Boeshane Peninsular, 5175
Exhausted, knowing he would not sleep for many hours, Ianto Jones leaned
forward to peer from the Transporter window.
The shrill klaxon sounded. Heavy hover fans churned beneath the soles of his feet, faster and faster, mimicking the rhythm of his heart.
Tonight he would lose his virginity.
For the second time.
Ianto sank back in his seat and massaged his pounding temples. He prayed
silently that it would all go well, that he had done the right thing, coming out west.
Searching for reassurance, he pulled open his draw string bag and withdrew the newspaper advertisement.
Farmer, Jaxton Harkness, seeks gentle and peaceful mate for simple life on Boeshane Peninsular prairie. Must agree to daily toil and plain home.
Marriage and a simple life was what he'd always wanted, he reminded himself, as he watched two children chase each other up the aisle, screeching with laughter.
A troublesome guilt slithered up Ianto's spine.
Never in all his dreams, had he believed he would reach his goal of marriage through deceit.
But he had no choice, really.
He folded the wrinkled piece of paper and slid his fingers along the crease. If only he knew what to expect from his future husband.
If only he knew what he looked like.
Stuffing the ad back into his bag, accidentally elbowing the sleeping woman beside him, Ianto decided with conviction that a man's looks were of little importance to him now.
He had learned his lesson in Delvon Prime.
This time he would act with common sense.
He gazed out the window at the ocean of golden prairie grass. The rippling land seemed to stretch on and on forever, colliding violently with the cloudless sky.
A person could easily disappear in it.
Amazing that the outer limits were sand when the prairie it framed was so lush. Would his home look like this?
He tilted his head back, closed his weary eyes, and imagined his new husband.
Perhaps Jaxton would be waiting for him with a black Land Hopper. He would touch the brim of his hat when their eyes first met.
Surely he would know him the moment he saw him. Ianto envisioned him wearing a new wedding suit—a gray one with a matching fedora—something similar to the one his father used to wear to church on Sundays.
He wondered if Jaxton was clean shaven. Tadda had always worn a wide, bristly moustache with the ends waxed into a curl.
And gold spectacles.
He smiled as he remembered how he used to smoke a pipe on Saturdays after supper.
Perhaps Jaxton would do the same.
All of a sudden, that tenacious guilt returned and stabbed at his dreamy thoughts.
He had not been completely honest with his future husband. He had kept many things from him. Ianto had come here in search of more than a simple home.
He had come in search of safety.
Sanctuary.
A baby at the back of the Transporter began to cry. Ianto opened his eyes.
He hoped Jaxton would never know how far he had plunged from his father's virtuous pedestal. And he hoped his husband would forgive him for deceiving him on their wedding day.
"I still think you're making a big mistake," Gray Harkness said, his eyes perusing
the dark, damp interior of the sod house.
Jaxton "Jack" Harkness glared with irritation at his brother, who brushed at the top of a wooden box before sitting down. Heaven forbid he should soil his new suit while he handed out his opinions.
Trying to ignore Gray's advice, Jack looked around his one room dwelling.
Rain from the day before had soaked through the walls to the inside. Mud dripped from the ceiling with a tedious tat-tat-tat.
The smell of wet earth yawned from every crevice after the rainstorm the night before, the dampness seeping under his clothing.
What a fine mess for his new mate to come home to.
Gray stomped his foot on a dirthopper, kneading it into the dirt floor. "You're
not over Gwen yet."
Shrugging into his fringed buckskin coat, Jack winced at the sound of Gwen's
name.
He hoped after today, he wouldn't hear it again.
His gaze searched the dugout for his worn leather gloves. Taking three easy strides, he swept them up from the nail keg by the door and tapped them against his thigh.
He wondered if he should have shaved.
Too late now, he decided. He'd been working since dawn in the corn field and hadn't realized the time.
"You're not listening to me," Gray went on. "It's only been three months, and you're hardly set up for marriage."
"I'm set up fine. I have land and I have a house." He spread his arms wide so the fringe on his sleeves dangled. "What more could I need?"
"You call this a house?" Gray walked to the sod wall and plucked out a long blade of limp, brown grass. "You advertise in a city paper for a mate, and you expect her to live here?"
Jack clamped his jaw at the insult. He was proud of what he'd accomplished over the past year. He owned this land and all the corn and wheat planted on it. As soon as the harvest machine came, he'd make a handsome profit off his wheat and rye.
Also, the insinuation that he would want another woman. After the last one?
"I said I was looking for someone who could handle the prairie. That someone answered, so there's nothing else to talk about. I need help around here. I need a mate. And I'm done sitting alone on my land like the hermit everyone thinks I am, pining away over…." Still uncomfortable speaking her name, he reached up to rub the back of his neck, warm under the blanket of his thick, unruly hair.
"You were never one to care what other people thought," Gray pointed out, a little too perceptively for Jack's present mood.
He took a deep breath, searching for patience. He succeeded only in reminding himself of the ever-present smell of dirt and grass. Everything was so darn wet.
"I am over Gwen," he said. "I was over her the moment she took me for a fool
and broke our engagement."
He turned his back on his brother. He didn't need this.
Not today. They had a long drive ahead of them and he had vows to think about.
"Look at you," Gray snorted. "You're covered with dust. You look like you just walked off the field. Why don't you at least borrow one of my suits?"
Jack looked down at his faded denims and shabby leather boots. "I did just walk off the field. This is the way I dress, and your suits would never fit me. You know that."
"We could stop off at the clothier—"
Jack raised an eyebrow, wishing Gray would stop making suggestions about his wedding attire. Jack had never intended the ceremony to be anything more than what it was.
A legality.
A moment of silence passed while Jack threw an old gray blanket over the narrow bed and fluffed up the single pillow. Suddenly, his gut wrenched. He was in the habit of living alone.
Soon he'd be sleeping here—sharing his bed—with a complete stranger.
"You don't have to marry this girl today," Gray continued. "You don't even know what she looks like."
"It's not about looks, Gray. In fact, a pretty face clouds a man's judgement. What I need is a capable mate who's not so concerned with fancy clothes and hats and all that other stuff women like." Jack flipped his hair out of his face. "He's going to live out here, miles from town, lighting fires with dry cow dung."
Gray's disapproving gaze swept the room then he pushed his gold spectacles further up the bridge of his nose. "It's not too late to change your mind. You could get to know her first, maybe court her a little. Er … He? Him?"
"I don't have time to court. I'm thirty years old. Besides, if I felt like courting, I'd court someone here in Boeshane Peninsular, instead of bringing him all the way from….uh…" Jack drew his eyebrows together, struggling to remember which newspaper advertisement he'd answered.
"Delvon Prime!" Gray finished for him as he finally accepted that he was gaining a brother, not a sister as first thought. "You brought him from Delvon Prime!"
"Right. Delvon Prime." He took one last look around to make sure everything was in order. It was as good as it was going to get. He reached for his well-worn ivory Stetson and placed it on his head. "Now let's get on the road or we'll be late and he'll be standing around at the station wondering if he got off in the wrong town."
Jack followed Gray through the narrow door, watching his brother duck so his
gray fedora wouldn't graze the low frame.
"I'm sure he'll be wondering that, regardless, when he sees this place," Gray commented.
The two walked into the wind toward the unpainted skipper, aged the colour of a thunder cloud. Hoisting himself into the hard seat, Jack flicked the switches and they lurched ominously into motion. He turned the skipper through the yard toward town with Gray's small skipper in tow.
Jack sighed. Maybe Gray was right.
Maybe he should have waited—at least until the harvest was in. But what was done was done. He'd made an agreement and he wouldn't go back on his word. The man had insisted on coming right away. He'd travelled across the solar system and he had promised him a marriage certificate the day he arrived.
Jack squinted up at the blue sky, removed his hat and swabbed his forehead with a sleeve.
Marriage.
He'd never imagined it would come about like this. But recalling his first proposal, he decided it was better this way. He'd made a mistake in choosing
Gwen. She was completely wrong for the kind of life he'd always wanted, but he'd been struck blind by her beauty and charm. Gwen could never have been a farmer's wife. He should have known that from the start.
Perhaps things turned out for the best with Gwen, he thought, absent-mindedly steering the skipper through a deep rut. There was no denying he'd suffered when she left him.
Anger had beaten the drive out of him for days, but it was anger directed at himself for being so foolish. His brain had been in his trousers when he'd proposed.
Not this time, he thought proudly. This time, Jack had a clear set of requirements, and a pretty face was not among them. This time, the marriage would be built on respect and a mutual desire for companionship—things that would last through the years.
Gray's voice penetrated Jack's thoughts. "Did you get him a wedding gift?"
"A wedding gift? Isn't it enough that I paid his fare all the way from Delvon Prime?"
Gray shook his head in that slow way of his. "A mate likes something he can
hold onto. A gift that'll mean something in twenty years when he digs it out of the closet. Why don't you give him the necklace?"
"Are you out of your mind?" Jack exclaimed. "What would I do about the engraving on the back? Draw a line through 'Gwen' and write in the other one's name?"
"Ianto."
"I know his name."
"It would be nice if you could use it when you meet him. Ianto, strange language, his planet has."
"I will. I will."
"And I don't want to hear you complaining if he's not the most beautiful man you've ever seen. You like the pretty ones and that's why you fell so hard for Gwen when she wasn't—"
Jack shot his brother a glare. "I hope my mate's got hips as big as a barn and arms stronger than Big Joe Maclee's. He'll need 'em if he's going to haul water from the creek 'till I get a well dug."
"And when do you plan on doing that?"
Jack clicked more switches and frowned. "When I get around to it."
Gray didn't respond, and Jack could feel his disapproval like a pesky fly.
Being a settlement person and a lawyer, Gray could never understand how much work went into farming. Or how rewarding it could be.
"I just hope you're nice to him today."
"I will be," Jack replied defensively. "And I don't want to hear any more about
it."
The skipper lurched and swayed over a bump in the road and realizing that, come sundown, he'd be a married man.
His chest tightened at the thought of meeting this strange man. He hoped this time he knew what he was getting into.
.
.
.
.
"Next stop, Boeshane City!" the conductor called out, whisking his fingers over the back of each seat as he staggered down the aisle.
Knots twisted inside Ianto's slender body.
He sat forward to see, for the first time, the place that would become his home. It was real now, no longer a fantasy.
He checked to ensure his soft brown hair was neat and tidy, all his buttons were fastened, then pinched his cheeks to summon some colour.
"You look lovely," the woman beside him said. "I'm sure he'll fall in love with you the moment he sees you."
Ianto forced a smile. "How did you know?"
"I saw you reading that ad, and it's not hard to tell how nervous you are. But don't worry. You're a beautiful young man. He'll be pleased, to be sure."
Ianto watched the dust-covered, wooden buildings pass by the window as the Transporter chugged into Boeshane City.
Sagging boardwalks sighed with fatigue under the persistent flow of Peninsular and Settlement folk. The wide main street, muddy from a recent rainfall, lay battered with deep hoof-prints and skipper tracks.
Oh gods, they still use horses?
The Transporter jerked to a tuckered-out halt at the station. Outside the window, a crowd was gathered on the platform, mostly men puffing pockets of cigar smoke out from under their hats.
Ianto took one last quick look, swallowed his apprehension then reached for his bags.
Inching into the aisle, Ianto carried his bags toward the door. When he reached the steps, he squinted into the bright sunlight then quickly raised a hand to shade his eyes.
He searched the unfamiliar faces looking up at him.
Where was the man who had promised to meet him?
The man who would soon be his husband?