The Unexpected Bride (The Brides Book 1) (5 page)

He’d stolen a quick kiss and hurriedly pressed a coin into her hand. Backed away. She shrugged it off with a puzzled frown, tucked the coin into the pocket of her skirt, and returned to scrubbing a tub of wash. She hadn’t shown the least flicker of emotion.

He’d ducked out of the tent to breathe some fresh air. He remembered it was an effort just to stand upright, he was shaking so hard, as if he’d run up the mountain.

So he’d never
been
with a woman—not for more than that one stolen kiss anyway—in all his years. He was twenty-four now, boss of his own business. His men looked up to him. But he didn’t know a thing about women. And now he was marrying a stranger. In three days.

He returned to the cabin to find his father already snoring in the narrow bed next to his. Thoughts of marriage and a woman with reddish-gold hair and green eyes soon swirled into a fog as sleep claimed him.

SIX

In a one-room shanty just outside Seattle...

I
cy rain leaked through the gaps in the roof, chilling Jem Wheeler’s face and soaking his sheets. He shivered and tried to remember a time when the roof didn’t leak. He was sixteen now, and it seemed like raindrops had been splashing against his skin his entire life. When he was really small, he’d wake up in terror feeling cold water on his face. Back then, he’d thought the ceiling was gonna cave in on him. Even though he knew now that it would hold, he still lay awake, uneasy. Waiting.

The front door crashed open, and he saw the shape of a man standing in the doorway, not much more than a shadow in the night. The shape staggered in, coming toward his bed. Thunder cracked, making Jem jump, then there was a moment of deathly quiet.

He jerked upright, his pulse deafening in his ears. “Pa?”

“Hush up, boy!” The slurred command sounded like a gunshot. It was Pa, drunk again. He struck Jem across the jaw with the back of his hand.

Something broke inside of Jem. He finally snapped, like a branch bent back too far.

“No, Pa! You hush up!” He scrambled out of bed and shoved Pa away.

His father stumbled backwards. He roared in anger, swearing. A flash of lightning lit the room. Jem saw the glint of metal in his pa’s hand. It all happened so quick. Pa rushed him before he could get out of the way. Pain lashed across his chest. It was hot at first, then icy cold, all over.

“Git on out of here, boy!”

Pa’s string of cusses weren’t anything Jem hadn’t heard before, but he was already at the breaking point.

“I hate you!”

“You good for nothin’! Go on. Git!”

Jem didn’t wait for a second swipe of Pa’s hunting knife. He ran out the door. For a second, he glanced back, hating to leave his one treasure behind, but there was no way to get it now. He ran through the storm, feeling the safety of the black night immerse him.

He was done with Pa. He was done with Pa’s cussing. He was done with Pa’s drunkenness. He was done with Pa’s beatings. He was finally on his own.

SEVEN

T
he Pearsons’ household was quiet with sleep. The sound of thunder woke Becky, returning her to her anxious thoughts. She’d be a married woman soon. Shivering from the cold and perhaps something else as well, she rubbed her feet against the sheets to warm them. She turned her head into her pillow, but sleep eluded her. Doubts had plagued her on the long voyage to Seattle—three seasick months with nothing else to do but think. She’d doubted her sanity, her common sense, her judgment.

His name had convinced her to come.

An Isaac for her Rebecca, as if God placed his approval on the match.

But perhaps God hadn’t been telling her that at all.

Maybe she’d made it up in her mind. Maybe she’d just wanted to believe it so bad. She’d wanted to leave.

A soft sigh escaped her lips.

It was a little too late for doubts now.

Yesterday, Isaac’s height had dismayed her. She smiled to herself, remembering her relief as she’d met his dark brown eyes for the first time. They were nice eyes. Warm eyes. The eyes of a good man—if you could tell by a man’s eyes alone. Isaac seemed like a good man anyway, and they’d have the next few days to get to know one another.

He was so different from Jack. Where he was dark, Jack was fair.

Jack was lean, blond, and handsome. For years, he’d taught her everything a proper young girl shouldn’t know: from riding bareback through the orchard to shooting a rifle. He’d showered her with attention. Her first and only kiss had been with Jack Duncan. She’d dreamed of having a family with him, a house full of children and laughter. How she’d loved him. She remembered the night she’d found out he was back from the war and pressed her face deeper into the pillow, mortified afresh.

When she’d heard the news, despite the cold, she’d hiked her skirts to her knees and run from Sullivan’s Grocers all the way to the Duncans’ family orchard. She banged on their door and pushed it open, so embarrassingly eager, not even waiting for so much as a hello. She’d seen Jack first. He was standing just inside the doorway, looking somehow different—older, more a man than a boy. She’d told herself that was why he hadn’t grabbed her up immediately and swung her around. He’d become a man, and a gentleman at that.

“Jack!” She launched herself into his arms, wanting to show him how much she’d missed him with the strength of her embrace.

“Becky, it’s good to see you,” he said, sounding oddly subdued.

He should have been as excited as she was.

Why wasn’t he?

Was he hurt? Wouldn’t someone have told her? She didn’t see any signs of injury. No scars, no bandaged anything.

“Jack?” Becky searched his face as he gently set her aside, wondering why he looked so much like a discomfited suitor.

“Jack?” A young woman with a soft drawl had claimed Jack’s sleeve. Her white dress had a hooped skirt that had filled the hall, and her shining black locks had been caught up with perfect white bows. She was the loveliest lady Becky had ever seen.

Becky had also never seen a dress quite like that before. It had made her feel somehow inferior. Unsophisticated. And confused, because nothing made sense. Who was she? What was she doing here?

A relative maybe. But Becky didn’t know of any relatives they had in the South. A distant cousin?

Why was she holding onto Jack’s sleeve as if she had the right to?

“Miss Rebecca Sullivan, may I present Mrs. Melody Duncan...my wife.”

Jack’s strained words slowly penetrated Becky’s fog. Her heart had been breaking, but she’d somehow forced her cold limbs to obey her command. She’d offered Jack her congratulations, given a welcoming smile to his lovely wife.

How her face had hurt.

She thought her cheeks might break.

She couldn’t get out of that house fast enough, but Jack’s mother had begged her to stay for dinner. It had been the longest night of Becky’s life.

And letting herself wallow in memories like that wasn’t going to help her sleep tonight.

Becky burrowed deeper into her pillow, trying to clear her mind. But her thoughts continued to spin.

Was Papa glad to have her gone?

She’d never been able to please him, no matter how hard she tried. Even her efforts to help him with the books got turned around on her. She never knew what to do whenever she found out he’d made a mistake. If she pointed it out, it only made him mad. If she left him to find it himself, he thought she’d done it. She’d seen the flicker of interest in his eyes when she’d brought up the notion of leaving with Mr. Preston. He’d wanted her to go, and she’d wanted to be gone more than anything. Thinking about Papa was only turning her inside out, so she pushed those thoughts aside as well and tried to sleep.

A half-dream finally claimed her: She was in the water, floundering in a roiling sea. Lightning flashed and lit up the night sky. A shadowy figure beckoned to her. The figure became Isaac, but as he reached his hand to rescue her, Jack called her name from another shore. She turned to him, but a woman dressed all in white was pulling him away. Becky tossed about throughout the night, her bedclothes wrapping around her like seaweed.

EIGHT

I
saac picked at the cords of his loose-fitting leather vest to avoid looking at his father, whose jaw was stuck out in that obstinate way Isaac found so annoying.

Backing toward the door of the cabin, Isaac bumped into the crate of hooks and chains his father kept just inside the door. He glared at it. How did Pop expect him to bring a woman to this old ramshackle hut?

“You know, if you don’t want her, there’s a slew of men around here who’d appreciate having a wife.”

Isaac realized the truth in his father’s words, but the thought of Rebecca going to another man made his brow buckle.

“No, I’ve committed to a date. I won’t go back on my word now—and I wouldn’t want to put the Pearsons out.” He glanced at his father.

“Put the Pearsons out? Right, Son.” Pop chuckled.

Isaac gave a frustrated tug at the knotted cords and ducked his head to avoid Pop’s too-observant eyes. He’d resigned himself to marrying the woman to please his father, but part of him wanted to see Pop wriggle a bit.

Problem was, he was the one doing the wriggling.

“Go on, boy. Go see the little gal. We can handle the work here—don’t you worry about that.” His father pushed him out the cabin door, tossing his coat out after him.

“All right.” Isaac sighed in defeat and headed to the lean-to to saddle his horse.

Rebecca
. He toyed with her name in his mind, imagining her reddish-gold hair, her delicate face, and huge green eyes. As he rode toward the Pearsons’ place, he kept thinking he was making the biggest mistake of his life.

He continued on his two-hour journey down the mountain into town, lost in his thoughts.

***

From the second story of the Pearsons’ house, Becky pressed her forehead against the window in her room, her gaze skimming the horizon. The peaks of the Olympic Mountains towered around like sentinels, protecting this place, protecting her. It was a fanciful thought perhaps—the stuff of fairy tales. When she’d finally left the ship and stood on land, she thought the sea would never bring her pleasure again, but now, as she looked down on the choppy waters of Puget Sound, the sight was simply beautiful. She sighed.

A spattering of wagons and carriages rumbled by on the deeply-rutted dirt road below. This was the most populated area of Seattle, but it was by no means a big city. She scanned the horizon where the mountains rose up. There was a lone figure on a horse—barely more than a dot. It had to be Isaac. She’d watched him disappear over that same rise yesterday. Gripping the curtains, she watched him now as he rode up to the front of the Pearsons’ house.