The Wrong Bride_A Christmas Mail Order Bride Romance

by Natalie Dean

  Chapter 8

  “One down,” Z said. “One more to go. We need to go fill Grandmother in. How’s your sister doing? Is she up to meeting Grandmother?”

  “Not yet. She finally fell asleep. I think all the crying exhausted her. Kasia isn’t like Elzbieta; she’s impulsive and high-spirited. You wouldn’t know it now, the way she looks, but she is the prettiest one in the family and the most... I’m not sure of the word . . . . charming, I suppose. She is so fastidious in her dressing and so . . . it broke my heart to see her looking like a girl who just got off the boat and didn’t know how to take care of herself. Kasia was a maid but she put as much thought into what she wore as any debutante, I can tell you that much. She’d add ribbons and buttons to the dresses she sewed, and you wouldn’t believe how fine she’d look. She’s . . . Z, I know that what she did was wrong, but she’s not what you might think. She’s not loose. She thought she was in love and she thought he loved her. I guess she made the same mistake other girls have made. She believed him. I just don’t want you thinking that she’s someone who’s going to end up in a bad way for the rest of her life. I know this will take some handling, but if Kasia meets the right man, she’ll be the best wife ever.”

  “In the first place, I have the best wife ever, so she can’t be that. In the second place . . . Sweetie, I don’t think anything. Women get left with the brand when a baby is started up, that’s how it is. It’s not fair, but it’s how it is. I feel sorry for the kid. I understand how Will Henry feels, though. It took him this long to get over Mary Ellen and I think he’d started falling in love with Elzbieta with the first letter.” Z’s grin was a little crooked, as if he were making fun of his brother and protecting him at the same time. “He wants to be married. But he wants his own baby. I can’t fault him for that.”

  “I don’t either. I just don’t know what to do next.”

  “Yes, you do. We tell Grandmother. She’s like a hungry tiger when there’s something going on and everyone else is munching on the news.”

  Elsie had put Grandmother to bed, but she wasn’t asleep. She sat upright, her back supported by pillows. Her hair was still arranged as it had been when she was dressed, indicating that Grandmother did not intend to stay in bed all day. As Z had guessed, she had been waiting for them to come to her and her hunger for answers was apparent. Grandmother didn’t like being the one who didn’t know what was going on, especially when it concerned her grandsons.

  “Well?” she asked expectantly when Bonnie and Z had entered after knocking on her door. “Sit down and tell me what this is all about.”

  Bonnie was relieved when Z took the lead. She was fearful that she might break down telling the story of why Kasia had been sent to Texas in their sister’s place. Z relayed the details in a straightforward, unemotional manner, but by being the one to tell Grandmother, he tacitly was supporting his wife and her sister as well, and Bonnie appreciated that gesture more than she could have expressed in words.

  Grandmother waited until Z was done talking and when she spoke, she made the same point that Z had made. “I can’t say I’d be happy if my daughter had gotten herself into a fix like this,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have put her on a train with no one to look after her.” Her bright brown eyes gave Bonnie a shrewd assessment. “Do you think your mother hoped she’d lose the baby and come here with nothing to hide?”

  “Almost nothing to hide,” Z pointed out realistically. “She wouldn’t be Elzbieta, for one thing.”

  “And for another, she’d have already been with a man, although there’s more than one girl who’s beaten the preacher to the vows,” Grandmother agreed. “But back to what I asked. Bonnie?”

  “I don’t know,” Bonnie said wearily. Had that been Mama’s intention? How could she explain to this strong-willed woman who had borne two children, Daniel and Dora, and who had raised two grandchildren, what it was like for Mama to raise thirteen children, mostly on her own after Papa’s death? She could not explain. It was another world, the mining community of Pittsburgh, and the stories of Texas and Pittsburgh didn’t have the same plot.

  “I can’t say I wouldn’t have thought of doing that myself,” Grandmother admitted.

  “What?” Z said, shocked. “If a son of mine gets a girl in trouble, I’ll be standing behind him with a rifle and a preacher.”

  “Can you say for sure that you haven’t gotten a girl in trouble?” Grandmother challenged her grandson, loving him with all his faults but not blind to the consequences of those faults. “You haven’t lived like a monk, you know.”

  “That was . . . I’m married now.” Z’s candor with Bonnie was not going to be replicated in a conversation with his grandmother.

  “You had some years of not being married,” she reminded him.

  Z was silent. “If any woman had a child by me, I’d want to know,” he said in a low voice. “Shame or not, I’d claim the baby. You know that, Grandmother. You raised us to feel that family comes a close second to God.”

  “But not if it wasn’t yours.”

  “No . . . “

  “Neither will Will Henry. Neither would most men. So, what do we do now? We can’t cast this Kathy girl out in the cold.”

  It was not the time to correct Grandmother’s pronunciation of her sister’s name. “Kasia hasn’t asked for anything,” Bonnie defended her sister. “She doesn’t expect Will Henry to marry her, nor am I sure she even wants to be married at all.”

  Kasia had been vocal on that point. She only loved one man, the father of her baby and she could never give herself to another man and that was that. Even if the baby’s father was off in Europe, he was the one she loved, and she felt she would never love anyone else. But that declaration, spoken in Polish, was something that Bonnie was not going to divulge. Will Henry had endured enough from what he hadn’t had to translate. When she had first arrived in Mesquite, Bonnie had been drawn to the reserved, kind-hearted twin with such thoughtful ways. She’d never admit it to Z, but for a brief time, she had wondered if she was marrying the wrong brother. That thought was gone, but a sisterly affection for Will Henry remained.

  “I should hope not!”

  “She’ll need a home, Grandmother and she’s Bonnie’s sister. Will Henry understands that.”

  “Will Henry has a generous heart. I reckon he’ll keep his distance from the girl. Bonnie, it’s going to be on you to make her understand that she is welcome here as your sister. People will talk, I reckon, they always do. She’ll have to hold her head high and stare them down.”

  “Kasia doesn’t know anyone in Mesquite. But Will Henry does, and Will Henry doesn’t like people gossiping.”

  “We’re not going to let that boy turn into a recluse,” Grandmother said firmly. “He spent too much time inside himself after that girl died and now he’s got another lost love with Elizabeth not coming out here. It’s him I’m worried about. When your sister has that baby, she’ll have something to pour herself into, but Will Henry won’t have anything. We need to take care of him without him noticing.”

  “Good luck with that. Will Henry notices everything,” Z reminded his grandmother, who then gave him an undaunted gaze.

  “You’ll be taking care of him,” she directed. “You’re his twin, so who better to do it? I’m sure you already told Linc Duffy that you’d be in town this Saturday night for poker.”

  Z was astonished and dismayed. He hadn’t even told Bonnie yet that he had plans for a little fun come Saturday night. While he didn’t go out carousing like he had before he was married, he did occasionally enjoy a Saturday night playing poker with his pals. Bonnie was tolerant up to a point and Z knew better than to cross that line. But he’d figured that, with her sister having arrived, she wouldn’t mind if he were out of the house while they did more catching up. That was before the disclosure that had turned the anticipation of the day into grim disappointment.

  “You’ll take Will Henry with you.”

  “Grandmother, the last
thing my brother is going to want after the town finds out that his mail-order bride isn’t the woman he sent for is to show up in a saloon to play poker.”

  “He’s got to go somewhere, and it might as well be the saloon. If he broods, he’ll end up walking at night again and I declare if I have to watch him doing that, night after night, I’ll feel like his boots are wearing the ground into a grave.”

  So it seemed that Grandmother too, had observed how often Will Henry had left the house at night to walk. Grief for the loss of his beloved Mary Ellen kept him from sleeping, and memories held her nonpareil to any other woman. Bonnie wondered if he would walk in mourning for Mary Ellen, the first love, or Elzbieta, the woman who, because she was so far away, had become the ideal.

  It was not the kind of question she could put to Z, but that night, when they were in bed, and Z was complaining about Grandmother’s decision to send Will Henry off socializing in ways that were contrary to his nature, she interrupted him. “Is Grandmother afraid that Will Henry will die of a broken heart?”

  “Men don’t die of broken hearts,” Z scoffed. “She’s just doing what she always does, which is telling us how to live. Will Henry never cared for poker and drinking and such. He’s sober as a judge, you know that. I keep saying that we’re going to have the son Will Henry should have and I’m going to go crazy trying to figure him out.”

  “You figured Will Henry out.”

  “We’re twins. It didn’t take any figuring out. We just knew from the time we were born, like we shared a brain. The differences between us never mattered. He just always took things to heart more than I did,” Z said simply, putting his arm around her. Her belly, big with the promise of the baby they awaited, was warm against his skin. Sometimes, when the baby moved, he would run his hands over her belly and the baby kicked back. Nothing that had ever been in Z’s life matched the way those little kicks made him feel. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, not even Bonnie, but he was sure that baby knew who he was already. He was also sure that the baby was a boy, but he didn’t dare tell Bonnie or Grandmother that or they’d both laugh at him for being fanciful. But that little boy, Daniel William Henry Kennesaw, was waiting to see his daddy. Z knew it. Bonnie agreed with the naming. Grandmother was pleased that her husband and son would be remembered, if the baby were a son, in his name; Will Henry was pleased and humbled that the child—if a boy, he reminded them, ever cautious with the unknown—would have his name as well.

  Will Henry was going to need something to look forward to. The birth of a nephew couldn’t make up for the devastating blow he’d taken today, but Grandmother was right about one thing: they couldn’t let Will Henry surrender to disappointment.

  “It’s going to be awkward, with Will Henry avoiding Kasia.”

  “He’ll be a gentleman about it,” Z assured her. “You know Will Henry doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. She’ll barely notice. He doesn’t want to punish her, he just doesn’t want to be reminded of what’s happened. How’s she going to feel?”

  “About Will Henry? She’s not really thinking of him. She’s—Kasia’s young and the world she knows is the one that revolves around her. She only wants this Hayes Gardner boy, no one else, therefore no other man exists. I think she was so aware of her shame at home that she might actually feel better here. No one is going to point out her wickedness.”

  “She’ll marry someone,” Z said confidently. “She’s pretty and men notice that right away. With us standing behind her, no one is going to take advantage of her. I’m not saying some men won’t try, but they won’t get far.”

  Bonnie snuggled closer to Z. “I’m grateful to you for being protective of my sister,” she said, placing her hand on his bare chest, right over his heart. She could feel it beating beneath her palm, a steady reminder of the constancy of his love. She kissed his neck, enjoying the texture of his taut, sinewy body.

  “I know a girl who’s going to end up in trouble if she keeps that up,” Z’s voice, husky with desire, sounded amused and amorous all at the same time.

  “I’m ready to be in trouble,” she replied pertly, raising up her head for the kiss that she knew was coming.

  “Oh, well,” he said, “in that case . . .”

  Chapter 9

  Katarina slept all day and then awoke suddenly as the moonlight brought its pale incandescence into the room and forced her into wakefulness. She forgot, at first, where she was, until the recollection of the dreadful trip, the stuffy, cramped stagecoach, and the discomfort that had been her constant companion every mile of the way here, returned to remind her. She was in Texas. She did not want to be here. She wanted to be in Pittsburgh, with Hayes Gardner, the man she loved.

  Where was he now? His family had wasted no time in sending him away. He had already been to Europe before, of course; the Gardners traveled extensively. He had told her that he wanted to take her there one day. That seemed so long ago, just one of those stolen meetings when they’d been together. He had told her that he loved her and that she was beautiful, more beautiful than any of the society girls that his family wanted him to marry.

  Hayes loved her. Kasia knew that her mother hadn’t believed her when she told her that they were deeply in love. Hayes had wept when he broke the news that he was being sent away. As soon as she had realized that she was going to have a baby, her thoughts had been tempestuous; one minute, she was eager for Hayes to know so that they could get married right away, the next minute fearful of what his family would say. But when she told him, and he had promised that he would marry her, she thought it was solved. Then had come the day when his parents told her to leave. She was no longer in their employ. She had been too distraught to know what to do and even now, the thought of him leaving her continued to grind away at every fiber of her being. They had managed one final, clandestine meeting and he had had tears in his eyes when he admitted that he was being sent away. She was alone. She hadn’t meant to react so emotionally when she saw Bonnie standing outside the stagecoach, but it was such a relief to see someone who wasn’t frowning at her in disapproval, that she’d run without thinking into Bonnie’s embrace.

  She was at least glad that Bonnie was here. Would they send her away, she wondered as she stared at the moon outside her window. Maybe it would be best if she died in childbirth and Bonnie could raise her baby, along with the child Bonnie was carrying. Bonnie would be a good mother. She wouldn’t let her sister’s baby forget its mother, even if it never knew her. Bonnie would know what to do. Bonnie was strong and certain of herself. She had traveled all the way to Texas because she wanted to, even though it meant marrying a stranger. Bonnie was brave. She loved her Texan now, but surely she had been uncertain along the journey, not knowing what she was getting into. But Bonnie hadn’t been in love with another man like Kasia was. Kasia could never marry the Texan, Will Henry, because she could only love one man.

  It didn’t matter that Hayes Gardner had sailed for Europe. He was the love of her life. Mama had mocked her for thinking that a Gardner would ever marry a miner’s daughter. She refused to listen when Kasia protested that Hayes was different, he wasn’t like his family. Mama said that rich people were all the same; they wiped the soles of their shoes on poor people.

  She didn’t want to think about those terrible arguments at home with Mama. Kasia got up out of the bed and went to the window, where the night was calm beneath the benign glow of the moon. It didn’t seem possible that Texas could be in the same country as Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh, people were huddled under their warmest blankets in winter, dreading when they needed to leave the comfort of the bed to brave the cold in the room. In Pittsburgh, at this time of year, the wind made people move faster as they walked, and the cold air hurried people to their homes. Coal was plentiful in southwestern Pennsylvania, but the houses were drafty and even inside, winter made its bitter presence known. Here, she could get up and not feel cold at all, not even her bare feet on the floor. It didn’t even feel like winter, even though
Christmas was coming.

  It was so easy to see the sky here. There was no smoke or soot to obscure the view, and the stars looked down from above as if they were God’s eyes, watching everyone and everything peacefully. Then she gasped. There was a man outside, walking across the rise of the landscape, his head low, his pace steady. What kind of man walked at night? Kasia shivered, thinking of the stories the children used to tell about unquiet spirits who walked the earth. He didn’t look like a spirit, she thought, standing on her tiptoes so that she could see more clearly. He did not look like what she thought an Apache or a Comanche would look like; she had heard about the tribes of the West who would take a woman’s scalp and cut out her nostrils and stab her in the belly and tear out her entrails. He did not look unquiet, either. Just solitary. He seemed to know where he was going; he never hesitated or stopped, or looked up. Who was he and why was he out there walking so late at night? Weren’t people afraid in Texas? Did they lock their doors in this Texas ranch, she wondered. It was something to ask Bonnie. Bonnie would know about the man who walked at night.

  Bonnie was happy, Kasia realized as the man walked out of sight, leaving her to an uninterrupted view of the still night. Bonnie had a husband who loved her, she was expecting a baby, and she belonged here. And she hadn’t . . . well, she hadn’t done what Kasia had done either. She’d waited until she was married, like a woman was supposed to do. But Hayes had said they’d be married eventually, and he’d kissed her, and one thing had led to another, until, all together, everything led her to Texas and Hayes to Europe.

  Kasia didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong in Pittsburgh. She was going to give birth to a baby that nobody wanted. But she wanted this baby. It was all she had of Hayes, and this poor baby, unwanted by others though it was, could not be taken away from her. Forgetting that just moments ago, she had contemplated her own death, Kasia’s eyes streamed with tears as she realized that she had to live so that her baby could have a place to belong. What was she going to do? Mama said that a baby born out of wedlock couldn’t be baptized, and couldn’t be sanctified. That baby was damned. She couldn’t doom a baby because she had sinned in the eyes of the church. It was something else to ask Bonnie.