His Mail-Order Bride

by Tatiana March

  When she finally woke up, Thomas was already gone. According to Dottie Timmerman, he’d fetched his horse and ridden out at the first glimmer of dawn. That afternoon the widows and orphans had arrived on the train, and since then Gold Crossing had been as if a hurricane was sweeping through the town.

  Twice in the past fortnight—once on a Thursday and once during the Fourth of July celebrations—Charlotte had seen Thomas ride in on Shadow, but both times she’d been surrounded by a crowd of unruly children, unable to have a private conversation with him.

  Why had he tried to kiss her? Had he forgiven her? She longed to ask Gus Junior about the other mail-order bride Thomas was supposed to have sent for, but pride kept her silent.

  “Miss Jackson, can we go now? It’s Thursday.”

  It was little Jessica, one of her pupils, the one who showed the most promise on the path of learning. The other children had caught on to it and always sent Jessica to ask for concessions, such as ending the lessons early when the train was due.

  “Go,” Charlotte said. “And it is Switzerland. Remember that. Switzerland, to the east of France and to the north of Italy.”

  She was talking to their backs. The little monsters were already trooping out of the classroom. Charlotte went after them to close the schoolhouse door and then she collapsed to sit on the nearest desk.

  She had eight children in her school, six boys and two girls, aged from seven to twelve, and none of them were the least bit interested in learning, except perhaps little Jessica. Most of them were out of the city for the first time in their lives. They didn’t want to be shut up in a classroom, at least not on sunny summer days.

  Two widows had accompanied the orphans. Mrs. Duckworth, a rail-thin redhead in her fifties, was a stout defender of moral values. She had already made friends with Miss Gladys Hayes. It was clear that Mrs. Duckworth would make no contribution to Art Langley’s revival plan for the town—that the miners would marry the widows and start families, which would add to the population.

  The other widow, Mrs. Perkins, was a pretty, voluptuous blonde in her late twenties. Her son, Timothy, a half orphan, was one of the children she was teaching. Mrs. Perkins might prove that the revival plan was feasible after all. Two prospectors were already courting her. The mercantile had ordered chocolates and little trinkets that were suitable as sweetheart gifts.

  Out in the distance, Charlotte could hear the shrill whistle of the arriving train, but instead of going to watch she got on with chores. She needed to mend the green wool skirt she had scorched against the potbellied stove. The schoolroom was so small she was always bumping into things. She had barely finished the task and pulled the skirt back on when someone came banging on the door.

  “Miss Jackson! Miss Jackson.”

  Charlotte recognized the voice of Timothy Perkins, her most unruly pupil.

  She went to the door, opened it. “What is it, Timothy?” The boy’s mother insisted that he be called by his full name, not Tim or Timmy.

  “There’s a man who wants you at the Imperial Hotel.” Timothy spun on a grimy bare heel and hurried off.

  With the arrival of the children, Gus Junior’s monopoly on messenger services had been broken. Gus Junior was now dedicating himself full-time to newspaper publishing. The Informer came out at random intervals, whenever Gus Junior came across some piece of news that he hoped people might be willing to pay for.

  Puzzled, Charlotte made her way to the Imperial Hotel. The lobby was crowded. Mrs. Perkins was having afternoon tea with one of her suitors. Mrs. Duckworth and Miss Hayes were on chaperone duty. Art Langley was playing solitaire at the counter. Gus Junior was hawking the latest issue of the Informer at the little newsstand he’d set up in the corner.

  There was one more occupant, a well-dressed stranger who sat alone at a table near the door. Small and slender, with a beaked nose and receding chin, he had a pair of nervous eyes that flitted about. He cast a quick glance in her direction. Appearing to lose interest in her, he resumed drumming his fingertips against the tabletop.

  Timothy ran to the man. The child stuck out his cupped hand in an unmistakable gesture of demand and pointed at Charlotte with his other hand.

  The stranger’s darting eyes snapped wide. Incredulity flickered across his features. He jumped to his feet, charged up to Charlotte, grabbed the bodice of her pale gray blouse with both hands and shook her hard enough to make her teeth rattle.

  “What have you done with Maude?” Hysteria edged his voice. “Where is Maude?”

  Dear God. For once in her life, Charlotte regretted that despite her frail appearance she possessed a sturdy constitution. She would have given anything to escape into a swoon.

  Art Langley dropped his playing cards and hurried over. “Is there a problem?”

  The stranger shoved Charlotte aside and turned to face the room. “Is there a problem? Is there a problem?” he yelled to everyone at large. “This woman is not Maude Jackson.”

  “Please.” She touched the man’s shoulder. “I can explain.”

  He ignored her calming gesture and drew a pistol from beneath his suit jacket. He didn’t aim the barrel of the gun at her, or at anyone else in the room. He just flung his hands about, carelessly waving the weapon in the air.

  “Where is Maude?” His eyes rolled in his head, the whites flashing, like on a horse about to bolt. “What have you done to her?”

  Charlotte swept a frantic glance around the room. Art Langley had eased back to the reception counter, where he kept a short-barreled shotgun. The man sitting opposite Mrs. Perkins had pushed aside the lapel of his coat. His fingers fondled the handle of a revolver in a leather holster at his hip.

  Since the Sam Renner incident, and since the arrival of the widows and orphans, the previously somnolent little town of Gold Crossing seemed to have plunged right back into the lawless frontier era of a decade ago. Even Gus Junior wanted to carry a gun, in defiance of his father’s orders.

  Footsteps. The creak of timbers on the porch. Charlotte turned around to look just as the doors swung open. A man appeared on the threshold, tall and broad, a hat in his hand. Golden hair glinted in the sun.

  Thomas.

  Of course. It was Thursday. He usually came into town on Thursdays. And now he stood there, silhouetted against the bright daylight, his broad chest filling the door frame, making him into a target even the most incompetent of shooters would find difficult to miss.

  As far as Charlotte knew, Thomas didn’t possess a sidearm, only a rifle for hunting, and he didn’t carry it around town. He was unarmed, defenseless, and once again she had brought danger upon him.

  “What have you done to Maude?” the stranger yelled, spinning back to face Charlotte. His eyes glittered with a crazed look. Even when he didn’t speak, his mouth was working, as if he needed to chew up every breath he inhaled.

  Scowling at Charlotte, the man waved the gun in his hand. When Charlotte didn’t reply, he followed the direction of her anguished look, and understood she’d been staring at the newcomer who stood on the doorstep. Jumping to the wrong conclusions, the man aimed his cocked pistol at Thomas.

  “Where is she?” he screamed. “Where is Maude?”

  Charlotte could see Thomas tense his muscles, getting ready to tackle the deranged stranger. In her mind, she saw him leap forward, saw the bullet puncture his chest, saw a crimson stain spread on the front of his shirt. She had to speak up now. It was no use hoping for a more private moment.

  “Dead,” she said in a voice that rasped with terror. “Miss Jackson died from an overdose of laudanum on the train to Chicago. I stole her tickets. She is dead. Dead by her own hand because some man abandoned her, leaving her all alone with a baby growing in her belly.”

  As soon as she’d blurted out the words, Charlotte winced. She’d spoken without thought, out of turn. The
secret of poor Miss Jackson had not been hers to reveal to the world. But she’d been angry on the woman’s behalf, angry on behalf of every woman who had shared the same desperate fate.

  The stranger collapsed to the floor. He huddled down on his knees, rocking back and forth. “I’m the one.” His harsh, guttural sobs echoed around the room. “I am...the one...who abandoned her...”

  The lobby hushed into silence, like a stage play interrupted. Only the stranger crumpled on the floor by Charlotte’s feet kept talking. He rocked his body to and fro on the floor, his frantic gasps forming into words. “My father...didn’t approve... She was only a maid...maid in my father’s...house... Oh, Lord... killed her... I killed her...”

  Suddenly, his slumped form stirred into motion. His hand came up to his head. The barrel of the gun lined up against his temple. “I killed her...killed her.”

  From the corner of her eye, Charlotte caught a blur of motion as Thomas lurched forward and dived down toward the man. His right arm curled around the stranger’s shoulders while his left arm flung upward and dislodged the gun from the man’s clasp just as the weapon fired.

  The shot reverberated around the lobby. The acrid smell of gunpowder exploded into the air. The gun clattered down and skidded along the floorboards.

  Feminine screams. The scrape of chairs. Blood trickled from a jagged wound at the top of Thomas’s arm. The man sitting opposite Mrs. Perkins leaped out of his seat and snatched up the fallen gun. The deranged stranger slumped against Thomas’s chest. It seemed as if the two of them were embracing, the way they knelt facing each other on the floor, with Thomas’s arms around the man to stop him from toppling over.

  “Get the doctor,” Charlotte shouted. She rushed up to Thomas, bent over him, pressed her hand to the bleeding wound at the top of his arm. Her head swiveled about, left and right, searching the crowd of stunned spectators for someone who could help.

  She spotted Timothy Perkins. “Timmy, get the doctor.”

  The boy didn’t move. He remained hovering between the tables, eyes gleaming with fascination. “Silver dollar, Timmy,” Charlotte called out. “A whole silver dollar if you fetch Dr. Timmerman.”

  The boy glanced in her direction, came to life and edged toward the door, the power of commerce more potent than the lure of watching the unfolding spectacle.

  Beneath her hands Charlotte felt Thomas move as he adjusted the weight of the man leaning against him. He tipped his head back to look up at Charlotte and sent her a shadow of a smile.

  “I’m fit to walk,” he told her. “And stop what you’re doing, pressing down on my wound. It hurts.” Rising to his feet, he slid the stranger’s arm over his shoulders and draped the inert body against his side.

  “Is he dead?” Timothy called from the door.

  “Fainted,” Thomas said. “Run along. Tell the doc we’re on our way.”

  Charlotte watched Thomas haul the unconscious stranger toward the entrance. Her pulse was racing, her body trembling. Her breath came in rapid bursts. She tried to follow Thomas out into the street but someone grabbed hold of her and shoved her into a chair.

  She didn’t resist. The room dimmed around her, a swoon perilously close. But even then, she couldn’t ignore the truth that had revealed itself while she saw the stranger’s gun aimed at the big blond man standing in the doorway.

  She’d never felt such fear, such agony of loss.

  She was in love with Thomas Greenwood.

  Perhaps she’d already known it when she sobbed against his chest after he rescued her from Sam Renner, or when he tried to kiss her in Doc Timmerman’s treatment room. Or even earlier, when she walked out of his valley because she couldn’t bear to bring ridicule upon him.

  She loved him.

  She had denied the knowledge because she had felt her duty was to her sisters, but what grown woman put her sisters before a husband, before a family of her own? Miranda was feisty and would forge her own path, and Annabel would grow up and mature to find her own way in the world.

  She needed to leave her sisters to follow their own destinies. She needed to make Thomas understand. Understand and forgive her. And it would help their future if she could stop bringing deranged madmen to attack him.

  * * *

  For an instant, Charlotte believed she might truly have succumbed to a swoon. Around her, voices soared around the hotel lobby, but she could not make out a single word. She wanted to go to Thomas, but every time she tried to rise from the chair, someone pushed her back into it.

  People came and went. Finally, when her head had cleared enough for her to flap aside the concerned hands of everyone and get up to her feet, Art Langley pulled her aside.

  “I’ve got Mr. Wakefield upstairs.”

  “Mr. Wakefield?”

  “The man who came looking for Miss Jackson. He had only lost consciousness. Doc Timmerman looked him over and let him go.” When she tried to break away and head for the door, Art scowled at her. “Mr. Wakefield has questions for you.”

  Of course. Charlotte swallowed. More than anything, she wanted to go to Thomas. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him that she wanted to live with him in his secluded valley, away from the rest of the world. She wanted to be a farm wife with chickens and a milk cow and a strong, steady husband who slept by her side every night.

  It didn’t matter if her name was Maude Jackson or Charlotte Fairfax.

  She wanted to be Mrs. Thomas Greenwood.

  Charlotte sighed and let her heavy mantle of duty settle on her shoulders. She might want to go and see Thomas, but she owed it to the stranger to tell him as much as she could. He deserved better apologies and explanations than the angry words she had flung at him in front of the curious crowd.

  She clasped Art’s arm. “Thomas. How is he?”

  “It was just a flesh wound. The doc’s patched him up. One more incident, the doc says, and he’ll give Greenwood wholesale rates. Greenwood is resting in the doc’s spare room. You can see him after you’ve spoken to Mr. Wakefield.”

  Art led her upstairs, where the stranger huddled in an overstuffed armchair. His eyes were red rimmed, his face ashen. Charlotte sat in another chair beside him, introduced herself by her real name and told him everything she could remember.

  “It’s my fault,” Mr. Wakefield said, sobbing.

  “Not yours alone,” she consoled him. “Your father shares the blame, for rejecting her. And if Miss Jackson had waited for you, if she’d had more faith in you...” Charlotte groped in her mind for the right words of comfort. “I’m sure she knows now, in heaven, that you came after her. That in the end you stood by her and would have married her and taken care of her and the baby.”

  Mr. Wakefield’s weeping showed no sign of ceasing. “At first...I thought she’d died on the train...like you said... A body of a pregnant woman was found... But then some other man came...identified the dead woman as his cousin... Some rich man...from a Boston seafaring family... The police sent for him because he had reported his cousin missing and they found a silver cross on the body with the missing woman’s name and a birth date engraved on it...”

  A shiver ran over Charlotte. Of course. Cousin Gareth. The silver cross she had hung around the neck of poor Miss Jackson, like a blessing, had led him to her trail. For on the back of the cross an engraving said Charlotte, 4th May.

  Now she understood how it had come about that Cousin Gareth had been able to claim the body of Miss Jackson as hers, and why she was presumed dead, just as Miranda had indicated in her reply to the Emily Bickerstaff letter.

  But Cousin Gareth must know she was alive. There was no possibility that Miss Jackson, who had straight, light brown hair, and who stood several inches taller and weighed at least thirty pounds more, could be mistaken for her.

  Clearly the mistake had been deliberate. But wh
y had Gareth done it? What was his plan? Did he continue to pin his intentions on her, or had he now revised his plan and set his sights on Miranda?

  Charlotte’s hands tightened in her lap. If only she knew more of what was going on at Merlin’s Leap! She’d been wrong to think her escape did not put her sisters in danger, but it was too late to regret it now.

  Miranda is strong, Charlotte consoled herself. She’ll manage Cousin Gareth better than I ever could. She wished she could write or telegraph, asking for news, but it would only serve to raise suspicion. Her sisters knew her address and would write when they could. She would just have to wait to hear from them.

  Brushing aside her own worries, Charlotte focused on the distraught young man sitting beside her. “Mr. Wakefield,” she said. “There has been a mistake. It is my doing, but I hope something good has come from it. My cousin claimed the body of Miss Jackson, assuming it was me. The body is buried in the cemetery at Merlin’s Leap, my home in Boston. Your fiancée is buried in consecrated ground, and my sisters mourn for her. They know it is not me in that grave. It is Miss Jackson they pray for, which means she is not alone in death.”

  “How could your cousin make such a mistake? Has he never met you?”

  “He has, Mr. Wakefield. Indeed, he has. And I am sure he made no mistake. I believe he did it on purpose. I think it may be part of his intrigue about the family fortune—a fact that I implore you to keep a secret. People in Gold Crossing don’t know I come from wealth. If they did, one of the miners might sell me out to the Pinkerton detectives I expect are following on my trail.”

  Mr. Wakefield’s nervous eyes ceased their flickering. He swallowed, a quick ripple of his pointed throat. Then a faint smile. “So my family is not the only one to put money before happiness and the lives of others...”

  “Certainly not.” Charlotte drew a calming breath. “Mr. Wakefield, I expect you will wish to visit the grave of Miss Jackson, and I would be happy to give you directions to Merlin’s Leap, but I beg you, until my birthday next year, until May fourth, could you pretend it is me you are visiting? I shall write to my sisters and let them know you might be coming. Then, once I have returned home, we can replace the headstone and have the name of Miss Jackson engraved on it.”