by Sky Winters
But he did not need to know that at present.
He buried his head in his hands. “Then it’s true,” he said, running his fingers through his hair and mussing it up even more. “It’s all over. I’ve lost.”
Annabel raised her eyebrows at him and sat beside him on the couch. “What are you talking about?”
“The BET!” Jasper cried miserably. “Clayton bet me that I could not convince you to marry me and be my homestead wife, and that I could not stop myself from…taking your maidenhood before two months were up. Oh, I was doing so well!” He was so upset at himself that he almost started to cry.
Annabel, on the other hand, found it hard to be sympathetic. “You married me on a BET?” she asked him. Her pretty face pinkened for a different reason now. “Why, I have never been so insulted in all my life!”
She stood up from the couch, gathered her skirts and went off in a huff to her bedroom. It had only been a joke, teasing him about making love, but it had backfired and all this time, he had merely been using her to… To what? Win some money? He had been using her like she was a common trollop! Why could he not have simply married one of his saloon floozies? They would have sufficed just as well, though perhaps it was because he had to marry an actual lady.
Her blood was boiling as she quickly packed up her things. She rushed out of the house and went to the stables, borrowing a cart for her suitcase and tying it to Penelope’s bridle.
“Anna, wait!” Jasper called, hurrying after her and catching his breath in the doorway of the stable. “Please don’t go. Don’t you see? It’s all over, and I still want you.”
She glared icily at him, tossing her auburn curls over one shoulder and climbing up onto her horse. “Don’t you ‘Anna’ me. You’re right about it being over. I never want to see you again.” She started to cry and it hurt her so much; the tears were real this time. She realized he had broken her heart. He may have only been into this marriage because he wanted to win a bet, but she had been looking forward to being his wife. She would have enjoyed it. Even without servants.
With a sniffle, she slapped the reins against Penelope and was off towards the train station. Jasper got onto the back of his horse and rode behind her, keeping her in view although she was riding quite fast. He whistled a bit, impressed even more with her. She had to see that he loved her for real. Now that the bet was over, he could see that. He could feel it. He did not need eight hundred dollars. What he needed was her.
“Aw, hell,” he said under his breath, kicking at his horse’s sides to try to move faster.
Annabel got off her horse and rushed over to the ticket counter. “One way ticket to Boston, please,” she said, out of breath. She handed over the money and took her ticket before picking up her bags from the waiting horse’s cart. She kissed the horse’s nose. “Goodbye, Penelope,” she said sorrowfully, tears still in her eyes. “I will miss you, good girl.”
She walked to the train and was just about to board when she heard a familiar voice hollering to her. Turning, she saw Jasper riding his horse to the station. He appeared even more bedraggled now. He got off his horse in front of her, getting his foot stuck in one of the stirrups.
“What in the world?” Annabel asked, feeling like laughing and crying at the same time. She took a hold of Jasper and helped to get him untangled from the saddle. “What are you doing here?”
He took her hand, looking into her eyes. “Please, Annabel. Don’t leave me. I love you with all of my heart, I swear it. Fact, the only thing good about that damned bet is that it led me to you… Now don’t be so mad at me. I love you. I want you to be my wife, hang everything else. I’ll stop drinking, I’ll stop going to those saloons.”
She looked into his eyes and she could tell that he was telling her the truth. “Oh, Jasper,” she said, crying happy tears. “I want you to be my husband.” She kissed him and threw her arms around him. People standing on the platform started to applaud the happy couple. Annabel giggled against his ear. “I chose you to be my husband because I thought you sounded fun and it would displease my parents the most,” she confessed in a whisper. “So I guess we were both wrong.”
Jasper smiled down at her, shaking his head a little. “But we’re both right now, that’s all that matters.”
He tied her luggage to his horse and they got back up onto their steeds, holding each other by one hand and riding to the chapel together.
They barely let the minister get his words out, so ready were they to shout, “I do!” Once the short ceremony was over and they were officially married, they kissed each other passionately.
“I have another confession to make,” she said, biting her lip a little bit.
Jasper beamed at his new wife. “What’s that?” he asked. “We’re in a church; there ain’t no better place for a confession.”
Now that they were married, they had nothing to fear about each other, but Annabel was worried that he would be mad at her for lying about sleeping together. “I- It’s about my maidenhood,” she said softly when the minister was out of earshot. “I lied to you before, which was wrong of me and I’m sorry… We did not make love that night. I was only teasing you.”
He blinked at her in surprise and suddenly grinned. “You mean I win the bet??”
Annabel sighed and nodded, smiling a dimpled smile at him. “What is it that you win?”
“Aw, mostly my pride,” he said. “And a check for eight hundred dollars.”
She stared at him and mouthed the amount again, liking the way it sounded. Even though it had irked her that he had gone into the marriage for the wrong reason, that was a lot of money. “Wow,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m worth a small fortune.”
Jasper kissed her again. “You’re priceless.”
They went to the saloon to find Clayton, Billy and Jasper’s other friends. It did not take long to find them sitting around a table, playing poker. The pile of money and other valuables was high, and Jasper licked his lips a little but did not give in to the temptation to join them. “I would like to announce to all you reprobates that Jasper Daniels has taken a wife. Meet Mrs. Annabel Daniels, the beauty from Boston and horse riding extraordinaire!”
“Well,” Clayton said, clapping him on the back. “I’m impressed. You have the most beautiful homestead wife in all of Jefferson County. Now you only have to wait about one more month and then we’ll see if you’ve won.”
Jasper cuddled Annabel to him, kissing her on each of her cheeks, which made her giggle. “I’ve already won,” he said.
She took him aside. “Jasper, I think we should go for it,” she whispered. “I think we ought to win that check. You see, I promised my parents that I would send them along some money as soon as I was married, to help them pay their debts. It is a silly thing that we don’t have to do, but… I want to.”
He looked lovingly into her eyes. He could not say no to her, not even if he wanted to. Were it not for the booze that night, he very well might have taken her to bed and then who knew what would have happened. She had saved the day by getting him drunk, and by teasing him so unfairly. “My days of drinking and playing cards and getting up to no good in these saloons are over,” he said. “But I promise that I will help you help your parents.”
Everyone in the bar raised their glasses in celebration, and the music began to play ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow.’ “To Mrs. and Mr. Daniels,” Billy announced. “May we all be so lucky!”
“To Mrs. and Mr. Daniels!” everyone shouted, drinking.
Jasper ordered two glasses of water for himself and Annabel. He was serious about becoming a better, cleaner man for her. She was his priceless prize and he was not going to risk losing her ever again.
The din of the saloon was almost too much for him, and he realized what it must have seemed like when she arrived there in search of him. He had never noticed before how loud it got, or how smoky the air became when bachelors gathered around to drink, gamble and be merry.
“When Cla
yton gives me the check in a month,” he told her, clinking water glasses with her. “I promise to send it along to your parents. My days of betting are over.”
“And your days of bedding will soon begin,” she said with a smile and a wink.
She knew full well what she did to him, and he could not get enough of it.
The End
Once Upon A Bride
Standing on the train station at the foothills of the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains, Eleanor looked around for some sign of the man she had been penning letters with for months. His name had been Danny Turnbull. He had sounded so attractive in print, and so different from the life she had led back home in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her life had been hard up until this point. She did not have much in the world to her name. She was a textile worker, but she had big dreams of moving out west and being married to someone who could save her from the factory life, and give her the love and support that a girl of twenty years craved.
Danny Turnbull had told her that he was a gold miner. That appealed to her greatly, because gold was surely not something she had before. He promised her that, if she paid for her train ticket, he would pay her back as soon as she arrived. He said that he did not trust the mail to handle his money, so he had not sent it to her directly. His letters always contained such kind words, that she agreed to pay for the train with her solace being that he would pay her back upon arrival.
However, when she arrived at the train station that night, he was nowhere to be found. At least, no one fitting his description could be seen.
A sudden snap of twigs on the ground behind her made her turn around. A man came up to her, dressed all in black with a handkerchief covering the bottom of his face. She was all set to holler when he cut her off by speaking gruffly. “You Eleanor Whitman?”
Too frightened to speak, she simply nodded. How did this bandit or highway robber or whatever he was know her name?
“I’m Danny,” he replied, lowering his mask so she could see his sly grin. He had a black mustache and beady eyes that also appeared black to her in the dusk light. He did not look like a trustworthy man at all.
She loosened her hold on her suitcase and it fell to the ground. “No,” she said. “You can’t be. The Danny who was writing to me is a wealthy gold miner!”
He laughed. “I never said I worked in no mines. Let’s see what gold you’ve got in your bag there.” As he moved toward her to grab her suitcase, she screamed loudly. The sound of it echoed through the mountain’s hills, but no one in this strange county of Tuolumne came to her rescue. Quickly, she had to make the choice between rescuing her belongings from this horrible bandit or fleeing.
Since he was a great, big man with a gun, and she was a young girl with no defenses of her own, the choice was clear. She ran away, leaving her last personal belongings in his hands. He would find no money there, however. Eleanor had spent the last of her wages from the textile factory on this trip to California.
Luckily, she ran away fast enough that she was out of his range by the time he could notice that there was no money in her bag. As she ran, tears fell from her eyes and she cursed him under her breath. She had risked everything to go there to be with him, and he had lied to her from day one.
Feeling a fool, she slowed down to a walk as she entered the peaceful little town of Grass Valley. She asked God what she should do. Up ahead, she spied a mail order bride advertisement office, the perfect place to find a willing groom to save her. She marched straight into the door of the office and waited. The clerks behind the counter eyed her, confused and suspicious, but they said nothing. They were in the business of selling advertising space in The Grass Valley Times, and if this newcomer wanted to advertise, they weren’t going to stop her.
She waited what felt like hours, but was probably more like a soul-crushing fifteen minutes, and was about to turn and head to try her luck at finding shelter somewhere else when a man walked into the office.
He was tall with dark brown, almost black curly hair, green eyes and a scruffy, close beard. He looked to be about twenty-seven years old.
He would do.
Eleanor stood in front of him. “I will marry you!” she blurted, unable to mask her desperation behind more feminine modesty. She was stranded and did not know what else to do.
The young man looked at her like she was clearly insane. Not wanting to be rude, he simply did his best to ignore her and walked past her to speak to one of the clerks at the counter.
Feeling dejected and even more alone in this strange place away from home, Eleanor turned and walked out of the office building. She hugged herself, feeling the bitter chill of the nighttime beneath the mountains. She had longed for so long to live amongst mountains and forests on the west coast, but now she just wanted to go home.
There was no way she would be able to go home, though, because she was now penniless. She could not even sell any of her belongings, because she had lost all of them to that awful bandit Danny Turnbull, if that was even his name.
“Why was I so foolish?” she asked herself as she walked along the path outside. “I should have asked more questions. I could have requested a photograph, some type of verification. Surely this could have been prevented.”
Alexander Montoya came out of the advertisement office and saw Eleanor sitting on the edge of the road. She did not even have a coat on her shoulders. He came over to her and knelt down, looking her in the eyes. She had kind-looking blue eyes, and cinnamon-colored hair that was up in a bun but was starting to tumble out after a very trying day.
“You aren’t planning to spend all night out here, are you?” he asked her.
She looked up at him, frightened at the sound of a man’s voice, but then relieved to see that it was the man she had seen in the office about an hour ago. “I was supposed to be with someone, but he… He lied to me.” Eleanor sniffled and was soon crying again, covering her little face with her even littler hands.
Alexander’s heart went out to the girl. He could not possibly leave her stranded out there on the cold street. “There now,” he said gently, offering her his handkerchief. “Why don’t you come home with me? I can put you up in my barn for the night. If you help me out on my farm, I will let you stay as long as you need to in order to get back on your feet. What do you say?”
She gladly took his handkerchief, blowing her nose and wiping away her tears as best as she could. “That would be very kind of you,” she said. He offered his hand to her, which she also graciously accepted. Once she was standing, he walked with her to his waiting horse and helped her onto it.
They rode together to his farmhouse, with her holding on tightly to his back. She kept her eyes closed for the ride, because she was tired and embarrassed about everything that had happened. She had thrown herself at this man in a very undignified way, and now he was answering her prayers. He was going to keep her safe, at least for the rest of this horrific disaster of a night.
When they arrived at his house, he dismounted carefully and helped her down. She was cold and tired and half starved. The journey had offered her meager meals because she had not been able to pay for much of anything. “Are you hungry?” he asked her. “I can fix you up some soup and then get to work making my barn livable for someone who’s not a sheep or a cow.”
He smiled at her and she softened a little towards him. He clearly was not angry with her, so she should not continue to feel so worried about what he thought of her now. “Thank you,” she said.
The house was warm and had a nice, homey, cottage-like feel to it. As she closed her eyes and took in the wonderful smells that came from the kitchen as he cooked up some soup, she could pretend that she was back home and that nothing bad had happened to her.
“What is your name?” she asked him. “I am Eleanor Whitman, from Massachusetts. I am sorry about before… It’s just that I came all this way at the request of someone from the mail order bride service. Only he turned out to not be who he said he was. He stole my pu
rse and I had to run away.”
Alexander gazed at her in shock. That was awful! The women and men who used the service were usually kind, well-meaning souls who, for one reason or another, were in earnest to find a good match for themselves with someone across the country. He could not believe that someone would have taken advantage of this poor, innocent girl!
“Don’t worry about that now, Eleanor,” he said sweetly to her. He placed a hot bowl of potato soup in front of her at the table. “Be careful – don’t burn your mouth. My name is Alexander Montoya.”
She looked at him, batting her lashes. “And you were hoping to find a bride from across the country?” she asked. “Golly, I wish that I had found a respondent like you, and not that horrible man.”
He smiled a little, blushing cutely. She noticed that he had one dimple that showed on his left cheek when he smiled. She hoped to keep seeing that while she lived with him.
“I don’t know how good of a guy I am, but I will say that I’ve gotta be better than a bandit.” He ate a spoonful of the soup. “Mm, it’s not too hot now. Try it. It’ll warm you up and make you feel better.”
Eleanor ate with him, relieved and happy to have at least found a friend to be with while she was in Grass Valley. She supposed that any money she was able to make would go towards sending herself back home. She did not intend to be a burden on Mr. Montoya for longer than was absolutely necessary.
