“You’ve a fair complexion, much like me daughters back in the homeland. You’ve got to watch skin like that or else it’ll burn straight to a crisp.”
“Daughters?” Alice asked in surprise, hoping very much that her interruption wouldn’t stop the woman from talking about her far away Ireland home, “I didn’t know you had daughters.”
“That’s right. You remind me of them, that you most certainly do. I suppose it’s part of why I’ve got a soft spot for you. Part of why I’ve been thinking of ways to bring you back to the land of the living.”
“I--I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“But you do, child. You know it and I know it too. The thing that brought you here, it wasn’t just a quest for adventure. There’s a sadness and it’s a sadness I’ve seen. It’s a sadness I know. I’ve felt that way, run from my own demons. The best way I ever learned to rid myself of them was to make myself feel useful again. Does that sound like something you might like to try?”
Alice nodded. She had no words and she wouldn’t have been able to speak even if she had. She had never in her life felt such a singular understanding coming from any person. It felt like a weight being lifted off of her shoulders and at that moment she knew that she would do anything this woman advised her to. Which, as it turned out, happened to be gardening on this particular sunny day. She had never gardened in her entire life but somehow it seemed to be just the thing she needed.
There was something about being out in the sun and feeling her own sweat, something about using her own body to do something good that helped her to feel more right than she had in a long time. As she worked, she listened as well. She listened to Mrs. Patterson talk to her about Bradan and how he had come to the west to begin with. He had come as a boy with parents that were from Ireland as well and he had loved the land immediately. He had loved the land so well that when his parents had both passed away when he was only seventeen, he had taken it upon himself to keep the place running. She listened for a long time to the sound of Mrs. Patterson’s voice and when she finally went inside again when the light began to turn to dusk she felt a peacefulness beginning to settle inside of her. Those fears she had been carrying with her since before she had even arrived didn’t feel quite so real now.
She was starting to see that she could really have a life in this place and as she washed the dirt off of her blistering hands she thought to herself that it might be a really good life, too.
“Well look at you all covered in the earth. I don’t believe I’ve seen you this way before.”
“Oh! Oh dear, I’m sorry, I’ve taken over your kitchen without any thought to the mess I’d be making.”
“No!” Bradan laughed, leaning casually in the kitchen’s door frame with a warm smile in his eyes, “Please, no, don’t feel sorry. I’m glad to see you looking like this might be your home. I’d begun to wonder if it might not happen at all.”
“I’m sorry about that as well. Perhaps, well, perhaps I owe you an explanation about that.”
She wanted to tell him at least some of what had happened to bring her here, despite the fact that the very notion of doing so was terrifying to her. She thought she might just do it, too, but before she had time to she saw that Bradan was walking towards her with that smile still lighting up his eyes. She felt her heart stop beating in her chest and, for a moment, she wondered if she might be coming down with some kind of illness. It took her a few seconds to realize that it was not illness. It was her body’s response to this man. In all of these weeks she had been so consumed with herself and her thoughts that she hadn’t stopped to really take notice of who and what Bradan was.
After listening to Mrs. Patterson all afternoon, however, she felt as if her eyes were open for the first time. He was a strangely beautiful man, his lanky body and Irish coloring, but it was more than that. There was a kindness to him. She felt that. She supposed it had been there all along, that goodness, she just hadn’t been able to see it. She had come dangerously close to letting her past rob her of her future and she knew that was not a mistake she was willing to make. As he came closer and closer to her she found herself wondering for the first time since her arrival when their actual wedding would take place. After being left at the altar it seemed that part of her had lost interest in being wed without even realizing it. But now that she had begun to reanimate she knew that she wanted this life. Yes, she was afraid, but she wanted this life with Mr. Bradan Shaw and when he reached his thumb out to brush a wayward bit of dirt off of her face she inhaled quickly, forcing herself to look him in the eyes.
“No, miss, you don’t owe me anything of the sort. I’m glad to see your spirits lifting, though. I am mighty glad to see that.”
“They are lifting,” she said quickly, wanting him to see the potential for happiness that she was suddenly seeing, “believe me, they are.”
“Good. That’s good. I did come in here for a reason though. Not just to interrupt you. I needed to tell you that I’ve got to go away for a little while. Just a quick trip, only a few weeks. I was wondering if maybe when I return, maybe you might want to start talking about a wedding. If you’re agreeable to the notion.”
“I am. Yes, I believe that I truly am.”
Chapter Five
Alice had never been so restless in the whole of her life as she was in those almost three weeks between Bradan’s leaving and his return to the Shaw ranch. Life had its way of taking funny turns and Alice was beginning to learn that it had a tendency to go down before it went up. Still, the waiting felt like a torment to her. The last thing she had expected was to come to the realization that she really wanted a marriage with Bradan but once she did realize it she wanted to move forward as quickly as possible. So naturally, the way that life did, things took their unexpected turn and Bradan disappeared. She knew that wasn’t truly what he was doing, business was business, but her impatience made it feel that way. She developed a habit of haunting the front yards of the ranch, walking along the fence line like an animal waiting for its humans to return. Mrs. Patterson would distract her with their gardening and with teaching her to cook (according to her, every wife should know how to cook at least a few things, a belief that was very different from the way Alice had been raised but was nevertheless appealing), chuckling all the while.
“What is it that you find so funny now, Mrs. Patterson?” Alice would ask with the petulance of a child.
“Why, you, my dear. You’re what I find so funny.”
“I don’t see why.” Alice would mutter, only causing Mrs. Patterson to laugh all the more.
“Because I’ve never seen a girl change so completely. From the most lethargic thing I ever laid eyes on to the most impatient. It’s good. It’s a good change and I’m mighty glad to see it. But calm yourself dear, he’ll be home soon enough. He’ll not ever leave you in the lurch, that one. He’s got a good heart and he’s as strong as oak. If you love him well, he’ll love you right back with everything in him. You’ll see. He’ll be home again before you know it.”
And she was right. He was home again, after being away for just shy of three weeks. His return wasn’t anything like she had expected it to be, however, not at all. In her mind’s eye, when Bradan returned she would be out in the garden, or maybe just finishing preparing a nice hearty meal. He would pull up in that same wagon he had delivered her to the ranch in on that first shell-shocked day and he would hop down off of it with that limber ease she had come to know him by; the ease of a natural outdoorsman completely in his element. She would wave and give him her widest smile and he would grin in return before taking her in his arms in a warm embrace. They would plan their wedding on the spot and then they would begin their lives in earnest.
In truth, his homecoming was nothing like that. Nothing at all, not even close. Bradan did not return on the afternoon of some sunny day full of smiles and stories of his business successes. She was not in the kitchen or out in the gardens when he finally returned. In truth, when
Bradan arrived home it was not daylight at all and Alice was in the room that was hers until their wedding night fast asleep. She would never be able to say what it was that caused her to wake. Although she had suffered terrible bouts of insomnia for her first several weeks of living on the ranch, since she had taken up gardening and found her true heart again she had slept with the ease of a child. But not on the night of Bradan’s return. On that night, the air outside was full of a sharp chill and a wild rain that beat down upon the roof of the house. Alice woke in her bed with a start, for a moment confused about where she was. Had she somehow been transported back to that long night before the wedding that was never to be?
But no, nothing as awful as all of that. It was just a storm railing against the house the way a child in the midst of a full on tantrum was apt to rail against his parent. Still, she felt a restless kind of a presence and found that it was something she could not shake. She got herself out of bed and bundled herself in a blanket before opening her door and padding down the home’s seemingly never-ending hallway. Something she had learned to love about being up in the small hours when everything was quiet and most of the people around her slumbered was how much easier it seemed to trust and follow her instincts. There was far less questioning, far less talking herself out of things and attempting to adhere to some kind of logic. When a little voice in the back of her head told her to make her way to the great room with the massive fireplace she had come to love, she listened to it. There was no reason for her not to. She simply did as it told and that room was where she came upon Bradan. Bradan, the man she had been waiting for these three weeks and all of her life before that. He was home again, a fact that filled her with joy, but he was not at all as she remembered him. She could not see his face with the way he knelt beside the fire, but looking at his bent back she got the impression of a man who was badly broken. Not in body, but certainly in spirit. His head was bowed and his body shaking and after a few disoriented moments Alice realized that he was crying. This man who had always seemed so full of joy was crying alone in the middle of the night. She didn’t want to startle him but she could not stand to see him that way and so she hurried to his side, placing one tentative and questioning hand on his shoulder. At her touch, he turned to look at her over his shoulder and she could see that his eyes were full of sorrow. What could possibly have happened to him to make him look so defeated?
“Bradan? Bradan, what is it? What’s happened?”
“It’s nothing, nothing to worry yourself about.”
I don’t think so,” she replied softly, sinking to the floor at his feet and forcing him to hold eye contact with her. “I don’t think that’s true at all. It doesn’t look like nothing.”
“I don’t want to make my burdens yours, to cause you any more trouble than I may have already.”
“How do you mean? I can’t think of any trouble you’ve caused me at all.”
“Not that you know of, not yet, but I’m sure you’ll think it’s trouble when I tell you that I can’t marry you after all.”
Alice felt as though her spirit had left her body. This had to be some kind of a cruel joke. This couldn’t possibly be happening to her again. There was no way life would deal her such a terrible hand. But from what she knew of Bradan, he was not a spiteful man and would not wish to cause her any pain without reason. So then he meant it? He was going to call off their wedding just as Travis had? Alice wasn’t sure she could survive it. She did not know how she could begin to pick herself up again after this final blow and she spoke without knowing if there was any real point in doing so.
“You don’t want me, then. I see. You don’t want me here.”
“No! Oh Alice, no, it’s nothing like that. How could you possibly think a thing like that? How could you think that any man wouldn’t want you?”
“Because,” she said simply, her new heartbreak driving her to an honesty the two of them had not previously had. “This won’t be the first time a man has made that decision. Before I came here I was to be wed but on the day of my wedding my betrothed left for another. I suppose I should have known then that there was something about me that did not inspire a man to take me on for a lifetime.”
“No,” Bradan’s voice was hoarse and his tears had begun anew. “It’s nothing at all like that. I do want to marry you. I want you here badly, more than I feel capable of letting you know.”
“Well then why are you sending me away?”
“Because. Very soon there will not be a here to live on and I can’t ask you to be my wife when I’ve nothing to provide.”
“I don’t understand.”
Bradan ran one tormented hand through his still wet hair, his eyes staring into the fireplace and his body actually shaking with fear or grief or any number of unknown feelings Alice could only begin to guess at. She hated to see him like that and it was without a second thought that she took his hand firmly in both of hers. She wanted him to know that she was there with him, in both body and spirit. She wanted to give him whatever strength she was able.
“My parents. This ranch belonged to them before it belonged to me. They loved this land every bit as well as I do but they weren’t the best at managing their money. When they died it was sudden and they left me not only this land but also a significant amount of debt. I’ve spent more than a decade trying to dig us out from under it but now I see that I have failed. I visited the bank, you see, and the last little bit of grace and leniency I had from them has been exhausted. They mean to take the ranch unless I can pay the remainder of my parents’ debt in full by month’s end and there is no way I can accomplish that. So you see, I can’t take you as my wife. I don’t know what made me think I could build that dream of a life to begin with.”
“Is that all?”
Bradan finally tore his gaze away from the fire, but only to look at Alice as though she were crazy. The combination of the look and the pure joy that had consumed Alice caused her to laugh giddily, which only confused Bradan further. He must have thought that she had lost her mind and she supposed that she would have believed the same thing if their positions had been reversed. It was just that she felt such a profound relief upon hearing the story that she could not keep it to herself.
“Is that all? Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Well then we’ll be married just as we planned.”
“Do you really want to take on the role of a pauper’s life? It will be very hard. I will give you everything I have, I’ll do it for the rest of my life, but it will still be hard.”
“So you would want to marry me regardless of your situation?”
“Yes,” he said with that same loving kindness radiating from him, “I don’t want to think of a world where I have to lose you as well as everything else.”
“Then you shall lose nothing at all. There is something about myself that I have not told you, something I intended to keep to myself until after we were wed. I see that it may have been wrong and I hope you aren’t angry, but after the way I was left before I felt that I couldn’t do anything else.”
“I’m afraid that now it is I who does not understand.”
“When we are wed, it is not only me you will receive. There is a dowry as well. It is quite substantial, and I believe it will pay your debts with plenty to spare afterwards.”
“But that belongs to you!”
“No,” Alice said happily, knowing that when she spoke the words they were true. “It belongs to us. To our future.”
THE END
Return to TOC
From Debt to Love
Return to TOC
Chapter 1
Todd Cody is getting far too old, or so his mother thinks, to be single. She takes it into her own hands to find him a suitable bride by mail. When she asks for guidance on who would be the best match, God shines a light on a particular ad. She takes this as the sign she needs and sends for the woman.
Imagine the shock that both Todd and Clara get when they see each other for the
first time. Will Todd marry her? Will Clara stay or go back home?
Clara looked down at the bills piled on the table. “How did this happen?” She held her head in her hands. “What can I do?”
“We’ll except payments from you, but you need to give us larger amounts each time. I’ll give you one month to pay off this pile here.” The man sitting across the table separated the bills into three piles.
“But I just buried Jarrett yesterday. You can’t expect me to go out and get a job right now,” she uttered. She looked at the man who showed absolutely no sympathy in his eyes.
“I don’t care what you have to do to get the money, honestly. Your husband owes us this money. Now that he’s dead, it’s your responsibility.” He looked at her, his eyes cold and hard. “For all I care you can go to the Salon and dance,” he added.
She felt flustered and confused. “How can you do this to me? My husband just died! Do you have absolutely no compassion?” Clara furrowed her brow and looked at him. If she’d thought of it she would have looked at him sadly. But the fact was she just couldn’t believe someone could be so hard and uncaring to another human.
“Look, my business is money. I lend it and people pay it back. If I had a heart and cared about what people went through, I would never get paid. I can’t tell you how many excuses people can come up with when they owe you money. They don’t matter, the many stories I’ve heard. All that matters is that you have a month to pay those bills right there. If you don’t pay them, collection will be made on your behalf.”
“What does that mean?” Clara stuttered.
“It means that I will find a way to get the money from you, whether I sell you as a mail-order bride or you pay me. Or I guess I could simply throw you in jail now, since you seem like you aren’t willing to pay it off.” He began to write something on a piece of paper sitting in front of him.
Romance: Western Mail Order Bride Bethany's Love -Clean Christian Historical Romance (Western Mail Order Bride Short Shorties Series) Page 138
