The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3) (9 page)

“Ben—” Ray started in a cautioning tone, but Jem wasn’t going to hide behind the older man, especially not after Ben’s accusation.

“Not that kind of doctor,” he said. “I work with horses—you know that.”

Even as the words left his mouth, Jem knew there was only one problem with what he said: He
was
guilty. He should’ve done something. He should’ve known. He’d lost confidence in Dr. Whittaker, toward the end. He should’ve done more to move Lorelei someplace else.

Ben opened his mouth, but before he could say anything else, Ray stepped in.

“That’s enough for now. Let’s get you settled.” Ray went on to detail that Mae could have the old nursery, and that Jem would be in Lorelei’s old room. “Annie too, of course,” he added uncomfortably.

Jem held Mae to his shoulder, his hand frozen against her back. One glance at Annie told him she was frozen in place too.

They hadn’t talked about sleeping arrangements. Or, he hadn’t laid out any plans ahead of time, that is. It wasn’t like she could ask him either. She was probably worried. Women worried about things like that.

“Annie will a need a room for herself,” he said plainly.

“She will?” Ray looked in clear surprise from Jem to Annie and back again, his brows raised.

“She will.” Jem kept it simple. Unquestionable. No explanations. No one needed to know their private business.

Ray scratched the back of his neck. “Well, then... I’ll have to get Ben’s old room ready then. He’s moved into his parents’ old room. The biggest room,” he added by way of explanation, reminding Jem that Ben was the master of the house now and head of the ranch. “Wasn’t expecting a third and the bed’s not made up. If you’ll get Mae settled, I’ll set things up, get baths ready for you, and we’ll have dinner after.”

That’s when Jem saw Annie’s head come up for the first time, her expression relieved.

“Is there a place where Annie can rest while you get the room prepared, Ray? I do appreciate it.”

Ray waved that away. “Come sit in this rocker, miss,” he said to Annie and led her into a homey parlor room off the foyer, settling her in a rocker by the empty grate. It was too hot out to have a fire lit. A nice cooling chill rose off the hearthstones. The puppy curled up in her lap and let out a sigh, seemingly prepared to take a nap.

“She hasn’t got any baggage, Ray,” Jem said quietly, when Ray returned to his side. Ben was watching them in silence, his gaze filled with belligerent interest.

“She what?” Ray asked.

“So she’ll need some clothes.”

“Clothes?”

Jem merely nodded.

Ray pursed his lips thoughtfully, as if holding back a stream of questions. Finally, he looked to Ben. “Gonna need you to handle that one.”

“What?” Ben asked, pausing mid-retreat.

“Get Miz Annie something of Lorelei’s.”

“Me?”

“Unless you want to make the bed, carry up water for the baths, and stir the stew?”

Ben mumbled something under his breath and stalked off, climbing the stairs with a militant sort of stride.

“Is he going to do it?” Jem asked, looking up at Ben’s retreating back.

“Oh, he will,” Ray said, with a little more confidence than Jem was feeling. “He better.”

TEN

I
n the end it was Ray who came to wake Annie from her brief slumber by the fireplace in the cozy parlor.

“Your bath’s ready, miss,” he said, bending to light a table lamp beside her. He’d also evidently lit several wall sconces. A quick glance out the window told her the sun had set, and the sky was mellowing into tones of gray and purple.

Annie felt suddenly empty-handed, a warm spot still on her lap from where the puppy had been. Jem was gone. There was no sign of Mae. She raised her eyes in question to Ray.

“Jem outside with the puppy. Then he’s gonna check on that horse with the sore hoof. Mae’s in the kitchen playing with spoons and such. She’ll be all right there.”

Oh
. Annie nodded, still a bit groggy. She stood reluctantly. She could’ve slept a year in that chair.

“I brought a bath up for you.”

She simply smiled at him and nodded, reluctant to grunt at him. She didn’t know him well enough just yet, and she was determined to make a better impression going forward. He must think Jem had found her in a gutter.

“This way.” Ray led her up the front stairs to the right. It was quite a grand staircase, Annie thought, skimming her hand along the smoothly varnished wood of the carved banister. It was a sturdy affair with thick balusters. The risers were bare wood, no carpeting. She could see Ray favoring one leg as he went up them. Maybe his knees were getting old. It was that way of climbing. Arthritis. At the top of the stairs, he led her to the right and down a long hall. She saw an equally long hall going off in the other direction, as if the house were split in halves, with an east wing and a west wing. Fancy.

Sconces lined the walls here too, casting golden pools of light on the wood floor.

Ray opened the last door without entering himself. Annie went in, listening with half an ear as he stood awkwardly in the doorway, pointing out the bathtub, steaming gently, and some clothes that had been laid out on the bed. He said something about the room beside hers being Mae’s.

Nothing about Jem’s.

“All right then... Soon as you’re ready you can throw that dress out into the hall, and I’ll get it washed.” Ray’s voice had grown gruff, as if he was a mite embarrassed about telling her to undress.

Annie just kept nodding, her attention fixed on the room. It was huge compared to her small attic room back in Tennessee. There was a big double bed in the center, big enough for two people with space to spare. A soft-looking quilt was spread out over it, done out in bright blue and white, with little touches of buttercup gold in the patterns—flowers and stripes and such. All interlocking squares and rectangles. Very comfy looking, like a grandmother had made it many years ago. It was nicer than anything even the Ruskins had owned, and they’d had a lot of nice homemade things because Mrs. Ruskin was an excellent seamstress. Or she had been, Annie thought with a pang.

She also saw there were two pillows on the bed, but she knew without too much looking around that none of Jem’s things were here. So he truly didn’t mean to sleep here, just as he’d said earlier. That was well and good. They hardly knew each other. At least not yet.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it then,” Ray said, closing the bedroom door without a sound.

Annie gave him a little wave over her shoulder, but he was already gone.

She stepped onto a colorful rag rug that lay just inside the doorway. There were several strewn over the wood floor, placed around the bed to cushion bare feet and ward off the chill on wintry mornings. Annie tested the rug with her toes—pure bliss—and let out a sigh. Then realizing her bath wasn’t getting any warmer, she quickly pulled her dress over her head, stripped off her undergarments, and rolled the lot into a bundle which she pushed out into the hall with one hand while using the door as a shield.

The bath was as deliciously warm as it looked. Ray’s doing, she suspected. He’d left her a bar of soap and two towels, which was nice of him. She soaped herself up five times and washed her filthy hair about as many times. Much as she hated being so dirty—and hated making such a poor impression on everyone she’d met here—she couldn’t regret her efforts to keep Danny away.

At a certain point the bath water went tepid. It had turned murky from all her dirt, and her fingertips had started to wrinkle. She caught a whiff of beef stew or something equally hearty, reminding her she hadn’t eaten much in the past few weeks.

Annie quickly dried off, wrapped one of the towels around herself and another around her wet hair, and went looking for a dress to change into.

She hadn’t taken much interest in the clothes on the bed until now. All her attention had been focused on getting out of her dirty clothes and slipping into that welcoming tub.

Ben must have brought the clothes, as Ray had asked him to do. She’d gathered that Ben was Jem’s younger brother-in-law. And Jem’s wife had been called Lorelei, a pretty name. It sounded like she’d passed on not that long ago.
Not gone a year.
Annie had learned quite a lot in the foyer. She also knew that Ben didn’t like her. Not one bit. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her he’d practically smoldered with hostility toward her.

She’d have to go carefully with him.

Annie went through the stack of clothes he’d left, and it became even clearer that he didn’t want her here. Instead of bringing her some of Lorelei’s old clothes, which was what Ray had said he should do, Ben had left a stack of boy’s things. And not a single dress among them. There were no underthings either, nothing besides an undershirt, thin as a whisper it had been washed so many times. Ben’s old things maybe.

Annie spread them all out on the big double bed, taking inventory: one pair of dirt-brown trousers. An over-sized button-down cotton work shirt. A long man’s white nightshirt. One pair of socks.

She held up the trousers to her waist, then clutched the waistband into a ball, her hands shaking. She couldn’t wear these. Why, it would be indecent to wear trousers around a bunch of men. Never in her life had she worn
trousers
around anyone.

What was she supposed to wear to the dinner table? A man’s nightshirt? Surely not. It might’ve been as long as a dress, but it was too sheer to be decent, and she didn’t even have a shift to wear under it.

He
knew
. Ben knew she couldn’t wear these things. Or thought he did.

He hadn’t counted on someone like her. She knew what it was like for people to point and make fun of her. She knew worse than that. This was nothing, she told herself firmly.

In the end, Annie wore everything: the trousers, the undershirt, and the nightshirt, which fell down nearly to her ankles. She rolled up the bottoms of the pants, just high enough so she could walk. She wore the socks as slippers too, since she didn’t have any shoes. Lastly, she drew on the pale blue work shirt. It hung shapelessly to her knees. She supposed—checking her reflection in a full-length oval mirror in one corner of the room—she was decent enough. But she didn’t much like the way it made her look like...well
not good
.

She thought of Ben seeing her like this and snickering. He wanted to shame her for whatever wrong he thought she’d done.

He’s sad
, a small voice inside her whispered.
He lost his sister.
Poor thing.

Annie took some small pleasure in thinking how he’d hate being called that. He looked about twenty. Old enough to want to be seen as a man and not a “poor thing.” Not that she planned on shaming him or seeking retribution. Oh no. She’d win Ben over, somehow. He was family already, being Jem’s brother-in-law. Just like Ray was family. What did blood matter?

Maybe nobody wanted her for a family, but
she
wanted a family. And she just might have to fight for it.

Annie squared up her shoulders.

Winning Jem was probably going to be her biggest challenge. He’d saved her—that was true. But she had the impression he couldn’t help himself when it came to helping someone in trouble. At the church tent, he could’ve walked away. She hadn’t precisely kept count, but two men had bartered for her, others had watched on, and a whole crowd of folks could’ve stepped closer to find out what was going on. But none of them had. All the other men had walked away. And one man had outright
bought
her. Annie shuddered at the memory of his cold eyes.

But then Jem had stepped in. He’d handed over twice the money the other man had paid. More than she’d ever seen in one place. He’d bought her a ticket for the train. He’d fed her.

Not unlike the dog.

The realization brought Annie up short.

She tapped her fingernail against her front tooth, thinking.

To be fair, he’d saved the puppy too. Seeing it jerked around on that chain had woken him up—not unlike poking a sleeping bear.

She smiled at the image. Outside, Jem did rather look a bit like a bear with all that hair on his face, but inside—and inside was all that mattered—he was a protector of helpless dogs and people in trouble. The problem was he’d gone right back to sleeping. He’d pulled his hat over his eyes and sunk back to sleep. The kind where you drifted away from the whole world.

How did she break through?

Well, certainly “break” was the wrong word. You might get hurt trying to “break” into a man like Jem’s world. She’d need to go about it more subtle or he’d slam all his doors and windows shut. Fair enough.

He’d said he wanted her to watch out for Mae while he worked the ranch. She could do that. She
wanted
to do that. And for now, she guessed she’d simply watch him. Learn all she could. Sort of secret-like so he wouldn’t even notice. And then, well, she didn’t know what.

Annie straightened her spine, fixed what she hoped was a warm, natural smile in place, and marched out.