Christmas Mail Order Bride - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides: Book 1) (5 page)

“I wouldn’t let your early success go to your head, though,” he advised. “He let you have that one. He won’t be so easy to placate, the next time around.”

“Is he really so difficult?” she inquired.

“I wouldn’t call him difficult,” George corrected her. “Just a bit tricky, I would say.”

“In what way?” she asked.

“You just have to watch him and figure it out for yourself,” George demurred. “He gave in to you on this one, but he’ll use it later to stop you from doing something else. You’ll see.”

“How can you stand to let him manipulate you and control you like this?” Penelope moaned. “How can you let him run your lives without fighting back?”

“He doesn’t manipulate or control us,” George declared. “He runs our ranch operation. That’s his rightful due, as my son and heir. He deserves to run it his way, because it’s all his anyhow. It wouldn’t do to interfere.”

“I just don’t understand it,” she sighed.

“No, you don’t,” George maintained. “You’ll see. Once you’ve lived with Anders for a while, you’ll see that this is the most logical way to handle him. You just have to stay out of his way and let him do things his own way. He’s always been headstrong that way. And he’s the only son I have. I want him to have the best advantage that he can. If he can run the ranch successfully now, he won’t have to learn how to do it when I’m gone. He’ll be that much better off in the long run.”

“You must love him very much,” Penelope observed.

“Like I say, he’s all I have,” George gazed out the window into the driveway. “I’ve invested everything I have in him, and when I see him wrangling with auctioneers at the sale yards and debating with the clerks at the county Supervisors’ office, I’m proud of him. I’m proud he can run the ranch without any input from me at all, and I’m glad to let him do it his own way. He’s a different man than I am, and he does things I wouldn’t do, but that’s to be expected, and it only shows he has the strength to think for himself. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

“Hopefully, you’ll be able to help us raise your grandchildren,” Penelope offered.

“I hope so,” George brightened up at the subject. “I had almost despaired of Anders finding a wife. But now I can hope to live so long.”

“It must be terrible, to be an only child and your parents’ only hope,” Penelope remarked. “It must put terrible pressure on him.”

“We always wanted more children,” George admitted. “Matilda had a terrible time with Anders, and she just couldn’t have any more. I think it must be terrible for her, too.”

“Yes, I can imagine,” Penelope murmured.

“But, now that you’re here,” George revived. “we can look forward to the future with new hope. You are the answer to all our prayers.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” she protested.

“No, it’s true,” George faced her. “We can only hope that marriage will bring Anders to a deeper understanding of our feelings for him. We want him to understand how much we think of him. As it is, he doesn’t seem to think much of us at all.”

“But what can
I
do about that?” she observed.

“Not you, so much, as marriage itself,” George elucidated. “Maybe if he starts thinking about having a family of his own, he’ll understand all that we’ve put into him over the years.”

“I hope I can be the kind of wife that will do him credit,” Penelope confessed. “I hope I can do him good, in one way or another.”

“I’m sure you will,” George reassured her. “After what I just saw at breakfast, I’m sure you are exactly the kind of wife he needs.”

This conversation with George inspired Penelope to redouble her efforts to make herself useful and pleasant to Anders, and to smooth the way for her request for the Christmas money. The following evening, Anders entertained some of his friends in his room. They sat around the table, drinking and puffing at cigars and playing cards. Penelope waited on them, ferrying trays of glasses and food and bottles of various liquids to the room, and removing the empty glasses, bottles, and plates to the kitchen when the men finished. For most of the evening, Anders paid her no more attention than he would have paid to Janet coming and going and executing the service of the party until, at the conclusion of one round of the card game when Penelope leaned over the table to collect the empty glasses, Anders threw his cards down into the middle of the table and barked at her, “Bring up some more of that cold ham, will ya?”

She finished loading her tray and went out without a word. She returned with the tray reloaded with food of all kinds from the kitchen, and distributed it to the men at the table. As she approached Anders’s chair, he wrapped his arm around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides, and kissed her loudly on the outside edge of her arm. She wrestled herself free from his grip, set his plate down on the table at his elbow, and hurried away again.

The next time she appeared in the doorway, Anders assailed his friends with bawdy remarks about his new bride. “There she is, gents!” he announced. “I got her for a fraction of the price one of these local ladies would have cost, and I didn’t even have to meet her parents first!” He extended his hand toward her. “Come here, darlin’,” he called out. “Come here and meet my good friends. We’re all gonna be really good friends together, and I want you to treat them the same way you would treat me. Do you hear me? Do you understand me? You’re to serve them just as you’d serve me, and you’re to follow all their orders by saying ‘Yes, sir’ to each one of them, just as you would to me.”

Seeing the unmistakable signs of drink affecting him again, Penelope sniffed at him, pursing her lips. “I don’t say ‘Yes, sir’ to you, Anders,” she chided. She continued her circuit of the table, delivering fresh glasses and bottles to the participants of the game.

“Not yet,” Anders announced. “but you will.”

“I don’t think so,” she returned.

“Come here, darlin’,” he repeated. “and show the boys what a fine woman I have for a wife.”

Penelope now came around to his chair, the last chair left at the table to receive its delivery, and when she stepped within his reach, he caught her around the middle again and yanked her in against his chest. “You see, boys?” he yelled. “You see what a fine woman I have? And she’s mine, all
mine, from her top to her toes. Every inch of her is mine!” With these words, he buried his face into her belly and made a rooting noise into the front of her dress.

Horrified and embarrassed, Penelope jerked herself free from his grasp. “Let go of me, Anders!” she gasped in shock.

One of the men across the table let out a loud, braying laugh in Anders’s face. Anders scowled at him. Then he frowned at Penelope with an expression as black as thunder. He instantly seized her again, pulling her in, and repeated the same horrible action of nuzzling his face into her stomach, rubbing it back and forth, and grunting bestially. Again, she tore herself away from him, this time with such vehemence that she dropped her tray. The glasses balanced on it crashed to the floor in a shower of shattered crystal. Penelope cried out once in dismay at the mess as much as at her repugnance at his behavior. Seeing her distress, Anders mimicked the mocking chortle of his friend, first at her and then toward his comrade across the table, as if to share the joke.

Penelope
whirled away from the brutish circle of leering faces and dashed from the room, covering her mouth with her hand to stifle her sobs. She sailed down the stairs to the door of the parlor but, when she reached it, found it open. The sight of Anders’s benighted parents sitting before the fire in their own oblivious bubble of domestic tranquility sent Penelope flying away in the other direction. She burst out through the front door of the house to the driveway, where the stinging cold of the night air pricked her skin and penetrated her clothing. She cast this way and that for a refuge in which to hide from the scene indoors, and settled finally on the nearest building to her, which was the barn. She pushed the door aside, just enough to wedge her body through, and then drove it home again behind her.

Inside, the heat of animal bodies warmed the building as cozily as the house itself, and she immediately felt comforted by the steady breathing and the occasional stamp of feet against the soft straw scattered on the floor. The overpowering smell of hay and horses banished all traces of tobacco and booze from her mind, and she ventured deeper into the darkness of the barn, hesitant to disturb these serene animals in their sanctuary. One or two of the horses snorted at her passage, as if to ask her business or to alert their fellows to the presence of an intruder, but she moved so cautiously that they soon settled down into their sleepy reverie again. Penelope relaxed in their presence and breathed a sigh of relief.

Suddenly, very close to her, a male voice broke the silence, startling her from her calm. “Who’s there?” the voice demanded.

“It’s me, Penelope,” she squeaked pathetically, unable to see anyone in the darkness.

“Who?” the voice inquired.

“Penelope,” she repeated.
“Anders’ wife.”

A pregnant pause made her catch her breath in anticipation. “Oh,” he replied at last.

The blaze of a match striking against some scratchy surface burned like a bolt of lightning in the pitch black of the barn, and the flame touched against the wick of a lantern. In a moment, the halo of light spread around them, and she found herself face to face with the young ranch hand, Caleb.

“What are you doing out here?” he challenged her.

“I just wanted to get out of the house for a minute,” she whimpered. “It’s hot and stuffy in there. I just wanted to get out.”

“It’s hot and stuffy in here, too,” he grumbled.

“I just had to get out of there,” she whined, her tears springing up in her eyes again, and before she could stop herself, they overwhelmed her and she burst out crying.

Caleb stared at her in the ghostly shadows of the lantern light. “Okay,” he murmured at last. “Okay. Just settle down now. You’re out of there. You can stay here until you settle down. No one will find you here.”

Penelope let her choking hiccups flow out of her, making no further attempt to stop them. “I just can’t….” she  stammered.

“Okay,” he reassured her. “That’s okay. Come here.” He took her by the hand and led her to a bench against the wall of one of the stalls nearby. “Sit down here.” He guided her down onto the seat and took the place next to her.
“Just calm down. It’s over now.”

“But it’s not over!” she groaned. “I have to go back inside eventually. I can’t stay out here all night long.”

A meaningful silence answered her. Then he replied, “Well, you can stay here until you calm down, anyway. No one comes in here after dark. I come in here myself to get out of the bunkhouse. They’re playing cards and laughing and swearing in there, and it’ll probably end with them getting into a fight, like it usually does. I come here just to have some peace and quiet, and no one ever comes looking for me.”

“That’s you!” she pointed out. “What if Anders comes looking for me here, too?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he remarked. “What’s going on up in the big house?”

“He’s drinking and smoking cigars and playing cards with his friends,” she told him. “Not that that’s such a big deal. It’s just that….” She broke off, reluctant to tell him of the events that drove her out of the house.

But he anticipated her. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know anything about what goes on in that house. I see enough of Anders during the day. I don’t need to know what he does at night behind closed doors. I leave that to him.”

Penelope sniffed her tears away and wiped her eyes and her nose on a corner of her dress. “Have you been working for him for long?”

Caleb nodded. “I’ve been working for him since I was fifteen. Four years. But I’ve known him a lot longer than that. I know what sort of a man he is.”

“He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” she observed.

He chuckled under his breath. “No, he certainly doesn’t.”

“Do you know why?” she inquired.

He shrugged and stared off into the darkness outside the circle of lantern light. “Who knows why anyone likes or doesn’t like anyone else? Even if I had my own ideas about why he doesn’t like me, it wouldn’t help me get along with him any better. I just have to do my best to keep my job around here.”

“But George seems determined to keep you on,” she encouraged him. “He seems intent on stopping Anders from getting rid of you. That should give you some security.”

“George is a good man,” Caleb responded. “I would be nothing without George. But he can’t protect me from Anders forever. Anders could get rid of me any time he wanted, and there would be nothing George could do to stop him. Eventually, George will give up trying to defend me to Anders, and then I’ll be moving on somewhere else, looking for another job.”

“There must be something someone can do!” Penelope exclaimed. “It just doesn’t seem fair.”

“It’s fair, alright,” Caleb rejoined. “It’s as fair as anything else in this world. Anders was born rich, and I was born poor. That’s all there is to it. That gives him the right to dictate my whole life. I was lucky to get this job. I only got it because George felt sorry for me and wanted to give me a break in life. He could have had anyone else to fill my place. I think he only took me because he could pay me a boy’s wages to do a man’s job. I still make less than half what the other hands make and unless I’m willing to work for that all my life and put up with Anders’s boot in my rear end, I don’t see I have much choice but to move on. I’ll put up with it as long as it lasts but George won’t live forever, and then I won’t shed any tears packing up my bags and going somewhere else.”