His Mail-Order Bride

by Tatiana March

  Her whole face lit up in a smile—eyes shining, cheeks dimpling, lips parting to reveal a row of pearly teeth. To Thomas, that smile delivered more warmth than the sun in the sky.

  He took the egg from her, moved aside to prop it on the stack of logs.

  Charlotte darted to the next perch and looked back at him over her shoulder while she searched about with her hand. “I’ll get a little wicker basket to collect them in,” she told him, full of enthusiasm. “Is that the right way to do it? Or do I need to collect them in an apron?” She lifted a single eyebrow, the way he’d seen her do before. “How does a proper farm wife do it?”

  As she rummaged about without taking proper care, the egg rolled over the edge of the straw perch and crashed down to the dirt floor. Charlotte jumped back. She stared at the mess of broken shell and spreading white and yolk and uttered an unladylike word.

  Thomas tried not to laugh as he observed her fraught expression. Something moved inside him, an odd sense of tenderness, like a warm flicker in his chest. With a rueful smile, he said, “A proper farm wife does it without breaking the eggs.”

  * * *

  Four eggs! She had found four eggs, including the one she’d smashed. Now she knew what farming folk ate for breakfast. Thomas had told her that the hens laid an egg most days, except for the elderly Harrison. He’d warned her not to become attached, because if they wanted a proper Thanksgiving dinner, Harrison would end up in the pot.

  When he mentioned Thanksgiving, she fell into silence.

  Don’t spoil today by worrying about the future, she told herself.

  They took the eggs into the cabin. Thomas showed her one more time how to make coffee. Three spoonfuls. That was right. But the small spoons. Not the big. And level spoonfuls, not heaped. She was learning from her mistakes.

  The porridge dumpling sat heavy in their bellies and they only had coffee and dried biscuits for lunch. Then Thomas took her to meet the milk cow. Charlotte followed him into the shadowed barn. The smell was different on this side of the building. The chickens had an acrid odor, but the stable had a more fertile smell.

  “Muuu,” the animal greeted them.

  It was huge. An enormous lump of brown matted fur on four legs—legs that seemed far too spindly to bear its hulking weight.

  “Milking her will be your job,” Thomas said.

  Charlotte slid her terrified gaze from the cow to him and back again.

  “She’s called Rosamund.” Thomas walked up to the fur-coated brown monster and patted its flank.

  “Muuu,” went Rosamund.

  Charlotte eased closer, hiding behind Thomas. She peeked past him at the animal, which was straining its head toward them. “Does it bite, like horses?”

  “She won’t bite. You can pet her nose. Like this.”

  Following his example, Charlotte held a flattened hand in front of the huge pink nostrils. Cool, damp breath brushed against her skin. A wet, slippery nose nuzzled her palm. Startled by the touch, Charlotte pulled her hand away.

  “I guess you can’t just press a button and the milk will come out,” she said, eyeing the cow with a speculative look.

  “I’ll show you,” Thomas promised.

  She scooted backward, keeping safely behind Thomas as he moved away. He lifted a small wooden stool from a hook on the wall and set it down next to Rosamund. Then he turned toward her and pointed at the stool.

  He wanted her to sit there.

  Right under Rosamund’s huge belly.

  Charlotte inched forward. Don’t be a coward. She slipped onto the stool. The wide flank of brown fur filled her sights. Surely, the animal would crush her, if it decided it was tired and wanted to lie down.

  Thomas crouched behind her. His arms circling her, he reached for the pink udders that dangled from Rosamund’s belly. His hands curled around two of the teats.

  “You tighten your fingers one by one, starting from the top, and at the same time you pull your hand downward. Like this.” His hand moved. A thin stream of milk spurted into the straw.

  “You try,” he said.

  Charlotte leaned deeper beneath Rosamund’s sagging belly and fisted her hands around the udders. She tightened her fingers and pulled. Nothing happened. No stream of milk. She tried again. Rosamund made an angry noise and shifted her enormous hooves. Charlotte shrieked and toppled back on the stool. She would have fallen over, but strong arms closed around her, steadying her.

  She was lifted in the air. Thomas perched to sit on the milking stool and settled her between his muscled thighs. His arms on either side of her, he guided her hands back to Rosamund’s udders and laid his hands on top of hers. His body surrounded hers, even more completely than it had at night when they slept.

  Every trace of fear vanished. Rosamund was getting restless, grunting and stomping, but Charlotte could feel Thomas all around her—his chest against her back, his legs outside hers, his arms circling her. He was a barrier to keep away any threat of danger. As long as she sat snug in his lap, nothing could hurt her.

  His fists closed over hers. Fingers squeezed. One hand slid down. Milk rained into the straw. Thomas lifted his hands away from hers and she tried alone. Nothing. Rosamund protested, an unhappy bellow and the angry clomping of hooves.

  “That’s enough for today,” Thomas said. He eased back, his arm firm across her waist, and rose to his feet, lifting her with him. He held on to her for a moment longer, while she found her footing, and then he released her and stepped away.

  She turned toward him. “I can learn how to do it. I will learn.”

  He reached one hand to touch the curls by her face. “It’s not important.”

  The gentleness of the gesture, the soft acceptance in his voice flowed like a magic spell over Charlotte. The restless noises of the cow, the smells of the stable, everything seemed to fade away. She was only conscious of Thomas. His eyes held hers, and again she could see a sharp, almost painful longing in them, like she’d seen when he’d brought her home in the wagon across the desert.

  Something stirred within Charlotte. Something other than guilt. Respect. Admiration. Perhaps even envy. Thomas wanted so little in life. Just to grow enough food to survive on, and to live peacefully in his valley, with a wife by his side.

  For a moment, she almost hoped that she could be that wife. A temptation seized her, to lean into his touch, to rise up on her toes and move into him, to have his arms close around her in an embrace. To give something to him, instead of just taking from him—food, protection, guidance and affection.

  Rosamund let out another angry bellow. Thomas flinched, as if he too had drifted into some inner world, detached from reality. He made a small, fraught sound low in his throat and turned away to soothe the restless animal.

  Charlotte could feel her body trembling. What would have happened if the moment had not been broken? What was happening between them? Was it simply the idyll of two people isolated from others, like Adam and Eve, or was it more?

  She did not dare to think about it. She must keep her distance. Anything else would only cause more problems, bring deeper hurt when she returned home to Merlin’s Leap. And she would have to return, there was no question about it. Her duty was to her sisters, her responsibility as the firstborn something she must never forget.

  As they left the barn and crossed the sunlit yard to the paddock where two horses grazed, Thomas’s words played on Charlotte’s mind. It’s not important, he’d said when she promised she would learn how to milk Rosamund.

  It’s not important. As if he was resigned to her being incompetent, unable to deal with the farm chores. She would learn. Otherwise she would be nothing but a burden to him.

  Chapter Seven

  Charlotte sat at the long table in the parlor and composed a letter to her sisters. It had to say everything witho
ut revealing anything. Thomas had gone out to work on the vegetable patch after showing her the horses—the chestnut cart horse called Trooper and a blue roan quarter horse called Shadow.

  The sun was low in the sky by the time Charlotte was happy with her efforts. She hurried to read the letter one more time before sealing it in the envelope. It was addressed to her—Charlotte Fairfax.

  Dear Charlotte,

  I hope this letter finds you in good health, and that you remember me, Miss Emily Bickerstaff, from those few weeks you spent at the Boston Academy for Young Ladies, before you returned home to be educated by a governess.

  I am writing on behalf of another student, Maude Jackson, whom you never met as she joined the Academy a year later. Her name is Maude Greenwood now. Her husband is a pioneer in the frontier region of our country. They live in Gold Crossing, Arizona Territory, and their hometown is the reason why I am writing to you now.

  Teachers are very difficult to recruit out in the West. Mrs. Greenwood has contacted me to see if I might be interested in a position, but unfortunately I need to care for my elderly mother. However, it occurred to me that you might be interested in an adventure out in the territories.

  If you are not in need of a position, perhaps your younger sister might be. I believe you mentioned she is only two years younger and has benefited from the same education. I am afraid I don’t recall her name. However, if she were interested in traveling out West, Mrs. Greenwood would be extremely grateful to hear from her, as would everyone in the town of Gold Crossing.

  Yours truly,

  Miss Emily Bickerstaff

  Charlotte let her mind stray back to the few miserable weeks she’d spent at the Boston Academy for Young Ladies. The formal, rule-driven world of the school had felt stifling, full of petty jealousies. The secluded valley that now surrounded her reminded her of the happy home Merlin’s Leap had once been.

  She cast aside her memories and raked one final glance over the letter. That would have to do. She daren’t give any more details. Annabel would figure it out, and her sisters would write to her, addressing the letter to Maude Greenwood, care of the Post Office, Gold Crossing, Arizona Territory.

  She had considered making the sender Maude Jackson, with just a mention of Emily Bickerstaff as a mutual friend, but that might arouse suspicion in Cousin Gareth, for young ladies of quality did not write to each other without getting an introduction first.

  The biggest problems with the letter were the lack of sender’s address and the prospect the post office might put marks on the envelope, revealing it had come all the way from the West. She hoped those would escape Cousin Gareth’s notice, and that he would be too lazy to seek out Emily Bickerstaff to verify the facts.

  Charlotte folded the sheet, slipped it into the envelope and sealed the flap, just in time, for heavy footsteps echoed across the porch. The instant the door flung open, she bounced up to her feet and waved the letter in the air.

  “I’ve written to my sisters. When can you go and post it?”

  Thomas strode over to the kitchen counter and used the dipper to drink from the pail. Charlotte could see hurt and disappointment in the way he averted his face. Of course, he would have liked to have seen what she’d written, to be included in the family connection. However, it was just as important that he remained ignorant of the contents of the message.

  She had hesitated before addressing the letter to herself. Thomas might study the envelope, see the name Charlotte and be puzzled by it. It couldn’t be helped. It was more important to throw Gareth off her track. His suspicions were more likely to arise if a letter came for Miranda, who had never been away from home and was unlikely to have friends Gareth didn’t know about.

  For Cousin Gareth would intercept the letter. Charlotte had no doubt of it. However, in his efforts to discover her whereabouts, he was bound to share the contents with Annabel and Miranda, hoping to get some clues from their reaction. It was something Charlotte could not predict for certain, but it was a gamble she had to take.

  Thomas wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Is the letter important?”

  “Not really,” Charlotte told him. “But I’d like my sisters to know that I’ve arrived safely and that the wedding has taken place.”

  “I’ll ride into town tomorrow.”

  “There’s no need to make a special trip.”

  “We need a few things from the mercantile anyway, and it’s only an hour’s fast riding. It takes longer in the cart.” Thomas held out his hand. “I’ll leave at first light tomorrow. If you give me the letter now, I’ll get my saddlebags ready.”

  Charlotte felt her heartbeat quicken. She couldn’t meet Thomas’s eyes as she handed him the letter. He took it, studied the envelope. When he lifted his gaze back to her, a troubled furrow lined his brow, but he did not ask why her sister was called Charlotte Fairfax.

  Charlotte prayed in her mind for him to remain silent. If he asked, she could tell him her middle name was Charlotte and she used it because she disliked Maude, and her sister was also called Charlotte and she was married to a man named Fairfax, but the thought of adding to her lies filled her with shame.

  The silence in the cabin went on and on until it grew oppressive. Like so many times during the day, Charlotte could feel Thomas’s assessing gaze lingering on her slim waist. The denim trousers made the flatness of her belly even more obvious.

  He suspects. The thought flashed through her mind.

  With a bright smile that hid her ill conscience, Charlotte hurried up to the kitchen cupboards. Chattering like a demented magpie, she banged doors and shuffled cardboard boxes and glass jars and small burlap sacks.

  “I see that you mostly have dry goods,” she said. “Do you know, they are preserving things in metal cans now? Meat and fruit and even fish. Not in glass jars, like people do at home, but in metal cans.”

  “I read the newspapers,” Thomas said. “When I can afford one.”

  Charlotte fell silent. She’d already seen the small pile of carefully preserved back issues of the Arizona Citizen and the San Francisco Call. There had even been a copy of the Matrimonial News, with some advertisements circled in pencil.

  “I know.” She spoke into the depths of the cupboard. “I wasn’t implying that you’re a country yokel. I simply assumed that such things may not have arrived here, because of the cost of transport.”

  Thomas didn’t reply. Charlotte stole a glance at him over her shoulder. He was rubbing a hand over his eyes.

  “Are you tired?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “I’ll cook for you.”

  “I’ll cook. I’m more hungry than I’m tired.”

  There it was again. The dismissal that suggested she might be a pretty face but useless otherwise. Didn’t he realize how much she wanted to be of help to him? Didn’t he see how hard she was trying?

  Charlotte shook off the surge of frustration. It was too nice an evening to brood, with a chorus of birdsong coming in through the open front door and the last rays of the sun gilding the grass and the trees. “Fine,” she said, her spirits rallying. “But tomorrow, after you are back from town, you must show me how to irrigate the fields, and then I can help you with the task.”

  * * *

  Thomas stopped fighting the doubts as he rode home from Gold Crossing where he’d gone to post Charlotte’s letter. The envelope—the contents of which his wife had taken care to conceal from him—had been addressed to Charlotte Fairfax, Merlin’s Leap, Boston, Massachusetts.

  He’d married Maude Jackson from New York City.

  And yet his wife had asked him to call her Charlotte, and now it appeared that her sister was also called Charlotte, but with a different last name, Fairfax. Perhaps the sister was married, or they were half sisters, with a different father.

  But t
here was more to it. Several times, he’d caught his wife talking about Boston when she referred to her home in the East. When she noticed the slip, she’d made some flimsy explanation about having moved from one city to another.

  Who was she?

  Was she Maude Jackson? If so, why did she answer to Charlotte?

  Was she Charlotte Fairfax? If so, why write a letter to herself?

  And the pregnancy? However hard he looked, he could see no sign that she was with child. Weren’t women supposed to have funny cravings for food? And morning sickness?

  But each time Thomas pondered the matter, he came to the same conclusion: being in the family way outside marriage brought such shame, no woman would tell such a lie. Lies went the other way round, denying a pregnancy.

  The photograph of Maude Jackson burned like a silent protest in his pocket, adding to his turbulent thoughts. More and more he felt unable to reconcile the plain features and pinched expression in the picture with the beauty he’d married.

  Thomas could only come to one conclusion.

  For some reason, his wife was deceiving him.

  The old pain flared up inside him. The pain of being excluded, of not being worthy, of being rejected. He’d grown up wanting to belong, wanting to be loved, and now a fear surged inside him, a premonition that nothing had changed for him.

  He was being used, and he didn’t know why, or even exactly how. Perhaps his wife had contracted to the marriage as a temporary solution, to conceal her pregnancy from family and friends, and she planned to leave him as soon as the baby was born.

  As the thought formed in his mind, an idea struck him.

  If she planned to leave, might she let him keep the child?

  Resolve hardened within Thomas. Even if he failed to hold on to his wife, he’d fight to be a father to the child. That might help him heal—saving another human being from the burden of growing up unwanted and unloved.

  * * *

  Thomas found Charlotte waiting for him on the porch steps, dressed in her boy’s clothing, a pair of big rubber boots weighing down her movements, like anchors on her feet.