Redemption In Red Desert: A Clean Western Historical Romance Novel

by Ember Pierce

  * * *

  Gus made a clucking sound with his tongue. Now Bonny didn’t have to fake interest in what he was saying. Kristian hadn’t mentioned any of those things in his letters.

  * * *

  He’d had a brother who died? That was a horrible tragedy. And he hadn’t said anything about it at all.

  * * *

  Granted, neither of them had written long, newsy letters, but shouldn’t he have said something about that?

  * * *

  And what had Gus been saying about not being sure if Kristian would ever get his act together? What had he meant by that?

  * * *

  Bonny wanted to ask, but as she was mulling over ways to bring it up without making herself sound ignorant, Gus slowed his horse.

  * * *

  “The Triangle Ranch is just up that hill, but since you told me you wanted to walk the last leg on your own, I think this might be the best place to stop.”

  * * *

  “Thank you,” Bonny said as Gus got out of the wagon and helped her down. He lifted her one bag out of the back and handed it to her.

  * * *

  “Good luck, miss,” Gus said. “I’m sure I’ll see you around town.” He gave her a warm smile before he turned the team around and headed back off down the road.

  * * *

  Bonny stood still for a moment on the side of the road. She wanted to take in her surroundings.

  * * *

  The Red Desert was so vastly different from Philadelphia that she was struck dumb for a moment. She had no words to describe the beauty that she saw all around her.

  * * *

  A part of her heart that she didn’t even know existed seemed to swell in her chest. She had been stunted in Philadelphia, growing up in the crowd of her family.

  * * *

  This place was where she would grow into the person she was meant to be, whoever that was.

  * * *

  She peered around for the landmarks Gus had mentioned. She could easily make out the forest and the road. The river must have been on the other side of the ranch.

  * * *

  Somewhere in the distance a cow mooed, answered by another. Instead of the noise of hundreds, thousands of people, Bonny would be listening to the sounds of animals.

  * * *

  She noticed how different the grass was here. When she had left Philadelphia, the grass had just been losing its lush green color. Here, the grass was crunchy and brown, brittle when she stepped off the road onto it.

  * * *

  The other thing she noticed was that there weren’t many trees here, other than in the forest behind her, and the ones she could see were different than the ones back home.

  * * *

  Back in Philadelphia, she corrected herself. Home was here now.

  * * *

  The trees were short and scrubby. She wondered if she would miss the tall oaks and elms, though she suspected she would easily acclimate to her new surroundings.

  * * *

  She had been so excited to leave the city, and she was feeling equally excited to fully embrace where she was now.

  * * *

  Bonny wasn’t sure how she should approach the ranch, since she hadn’t told Kristian exactly when she would be arriving. She didn’t want him to make a fuss over her.

  * * *

  That seemed stupid to her. So, she had simply told him in her last letter that she would be arriving this week.

  * * *

  Her mind drifted back to what Gus had said about Kristian finally getting his act together.

  * * *

  She found herself wishing that he had been completely honest with her in his letters, although she had only shared the very basic details of her life with him.

  * * *

  It was hard to know what to say to a stranger you were going to spend the rest of your life with.

  * * *

  The heat of the day seemed to have reached its peak, and Bonny felt herself wilting as she fanned herself with her free hand. Now she was missing the trees from back home.

  * * *

  Glancing around one more time, Bonny decided that she definitely liked the landscape of her new home. And if she liked this, she hoped that she would like the man she had come to marry.

  * * *

  She lectured herself that she needed to stop dilly-dallying and go meet Kristian.

  * * *

  As she climbed the hill that led to the ranch, a million thoughts raced through her head. Excitement still warred with nervousness, but now she was also trying to work out how she was going to settle into her new life.

  * * *

  The practical aspects of setting up her own cooking and cleaning schedule, of only having one other person rely on her for those types of things, calmed her down.

  * * *

  She knew what she was doing in those circumstances. The thought of sweeping a floor clean gave her a strange sense of control over her new life.

  * * *

  There were other thoughts that threatened to intrude on what little hope she had managed to extract during her trip out to Wyoming. She had learned that life was hard, and she knew that would be true out here in such a desolate place.

  * * *

  The hard work she had done back in Philadelphia would most likely be two times harder here, and though she liked what she had learned of Kristian in his letters, the reality of the situation was that he was still virtually a stranger.

  * * *

  As she crested the hill, she got her first good look at the ranch. The large ranch house with some smaller outbuildings just visible beyond was the first thing she noticed.

  * * *

  A large barn with cows grazing in open pasture stood to the north. Beyond the cows, Bonny caught a glimpse of the river that Gus had mentioned.

  * * *

  The whole ranch was lovely, and that gave her hope that there was a place for her here. There was also a barn there, but she couldn’t see inside.

  * * *

  She guessed that was where the horses were, and she longed to look in. A real, actual horse was inside the building.

  * * *

  Probably munching on hay or something. Or just standing there, waiting to be petted or groomed. Or given a bath.

  * * *

  She wouldn’t mind giving a horse a bath. It would show how much she liked him.

  * * *

  The closer she got to the porch, the more nervous she became. Her emotions were one big jumble that she couldn’t sort out. Once again, she felt like she might be sick.

  * * *

  Why had she thought she could do this? Why had she thought she would be able to fit in on a ranch in the wild west when she hadn’t really fit in with her own family in Philadelphia?

  * * *

  There were people sitting on the porch. She was still too far away to make out any of their features clearly, but she had to assume that one of them was Kristian.

  * * *

  Was he looking back at her right now, wondering who she was? Did he have any inkling that she was Bonny? Would he be excited or disappointed?

  * * *

  She clutched her bag closer and her free hand raised to her neck to clasp her grandmother’s ring, which she had worn on a chain around her neck during the trip to keep it safe.

  * * *

  She could feel her face get tight the closer to the porch she came. This was not the first impression that she had wanted to make, so she forced herself to smile.

  * * *

  All three people looked at her curiously as she stepped up. Immediately, she found the man that she assumed was Kristian.

  * * *

  Still, she made eye contact with all three people, one woman and two men, before she said, “Hello, I’m looking for Kristian Downing. I’m Bonny, his mail-order bride.”

  8

  Kristian felt a ripple of recognition at the sound of her voice. He had heard it before when he’d read her
letters.

  * * *

  He didn’t understand the feeling, he just knew that it was true. Maybe it was the way she wrote.

  * * *

  She was lovely, but she looked shy and maybe a bit scared. The way she was clutching her bag told him that despite the brash way she had walked up to the porch, she was just as afraid as he was of this meeting.

  * * *

  The two of them were embarking on something that didn’t feel completely normal.

  * * *

  Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he stood and beckoned her closer to join them. He gave her a warm smile.

  * * *

  “I’m Kristian,” he said. “And these are my parents, John and Erica.”

  * * *

  Bonny smiled back shyly as she greeted him and then his parents. Ma got up to draw her into a welcoming hug.

  * * *

  “I wish we had known that you were coming today,” she said. “I would have made something special for supper.”

  * * *

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Bonny replied softly. “I don’t like to have a fuss made over me. Besides, I wasn’t sure how the traveling would go; I’ve never traveled before.

  * * *

  “From what people mentioned about traveling in the West, they might have told me Tuesday and I might have ended up Saturday.”

  * * *

  She smiled. “There were a few difficulties like that on the way.”

  * * *

  “At times, that certainly is true,” Ma said.

  * * *

  “I met some very interesting people. In fact, I met some unforgettable people. To be honest, I had never met a gambler before, but one was on the stage.

  * * *

  “He was very nice,” Bonny told them. “And then, when I got to town, I found Gus and he gave me a ride out here.”

  * * *

  “Gus is a good man,” Pa said. It was the first thing he had said to Bonny, and she seemed startled by the sound of his voice.

  * * *

  “Would you like to go freshen up?” Kristian asked. “Then we can sit down and have a cold drink. I imagine you’re awfully thirsty after your travels.”

  * * *

  “That would be lovely.” Bonny smiled..

  * * *

  “I’ll show you where you can leave your luggage,” Ma said.

  * * *

  Kristian watched his mother escort his future wife into the house. He hated that they were both being so formal with each other, and he wondered if Bonny had recognized anything about him from his letters.

  * * *

  Probably not. His mind was probably just playing tricks on him. He tried not to feel too disappointed at that.

  * * *

  “She’s quite pretty,” Pa said.

  * * *

  “She is,” Kristian agreed. He squirmed slightly at having this discussion with his father.

  * * *

  The fact that his fiancée was beautiful should have been for him alone to think about, but he knew he was being absurd and tried his best not to let his irritation show on his face.

  * * *

  Pa meant well. Kristian had spent the past month learning that, and getting to know his father in a different way.

  * * *

  While Bonny was inside freshening up, Kristian fidgeted on the porch. He paced one way and then the other.

  * * *

  He sat down, but sprang right back up when he thought he heard her coming. Ma brought out a tray with iced tea and lemonade, along with the glasses that had traveled here with her from back east and that had belonged to her grandmother in the old country.

  * * *

  All those things had always sounded mysterious and special to Kristian, a little country boy from the middle of nowhere.

  * * *

  He wondered what Bonny would think of them. He hoped she wasn’t too sophisticated for them.

  * * *

  When Bonny finally came back out, she looked much calmer and more sure of herself. She sat in the rocking chair that Pa had brought out for her and accepted a glass of lemonade from Ma.

  * * *

  “These glasses are beautiful,” she breathed.

  * * *

  “They were my grandmother’s glasses,” Ma said.

  * * *

  Bonny pulled something on a chain out from beneath the neck of her dress and showed Ma.

  * * *

  “This belonged to my grandmother. It’s the only nice thing I have ever owned. How wonderful to have all these pretty things around you in this beautiful place,” she said.

  * * *

  Kristian felt an odd pleasure bubbling up inside of him at the way Ma and Bonny were getting along so well.

  * * *

  He glanced over at Pa to see if his father was noticing the same thing, but his father’s expression was unreadable.

  * * *

  After they had finished their drinks, Kristian asked, “Would you like to go for a walk? I can show you around the ranch.”

  * * *

  “That would be lovely,” Bonny said.

  * * *

  Clearly, she still felt nervous and formal, and Kristian couldn’t stop feeling restless. Walking would be good for the both of them.

  * * *

  She slid her arm through his outstretched one, and he marveled at how good of a fit she felt like to him. He wanted to ask if she felt the same way, but he held back.

  * * *

  There would be time enough to ask all those sorts of questions. No reason to rush into everything.

  * * *

  “These outbuildings are used for chickens and the goats; the cows rarely use the barn but we do keep our milk cows in there, and some horses.

  * * *

  “I’ll show you those next, but first I want to show you our home. I mean, our first home. It’s just temporary, until we can get something bigger built.”

  * * *

  Kristian stopped talking as they stopped in front of the home he had been working so hard on. He hoped she could see all the potential and work that he had put into it.

  * * *

  Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how desperate he was for her to like the house.

  * * *

  She was quiet for so long that he thought she surely must have hated it, but when he summoned the courage to look at her he saw that her eyes were shining with tears.

  * * *

  “I’ve never had a real home of my own before,” she said in a soft voice so full of emotion that Kristian felt his heart squeeze for her.

  * * *

  “We’ve—my family, I mean—always lived in a tenement. I hate being stacked on top of other people. This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.”

  * * *

  “Let me show you the inside,” Kristian said as he unlatched the door. “I’ve been working on making all the furniture. I still need to build a dresser, but everything else turned out pretty well.”

  * * *

  He knew he sounded too eager, but he didn’t care. He was proud of this place, and he was excited that Bonny seemed to like it, too.

  * * *

  After Bonny had examined and exclaimed over each piece of furniture that he had built with his own hands, they stepped outside again. Kristian could see a summer storm sweeping across the plains toward them, and he led Bonny toward the barn.

  * * *

  He had a feeling that she would enjoy seeing all the animals in their stalls. And they could wait out the storm there and be dry.

  * * *