by Natalie Dean
“You’re innocent,” he said excitedly, rushing up to Fiona waving a small piece of paper in his hands. “We’ve proved it! They can’t keep you here.”
“Now hold on a moment,” Branson said. “You haven’t exactly proven anything. The money could still be stolen.”
“I don’t understand,” Fiona said. “What’s going on?”
As she asked the question, a tall man with light brown hair stepped into the room behind the sheriff. Fiona vaguely recognized him as the town pastor.
“We received word from Tennessee this morning,” the pastor said. “Your father’s hideout was found two days ago. The money from his latest heist was found with him.”
“That’s proof that the money you…borrowed,” Sam said with a defiant glance at the sheriff, “…could not have come from that Applewood bank. And the pastor talked to the jeweler this morning. The bills you used to pay for the rings weren’t marked. So, there’s no evidence that they were stolen.”
“As I said, that doesn’t prove anything,” Sheriff Branson said harshly. “The boys in Tennessee may still want her back.”
“Even if they do,” the pastor said. “I doubt any judge worth his salt would allow her to be extradited back to Tennessee. And, even if you found one, you have no legal means of holding her here in the meantime.”
Sheriff Branson looked from the pastor to Sam, stuttering to come up with some sort of argument against this. When, apparently, none presented itself, he heaved a sigh and turned to Sam.
“Son, are you sure you want to stick up for her?” he asked Sam. Branson’s voice was so quiet that Fiona had to strain to hear him. “What I said was true. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In my experience, it never does.”
Fiona’s cheeks flushed, and she looked down at her feet. When she thought about her father and grandfather, about her own theft, she couldn’t deny the truth in the sheriff’s words.
“That may be true in your experience, Sheriff,” Sam said. “But not in mine. I hope, one day, Fiona and I will prove you wrong. But, until then, I think it best if you let my bride out of that cell, and we’ll be on our way.”
The sheriff glanced from Sam to the pastor. Finally, with a large huff, he pulled the keys from his belt and the cell door clicked open.
“It looks like you are free to go, Miss Greyson,” Branson said, his eyes still narrowed in suspicion.
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Fiona answered, her eyes still fixed on her feet. “And, for what it’s worth…I’m sorry about what my father did to your brother.”
She glanced up just in time to see the older man’s eyes grow wide and his face drain of color. He stared at her for a long while before pursing his lips tightly and giving her a small nod in acknowledgment.
“Sheriff,” the pastor said suddenly. “I was wondering if you would walk me back to the church. I had a few things I wanted to discuss with you.”
Branson jumped at Pastor Rhodes voice and turned towards him as though surprised to see him there.
“All right then,” Sheriff Branson answered stiffly.
“Miller,” Branson barked at the deputy, who was standing forgotten in the back corner of the room. The boy straightened his stance immediately.
“Yes, Sheriff,” he said.
“Keep a watch on things in the front while I’m away. I shouldn’t be gone long.”
“Yes sir,” Miller said.
At that, the pastor led the way out of the small room, with the sheriff following in his wake.
A moment later, the deputy shot a confused glance at Fiona and Sam as he moved through the large wooden door and into the front room.
This left Fiona and Sam alone in the small room standing beside the newly emptied jail cell.
They stood silent for several moments, Fiona still staring down at her feet.
“We should get you back to the hotel,” Sam said finally. “I’m sure you’d like to sleep in a proper bed after last night.”
He offered her his arm and Fiona hesitated before taking it.
Neither of them spoke until they had walked down the small, wooden steps of the sheriff’s office.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Fiona said. “I was more than willing to accept the consequences of my actions.”
“What actions?” Sam asked stopping in front of the hotel and turning to face her.
“Even if that money wasn’t from the bank in Applewood, I know that my father took it from someone. And I took it from him,” she said. “I did not truly need it. You had given me plenty for the journey. The truth is…I took it because I wanted to get back at my father. Him and all his horrible…friends.”
Fiona looked down at her hands and began moving her fingers across her palm in an absent, almost frightened gesture.
“How does that make me any different from him?”
Suddenly, she felt a warm, gentle hand on her cheek. Sam’s fingers gently lifted her jaw until she was looking into his warm eyes.
“You’re different,” he said. “Because of what you just told me. You were willing to accept the consequences of your actions. While your father and his gang keep trying to defend themselves and escape the law, you are more than willing to admit when you’ve done wrong. You are willing to change, and they are not. That choice is what makes you who you are.”
That tingling sensation returned to her spine, and her heart lifted at these words.
“And you still want to marry me?” she asked. “You wouldn’t rather have some nice, simple girl. A girl whose past isn’t quite so…complicated?”
A wide grin spread across Sam’s face as he gave a bright chuckle.
“Fiona,” he said. “I didn’t fall in love with you because you were nice or simple.”
“Why did you fall in love with me?” she asked quietly.
“I fell in love with you because you were brave and smart and witty,” he said. “I could see that even in your letters. And I know I could never love anyone else. And, there is no other woman in the world who I would wish to marry.”
His hand on her jaw moved to caress her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned into his warm touch.
As he gently moved her forward and met his lips with hers, Fiona knew that the same was true for her. There was no other man in the world who she could possibly love as much as Sam Jenkins.
Epilogue
It was a small wedding.
Even so, the bells rang happily in the chapel as the bride and groom, newly made man and wife, rushed down the aisle and into the wagon waiting to take them to the home they would share.
As Mrs. Sam Jenkins gave her hand to her husband so that he could pull her up into the wagon, she glanced around at the crowd still smiling and cheering.
She spied Mrs. Matthews, the hotel owner, smiling with tear tracks running down her face. Just as the old woman had promised Fiona they would be before the ceremony even began.
“I am certain I will cry,” she’d told Fiona as she helped the bride dress in her Sunday best. “I always do at weddings, you know.”
She could see the jeweler and various shop owners she had met in town. There were also several ranchers with their wives.
All were smiling, clapping and cheering the newlyweds.
All, that is, except one face.
Sheriff Branson eyed the wagon with his arms folded across his chest. His small eyes still narrowed in suspicion.
Fiona supposed it was progress that he had allowed himself to come to the wedding at all. She knew she should be grateful. However, that glare still filled her with a small amount of righteous indignation.
After all, if she could make peace with her past, there was no reason the sheriff could not make peace with it as well.
“He still doesn’t care for me,” Fiona told her husband as they rode off towards Sam’s small apartment behind the newspaper office that they would now share.
“Give him time, Fiona,” Sam said. “Pastor Rhodes is still speaking to him. Eventually,
he’ll learn that you are not his enemy.”
“I suppose,” Fiona said slowly. “I should be pleased that his deputies are now longer following me around the town.”
“That,” Sam said pulling the wagon to a stop outside their small apartment. “Is a very good thing. Especially today.”
With a playful smirk, he jumped down from the wagon before offering his hand to Fiona.
Fiona took it. As soon as she stepped down, Sam enveloped her in a tight embrace. She returned it whole heartedly pressing herself against him and letting out a happy sigh.
It was a long time before he pulled away and looked down at her.
“Welcome home, Mrs. Jenkins,” he said.
A wide smile spread across Fiona’s lips. As she reached up to kiss him, she said a little prayer of thanks to God. After a lifetime of feeling out of place, she was finally right where she belonged.
THE END
The Unexpected Bride
By Grace Weston
Book Description
The Unexpected Bride
A Western Romance Short Story
“What are you looking at? Haven’t you ever seen a woman put paid to a horribly unsuitable beau before?”
Montana, 1865
When prim and proper Jeanne Trippler made the arduous journey out west to meet her groom, she was in for a surprise. He talked the talk of a gentleman through his letters, but when she got to Montana, he ended up being one of the town drunks. Now she’s left with nowhere to go, except the small hotel filled with seedy characters. Then she meets Jack…
Jack Wilson is an honest, hard-working man who has been left to run a large ranch on his own. His brother and sister-in-law were living there and helped out, but they recently up and left to head back to Texas. Now the house is badly in need of a woman’s touch.
While in town to sell some fish he caught, he finds himself blown away by the new beautiful woman in town. He overhears her putting one of the town drunks in his place with her sharp-witted tongue. Now she’s looking for a respectable place to stay while she waits on the next train out.
Is Jack losing his mind for thinking he wants her as his bride? Will she even say yes if he asks her? Find out in this clean historical western short story…
Chapter 1
Montana, 1865
Jack Wilson hunkered low on the wagon’s seat, his hands holding the reins loosely as the tired horses clopped into the small town on the edge of the Montana wilderness. His eyes picked out the smudge of black smoke in the sky that meant a train was either arriving or leaving, and his lip curled.
More greenhorns, just what they needed around. Those fools were always pouring into the place, trying to start ranches because they’d heard a man could live in ease up there. They had no idea what it meant to work a ranch, and most of them didn’t want to know either. They came, realized it was a hard life, and left again, usually blaming everyone and thing but themselves in the world for their failures.
His wagon was heavily loaded with fish from the wide and deep creek that flowed along his property. The creek went underground somewhere right past his land, and so its waters were the coldest and clearest for miles. It was also chock-full of fish, especially now that summer was edging toward autumn and cooler weather.
That meant a trip to town because fish meant money, and he could use some. Now. His eyes, the same color as new grass, scanned the sky for signs of rain. None forthcoming, from the looks of things.
That worried him. He had a four hundred acre spread and a hundred head of cattle. The creek kept them watered, but without rain, the level of the creek would drop. He sighed, and his eyes lowered. He shifted again as he noticed some of the thread unraveling on his jacket’s hem. There was a hole in his sock too, and his big toe was rubbing against the top of his shoe.
His mind went back to the ranch again. The kitchen was a mess, the floors needed to be swept, there were windows but no curtains, and he was pretty sure that the mattress he had packed full of grass some time before was in need of stuffing again. The stove needed blacking and the rugs—he didn’t even want to think about the rugs. He really didn’t want to think about the burned skillet and the charred black beef still stuck in it either.
His brother, Liam, had chosen a fine time to light out, and take his bride, the cheerful Melissa, with him. Jack’s eyes fell on his sleeve again and he chewed at his bottom lip. Melissa hadn’t minded doing the mending, but Liam had decided that the two of them needed a place of their own—and Melissa was a woman who was already missing Texas as much as Liam was.
Liam had said, as they were departing, that Jack should just throw in the towel and head back to Texas too. That they could drive the cattle overland, but Jack wasn’t missing Texas at all. He’d left too much behind him, and he had no desire to go back and relive that past. His heart wouldn’t take it.
His fingers scratched at his chin as he watched the smoke rise against the sky again. The train was leaving. He neared the town proper, a short line of small houses that stretched out along the wild grass and the blue-and-purple hazed hills, a church, a general store, an assessor’s office, a livery, and a small hotel that served the people who stopped off for a bite to eat, or spend the night on their way elsewhere.
The station sat on the opposite side, its raw lumber shining like bones under the bright haze of sun. He rode past it, ignoring the small tide of humanity clustered on the wooden platform. He headed right for the first store, his mind on the fish packed in wet grass and canvas sheets in the back of the wagon.
The store owner came out, a smile on his face. Brad Nelson was a tall and smiling man with a permanent stoop in his back, and he waved a hand in front of his face as he said, “Whew! I smell that all the way over here! How much fish you got there?”
“A lot.” Jack jumped down and tossed the reins over the hitching post, a smile lighting his own face. “I need to trade some and sell some if possible.”
Nelson nodded. “Anything’s possible. I don’t know that I can take all of it but I bet Bertha over at the hotel would be glad for some.”
Jack was hoping just that. He yanked the cover off the top of the wagon and Nelson said, “Looks like trout.”
“It is.” He gave the fish an appreciative glance. He had kept some back for himself, cleaning them and placing them in the springhouse, but his mood soured as he wondered just how he was supposed to cook that fish without turning it coal-black. He could probably campfire cook it and not ruin it…
A ruckus caught his attention. His head turned, and his mouth fell open. There stood a woman, a very beautiful woman, wearing a green and white striped coat over a white shirtwaist, a green skirt, and an utterly ridiculous, wide-brimmed hat, also green, and trimmed with white feathers that blew in the breeze.
“Liar! Scoundrel!”
The words, in a high and feminine voice, rang across the air. Jack blinked a few times. He slapped a hand down on the back of his neck. “What d’ya think that’s all about?”
Brad Nelson said, “I’ve no idea.”
The woman gathered steam. She used the tip of her parasol to send Howard Weems, a notorious rum-pot, to fleeing as fast as he could go. The woman called after him, “You are no gentleman sir, and I hope you fall on your face in the grass and…and hit your head hard enough to gain some sense!”
The onlookers scattered as she wielded that parasol toward them. Jack took a step back as well as she cried out, “What are you looking at? Haven’t you ever seen a woman put paid to a horribly unsuitable beau before?”
Jack, open-mouthed, gasped out, “Did she just say…”
Brad Nelson spoke, cutting in an equally dazed voice. “She sure did but why she would call that drunken fool a beau in the first place is beyond me.”
“Me too.”
The woman gripped the handle of a very large trunk and began to march across the street. Her head was high and her skirt’s hem sent little eddies of dust drifting upward. The hat’s feathers bobbed
and danced. She stopped, with her parasol, open now to protect her very pale skin, dipped in a way that made Jack take a careful and long side step. Brad did as well.
Her voice was crisp. “Could one of you tell me when the next train leaves and if, as that man behind the counter just said, it does not leave for three more days, where a respectable woman might stay? And don’t suggest the hotel. I have heard horror stories of the drinking in its bar. I don’t drink. I don’t appreciate a man that drinks. I most certainly have no appreciation for a large gathering of drinking men. Also, that fish needs to be covered or properly stored before the sun makes it unfit to eat.”
She was as sharp-tongued as a viper and bossy too!
“We’re about to do just that, and yes, it will be three days. Unfortunately, I don’t know of anywhere else for you to stay but the hotel I’m afraid,” Jack stated.
The woman lifted her head higher. The hat trembling on her head proof of her outrage. “I see.”
Nelson said, “We should take care of this fish. I tell you what. I’ll take the lot and sell some to the hotel myself, if that is all right with you.”
“It is.” Jack couldn’t stop staring at the newcomer, who was revolving in a slow circle. “Miss, will you be all right?”
She spun around, a slow turn that brought her face: all high angles, big blue eyes with thick black lashes, determined chin and straight brows into view. Her lips, wide and full, pursed. “Let me think. The man who was supposed to be my groom turned out to be a drunken fool with a poetic bent and a bald pate. There is no train for three days. There is also no respectable lodging. What say you, sir? Shall I be all right?”
Confounded by the words she just spoke, all Jack could do was stare at Nelson, who was as scarlet as if he had a fever.
Jack’s eyes fell on his sleeve that needed stitching, on the hole near the knee of his pants, the hole that needed a patch. Then, he hesitantly aked, “You…um…you were to be a mail-order bride?”
