Duncan stretched before releasing a long sigh. “Did you feed him?”
“Yes,” Elle said grouchily.
“Clean him?”
“Yes.”
“Why’s he crying then?”
She turned, and though it was too dark to be certain, Duncan could swear that she was glaring at him. “How the hell should I know?”
He smirked. Both of them loved to sleep as often as they could, and little Sam had been forcing them to cut back. It was tough, his fatigue heaviest within his skull. Stretching one more time, Duncan forced himself to get out of bed and assist his wife.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said over Sam’s wails. She leaned against Duncan when he wrapped a languid arm around her. “I’ve tried everything.”
Duncan peered down at his son and thought. “Ma used to give me whiskey when I was fussy.”
Elle reeled in his arms. “Really?”
He had to laugh. “You never heard of doing that?”
“No. That sounds dreadful!”
Duncan hummed at that, and let his mind drift for a bit. The piercing sounds of Sam’s cries were aggravating things he had actually started to get used to. He rubbed his jaw and yawned. “Well, I don’t know. You want to rock him?”
“I did that for hours.”
Duncan reached in the crib and ran his fingers over the baby’s arm. Sam was shaking his fists in the air as if the world had done him a great injustice, but before Duncan knew it, the baby was moving his little arms and grabbing Duncan’s finger. Duncan watched, mesmerized, as Sam slowly tugged his finger until it was inside the infant’s mouth.
Silence fell upon the house.
“Thank the Lord,” Elle breathed. “He just needed something to suck on.”
Duncan smiled down at his quiet boy. The moment was calm, affection warming Duncan’s heart and soothing him.
But then his back started to ache.
“Am I supposed to stay like this all night?” he whispered into Elle’s hair.
She snorted. “I guess so.”
He tightened his grip on her and pulled him to his chest. “You’re staying with me,” he said, grinning with a sense of triumphant.
She chortled softly before a big yawn got the better of her. Smacking her lips together, she rested her head beneath his chin. “Okay,” she said sleepily.
Duncan’s smile softened. The two most important, precious beings to him were within arm’s lengths. Just being near them…it was all that mattered. As uncomfortable and exhausted as he was, there was no other place he would rather be.
*****
THE END.
The Cowboy’s Bride
Mail Order Bride
CHRISTIAN MICHAEL
1876 Minnesota
John stood on the hill overlooking his home and smiled. It had been five years since he had left his small Minnesota town for the war and he had never thought he would have made it back alive. To be frank, he had all but prepared himself to come home in a body bag or box. His fiancé would have been the one to be handed the flag that would have been used to cover the box he arrived in and the theatrical sounds of sixty-one guns would have rung out as he was buried.
“Home sweet home,” he whispered on the cold winds that whipped around him. Oh, how he had missed being here. He had missed everything about being home, everything including the cold winters and early autumn winds that had always cut his summers short. He had missed it all.
With glee in abundance he slowly skipped his way down to the hillside and to the sprawling mansion that had been his family home. As an only child he had inherited it, but unsure carrying on his family’s legacy was what he had wanted to do for the rest of his life he had opted to go off to war. The family’s caretaker, Clive, had been the one left in charge of it all and by the looks of things as he walked onto the compound; he had done a fine job.
His father had died the year he had gone off to war and it had been the catalyst for his decision but that wasn’t the only thing that had made him go off. His mother’s refusal to accept the woman he loved had also been a motivating factor. Now five years later she had sent him a letter begging his forgiveness and stating that she had remarried, moved south and wanted nothing more than for him to be happy. It had been a burden lifted from his shoulders in a time when parental approval was necessary for almost everything.
“John!” An overjoyed Clive flung the brass doors to his house open and rushed out to him. The older man who walked with a limp covered ground faster than John would have thought was possible and his burly figure near knocked him on his rump. He dropped his duffel bag and embraced him with the kind of love that only family could share. His family had been many things, from cantankerous to deceitful and even downright filthy but the one bond that had held them together all these years was the fact that they valued loyalty. They valued every single bit of it and Clive had been heavily rewarded for his. This was a man who had been a friend, brother and a father to him and John could have been no happier than he was now at seeing him.
“I woke this morning and felt I was in for a change! For a grand surprise!” Clive said with happy laughs punctuating his every word. “I woke this morning and I felt in my bones that I would be in for some wonderful news and here you are!”
John laughed and pulled him in for a hug. “I am happy to see you too Clive. I have never been happier.”
“Welcome home Sir,” the man who had been his butler for years answered with respect. John would have told him that he needed not call him Sir, but he knew it would do no good. He had been telling the man that ever since he was a child and here he was twenty-nine years later still doing the same thing.
“How have you been?” he asked him as they walked into the foyer of the mansion and the familiar scents of family and home assaulted his nostril. He smelt the lavender incense his mother always burned filling the house and the paintings decorating the walls were the same. An old woman who was supposed to be his grandmother smiling down at him from the entrance and as always he wondered what it would have been like to know her. His father had been a gentle soul but a conniving one. He had always wondered if those were mannerisms he had learnt from his mother.
Maybe....maybe not, and he would never know for sure given that they were both dead.
“I have been good,” Clive was answering his question. “The last couple winters were horrible and I suspect this one will be just as cold but it has been wonderful.”
“And the estate?” he asked taking on a serious tone as he queried his finances. He wasn’t a superficial man but he would honour his father’s legacy.
“It has grown,” Clive said with a smile. “We have procured more lands to the east and we have bought a couple of the local businesses that were suffering and built them up. I have done as best as I could and I hope you will be pleased,” the man said and John could see he was searching for some sort of approval.
“I am sure I will be,” he said. “Have you married yet, Clive?” he asked with a smiled.
The man, whose neat sideburns were greying just the smallest bit, blushed in the most vulnerable of ways. “There was someone about two years after you left but she could not understand my dedication to this estate and so it did not work out.”
“Your dedication?” John asked, a bit surprised at the reason and worried his love with whom he had conversed every month would feel the same way. He got nervous at the prospect seeing that he was to be visiting her before the day’s end to put an end to the long wait for marriage to happen.
“Yes, she didn’t think it was healthy,” Clive said sadly. “I understood early out that we would not work and I ended it before we got too entangled.”
“So you have been alone in this big ole house?”
Clive laughed. He was good looking and a gentleman so his response was not a surprising one. “I have had the occasional company but nothing too serious.”
Marin smiled. “At least you weren’t alone. Maybe now tha
t I am home and intend to be married within the fortnight you will find more time on your hands to go wow the women who must no doubt be clamouring for your attentions.”
The solemn look that flashed across Clive’s face and stayed there was enough to tell him that something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
Clive walked to the bar in the foyer and poured them two very large shots of bourbon. “I think you will need to take a seat.”
“Tell me what it is!” he demanded ignoring the drink the man offered him but Clive would not be coerced into responding until he was ready.
“Drink your drink and let’s have a seat out front.”
John took the glass from the older man and waited until he exited the house to take a seat on the front steps. “What is it?” John asked him again and this time he dug for all the patience he had left in the deepest part of his soul and tried to wait on the response.
Clive’s grey eyes bore into the dark brown of his and he could feel the arrival of bad news before it even got to him. “She has taken up with someone else,” he said softly, looking away to the trees that swayed gently in the late summer winds.
“What?!”
“Emma, your betrothed. She has taken up with another man,” he repeated.
“Impossible! I wrote to her just three weeks ago saying I was coming home and we spoke for every single month that I was away.”
Clive looked at him in surprise. “But she has been married for two years and is now carrying his second child,” he said confused.
John lost all control of his fingers and the glass slipped from his hand breaking in echo to his heart in a million pieces. “Impossible...” he croaked around his throat that was tightening painfully.
“Do you wish to go see for yourself?” Clive asked and it took him a minute before he could nod. If it hurt this much hearing the news then he could only imagine how much more devastated he would be at seeing its reality.
“Take me,” he said calmly, knowing he would never be able to believe it until he saw it and even more was the fact that he would need closure. How could she? He had professed his love for her in each letter of every month that he had been away and she had echoed his every sentiment in her elegant hand writing that had been a solace to his aching soul. He had loved Emma for years and had been willing to defy the love of his other to be with her. Clive must be mistaken for there was no way she could have done him such a wrong.
They saddled their horses in silence and rode out at a gallop towards the town with Clive warning him to be calm and not create a scene when he found what he was being told to be true. Less than an hour later they hitched their horses to the post outside what was supposed to be her husband’s saloon and when he entered he would have fallen to his knees had Clive not stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
“Emma?” he questioned to the woman sporting a baby bum and a smile as gorgeous as he had remembered. Her long flowing hair that used to whip around when she walked was cut into a short bob and her eyes were now strangers to his soul.
“John?” she asked in shock, setting the tray she carried aside. Her smile disappeared and her eyes filled up with water. The whole diner went silent.
“Why?” he asked her around the tears in throat, forgetting to breathe as his heart broke yet again. “Why did you lie to me?”
She took a step towards him but he stepped away. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said sadly and a tear he did not believe in slipped down her face.
“So you lie to a man longing to come home to you, only to know I would return to this?”
“I am sorry,” she said and took another step towards him.
He held a hand up to stop her. “I have known that people could be cruel, but this...this tops them all,” he said and walked out of the diner.
Somewhere in the back of his head he heard her calling out to him but he could not make out the words she was saying and he was certain he did not want to hear them either. As fast as he had rode into town he made his way back home with Clive hot on his heels. When he got to the house he wasted no time grabbing his duffel bag and heading right back out.
“Where are you going?” Clive asked him saddened.
He hugged the man. “I cannot stay. Not now. You can give me a couple more months, can’t you?” he asked
Sadness filled the man’s eyes but he nodded. “Take all the time you need. Where will you go?”
“I think I will head to Texas. I have a friend there, Lenard Collard.”
“I don’t know of him,” Clive said.
John sighed. “We met in the war, he was a part of my platoon but he went home last year after a horrible accident. I think I will go see him and figure out if maybe Texas is as nice as they say it is.”
Clive hugged him again, but this time he didn’t hold on to him, “have fun and come home soon. I will miss you.”
“I will be back in two months,” he said and set off for a place where he hoped his heartache would be cured and maybe just maybe he would find himself a love of a lifetime.
***
Jemma sneezed for the third time in that day as she walked through the town. Her nose ached and she could feel a cold coming on yet again. This would be the second time in the two weeks since she had arrived in the cool hills of Minnesota that she would be sick.
"I will make you some soup as soon as we get home," her Auntie Jasmine said rubbing her back. Never before did she think she would have missed the dry acrid temperatures of the south. She was beginning to question her smarts as to why she had chosen to move a place so cold her first time. The town's doctor had made it clear that she wasn't in any ailing condition or suffering from some bug she might have picked up. She was simply adjusting to the thinner and colder air. She wished she would just adjust already.
She smiled in gratitude at her Aunt's suggestion and prayed it would be enough. She had drunk more soup in the last two weeks than she ever had in the last twenty odd years of her life. They turned into her small grocery store and Jemma immediately busied herself behind the store counter just as the rotund derriere of the town's gossip wheeled in with such flounder even the shelves could not help but be bothered.
"Josy! Josy!" The woman called for her Aunt. "Where is she?" She turned to Jemma and demanded.
"Good evening Mrs Hall," she pointed out politely that the woman had forgotten her manners. There was no return of a salutation and Jemma frowned at her in dismay. "She is in the back."
"What is all the raucous about Jane?" Her Aunt rushed out addressing the woman. Jemma rolled her eyes. She had come to find her Aunt was quite a likable woman but the need to gossip as much as Jane did was an annoying tiny bit and every now and then she found herself missing the humming of the pots and pans at the ranch as she would give them a washing for cooking. She missed Jenny's soft voice chattering away about nothing in general and Lenard's insistence on bothering her in the kitchen. But even then she liked Minnesota, the difference in culture and the people she found there. She paid the women no mind as they started chattering about a war veteran who had come home today to find his fiancé had off and married another man. Apparently they had all thought he was dead.
How cold and callous it must have been to find him in such a fix but yet these older women were amused by what must have been his heartbreak. She sighed and tuned them out as she went about restocking the empty shelves.
"Excuse me," a soft voice interrupted her musings and she turned to look at the freckled face of Megan Jones, a bit of an outcast in town having moved there for some unknown reason.
"Yes," Jemma said smiling at her. "How can I help you?"
"I am looking for honey but I can't seem to find a bottle on your shelf," the woman who must have been her own age looked away from her. Jemma had heard mean things being said about her too but this was the second time she had been around her and she found the girl quite nice to be around.
"We ran out this morning but I am due to go collect a few bottles from th
e farm down the road in an hour if you don't mind coming back."
Megan sighed and looked around at Ms. Hall who fixed her with a disdainful eye. "No, I am okay. Thank you."
Jemma watched her hurry from the store and then suffered a talk from the nosy woman. "Don't you be getting friendly with that girl. She is no good."
"And how do you know that?"
"People talk," Ms. Hall said with so much absolution Jemma was sure she thought that was explanation enough.
"I am not much of a fan of gossip, so I don't really care," she responded and grabbed her coat to head out after Megan.
"Hi, there!" She called to the woman who was walking with sagging shoulders through the town. "Take a walk with me to pick them up?"
Megan smiled and tried to decline but Jemma would not take no for an answer and so they walked in silence for fifteen minutes.
"You should boil some cerise tea for the cold you have coming on and put some lavender oil on your pillow. By morning it would be gone."
Jemma looked at her suspiciously. "That tea is as bitter as they come. I think I will pass."
Megan laughed. "Try it you won’t regret it."
They spoke about how she learnt of the powers of herbs and how she came to know so much. Jemma learned that the woman had worked with a botanist for most of her life. As they spoke she could feel a friendship blossoming and by the time they had collected the jars of honey and made their way back to the store they planned for lunch the next day. After two weeks she had finally made a friend and she wrote home to Jenny about her that night.
"Have you thought about marriage, Jemma?" Her aunt rudely interrupted their dinner hours later with her prying comments. "You aren't getting any younger, you know."
She was well aware of that fact and wanted to tell the woman that much but decided against being rude. It was not in her nature.
"I have," she responded trying to keep her calm, "but I want to find the perfect man."
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