ROMANCE: MAIL ORDER BRIDE: The Other Man’s Baby (A Clean Christian Historical Western) (New Adult Inspirational Pregnancy Romance) (29 page)

Asia was walking down his stairs looking like a biker beauty, leather pants, leather jacket, leather boots. Damien leaned back against his bike for support as much as to enjoy the view better. Her hair bounced around her shoulders and the smile that took over her face was for him. How did he get so lucky? “You ready for this,” he called. Today, she was taking the Harley out solo for the first time. Nerves knotted in his stomach, but only because he loved her so much. Letting her out of his sight had become a true fight for him, but one he shared with her.

Brighter smile. “Damn straight.”

She kept walking until his space was her space, and she stood close to his chest, her thighs flush against his. All the nerves that were knotted in his stomach disappeared as he pressed his lips against the side of her mouth. “I can't believe it took this long to get you.” He said with a sigh.

Asia moved slightly so she could nip his lower lip. “Mmm, the truth is I loved you the whole time.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Word?”

“Word.” She said.

“Okay, baby, let’s do this.” He reached behind her for the helmet and slid it over her curls.”Buckle up.”

Folding his arms across his chest, he watched as she disappeared around the side of the house. He took in his garden, lush now at the end of July.  Asia was taking vegetables into the diner nearly every day now. He smiled when he glanced at the sliding glass door. He saluted his father who leaned against it. His name was next on the waiting list for a kidney. By this time next year, he would likely be off dialysis and starting a life again with a new kidney.

Life was looking pretty good. The sound of his motorcycle returning made him smile. Asia pulled up in front of him, cut the motor and removed the helmet. Smiling, she climbed off the Harley and held out her hand.  “Come on, Damien, let’s go upstairs.  Put up or shut up.”

**THE END**

“Durnit!”

Gideon Mathieson pulled on the reins to draw Lucky to a halt.  He didn’t have time to stop and bring that darn cow back to Mrs.  Jacob’s spread.  Just last week he’d caught the darn cow on his land again, wandering off by herself as if she wanted to visit the neighbors.  He didn’t care about Lucy being on his property, but she could get into mischief or worse trouble, and Mrs.  Jacobs set a store by that darn cow.

He jumped from the buckboard.  He grabbed a rope from the back and hid it behind his back; that darn Lucy was too smart and then some and if she saw the rope, she’d take to running and like as not break a leg and then he’d have a hell of a time consoling old Mrs.  Jacobs.  Who ever heard of a grown woman having a pet cow?

He walked slowly, sauntering as if he just happened to be strolling by, neighborly-like.  When he was close enough, he sent the lasso twirling in the air, and it landed true, right on Lucy’s damned neck.  But Lucy wasn’t having any of it.  She pulled at the rope, Gideon held on, and they tugged for a bit, until Lucy realized that Gideon wasn’t surrendering.  He tied the rope to the back of the buckboard so that she could trot along.  This was not the first time he and Lucy had enacted this scene, but today was not a day when he had the time to spend playing nursemaid to a vagabond cow. 

Mrs.  Jacobs was appreciative as always. 

“Gideon, I don’t know what me and Lucy would do without you,” she said when he knocked on her door and she saw her cow, now tied to the porch railing.  “She’s just the most wandering creature God ever made.  But you have a busy day today, don’t you?”

“That’s all right, ma’am,” Gideon said.  But it wasn’t.  The stagecoach was due in, and aboard was his wife.  Well, she would be his wife once the preacher made it so.  When Gideon turned 30 last winter, he’d vowed it would be his last Christmas in a cold bed.  He wanted a wife and a family and all the women that he knew in Goshen were either wives, daughters, or other than ladies.  He didn’t want a fresh filly who had her head filled with romantic notions, and he sure didn’t want a woman who’d been bed companion to half the cowboys in town.  He wanted a woman, grown and able, someone he could love with hard work and faithfulness.  In return, he’d offer her a snug little cabin that he’d built himself, the prettiest spread this side of the Goshen Creek, and a willingness to let his wife run the home while he ran the ranch.

He didn’t reckon that he was much to look at.  Big-shouldered and broad-backed, with a nose that had been broken a decade ago when a bronc threw him, Gideon didn’t figure that he was much to look at and the only reason he had a mirror at all was so that he could shave without slitting his throat.  His black hair grew thick and unruly, and his dark brown eyes could look any man in the eye without shame, but he wasn’t one for frills.  He’d left the army after the war as a raw nineteen-year old who was anti-slavery and pro-states’ rights and made his way to Texas, where he figured he could leave Union and Confederate sides behind and just be an American. 

“You’re a good man, Gideon,” Mrs.  Jacobs said with her accent that told him she’d started out somewhere east of the Atlantic Ocean.  Maybe she came from somewhere where cows were pets; he didn’t know much about those other places.

“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You bring that bride of yours by some night for supper, you hear me? I want to meet her.”

“Thank you, ma’am.  I reckon she’ll be glad to have a neighbor lady close by.”

He tipped his hat to Mrs.  Jacobs and began to walk away.  But Lucy hadn’t forgotten her grudge.  As he walked quickly to gain back the time he’d lost, he failed to look down.  The next thing he knew, he had slipped and fallen to the dirt, where soil and the smeared remnants of a cow patty left marks on his best trousers. 

“Lucy!” Mrs.  Jacobs scolded.  “You know better!”

She was down the stairs in seconds with a wet cloth to wipe his trousers clean.  “Gideon, I’m so sorry, she knows better than that.”
“Well, ma’am, she’s a cow and I don’t know that she knows better at all.”

Mrs.  Jacobs continued to brush the cloth.  “There!” she said triumphantly.  “I think most of the stink is gone!”

Gideon started to laugh.  Hell of a way to meet his bride.   She might as well get used to what Texas smelled like, he reckoned. 

Mrs.  Jacobs peered up at him, puzzled by his amusement.  “You’re a good man, Gideon,” she said again.  “I will give Lucy a scolding such as she has never heard.”

“Ma’am, you don’t want to hurt her feelings.  She’s a spirited cow, that’s all.”

Mrs.  Jacobs beamed.  “Remember, supper as soon as you and the Mrs. are ready to meet the neighbors.”

Lucky knew the way to town all on his own, so Gideon kept a light hand on the reins while he thought about her, his mail order bride.  Catherine was her name.  Catherine Smith.  Was she a Kate, he wondered, or a Cathy? No matter, she’d be his darling in time.  He’d be kind and patient while she got used to him.  He’d remember to wipe his feet before coming inside he recalled his mother’s ire when the men failed to do so, tracking mud onto her floors.  In the eleven years since he’d been in Texas, he’d been so busy working that there hadn’t been time for such niceties, but he’d spent every night for the past month cleaning the cabin so that it would look nice for the woman who would live there.  Mrs.  Jacobs had helped him, bringing a fair-scented soap with her that left a fine smell in the rooms, and giving the furniture a sturdy polishing so that the wood shone.  He’d paid Paint Chandler’s wife to make a couple of brightly colored rag rugs for the front room and the bedroom.

The bedroom.  Gideon thought of that room now.  He’d wake up tomorrow with Catherine’s hair spread out on the pillow next to his, and her soft body beside him.  He didn’t know what she looked like, but if he didn’t frighten her with his big, calloused hands and cowboy ways, he reckoned they’d make out alright.  Pretty would be nice, but he wasn’t asking for more than the good Lord could send him in this wild country.

As he entered town, Lucky leading the way down between the two sides of the street that housed the stores, saloons, sheriff’s office and the schoolhouse, he noticed that a crowd had gathered at the far end where the stagecoach let off passengers.  Likely the townspeople, knowing that his mail-order bride was coming, had gathered to welcome her and reassure her that late didn’t mean he wasn’t coming.  They all knew how eager he was for this day.

But the voices that he heard didn’t sound welcoming.  He heard yells, and curses, and then he saw a clod of dirt sail through the air.  As he neared the scene, he saw a tall woman, loose black hair lifting in the stray breeze beneath a bonnet, standing alone. 

“What’s an Injun doing here?” he heard someone—sounded like Al Jessop, the manager of the general store—call out.  “Who sent Gid a half-breed squaw for a wife?”

“Half-breed!” someone else yelled; a woman this time.

Gideon drove the buckboard to the crowd’s edge and got out.  Al came over to him. 

“Gid, you’ve been cheated.  That mail order place sent a half-breed for a wife.  You go on and send her back; we’ll pay the fare.  What were they thinking, sending an Injun for a wife?”
The mail order place that Al referred to was a mission; Gideon had figured that he didn’t care what religion she was, as long as she was a good woman, and a mission was likely to be reputable. 

“Catherine?” he asked softly.

The woman met his eyes impassively.  He saw that her dark blue skirt and white blouse were marked in places from the dirt that had been thrown.  Lord, she was pretty! Prettier than he’d have had any right to expect.  Dark eyes, dark hair, a slim, straight figure.  He could see the mixture of white and Indian in her bones and skin color. 

She nodded.  “I am Catherine,” she said.  Her voice was low-pitched, not shrill.  He was glad of that.  Cam Gestetner’s wife Laura was a dab hand at cooking, sewing, and childbearing but she had a voice so shrill that he thought it a wonder she hadn’t sent cattle into a stampede.

A pretty woman, a soft, low voice.  He had a bride.

He smiled.  “I’m Gideon Mathieson, ma’am.  We’d best get over to the parson’s so we can head on home.”
“Gideon!” Al Jessop was outraged.  “You can’t mean to marry this squaw and bring an Indian into this God-fearing community?”

“She’s from the mission, I reckon she’s as Christian as any of us,” Gideon replied, moving into the circle to stand by Catherine.  He offered her his arm; he didn’t know many fancy Eastern ways but he knew that much. 

She looked at his proffered arm, then her gaze swept up to look at him.  The scrutiny was a measuring one.  “I ain’t much to look at,” he admitted softly. 

She smiled faintly.  “You look very well, Mr.  Mathieson,” she said. 

It was funny how they both were talking so low and no one could hear them.

Her arm linked through his, they moved forward, Gideon tipping his hat to the cold-eyed women they passed.  He didn’t quite understand why everyone was behaving this way; there hadn’t been Indian trouble in the last five years. 

“You send her back, Gideon, if you want to be part of this town.”

That was from Lizzie Bertram, the sheriff’s wife. 

“I’m as much a part of this town as anyone, Miz Bertram, and I and my wife will be pleased to welcome you to our home.”

Her face grew red and, sad to say, ugly with her anger.  He’d always thought her a fair-looking woman but as rage swelled her cheeks and made her eyes bulge, he noticed that she looked like a big, red frog.  “We’ll never welcome an Indian! You’re one of us, Gideon, but an Indian will never be!”

“Bible says a man and a woman become one.  I reckon that Catherine and I, we go together, as soon as the Reverend makes it so.”

But Rev.  Hale refused to marry them.  “I can’t, Gideon.  She’s a heathen.”

“She’s not a heathen, Reverend, she’s from the mission.  Same God.”

“Gideon---let’s talk privately about this.”

Catherine began to relinquish his arm but Gideon placed his hand over her elbow, keeping her fast.  “What you say to me, you’ll say to my wife.”

Rev.  Hale had been a citizen of Goshen for twenty years.  He’d seen the community grow from a raw frontier to a settlement with a church the residents had built, a school that was always advertising for a teacher because as soon as a new one arrived, she was snapped up by some love-hungry cowhand who offered marriage, stores that sold everything from frying pans to bullets, even a dressmaker, Madame du Pres, who kept up with the latest fashions back East thanks to Godey’s Lady’s Book.  They were good people, righteous, upright people who followed the Lord.  But they’d all seen or knew of a time when the bloodthirsty savages who resisted the white man’s claims to their land had committed terrible, godless deeds. 

“Gideon, I can’t marry you.  If you send this woman back, she can marry one of her own.”

“Bible says in the Lord there’s no East or West.  Reckon that means that in the Lord, there’s no Indian or white.”
“Gideon, I don’t think you want to debate Holy Scripture with me.”

“No, sir, I don’t.  But the Good Book I know preaches love.  Now, I aim to love this woman if she’ll still have me.  And if you won’t wed us, I reckon we’ll have to just live in sin, and that will be on your soul.”

Rev.  Hale’s quandary made him nervous.  “I can’t countenance a marriage, Gideon,” he said.  “

“I’m not asking for your blessing, Reverend.  I reckon God will give us that.  I’m asking for you to make us man and wife.”

Gideon was a powerfully built man; Rev.  Hale was lean and spare.  No one had ever seen Gideon in a rage and he was accounted a peaceable man.  But Rev.  Hale chose not to risk it.  In the end, he agreed to marry them, but only to prevent sin from taking place and bringing eternal damnation on Gideon’s soul.

“I think we’ll be going to Sunday services with the Methodists over in Settler’s Ridge,” Gideon told the minister after he had pronounced them, grudgingly, man and wife. 

“You’ll get no welcome there,” Rev.  Hale snapped.  “The Methodists feel the same.”

“Maybe so.  We won’t know until we try.”

Gideon lifted his wife into the buckboard and clipped the reins lightly against Lucky’s back. 

“Heading home now, Catherine.  I’m sorry I wasn’t here in time to welcome you straight off the stage.  I had a run-in with a cow.”

She was laughing by the time he’d finished telling her about Lucy.  Gideon laughed, too, but inside he could feel rage boiling within.  What kind of Christian people could treat a stranger so? Especially one who was promised to one of their own? He’d lived here for over a decade; he’d grown from a boy soldier to a man rancher here.  He’d danced at their family weddings, mourned at their funerals; he’d helped out when it was needed and received help in return.  He had a herd as fine as anyone’s, he paid fair wages to his hands, he read a chapter from the Good Book every night and he was in church every Sunday.  He didn’t get drunk, he didn’t cheat at cards, he didn’t carouse on Saturday nights.  To be treated this way was beyond understanding.

When they reached the cabin, Gideon stopped for a minute.  The sight of his land never failed to lift his spirits.  Every time he remembered the bloody battlefields of the war, he replaced that image in his mind with this one of his home, his land, his stable, his barn, his herds.  Sometimes even that damned Lucy showed up in the image, just because, in her own cussed way, she was a part of his life, she and Mrs.  Jacobs.  Would Mrs.  Jacobs recant her offer of supper?

He decided to put it to the test.

“There’s someone I want you to meet, Catherine,” he said.  “She’s a good neighbor, and it’s she who owns Lucy that I told you of.”

Catherine’s brown eyes were steady.  “If you wish,” she said, her words telling him that she was ready to be shunned anew and prepared for it, but that she would do as he wished. 

He steered the buckboard out of the lane and drove over to Mrs.  Jacobs’ home.  There was Lucy in the front yard, blandly chewing grass, her halter securely fastened.  She gave him a contemplative look as he led Catherine up the stairs.

“I think she knows you,” Catherine said. 

“Oh, she knows me all right.  Hates me, too, I reckon.”

“I don’t think so.”

Gideon knocked on the door.  Mrs.  Jacobs opened it and, seeing him, beamed.

“Gideon, it’s a pleasure to see you.  I didn’t expect to see you today.  Have you brought your bride to meet me?”

“Mrs.  Jacobs, please meet Catherine—Catherine Mathieson.”

Mrs.  Jacobs turned to Catherine.  Gideon felt himself tense as he waited. 

“Gideon has a beautiful wife.  Please come in, Mrs.  Mathieson.  It’s a pleasure to meet my new neighbor.”

As they followed her inside, Gideon wondered if Mrs.  Jacobs, with her poor eyesight and the thick lenses of her eyeglasses, had really been able to see Catherine. 

She ushered them into her parlor, a cheerful room with a large window that emitted the sunlight.  “Sit down, please.  I have cake.”
“We didn’t mean to put you out, Mrs.  Jacobs,” Gideon said.

“I baked it yesterday, and it would please me if you would help me eat it.” She left the parlor and came back shortly with three plates, each bearing a generous slice of her raisin cake. 

“When I married, many years ago, there was wedding cake,” she reminisced.  “We were very poor, Josef and I, and coming here took all the money we had saved.  But we knew it was the right thing to do.  It was very hard.  But here I am.  This was a good home for us.” She pointed to the photograph on the wooden table next to a Bible and a sewing basket.  “That’s my Josef.  He was young then.  As you are young now.  I hope you will grow old and happy together as we did.  Now tell me about yourself, Mrs.  Mathieson.”

“I grew up at the mission in Della Ray,” Catherine said

“The mission.  The friars and sisters run the mission, I believe?”

Catherine nodded. 

“Are you Roman?”

“I was baptized Roman Catholic,” Catherine replied.

“She’s a Christian,” Gideon said.  Was Mrs.  Jacobs going to disappoint him too?

Mrs.  Jacobs smiled at him.  “Yes, but I am Jewish.”

His jaw dropped.  “I never knew,” he said.

“Most people don’t.  Did you think I do not go to church because I like to sleep in on Sunday mornings?”

“I---I guess I thought you had your own reasons for not going.”

Mrs.  Jacobs smiled.  “I do have my own reasons.  I am a Jew and our Sabbath is not on Sunday.”
“There are no other Jews nearby?” Catherine asked.

Mrs.  Jacobs shook her head.  “No synagogue either, of course.  The synagogue, that is our church,” she explained.  “There are some Catholics in town, I believe.”

“I will worship with my husband,” Catherine said.  “Where he goes, I will go.”

Gideon’s heart swelled.  My husband.  That was something to hear.  He wasn’t just a cowboy anymore.  He was a husband. 

Mrs.  Jacobs said that she would be over to visit in a couple of days, after Catherine had had time to settle in.  “You’re going to want some time to settle in and make things your own,” she said, walking them to the door.  “It’s the nature of a woman to make things over.”

“I won’t change anything,” Catherine said quickly.

“Men expect change,” Mrs.  Jacobs.  “They don’t notice things, so they count on their womenfolk to do it.”

In the buckboard once again, Catherine was silent.  Was she regretting her decision, he wondered? A welcome like what had taken place in town would have made him head on back home where he didn’t have to face angry people who seemed to think they had a right to tell someone she didn’t belong.  He hoped they all felt ashamed of themselves.

“She’s very kind,” Catherine said unexpectedly, as if she’d been weighing the things Mrs.  Jacobs had said.

“She is that.  She and Mr.  Jacobs were here when I got here.  I never knew they were Jewish.  Imagine that; all these years, and she never told me.  You show up and she tells me.  Funny, that is.  She sold off a lot of the spread after Mr.  Jacobs died.  Too much work.  But she manages.”

“You help her?”

“She’s a good neighbor.”

A couple of the hands were lounging around the front of the cabin.  Gideon wondered if they’d heard what had happened in town and were going to react.  He got along well with the men, and he knew that he paid better than the other ranchers.  He made a good income and he didn’t have much else to spend it on, so wages seemed like a smart option.

“Hey, Boss,” Rip came forward, tipped his hat to Catherine.  “Just wanted to welcome your Mrs.  home.” Rip was good people; he’d been a hand all his life and had no ambition to be more than that, but he worked hard and he was steady as the mountains. 
Gideon made introductions.  He noticed a couple of missing faces, and from the look on Rip’s face, he guessed why.  But the men who were there made a point of being polite to Catherine, welcoming her in their diffident, awkward way.  She returned their greetings with the same grave dignity that she’d displayed when the townspeople had accosted her with slurs.  Gideon helped her down from the buckboard and started up the stairs.

The men began to protest.  “You gotta carry her over the threshold, Boss,” called out Rip.  The joshing continued until Gideon lifted her in his arms and took her inside.  She was tall, but slender and no weight at all.  Rip and Cal followed with her trunks.

“Thank you,” she told them.

“Pleasure, ma’am,” Cal answered. 

“Boss, you got any special orders for tomorrow?”

“I’ll be right out.  Catherine, I’ll be back soon; you take a look around.  I want this to feel like home for you.”

She nodded, her dark brown eyes watchful.  Was she afraid? He couldn’t tell. 

Outside, he led the way to the barn. 
“They heard and bolted,” he said to Rip.

“Mason said he wasn’t staying.  Denton went with him.  The rest stayed.  Don’t seem like there’s a reason to leave, just because your wife is part Injun.  Just wanted to let you know.  Me and the others will keep our eyes out in case there’s trouble.”

“People in town weren’t friendly.”

Rip looked out at the horizon where the sun was beginning to set, leaving a bright orange path across the sky. 

“Maybe they expected somethin’ else.  Easy for them, they got wives.”

Rip understood.  The loneliness, the overwhelming ruggedness of life in the West made a man crave his concept of a woman: soft, pretty, gentle, someone who could give him a purpose beyond his day’s work. 

“Thanks, Rip.”

“Just wanted to say that if you want to have a honeymoon day, me and the boys can take care of things.”

“Appreciate that, but there’s too much work, especially if we’re short-handed.”

Rip acknowledged the truth of this.  “I’ll put the word out that we’re taking on good hands for good pay.”

“Appreciate that.”

Gideon returned to the cabin.  He couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.  Would his wife feel the same way? Would she be served when she rode to the general store for supplies, or would the hands have to do the household shopping? If she ended up a prisoner on the ranch, she wasn’t likely to think the marriage worth it.  He didn’t know anything about her beyond what he’d learned from the mission correspondence when he’d written to them with his request for a bride.  He had a lot to learn. 

Inside the house, the lamps were lighted.  She was standing on top of one of the kitchen chairs, examining the contents of the pantry.  “You’re hungry?” she asked. 

He was hungry, but it wasn’t food he needed.  Something in his eyes must have answered her because she immediately stepped down from the chair, her actions deft and nimble. 

“I will try to be a good wife,” she said to him.

“We’ll both try to be good to each other,” he replied.  His throat was dry, and his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.  “Catherine—“

He took her hand.  There wasn’t any way to put what he felt into words, so he led her to the bedroom.  It wasn’t dark out yet, and he supposed if he were a true gentleman, he’d wait until dark, but it had been so long since he’d been with a woman.  He couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t taken his pleasure at the saloon, where the girls were pretty enough and willing.  But it shamed him to pay for something that was only right between a man and a woman who had bound themselves to one another before God, and in recent years, he’d done without. 

He wished he wasn’t so big and so clumsy.  He didn’t know what to say, and she simply stood there, silent and still, waiting for him to tell her what to do.

“Did you find the privy?” he blurted out.  “It’s in the back, by the tree.  That keeps it cool in—“

She was smiling.  “I found it.”

“I’m not much good at this.  You’re so pretty and I’m just a cowboy.”