Sleigh Bells & Mistletoe: A Short Story (The Brides Series 1.5) (6 page)

A man like him didn’t deserve a dog.

A man like him didn’t deserve
a wife
.

Although, a man like him—wealthy, in his mid-forties or early-fifties, it looked like—probably already had a wife.

It was possible.

Which meant, possibly, he
hadn’t
just married Annie. Not legally, anyway.

Which meant, possibly, he had plans for her that had nothing to do with being married or faithful. Things that didn’t bear thinking about.

Jem couldn’t know for sure.

But it was enough to make him doubt.

“I said ‘drop the leash.’”

“Listen, mister,” the rancher said, his eyes going mean. “I don’t want any trouble with you.”

“Why? Because I’m bigger and can fight back?” It was a guess, but Jem had the satisfaction of seeing his words hit home.

The rancher took a step toward him, bristling.

The preacher hovered near his satchel with an anxious expression, as if he’d just swallowed a wasp.

Jem glanced at Mae, wishing he could protect her from sights like this. Wishing she was far away. Annie had scooped her up and was holding his daughter’s face pressed into her shoulder. Good.

“I’m taking the dog,” Jem told the rancher coolly. He pulled money out of his pocket before the man could say anything else. Jem handed him a bill that made his eyes widen, and, before he could say anything, slid the leash from his senseless fingers. Jem didn’t shy away from making himself look as big and as intimidating as possible, which might’ve helped. Then he turned to the preacher and asked, “What did he give you? How much?”

The preacher swallowed and named a number.

It was high, enough to make Jem raise his brows, but not enough to make him stop.

“I’m taking
her
too. I’ll give you twice what he paid,” Jem told the preacher. “Just give him the money back.”

“What?” he stared at Jem blankly, his face going faintly green.

“If you won’t I will.”

“But—but they’re married. All proper and legal.”

“Oh really?” Jem asked. “Seems like a
married
man can’t have two wives.”

“Who says I’m married?” the rancher protested. He put on quite a show, but Jem wasn’t convinced. Didn’t matter anyway.

“I say you are.” Jem took the paper from the man’s hand and ripped it into pieces. The wind took them away, blowing them down the street like tiny white leaves

“Hey!” The rancher shoved Jem. He fisted his hands, ready to fight.

Jem held him off. “Give him back his money,” he practically barked at the preacher, losing his patience fast.

The preacher swallowed and stuck his hand out, the wad of bills outstretched. The man subsided all of a sudden, perhaps thinking it wasn’t worth his effort anymore—something that had perhaps only been an amusement to him. He took the bills from the preacher, his gaze hard on Jem the whole time.

“That’s right. Good. Now get us a new paper, preacher,” Jem said. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but what choice did he have? Let the preacher “marry” her off to the next man, possibly someone worse?

The preacher hurried to grab another paper from his bag, his hands visibly trembling as he made it out. Jem gave his particulars.

“You need to sign.”

Jem took the pen, held the paper against his palm and signed. It was all there: his name, as the preacher had hurriedly printed it, and his own signature. He looked at her name and just saw Annie.

“What’s her last name?” he asked the preacher. “Doesn’t it need to be on here?”

“She doesn’t have one. Never did, I guess. That’s what her father said.”

“Don’t call him that again,” Jem said, irritated. “Just put his last name down here for hers, now.”

He hurriedly wrote the name in:
Ruskin
.

Annie Ruskin.

As soon as the preacher added the name, Jem slipped the paper out of his hands and beckoned to Annie. She brought Mae closer, and Jem took his daughter from her. Mae squirmed immediately.

“Hush,” he told her. “Wait just a minute.”

“Hungry.”

“I know. I’m hungry too.” Except now he wasn’t. This whole business had driven his hunger away.

“Can you make your mark here?” he asked Annie, handing her the paper. “Annie,” he added, out of respect. “I’m James. James Wheeler. But most folks call me Jem. And this here is Mae. She’s mine. I’m not married now, but I was. Widowed.”

She looked at him, seemingly frozen in place.

“If you want,” Jem said quietly, looking at the preacher and the other man, her supposed “husband,” who was still hovering nearby. He was a big man. Used to getting his way. Unprincipled. Rough. Rude. And he was obviously furious.

She looked at the man and swallowed, obviously not liking her odds. She hesitated a beat more, turning to look Jem over from head to toe, maybe not much liking the looks of him either. But in the end she nodded and took the pen and paper from him and made her little mountains. Her grip appeared painfully tight and the effort to make the mark showed on her face. Funny how she could draw so nice but couldn’t make her letters. Jem tried to recall any condition from his studies that would explain her inability. None came to mind. Not that he knew that much about human conditions, seeing as his interest was animal care. But he was fairly certain she was mute. Maybe it had something to do with the way her mind worked. Some sort of impairment from birth? Or maybe some trauma or accident that took it away?

“That will do just fine, I think.” Jem rolled the paper in his right hand, holding Mae on his left, her legs wrapped around his waist. He had a good grip on her, but keeping her still was made awkward by the fact that he was holding the leash too, and the puppy was pulling. Jem shoved the roll of paper down the front of his shirt, just to be safe. Wouldn’t do for the man in the duster to grab it and rip it up.

“That’s all proper and legal?” Jem asked the preacher, wondering. He seemed to remember there being more to it when he married Lorelei, but then they’d been married in a big white church with a steeple, flowers, and everything, in a proper town with a proper town clerk.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I don’t ever want to see you again, understood?”

“Understood.” The preacher hurriedly shoved his wad of money into his satchel and ducked into the church tent. He snapped the tent folds closed, evidently done with the proceedings.

Jem was pretty sure Annie wasn’t sad to see the last of the young man. Although, she seemed pretty much lifeless at the moment.

“Can you take the pup?” he asked her, hitching Mae up a little higher on his hip.

Annie woke up a bit and nodded. She grabbed the leash from him, and hurried after him as he marched to the train.

Jem paused with his foot on the step. “Do you have any bags?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing at all?”

“No.” It was the only word he’d heard her say, and it came out oddly clipped, guttural even. She blushed fiercely, and he suspected she was embarrassed by the sound of her own voice. Maybe she’d been mocked as a child. People could be cruel.

“Then get on board,” he said. “I’ll pay your fare when the porter comes around.”

She scooped the puppy into her arms, and Jem helped her up the stairs, putting a hand under her elbow. Well, as best he could with Mae squirming and asking again about food.

The rancher was still standing there watching them, watching the train, unhappy and possibly feeling the need for vengeance. Jem wouldn’t put it past him to come after them later. Maybe get him alone, ambush him. Take Annie and the dog. It seemed a bit overdramatic, perhaps, but Jem had seen worse things in his life. Men who’d done far worse to their own kin.

Food would have to wait.

TWO

T
he train closed in on Annie. It was like being wrapped up. But not like the warm comfy feeling of a blanket coming around her on a cold night—more the suffocating kind. It wasn’t the walls or the ceiling, not anything like that. She was used to riding the train by now, having followed Daniel Griggs, the “preacher,” around for the past few weeks.

The man across from her—her husband—had leaned back in his seat, the brim of his hat pulled down low over his eyes like he was fixing to take a nap. Not looking at her at all, so it wasn’t his gaze she felt on her. It was everyone else’s. All the other passengers in the car were looking right at her. There weren’t that many of them, but what there were, they were all looking at her. She squirmed in all her filth. She’d gone a week or more without bathing, but with good reason. Daniel liked things clean. He liked things clean so much, he barely looked at her if she had a speck of dirt on her or a hair was out of place.

She couldn’t be blamed for not wanting him to look at her.

She hadn’t wanted him to touch her either. He’d tried that one time—not married up with her in the least—and she’d struck out at him. Gave him a good black eye too. He’d deserved it. Hypocrite. Liar.

Oh, he preached salvation and faith and all that, but after his revivals, he liked to take up with the young teenage girls behind the tent—the ones with the moon eyes, looking up at him like he was God himself in a black coat and tie. She’d seen him out back doing...
things
...and more than once. Sickened her.

He was handsome enough, she supposed, but in a too-slick kind of way. Not suitable for the preaching life. More suited for a gaming hall. Something like that. She’d seen the type. And she’d tried to stay out of his way from the first moment she laid eyes on him.

Which was why she was a dirty as a pigpen now, and around all these decent people. Seeing one middle-aged woman and her husband talking in hushed tones and looking her way, Annie tried to scrub her face clean with the sleeve of her dress. Problem was she suspected her dress was even dirtier than her face. She didn’t have a single thing to clean up with or change into, and she couldn’t very well ask the man across from her for anything. One, because she
couldn’t
ask him a thing—not speaking out loud anyway. And, two, because he wasn’t looking at her. Sometimes if someone was looking at her, she could get her meaning across, but most times people just avoided looking at her altogether. The man across from her—James, he’d said, or Jem—seemed that sort of person. He’d rather look right through her. She knew the type. She was an embarrassment.

The only problem was, she was tied to him for life now.

Because she was
his wife
. It seemed so unreal, like it had happened to someone else. Or it hadn’t happened at all.

Except she’d seen him stuff the marriage certificate down the front of his shirt, and she could see the bumps the folded paper made against the blue fabric of his shirt.

A “mail-order” bride. That’s what Daniel had called her. That was a laugh. More like a slave. Cooking, cleaning, mending. She doubted he ever meant to marry her. He’d had the opportunity before they left Tennessee, but he’d pushed it off, telling Mr. Mead that he “wanted to get married with his family in attendance.” Whatever the reason for him delaying, she could only be grateful she wasn’t tied to
him
for life.

She eyed Jem thoughtfully. Half his face was covered in a beard and mustache, and the other half was shadowed by his big, wide-brimmed hat. He had on a leather jacket and dark brown trousers. In fact, he was pretty much dark brown, dark brown, dark brown, except for his blue shirt and the little patches of flesh where his skin was showing. She’d count herself lucky if she could ever catch another glimpse of his eyes. What she’d seen of them earlier, she thought they were gray, like a stormy sky. Like his daughter’s. He’d called her Mae several times. An adorable little wee one.

The puppy snuffled at Annie’s fingers, and she stroked his downy-soft fur.

She was glad Jem had stepped in and done something to help the poor creature—she just hadn’t expected him to do quite so much.

Like tearing up that marriage certificate Daniel had made her sign.

Like marrying up with her instead, evidently so no one else would have her.

What kind of man did that?

In appearance, he seemed a not-very-nice sort of man. Not the kind of man you’d want to sneak up on unexpected. He was lean and rugged every which way: broad-shouldered, tall, muscular... You wouldn’t want to startle this man in the dark, for instance. He was dangerous that way. The other man—the one with the mean eyes—had seen that too. It was the only reason he’d backed down. The money hadn’t mattered. He’d just been plain old scared of Jem. And that was a fact.

She rather liked that. She’d married a
dangerous
man. A dangerous man who’d stood up for a puppy and a filthy girl in a filthy dress.

He’d come running over to check on his little girl too, which meant he must have a softer side. It was the one reason she’d made any sort of effort to get through to him about the dog.

And, thankfully, she had gotten through.

The sweet little pup was licking Mae’s fingers and had pushed its furry little body in closer to Annie’s side. It was a nice feeling being snuggled into.

The whistle blew, and Annie snuck a glance around for nearly the hundredth time to be sure the mean-eyed man hadn’t boarded the train. There was no sign of him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in one of the other cars, she supposed. He had come off the train when it stopped, been one of the first ones Daniel had approached. So that meant he was headed south like the other folks on board. Anyway, why would he want to stay in a tiny old town like the one they were about to pull out of? Why would anyone? It didn’t even have a name as far as she could tell.

Across from her, Mae squirmed. She’d been trying for a good while to be quiet. Annie could tell that from the way the little girl gripped her knees tightly and kept pulling her lips in and out of her mouth.

The train pulled away from the depot with a jerk and then a steady roll.

“Daddy,” Mae finally said, watching the depot roll past the window with a crestfallen expression.

“Umm?” he mumbled, his face still hidden under his hat. Maybe he had his eyes shut—it seemed like it to Annie. Maybe he’d been sitting there this whole time, searching his mind for answers.

“Daddy,
so
hungry.”

He turned his head toward her. “I’ll ask the porter when he comes round. Maybe they’ve got some more apples. Or soda crackers and cheese.”

Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over.

“Don’t you dare cry,” he said gruffly, but not in any truly mean way. It was actually sort of a tender thing, the way he said it.

Mae sniffled.

He rested his hand over her head for a moment and gave it a playful waggle.

So, the man wasn’t
entirely
dangerous... Not nearly as dangerous as Annie expected he wanted people to believe, which was curious.

Annie looked from one to the other: father, daughter. She was hungry too. She didn’t know quite what to expect if there were to be apples, crackers, or cheese. Would he buy some for her too? She didn’t have two cents to rub together. Not even one, truth be told.

She cleared her throat, and when he glanced at her, she quickly placed a hand over her stomach before he could hide back under his hat again.

He nodded. After a few seconds, he seemed to get a bit agitated, rubbing his knees, tapping the heel of one boot, which set the spur jangling, making a tinkling metallic sound. He tugged his hat down more securely over his eyes, when it would have been more polite to take the thing off inside the car, Annie would’ve thought.

When he stood abruptly, she jerked a bit in surprise. The puppy and Mae looked up at him too, every one of them expectant, herself included.

“Come along, Mae,” he said, reaching down a hand toward her, inviting her to take it and follow him, no doubt. “Let’s go find the porter. Maybe he’ll have something for us.”

But now that he indicated he was going in search of food, the little girl immediately turned her attention to the puppy again, sliding to the very end of her seat and pointing her toes across the space between them. Her shoes lay on the floor. She must have kicked them off. For her part, the puppy was stretching as far as she could on the end of her chain, using its support to lean out farther than she could have otherwise. Her nose evidently tickled Mae’s toes, for the little girl smiled, delighted, and stretched father—so far Annie feared she was going to topple off the edge of her seat.

“I stay,” Mae said to her father, shooting an impish grin at him. Adorable. Irresistible.

Jem hesitated, clearly torn. If he went on his own, Annie figured he could move much faster, going from car to car. But he probably didn’t want to leave her alone with Annie. Not that she blamed him. What did he know about her, a stranger?

Finally he seemed to come to a decision, for he heaved out a breath and squared his shoulders.

“All right then, stay,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find the porter.” Before he left, he leaned down and whispered in Annie’s ear, his beard tickling her cheek. His nearness stirred up a strange awareness in her, not entirely unpleasant, not like when Danny tried to sidle up next to her. With Jem it was more like bacon sizzling nicely in a fry pan, even with that furry beard and the hat pulled down low over his eyes. Maybe because she’d decided she could trust him.

“If
he
comes by here—finds you—you need to stay put,” he said, an order. He was obviously used to be listened to. “Don’t even look at him. He has no rights over you. Understand?”

She nodded, surprised. He was worried about
her
?

“If he tries to touch you or Mae or the dog, I want you to scream as loud as you can and don’t stop. Can you do that—can you scream?”

She nodded, embarrassed that he had to ask. She could make any number of truly awful screeching noises, loud as could be if she needed to.

“Okay, good. I don’t think he’ll try anything here on the train, not really. Too many people. But it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.” He stood and took an assessing look around their car. Apparently satisfied, he told Mae, “You wait here.” He glanced down at Annie again to get her commitment to stand watch over his daughter. She sat up straighter and nodded.

He hesitated, clearly torn.

Annie tried to fix her most trustworthy face on.
Go on
. She waved him away.
I’ll watch the wee one
.

Maybe it was hard to trust her in all her filth—or maybe he was still worried about the man coming to look for them—because he hesitated one more moment. Then he stalked off, as if intent on getting where he was going and back as quickly as possible. She saw him disappear through the connecting door to the next car up.

It wasn’t fifteen minutes, maybe twenty at the most, and he was back again. He held up his prize: one wrinkled red apple, two hunks of cheese, and a packet of soda crackers. He also had a large silver flask of what she hoped was cold, clear water to share.

Annie’s mouth watered, just thinking about cheese.

She watched as Jem sat back next to Mae and handed her the apple straight off. So the apple was out of the offing. Gone to a hungry little girl. That was fair.

Mae didn’t even wait for grace to be said. She bit down into that apple and chewed, an expression of relieved delight crossing her face. The apple must not have been too dry, for juice dripped down her chin. She didn’t bother to wipe it off—she just took another bite. More juice dribbled down onto her dress. Her white pinafore was nearly as dirty as Annie’s dress from playing in the dirt, but a small child could be excused for that. A child on a long train journey, anyway.

Annie didn’t have that luxury. She was all too aware of the glances still being slung her way. Her appearance was one thing, but then add to that the fact that she’d just newly come onboard. They’d been traveling with this man and his child for who knows how many days. They all knew he hadn’t been traveling with a woman. None of them would have dreamed he’d married at the last stop—just like that—and least likely to a woman like her. What on earth did they think she was? She didn’t dare consider it.