Double Wedding: Sweet Historical Mail Order Brides of Lowell (3 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Annie sat on the front porch peeling potatoes. Gone was the big hooped skirt and pearl-buttoned boots she’d worn the first day she’d arrived. Instead, she was wearing the plain cotton gowns and worn leather boots that had been her everyday attire at the mills. With each day here, she felt more and more like this was where she was meant to be. After almost a week, she barely remember her old life in the factory.

She dropped a potato into the pot of water next to her and reached into the sack for another. George was spending more time with her since Sunday’s announcement of their betrothal.

She still had trouble sometimes matching the man she was falling in love with to the words in his letters. But if he didn’t speak endearments to her like she knew he would have if he’d written her a letter, that was a small gray cloud in the far corner of a great blue sky.

As if thinking of George caused him to appear, he strode toward her with purposeful strides and a smile on his face. He stopped and sat on the stair next to her. Reaching into the sack, he pulled a potato out and absently tossed it up in the air repeatedly. He looked so relaxed and handsome, Annie could hardly believe her luck.

“How would you like a tour of the farm after supper?”

“I’d love it.” She laughed and grabbed the potato in mid-flight. “Now, get so I can finish making supper.”

George walked inside and left Annie with a smile on her face.

Annie tried not to listen when she heard raised voices in the house. At first, the voices were muted as George and Molly must have been in the kitchen. Annie kept peeling her potatoes and enjoying the view out over the horizon. It still amazed her that one could see practically forever from one’s own front porch here.

After a few minutes, the voices inside became louder. The pair must have walked into the main room and stood near the open windows. Annie had just placed her half peeled potato into the bowl with the skins. She would go for a little walk and give the two some privacy. But before she could get up, their argument became clearer and easier to hear.

“You have to tell her.” Molly said.

“There’s no reason, it’s in the past. It’s forgotten.” George said.

“Are you serious? A marriage needs to be built on trust. Annie needs to know you didn’t write those letters.”

Annie felt all the blood drain from her face.

“She’ll forgive us when she knows I wrote that advertisement and answered all her letters out of concern for you.”

Annie gasped as the words she heard registered in her mind. She stood up and the tin bowl of potato peelings clanged to the floor and clattered loudly down the stairs. The voices inside the house stopped.

Annie couldn’t believe the man she loved had lied to her. No wonder his letters had sounded so different. He hadn’t written them. Annie couldn’t think. She could barely breathe. She needed to get away. Picking up her skirt, she ran. Tears streamed down her face as she headed for the small corpse of trees near the house. She heard the door bang open and George call her name. She ran faster. She didn’t want to talk to him.

In her headlong rush to get away, she wasn’t watching where she was going. Her foot caught on something and she started to fall forward. She grabbed at a tree to catch herself and felt a burning pain in her arm as she scraped the tree bark on her way down. She quickly sat upright then froze.

An unearthly rattle sounded just in front of her.

There on the ground no more than two feet from her toe was a coiled rattle snake on a pile of decayed leaves. It’s rattle pointed straight up and the rest of its body coiled and ready to strike. Annie and the snake stared at each other.

Vaguely, in some other part of her mind, she heard George coming for her. But she knew he would be too late and that there was nothing he could do. The snake was too close.

She was afraid to look away. She prayed while looking into what she knew was certain death.

“Please Lord, watch over George and Molly.”

CHAPTER NINE

When George heard Annie gasp, he saw the windows were open. She’d heard them.

He had to get to her. He had to explain.

He sprang across the room and was almost to the door when her metal bowl clanged as it hit the porch. Swinging the door open, he saw Annie racing away from the house.

“Annie, stop!”

She was ignoring him and he couldn’t blame her. Molly was right. He should have told her about the letters.

His heart stopped. His call had made her turn toward the trees near the creek. A rattler had spooked his horse the other day and gotten away in the underbrush near the area she was headed for.

He ran after her with all the speed he could. He berated himself as he ran. George knew he should have taken the time to find that snake then and there. But they’d been headed for church and he hadn’t wanted to be late.

If something happened to Annie, he’d never forgive himself.

Just as she crossed into the underbrush she went down. She quickly sat back up but then didn’t move. Fear gripped his insides. He forced himself to slow as he got near. Though his lungs wanted to explode, he clamped his mouth shut to quiet his breathing. Grabbing the pistol at his hip, he pulled back the hammer and crept the last few feet as quietly as he could.

There. Less than two feet from her outstretched leg was the rattler coiled and ready to strike. Sending a prayer Heavenward, he aimed and squeezed the trigger.

Annie screamed. And from behind him, Molly screamed.

George raced to Annie’s side. The snake’s headless body flopped then stilled. George fell to his knees and gathered Annie into his arms. She wrapped her arms tightly around him and buried her face in his shirt. He pulled her head back to get a good look at her.

“You’re alright? Did it bite you?” He was frantic. He needed to know she was okay. She shook her head. “It didn’t bite you?”

“No,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Oh, thank God.” He kissed her forehead. Then slid his arm under her legs and behind her back and lifted her up and out of the brush.

“My dearest Annie. I thought I’d lost you.”

Molly was beside him. “Is she alright?”

Annie nodded her head and leaned into George.

Molly hurried to stay ahead as George took long strides back to the house. He sat in a chair at the table with Annie still in his arms.

Annie savored the feeling of being in George’s strong embrace. She felt safe and protected. He had saved her. When she’d been certain she was going to die, George had saved her. He sat rocking her on his lap murmuring endearments to her. Annie felt like she was in a dream.

But wait. The fog was lifting from her mind. She pulled back to look at him.

“The letters.”

“I should have told you as soon as you got here.” He looked into her eyes. “When Molly told me what she’d done, she handed me all your letters. The night before you came, I read those letters and half fell in love with you then and there.” His hand played with a lock of her hair that had fallen loose. “When I saw you get off the train, you were so beautiful and proper that I couldn’t let myself believe that you would want to give up the city to live on a farm. So I tried to stay away from you. Since you were going to be headed back, there was no need to tell you about the letters."

His fingers caressed her cheek and despite the words he was confessing, she leaned into his touch.

“But I couldn’t stay away. Each moment I spent with you I fell more and more in love. At that point, I was afraid to tell you about the letters. Afraid you would leave me.”

He held her face in his hands. “I was wrong. Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?”

She stared into those same beautiful, hazel eyes that had mesmerized her that first day at the train station. “When I thought I was going to die, I realized God had given me this wonderful gift of a life with you and I’d thrown a tantrum because of the way He’d seen fit to bring us together. My dear sweet George, can you forgive me?”

George didn’t speak. Instead, he leaned in and kissed Annie. All her fear and all the years of yearning flowed out of her as she returned his kiss.

After a few minutes, he lifted his lips from hers. “Our wedding on Sunday cannot come soon enough.”

CHAPTER TEN

The sun shone brightly in the sky without a cloud in sight. Annie’s toes inside her pearl-buttoned boots danced to the fiddle music as she stood wrapped in the arms of her husband on their porch steps. She wished she could have worn her periwinkle blue dress that she’d gotten married in last summer. But as she looked down on the sleeping face of their new daughter, Annie didn’t mind the few extra inches she still carried around her waist. And from the squeeze George gave her, he didn’t mind either.

It was hard to believe so much had happened in her life. A year ago, her life had revolved around spending her days inside a dark, dirty factory with no hope of a husband or children.

Annie and George stepped down into the yard. Annie handed her daughter, Daisy, to Auntie Molly whose swollen belly was keeping her in a chair for their double anniversary party. Her husband, James, hovering nearby.

George took her hand and led her to the area where the dancing was.

“May I have this dance, Mrs. Pulaski?” He asked as he wrapped his arms around her.

“Yes, you may, Mr. Pulaski.” Not caring who saw, she leaned up and kissed his cheek. Annie’s last thought before the music started and the world began to spin was that she was so glad she’d answered that advertisement.

Preview the next story in the Sweet Historical Mail Order Brides of Lowell series.
Telegraph Bride

Elizabeth Stemple stood on the station platform, next to her wooden trunks, waiting for the man who should have been here to meet her train. The station master, a handsome man with warm chocolate eyes and nice broad shoulders, had already stopped by to check on her. It wasn’t often that she met a man who was taller than she was. Usually she saw over most women’s heads and was on eye level with most tall men. But this brawny station master almost made her feel petite. He didn’t just check on her once either but twice. He stopped once on his way to help the steam engine take on water and once on the way to the back of the train to help unload cargo. Having run a train station for seven years, more than four of those by herself, she watched him with a critical eye. He was good. He knew when to be where, and how to keep a conductor on time who wanted to dawdle and chitchat. Too bad he wasn’t the one who had written the advertisement in the Lowell Gazette looking for a wife. Her gaze swept the nearly empty platform.

With a sigh of impatience, Elizabeth lifted the large pocket watch she wore around her waist. She paused for a moment and rubbed a loving hand over the ornate letter S. She’d given that watch to her husband on their wedding day. When he’d stepped on the train that last day, he’d said for her to hold it until he came back. She let another sigh escape, this one filled with sadness. If not for that dreadful war, she and Henry would still be running their train station. She tucked a stray brown curl back into her bonnet, rubbed the cover of the watch one more time, then popped the cover open in a swift, experienced motion.

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For more Historical Mail Order Bride stories and other historical romances by MaryAnn Burnett, visit –

http://www.MaryAnnBurnett.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MaryAnn Burnett grew up reading historical and contemporary romance novels and never stopped. She loves history, particularly women’s history, and has tried her hand at many needlecrafts. (A hint from MaryAnn: If you ever want a good workout, make a quilt on a treadle sewing machine…)

MaryAnn wanders through life holding the hand of her best friend and husband. After almost ten years of marriage, strangers still ask them if they’re newlyweds.

MaryAnn and her husband live on a hillside near a small southern town where she writes from her sunroom overlooking the garden. Two cocker spaniels keep her feet warm as she writes and sneak-attack kisses occur if she gets too lost in a story.