The Bride Series (Omnibus Edition)

by Bittner, Rosanne

  The Bride Series

  Rosanne Bittner

  Tennessee Bride

  Texas Bride

  Oregon Bride

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © F. Rosanne Bittner

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  Diversion Books Omnibus Edition 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-513-1

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1988 by F. Rosanne Bittner

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition May 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-282-6

  I saw him the first time,

  In the sweet green of spring.

  My eyes fell upon him,

  And I wanted to sing.

  He was strong, and so handsome;

  So wild and so free;

  A man of the mountains,

  In high Tennessee.

  His arms drew me close,

  And I melted away.

  His lips warmed my own,

  And together we lay…

  In the soft mountain grasses,

  Where he made me his bride.

  And our love, through all hardships,

  To the end shall abide.

  —F. Rosanne Bittner

  Author’s Note

  This story takes place in the state of Tennessee, between 1824 and 1827. The location is mostly along the Hiwassee River in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee.

  Although the leading characters in this story are white, parts of my story involve Cherokee Indians. As in all my stories, I work diligently on historical accuracy, especially when writing about the American Indians, for whom I have a great respect. Therefore, you will find in this story a few references to the Cherokee fight through Congress and the courts to be allowed to stay in their homelands of Tennessee and Georgia. These particular references are based on fact, and there really was a Cherokee Indian leader named John Ross who led this legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

  Although my story does not take the readers all the way through this legal battle, it might be of interest to you to know that the Cherokee won and the Supreme Court ruled that they could stay—at least in the state of Georgia. However, the state of Georgia defied the Supreme Court ruling and forced their Indians into Indian Territory (Oklahoma), along what has come to be called the infamous “Trail of Tears.”

  Although some real history is involved in this novel, major characters in this story, as well as the basic story line, are purely fictitious and a product of this author’s imagination.

  Prologue

  He was called River Joe, and to most he remained a man of mystery, a topic for gossip over glasses of whiskey in the taverns, and over the clotheslines of the women in the mountain settlements. He was a white man, but raised by Cherokee Indians—“as mean at heart as those savages,” some said.

  Every spring River Joe came down from Indian settlements high in the Smokies to trade deerskins, handmade bearskin coats, and the like for food and supplies to take back to his people. He never said much, and even though his blood was white, he didn’t trust most other white men. After all, the white settlers in this part of Tennessee had already chased the Cherokee to higher elevations, where they had found peace and safety from white raiders who burned their homes and crops and abused their women.

  “Captured by the Cherokee,” some said about River Joe. “Just a boy then. They say his pa was killed and his ma was killed, too, only she was raped first. That goes to show you the kind of people them Indians are. No matter how civilized they say they are, their men still pant after white women and their own women is loose as prostitutes. And that River Joe might be a white man, but his heart is Indian, and folks had better not trust him too far.”

  Such were the rumors fifteen-year-old Emma Simms had heard about the mysterious River Joe. Emma didn’t know much about the outside world, for she had never strayed far from the broken-down farm along the Hiwassee River where she lived with her mother and stepfather, Luke Simms. Luke was a hard, cruel man, who during drunken rages often beat Emma and her mother.

  Emma stayed away from Luke as much as possible, which was why she often went for walks alone, especially to a special place along the Hiwassee where she had found an old raft caught in the rushes along the bank of the river. Emma considered the raft, the wildflowers, and mountain laurel that bloomed all around as her own secret retreat; the only place where she could go to dream a young girl’s dreams, where she could hide away from her cruel stepfather and was free to wonder about the man called River Joe.

  On a gentle day in spring 1823, Emma suddenly realized she was not alone in her secret hideaway. She felt someone watching her, and as she cautiously moved her eyes along the surrounding forest, she saw him—a tall man in buckskins, his hair a dark brown but long like an Indian’s, his eyes dark but showing no malice. And she knew in that moment that she saw him only because he had decided to allow himself to be seen.

  Emma could only stare back at the intruder. But it was not fear that made her speechless. It was surprise, and total fascination. How many times had he watched her before, without her knowing it? He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, and surely the tallest. His shoulders were broad and powerful-looking, and a wonderful warmth flowed through her as his dark eyes moved over her. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, he vanished, and she realized she had not even been afraid of the stranger.

  For the next three days, every time Emma went to the raft, the tall man in buckskins appeared, saying nothing, only watching her, then quickly disappearing. Emma made a secret vow not to tell Luke or even her mother about the stranger. Luke would probably try to shoot him, and her mother had enough problems of her own. Her mother would never understand Emma’s fascination, her wonderful secret. She would tell Emma she must never return to the raft—the secret retreat that made her hard life bearable.

  Emma had never had anything all her own—but now she had this, her own special hideaway, and a secret. She had seen the white Indian. She was sure it was he who had watched her, and the memory filled her dreams at night.

  But then he stopped coming. Spring turned to a blistering, steamy summer, and then fall and winter. Gradually Emma forced herself to stop thinking about the stranger, for apparently he had left for good; the only excitement she had ever had in her short life was gone. Reality brought back hard work and cruel beatings, and her mother, who had lost several children, became pregnant again. Spring and the birth of the baby approached, but the tall man in buckskins did not return.

  Emm
a stopped watching for him, thinking him gone for good. Little did she realize that those first glimpses of the white Indian were the beginning of a great love that would carry her to hell and back…back into the arms of a man called River Joe.

  Chapter One

  It should have been a beautiful morning, that spring day in 1824. But sixteen-year-old Emma could not hear the birds singing. She did not see the blooming wildflowers or the lovely blue sky.

  The only person who had come close to loving Emma Simms, who might have protected her from those who threatened and terrified her, lay in a grave at Emma’s feet. Her mother, Betty Simms, was dead. After years of miscarriages, with Emma her only surviving child, Betty had finally carried a baby full-term, only to die giving birth. The baby had died soon after.

  Emma had no doubt that the difficult birth and all the miscarriages before it were the fault of her stepfather, Luke Simms, whose name Emma had long ago been ordered to take as her own. Luke had worked both Emma and her mother like plow horses on his small farm along the Hiwassee, deep in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

  Life was hard, and the farm had never amounted to much, for Luke was lazy and liked his whiskey. While fences needed mending and sheds were falling down, Luke had begun selling off livestock. There were only a few pigs and cows left, and Emma wondered how they were going to survive much longer.

  “Ashes to ashes,” the preacher was saying now. He had come from a distant settlement, one Emma had never seen. She had lived her whole life on this little farm, which her real father had owned. He had died when she was four years old. Her mother had then married Luke, a neighbor, who seemed friendly enough at the time, but who soon turned into a drunken tyrant, putting his “woman” and stepdaughter to work, using a hard hand on them when they “got lazy.” He had never been kind to Emma, nor had he seemed to have any fatherly feelings for her. And after Emma’s mother had had several miscarriages, Luke seemed to resent her more and more, accusing her of being a “useless woman” for not giving him any children of his own.

  Now Betty Simms lay dead after trying to do just that. Twenty-nine. She was only twenty-nine. Compared to her mother, Emma was already an old maid at sixteen. Her mother had given birth to her at thirteen.

  “Mountain girls get married young,” Luke Simms was always complaining. “Why ain’t that daughter of yours married off yet? You know Tommy Decker wants to marry her.”

  “She hates Tommy Decker,” her mother would argue. “Tommy would be cruel to her.”

  “A man can treat a woman any way he pleases,” Luke would answer, glowering.

  Betty Simms always gave up the argument then, but at least she helped stave off any decision about Emma’s marrying Tommy.

  Emma’s eyes stung with tears as she stared at the wooden box in the freshly dug hole behind the collapsing cabin where she would now live alone with her stepfather, a thought that made her feel ill. She had not known truly warm love and affection even from her mother in years, but she didn’t blame the woman. Betty Simms was worn out and abused. She had turned hard; she had lost the ability to see beauty in life, the ability to love softly and gently.

  But Emma struggled to hold these things in her own heart. In one tiny corner of her mind she knew by instinct that there were such things as peace and love and that the song of birds and the brilliance of spring flowers were things of beauty. In stolen quiet moments alone she had allowed the sweet air of the Tennessee mountains to renew her spirit; let the soft swish of the rushing waters of the Hiwassee River soothe her soul; let the sight of a bird in flight give her dreams of going away and finding a better life; and she had dared to dream of loving a man who would be kind and gentle, a man who would be nothing like her stepfather, or like Tommy Decker, who stood now on the other side of her mother’s grave.

  She refused to look at Tommy. Surely now that her mother was gone, Tommy would come for her, demand that her stepfather allow them to marry. Emma could think of nothing worse than being Tommy Decker’s wife. To call herself a slave would be a more fitting description. And she shivered at the thought of how he would treat her in the night. He had told her several times, with an ugly, teasing grin, exactly what a man and woman did to get babies.

  “And we’re gonna have lots of babies, Emma Louise Simms, if you get my meanin’.”

  “I might be like my mother and not be able to have babies,” Emma would reply.

  “Well then, we’ll have fun findin’ out, won’t we?”

  Emma swallowed back a lump in her throat. She felt exposed now, vulnerable, unprotected. Her mother’s objections had been the only barrier between herself and Tommy. Now she could feel his cold blue eyes on her. She guessed Tommy could be considered good-looking, if he were not so mean. He was twenty now, tall and strong, his hair red as fire and his skin peppered with freckles. If he smiled kindly, it might be a nice smile. She had struggled to find something about him to like but had never come up with even one commendable trait.

  Tommy hadn’t an ounce of kindness in his soul. Every time he came to visit her father, sometimes with his friend, Deek Malone, he took the opportunity to tease Emma with talk of bad things men and women did together, to threaten her physically. She had always stayed near the house, and she had always depended on her mother to protect her. But now her mother was gone, and she knew instinctively that Luke would never help her if Tommy chose to go through with any of his threats.

  She glanced at her stepfather and saw no tears. The man stood staring at the wooden box as though he were angry at Betty Simms for dying and taking the baby with her, and he had always blamed Emma for her mother’s birthing problems.

  “If she hadn’t had you so damned early in life, her insides wouldn’t be all messed up,” he would say. “That first husband of hers should have kept himself from between her legs for a while, till she was older.”

  The words rang in Emma’s ears. Picturing what he meant, and remembering Tommy’s descriptions of mating, made her positive she could never do such things. Even if she met a kind man, the thought of having babies terrified her now—not only the act of mating, but having seen her mother’s pain and agony and now her death. Taking a man and having babies were surely humiliating, painful experiences, and she wanted no part of it, especially not with Tommy Decker.

  She could not help letting out a whimper then, and her thin shoulders shook. So many things confused her, the contrasts between beauty and ugliness, peace and turmoil, smiles and tears, life and death. She had no one to console her, to talk to her, explain things to her—only Luke, Tommy, and his father, Jake, who were their closest neighbors, and the preacher. Emma wished she could talk to Mrs. Breckenridge, the traveling schoolteacher who had spent so much time with her a year ago. Mrs. Breckenridge and her husband were dedicated people who trudged through the Smokies, visiting mountain families and bringing formal schooling to children who would otherwise have none. The little bit of reading and writing and numbers Emma had learned had made her hungry for more, and her mind had begun to fill with curiosity about the outside world.

  Mrs. Breckenridge had worn fine dresses and had told her about theaters and schools of higher learning, and big stores in big cities like Knoxville where a person could walk in and pick out anything she needed and buy it on the spot. Through Mrs. Breckenridge Emma had seen another kind of life, a gentler life, and most of all, she had seen love—real love between a man and a woman. Mr. Breckenridge was so good and considerate, with never a harsh word for his wife.

  Then Luke Simms, in a drunken rage, had thrown both Mr. and Mrs. Breckenridge off his property, telling them never to come back.

  “Quit fillin’ my daughter with ideas about bein’ somethin’ special,” he had shouted. “She knows her place. She’s right where she belongs, helpin’ her ma and pa. Before long she’ll be married off and busy puttin’ out babies like a woman’s meant to do. She don’t need no education.”

  The Breckenridges had left, fearing for their lives, and Luke Simms ha
d burned the few books Mrs. Breckenridge had left behind. Emma would not forget that day for the rest of her life. She felt a prison door was closing on her. Now, with her mother dead, that door had been locked. She didn’t know enough about the outside world to go into it alone. This little farm deep in the mountains had been her whole world. With no money, little education, and no experience in anything but feeding pigs, how could she go to the big cities Mrs. Breckenridge had told her about? Calhoun, Knoxville—they were downriver, far away. And they were places Emma knew next to nothing about.

  The future seemed hopeless now. Instinct told her the Breckenridges would not return. They had deserted her, just as her mother had now deserted her in death.

  Emma lifted her tear-filled blue eyes from the grave, trying to find some beauty in the day to keep her from wanting to die. Rhododendrons and azaleas bloomed wild here and there in the surrounding woods. Mockingbirds, robins, wood thrushes, and hundreds of other birds sang their songs, oblivious to the sorrow in Emma’s heart. The hickory, oak, sycamore, poplar, and maple trees all burst with new green leaves; nuts were forming on a nearby walnut tree, their green skin hard and new.

  She concentrated on the woods and the birds, not even hearing the rest of the preacher’s words. She let her mind wander to less painful thoughts, remembering those four days last spring when she had seen the white Indian. He had never come back, but for a long time she had wondered about him, fantasized about him.

  Somehow she sensed he was different from Luke and Tommy. He could have hurt her, could have done bad things to her, but he had not. And the look in his dark eyes still brought a wonderful warmth that moved deep inside her chest and belly, stirring a curiosity about men, making her wonder about things she had never dared to consider before.