The Ranger's Wife (Hero Hearts; Lawmen's Brides Book 1)

by Natalie Dean

  But, laughter was what came.

  Jimmy’s warm chuckle filled the room, and she looked up at him in amazement.

  “Is that all?” he asked smiling at her as he crossed the room. She remained silent, her eyes wide as he moved towards the bed.

  “Victoria,” he said. “I did not ask you to marry me because I expected you to be a superior cook or be able to sweep a floor clean.”

  “Why did you ask me?” Victoria asked, her own voice smaller than she had ever heard it.

  “I asked you because you are kind,” he said. “And witty and intelligent and…”

  Here, he leaned down and took one of Victoria’s hands in his.

  “…and I fell in love with you, Victoria,” he said. “By the time I read your second letter, I knew you were the woman for me.”

  Victoria blinked again before looking down at his hand entwined with hers.

  “Then…you don’t blame me for what happened?” she asked. “With the barn and…and…John?”

  “Why would I blame you for that?” Jimmy asked sounding genuinely confused.

  “If…if I hadn’t told you how I felt about John,” she said. “Maybe he wouldn’t have felt threatened. Maybe he wouldn’t have burned down the barn. Maybe…”

  “Victoria,” he said cutting her off. His hands moved firmly to her shoulder. “That was not your fault. Burning down that barn was the act of a very unstable man. Who can say what a man like that will do? Or what will set him off.”

  His hands relaxed on her shoulders, and one hand moved to cup her cheek. Her eyes fluttered closed as she felt his warm hand against her skin.

  “I would never blame you for what someone else chose to do,” he said. “And…if you’ll let me, I want the chance to prove just how useful you are to me.”

  Her eyes opened, and she looked at him. Part of her expected to see something false there. She expected her little gift to detect a lie in his face. But she saw none.

  Instead, she saw only the goodness she had felt from him from the start. When she looked into his eyes, she saw nothing but a truth she had never seen from anyone else in her life, except her beloved father.

  “All right,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. “I’ll stay.”

  His eyes widened, and a large smile spread across his own features.

  “Victoria, are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I love you, Jimmy Fairchild. I want to stay with you.”

  He looked into her eyes in wonder for one more moment, as though he had never seen anything quite so beautiful. A moment later, he leaned forward and met her lips with his.

  As she wrapped her arms around him, giving into his passionate kiss, she knew she would never have to wonder about her place in the world again.

  She belonged here. In the arms of the man she loved. In this wonderful town of Laramie, Wyoming.

  THE END

  EXCLUSIVE Sneak Peek: MAIL ORDER BRIDE: FOOLS RUSH IN

   Copyright 2017 by Kenzo Publishing - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document by either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited, and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Chapter One

  A wild pounding thrummed through Aíne Murphy’s veins.

  No, she thought ruefully. Anna. I’m in America now. My name is Anna. The name didn’t sound quite right, and she squirmed with the thought of it.

  She was a proud daughter of Erin, to be sure. But since she’d set brogues down on American shores, she’d encountered far too many who thought far less of the fair Emerald Isle.

  “NINA” signs in a storefront window. “No Irish Need Apply.” The harsh lash of wicked tongues spitting racial slurs like “Paddy” or “Bridget” or “Mick.”

  The thrumming drive caught her attention once more. She couldn’t be certain if it was the excited thrill of her own pulse or the frenzied galloping of the horses pulling the stage next to the Central Pacific train that carried her, anxious but hopeful, into Colfax, California. The horses kicked up huge plumes of swirling yellow dust. It was like powdered golden sunshine. She picked up her copy of The Sun that she’d carried with her all the way from New York

  The Sun. Aptly named, she thought. The penny paper had certainly given her a shining ray of hope. A gentle smile tugged at the corners of her full, pouty lips.

  As the train pulled into the station, Anna gave a last look around the train. All kinds of people made the arduous journey. Some folks came in pursuit of gold. Some came searching for better circumstances. Others came seeking both.

  Anna had come for love.

  Well, not love, exactly. More like a business contract. Her eyes drifted back to the paper. The whole affair had started with an advertisement in The Sun.

  “Lonely prospector seeks bright, young woman who is matrimonially-inclined, to entertain correspondence with an eye toward true love and many golden sunsets. Must keep a smart house and be handy at the hearth. Will share stake and prospects. Please reply to J. D. Callahan, Colfax City, California.”

  The interior of the railway car was stifling. The car was not much more than a narrow wooden box, a flat-topped ark carrying the collected droves to the Promised Land of the West. A meager passage ran down along the middle, with crosswise benches bracketing either side. A small stove occupied one far end of the car, while a privy maintained the opposite end.

  As Anna fanned herself with the paper, sweat trickled down her long, slender neck and pooled in the small valley between her rounded bosoms. Her linen chemise, nothing more than a long shirt-dress, clung to the alabaster skin under her frock, stuck by the incessant moisture of the ninety-degree heat. The tight lacing of her bodice did her no favors either. Nor did the coarse woolen weave of her simple dress and stockings. But, it was all she’d been able to bring with her from Ireland. The Great Hunger had not been kind to many Irish families.

  The heat didn’t matter to Anna. The West could be hotter than Lucifer’s own kitchen, she thought. Anything was better than the dismal grunge and grime of the New York tenements and the evil folk that abided there. The frightful memory twisted a nervous knot in her belly.

  Chapter Two

  “Rent’s a dollar a week. An’ it’s due on Sundays. Not a speck later.” The round, port-faced landlord led a nervous Anna through the narrow hall opening from the street and waddled down the narrow hallway over loosely laid wood plank. The walls were dark and dank. A good place to hide, Anna thought.

  A wide, bleak fireplace just to the right yawned cold in a room that, in better times, may have enjoyed convivial conversation between guests. Anna feared to be drawn into any conversation, lest her pursuer discovers her location…or her theft. She looked back at the stone hearth. Now the gloomy space stood chill, hungry for the meager rays of warming light that struggled over the lip of a shallow sash window. Anna understood, yearning herself for the sun of her native Ireland.

  Two suites of rooms flanked each side of the hallway. Many of the rooms had doors standing open, a vain attempt to encourage any kind of circulation in the cramped quarters.

  The first room Anna passed housed a haggard, red-bearded man, toiling away at his bench, cobbling a shoe. A worn woman, ash-blonde tendrils of unkempt hair plastered to a pale forehead, suckled an infant at her breast and scrabbled about the tight space trying to tend a meager stew along with five more rowdy children from two to nine years of age. A palsied grandmother shook uncontrollably as she attempted to dry the only four plates the family owned in dishwater grayer than the mule Da used to use on the farm back in County Galway.

  At least there was a window, Anna mused hopefully, though the view through the grimy glass wasn’t much more than a dingy brick wall and the upstairs neighbor
’s knickers sagging down on an over-burdened line. A rat, fat and black, scurried over the toe of her shoe. Anna held back a squeal.

  “A dollar a week!” Anna suddenly exclaimed. “Are ye daft?”

  The large woman sniffed noncommittally and shrugged. “It’s on the ground floor. The lower the floor, the higher the price.”

  “But, I only make two dollars a week at the factory, Miss.”

  It was a little white lie. She didn’t work at any of the garment sweatshops that had cropped up in the wards along Delancey, Essex, and Canal. She had some means, ill-gotten though they may be, she had no time to spare a thought for that now. It was just better to let the landlord believe she worked as a seamstress doing finish work for shops in the garment district. “I need to keep some money to send home to my Da. Might ye have a room on a higher floor? A few stairs would nae bother me t’all. I’m young and light of foot.”

  The landlord’s face puckered lemon, taking Anna’s comment as a derisive remark on her own generous weight. She stationed two ham hands on her full hips. “Ye don’t want it? That’s fine. There’s always the almshouse. Yer lucky I even got a room. If’n the tenant in here hadn’t drunk himself ta death, I’d be full up as a church on Judgment Day.”

  Anna realized nervously that she’d offended the woman. She couldn’t afford to go to the almshouse or any of the nearby charity boardinghouses. That’s the first place Obadiah Jessup would think to search for her. She clutched the little satchel she carried with her. It gave a tell-tale rattle that drew a raised eyebrow from the landlord. Anna held her breath. She gave a forced smile and a brief curtsey.

  “I’m sure it’ll be jus’ dandy, Miss. A dollar a week ‘tis.” She didn’t plan to be there for long.

  The landlord stood for a moment, air whistling like an out of tune bo’sun’s pipe through her wide nostrils. She squinted two bloodshot eyes and studied Anna from head to toe, lingering momentarily on the bag clutched at Anna’s side.

  She finally decided it wasn’t worth her bother and dragged a grease-stained sleeve under her nose. She reached under her wrinkled apron for a heavy, iron key. She drew it out and slid the pin and ward into the yawing keyhole and snicked the lock open. She grasped the tarnished brass doorknob and gave it an angry twist. She swung the door wide open and stood aside to afford Anna a view of the room.

  The apartment was dim and uninviting. Apparently, not all the rooms came with a window. A funny smell permeated the air, a peculiar combination of sour and rot. Anna prayed to St. Patrick that the smell wasn’t coming from the squalid, stained bed. An empty cradle, crafted from an old apple crate, told its own story, silent and abandoned in the corner. A single rickety chair waited at a scarred, wooden table, a single slat broken loose like a rotted tooth. A pot-bellied, cast-iron kettle rested on the stove...cold.

  Cold. That was New York in a nutshell for an Irish immigrant. But, then, something had happened to stoke a burning flame more fiery than the auburn tresses that blazed under her kerchief.

  Chapter Three

  “Mama! Mama!” The keening voice of a lost child cut through the babel of accents saturating the rail car. A little girl, her hair a mass of yellow curls, had gotten separated from her parents in the crush of bodies who had made the weary journey out west. Anna’s heart leaped in her chest. She gently squeezed her bag to her bosom. For a moment, the child recalled vivid memories of Pearl, Obadiah Jessup’s youngest progeny. Had he found her out? Was Jessup here? On this train? Was this the end? Da would die of a broken heart if he learned his only daughter had been jailed, branded a runaway. He would never hear the whole story, though. Jessup would make certain of that. She’d certainly be shamed, or worse…disowned.

  She pulled the edge of her kerchief down further over her porcelain forehead to hide her tell-tale russet waves and ducked behind a tall, burly man. She peeked from her hiding place to keep a wary eye on the lost girl.

  A middle-aged woman swept out an arm and deftly snagged the child’s small hand in her own. Anna got a clear view of the child’s trembling lower lip as she received a fine scolding from a worried mother.

  Anna let loose a sigh of relief. It was not Margaret Jessup. There was a tempered kindness in the careworn lines in the mother’s face, a kindness that was markedly absent from Margaret Jessup’s stern face.

  ***

  There was little love lost between the Irish maid-of-all-work and her former mistress. Though Margaret herself could claim Irish heritage, she would never deign to do any such thing. The daughter of an Irish landlord, Margaret, whether by accident or design, had made a smart match in taking English nobleman Obadiah Jessup as her husband. It separated her, however modestly, from the stigma of her Irish ancestry. She worked diligently to lose her Irish brogue and affect her husband’s manner of speech, particularly once business interests had called Obadiah Jessup to American shores.

  The kinship between Anna and Margaret ended there. Tragically, when the mistress of the house was nearer in social class to her maid, the more ill effects the maid bore upon her shoulders. To underscore her affected superiority, Margaret often worked Anna to the point of exhaustion, expecting her to rise at five and work steadily through the day until midnight or later. When other servants were presented with vails, those highly coveted tips dispensed to servants after some happy occasion like a dinner party, Margaret made certain to pass by Anna’s outstretched hand. She’d claim some ridiculous, petty mistake like an imagined spot on her napkin or silver.

  But nothing Margaret did was near as bad as the vile offenses perpetrated upon Anna as those of her master, Obadiah Jessup.

  Obadiah Jessup indulged, and his indulgences wept through his pores. His snifter was never void of brandy. His corpulent waist never missed a thick, long chain of golden rope drifting from his pocket watch. The pudgy flesh of his fingers strained against the biting band of his gold wedding ring, a testament to his penchant for fine, rich foods. And, as Master, he quite obviously thought that Anna was fairly on the menu.

  The first affront came shortly after Anna had begun in the Jessups’ employ. At first, Anna was delighted with her grand luck in securing a house position upon her arrival in New York. The position afforded her a small room, albeit in the attic, so she was able to avoid the base, unsanitary conditions of the tenement wards. The Jessups had afforded the cost of her travels from Ireland to the New World, so, for a time, at least, she was indentured to the family until her debt was paid off. Then she could start sending much needed money back home to the family and Da.

  Then, the trouble started. It began with lewd looks from the Master as she went about her daily chores. When she bent over to light the drawing room fire. When she rolled her sleeves to wash the family dishes and exposed her fair, ivory arms. When she leaned over the cherry wood of the dining table, reaching to dust the center, legs slightly spread to give her balance. Then looks gave way to something far more wicked. Something shameful. Anna spent hours into the wee mornings sobbing into her straw-stuffed mattress. That was when she began to hatch her plan to escape, from New York, and the clutching grasp of Obadiah Jessup.

  Chapter Four

  Colfax, like many of the early mining camps and boom towns of the time, squawked with the pang of growing pains. The squeal of the train’s brakes pierced through the air, prompting horses in the main street to rear and whinny in alarm. The tinny keys of “My Darling Nelly Gray” spilled out from the swinging louvered doors of the saloon, along with one of its less than sober patrons. The drunken man, with more than a little encouragement from the bartender, exploded into the street, end-over-head, and landed with a sobering splash in a nearby horse trough. The Palomino tethered nearby remained unfazed and continued lapping up the dusty water.

  Anna’s ear caught the brash bray of a heavily made-up woman leaning against the wooden façade of a parlor house. Her deep, ruby lips- painted in the same color as her taffeta dress - parted in tawdry laughter at the risqué joke of the cowboy loitering on th
e wooden porch.

  The rhythmic bite of metal on stone chinked in the air. The undertaker plied his trade, chiseling generic epitaphs into granite headstones. Business must have been booming, Anna thought. Ten more headstones lined up behind him, all waiting patiently for their turn under the hammer. She shuddered. What had she gotten herself into?

  The town, as it was, fell out into a T-shape. The railroad station paralleled the bar of the “T.” The rest of the town stretched out in a fairly straight line from there. Buildings abutted one another tightly and looked as if they were held together by a sheer force of will.

  “Those buildings go up fast, darlin’,” a friendly male voice answered her unspoken question. It was the burly man in the red-checked shirt she had hidden behind earlier on the train. He unloaded his bags from the baggage car. “Nobody wants to spend time building when they could be out there, diggin’ for gold.” As he tossed one of the huge duffels to the dusty ground, a metallic clang sounded.

  The big man saw the look of concern on Anna’s face. He smiled a broad, crooked grin. “That’s where I’m planning to be as soon as I finish unloading my equipment.”

  “Oh,” Anna sucked in a sigh of relief. She suddenly wished she hadn’t taken such a big breath as the pungent odor of manure assaulted her nose, musky and loamy. She raised a gloved hand over her mouth and nose.

  The big man laughed. “Perfume of the West, darlin’,” he chortled. “Best get used to it. You’ve just the one bag, then?”

  “Aye,” Anna gave the bag an unconscious squeeze.

  “Planning on doing a bit of prospecting yerself?” the big man asked.

  Anna clutched her bag to her chest tightly. “I’m not here for mining, sir. I’m here ta be married. Only, I had the notion that me groom-ta-be would be meeting me here at the station.” She cast a furtive glance around the gathered crowd.