Not wanting Maria to find her wearing yesterday’s dress, Hope quickly stripped and after washing up, changed clothes. Her parents ordered her to stay inside her room, but she was not going to oblige them.
After her first act of true rebellion, she was really on a roll, she realized with mild amusement. Collecting the letter and securing it inside her purse, Hope slowly, as quietly as possible, descended down the stairs.
“You are up early,” Maria startled her. So much for leaving the house undetected, Hope thought to herself glumly. This mild setback was not going to discourage her from going out.
“Yes, well, I wanted to go for a walk, it is such fine weather.”
Maria looked at her, clearly not believing a word of that statement. Hope was not good at pretense. “And to go to the post office,” she added reluctantly.
“I could mail it for you,” Maria offered and Hope panicked. What if Father ordered everyone on the staff not to let her out of the house? No, he wouldn’t do that. It was far too extreme of a measure. So far, they only had one disagreement. Granted, it was a big one, but Robert Trousdale was a very rational man. If he wanted to make her do something, his methods would not be so mundane.
You believed that for the arranged marriage as well, the other part of her challenged. She shushed that part.
“No, thanks, Maria,” Hope replied instantly, trying to conceal how nervous she was all of a sudden. “I will mail it.”
Hope did not object because she distrusted Maria in any way. Yes, this letter was very important for her and she wanted to see it sent off personally. Also, she wanted to leave the house, for just a bit. Simply to see if she still could. Hope’s whole perspective had changed in less than a day. This grandiose house did not feel like a home to her, more like a prison and she wanted, actually needed, some fresh air.
“All right, let me just get you a shawl,” Maria suggested. “It is a bit chilly this morning.”
Hope nodded, relieved. “Thank you. Just be quick about it, please.”
“Of course.”
When Hope looked back at her life, she discovered a pattern she had ignored before, marking it as something usual. Her father really pushed her hard over the years. It was expected of her to excel at everything. Hope went to the best school, had the best tutors money could buy for her academics and music lessons alike. In exchange, she had best of everything: clothes, books, furniture for her room. Foolishly, she thought it was because he loved her. As it turned out, it was all an investment for Robert Trousdale, so he could sell her off one day to the highest bidder.
That day, unfortunately, arrived. Not if I have something to say about it. Hope was not going willingly and without a fight.
Ten new factories, Father threw that number into her face last night.
Is that my worth? Ten factories for your daughter’s happiness. Is that really a fair trade? Hope did not dare to answer these questions.
Maria returned with the shawl and she had one wrapped around her shoulders as well. Hope should have known her maid wasn’t going to let her go alone. It was far better than the alternative.
“I’ll go inform Mrs. Trousdale we won’t be long.”
“Don’t bother,” Hope said with a wave of her hands. “As you said, we won’t stay long.” And before her maid could protest or say anything else, Hope ushered her through the door. Hope did not want anyone to know she was sending this to Jessamine. Their correspondence was rather regular and usually no one in the house would raise an eyebrow. But the timing of this letter could raise questions, so she did not want to take any chances.
A part of her wished she never had to return to the house. That was a rather silly notion, to begin with. No matter how crossed she was at her parents at the moment, they were still her parents, and Hope loved them dearly. This will all pass, she tried to comfort herself.
Maria tried to engage her a couple of times in a conversation. Hope was absentminded.
“I do not feel like practicing my Spanish this morning, Maria,” Hope explained.
“Lo siento,” Maria murmured.
“That is quite all right, some other time, maybe.” Hope knew the maid was just trying to be helpful.
Hope sighed in relief once they reached the post office. It was foolish of her to put so much significance to a piece of paper, but it meant the world to her because she needed to know what Jessamine would write back about Hope’s problem.
“You really miss your friend,” Maria guessed. She was not wrong. She was not completely right, either. Hope nodded nevertheless, not wanting to elaborate.
There was no line at the post office so Hope conducted her business immediately. She paid a bit extra to the clerk in the office, stressing how important it was to her that this letter reached her friend as soon as possible, and he promised her that it would. She knew that the road was long and hard between her and Jessamine, but Hope prayed that with a bit of luck, the letter would reach its destination.
On her way back home, they ran into Kith. Hope loved Kith. He was her favorite cousin. Probably because he misbehaved the most and it was fun to be in his company. The things that happened to him because of his personality were always highly entertaining. Hope’s mother branded him a bad influence. Hope did not care, she spent as much time with him as she could.
All that was fine if you were simply a friend or a cousin to him, but if you were a girl enamored, Kith’s fickleness could pretty quickly turn any girl’s affection to resentment. Hope saw that happen many times in the past.
One day he will meet his match, Hope thought, sparing one last glance toward her cousin. Once she even thought that match was Jessamine, alas, that was when she moved away.
Kith chuckled approaching them. “You look rather pleased to see me, cousin.”
Oh, you have no idea, Hope felt like replying. Instantly, Hope wanted to tell him everything, despite him being the biggest gossip. Kith will know what to do. And Hope had ways to insure his silence. As it turned out, no type of blackmail was needed. Kith promised to stay quiet simply because she was his favorite cousin. The feeling was mutual.
“Maria?” Hope turned toward her maid once they all greeted one another.
“Yes?”
“Would you be so kind as to go and buy me some roasted chestnuts. I feel a bit lightheaded,” Hope said, rubbing her temples as Kith watched her with slight amusement. Am I overdoing it? She lowered her hand.
“Better,” Kith mouthed so Maria could not hear him.
“You did skip breakfast,” Maria mused. “I will be right back.”
“We will be in the park,” Kith provided.
Once Maria was out of earshot he turned toward her. “I know you have something scandalous to tell me, so please do,” he said in his usual, cheerful manner.
“I am to be married,” Hope blurted out.
Kith chuckled. She hit him in the arm. That was certainly not the reaction she was hoping for.
“This is serious, Kith, Father is forcing me to marry some business partner of his, or rather his son.” Hope quickly told him everything.
“Not you too, cousin,” he exclaimed in exasperation.
Now that is an appropriate reaction.
“This life is rather cruel to us, don’t you think?”
“I will not do it,” Hope said stubbornly.
“That’s the spirit. I have been dodging marriage for years now.”
“You will have to teach me how to do that,” Hope only half-joked.
“With pleasure. Firstly, you will have to become a man.”
“Kith,” she chastised.
“What?” Kith chuckled. “All my methods work only if you are the same sex as me.”
She was completely serious, but he used every opportunity to jest with her. I should have known better.
Maria returned with their snack and that put an end to Hope’s conversation with Kith.
“This is not over,” she mouthed silently to Kith and he inclined his head, und
erstanding her perfectly.
* * *
As it turned out, everything failed. Hope honestly tried to reason with her parents. She tried to use logic and business language knowing her father would approve, yet it did her no good. She was still to be married.
Jessamine is my only hope now.
Weeks and weeks passed until Hope finally received word from Jessamine. Hope was very much in a war with her parents. She did not want to change her mind, unfortunately, neither did they. So far she had not been prevented from leaving the house or seeing her friends. That did not change for her. Things that did change were the meals. Mother never missed an opportunity to scorn her and Father completely ignored her apart from when he barked a few orders at her. It was maddening, to say the least.
While she waited for the letter, her father tried to arrange a meeting between her and Kristopher Hewitt. Hope learned his name, not that it changed anything for her. She preferred to call him Junior in her private thoughts. It felt like a small rebellion to her in some way.
One fine day, shortly after she sent the letter, Father called upon her to inform her how her betrothed—she really detested that word—would be calling on her. He told her to dress properly for the dinner they would be attending. Hope calmly agreed, only to develop a sudden case of the shivers, so the meeting was canceled.
Hope successfully sabotaged every other attempt of her parents to get the couple together. The second time, she bruised her ankle when they were about to go for a walk. The last one was by far the hardest since her father was on to her. Somewhere along the line, her father started to suspect she was doing all this on purpose. Blissfully, Kith helped her get out of her appointment. She could always count on her crazy cousin to pull her out of trouble. Sometimes that entailed getting her into even bigger difficulty, however, that was a price Hope was willing to pay.
“This childish behavior has to stop,” her father shouted at her afterward.
When you stop, I will too. She did not say that out loud. “May I be excused?”
That infuriated him even more. “Go and reflect on what you’re doing to me and your poor mother.”
Hope did not let that bother her or prevent her from behaving in the exact same way in the future. Because that was precisely what was on the line. Her future. And she was determined to have it her way, at any cost.
Relieved she finally had the letter, Hope ran up to her room and tore the envelope, impatient to read what Jessamine had to say about her problem.
“What?!” Hope couldn’t help but exclaim, starting to go through it. She found Jessamine’s advice to be rather peculiar. And that would be the understatement of the year. It was utter nonsense.
“This is preposterous. How can she even suggest something like this to me?” She muttered, pacing around her room. Did she wait for so long, for this? I cannot believe it. Hope asked for help and this was what she got. This must be a jest, she thought, returning to the discarded envelope simply to make sure there was not a second letter inside. Unfortunately, there was not. That could only mean that Jessamine’s advice was genuine. She couldn’t stop reading through it over and over again.
She sat on her bed at some point, when her legs started to ache. She was really wearing out the rug inside her room.
“Maybe she has a point,” she continued to speak with herself after her tenth read-through. By then she knew it by heart.
At the beginning of the letter, Jessamine shared Hope’s outrage about her parent’s behavior, politely stating afterward how that was not an uncommon thing. Hope already knew that.
Then Jessamine proposed a plan that was rather simple and could fix everything, in a way. The bad part was that Hope had to sacrifice a great deal to achieve it. Mostly her freedom. Jessamine suggested, in all seriousness, Hope should start reading Mail Order Bride ads in hopes of becoming one.
That’s crazy. Could I actually do that? Hope smiled.
4
Hope found the whole affair ridiculous. Mail Order Bride, indeed, she huffed. At least at first.
To marry some stranger, a man who lived on the western frontier, simply because she did not want to marry some stranger her father chose for her, did not seem logical.
That was her first reaction. Afterward, she started to look at things a bit differently. Jessamine must have proposed this idea because she thought it might actually work. So Hope gave it a shot.
This mail-order marriage would be her choice. By reading the ads, she alone could choose a man she deeded fit to be a husband. There was another benefit. Nobody said she had to marry the man if she didn’t fancy him in the end.
If Hope did run away, and then later, decided to return home, could she? Would Father let me return home? Hope had a moment of doubt. Still, she resumed thinking about Jessamine’s plan. The cherry on top would obviously be the fact that her father would have no say, and most importantly, he would make no money out of the marriage she would arrange for herself.
She would still, unfortunately, have to actually marry someone. That was the thing that worried her. The notion about being married to some man held no appeal to her. And what about love?
That was the thing she threw in her father’s face and one of the main reasons she did not want to marry Kristopher Hewitt. How would the mail-order business be any different from her father’s arranged marriage?
It will be different because I will make it so, Hope was resolved.
Besides, there was no harm in looking at the ads after all, and perhaps if she fancied someone she could even meet the man. Most importantly, nothing was written in stone. There was nothing that suggested she would actually, by any means, marry the man from the ad. Promise of marriage and forced to marry are two very different things. That put her mind at ease a great deal.
All right, Jessamine, I will put this plan of yours to a test.
The next day, feeling utterly ridiculous, Hope bought all the Mail Order Bride magazines she could find and started reading through them. She barely managed to escape from the house undetected. Hope couldn’t bear to have Maria at her side in those moments. It was stressful and embarrassing enough to do it on her own. With Maria at her side? It would be unimaginable. Hiding her purchases in the ruffles of her skirt, she couldn’t wait to return to her room and go through them.
Locking herself in, she opened the magazine and was quite disappointed. This was not what she expected.
Some ads were so short they provided the reader with only the most basic of information. How am I to make the biggest decision of my life based on this? She scoffed at the paper in her hands as thought expecting an answer. Luckily, the paper remained silent, proving she did not lose all her senses.
Hope could not help feeling disappointed. Maybe the mail-order worked for really desperate girls that did not have any other options. And you are not desperate enough? Instantly, an image of her and Kristopher as husband and wife came to mind. Hope shuddered. Deciding to ignore all her previous thoughts, she returned to reading. She had to laugh at one point. This one just won’t do, she thought, crossing out one particular advertisement.
Hope skipped the ones that looked as though they were too close to home. If she was doing this, she was going to do it right. Hope did not want her family to learn about this and somehow stop her in any way. She needed to go someplace far away, at the edge of the world, to escape her father’s reach. I just pray a place like that truly exists. She went through everything she had and found nothing. Maybe I’m just being too picky.
Sighing deeply, she decided to give it another go. Who knows, maybe I missed something.
Halfway through her second read, Hope instantly stopped while reading one particular ad. “This cannot be,” she exclaimed, continuing to read it with wonder.
How could I have missed this? The advertisement completely held her attention now. It was well written and concise, with an underlying humor and most importantly, the man lived in Rippingate, just like Jessamine.
T
his must be true Providence, she cheered, deciding on the spot that was the one she was going to reply to. Jessamine advised her to write to several men, simply so she could weigh her options but Hope did not want to do that. Besides, this was the only one that held any interest to her. It wouldn’t be fair to write to others under false pretenses. Hope might be desperate, however, she still had her standards.
She could not say if it was fate or madness, but suddenly, Hope was rather excited by the prospect of living in the same town as her best friend. It would be like old times. Hope wanted to write to Jessamine immediately, but then reconsidered. First, she needed to write to the gentleman in question. There was no point in raising Jessamine’s hopes up if nothing came of it. On the other hand, Hope’s optimism was boundless.
The Redemption 0f A Hunted Bride (Historical Western Romance) Page 3
