Texas Bride: A Bitter Creek Novel

by Joan Johnston

  Despite how hot and sweaty she felt, Miranda pulled her brother close and glared at the woman on the opposite bench.

  The woman looked down her nose at the three raggedy passengers with whom she shared the coach. Miranda felt angry but knew the better course was to appease the woman, if she could. This lady might become one of her neighbors in San Antonio. At least, she had the same destination.

  “I’m sorry. He’s very tired,” Miranda said in explanation and excuse of Harry’s behavior. “My name is Miranda Wentworth. These are my brothers, Nicholas and Harrison.”

  When the woman said nothing in reply, she continued, “We’ve come all the way from Chicago. We weren’t expecting it to be so hot in February.”

  “I’m Mrs. Swenson,” the woman said. “I run the Happy Trails boarding house in San Antonio. You can call me Dottie.”

  “Thank you, Dottie,” Miranda said.

  “Sorry I yelled at your brother. I’ve got a fear of mice. I don’t really see very well, but I don’t like to wear my spectacles, so I wasn’t sure what it was down there. He touched my skirt just enough that I thought it was one of those awful vermin. Well, anyway, I’m sorry. You seem very young to be traveling alone.”

  “I’m meeting my husband in San Antonio,” Miranda replied, feeling relieved that Mrs. Swenson wasn’t another Miss Birch. Miranda wondered why she hadn’t just admitted she was a mail-order bride and that she was meeting her prospective husband in San Antonio.

  She turned to stare out the coach window, hoping Mrs. Swenson wouldn’t ask any more questions, especially since she intended to conceal the existence of her two brothers from Mr. Creed when she arrived.

  “Wentworth. Wentworth,” Dottie Swenson murmured. “I don’t believe I know any Wentworths in San Antonio.”

  Miranda felt pinned like a butterfly on a museum wall by Miss Swenson’s inquisitive stare. “That’s my maiden name,” she admitted. “I’m meeting my husband-to-be in San Antonio.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Swenson smiled. “You’re a mail-order bride?”

  Miranda gave a jerky nod. “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll be a horny toad.”

  “A horny toad?” Nicholas said. “What’s that?”

  Mrs. Swenson grinned. “Horned toad, actually,” she corrected, and then explained, “It’s a lizard with spines. You’ll see a lot of them around here, along with rattlesnakes and such.”

  Miranda’s eyes went wide. “Rattlesnakes?”

  “Holy cow!” Nick said.

  “Nicholas Jackson Wentworth!” Miranda scolded. “Watch your language around—”

  “I’m not a baby!” Harry yelled before she could finish her sentence.

  Nick wasn’t cowed. “I can’t wait to see a horny toad and a rattlesnake.” He stuck his head out the coach window, searching the terrain and exclaimed, “Look! There’s another deer.”

  “Let me see!” Harry cried as he climbed across Miranda to the window where Nick was seated.

  “It’s gone now,” Nick said.

  “There it is,” Harry said, pointing to an animal with a red hide.

  “That’s a cow, stupid.”

  “I’m not stupid!” Harry retorted. “Is that a cow or a deer, Miranda?”

  Miranda scooted closer, glanced out the window and said, “It’s a cow. You can tell by the long horns growing out of its head to the sides. Deer have antlers that grow up, rather than out.”

  “So there!” Nick said to his brother.

  “There sure are a lot of cows,” Harry said.

  “Yes, there are,” Miranda agreed.

  “They’re steers,” Mrs. Swenson corrected.

  Miranda turned to the older woman and asked, “What’s the difference?”

  “There are cows out there, but most of those animals are steers—male animals that have been cut so they can’t reproduce.”

  “I see,” Miranda said, although she didn’t.

  “Cut how?” Nick asked.

  Miranda had wanted an explanation, too, but she’d been too embarrassed to ask.

  “Emasculated,” Mrs. Swenson said.

  “What does emascu—”

  Miranda slapped a hand across Nick’s mouth to cut off his question and said, “I’ll explain later.” To change the subject she asked, “If you live in San Antonio, Mrs. Swenson, what caused you to travel to Houston?”

  “I was visiting my sister,” she replied.

  “I miss my sisters already,” Miranda said wistfully.

  “Where are they?” Mrs. Swenson asked.

  “I left them behind in Chicago.”

  “Miranda’s eighteen, so she had to leave the orphanage, and Nick and I came along at the last minute,” Harry volunteered. “We’re a surprise.”

  Miranda put a hand over Harry’s mouth but it was too late. The cat was out of the bag.

  Mrs. Swenson’s eyebrows rose all the way to her hairline. “Your prospective husband doesn’t know your brothers have come along?”

  Miranda shook her head.

  “Oh, my. Who are you marrying, Miss Wentworth, if I may be so bold as to ask?”

  She took a deep breath and said, “Mr. Jacob Creed.”

  “Oh, my,” Mrs. Swenson repeated, putting a gloved hand to her mouth, which had opened in shock. “Jacob Creed, you say?”

  “Yes. Is there something wrong with Mr. Creed?”

  “I think it would be better if he explains the situation to you himself,” Mrs. Swenson said.

  Miranda was left to wonder and worry as Mrs. Swenson chattered on about a number of subjects that steered completely clear of Jacob Creed. Miranda was so distracted by her troubled thoughts that she was surprised when the driver shouted, “Whoa! Whoa!” and the stagecoach rumbled to a stop.

  Miranda’s gaze shot to the window for her first view of San Antonio. All she saw was a cloud of dust.

  She turned back to Mrs. Swenson and said, “Please, I need your help. Could you take the boys with you to your boarding house? I mean, just until I have a chance to meet Mr. Creed. I promise I’ll come for them as soon as I can.”

  “I want to stay with you, Miranda,” Harry said.

  Miranda ignored Harry’s grip on her arm and said, “Please, Dottie?”

  Mrs. Swenson took her time making up her mind. The coach door was already open by the time she said, “How would you boys like a big bowl of beef stew?”

  The mention of food caused Harry’s head to whip around. The mention of beef even made Miranda’s mouth water.

  “Real beef?” Nick said.

  “Sure enough,” Mrs. Swenson said. “How about it, boys?”

  “Come on, Harry,” Nick said as he grabbed Harry’s hand and jumped down from the coach. “Let’s go get some lunch.”

  “The boarding house is at the end of the street, just beyond the Alamo,” Mrs. Swenson said as she stepped down after the boys. “They’ll be fine. Come get them when you can.”

  “I’ll be there soon,” Miranda said, following after the older woman. She brushed a hand across Nick’s cowlick, and wiped Harry’s nose one last time, before they eagerly turned and followed Mrs. Swenson down the street.

  Miranda stood, carpetbag in hand, looking around her for Mr. Jacob Creed. The street that had appeared busy a moment before was suddenly empty. Where was he? He was supposed to be here to meet her.

  She felt a moment of panic. What if he never showed up? She took a deep breath and let it out. No one would have spent so much on tickets if he didn’t intend to marry his mail-order bride once she arrived. She looked around and saw the coach had stopped at the front door of the Menger Hotel. That was as good a place as any to start the search for her groom.

  Jake Creed didn’t want a wife, but he needed one. He needed someone to cook, someone to clean, someone to mend his clothes. And someone to be a mother to his two-year-old daughter.

  Maybe he should have warned his mail-order bride that she was getting a ready-made family. Miss Miranda Wentworth had written that she loved k
ids. If she hadn’t lied, things would work out fine.

  Jake rubbed his belly, which was tied in several knots. Miss Wentworth was arriving on the two-o’clock stage. He would be a married man again before the day was out.

  He’d tried to imagine how his future bride might look, with her blue eyes and curly blond hair, but whenever he did, he felt unfaithful to his dead wife. Priscilla’s eyes had been brown. Her hair had been brown, too, and straight as an arrow. Priss had died in childbirth six months ago, and he’d buried their stillborn son along with his beloved wife.

  Jake didn’t have the luxury of grieving any longer. His father-in-law had cared for motherless Anna Mae over the past six months, but the old man had complained constantly. Slim Stockton hated being housebound. The old man didn’t have much choice. He’d broken his back coming off a bronc a year past and was confined to a wooden chair with wheels. Jake had felt overwhelmed taking care of both father-in-law and baby daughter.

  It was the crotchety old man who’d suggested he take another wife. Jake had agreed it was the practical thing to do. However, there hadn’t been much chance of getting the daughter of any of the nearby ranchers to marry him, not with the ongoing feud between him and his wealthy stepfather.

  Nobody wanted to cross swords with the Englishman who’d married Jake’s mother when Jake’s father, Jarrett Creed, hadn’t come home after the War Between the States. As far as Jake was concerned, Alexander Blackthorne had married his mother, Creighton Creed, to steal her land and then fathered children on her to steal Jake’s inheritance.

  Jake had taken Three Oaks, the cotton plantation willed to him by his uncle, branded as many mavericks as he could round up after the war, and eked out a living for the past ten years as a rancher. His stepfather had tried to buy him out and burn him out and starve him out. But he wasn’t going anywhere. The Englishman didn’t scare him.

  Unfortunately, no rancher with a daughter—pretty or otherwise—wanted to get on the Englishman’s bad side by aligning himself with Creighton Creed Blackthorne’s eldest son. So Jake had put his advertisement for a mail-order bride in newspapers in several big cities outside Texas, including Chicago.

  He’d gotten numerous replies and had chosen an eighteen-year-old with blue eyes and curly blond hair named Miranda Wentworth. On paper, his prospective bride sounded like some kind of fairy princess. He was cynical enough to believe she’d turn out to have buckteeth and crossed eyes.

  No matter how she looked, he was going to marry her this afternoon. But he wasn’t going to love her. Losing Priss had nearly killed him. He was never going through that kind of pain again. Having a woman in his home was necessary. But he wasn’t going to let his new wife anywhere near his heartstrings.

  Life here in Texas was too damned hard on females. The blue northers, the drought, the prairie fires—and the loneliness etched into the landscape by the constantly moaning wind—chewed them up and spit them out and left their husbands to bury them.

  Because Priss had loved him, she’d worked herself to the bone and then been too weak to survive the birth of their second child. He felt responsible for her death. She’d hidden her exhaustion, but he should have known better. He should have made her rest more. He should have taken better care of his wife.

  He was never going to make that mistake again. He would never put that second burden—a pregnancy—on another woman. He might wish for more children, but he didn’t need them. He would hire help, rather than depend on his own sons to do the work around the ranch. He was happy to pass on whatever he had to his daughter when the time came.

  The only certain way to protect his wife from pregnancy was to avoid having sexual relations with her. But he couldn’t help hoping his new wife would be pretty to look at and cordial to speak with and kind to his daughter.

  He was sitting inside the Menger Hotel when he heard the two-o’clock stage pull up out front. He didn’t watch his future bride step down from the coach because he wanted the possibility of a fairy tale princess to last as long as possible. He forced himself to stay seated in one of the red-satin-covered Victorian chairs in the hotel’s fancy lobby.

  He caught himself fidgeting with a string hanging from a hole in the knee of his best denim Levi’s and let it go. When his future bride still hadn’t shown up in the lobby two minutes later, he realized she might not know to come inside. So he stood, intending to search her out.

  At that moment, a raggedy-looking waif in a too-big dress stepped inside the lobby. She searched the elegant room with eyes as blue as a summer sky, until her gaze landed on him. She looked frightened. The blond curls of his imagination were tied up tight in a bun at the back of her head, revealing sharp cheekbones in a thin face.

  Jake’s heartbeat ratcheted up, and his neck and ears got hot. He felt like a cradle robber. This elfin girl—there was no evidence of a woman’s figure—must be his bride. He yanked his flat-crowned black hat off his head and held it in both hands at his waist. His feet seemed to be rooted to the floor and his tongue was tied to the roof of his mouth.

  He stared at her, wondering how he could have been so stupid as to choose a bride sight unseen. “Miss Wentworth?” he said at last.

  She stared back. “Mr. Creed?”

  He managed a jerky nod. Then she smiled.

  Jake felt his heart jump. Her full lips were bowed at the top and her teeth were white as pearls and perfectly straight. He didn’t want to make the comparison to Priss, whose teeth hadn’t been her best feature, but he couldn’t help it. He’d loved his wife, despite her imperfections. It didn’t seem fair to compare her to this intriguing stranger with a smudge of dirt on her cheek.

  He took the few steps to bring them close enough to speak without being overheard by the gossipy clerk at the lobby desk. “Do you have any luggage I need to get from the coach?”

  She looked down, and he saw she held a shabby carpetbag.

  “I have everything I brought with me in here.”

  Jake frowned as he eyed the thin carpetbag. Then he took a closer look at what she was wearing. The wool dress was too warm for the weather, which was proved by the sweat stains on the dirty white collar and the small dots of perspiration above her perfectly bowed upper lip. “You didn’t bring much.”

  “I don’t own much,” she said, her smile fading. “I’m an orphan, you know.”

  “I thought you worked at the Chicago Institute for Orphaned Children.”

  Her smile returned, and he felt that flutter again in his heart. He did his best to ignore it. On first glance, she wasn’t much to look at. But those blue eyes of hers and that smile had taken him off guard. He hadn’t expected to be so physically attracted to a perfect stranger.

  He didn’t like it. Especially when he was going to share the same bed with her—but keep his hands off. No touching, no kissing, no nothing. He felt an ache in his chest. It was loss he was feeling … the fading promise of what might have been.

  He reminded himself of the price he would pay if he took the chance of loving this woman. Her eyes and that smile were enough to tempt him. But once burned, twice chary. He had no intention of getting attached to Miss Miranda Wentworth.

  “I did work at the orphanage,” she explained with a winsome quirk of her lips. “I simply wasn’t a paid employee.”

  He tried to smile back, but he couldn’t manage it. Smiling was something you did when you were happy. Which he wasn’t.

  He had some inkling how lucky he was that Miss Wentworth hadn’t turned out to have buckteeth and crossed eyes. He just hoped her personality, which was far more important, turned out to be as providential as her looks. “Would you like to wash up?”

  “Oh, yes, I would. Where could I do that?” she asked.

  “I’ve taken a room at the hotel.”

  Her eyes rounded and her mouth dropped open in surprise. “Oh.”

  His ears and neck felt hot again. There was something very womanly about those wide, innocent blue eyes and that sensual mouth. He force
d himself to focus on the childish smudge of dirt on her cheek. “I got the room so you’d have a place to freshen up,” he said. “I didn’t plan for us to spend the night. We can be back at Three Oaks—my ranch—before dark if we leave right after the ceremony.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well. That sounds fine.” Her smile was gone again. She looked nervous. Like a new bride. Which she was.

  Except he didn’t intend to bed her.

  He hadn’t really considered what it would be like to sleep beside a woman who was his wife and not touch her. Mostly because he hadn’t let himself think that far ahead. He was horrified to realize he was getting aroused at the mere thought of lying next to her. He imagined kissing that bowed upper lip and felt himself go hard as a rock.

  He held his hat where it would conceal his body’s unruly—and unwanted—response and made himself remember how his dead wife had looked, lying in their bed after the stillbirth of their child. That pitiful image quelled his arousal.

  “The bellman can show you where to go,” he said when he had himself under control. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a room key.

  She held out a surprisingly work-worn hand, and he set the key in it. She’d taken a step past him, when she stopped and turned back, looking up at him with those compelling blue eyes. “What time is the wedding?”

  He pulled a gold watch from the brown leather vest he was wearing over a long-sleeved, blue cotton shirt, flipped it open and said, “I have a minister scheduled to marry us an hour from now. I wasn’t sure exactly when the stage would arrive. Will that give you enough time to wash up?”

  “More than enough,” she said. “In fact, the sooner we’re wed, the better. Do you think we could move the wedding up a half hour?”

  Jake knew why he was anxious to marry. He just wanted this part over with, so he could take this woman home, where she could start being a mother to his two-year-old daughter. He wasn’t as sure why she was so anxious to hurry the moment. Jake felt a niggling suspicion but didn’t examine it too closely. He was too glad she wasn’t homely, too pleased that her smile lifted his spirits, and too grateful that she seemed healthy enough to survive the life she’d agreed to share with him.