Christmas Mail Order Bride - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides: Book 1) (4 page)

“Not that I knew of,” Penelope continued. “We just don’t have them in Baltimore. Not that I’ve seen, at least.”

“But that’s impossible!” Matilda maintained. “They’re everywhere!”

“But she looks so normal to me,” Penelope insisted. “I would never have guessed, just from looking at her. She looks like any ordinary woman to me.”

“I think you had better take a closer look, my dear,” Anders put in. “You should train your eyes to pick up these things. You may not have many Indians in Baltimore but around here, a person can’t really function without knowing who’s who. You’ll need to learn to recognize them when you see them so you can treat them appropriately.”

“Well, now that I know, I will certainly keep my eyes open,” Penelope assured him. “I just never thought they could look so….I
don’t know….
normal
, I guess.”

“She doesn’t look normal,” Anders retorted. “She looks like an Indian. She has the black hair and eyes, and she has the twisted-up features, and she has a strange way of speaking that tells you she didn’t learn English on her mother’s knee. She learned it at the Indian
School, and it sort of rolls out of her mouth with a strangeness that gives her away. And then there’s the way she walks. She moves around silently, like a cat sneaking around. She can sneak up on you and surprise you, if you’re not careful. You have to keep a look-out for her every minute of the day around here. I wish you’d get rid of her, Mother, and get yourself a proper white woman for a housekeeper.”

“But Janet’s been with us for over twenty years,” Matilda pointed out. “She does an excellent job, and as you just said, she’s very quiet. Besides, we pay her a fraction of what we would have to pay a white woman. If we wanted to hire a white woman, we almost couldn’t afford to have a housekeeper at all.”

“Nonsense, Mother!” Anders snorted. “We can afford anything we want and you know it!”

“That’s what you think,” his mother scolded. “You might spend money like it grows on trees, but I still remember when your father and I had nothing more than a pot to cook in, and I can’t help pinching pennies where and when I can. Janet is a perfectly acceptable housekeeper, and she gives us very good value for the money we pay her, so she can stay here as long as I’m alive, as far as I’m concerned.”

“There’s more to the question than the value she gives you for the money,” Anders declared. “There’s the question of respectability. How do you think it reflects on us when respectable people from town come to our house and find us with an Indian housekeeper?”

“They don’t think anything of it,” Matilda insisted. “They all have Indians working in their houses. Everyone has them. It’s the most sensible thing to do in this part of the world, where the Indians are willing to work for half the wage of white people and do just as good a job.”

“I think you’ll find that isn’t quite the case, Mother,” Anders argued. “That is peasant thinking. It isn’t the way an upper class woman would consider the situation.”

“Very well, Anders,” she conceded. “I will defer to you on this point, but I will retain Janet as long as she is capable of working.”

Penelope listened to this entire exchange with the fascination of an outsider learning a new language. “Well, I just can’t believe I didn’t recognize her for an Indian the first time I saw her!” she marveled. “I thought I knew what they looked like.”

“Well, now you know,” Anders declared.

“I’d like to get to know her better,” Penelope continued. “I’d like to talk to her and find out more about her. She strikes me as a very interesting person.”

“You stay away from her!” Anders ordered. “You don’t talk to
any
Indians, if you can avoid it. They’re not like white people. You can only get yourself into trouble, talking to those people.”

“Why? What’s wrong with them?” Penelope asked.

“They’re dangerous,” he snapped.

“But how?
I don’t understand,” she flummoxed.

“Just don’t talk to them,” he demanded. “I told you not to, and that’s the end of it. Stay away from Janet, and stay away from all other Indians, too.”

Penelope let the matter drop for the moment, but her interest in Janet didn’t dissipate. After a few further pleasantries, the elder Wests migrated away to their bedroom with many kisses and embraces and well wishes to their new daughter-in-law. When the door closed after them, leaving Anders and Penelope alone in the parlor, Penelope knit her fingers in anxiety at the inevitability of climbing the stairs to the bedroom and closing that door behind them and facing her new husband, alone together in their marital bedroom for the first time.

Anders certainly anticipated the same scenario, but without the same dread that plagued Penelope. He tossed back three more glasses of his favorite beverage before replacing his tumbler on the side board and sliding back the parlor door. “Come along, my dear,” he drawled, indicating the passageway outside the room with an inclination of his head. Penelope brushed past him with as much dignity as she could muster, but she still kept her hands clasped at her waist to stop them shaking as she climbed the stairs to the upper landing. Anders' footsteps followed her up the stairs and down the hall and into the bedroom, the same unkempt bedroom, and he shut the door behind him.

“Well, here we are, then,” he muttered to himself, crossing the room toward her.

Penelope faced him. She smelled the fumes of the alcohol on his breath and noticed, like a beacon illuminating his face for the first time, his bleary eyes and slackened lips. He seemed to struggle to focus his eyes on her face, and even to labor to keep his eyelids propped open at all. The sequence of events over the course of the day, from the time they arrived at the house until now, replayed themselves in her memory and in the realization of how much he had actually drunk in that time, she understood that he was truly and thoroughly intoxicated beyond any sensibility. Her fear and reticence at exposing herself to a total stranger changed to annoyance, and she resisted the duty confronting her with more endurance than before.

Somehow, however, she still experienced a pang of guilt at shirking her obligation. She suffered Anders to lead her by the elbow to the bed, but she perched on the corner of it without moving any closer to him. He projected his face toward her in a sloppy attempt to kiss her, but she withdrew with a jerk. “Let’s just sit here and talk for a moment, Anders,” she suggested, laying her hand on his. “Let us become more familiar with each other before we venture into that.”

Anders compressed his lips in impatience. “What is there to talk about?”

“Let’s just get to know each other,” she maintained. “Give me a few moments to get close to you before we jump into bed together.”

“Come on,” he slobbered closer to her. “Loosen up. Drop all that talking stuff and come over here.”

“Wait, Anders,” Penelope averted her face from the cloud of reeking vapor emanating from his mouth and scorching her nostrils. “Just slow down for half a minute until I get used to the idea.”

“What idea is there to get used to?” he bawled. “We’re married, and this is our wedding night. Now, come on. Don’t hold out on me.” He leaned into her again, more adamantly than before, forcing her to leap away, off of the bed, to avoid him. “Hey!” he brayed. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Not so fast, Anders,” she wagged her finger at him. “Just give me a minute to get used to you before you throw yourself at me. You can’t expect a lady to just melt into your arms. You have to woo me.”

“Woo you?!” he bellowed. “I’m your husband, and you’re my wife, and I have rights! You belong to me now! Now, come on. Get over here. I’m tired of waiting.”

“You won’t get anywhere, talking to me like that,” Penelope bristled. “You married a lady, and now you have to treat me like one. You have to respect me. You can’t just demand my body and expect me to fall over for you like any tramp from the gutter.”

“Oh, so that’s the way it has to be, is it?” Anders fumed. “We’ll see about that!”

He lurched off the bed and staggered toward her, grabbing for her with his paw, but his addled brain couldn’t make his body obey his commands, and he stumbled past her when she dodged him around the other side of the table.

“You won’t come near me that way, Anders,” she cautioned him.

He made another lunge to catch her but when she side-stepped him, he tripped over his own feet and careened headlong into the wall. He bashed his forehead into the wainscot and collapsed onto the floor. Penelope suppressed a gasp and resisted the urge to fly to his aid. Sure enough, he hauled himself unsteadily onto his feet, his hand pressing his forehead. When he regained an upright position, she noticed a large bubble of purple sprouting from his forehead under his hand. He glowered at her through the cloud of his groggy wits.

“Oh, you’re a real gem, aren’t you?” he snarled. “I got a real bargain when I got you, didn’t I?”

“Calm yourself, Anders,” Penelope squared her shoulders.

“I won’t stand for this!” he bellowed. “I’ll have my rights, or I’ll have you punished!”

“How will you do that?” she stifled a snicker at the idea. “You’ll have to catch me first!”

“You’ll pay for this!” he fulminated. He teetered over to the bed and plunged into it head first. He sprawled out on top of the coverlet and without stirring again, began to snore. Penelope remained rooted to the spot, observing him for several minutes until she comprehended that he was in fact asleep and no longer posed any danger to her. She lingered there, surveying the room a while longer, wondering where she ought to sleep that night, but relieved to postpone the muddle of her marital obligation for at least one more night.

During the following days, Penelope settled into her new life at the West Ranch house, growing more familiar with her parents-in-law and with their employees. Penelope immediately took charge of the management of their bedroom, removing every empty glass and soiled ashtray from it as soon as they appeared, and she requested Janet to change the bed linens each week. As her last crowning addition to the room, she hung a large mirror over the fireplace in which to oversee her own appearance. She planned to introduce some different pieces of furniture to the room to make it more comfortable, such as some upholstered chairs in front of the fireplace and some carpets for the bare wooden floor but she deemed the current changes enough for the moment, leaving the others for later, when Anders grew more accustomed to the presence of a woman in his room.

Over the course of her first week as a member of the family, she joined Matilda after breakfast, unpacking, sorting, and cleaning the Christmas decoration. The two women twittered merrily as they planned the decoration of the house, and Matilda enjoyed explaining the origin and significance of each piece as she rediscovered long-lost items tucked into corners of boxes, stuffed with sawdust, she hadn’t seen in many years and thought had gone astray. On the third day, Caleb and Bill Olsen brought a big tree into the house and nailed it onto a wooden stand in a corner of the parlor. They also deposited several armloads of green pine boughs on the porch. In the ensuing days, Matilda and Penelope donned their thick winter attire and sorted the boughs into lengths suitable for the weaving of wreaths. They laughed and talked, cutting here and pruning there, until Janet called them to lunch. Penelope wondered at first if Janet objected at all to being displaced in the festivities of holiday preparation, but she gave no sign whatever on the subject, and no opportunity presented itself to Penelope to ask her. Janet continued her domestic chores with the same taciturn readiness, giving Penelope and Matilda all the space they needed to execute their task in the isolation of their own company. When the wreaths and ribbons adorned the front door of the house and the awning of the porch, and after they set up the candles for Advent and induced their husbands to stand by as they lit them and intoned a consecrating verse over them, the two women turned their attentions to the tree. Penelope relished placing each piece in its  proper location, of draping the ribbon around its branches, and finally adorning the uppermost tip with the lace angel.

During this process, she engaged her mother-in-law in conversation. “How I envy you,” she observed. “
for having such a fine home and a family to share the holidays with! I always knew I was missing out, being an orphan, but I just never realized before the sheer joy of the season. To be surrounded by your family and to share these things with them—it gives the season so much more meaning. When you don’t have it, you don’t know what you’re missing!”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, my dear,” Matilda rejoined. “It’s the perfect way to welcome you into our family.”

“What other traditions do you observe for Christmas?” Penelope asked. “I want to know all about everything you usually do.”

Matilda lifted another ornament out of the box and handed it up to Penelope. “There isn’t much more that we do, as a family, besides Christmas dinner. I usually take on the business of decorating the tree and putting out whatever decorations I want around the house, but George and Anders don’t take much interest in any of it. When Anders was a boy, we used to give gifts and make special desserts to eat and all that sort of thing. But since he’s grown to be a man, he doesn’t care much for that sort of thing anymore. I don’t doubt that, if I stopped decorating and cooking for Christmas, the two of them would hardly take any notice. The running of the ranch is the most important thing to them now. They get annoyed because the ranch hands take Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off from work, and still get paid for it. George doesn’t mind so much but if Anders had his way, he would either dock their pay or make them work through Christmas. He doesn’t countenance paying a man not to work.”

“But you have to do
something
for Christmas!” Penelope insisted. “It wouldn’t be right not to. Don’t you even give each other gifts anymore?”

“Not much,” Matilda dropped her eyes away from her daughter-in-law. “The men think it’s a waste of money. Anders says that, if we want something, we can buy it any time. We don’t need to go out buying things we don’t need just to celebrate a holiday.”

“But that’s not the point!” Penelope cried. “The whole point is the thought you put into buying a gift for someone. What matters is that you took the time and effort to think about what they might like when you went out and bought it for them.”

“I understand how you feel,” Matilda soothed her. “But I don’t think Anders will agree with you.”

“Well, I intend to give you all gifts,” Penelope resolved. “It wouldn’t be Christmas without it. I don’t care what Anders says.”

Matilda scrutinized her. “And do you have your own money to buy the gifts with? I don’t think Anders will give you the money to buy them, if you don’t.”

Penelope gaped at her. “Are you telling me that Anders controls all your spending money?”

Matilda nodded as she turned back to the decorations. “Anders manages all the finances for the whole ranch. He oversees the reckoning of the price Janet pays for our food supplies, he negotiates our taxes with the county Board of Supervisors, and he handles all the buying and selling of our stock at auction. I don’t think George or I have seen a reckoning of our bank accounts in ten years. Anders takes care of all of it, and he decides what money comes in and what money goes out.”

“But surely he must give you a spending allowance,” Penelope endeavored to keep the pitch of her voice low.

Matilda shook her head balefully into her box. “He says we don’t need it. He says we don’t need to go shopping because we have everything we need.”

“But that’s just beastly!” Penelope shrieked. Then, she humphed in annoyance. “I’m going to speak to him about it.”

“I wish you good luck with that,” Matilda muttered.

“But you’re his own parents!” Penelope pointed out. “How can he treat you like that? It’s almost as though he’s treating you like children.”

“He runs the whole ranch, my dear,” Matilda informed her. “He stands to inherit the entire operation when George dies, and he will run it his way then, if he doesn’t do it now. As it is, George insists he keep the same staff employed, when Anders would like to get rid of most of them and replace them. But George feels a loyalty toward these men—not unlike what I feel toward Janet—that makes him put his foot down. And that is quite a challenge, if I may say so, when you have a headstrong man like Anders to deal with. George chooses his battles with Anders very carefully. He protects the men from Anders as best he can, keeping them employed, although Anders still manages them in his own way. He can’t afford to make Anders angry over a trifling matter like a spending allowance, not when we can manage alright without it.”

Penelope almost let fly with another imprecation about the unfairness of the situation, but she thought better of it and shut her mouth. Matilda noticed this, and smiled kindly at her. “And I would suggest,” she continued. “that you take the same strategy when dealing with Anders. He has a nasty temper, and he can hold a very vindictive grudge when someone crosses him. I would advise you to tread lightly around him, and to avoid challenging him whenever possible.”

“Very well,” Penelope assented. “I will try to follow your advice, though I will have to bite my tongue, I think.”

“Making him mad will only make life extremely unpleasant for all of us,” Matilda maintained. “We all have to live under the same roof with Anders, and because we all depend on him for our maintenance, we should work hard to make him as calm and content as possible.”

“I understand your meaning,” Penelope mumbled.

“And remember, my dear,” Matilda persisted. “remember how lucky you are to be married to such an accomplished and well-disposed husband. He could have married anyone he chose. Several of the local families would have jumped at the chance to marry their daughters to such a husband. He turned down several advantageous offers before he agreed to let George negotiate with you. He stands to inherit a staggering fortune when his father dies, and even now, he commands the reins of an immense empire covering four counties. He understands the management of financial affairs much better than you or I ever will. He understands them even better than George, and George built this empire up from nothing with his own sweat and toil. We shouldn’t question him on a subject he understands so much better than we do.”

“You’re right,” Penelope agreed, abashed. “I should keep my place better. I will make every effort to do so in the future.”

“Anders is thirty,” Matilda related. “He knows what he is about. He has considerably more experience in the world than you have. You are little more than a child. You have a lot to learn about the world, before you go dictating terms to someone so much older than yourself. And then again, look at me. I am old, but I’ve spent all my life behind the doors of houses. Even I don’t have as much worldly experience as Anders. That’s why I defer to him on matters outside my realm of expertise. He goes to town all the time on business, conferring with other ranchers, politicians, and businessmen. How can I tell him what to do, when he sees so much more of the bigger picture than I do? I think you should consider these things before you start arguing with Anders or telling him what you are going to do. As his wife, you would do better to ask him what you ought to do, and follow his instructions when he gives them.”

Penelope withdrew before this admonition. “You’re right. I’ll do as you say.” And she resolved to do just that.

When Anders came home that night from his work on the ranch, Penelope made every effort to placate and please him. She brought him his glass of brandy by the fire, and she smiled at him and stroked his hand in a soothing, suggestive way to indicate her willingness to give herself to him when they ascended to their chamber. He grinned at her, apprehending her meaning, and squeezed her hand between gulps from his glass. Penelope settled herself into the couch at his side, petting his hand, as the conversation flew around the room between them and his parents. Penelope rose from her seat to fill his glass at regular intervals but toward the end of the evening, when she began to anticipate their retirement to their chamber, Anders suddenly stood up from the couch and quit the room without a word of explanation to anyone. Penelope waited for him to return, and even remained seated after her parents-in-law withdrew to their own room but Anders still didn’t reappear. At long last, feeling weary herself and unsure what else to do, she left the parlor and mounted the stairs to the door of Anders’s bedroom, which she found ajar. Softly, she pushed it open. A single lamp illuminated the room, but no fire warmed the hearth. The rasping noise of Anders’s snore issued from the room, and Penelope tiptoed in to find him sprawled on top of the bed, still fully dressed, and sound asleep. She undressed herself, slipped under the blankets, and blew out the lamp.

The following morning at breakfast, Penelope cast a few sidelong glances at Anders to discern his level of sobriety before she broached the subject of the Christmas gifts. “I’ve been thinking, Anders, that I’d like to go into town and buy some Christmas gifts for you and your parents.” Across the table, Matilda perked up her ears.

“What for?” he grumbled.

“I told you. For Christmas,” she shot back. Then she softened her tone. “It’s what people do at Christmas. They give their loved ones gifts. It’s the tradition.”

“It’s not our tradition,” he maintained.

“Your mother told me you used to give each other gifts when you were younger,” she related. “I’d like to revive that tradition, now that we’re a family. If we have children, we will want to give them gifts, and for them to give each other gifts, and for them to exchange gifts with their grandparents. It’s the spirit of the season, you know, to give gifts. I think we should do it.”

“It’s a waste of money, if you ask me,” Anders mumbled into his plate.

“No, it isn’t,” she replied. “It’s the kind and generous way to celebrate the holiday. It’s a family holiday, and it shows your consideration for members of your family. Anyway, if you don’t want to give gifts, you don’t have to. But I would like to.”

“Well, go ahead, then,” he acceded.

“I’ll go into town on Monday,” she declared. “It’s Friday now, so nothing in town will be open again until Monday. I’ll go then. And I’ll need you to give me the money to buy the things, too.”

A cloud passed across his brow, and he stiffened noticeably under his jacket. But he didn’t argue with her. “Whatever makes you happy, dear,” he relented.

“Thank you so much!” she cried, clasping her hands with delight. She leapt from her chair and planted a kiss on the side of his face. “You are the best husband in
all the world! I’m going to give you the best Christmas present ever!”

Matilda smiled at them, and lowered her eyes to her plate.

Anders finished his meal without another word and banged out of the house to his daily work. Penelope watched him go from the front window of the parlor. She almost jumped out of her skin when her father-in-law materialized at her side. “That was expertly done,” he commented.

“Oh!” she gasped. “I didn’t hear you come in.”