Mail Order Annie - A Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Novel (Mail Order Romance - Book 1 - Benjamin and Annie) (3 page)

             
“Oh, I quite understand that,” Anne hoped her voice did not reveal her apprehension. “You have told me as much, more than once, in your letters, so I am quite prepared to accept the situation as it is. But now, you must tell me more about your ranch. I understand it is quite large. Do you have any neighbors that you associate with?”

             
“My ranch is five thousand acres,” Moran stated. “It’s not all that big, by local standards. As far as my neighbors go, there’s Tom and Maureen Iverson to the west of me. They have thirty thousand acres. And the Forsythes own fifty thousand acres and a hundred thousand head of cattle, just next door to me, in the next valley over. But I wouldn’t call them neighbors. I don’t associate with them at all, not if I can help it.”

             
“Oh!” she brightened. “Is that the same Forsythe family that Webster Forsythe belongs to—the man I met in town?”

             
“Yes,” Moran grumbled. “His father owns the ranch. Young Webster is the heir apparent to the whole empire, and it’s on his account that neither I nor anyone else around here has much to do with the Forsythes. He’s a rake. He’s a snake in the grass, and if you take my advice, you’ll have nothing more to do with him.”

             
“That’s very curious,” Anne ventured. “He seems to have the same low opinion of you.”

             
“I’m sure he does,” Moran asserted. “He hates me because I know things about him that he would prefer I didn’t know. That’s his way, sneaking around, doing every low thing that strikes his fancy, and then trying to cover it all up so no one finds out. He’s terrified that I will tell someone what I know about him, and that it will get out, and then his posh reputation will be even more spoiled than it already is.”

             
“What sort of low things does he do?” Anne inquired, her curiosity peaked.

             
“He goes down to the Eckville Saloon whenever he feels the urge, drinks himself into a stupor, and then goes around looking for any young female he can lay his hands on. He’s not above breaking into folks’ houses and bodily carrying off their daughters. He has ruined every young woman in the area—or tried his level best to ruin them—and some of the families have chosen to send their daughters away to schools Back East or to live with relatives, just to get them away from Webster Forsythe. It’s a cryin’ shame, really, because his parents are really nice folks, and they would love to have company out at their house and show off their wealth and all that, but no one will give them the time of day. It’s especially hard on his mother. Old Lady Forsythe would like to be a charitable patron of the poor and have ladies’ meetings and tea parties and all that sort of thing, but none of the other women in the area will even speak to her when she comes down to the Post Office. So she hides herself away at home. Same with her husband, Banford Forsythe, Webster’s father. No one has seen either of them in Eckville for years. No one sees anyone from the Forsythe Ranch except Webster, and a darn sight too much of that.”

             
“That is all very curious,” Anne repeated, shocked at her own sudden recklessness, “because he just told me a similar story about you. He said that you tempted a young lady out to your homestead, and that she lived with you for two years before she ran away and disappeared. Is that true?”

             
Moran humphed. “I’ll just bet he did,” he scoffed. “That’s just like him.”

             
“Is there any truth to the story?” Anne insisted.

             
“Maybe I’ll tell you all about it someday,” Moran hedged. “Now isn’t the time or the place. You’ll have to judge me for yourself when you get out to the homestead. You’ll decide for yourself if I am the man Webster Forsythe told you that I am, or if my intentions toward you are honorable. Come to think of it, I’m glad that he told you that line of hogwash first thing, so that you’ll have something to measure me against. A lot of people have heard that story from him, and some of them believe it. If you come to believe it, too, then you will certainly not stay on here with me, and we will both be better off apart.”

             
This response comforted Anne considerably. She considered that no man who was guilty of anything like Webster Forsythe’s characterization of Moran would answer in this way, without the slightest hint of concern for his own social position. Clearly Moran felt absolutely confident of his own moral position.

             
While this conversation proceeded, Anne did not notice the passage of the landscape. In the lull of the discussion, she realized that the plain dirt road along which they traveled wound steadily upward into the foothills of high mountains, and that the low scrub and blank waste of the country surrounding Eckville now gave way to rolling, forested hillsides and verdant streambeds, where birds chirped pleasantly and the occasional deer peeked through the trees at them before slinking silently away. The change stirred Anne from her misery and shone a glimmer of hope into her gloomy outlook. She began to look about her with an appreciation for the beauty of the countryside and a more measured attitude toward her future.

             
Just as the last words died away between them, the wagon trundled through a gap between two hills and crested a rise which overlooked a valley of unparalleled grandeur falling away from them into the distance. Anne gasped at the sight of steep bluffs sweeping up to peaks of unimaginable heights, with eagles soaring in the steel-grey clouds above them and a carpet of meadow strewn with wild flowers leading them down to the valley floor. In the very faint limits of her vision, Anne barely discerned the outline of a tiny stone cottage nestled into a line of trees, the faint breeze lifting a welcoming curl of smoke from its chimney into the fading twilight.

             
“What is this place?” Anne whispered, amazed.

             
“Angelfire,” Moran replied. His voice dropped to an awed hush like her own, so clearly enamored was he of his own land.

             
“But it’s breath-taking!” Anne gushed. “You said it was nice, but you never let on that it would be so magnificent! I never knew a place could be so beautiful! Even the word beautiful doesn’t do it justice! Oh, it makes you glory in God’s creation! It restores your faith in the world, to know that He has created places like this! Oh, I could sit here and gaze at it forever!”

             
“I’m glad you like it,” Moran smiled at her for the first time. “It’s getting late, and we still have a ways to go to get to the cabin before it gets dark. We can come back up here and admire the view tomorrow, or another day, if you want to.” With that, he clucked his tongue to his horse and the wagon teetered through the ruts in the road, dropping into the valley.

             
Anne savored the view as the wagon moved off, her heart soaring into the steely beyond.

The waving grass, speckled with gold and purple and blue, sighed in the breeze like the churning of surf on a beach, and the wind boomed through the tall trees along the far edge of the valley. All these sounds, together with the keening of the hawks at the precipice of the cliffs, sounded in Anne’s ear like a great symphony of glorious rapture, and she could scarcely believe that, just a few hours before, she had been choking back tears at the prospect of living here. Even now, the acute extremity of emotion almost made her burst afresh into tears, so incredibly fantastic did the scenery appear to her after the abject lifelessness of Eckville. Her eyes lustily drank in the surroundings, and she thought she could not look around fast enough or deeply enough to take in as much of the great beauty of the place as would satisfy her hungry heart.

              The wagon drew incrementally closer to the cabin, so that Anne eventually made out other shapes around it. A barn of heavy timbers and a small shed appeared behind the cabin, all plainly but sturdily constructed. Moran stopped his horse in front of the cabin and turned to Anne. “Go on inside while I put the wagon away and tend to the horse. The fire’s still going, and there’s a pot of beans on for supper. In the lean-to at the back, you’ll find a haunch of bacon, and flour and lard and butter for biscuits. I’ll bring your trunk in later.” Anne marveled that the expression of black fury had vanished from his face, and his voice rang almost kindly in it solicitude.

             
Anne climbed down from the wagon seat and went to the door of the cabin, while Moran steered the wagon over to the barn, where he slid back the door and led the horse inside by the bridle. Anne lifted the latch in the door, and it swung inward on well-oiled hinges. She had to stoop beneath the lintel of the doorway, and inside the darkness seemed impenetrable to her eyes before they adjusted to the light coming through the door. One small room comprised the whole of the cabin, with a handmade table and chairs in the center and a rope bed, spread with a patchwork quilt, in one corner. In the opposite corner, a heavy covered pan simmered peacefully on top of a pot-bellied, cast-iron stove. In spite of everything appearing exactly as Moran described his home in letters, Anne paused on the threshold, doubt and insecurity taking hold of her again. Is this my future? she shuddered. Is this all I have to look forward to? Is this where I will grow old? Once more, the crypt of crushing misery shaded her vision, and she quaked at the knowledge that she had now no alternative but to follow through on the path before her.

             
With a heavy sigh, she dropped her handbag and handkerchief onto the table and turned to the pan on the stove. A glance inside showed a stew of beans, now thoroughly cooked. She opened the vent at the bottom of the stove and, after shoving in a few pieces of wood from the crate on the floor, brought the fire to a blaze and the pan to a boil. In the lean-to, she sliced a few hearty chunks of bacon from the haunch of meat hanging from the ceiling, and gathered the ingredients for biscuits in a bowl. Back in the kitchen, she chopped the bacon into the pan, sprinkled in some salt and pepper from the shelf nearby, and occupied herself with mixing up the biscuit dough. The mundane task of preparing the meal took her mind off her worries and turned the phantasm of her thoughts into the reality of hearth and home. She patted her biscuit dough down onto the top of the stew and settled the lid in place just as Moran clumped in through the door with her valise in one hand and her trunk balanced on one shoulder. He pitched the valise onto the table top next to her handbag and dropped the trunk into the corner, where it split one last time into an amorphous pile of clothing and linen, spiked here and there with shattered wood, held together by its rope.

             
“Oh, thank you!” Anne rushed over to the remains of the trunk and stooped to rummage among its spilled contents. “I need an apron.” After a quick dig among the items on the floor, she found what she sought and tied it around her waist. This article of clothing sealed her transformation in her own mind, and she returned to bustling about the room, putting this right and that away, with renewed spirits of industry and prosperity.

             
Moran stepped outside again, and when he reappeared in the doorway, he carried a rifle in one hand and a short-handled ax in the other. Anne caught her breath at his violent appearance, but he hung the rifle on two pegs above the door and propped the ax behind the wood box next to the stove where it belonged, restoring the tranquility and homeliness of the cabin.

             
Moran kicked off his boots next to the door, lit a lantern hanging on the door post, and closed the door on the outside world just as darkness descended on the surrounding valley. “There’s a storm coming in,” he announced, padding over to the table in his socks. Anne saw a pink exposed heel poking out through a hole in the end of his sock. “Just as well we got in when we did, or we’d be soaked out there on the road.”

             
Anne swept her things from the table into the pile by the door and set two plates in their place. She spooned the steaming mixture into each one, replaced the pan on the stove, and man and woman sat down across from each other in the chairs at the table.

             
“Shall we say Grace?” Anne suggested cautiously.

             
Moran stiffened. “You go ahead, if you want to,” he muttered.

             
Anne clasped her hands and bowed her head. “Blessed be the Lord, who provides food to the hungry and rest to the weary. May we live and prosper in His sight and with His blessing. Amen.”

             
As the words died out on her lips, Moran took up his spoon and began devouring the food noisily. Anne followed suit more reservedly. After a moment of chewing, Moran peeked at her and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything fancy to toast your arrival,” he remarked. “I’m afraid a simple supper will have to do.”

             
“Oh, that’s alright,” Anne smiled across at him in the glowing lantern light. “A supper to fill my belly, and a fire in the stove, and a bed to sleep in will be more than enough of a welcome after three weeks in a train, I assure you.”

             
Moran cast his eye in the direction of the bed as they both began their meal. “You will sleep in here,” he pointed across the room with his chin. “I have a bed set up in the barn for myself, so you can have some privacy. If everything works out between us, and we wind up marrying, then I’ll move back in, but until then you will have the place to yourself.”