Christmas Mail Order Bride - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides: Book 1) (9 page)

“He must be very worried about me,” she speculated.

Caleb turned away and didn’t answer.

“And once we do get back….?” She faltered.

“What about it?” he rejoined. “What about when we get back?”

“I mean, you and me,” she stammered. “Will everything go back to the way it was before? Will we just act as though nothing happened between us?”

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “Nothing has happened between us.”

“I mean, about last night?” she flushed.

“What about last night?” he snapped. “Nothing happened.”

“But I thought…” she halted again.

“What could be different between us, when we get back?” he pressed her. “You’re married to my boss.”

“Yes, I know,” she whimpered. “But I just thought, after last night, that…”

“What?” he
insisted. “There’s nothing to be done. The best I can hope for is to get out of there with my life.”

“But I care for you!” she finally blurted out. “And I thought you cared for me. After what you said, I thought there was something…more.”

“Like what?” he softened his tone slightly at her confession. “You can’t get away from Anders, and I’m taking my life in my hands just talking to you. If I had half a brain in my head, I wouldn’t talk to you again around the West ranch. That would be the smart thing for me to do. Actually, come to think of it, the really smart thing to do would be to drop you off at the house, pack my bags, and get out of dodge as quickly as possible before the storm breaks.”

“How can you be so cold about it?” she complained. “I thought you cared for me the same way I care for you. At least tell me that you do. I could live with everything else as long as I know that you care for me.”

He arrested his efforts to prepare his horse for travel and slumped down onto the ground next to her. “Alright. Listen to me. I care for you. Ever since that night in the barn, I’ve been hoping to spend more time alone with you, because I feel more comfortable with you than I’ve ever felt with anyone else in my life, even my own mother. I could go on talking to you forever and never get tired of it, and I laid awake at night, dreaming of ways to be alone with you. When I heard you disappeared, and I had the idea of finding you here, I decided to come and see for myself, against my better judgment, because I was so excited about the idea of seeing you again. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you care for me or if I care for you. It doesn’t even matter if I say I love you and I want to be with you all the time, because I won’t be. I’ll be lucky to keep my situation at the ranch and never set eyes on you again. And you can bet your boots that Anders will be watching both of us like a hawk from now on, and he’ll be absolutely certain we never have any chance to spend any more time together, even if we wanted to. Don’t you understand that?”

“I know you’re right,” conceded Penelope, who laced her fingers into his while he revealed the depths of his emotions for her. “But I just can’t admit it to myself. I just can’t fathom that, now that I’ve found you and we want to be together, that I’m married to Anders all of a sudden, and that it will never happen.”

He stood up again and resumed his task. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” she sighed, although the endless refrain sounded so pathetic and childlike.

He faced her, his jaw set and his brows knit. “Yeah. You can stay away from me. Don’t try to come and find me, and don’t try to talk to me. Know in your heart that I care for you and that I long to be with you every day, and keep the memory of last night in your heart. But do me a favor. Don’t make it any harder for me than it already is. I have enough trouble just trying to stay one step ahead of Anders as it is. Once he gets you back, he’ll be out there running the ranch like he was before, and he’ll be all over me. Don’t give him any reason to think more of this than he already does.”

Penelope hung her head.
“Alright. I’ll do it. It won’t be easy, and I’ll be thinking of you all the time. But I’ll do it. I’ll do it for you.”

“Thank you,” he returned. “Now, come on. Let’s get going. We have a long way to ride before we get there.”

He lifted her by the hand and kicked dirt over the embers of the fire. He led her over to the horse, but instead of placing her in the saddle, he swept her up into his arms and kissed her furiously. She clutched her arms around his neck and devoured his mouth hungrily. A little sob, half desperation and half passion, mingled with her affections.

He extricated his mouth from hers with a loud smack. “There,” he grinned. “Now we can go.

Grasping her around the waist, he hoisted her up onto the horse’s back and climbed into the saddle in front of her. He kicked the horse into a casual walk, and they ambled out of their camp toward the east. Penelope wrapped her arms around Caleb’s waist and rested her head against his back in the depression between his shoulder blades, thankful for the time left to her to hold him before their fated parting. She didn’t look around at their surroundings all day. Though he never induced his horse to travel any faster than a leisurely saunter, he pressed on through the whole day without stopping, and when the late afternoon sun sloped down behind the trees, blanketing the land with evening chill, they came out onto the hard, high road Penelope recognized as the same one she traveled to and from the West ranch. She snuggled closer to him to keep warm, but very soon, they turned into the driveway and ascended to the house.

No one came out to meet them. Except for the thin trail of smoke rising from the kitchen chimney, no sign of human life stirred anywhere in the house, in the barn, or in the bunkhouse where the ranch hands slept. The whole place appeared absolutely deserted.

“Where is everyone?” she whispered, as Caleb reigned in his horse in front of the porch.

“They’re inside,” he informed her. “Jump down and get indoors before you freeze. I’ll go put the horse away and then go to the bunkhouse. You can tell them how you got back.”

Penelope stopped herself from giving the well-worn parting imprecation that she would see him later. She slid down from the horse’s back and skipped up the steps into the house as he sidled away without another word.

Inside, she found George and Matilda in their usual places in the parlor. Matilda launched herself off the couch at the sight of Penelope.
“Oh, my dear girl! Wherever have you been? We’ve all been worried sick about you! How did you get back! You must tell us everything!” She fell on Penelope’s neck in a gush of elated tears.

“Now, dear,” George intoned from the other side of the room. “Give the girl some room! She just walked in the door.” But Penelope saw a sparkle of moisture at the corner of his own eyes as he smiled on the two women.

“Oh, I thought my heart would break, when you disappeared,” Matilda moaned. “And they told us such terrible things about what they thought happened to you! And they found Pete dead. Attacked and killed by Indians, they said. They wouldn’t tell me all that happened to him, but it must have been terrible! And my mind was in a torment, imagining what you must be going through! Come in here, my dear girl!” Matilda dragged her by the hand and seated her on the couch near the fire. “Now you must tell me absolutely everything! What happened to you, and how did you manage to find your way home again?”

“Do you mind terribly if I have something to eat before I tell you?” Penelope ventured. “I haven’t eaten all day, and I’m in agony.”

“Of course!” Matilda wrung her hands. “How thoughtless of me! I’m so sorry! I’ll ring the bell for Janet to bring you something at once! Oh, Anders will be so pleased that you are back. He hasn’t left the house even once since you vanished. He’s been pacing the floors, waiting for any news of you from the sheriff, and driving himself to distraction.”

“Where is he?” Penelope peered around the room.

Matilda stopped suddenly. “I don’t exactly know, dear, now that you mention it. I think he might be up in his room. I couldn’t exactly say. But never mind about him. Oh, here’s Janet.” Matilda broke off her rattling banter to deliver a few terse orders to her housekeeper, and when that person left the room, she poured some brandy into a glass and shoved it into Penelope’s hands. “Here. Drink this. It will restore your spirits. Oh, I can’t bear to think what you have endured these last few days.”

“You needn’t worry yourself,” Penelope replied. “I was very well treated.”

“But didn’t the Indians take you captive?” Matilda inquired. “Oh, we thought you were dead and dismembered somewhere! The sheriff told us those dreadful Comanches probably attacked the carriage, and they never leave anyone alive. He filled our heads full of all kinds of terrible ideas about what they would do to you, although he did seem puzzled that they didn’t kill you on the spot, like they did to Pete.”

“No, they didn’t kill me,” Penelope related. “I was trapped inside the carriage, so they probably didn’t see me or couldn’t get to me. I was found by a different band of Indians. Caleb said they were Shoshones. He was the one who came and found me. He said that, when he heard the details of the wreck, he suspected I was with them and came to find out, and that is where he found me. They treated me very well. They took care of me and nursed me back to health from my injuries. I could have left their camp any time I wished, had I known that I was free to go and which way to go to get home. They sent out a group to try to take me home but they spotted the sheriff’s posse, and assumed they were hostile bandits. They didn’t know the sheriff was looking for me, and they took me back to their camp. That is where Caleb found me, and he just brought me home, this very minute.”

“Oh!” Matilda exclaimed again, but clapped her mouth shut rather than respond to these revelations.

“Well, that was very good of him to do so,” George put in. “We must find a way to reward him.”

“He is very worried Anders will jump to conclusions about his being alone with me,” Penelope informed him. “Anders threatened him once already with hanging and running him out of the county and all sorts of other nasty things, if he ever caught Caleb alone with me. I think that, if you want to reward him or thank him for bringing me back, the best thing you can do for Caleb is to keep him on here and to ensure that Anders doesn’t try to punish him in any way for presuming to rescue me.”

“I don’t think he will do that,” Matilda assured her.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” Penelope agreed. “But you know how emotional Anders becomes about things like that. I thought his reaction to Caleb was intemperate before, but you never know how he will respond to something like this. At any rate, I think the nicest thing we can do for Caleb is to defend him against Anders as best we can and to make his situation here as secure as possible. In some ways, he regrets rescuing me because he believes Anders will take it as an excuse to persecute him.”

“It is true that Anders hates him terribly,” George remarked.

“I wonder why,” Penelope mused.

“Well, never mind about all that!” Matilda rose from her couch and swept across the room. “You have a horrible ordeal to recover from, and we aren’t helping at all by talking about it.” She rang the bell again. “I’ll tell Janet to draw you a hot bath, and you’ll change out of those clothes into something decent. You’ll have something to eat, and then we’ll put you to bed. In the morning, you’ll feel perfectly restored, and we can all get back to our lives. Oh, I just can’t get my heart to stop fluttering! I can’t help it! I just can’t believe that you are really home! It’s a miracle! It’s a Christmas miracle!” And she burst into a fresh fountain of weeping.

Penelope embraced her and dried her own eyes. Then she embraced George, who kissed her on the cheek, and she took her leave from them. Climbing the stairs to the upper landing, she marveled at the stark juxtaposition between her experience in the Indian camp and the environment of the house. Even sitting on the thin blankets on the swept dirt floor of the Shoshone dwelling, drinking hot meat soup from a wooden bowl, seemed somehow more comfortable in her memory than perching straight-backed on the parlor couch, sipping brandy from a crystal tumbler. When she considered the two memories side by side and tried to decipher what set them apart, she realized that the primary difference lay in the expressions of the people surrounding her. Although she never exchanged even a single word with her Shoshone cohabitants, their smiling faces and their light banter set her at ease in a way Matilda’s ministrations never could. Though they smiled and laughed and chatted with each other and not with her, and in many cases, studiously avoided her, she remembered feeling perfectly relaxed in that house. She could stretch out on her blanket whenever she wanted and shut her eyes and drift off to sleep to the gentle cadence of their conversations. As she mounted to the landing and approached the door of her own bedroom, a curious alarm rang through her body and she trembled to find out what awaited her behind the door. Her hand lingered on the door handle, reluctant to turn it. She knew that whatever she found there would never be so restful or reassuring as her bed in the Shoshone house. She felt no anticipation or relief at seeing Anders again, and though an overpowering exhaustion at her experience crushed her with an excruciating compulsion to rest, she dreaded trying to sleep in the bed she shared with him.

With a sigh, she swung the door open and entered the room. The dingy destitution of the room appeared even more oppressive than the first time she surveyed it, and the unmistakable scent of male sweat, punctuated by tobacco smoke and spilled alcohol, assaulted her nostrils. Glasses, empty bottles, and overflowing ashtrays cluttered the table, and piles of ash glutted the grate in the lifeless fireplace. The drapes over the windows blocked out the last light of day. Penelope stood in the doorway, viewing the scene with the same horror she felt when she looked at the smashed carriage lying in the ditch by the side of the road. At last, her eye rested on the bed, where the insensible figure of Anders sprawled across the coverlet, his rumpled clothing still twisted around his body and his boots, still on his feet, stuck out over the side of the bed. Wrinkling her nose at the smell, she shot one of the drapes aside and pushed open one of the windows in the sash to let a blast of icy fresh air into the room.