The Bride Wore Spurs (The Inconvenient Bride Series, Book 1) (2 page)

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

—William Butler Yeats

Chapter 1

Ireland, 1878

Time for low tea, but instead of settling down like the others with a nice steaming cup and a bite of soda bread smeared with butter and jam; Kathleen Lacey O'Carroll was hiding in the broom closet doing what no proper young lady would even think of doing.

But then Lacey had never been particularly ladylike, and no one had ever accused her of being proper—and for a very good reason. Her place of residence was St. Josephine's Hospital for Women, sometimes referred to as County Tipperary's home for the insane. While Lacey wasn't exactly an inmate, she could hardly be considered as part of the staff, either. Although her status may have been in doubt, her situation was not; Lacey O'Carroll was every bit as cloistered at St. Josephine's as the nuns at Kylemoor Abbey. And had been since the age of seven.

Squinting hard at the paper she held in her hands, she cursed the shadowy and vague ribbon of light cast off by the small candle she'd pilfered. "Damn the bit and this miserly flame! Surely you can do a better job than this."

Trying a different angle, she raised the candle above her head. After most of the shadows had drifted away from the wrinkled parchment, she narrowed her gaze to better focus on the neat handwriting, then read the last portion of the letter which was addressed to her favorite nurse.

"... and do so look forward to meeting you this spring. Upon your arrival in New York, please wire ahead to let me know when to meet your train at the Laramie Depot. I will have the preacher standing by, and look forward to a long and happy life with you. Yours heart and soul, Caleb Weatherspoon."

Lacey's gaze fell below to the signature and hastily added postscript—both of which appeared to have been written in a scrawl which looked suspiciously unlike the rest of the cleanly-scripted letter.

"And by the by. If you got a yung frend better than sisteen but les than twenny-five who mite be wantn a hoss ranchur, bring her wit you. I got a nabur coud use hisself a wife."

A wife! Her sense of excitement growing as a plan took shape in her mind, Lacey searched out the beginning of the letter and started to read it again to be sure she hadn't misconstrued anything. As she reached the romantic salutation—My Dearest Miss Quinlin—she realized that this time through, the lighting seemed better, making the message quite a bit easier to decipher. She glanced up at the candle she still held overhead to find that the tiny flame had set fire to a bundle of cleaning rags hanging off the shelf above her hair. The light was brighter because she'd set the broom closet ablaze!

With a terrified cry, Lacey flung the candle and letter into the air, leapt to her feet, and burst out of the room, still screaming. In the next moment, everything went mercifully black, and she withdrew into herself, a place where her fears and the outside world couldn't reach her.

Later—hours or days, Lacey couldn't be sure—she struggled against the urge to remain buried within herself. Something on the outside was too important to indulge herself this way. Something that might have the power to change her life. What was it? she wondered.

When she remembered, Lacey surged through the darkness in her soul with a surprising burst of strength. Her eyes flew open to see four stark white walls. Then she caught sight of Nurse Katherine 'Kate' Quinlin who was pacing the white-tiled floor near the bed on which Lacey lay. A miracle of sorts, since by all rights, she should have been gazing upon stern Head Nurse Murphy. Blessed instead to find herself confined to a private room with her best and only true friend, Nurse Quinlin, Lacey breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow, dear Kate had managed to save her—once again—from what surely would have turned into a vicious birching, at the least.

Lacey lifted her thick coppery lashes and glanced up at her friend. "How long was I gone this time?" she asked guiltily.

Kate shook her blond head with frustration. "Just over an hour, but that were long enough! I was so sure ye could manage on yer own from here on out, but to find that ye've gone and set a fire is the work of the devil! What could ye have been thinking, lass, ye with the scars to warn ye away from all that burns?"

At the reference, Lacey automatically glanced down at her right hand: Staring at the web of scarring which made up the palm of that hand, she spoke in a soft, shaky voice. "It were an accident. I swear by the cross o' Christ that I ne'er meant to start a fire. I only thought to put a light on a small paper so I might better make out the words written there."

Kate stopped pacing. "Did ye now? And what manner of paper would ye be reading instead of taking yer tea?"

Trying to sound as if she'd had every right to Kate's possessions, Lacey casually said, "'Twas a letter posted to you from one Caleb Weatherspoon."

"
What?
" Kate hovered over Lacey, whispering angrily, "How did ye happen to come by such a letter, lassie?—and do be sure to save the blarney for them that don't know ye like I do."

Still feigning innocence, Lacey gave a casual shrug. "What difference does it make how I got my hands on it? The thing is that I found your letter, read it, and now I know that you're planning to mail yourself off to Wyoming as a bride for this Caleb Weatherspoon. And soon, too."

With a heavy sigh, Kate sank down on the only other piece of furniture, a spindle-backed chair pushed up close to the head of the bed. She suddenly looked old and weary, aged beyond her thirty-five years. "Aye, and I canna argue the truth of what ye says, lass. I was about getting around to having this talk with ye anyway. Now's as good a time as any, I expect, to tell ye that I'll be leaving here Saturday, this week."

"So soon?" Lacey abruptly sat up. "For the love of God, Nurse Quinlin, you've got to take me with you!"

"What's all this?" Harsh lines suddenly appeared at the corners of Kate's pale blue eyes and her lips grew taut and thin. "'Tisn't possible to take ye along."

"But of course 'tis possible! I read the postscript Of your letter myself—Caleb Weatherspoon said if there'd be a lass near my age, that you should bring her along as wife for a rancher friend of his."

"No! No!" Kate clapped her hands over her ears and rose to begin pacing again. "Ye canna ask this of me."

"But you've got to take me—don't you see? With you gone, there will be no one to care about what happens to poor Lacey O'Carroll. I'll surely die."

"
Raumach.
Ye've got your whole life ahead of ye—but yer right about the one thing. 'Tis time ye were free to go on yer own way. I was planning to speak to Nurse Murphy before I left about signing ye a clean bill of health, anyway."

"'Tisn't going to happen and you know it." Rarely did Lacey use sharp tones with any of the nurses, much less this one. But she used them now. "As long as there's a pound left of my money, I'll be stuck here as a woman of delicate constitution, and St. Josephine's will be all too happy to keep me."

"Bah! There canna be enough money left of your father's estate to matter now."

Since Lacey had no way of knowing her true financial, condition, she had to accept Kate's word. "Even if I'm near to broke, do you think Nurse Murphy will believe the fire in the broom closet was an accident?" Kate couldn't look at her, and that was all the answer Lacey needed. "Why, quick as a hare they'd be locking me up in the mad-room and throwing away the key. You're my only chance, Nurse Quinlin, and we both know it."

"Bah!" But a few more sighs and moments of rapid pacing later, Kate offered an alternate solution. "What if I manage to get ye out of here, then set ye up in my old rooms, introduce ye around to a few—"

"I'm better off left here. Or dead."

Kate whirled around and stared at her with surprise. "But 'tis freedom yer wanting, isn't it? That's what I'm offering!

"There's no freedom for me in Ireland. Where would I go? What would I do? The townsfolk assume I'm a madwoman since I've been at St. Josephine's near my entire life." And Lacey wasn't so sure they'd be wrong. "I have to leave the homeland if I'm ever to have the chance to try and be a regular woman—even to be a wife, God willing. I'm thinking maybe this Caleb Weatherspoon of yours might just know the perfect husband for me, a man who'd ne'er have to know of my past, or even guess at it."

"Oh, Lacey... I wonder. Even if I could take ye with me, and I'm not saying that I can, I dona see how ye can hide yer problems from a husband. What of yer spells, lass? How will ye explain them away?"

She hadn't thought of them, those occasional periods of silence brought on by stress, fear, or agitation when she simply withdrew from the world around her. Spells, they called them, which lasted anywhere from a few hours to a few days; when she couldn't speak, hear, or see: They'd started the night of the fire at the family castle, and occasionally got her locked up with the mad women—the way they had during the ten-year period between her seventh and seventeenth birthdays when she hadn't spoken so much as one word. But Lacey couldn't let those infrequent spells stop her now even though she didn't know how or if she could control them should she venture to America.

"I can handle the spells," she said with far more conviction than she felt. "The man need ne'er know of them."

Kate wrung her hands in genuine distress. "
Arrah
, like you handled them today? Is it so wise, or even kind to try and keep the life ye've lived from a man who'd pledge his troth to ye?""You tell me. Have you bothered to tell Mr. Weatherspoon what your previous calling was?" That Kate had not told him and didn't even plan to, was obvious by her pained expression. Being a "mad nurse" was sometimes looked on as one step away from the madwomen cared for.

Pleased by Kate's perplexed expression, Lacey felt a little smile tug the corners of her mouth. "I thought you might keep that bit of news to yourself, but do not worry—you'll not be cheating your dear husband-to-be. I've heard it said that a man should ne'er take a wife who has no faults."

In spite of her obvious reservations over the proposed plans, Kate, burst out laughing. "True enough what ye says, lass."

"So then, will you do it? Please?"

Kate raised her open palms to the heavens. "Lord have mercy on me! Will ye ne'er set me free of this lass? Ne'er?"

The more things a man is ashamed of,

the more respectable he is.

—George Bernard Shaw

Chapter 2

Wyoming Territory

April, 1878

He was late. Hell, more than just late. A thick coil of black smoke rolled across the clear blue skies to the northwest, telling him that the train had already pulled out of the station and was steaming toward Medicine Bow at full speed. Caleb would have his hide if he found out that no one had met his precious mail-order bride, and if he ever discovered the reason why—that his good friend and neighbor had been distracted by a small band of wild horses—that hide wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel. Not that most folks thought it was worth even that, given the fact that it was cinnamon-colored instead of pure white like the peaks of the Snowy Range Mountains behind him.