Romance: Mail Order Bride "The Ideal Bride" Clean Christian Western Historical Romance (Western Mail Order Bride Short Shorties Series) (161 page)

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Chapter 1

“Charles!  Charles, what have you got there?  You aren’t getting up to any trouble now, are you?  I know you couldn’t be doing a thing like that, not after all we’ve talked about.  Do you remember what we’ve talked about?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And what was it, Charles?”

“What do you mean, ma’am?”

Caroline McCormack laughed, a musical little sound that always made anyone within earshot laugh along with her, or at the very least smile.  She stood from the bench where she had been reading while watching the children, straightened her thick woolen skirts, and walked quickly towards Charles.  Little Charlie Wells was the smallest boy in his class and somehow still the one with the most fire inside of him.  She knew that many of his other teachers had little patience for him or for his antics, but Caroline didn’t feel that way about him at all.  Quite the contrary, truth be told.  She had a soft spot in her heart for the little children the others saw as troublemakers.  The idea that there were any children anywhere that people could just give up on or cast off as being somehow lesser than was simply awful. 

As far as she was concerned, she had never met a child she didn’t like.  It was why she had been so drawn to teaching.  It hadn’t been that she needed the money.  She didn’t really.  Her family was wealthy and well established. They had come to New York from Ireland and were one of the families that had really and truly succeeded.  She had grown up in a large, sprawling brownstone with deep, rich wood and wrought iron as far as the eye could see.  She had two younger sisters by the names of Adeline and Bethany whom she had always been devoted to, one four years older and one six.  From the moment of Adeline’s birth, Caroline had known that she wanted to be a mother.  She spent as much time as her mother would allow tending to first one and then two sisters, pretending that instead of siblings they were her very own babies.  It was by far her favorite game to play and any time she was forced out of the fantasy, to attend to her schooling for instance, she was singularly devastated.  As she grew older, her fondness for children grew as well, and although her education had only ever been intended to make her well-rounded and therefore more desirable, she decided long before she ever said it out loud that she would be putting said education to a good use.  She was going to teach.  It was an idea she felt overwhelmingly passionate about, held close to her heart and pulled out to examine late at night when she was meant to be asleep.  She couldn’t wait to have children of her own, and once they came she would almost certainly have to leave her job in order to tend to them (something she intended to do herself and would never leave to a governess), but she would miss her children from the school.  She loved them, each and every one of them in their own special way.  She believed it was an essential part of what helped her to reach them, to teach even the students that other teachers had deemed unteachable.  She truly cared for them and they knew it.  Like rambunctious little Charles here, for example, standing in front of her with red cheeks and a lip poked out for good measure.  She knelt before him, not caring a lick if it got her skirts dirty, and looked up at him with kind, patient eyes. 

“Charles, you know I’m not angry, right?”

“I think so, ma’am.”

“And what have we talked about?”

“I must think before I act,” he recited with the confidence of a boy who had received the same lecture many times over. “And if I get myself into trouble I mustn't try to hide it.  It only makes my trouble deeper.”

“Yes, that’s exactly right, Charles.  So would you like to tell me what you’ve got in your hand?  The one you’ve got clutched so tightly behind your back?”

It was still very clear that he did
not
want to, that he was very seriously considering not showing her a thing, but then his eyes dropped down to his feet and he opened his chubby hand for her to see what it had secreted away.

“Ah, I see.  The clock.  Is that right?  Do you have a piece of the clock there in your hand?”

“Might be.”

“Might be?”

“Might be so.”

“Charles?”

His little face, the one he had been trying so desperately to keep stoic, crumpled into a million pieces and he threw his sweet arms around her neck.  The contraband bit of clock fell to the ground, forgotten, and she used her free hand to scoop it up out of the dirt and slip it into her skirt pocket.  She could mend it easily later.  Either that or just purchase the classroom a new clock.  It was no great task.

“I didn’t mean it, ma’am,” he blubbered, his wet tears saturating the crisp collar of her dress shirt. “I didn’t mean to break it all to pieces!”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“I just wanted to see what would happen, is all.  I wanted to see what was inside of it to make it work the way it did.  But I ruined it instead and now it will never work again.  It’s too broken and I’ll be in too much trouble now.  I don’t want to be in trouble, not again.”

He continued to sob as if his heart would break and Caroline stroked his hair briefly, making soothing clucking sounds.  She wouldn’t tell him not to cry.  She never told a child that.  She was of the belief that every person needed to be allowed a good cry, and that included children.  Once he had calmed himself down and the cries had dwindled to a series of hiccups, she stood and held him out at arm's length, looking at him with a little smile.

“There now, do you feel better?”

“Mostly I do.  Am I in trouble?”

“No, Charles, no trouble for you today.  But will you do something for me?”

“Anything!”

“Next time you want to know how something’s insides work, tell me.  That way we can explore it together.  It’ll be our own little adventure.”

The boy nodded happily and then ran off to meet his playmates, as if he had never had a care in the world.  That was the thing about children.  They were so wonderfully resilient.  Not like grownups at all.

*

“Jeremiah?  Jeremiah, are you here?”

Finally home from another long but always fulfilling day at the school, Caroline stopped to give herself a once-over in the massive hallway mirror.  She was looking a little more frazzled than she would have liked, but it would have to do.  Besides, Jeremiah would understand.  Her love for her work and the children in the school was something he had always said he admired about her.  A few stray hairs weren’t going to bother him any.  Still, she always liked to look her best for him.  That was just something you did for the person you were intended to, wasn’t it?  It was a pity she wasn’t going to have time to freshen up before she greeted him in a proper fashion, but she had received word at the school that he would be waiting for her in the parlor when she returned home and so what little she could do in these quick moments before going in to greet him would have to do.  Her green eyes were bright and lively, something she always had working in her favor, and her red curls (a clear reminder of her Irish heritage) were piled up on top of her head.  Those could use a little help, but there was only so much she could do with her small hands and the bobby pins in her hair.  Rearranging only got her so far, and after a few fruitless moments of rearranging she decided it was as good as it was ever going to be.  She pinched the skin on her cheekbones lightly, just to give herself a little bit of extra color, smoothed her skirts down, and smiled.  She walked into the parlor that way, her pretty smile practically shining like an extra light in the evening dimness.

“Jeremiah!  Here you are.  I was calling for you, but I suppose you didn’t hear me.  You know I’m never loud enough.”

She hurried towards her betrothed feeling giddy and completely content, ready for the somewhat scandalous kiss she usually received on one hot cheek.  But he did not bestow it.  That was new, and most decidedly unsettling.  He always greeted her in the exact same way.  It was part of their ritual and it was a great comfort to her, an indicator of the life the two of them were on the verge of embarking on.  But tonight, instead of leaning in and taking her hands while he gave her that sweet little kiss, he took her hands but held her out at arm's length.  The skin of his hands was cold, dry, and the look on his face was pained and serious.  This was not their standard greeting at all and it made her heart seize up and her stomach jump into her throat.  She was strong, the two of them were strong together, and she was confident that they could weather any storm.  Still, nobody wanted bad news.  She bit her lip and straightened her spine, trying to prepare herself for anything.

“Caroline, you're here.”

“Yes, I’m here.  This is my home.”

“So it is.”

They stood in strange silence, Caroline hoping that her fiancé would unburden himself and tell her what it was that was troubling him and all the while him looking everywhere but at her.  She concentrated as hard as she could, half expecting that she could make him look at her, but it was no use.  Finally, she could stand it no more.

“Jeremiah, please.”

“Yes?”

“Please, whatever it is, whatever’s the matter, just tell me.  The wondering and not knowing makes things feel so much worse.”

“Yes.  Yes, I suppose it does.  It’s just-- have you ever had a thing you needed to say that you just couldn’t find the words for?”

“I don’t know.  Perhaps.  Honestly I don’t think I have.”

Caroline was baffled.  She really couldn’t relate with what he was saying.  She had always been a good natured girl, easy to get along with and unbelievably slow to anger, but also a straightforward girl.  She hadn’t ever had anything she felt the need to hide, and if she thought a thing, she said it.  Maybe that was part of her Irish heritage as well, the way her father liked to tell her it was.  True or not, it was the way she was and she could not fathom what Jeremiah was trying to get at now.

“How wonderful it must be to live in that world.  You truly are too good for me, you know that, don’t you?  I want you to remember that.  You need to remember that, please.”

“Why would I want to remember a thing like that?  Why would I even want to think a thing like that?  It isn’t true.”

“But it is!  It is, Caroline, and keeping that fact in your head and in your heart will help with what’s to come.”

Her heart was thump, thump, thumping inside of her ribcage.  She did not know this man.  She knew Jeremiah, of course, but the man who was looking at her out of these eyes she didn’t know at all.  He looked like a caged animal but he also looked cold, so much colder than she had ever seen him look before.  He was beating around the bush about something and although she knew with one hundred percent certainty that she would not like what he had to say when it came out, she wanted no more of this double talk.  He was making her miserable with the delay.

“And what is it that I’m to face?  What’s to come, Jeremiah?”

“The wedding,” he said through gritted teeth as he ran his hand compulsively, angrily through his hair. “I can’t.  I can’t go through with it.  I’m calling it off.”

Chapter 2

“Sister, please, tell me what’s happened.  It can’t be as bad as all of this.  Can’t you talk to me?  Can’t you tell me anything at all?”

But she couldn’t.  Try as she might to pick herself up off the bed, to shrug off the monumental blow she had just been served, and consider the blessings she still had in her life, Caroline could not stop sobbing.  She had been doing so, her head heavy on an arm that was almost numb from the constant pressure, for longer than she could have said.  It was entirely unlike her to behave this way which was surely where some of the panic in her sister Adeline’s voice stemmed from.  Caroline had soothed many a tantrum thrown by one or both of her sisters, but the occasion in which the action required reciprocation was almost unheard of.  In fact, later in the evening, when Caroline had slipped into a fitful sleep and Adeline and Bethany spoke in worried, hushed tones of all that had transpired, they would both state with absolute certainty that they had never seen her so distraught.  It frightened them, made them feel ineffectual in a way no person ever wanted to feel with a loved one.  The worst thing about it was that they could not understand it, not a bit of it.  Their sister had gone off merrily to her school just as she did every other day and had returned to a waiting Jeremiah.  That was all they knew for sure, aside from the fact that she had fled from the drawing room some time later with tears streaming down her face and, after reaching her large canopy bed, had not gotten herself back up again.  They knew nothing of what could be ailing her.

And how was she to tell them?  How was she to explain to these sisters she loved and had spent so many late nights counseling each other in the ways of their own delicate emotions what it was that had broken her in two?  Caroline had always been known for her sunny disposition and an optimism that was sometimes the subject of ridicule either openly or discretely by her peers.  She had always maintained that people had too much of a propensity for a kind of a wanton disillusionment in their lives and she had made a point of striving to do something different with her life.  It hadn’t mattered.  She had made her best effort and yet there she was, half asleep and jilted, still in the school things she had made such a point of making lovely before greeting her fiancé.  Or, to be more accurate, the man who had been her fiancé now.  He was not that now.  He was nothing to her now, despite all of the desperate cries her heart made to the contrary.

That first night had been the worst.  She had existed in a fitful kind of in between space, one where she would cry herself to sleep and in her dreams and forget about her loss, only to wake and remember and cry herself to sleep all over again.  It had been a night that felt like it would go on forever, this endless, vicious cycle that would only drive her mad in the end.  Waking had been a relief, a blessing, and when she had descended the fine staircase of her beloved home to meet her even more beloved family for breakfast, not one of them spoke a word about the sobs that had acted like a lullaby for the entire household all of the night before.  Nobody spoke about the dark circles beneath the usually sparkling eyes that left Caroline with a haunted look.  Nobody said a word then and they would remain silent in the days to come, Adeline’s plea for information the only brave attempt to understand her woes.

“I cannot continue this way” she said to herself softly while she watched the children she loved and looked after, playing their funny little school yard games.  Even that, even the job she had always loved more than anything, had lost some of its luster in the days and weeks after the event.  That was how she thought about it: as the event.  It was easier than filing it away in her mind as the jilting.  And it was that, the realization that Jeremiah’s unfathomable decision had robbed her of even the smallest portion of the joy she felt when doing her work that brought her to the realization that she had to act.  She was
not
a helpless woman with no means of achieving the things she wanted for herself.  True, she was just on the verge of being considered too old to be married and her situation felt very different indeed as a woman unattached than it had as a woman engaged, but in the end that did not matter.  It couldn’t matter.  Not if she still wanted to build for herself a life she loved, which she very much did.  So she began to plan, to piece together the beginning of a new life.  It was nothing like what she had envisioned for herself, not even close, but she was determined, and that was not something that was easy to do away with.  Curse of the Irish, that stubbornness.  It couldn’t be helped, and in this case, she was glad of it.  Resilience was nothing to be ashamed of, after all.  Once she had it all decided and the pieces very loosely set in place, Caroline sat Adeline down for a late night cup of tea and, once they were both very sure that their parents had retired for the evening, a little nightcap of sherry as well.  Caroline knew that spirits made Adeline nervous, that they clued her into the fact that things were not getting better in quite the way she had supposed, but everything was about to come to a head anyway.  As far as Caroline was concerned, they might as well have a little drink while they discussed the details.

“I want to thank you, Adeline,” Caroline said softly as she took her sister’s slightly trembling hands in her own. “You have been so dear to me in these past few weeks and I know it couldn’t have been easy for you.  For any of you.”

“Please don’t thank me.  I love you.  I think you know that.  I would do just about anything for you, and I hope you know that as well.”

Caroline could feel her eyes beginning to prick with God only knew how many unshed tears and she bit the inside of her cheek, her most trusted method for keeping her emotions in check.  Part of her wished that Bethany was with them as well, but she was still too young for this, still too young to hear the grisly details of how a dream could be realized and then abruptly taken away again.  Caroline wanted to spare her that knowledge for as long as she could, but she also needed to tell Adeline what exactly had taken place with Jeremiah.  That way she would understand why she had to go.

“Do you remember the last night when Jeremiah came to call?  When the butler let him in to wait in the parlor for me to return from the school?”

“Yes of course,” she said shyly. “That’s when everything changed.  That’s when the sadness began for you, underneath the sweetness.”

“Yes,” Caroline managed to choke out. “That’s the night.  I’m sure you’ve already deduced this and just been too kind to say so, but Jeremiah broke off our engagement that night.”

“I thought that might be it.  But why?  He seemed so taken with you!”

“Because for some people, being taken with you isn’t enough.  Some people need other things brought to the table, things I couldn’t offer.”

“I don’t understand.”

Money.  As ugly and vulgar as it sounded in her ears even without being spoken aloud, that was what it had boiled down to.  Jeremiah had come from a family that had at one time had an enormous amount of money but had, by the time the two of them met, been reduced to the wealth that came from a name only.  He had met a young woman who could help to restore that wealth in a way that Caroline and her family could never have hoped to and so he had left her.  Nothing romantic about it.  Just business.  But she would not tell Adeline that.  She didn’t want to say the words, to even think them.  She wanted only to focus on what path she had chosen for her future, and although she knew Adeline would find it difficult to understand, she also knew that this was the person who had always been her closest ally.

“You don’t need to.  Not now.  Let us just say that the two of us were not meant to be after all and leave it at that.”

“If you wish,” Adeline responded uncertainly, perhaps already suspecting the separation that her older sister was about to thrust upon her.

“I do.  I do wish, and I also wish to tell you of the correspondence I have since struck up.”

At this, Adeline sat up a bit straighter, looked just a bit more eager.  Every member of Caroline’s family had noticed this new communication between Caroline and some mystery person from somewhere outside of New York.  Nobody had made the move to ask her about it, however, because they were all afraid to upset the new and delicate balance that had been established once the crying had stopped.  But that didn’t mean that Adeline wasn’t eager to know what this new development was.  Caroline could see that she was practically chomping at the bit to be let in on the secret.

“So you’ve noticed, then,” Caroline laughed, feeling really and truly good for the first time in weeks. “And I suppose you’ve also noticed that the accompanying address is not from these parts.”

“Yes, I must admit that I’ve peeked at those letters a time or two.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Caroline reassured her blushing sister. “I would have done the exact same thing.  But I do have to tell you something, something I fear you might think makes me out of my head.”

“I trust you.  I think you’re the most level-headed person I know, although if you tell Father I said that I’ll swear up and down that you’re a liar.  Whatever you tell me I’ll know you’ve thought through, only please go on and tell me.  The longer you wait the crazier the ideas I make up on my own become.”

Caroline took a deep breath.  This plan she had concocted had, up to this point, only existed on her head and on paper.  But once she spoke it out loud, once she told her sister and watched the reaction on Adeline’s face, it would become real.  A thing being real could be a frightening thing, especially if that thing was utterly unlike anything you had known before.

“Caroline?  Are you sure you’re ok?”

“I am.  I’m ok.  But I’m going.  I’m going, Adeline, and I’m going to a place that isn’t anywhere close to here.”

“But where?  Where will you go?”

“Where do all adventurers go?  I’m going out West to discover my new life on the Ryan Ranch.”