Rose's Mail Order Husband - A Historical Mail Order Bride Story (Montana Brides) (3 page)

“You might not feel confused,” he told her, “but you certainly act confused. You act like you don’t know your head from your tail.”

“That’s what Violet and Iris keep telling me,” Rose admitted. “If you think so, then maybe there’s some truth to it.”

“Violet and Iris are acting the same way,” he added. “They’ve got nothing to complain about with you. All three of you are doing it. If
they’re accusing you of it, it only means they don’t recognize it in themselves. I wonder the other guys haven’t pointed it out to them.”

“Iris certainly has,” Rose acknowledged. “Last night, she came into my room and told me she wasn’t going to marry Mick. She said he
wasn’t the man she thought he was, and she said I should reconsider marrying you. Now, this morning, it’s all back on. She doesn’t know her head from her tail, either.”

“I wonder what that was all about,” Jake remarked.

“I didn’t ask,” she replied, “and I don’t want to know. I don’t want to talk to them at all.”

“Oh?” He narrowed his eyes.
“Why not? Why don’t you want to talk to your own sisters? And on your wedding day, too!”

“You sound like them,” she grumbled. “I don’t want to talk to anyone.
You’re the only one who knows what’s going on with me anymore, and I wasn’t supposed to see you today before the wedding, you know. We’re all supposed to be in seclusion.”

“I am in seclusion,” Jake replied. “That’s why I came up here, to be alone. And here you are.”

“I came up here for the same reason,” she told him.

“But you’re supposed to be getting your dress on and your hair done,” Jake reminded her. “The minister will be here soon.”

“What about you?” she shot back. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting cleaned up and dressed? I
don’t know what men are supposed to do to get ready for their wedding, but you must be supposed to do something. Maybe the other men should pour tobacco juice on your head or something.”

Jake chuckled. “Chuck and Mick are over there in the Fort House polishing every piece of clothing they have.
And brushing their suits and all that, too.”

“And you aren’t?” she asked.

“I already did it once,” Jake told her. “I don’t need to do it five or six times. I just have to get dressed, comb my hair, and shine my shoes. Then I’ll walk down to the Main House and I’ll be ready.”

“And I’ll be there waiting for you,” Rose concluded.

Jake smiled. “I should hope so.”

“Don’t you believe I’ll be there?” Rose asked. “Do you doubt me that much?”

“I just know you’re acting twitchy, just like the others,” Jake told her. “I’m not saying you won’t be there. I just won’t believe any of this until it actually happens to me. The whole thing seems too surreal. It seems to be happening to someone else, not me.”

“I know what you mean,” she agreed. “I feel the same way.”

He examined her. “You do? I thought you were taking the whole thing in your stride. I thought you were handling it pretty well.”

“Someone is,”
Rose told him. “I don’t know if it’s me, but someone is. Someone that I don’t know or recognize. Someone that I can’t control. Someone who wants something different from what I want. I don’t know who’s handling it all, but somebody is.”

Jake raised his eyebrows. “Is it that bad? I didn’t think you were that far gone.”

Rose looked out the window at the glancing leaves of the trees. The sun glinted off the edges of the leaves, sparkling and dancing. She narrowed her eyes, and the scene swam into a watery haze. She could fade into a sleepy dream in that hazy half-conscious state.

“I’ll just be glad when the wedding is over,” Rose told him. “I’ll be glad when we can come home together and get back to ordinary living. The suspense is killing me.”

Jake sauntered around the room, looking at curios on the shelves and pictures on the walls. “I don’t know how you can come up here the way you do. I’m lucky I didn’t know Cornell Pollard at all. If I did, this place would give me the creeps.”

“I don’t feel him here at all,” Rose replied.

“Don’t you?” Jake asked. “He’s everywhere you turn up here.”

“I don’t see him,” Rose told him. “Wherever I look, I see our life together, our future, our marriage,
our children. I see myself making a home here, the home I never had in the Main House. I see myself giving my children a bath, making meals, mending clothes. I see myself doing all the things Violet does down in the Main House. I see myself living. That’s what it is. I’ve never lived before. But I will live here. I’ll live for the first time in my life.”

“I suppose that’s a good thing,” Jake remarked.

“I can’t wait,” she replied.

Jake walked over to the kitchen and looked
out the window at a neighboring hill with a cluster of cypress trees on its peak. “And there’s his grave right over there. We’ll always be able to look out and see it, and he’ll be able to watch over us, too.”

“He won’t watch over us,” Rose retorted. “He’s dead.”

“So what do you propose to do with all his personal possessions?” Jake asked. “Are you just going to leave the place furnished the way it is now, and work around his things?”

“Of course not,” she shot back.

“What are you going to do with them?” he asked again.

“Get rid of them, of course,” she snapped. “I don’t want his things in my house. If the others want any of it, they can have it. Otherwise, we’ll just dump the whole kit and caboodle.”

“You can’t be serious!” Jake exclaimed. “There’s some very valuable stuff here.”

Rose looked around. “If there is, we’ll keep it. I
don’t have any reason to get rid of or keep anything in particular. I don’t feel anything for his things one way or the other.”

Jake shook his head. “No wonder your sisters think you’re acting strangely. At least Violet is crying for Cornell every
once in a while. It isn’t natural for you to feel nothing at all for him. He was your uncle and your guardian for most of your life, after all.”

“He’s a lump of rotten flesh now,” she spat. “Let him rot over there on the hill. I
don’t care, and I don’t see him watching over me when I look out the kitchen window. He’s gone, and good riddance.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Jake countered. “You don’t have that Sheriff breathing down your neck.”

“Is he breathing down your neck?” Rose asked. “I didn’t know he questioned you after that meeting in the parlor, unless there’s something you haven’t told me.”

“He doesn’t have to question me,” Jake replied. “He’s hunting around the place. Maybe
he’s here right now. I don’t know, but it’s only a matter of time before he finds out the truth about Cornell’s death.”

“I don’t care.” Rose stared out the window at the leaves.

“Maybe you don’t, but I do,” Jake told her.

“Why should you care more than I do?” she shot back. “You don’t have anything to worry about from that Sheriff.”

“You don’t think so,” he replied, “but I do. You don’t see it, but I do. I’ve seen it before. The Sheriff will follow his nose, and it will lead him to me.”

“Don’t worry,” Rose insisted. “We’ll be married in a few hours, and nothing can come between us after that.”

Jake sidled over to the couch and sat down. “I’m glad you still want to marry me.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Rose asked.

“After everything that’s happened,” Jake replied, “you might reconsider. You might decide it was all too much. You might think your sisters are right, that
I’m not the man you thought I was. Who knows? You could come up with any excuse in the book.”

“You
are
the man I thought you were,” Rose told him. “Aren’t we sitting here together, in our future home, making plans for the future? How could that be happening if you weren’t the man I thought you were?”

“I just thought you might think I was trouble,” Jake explained. “I don’t know. I wondered if you would want to go through with it, after Cornell died and the Sheriff started in on us.”

“I want to go through with it,” Rose told him. “I want to go the whole hog. I want the cow, the milk, and the whole dairy farm. You should know that by now. We’ve been through enough together already. We should stick it out to the end.”

“I just hope we don’t wind up in over our heads,” he replied.

“Why would we?” she asked.

“You never know
what’s gonna happen,” Jake told her. “Things could go squirrely when you least expect it.”

“They won’t,” she insisted. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“You?” he repeated. “You’ll make sure of it? Very reassuring. Big help, that is.”

“Come on,” she shot back. “Stop raining on my parade.
I’m getting married, and you’re going to make me upset if you keep talking like that. Forget about the Sheriff. He can’t touch us.”

Jake let his hand drop onto hers where it rested on the seat of the couch. “If I stop thinking about the Sheriff, I start thinking about….other things. Things I really shouldn’t think about.”

“You always were a bad sort,” Rose returned. “You can’t keep your mind on the job.”

Jake slid over next to her. His hand closed around her fingers, and he picked up her hand in both of his. “You know what?
We’re coming home to this house after the wedding. Where are we going to sleep—in his bed?”

“I changed the sheets and blankets,” she assured him.

“When did you do that?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” she told him. “I came up when you were out on the range with Chuck and Mick. I found some clean sheets and blankets in that trunk by the bed, and I changed everything. I took the old ones down to Rita.”

“Aren’t you at all worried about your sisters finding out?” Jake asked. “They get upset if we even glance in the direction of the Bird House.”

“I didn’t tell Rita where the sheets came from,” Rose told him, “but I think she knew anyway.
She’s a lot sharper than she lets on. She’ll find a way to cover for us when Violet comes poking around.”

“You’ve got the whole thing worked out, haven’t you?” he asked.

“I told you,” Rose exclaimed, “I want this. I want to be married to you, and I want to come home to this house after the wedding, and I want us to be comfortable here. I want to get my life started before another sun sets on this place. I think we’ve earned it.”

He pulled on her arm and drew her towards him. “We have earned it.”  He kissed the back of her hand.

Rose closed her eyes and melted into the velvety touch of his lips on her skin. She could bathe all her wounds and hurts with that soothing balm. Did he even know how precious his kiss was to her? Did he suspect? He didn’t welcome declarations of undying love, but he seemed to know, almost better than she knew herself, what lurked in her heart. When he looked at her, he saw the truth written in her soul.

With her eyes still closed, she felt the soft whiskers of his moustache brushing the back of her hand. The breath from his nostrils tickled the tiny hairs on her fingers. A shudder ran up her spine.

With an immense effort, she tore her eyes open, only to find them locked in Jake’s penetrating stare. His eyes laughed and drilled into her core all at the same time. Rose struggled to breathe.

He traced the outline of her cheek and jaw with his fingertips, and a warm, syrupy sensation rippled down in the bottom of her stomach. She held herself perfectly still, bearing the throbbing of her pulse through her flesh. If she moved at all, he might mistake her movement for resistance.

He kissed the back of her hand again, and his hands rubbed up around her wrist and further along toward her elbow. Then his arm slid around her back, and she sucked in her breath as he leaned her back against the couch.

He gazed down into her eyes, and his face loomed closer. Her lips quivered in anticipation, but he
didn’t drop down to her. He hung there, and then his head fell onto her breast.

Her body lay in his embrace, panting, yearning, reaching for more, but he
didn’t go any further. He rested his cheek against the bodice of her dress, and her heartbeat made the hair on the back of his neck dance with each pulsation.

She waited until she knew he
wouldn’t move any closer. Then she covered that slender neck with her hand and massaged it. The curls at the ends of his hair rolled up under her fingers. She touched the delicate hairs going down each side of his spine, and examined the pores of his skin.

Her heart slowed down, and the burning quicksilver in her guts cooled, but still her body clung to him for its very life.

“Your sisters would have me strung up if they saw us like this,” Jake murmured into her chest.

“Don’t you believe it,” Rose replied. “What do you think Mick and Iris were doing in the barn when Cornell was shot?”

“And don’t forget Chuck and Violet,” Jake reminded her. “They said they were talking in the Fort House just before it happened.”

“They were probably doing a lot more than we are now,” Rose continued. “Anyway, we’re as good as married. Then no one will have anything to say about anything anybody else does.”