Mail-Order Marriages

by Jillian Hart

  She spoke her mind again, with a look that challenged him. “If the changes I’d like to put in place aren’t agreeable to you, please feel free to let me know,” she said, applying a good bit of butter to her own biscuit. They were good, he’d noted, some of the best he’d ever eaten, and that thought filled him with mixed emotions. She’d made it apparent that he would admit to one thing, at least. She was a good cook, and he was about to waste no time in telling her so.

  But his younger son was a jump ahead of him. “You sure are a good cooker,” Toby said, relishing his last bite of biscuit.

  “Biscuits are nice and light,” Lucas admitted as he caught her eye. He swept his gaze downward over her upper body, her dress buttoned up to her neck, but still outlining her generous bosom faithfully. A fact he took time to appreciate.

  They ate then in silence, the boys finishing first and asking politely if they might be excused. Lucas was pleased that he’d managed to instill a few manners in them.

  She faced him across the table, a fresh cup of coffee next to his plate, her own almost empty. “What are your plans for the day, Lucas?” she asked.

  He looked up at her quickly. “Why, are you wanting me to do something in the house?”

  She shook her head. “No, I just wanted to know when I should have your dinner ready, and if I must ring the bell to call you in, or perhaps ride out to find you.”

  “Ride out to find me?” He sounded disgruntled at that, and cleared his throat.

  “I can ride a horse as well as most men,” she said. “I thought I’d told you that already.”

  “Ring the bell. I’ll hear it. And if I don’t the boys will. By noon they’ll be good and hungry. Don’t forget you’re cookin’ for three good appetites.”

  “Who’s been doing the cooking here before I arrived?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been known to open a quart jar and heat up the contents once in a while, and I know how to fry a steak and cut up potatoes. We haven’t starved.”

  “I’m sure you’ve done a good job with your boys. They seem well mannered and are certainly nicely behaved. I wasn’t criticizing you in any way, Lucas.”

  He looked away, toward the window where the swing moved a bit in the breeze. “I’m a bit touchy, I suppose, where my boys are concerned. We’ve had a tough row to hoe since Doris died. That’s why I sent for a bride. And that’s why it was you.”

  “How many offers did you get?”

  He smiled. “More than I’d expected to. Probably over twenty or so. Some of them wanted to see a picture of me, and I dismissed them out of hand, for I’ve never had a picture taken, and I wouldn’t have sent it if I’d had a dozen of them. My looks have nothing to do with my need for a wife and a mother for my boys. I wanted a woman who could keep house and knew how to please a man.”

  “I don’t know if I qualify for the last stipulation you offered, but I can cook well enough to please fifty-odd children in an orphanage, and believe me, some days it was a real challenge.”

  “If you keep on at the rate you’re going here, Elizabeth, I won’t have any complaints. You’re a damn good cook and I—”

  “Please don’t curse, Lucas. I can’t imagine that it’s a good thing for your sons to hear their father using such language. For their sake, if not mine, please try to watch your tongue.”

  “To tell the truth, Lizzie, I’d rather watch yours, especially when you’re thinkin’ real hard and you kinda swipe it over your top lip. Makes me want to kiss you.”

  Her blush was beyond pink, for she felt its heat all the way down the front of her dress. “We were talking about my cooking, Lucas, not kissing. If you have any requests for your meals, I’ll do my best to fix the things you enjoy eating.”

  “Nah, just surprise me,” he said with a grin. “I’m so sick of eating my own fixin’, I’d just as soon never look at that range over there again. I even burn scrambled eggs.”

  “Tell me, Lucas, why did you pick me out of twenty-something other letters? I’m sure most of the ladies had the same qualifications I did.”

  “Maybe so, but there was something about your handwriting, the way you took care with your letters and the things you said that let me know you were the right one for the job. I sent off the money the next day, for I figured if you could handle fifty young’uns in an orphanage, two would be a cinch for you.”

  She faced him boldly. “I want to tell you something. I was happy to receive your wire and the money for my fare. You took me out of a bad situation in Boston and I want you to know I appreciate it.”

  “Was there someone giving you a hard time?” he asked, his mouth narrowing as if he’d march to Boston and clean somebody’s clock, were that to be so.

  “I’d been engaged. Sort of, anyway—”

  “You can’t be engaged sort of, Lizzie. Either you are or you aren’t.”

  “Well, Amos definitely liked to speak of marriage, and we talked about setting a date, so I guess you could say I was within my rights to have expectations.”

  “What happened?” he asked when she halted her explanations and looked down at the floor.

  “My sister came on the scene. She’d been staying with my grandparents for a few years, helping out there, and Amos hadn’t seen her for a long time. She’d grown up to be a lovely girl. Looks like my mama, in fact—small, blonde and about half my size. When Amos got a good look, he decided she was the better prospect and dumped me. They got married and they have a family now.”

  Lucas walked around the table and drew her from her chair, holding her before him, his hands on her waist, her breasts softening against his chest. “He did me a big favor, Elizabeth, and I’m not saying that to make you feel good. I mean it. And anyone who would judge a woman by her hair color or size or shape ain’t much of a man, to my way of thinking.”

  “I wish you’d been in Boston, Lucas,” she said with a chuckle. “I’d have grabbed you up and sailed off like a clipper ship.”

  “Well, you’ve got me in Missouri, sweetheart, and that’s almost as good as Boston.”

  “You’ve only known me for a day or so, Lucas. How can I be your sweetheart?”

  He bent low and his voice was a whisper in her ear. “You earned that name last night in my bed, Lizzie. As far as I’m concerned, you’re my sweetheart, and if you want to argue about it, we can have a set-to right now.”

  She smiled, as if she wanted in the very worst way to lean up and kiss his cheek, but then thought better of it. “I won’t argue with you over such a thing. I know enough to pick my battles.”

  “Is that a warning?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Nope, just a fact. And now you’d better get on out there and get busy. I’ve got work to do.”

  “If you’re washing sheets this morning, I’ll carry the big boiler out for you. Looks like it’s steaming pretty good.”

  She’d put it on the stove and half filled it with water from the reservoir before breakfast, and probably planned to tote it out to the porch when Lucas left. His offer seemed to leave her without words for a moment and then she smiled, waving her hand at the steaming boiler.

  “Be my guest, sir. I won’t argue with a gentleman.”

  The sheets were washed and rinsed within an hour. She sought out a length of clothesline, searching through the pantry, and there it was, on the top shelf—a bit dusty, but looking to be a good length of rope. She doused it in the wash water she’d put aside in a bucket for washing the floor and then rinsed it in the rinse tub before she carried it out to the yard, looking for a good place to loop it. A nail on the side of the corncrib seemed a likely spot and she began there, then looked at the milk house, about thirty feet distant. Sure enough, a nail was pounded into the wall at a good height for her to reach. Surely Lucas must have used the line when he did the washing, she thought, even as she wondered how a man alone could keep up with the work in a house and barn and still bring in his crops and care for his children. He’d fought a losing battle
for three years, to her way of thinking.

  She looped the rope around the nail, then headed for the porch, where she wound it around one of the upright posts. It was enough line for all the sheets and pillowcases to hang, and within fifteen minutes she was finished with the job.

  The rinse water went to the garden, where she wet down the rest of the green beans and the potato plants, remembering the hours spent in the garden back home, her mother at her side, picking beans and later digging potatoes. It had been a happy time and she cherished the memories.

  And now she would make new ones in the garden Lucas had planted. A small family of tomato worms had set up housekeeping on the tender green leaves, so she picked them off and put them in a tin can she found in the trash. From there she took them to a bare spot in the yard, where she placed them on a piece of paper, then lit the four corners. She’d seen her mother do such a thing back home when they lived in the country, and it seemed to be suitable vengeance on the ugly worms for their destructive habits.

  Toby came from the barn to see what she was doing and squatted by the funeral pyre. “Are they dead?” he asked in a dark whisper.

  “If they aren’t now, they will be in a minute or so,” she told him, waiting till the fire consumed the paper and the worms and she could clean up the mess.

  “I never saw anybody burn worms before,” Toby said.

  “These are tomato worms and I don’t like them. They ruin the tomato plants, and if we want tomatoes in jars for the winter months, we have to take good care of the plants this summer.”

  “Can I watch next time you do it?” he asked, shooting her an admiring glance, as if she had somehow become a woman to respect, to his mind.

  “We’ll see,” she said, unwilling to promise such a thing, for surely Lucas wouldn’t want his son to be bloodthirsty. “Are you working out in the barn?”

  “Me and Josh have been raking out the stalls, so Pa can put fresh straw in them for tonight. Pa calls it mucking out the stalls, but we do it with rakes, so I don’t know where he gets that sort of word.”

  “It’s a man thing,” Elizabeth said with a smile.

  “We got sheets hanging all over the yard, don’t we, ma’am?” he said, seeming to note for the first time that there was a veritable fleet of sails set loose on the clothesline. “Pa never hung things so neat—just kinda draped them over the line to dry.”

  About as she’d suspected, Elizabeth thought briefly. “Well, these are almost dry, so I need to get the churning done before I have to bring them in and make up the beds. You go ahead and help your brother.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, turning to scamper across to the barn, where he disappeared inside the wide door.

  Elizabeth went to the kitchen, dragged out the churn and poured in all the cream from the buckets of milk Lucas had brought into the house since her arrival. She sat down with the churn between her legs, and began the tedious job of churning butter. It had never been her favorite task, but it was her chore and she would gain the benefit when she sold the extra butter in town.

  Impressions of Lucas began running through her mind, along with thoughts of the night just past making her blush as she recalled his words of admiration for her body. He’d admired her long hair and made much of her full breasts and she’d been glad he couldn’t see the blushes she’d known were covering her body at his words. Now it seemed she was finished before she’d realized the churn was binding up. She lifted the lid and there lay the butter, in a neat circle at the bottom. She lifted the churned butter from the tall container and placed it in a lump, leaving the buttermilk to be disposed of later. She didn’t know if Lucas enjoyed drinking it or not. For herself, she considered it fit for the hogs, but he might have a different preference.

  She worked the butter, squeezing all the whey from it, then made four separate rounds from the mass and placed them on a large plate, covering it with a pot cover to keep it clean.

  “And now for dinner. I’m a bit late starting it, but soup should be easy enough. I’ll have more time to cook pork chops later on,” she said quietly to herself. A large kettle from the pantry was carried to the stove, where she put a ladle of water within and then pushed it to the back of the burners.

  A Mason jar with a variety of vegetables in the pantry seemed to cry for the kettle, she thought, and she opened it and dumped it in, then found an onion, peeled it, cut it up into bits and added them to the mix. It looked as if Lucas had been the beneficiary of someone’s skill with a canning kettle, for he had a decent supply of jars with assorted vegetables in them and even some beef, cooked up and put aside for a night when she was in a hurry.

  For now, she took a pint jar of the beef and opened it, then added a quart of tomatoes from the pantry. Altogether it made a decent-looking dinner, she thought. With a pan of corn bread, they could manage to survive until suppertime. In minutes she had corn bread in the oven and she headed to the yard to bring in the sheets. She’d make up the beds later, she decided, draping the sheets over the banister to be carried upstairs.

  Before she could go to the porch to ring the dinner bell, she caught sight of Lucas and the boys heading for the horse trough, him laughing at them and swatting them as if he teased them about something, the boys laughing and scampering ahead of him. They went through the same ritual as they had in the morning before breakfast, and again she couldn’t help but note the way both Toby and Josh imitated their father’s actions. It warmed her heart.

  She’d thought of the boys when she noticed her box of books on the bedroom floor only this morning. Straightening the bedroom, she’d considered the pair of them, wondering whether they’d listened to any of the stories she cherished as childhood memories, or whether they were ignorant of the excitement contained within the covers of a book. Especially those intended for children’s pleasure. Perhaps now was a good time to bring up the subject of reading, she decided, and proceeded to do so.

  “I wondered if you boys had formed an acquaintance with books while your mother was still alive,” she asked nicely. “I haven’t seen you with a book in your hands yet. Do any of you read for the fun of it, or for learning?”

  “You’ve only been here a couple of days, ma’am. You haven’t seen us at our best,” Lucas said. “I noticed the box of books in our room earlier and wondered if you planned on using them to educate us.” His eyes sparkled as he assumed a teasing demeanor.

  Josh spoke up. “You don’t read anything but the newspaper, Pa. And when that gets here, you complain because it’s already weeks old and all the news isn’t news anymore.” Josh was eloquent in his description of Lucas’s ire at the newspapers from St. Louis not getting to Thomasville in a decent length of time.

  “Well, that’s true enough,” Lucas said with a grin in Elizabeth’s direction. “We’re sort of out of line for the latest in news here, Miss Elizabeth.”

  “There are other things to read,” she said primly, and then expanded on the subject.

  “The books you noticed upstairs are just waiting to be put on a shelf somewhere in this house. Do any of you have any ideas as to where they can go? If we can get them out in plain sight, I wouldn’t be averse to reading aloud of an evening, if any of you are interested in hearing stories from them.”

  Toby almost jumped from his chair, his hand high in the air as he sought her attention. “I surely would, Miss Lizzibet. I would. I’d sit right next to you in case there were any pictures in your books to look at, and I’d listen real hard if you read stories to us. My mama used to read to us sometimes from a book with lots of pictures.”

  His enthusiasm tickled Elizabeth pink, and she felt a flush rise to cover her cheeks at the boy’s excitement. “Well, I’m sure your mama enjoyed spending time with you that way. I could do that very thing, starting this evening, if your father would bring the box of books downstairs and place it in the parlor. I suspect I could find a table in there to stack them on, since I didn’t see any shelves anywhere.”

  Lucas was
quick to take her up on her offer, and his words were obliging. “There’s an old library cabinet up in the attic, Elizabeth. I could bring it down for you. It’s a piece of furniture with glassed-in doors and shelves inside. Me and Josh could figure out a way to get it into the parlor if you like.”

  “That sounds like a wonderful idea, Lucas. If you and Josh wouldn’t mind doing that after dinner, I’d be happy to put my books in order in the parlor, and perhaps we can spend an hour this evening reading some adventure story.”

  “What’s an adventure story, ma’am?” Toby asked, wide-eyed at the notion of such a thing.

  “It’s a story about people who do exciting things, or invent things that no one else has ever thought of. Sometimes it’s about explorers who travel into parts of the world where no one else has gone before. Sometimes it’s about animals with owners who love them.”

  “Were you an explorer when you came to us from Boston, ma’am?” Toby asked.

  “Sort of,” Elizabeth replied, casting a look at Lucas that pleaded for his help. But it seemed he was not willing to inter-cede for her, so she elaborated a bit as she told the story of how she had come to Thomasville.

  “I got a wire from your father asking me to come here to marry all of you and make my home with you. He sent me the money for train fare and for the stagecoach from St. Louis, and I set off on my adventure. I’d never been anywhere outside a small town near Boston, and then to the city itself to live for a number of years. So seeing the countryside west of Massachusetts was an eye-opener for me. Riding the train was an adventure in itself, for I saw a number of people heading for the west, and spoke to a young man who sat next to me about his coming adventures. He was going farther west, planning to work on a ranch, and he spoke of riding horses and tending cattle. It was even exciting to see all the fields of wheat and corn growing right next to the train tracks, and we waved at folks in the towns where the train stopped.

  “Then, when I arrived here and met all of you, it seemed like I’d made the right choices for my life, and I married your father and got myself a family, ready-made. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be here with all three of you. It seems to me that right here is a wonderful place to be.”