Chapter 9: What the Quiet Man Heard

Marcello's POV

I have stood in front of guns on four continents, and I have never once been afraid for myself.

I was afraid in that chapel.

June stood behind my back with her hand in her hair, and Gwen Kinsella stood beside her, and forty barrels sat in the air.

The numbers were simple. Eleven on the left, twenty-nine on mine.

Odds I liked, in a room I hated.

"Eleven rifles are in my gun room," I said to the old man in the gray suit.

"Your pistols are in this room, with mine."

"I have twenty-nine men in this lodge. You have eleven."

"The snow hides a great deal," he said.

"It hides you better than it hides me. Look at your daughter."

He looked.

Gwen had put her hand on June's arm.

She held her chin level while her father's face went through every expression a man can wear.

"Gwen," he said softly.

"I'm not marrying him, Father."

"You'll do as you are told."

"I'll go with June."

His eyes came back to me, and they were flat and pale.

"We will finish this when the plows come," he said.

He lifted one finger.

Eleven pistols went back under eleven coats, and twenty-nine of mine followed, one by one.

I turned around.

June's face was bone white and perfectly steady, and she was looking at me.

"Get her out of here," I said to her. "Take Gwen to the east wing. Marcy too. My driver will go with you."

She went.

I let myself breathe once, standing alone in the aisle, and the hand on my sleeve was my mother's.

"You will marry that girl," she said, "or I will disown you in front of God."

"Yes, Mama."

"She stood in my chapel and shamed a hundred guests."

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