Romance: Mail Order Bride "The Ideal Bride" Clean Christian Western Historical Romance (Western Mail Order Bride Short Shorties Series) (199 page)

Chapter 9

That day was the beginning of the rest of my life. Robert and I were married shortly after the incident, and just like he promised, my past never caused any strife in our relationship. Robert was offering me what I’d wanted my entire life. He was allowing me to leave all of that bad stuff in my past. It was never even brought up again.

The incident left me a bit shaken, but also made me realize I never wanted to be that helpless again. Robert found a few men in town who were willing to teach me how to shoot and fight with a knife. Over the course of the next year, I became one of St. Louis’ best marksmen and Robert was more than proud of me.

I ended up joining the Sheriff’s volunteer brigade and within a short time I managed to bring in the two men who’d tried to take advantage of me. Getting justice on my own terms was one of the most empowering things I’d ever experienced. I encouraged other women to learn to fight, wanting them to feel the same kind of empowerment I had felt.

All this time, Robert was still trying to stop the brothels from coming to town and with the help of the local government, he managed to write a law that would permanently ban them from the city limits. It seemed that we’d finally won our war.

Eventually I had to stop working with the Sherriff since Robert and I were expecting our first child. It was far too dangerous for me to be fighting crime while carrying a child. I wasn’t even hesitant about leaving. I’d always dreamed of having a family and that dream was finally coming to fruition.

I turned to look at Robert as he climbed out of the small lake where we’d shared our first kiss. My hair was wet and my slip was clinging to my rounded belly. Robert leaned over and kissed me, resting his hand on my stomach for a moment. He looked at me seriously.

“Are you happy?”

“More than you will ever know,” I whispered.

For the first time in my life, I truly was happy, and I had found that happiness in Robert and in faith.

THE END

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Chapter One

“Lizzie? Are you in there?”

Elizabeth Wilder turned on her side at the sound of a light rapping on her door. Burying her head deeper into the pillow and wishing that the noise would simply cease, she groaned when the knocking intensified along with her friend’s sharp voice.

“I’m not leaving until you talk to me. Please open the door.”

Elizabeth sighed as she flung her legs over the other side of the bed and tossed the patchwork quilt aside. Her gaze was blurry from a night spent sobbing as she turned the knob and came face-to-face with Caroline.

“Oh, honey,” Caroline crooned. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

“Worse,” Elizabeth muttered under her breath as she stifled a sniffle and pushed her light red hair behind her ears. “Come on in. I suppose there’s no stopping you.”

“Not when you need a friend,” Caroline responded as the girls linked arms and slowly shuffled back to the bed. Grateful to sit again, Elizabeth cast her eyes on the floor and picked at the hem of her nightgown.

“Is Mrs. Anderson fit to be tied?” Elizabeth asked as her mind turned to the restaurant. Business was booming on account of the railroad laying tracks through Beecher’s Pass, and to be one server short had to have caused the squat woman’s eyes to bulge out of her constantly red face.

“She was none too pleased,” Caroline confessed as she smoothed her hand down Elizabeth’s back. “But I told her you were feeling far from fine. And that it wouldn’t be fitting if you passed the plague on to her valued customers.”

“It’s not as bad as all that,” Elizabeth said as she rolled her eyes. Caroline was nothing if not dramatic, but a small part of Elizabeth almost wished that she could return to the soft bed, curl up under the quilt, and never rise again.

“Maybe,” Caroline conceded. “But it still has to hurt.”

At that Elizabeth nodded and struggled to fight off a fresh stream of tears. Her gaze shifted towards the bureau resting just under the tiny mirror on the far wall. Caroline was quick to follow her stare, and the dark-haired girl bit down on her lips as soon as she spied one of the many objects of Elizabeth’s despair.

“The brooch,” she said. “Maybe the one good thing that louse left you.”

Caroline was on her feet, and she picked up the jewelry. The fine ebony stone lined with silver as a flower carved out of pearl rested in its center was the finest thing that Elizabeth had ever been able to call her own.

“I told him that it was too much,” Elizabeth admitted as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “He said that nothing was too good for me. And that there was more where it came from.”

“Like possibly something of the diamond variety?” Caroline asked. At the question, Elizabeth shoulders started to shake, and she hid her face in her hands as Caroline folded her in a warm embrace.

“You want some advice, Lizzie?” Lifting her head, Elizabeth waited without breathing as Caroline dangled the precious piece before her eyes. “I say you should sell it. Might as well get something out of the man leading you along. Net yourself a tiny profit and see what else the world has to offer.”

That was the point of coming to Beecher’s Pass in the first place. After the better part of a lifetime spent under the roof of the orphanage just outside of Claremont, Elizabeth came of age and was nearly resigned to the sad truth that no one would ever want her. Was it something in the way she looked? Was her face too round or her hair too frizzy? The day she turned eighteen, the moment of liberation sent her in search for something better.

And right on cue, there was Gregory Mitchell promising the world with a smile and the sweetest voice. He had come to town with the railroad. Caroline called him one of the
fat cats
who doled out the wages and never got his hands dirty. Those same hands were so soft when they stroked Elizabeth’s cheeks, and his lips were tender every time he pulled her in for a kiss and ran his fingers through her hair.

Until they spoke the awful truth.

“He said he has no choice in the matter,” Elizabeth started. “It’s an arrangement that his father made, and he has to honor the obligation.”

That meant that another girl, probably a willowy blonde with fine manners and porcelain skin would get to call Gregory her husband, and Elizabeth was left out in the cold once again.

“Rich boys always fall back on that line,” Caroline said as she pressed the brooch into Elizabeth’s palm and brushed a few strands of hair from her cheek. “As if we are supposed to believe that it just came out of thin air.”

“What do you mean by that?” Elizabeth asked.

“Lizzie, it’s a done deal when they’re still in diapers,” Caroline started. “They always know what their destiny is. And they pretend to be so tortured when they capture our hearts with pretty words and gifts. The parting is such sweet sorrow. But the love was never meant to last.”

As Elizabeth let the words sink in, she slowly started to shake her head.

“No. Not Gregory. He’s different. I know that he loved me.”

“Then why didn’t he fight to stay with you, honey?”

She had no answer to Caroline’s question. Even if he was caught in a trap, Gregory was going to link this life to someone else. In short order, there would be little ones to look after. How Elizabeth longed to shower one baby or more with the love that she had lost.

“What do I do now?” she asked as she blinked hard without any tears left to shed. “And I’m not pawning the brooch. It still means something to me.”

“Fair enough,” Caroline said with a heavy sigh. “But you really are too sweet to keep slinging hash. And there are other ways to get a fresh start.”

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, and Caroline reached into her pocket to reveal a small scrap of paper snipped from the newspaper. Focusing on the wrinkled words, she read them quietly and stopped before the end of the sentence.

“No,” she started. “That’s not what I want.”

She had heard the stories. Men whose wives had died from one disease or another or taken off when living off the land became too much too bear.

“Did you get to the best part?” Caroline asked. “Might be the answer to all of your prayers.”

Sucking in a deep breath as she steeled herself to see what Caroline was on about, the last few words burned brighter than the rest on the page.

There are three little ones in need of a mother’s love. To the person that can take them into her heart, I say welcome.

Reading the words a second and then a third time, Elizabeth trailed her fingers across the page and pictured the small children lost and lonely. She knew what it was to lose a mother. And should something happen to their father, what would be their fate?

“I thought of you as soon as I saw it,” Caroline confessed. “Where’s the harm in writing back? You might like the answer.”

“What if it’s
no
?” Elizabeth mused. “I’m not sure that I could handle that.”

“Would you rather sit in this room and stay sad until the end of time?” Caroline challenged. “A change of scenery will do you a world of good. Take a chance, Lizzie.”

It still seemed like a fool’s errand, but Elizabeth pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer. Her pencil was dull, but she moved to the desk and tapped the point to the stained wood and wondered where she should start.

“At the beginning,” Caroline prompted as she joined her at the desk and nudged her shoulders. “Just be honest; it’s what you do best.” Her smile was sweet, and Caroline planted an encouraging kiss on the top of her head as Elizabeth focused on the blank page and saw her own mother wracked with fever to the point where she could not stand up straight. The woman took to her bed and thrashed around the sheets until her body grew still and her eyes turned glassy. She made sounds without words and then nothing at all. Elizabeth remembered tugging on her mother’s sleeve and begging her to come back when a neighbor carried her out of the room. Her father avoided her eyes as the body was prepared for burial, and once her mother was lowered into the ground, his stare turned even colder. Sometimes she had wished that he would go away if he couldn’t even hold her.

And fate granted her request in the simplest and cruelest of ways. Her father was on his way home, for whatever that was worth, when his horse skipped a stone and sent him crashing into the ground. The word around the county was that he was gone before anyone had the chance to turn his body over and see his face, but Elizabeth would have taken him on any terms when her life became the orphanage. Having to fight for food or a blanket made her long for the man’s stony silence. Maybe that’s why she fell for Gregory’s charms. He could spin poetry out of a request for more potatoes, and the failure to hear the sound of his voice hurt almost as much as the loss of his kiss.

“Lizzie?” Caroline prodded. “Aren’t you going to write something down?”

“Yes,” she said. “But no more than he needs to know.”

Her pencil moved across the page in swirling lines. Elizabeth’s sentences were short as she pictured a man like her father. Frail and withered well before his time as he absorbed the words and took a pass like so many had done before. But she wanted something more as she punctuated the point.

“How does this sound?” Elizabeth asked. Caroline took the finished letter into her hands and smiled as she read aloud.

“
I can make your house a home. And I hope to hear from you soon.”

“A little bit of a weak finish, no?” Caroline asked.

“It is what it is,” Elizabeth stated. “Post it. We’ll see what happens.” She started to move back to the bed and fell into the sheets. “I’ll be back to work tomorrow.”

“And the next day?” Caroline asked as she patted her cheek.

“That’ll be me, too.”

She finally slept and rose to meet the new morning. Caroline passed her an apron as soon as she entered the noisy room and heard cutlery smashing against plates as hungry mouths slurped coffee down. Mrs. Anderson told her that she needed to watch her step lest she lose her present positon altogether and Elizabeth let the week slide by. And another after that. Whoever he was had to have viewed the letter by now, and she wished that she had said something more when Caroline grabbed her by the arm and waved a torn envelope in her face.

“It’s here!” Caroline squealed. “Looks like you knew what you were doing all along.”

Elizabeth took hold of the folded page with trembling hands and shot Caroline a smirk.

“You really shouldn’t be reading my mail,” she said. “But since you’ve already done the deed, do you want to tell me what has you smiling?”

“It’s your ticket out!” Caroline squealed. “Just look, Lizzie.”

She scanned the page and felt her eyes grow wide at the sight of the words.

Home sounds right. I’ve enclosed money for train fare. Hope you’re alright with the rails.

“Seems fitting,” Caroline said. “So you’re going to accept the offer. Right, honey?”

Licking her lips, Elizabeth stared into the distance and considered her options.