He scowled as the memory came back. Emily’d been hot stuff in those days, too. Too goddamn hot, it turned out. “Little whore,” he growled. She hadn’t wanted to wait till he got back from the trenches. She’d spread it around, starting with his best friend. He remembered walking in after he got a leave he hadn’t told her about ahead of time, walking in and…

Angrily, he turned away from the mirror. Then, feeling foolish, he had to turn back to get his hat-almost a Stetson, but with a higher crown and a wider brim-cocked at just the right jaunty angle. Everything was going to be perfect, dammit, perfect, and he wasn’t going to think about Emily even once.

A Birmingham painted in official butternut waited for him. “Take you into town, sir?” the driver said.

“If you don’t, we ain’t got a show,” Jeff answered, and the fellow behind the wheel laughed. Jeff added, “Yeah, you might as well. I’ve come this far. I don’t reckon I’ll chicken out now.” He slid into the back seat.

“Better not,” the driver agreed. “That’s where you get one of them waddayacallems-breeches of promise suits, that’s it.”

That wasn’t exactly it, but came close enough. Jeff wondered if any lawyers were filing breach of promise suits these days, or if the Army had grabbed them all. Most, anyhow, he guessed. But a maiden spurned could probably still find a lawyer to be her knight in shining armor-at a suitable hourly rate, of course.

Edith Blades was no maiden. On the other hand, Jeff didn’t aim to spurn her. “Long as I’m at the church, everything’ll be just fine,” he said.

A couple of buses sat in the church parking lot. They’d brought guards in from Camp Determination. Patrols would be thin there this afternoon and evening. Jeff hoped they wouldn’t be too thin. He didn’t think they would. He’d made the camp as hard to break out of as he could. It ought to get along just fine for a few hours with a skeleton crew.

Hip Rodriguez waited in the doorway and waved when Jeff got out of the Birmingham. Edith had squawked a little when Jeff asked a Mexican to be his best man, but he’d won the argument. “Wasn’t for him, sweetheart,” he’d said, “it’s not real likely I’d be here to marry you.” Edith hadn’t found any answer for that. Pinkard hadn’t figured she could.

“You look good, Senor Jeff,” Rodriguez called.

“So do you,” Pinkard said, which was true. His old Army buddy hadn’t put on nearly so much weight as he had, and looked impressive as the devil in his guard’s uniform. Whoever had designed those clothes knew how to intimidate.

“Gracias.” Rodriguez’s smile was on the sheepish side. “You know something? This is the very first time I ever go inside a Protestant church.”

Thinking about it, Jeff realized he’d never set foot inside a Catholic church. He remembered some of the things he’d heard about those places when he was growing up in Birmingham. Turning them on their head, he said, “Don’t worry, Hip. I promise we don’t keep the Devil down in the storm cellar.”

By the way his pal started to cross himself, he must have been wondering something like that. Rodriguez broke off the gesture before completing it. “Of course not, Senor Jeff,” he said, though his expression argued it was anything but of course.

Jeff went on into the vestibule or whatever they called the antechamber just inside the entrance. Edith’s sister, who would be her maid of honor, stood guard at the door to the minister’s little office. The bride waited in there, and the groom was not going to set eyes on her till the ceremony started.

Jeff liked Judy Smallwood just fine. If he hadn’t got to know Edith first, he might have liked her sister better. Since Judy was going back to Alexandria right after the wedding, though, that wasn’t likely to prove a problem. “You look mighty nice,” he told her, and she did. Her dress was of glowing blue taffeta with short puffed sleeves that set off her figure and her fair skin, dark blond hair, and blue eyes.

By the way those eyes traveled him, she thought he cut a pretty fine figure himself in his fancy uniform. She said, “Kind of a shame you haven’t got anybody coming out from Alabama for the day.”

“My ma and pa been dead for years,” Jeff answered with a shrug. “Don’t have any brothers or sisters. My cousins…” He shrugged again. “I don’t recollect the last time I talked to one of them. They heard from me now, they’d just reckon I was aiming to pry a wedding present out of ’em.”

“Well, if it’s like that, you shouldn’t,” Judy said. “It’s too bad, though.”

“Have I got time for a cigarette before we get going?” Jeff wondered. He’d just pulled the pack out of his pocket when the minister emerged from the office. Jeff made the cigarettes disappear again. A smoke would have calmed his nerves, but he could do without. Anyhow, the only real cure for prewedding jitters was about four stiff drinks, and that would make people talk. He touched the brim of his hat. “Howdy, Parson.”

“Mr. Pinkard,” the Reverend Luke Sutton said, bobbing his bald head in return. He sent Hip Rodriguez a slightly fishy stare. Rodriguez showed no sign of sprouting horns on his forehead or letting a barbed tail slither out past his trouser cuffs, so the minister looked away and started down the aisle.

Mrs. Sutton struck up the wedding march on a beat-up old upright piano against one wall. Some Baptist churches didn’t approve of music at all; Jeff was glad the Suttons weren’t quite so strict. As they’d rehearsed, he listened to her play it through once. Then he headed down the aisle himself. His best man followed.

Uniforms filled the folding chairs on one side. The other held Edith’s relatives: ordinary-looking men and women in black suits and in dresses of a variety of colors and styles-some of them must have dated from just after the Great War, and they ran up to the present.

Edith’s sons by Chick Blades were the ring bearers. Small, smothered chuckles rose as people got a look at the young boys. Jeff had to work to keep his own face straight. Edith had told him she would make sure Frank and Willie didn’t have silly grins on their faces when they came down the aisle. She’d put the fear of God in them, all right, better than Reverend Sutton could have dreamt of doing. They looked serious past the point of solemnity-all the way to absurdity, in fact.

Edith’s sister came next. She was grinning, but on her it looked good. And Edith herself followed a moment later. Her dress was identical in cut to Judy’s, but of a taffeta somewhere between cream and beige: this wasn’t her first marriage, so white wouldn’t have been right. She’d had to do some searching to find a veil that matched, but she’d managed.

She stood beside Jeff. They faced the minister. He went through a wedding sermon he’d probably delivered a hundred times before. It wasn’t fresh. It wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t even very interesting. Pinkard didn’t care. It was official-that was all that mattered. Before too long, Sutton got down to business. They exchanged rings, taking them from the velvet pillows Edith’s sons carried. “Do you, Jefferson Davis Pinkard, take this woman as your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, till death do you part?”

“I do,” Jeff said.

Edith’s vows were the same, except there was a to obey in them somewhere. Jeff hardly noticed it, and suspected Edith would hardly notice it, either. Her chin went up in pride as she also said, “I do.”

“Then by the authority vested in me by the Confederate Baptist Convention and by the sovereign state of Texas, I now pronounce you man and wife,” Luke Sutton declared. “You may kiss the bride.”

Jeff lifted Edith’s veil to do just that. He made the kiss thorough without, he hoped, making a spectacle of himself. Edith stayed relaxed in his arms, so he didn’t think he overdid it.