ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories) (48 page)

              “What’s the meaning of this, young man?” The doctor tried not to shout, focusing on his work. But the bloodied youth’s face caught his attention. “Oh oh. You catch a stray bullet there?”

              “Just a cut.” He said, but rapidly went on before either of them could say anything. “Jim and Garret are in terrible trouble. We got ambushed. Jim- he might die if you can’t help him!”

              “What do you expect me to do? I have a patient. Can’t go out there now.”

              “I’m just telling you what I know.” The boy fell into a chair, looking exhausted.

              “Aw hell.” Doc turned to Annie. “Annie, keep an eye on this… wait now, what are you doing?”

              She ran over to the doctor’s black bag and snatched it up. “I’m going to lend a hand.”

              “That’s too dangerous! You’ll get yourself killed!”

              “You can’t leave the blacksmith; we know he’ll certainly die without your attention. It may be too late for Jim, but I suppose I could try to stitch him up. I’ll be quick. Can you ride, Winslow?”

              “Yes ma’am!”

              “Then let’s go.” She rushed down the hall and outside to fetch the horse. She was glad she’d learned to ride as a young girl.

              Within a short time, they had ridden out into the steppes and wild grasslands. They raced along the prairie towards the looming, dry mountains where Winslow assured her he had left them.

              She found them, all right. Garret was leaning over this friend. His own arm was bleeding. Not too far away, they spied three more bodies.

              “It’s too late. We chased the others off, but it’s too late for poor Jim.” Garret bitterly declared. She dismounted and took a closer look, checking his heart and his breath. It was faint, but there was a pulse.

              “Let me see to him.” She ordered. She pulled out bandages from her bag and handed them over. “Wrap that arm of yours up until Doc can more properly treat you. I’ll do what I can for Jim.”

              She was testing the limits of her medical knowledge, but after a time she found the man hadn’t been seriously shot. He had taken a few bullets, one to a leg and another to his shoulder. But the real damage came from a blow to the back of his head, possibly from having fallen against a stone.

              After some time, she was able to revive him. He had no real memory of anything that had happened before the shootout.

              They fashioned a litter out of the men’s shirts and branches so Jim could be taken to the closest ranch and have a shot at recovering. When it was over and night had fallen, Doc finally arrived and took over for Annie.

              “You certainly saved this man’s life.” He declared. “Impressive. You did well today.”

              “Thank you, Doctor.” She was worn out, weary, but happy. As she left the room where Jim was recovering, Garret followed her out. They stepped outside the house where they were alone.

              “You
were
incredible.” He said, amazed. “I owe you much. Jim too.”

              “I was glad to do it.” She stated simply. Garret reached over and held her hands in his.

              “I’m lucky to know you, Annie McIver. You saved Jim’s life and, well, I think you’re saving mine as well.”

              “Glad to know you too, Garret McGrath.” She replied with a little smile. Before she could say more, he leaned down and kissed.

              The kiss grew in intensity and they were no longer holding hands, but embracing. Alone in the moonlight, they held each other and each, in their own heart and mind, admitted the other in.

              Several minutes passed. They parted lips, but still held each other close. “They’ll be back, you know.” Garret warned, low and sad. “They’re going to want revenge after today.”

              “I know.” She sighed. Then, a smile. “I may have an idea about that, though. Care to invite me to a dance, Mr. McGrath?”

#

              The event was, as all came to agree, the event of the year and for many a year as those who lived in Wide Bend would attest.

              On the surface, the idea of a celebration seemed ridiculous to a town that had suffered so much recently from the evil of the gang. But when a town meeting was held and Annie’s idea was discussed, it was quickly agreed that her idea was superb.

              Decorations went up. Musicians practiced, and the dance was planned. Delicious pies were baked, and families from even the most distant ranches put in an appearance at the town square.

              Before long, the hoedown was in full swing. Annie and Garret led the dancers who were glad for an excuse to dance and make merry. Letty sat along the sidelines, sampling a slice of pie and refusing to dance.

              “But why not, Letty?” The mayor asked. “The moon is full, there’s music in the air and romance, my dear, sweet romance!”

              “Pah.” She laughed. “Romance is for the young.”

              “Wasted on the young, more like.” Mayor McGrath protested. “Besides, I seem to remember you being quite the spritely dancer when you and I were younger than these jackrabbits.”

              She blushed and smiled. “You old flatterer.”

              “I’ll flatter you until you dance with me, Miss Letty!”

              “Well- only if it’ll get you to stop.”

              Garret and Annie smiled as they saw the older couple step lightly amid the dancers and did a stately dance to the fiddles playing. “They are quite the lovely, sweet couple.” Annie whispered to her beau. “I feel there’s a story there, am I wrong to suggest?”

              “A story, yes, a happy one no. But perhaps they are remembering that happier time.” Garret suggested. Then, even quieter he spoke gently in her ear. “You’re sure about this?”

              “Absolutely.”

              A great shout rose from edge of the dance and soon, the pounding of men on horses rushing up and to the middle of their festivities. Tables were overturned and the men on horseback fired into the air.

              “Bring me Garret McGrath and Jim Wood and I’ll not kill every man, woman, and child here.” A wild, bearded man roared as they threatened the crowd of dancers. “Me and the boys want to see them dance all right. From the end of a rope!”

              The nine men snickered and jeered, firing off a few more rounds in hopes of terrifying the crowd. However, they soon quieted as they realized that no one was moving or saying a word.

              “What’s this? Turn them out now, or I’ll put a torch to your damn town!”

              “I don’t think so, Butch.” Garret quietly announced. As he spoke those words, every man, woman, and child pulled a gun or rifle from a nearby hiding place. Annie stood beside him with a gun at the ready. Casually, almost as a secondary thought, Garret drew his own six-shooter. “Want to surrender and come peacefully? Or want to see if we’re serious?”

Butch looked around dazedly. “This here ain’t… you can’t… hellfire!” He started to aim his own gun towards Garret, but in an instant flinched and fell forward and off the horse. From a distance, Garret and Annie could see their friend Jim in a second-story window. His head was bandaged, but otherwise he seemed in good spirits. He gave a friendly wave.

              The surviving gunmen quickly threw down their guns and became prisoners. The dancers cheered, gathered up their weapons, and happily led them to the prison.

              “Don’t do nothing stupid, folks!” Garret shouted, and several people assured him they wouldn’t. “We can get them out to the judge now, and see about getting law and order back in Wide Bend! Promise me you’ll treat them right, you hear? We ain’t wild like they are.”

              The fiddlers struck up a lively tune and Garret gave a great yell of joy at their success. Annie joined him, as did much of the town. Before she knew what was happening, Garret was kissing her again in front of the whole town. She thought she probably should be mortified- she didn’t care. She kissed him right back, throwing her arms around him and, for the first time since she’d stepped off the train into Wide Bend, felt truly joyous.

              The tall man let go of her, bent down on one knee, and took both her hands in his. “Annie McIver. You’re the bravest, kindest, and most noble of all creatures to ever walk this earth. Will you honor me and be my wife?”

              There was no hesitation at all when she clasped her hands to her face, giving a little jump of excitement and happiness. “Absolutely, Garret McGrath.”

              “Yes.”

THE END

Unscripted Desires

              Spring had just melded into the first intoxicating drink of balmy summer when the letter arrived. 

             
Dear Ms. Aldryn,
(it read)

             
After reviewing your application, King Royal Cruises is proud to offer you a spot amongst our cast of performers for this summer season!  We hope you are excited as we are about this opportunity—we feature star-quality entertainment for our guests nightly, and our rotating cast includes Broadway stars, jugglers, musicians, etc.—anything you can name, King Royal Cruises offers! 

              We hope you’ll enjoy your time with us.  Take advantage of your days off by visiting our exotic destinations—you’ll truly feel like you’re on a working vacation! 

              Listed below this was the scheduled arrival time at the docks in exactly two weeks, along with instructions on how to obtain an identity badge.  Identity badge.  It wasn’t until she read that particular part of the letter that it finally hit Mackie that the thing she had been both dreaming about and dreading for the past month and a half had finally come into fruition. 

              The urge to push past her strongly disciplined boundaries had suddenly assailed her right after the American Ballet Company had accepted her to join their highly esteemed and coveted ranks.  For the past two-odd decades of her life, ballet had taken center stage, if she could excuse herself that particular pun.  Being a ballerina might have been every little girl’s dream, but few could imagine the physical exertion, iron will, and extreme degree of correctness it took to achieve that goal. 

              And Mackenzie was nothing if not disciplined.

              After receiving the news of her secured position at the company, however, there was one small problem.  Dance season began in late August, and until then, Mackie had about five months of time to fill.  After dawdling at one odd job or another for a couple of months, Mackie saw an online ad calling for new acts on King Royal Cruiselines. And without asking herself too much why she did it, she applied.

              Now, holding their response in her hands, it occurred to her that maybe the reason she hadn’t wanted to think about why she had applied was because she did not want to admit the reasons out loud.  And the reason was, she thought, years of diets, bruised feet, and nights locked up in the dance studio practicing flashing through her mind, was that she wanted one final break before dedicating the rest of her dancing years to the grueling life of ballet.

              So what was the big deal?

              The ballet company had several “strong recommendations” when it came to their new employees filling the months before they joined their ranks.  Get plenty of rest, practice ballet, and—behave “professionally.”  Which meant that jobs doing dancing at small-stage shows and other places got you a bit of a reputation, which the company frowned upon.  Working as a dancer on a cruise ship, locked away with cast and crew who saw nobody but each other for half-year sequences at a time might just be one of those places.  Looking back on her all-too-correct life, Mackenzie wondered if it would truly be such a terrible thing if she entered the company with a little edge to her name.  After all, recommendations were recommendations, not rules set in stone.  As if ballet could afford itself one more rule, she thought sarcastically.

              Fingering the letter from King Royal, Mackie felt a small fission of excitement seep through her body.  All of a sudden, it was all she could do to keep from jumping up and down on the wood of her family home’s front porch.  There were so many things to plan!  What to wear, which leotards to pack, what exactly the guys in the fantasies she would have until the cruise itself would look like.  They’d all wear captain’s uniforms, of course.  Or was that silly?  Maybe people didn’t wear those anymore.  And how would people react to her?  Had there ever even been a ballerina on a cruise ship?  It sounded almost farcical in her head, but the fact was was that if there hadn’t been, there was one now.  Image and reputation be damned, she owed herself this bit of fun.  It was the perfect opportunity, despite how ludicrous it might sound—this way she could practice ballet, rest, and even indulge her naughty a little bit. 

              Mackenzie Aldryn, cruise ship performer. 
Yes
, she thought, rising gracefully to her feet and pushing open the white screen door with her free hand -unsc
that sounds just right.

*              *              *

              “The backstage entrance is located on another floor altogether to give performers privacy and time to prepare, of course,” Rick, the cruise director, informed her as they stood in front of the King Majesty’s grand showroom stage exactly two weeks later.  “How does that sound?”

              To Mackie, it all sounded extravagantly wonderful.  From the moment she had arrived at the docks and seen the ship that would be her home for the next few months, she had had to pinch herself about every three minutes to convince herself this was actually happening.  Under a bright and cloudless sky, the King Majesty rose to reach the almost visible rays of the sun, the kind that Mackie used to draw as a child.  The ship was so large that it was difficult to imagine it sailing through the water without sinking to the very bottom, and the only indication of movement at all were the waves breaking against its hull as it stood anchored to seven posts at the dock.

              Shielding her face against the sunlight with a broad-brimmed hat, Mackie had met Rick on the main deck.  He had an hour to familiarize her with her schedule and the ship itself, and warned her it could be a bit overwhelming for a newcomer.  “But don’t worry,” he told her, kindly grabbing one of her suitcases and hoisting it onto a little trolley.  “We take care of our own.  I’ve no doubt you’ll have a great time—everyone does!”

              She would have chuckled at his incredibly cheery disposition if she hadn’t been so bowled over by the interior design of the cruise ship itself.  It was as if someone had taken the very best of fancy hotels around the world, mixed it together and thrown it out onto the ocean.  Gilded gold elevator doors, great crystal chandeliers intermingling with finely potted plants in foyers, dozens of tiny lounges, each complete with its own miniscule stage, where, as Rick informed her, a different musician would play each night.

              They were all on a rotating schedule.  Few people were ever on a cruise ship for more than two weeks, Rick told her, and so each performer only needed a few alternating acts in their repertoire for the time they were on the ship.  She would be performing four nights a week, twice on the main stage, interspersed with a few shorter numbers on some of the smaller stages.  It sounded like a dream, although Mackenzie knew it would be grueling—there was an early dinner crowd, and a late one, which totaled to two shows a night for every night she was performing.  Luckily, she had her days completely free, and she intended to take full advantage of that.  Nothing was going to hold her back from enjoying herself.

              Not even her cabin, it seemed.  She had been expecting something small and cramped, prepared for the worst, but her cozy room featured a darling round window, two gray silk curtains partitioning off her room into a living and sleeping area.  Best of all was the array of floor-to-ceiling mirrors around the vanity.  For her purposes, it was perfect.  She was lost in admiring it when she suddenly became acutely aware of Rick standing politely at her side, waiting for her to come to so he could leave.

              She blushed, grabbed her bags and thanked him, pushing all her things into the room.  Still, he didn’t leave; instead, he walked into the room with her, opened her window, turned around and smiled at her.  “You know, we’ve never had a ballerina act here before,” he said, walking back to the door.  “I think that this will be an educational experience for us all.”  And with that, he left the room and shut the door.

              Mackie caught sight of herself in one of the mirrors.  She turned her body this way and that, catching the long, lean lines of her form, honed by years of intense dance practice, and then pouted at herself in the mirror.  Her body was all wrong for ballet, her first teacher told her.  She inherited her broad thighs directly from her mother’s side of the family, a line of strong, beautiful South African women.  She did not have the right form, the teacher had said, but Mackie had proved him wrong.

              She turned from the mirror to take in the rest of the room. 
Time to change and explore
, she thought, and lost herself in a flurry of unpacking.

              Thirty minutes later, she was grasping the silver lean bar and observing the gargantuan crystal chandelier in the main entrance again.  The air sparkled with an almost visible representation of serenity.  The cool glass separating her from the open air of the entrance pressed against her dark skin, infusing her with a sense of calm and rightness.  From her left, she could hear the vague clank of cutlery as the kitchen staff prepared for the early dinner crowd.  Below her, people murmured as they sank their soft bodies into equally soft couches and absorbed the music tinkling around them. 

              There was something familiar about that tune.  Mackie leaned forward, just a bit over the railing, feeling the front of her dress tug a little.  Yes, there it was, the well-known strains of one of her favorite Sinatra songs. 

             
These vagabond shoes

              Are longing to stray…

              She couldn’t tell exactly where the music was coming from, but it filled her with a sense of peace.  She was feeling strangely alienated in this world of floral prints and cargo shorts, on both men and women alike, uniform blobs of humanity that were about as diverse as the threads in the fabric of Mackenzie’s sea-green silk dress.  So far, she was the only black woman on the entire cruise, as far as she could tell, and she was fairly certain she was getting some stares, the nature of which she could not decipher. 

              The feeling of being watched intensified as Mackie headed down the grand staircase, trailing the handrail with her fingertips.  She stepped into one of the many tiny alcoves of the cruise to discover a nearly deserted bar, dark and lovely, oak-paneled with a real, honest-to-goodness white shirt wearing bartender toweling off glasses.

              “A drink?” he tossed her way, casually, but to Mackie, it was the least casual thing in the world.  As a dancer, she had a strict diet and regimen to follow, and alcohol was not included in any of that.  Still, she wanted the full experience of doing just exactly whatever the hell she wanted, and so she slid one of her long legs onto the seat and ordered her first ever dirty martini.  The glass presented to her was as delicate as Mackie herself, the only thing lending credence to its contents was the two olives getting drunk in it.

              Sandwiching her clutch between her elbow and body and holding her drink, Mackie wandered around the floor, passing by hordes of Texans, all seemingly nervous at the prospect of not having to be at work.  Who knew vacation made you nervous?  Mackie giggled at the thought, warm with the alcohol from her drink.  She passed by a series of huge open windows and glanced out to where the sun had already set over the water.  Just then, a huge BOOM sounded, and Mackie knew that the ship had left its port. 

              She watched the waves lap languorously over each other, and watching the smooth satin of the water lick itself filled her with a funny feeling—or was that the alcohol?—as if she was the one who was submerged in it instead of the bow of the ship, and she was the one being tongued by a million riotous waves.

             
Greetings, passengers!
A voice came over the sound system. 
This is your captain speaking.  We have set sail and are traveling at twenty-five knots per hour.  Weather conditions look favorable, and the temperature is eighty-five degrees.  Please enjoy the various activities we have on board and don’t miss our fantastic show tonight! Happy sailing and bon voyage! 

             
Mackie breathed in the cool, conditioned air around her, and sipped some more of her drink.  She had wandered into a narrow hallway that seemed rapidly to be filling with people—what was going on?  A turn around the end of the hall revealed that she had found the main entrance to the showroom, and the early dinner crowd had finished stuffing down the last of their steaks and baked potatoes.  It was five minutes to showtime, and Mackie wanted to make sure that she got a good seat.  Smiling slyly to herself, she snuck around the crowd and dipped inside, flashing her ID at the showroom manager.  She ignored the loud protests behind her and navigated the sloping floor carefully, making sure she didn’t spill her drink.  She found an unobtrusive seat off to the side of the front row, and slowly sucked her drink down to the olives, waiting for the show to begin.

              She was not disappointed.  The glitz and glamour of the opening act rivaled Broadway, indeed, and she knew she would feel proud in the coming months of being part of such a talented team.   After the musical acts were done, Ricky took his designated post as host of the evening at the mic.

              “Ladies and gentlemen, King Royal is very pleased to have the next gentleman as part of our act.  You’ve seen him on Letterman, you’ve seen him around the globe—he is the number one champion juggler in the world, Adaaaaaam Santiiiiino!”