Taming the Rancher: Mail Order Bride (Brides and Twins Book 2)

by Natalie Dean

  “I never heard of such a thing,” his grandmother snapped. “I don’t think there’s ever been a Kennesaw who met his bride naked as a savage!”

  “Grandmother, he’s not quite naked,” argued Will Henry.

  “As good as!”

  The woman delivering this tirade was, Bonnie judged, in her sixties, with dark hair lightly silvered and deep-set brown eyes that had the fierce expression of an eagle. Her grandsons didn’t resemble her in the least. Bonnie went to her as soon as Zachary Taylor brought her out of the wagon.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Kennesaw,” she said, “for welcoming me into your home.”

  “Thank you for coming,” the woman answered. “Yankovich. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that name before.”

  “It’s Polish.”

  “Polish? Where’s that?”

  “Poland is in Europe. My grandfather came to the United States from Poland to work in the coal mines.”

  “It sounds foreign,” the woman nodded as if this explained it. “Coal mines? Dirty work. I never could fathom how a man could stand to be underground all day.”

  “I reckon they do it because it’s their work, Grandmother,” Will Henry interposed, “not because they are averse to sunlight.”

  “I’m surprised they don’t all head west where they can work outside in the sunlight,” Grandmother responded. “Underground all day. Dangerous work.”

  As that was why Bonnie had come west for a husband, she didn’t see any reason to add to the discussion. She did not feel comfortable in relating the story of her father’s death in the coal mine; although it had happened eight years ago, the memory was still painfully raw in her mind.

  “Grandmother,” Will Henry said, “you do know that cattlemen get gored by bulls and crushed in stampedes, and bitten by poisonous snakes, and killed by Indians.”

  “Grandmother wants Miss Bonnie to think that the West is much safer than the East,” Zachary Taylor said, picking up Bonnie’s bags.

  “Get along with both of you,” their Grandmother said, but it was apparent that, despite her gruff tone, she was fond of her grandsons. “Zachary Taylor, you get inside and get some clothes on. You’re not sitting down to the table in that condition. Bonnie, Elsie will show you to your room where you can freshen up. I don’t suppose either one of these louts has thought to give you so much as a sip of water from his canteen. Elsie will bring you a pitcher of water. Will Henry, you can help me into the house. Clem will take care of the supplies.”

  Will Henry took his grandmother by one arm; Elsie took the other. Bonnie picked up the canes that had been allowed to drop to the dirt when human help replaced the need for the support they provided.

  Once inside, when Mrs. Kennesaw was seated at the head of the table, Elsie turned to Bonnie. “I’ll show you to your room,” she said. “Looks like Z already took your bags.”

  The ranch house was built in a long rectangle with an occasional corridor leading to another wing of the structure. Bonnie doubted if an architect had done the planning; the additions were too haphazard for that. But after having grown up in a crowded house with a family of fifteen, when Papa was alive, the ranch seemed spacious. That perspective increased when Elsie opened the door to the room where Bonnie’s bags had been delivered. There were two windows, both opened to let in the fresh air and sunlight. There was a small bed in the corner of the room, and a braided rug beside the bed so that, on chilly mornings, a person’s feet wouldn’t land on the cold wooden floor upon rising. The room didn’t have a lot of furniture, but to Bonnie’s eyes, it seemed abundant; a basin and pitcher on a small stand for washing; a full-length mirror against the wall by one of the windows; a large wardrobe made of polished wood that had drawers and doors in it for storing clothing. There were also hooks nailed into the wall across from the bed for other clothing to be hung.

  The walls were plain white, but color abounded in the room; the bedcovering was a bright blanket woven in a pattern that was unfamiliar to Bonnie, but with a pleasing mix of deep, burnt reds and blues. The curtains at the windows were red, billowing as the breeze puffed them out lengthwise so that they seemed to be flying in the room.

  “The first Mr. Kennesaw was a smart man,” Elsie said. “He built this house so that it gets lots of sun, but he made sure he didn’t cut down all the trees. They sure make a difference in the summer months.”

  “Those paintings . . . .who painted them?”

  There were two paintings on the wall. One was of a horse, black, with a white patch on its forehead. It seemed to be staring at the artist as if issuing some sort of challenge. There was no saddle on its back.

  The other painting was of a sun setting in a sky; the colors were almost too vivid for the scene, but against the white wall, the effect was stirring without being excessive.

  “Miss Eldora,” Elsie said, then shook her head. “It’s been a lot of years. Miss Eldora is Mrs. Kennesaw. She’s the boys’ grandmother.”

  “She’s quite talented.”

  “She took up painting after she was throwed,” Elsie said, inclining her head toward the painting of the horse. “It was him who done it. She figured he deserved a painting; said instead of her breaking him, he broke her.”

  “She was badly injured?”

  “Bad enough. She don’t walk right; you saw that. She’ll use the canes when she has to, and she has a chair with wheels to get around inside the house. She broke a lot of bones, but she wouldn’t let the fall kill her. Miss Eldora, she can take a lot.”

  Bonnie glanced over to the painting where the horse maintained its level stare. Zachary Taylor’s words returned to her.

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, Miss Bonnie, you might not want to mention to Grandmother that you don’t ride. It’ll seem strange to her, and she’ll have you on a saddle by dawn tomorrow.’

  The woman who had been crippled by a horse expected everyone to know how to ride, even though riding had nearly killed her? Bonnie pondered what sort of a woman would feel that way, and what other demands she would make on a stranger who was about to join the family.

  Chapter Four

  Eldora Kennesaw was pleased when Bonnie, thanking her for the hospitality, praised the bedroom where she would be staying. “It’s one of the guest rooms,” Mrs. Kennesaw told her. “We’ve got family all around Texas. Things are quiet now, but kinfolks will be coming in for the wedding.”

  Zachary Taylor, whose trousers were now accompanied by a clean plaid shirt and, she assumed, boots, although he was sitting down and she couldn’t see them for herself, grinned. “Grandmother doesn’t want you to meet them before the wedding,” he explained, that dancing glint in his eyes alight with mirth, “or you might decide against marrying into us.”

  “That’s not true. The Kennesaws have been in Texas since Mexico. The first ones came from Georgia over seventy years ago,” Mrs. Kennesaw said as she began to pass plates of food that Elsie handed to her, one by one. “After the war ended, Mesquite started to grow. We’ve got quite a few veterans here who served on both sides, but that’s all done with now. We don’t pay attention to who fought for what flag then. James Turner owns one of Mesquite’s biggest spreads; he fought for the Union. His brother died fighting for the Confederates. Some things are best left in the past.”

  Bonnie had been told about the war, of course, the war that had split North and South. She had been a child when it began, and for the immigrant workers of Pittsburgh, the war simply provided them with more work, as the Union needed the labor of its miners and mill workers to maintain its superiority over the agricultural Confederacy. But her family hadn’t served in the war and hadn’t paid attention to the motives behind it. If they’d wanted to have problems, Mama had always said, the Poles could have stayed in Poland, where there were problems a-plenty.

  Bonnie, as the guest, was seated to Mrs. Kennesaw’s right and was the first to be served. Zachary Taylor sat next to her, and Will Henry was seated at his grandmother’s left. There were no other
places set; Bonnie supposed that when Elise had finished seeing to the family’s needs, she would eat later. Bonnie had never sat at a table where her food was served to her. Such things were common in the wealthy families in Pittsburgh, and her younger sister Katarina was a maid in one such household, serving as the source of information on the affluent leading citizens of the city. This was much less formal than what Katarina described.

  Accustomed to smaller portions and limited offerings, Bonnie was surprised to see a platter liberally filled with thick slices of beef cooked in onions and emanating heat and a delicious aroma. There were bowls of beans and potatoes and tomatoes being passed. The biscuits were so hot that the butter she spread inside melted immediately. Bonnie realized how hungry she was; she had been careful throughout her long journey to spend no more than she had to spend. Zachary Taylor had paid for her trip, but it had not occurred to him that she might be in need of money for meals and lodgings as well. She had earned the funds by sewing, as her mother did. Mrs. Yankovich and her mother, the children’s grandmother, Babcia, had taught the girls how to sew at an early age and Mama was a stern taskmistress. But that insistence on neat stitches had paid off when one of the women had hired Bonnie to sew some of the garments for her daughter’s wedding trousseau. She had paid well, making it possible for Bonnie to put money aside for the trip and also to supplement her mother’s income.

  Her letter to Zachary Taylor Kennesaw had included mention of her sewing and cooking abilities. She was also as fierce a housekeeper as any other Pittsburgh woman who was accustomed to the daily battle against the grime that the mills spewed forth and which engaged the female population in a never-ending conflict to keep their homes and their garments clean.

  “We don’t know why he came,” Zachary Taylor told her, handing her the gravy for her potatoes. “But since the Kennesaw Mountains are in Georgia, we’re guessing that the name he came here with wasn’t the name he left Georgia with, which leads us to the conclusion that he left Georgia some distance ahead of the law.”

  “We don’t know that,” Will Henry said, smiling, “but it does make us wonder. Even Grandmother wonders, although she won’t admit it.”

  “Maybe he was a riverboat gambler,” Mrs. Kennesaw said. “Not a very good one. Perhaps that explains why his great-grandson manages to lose his shoes, his shirt, his hat and his horse when he plays.”

  “Grandmother, I told you that it was a joke,” Zachary Taylor explained. From the inflection in his voice, Bonnie realized that this was likely not the first discussion with his grandmother that he’d had on the topic. “Whistler will come back, he always does, and I have other shirts and boots. I’ll get another hat.”

  Mrs. Kennesaw appeared to have much more to say on the matter, but she merely pressed her lips together. But that didn’t mean that her grandson was to be reprieved.

  Elsie, who had returned to the kitchen to send around second helpings and fill their drinks, said, “Your grandmother is distressed to think of your fiancée being treated disrespectfully.”

  Zachary Taylor looked astonished, turning his head to Bonnie. “I never meant to disrespect you,” he exclaimed.

  Bonnie had no answer. She hadn’t considered his conduct having had anything to do with her.

  But Mrs. Kennesaw had. “You gave no thought to her at all,” she said. “The night before your wife was to arrive, and you were cavorting in the saloon with stable hands, losing to them as if it doesn’t matter. It does matter. It may matter very much to your wife. Bonnie?”

  They were all gazing at her now, even Elsie, the bowl of potatoes in the circle of her arm, awaiting Bonnie’s response. Mrs. Kennesaw was expectant; Elsie leaning forward as if she would hear better the closer that she stood to the table; Zachary Taylor, his countenance flummoxed as if he had no method for combining a poker game with the arrival of a mail-order bride. Will Henry looked watchful; she couldn’t interpret his expression, and that was, she realized, the most significant difference between the brothers. Zachary Taylor wore his thoughts and feelings on his face as if he were a paid advertisement for whatever was taking place at the time. His brother, William Henry, locked his thoughts behind a fortress wall that no one could scale. It was odd that the twins, with such identical features, were separated by this significant difference.

  “One of my older brothers worked for a time on a sailing vessel on the Mississippi, where a great deal of time was spent playing poker,” she said. “He told me that poker isn’t about cards, it’s about people, and that it’s more important to be able to read the people than to know the hands they’ve been dealt.” It was unnecessary to let anyone know that Stush had taught his younger sister how to play the game because he told her she had what was called a poker face. “Whatever’s going on inside you isn’t showing on your face,” he said approvingly. “No one will know what cards are in your hand unless you tell them.”

  “Your brother was right!” declared Will Henry. “Exactly right.”

  “I reckon so,” Zachary Taylor agreed as he considered what she had said. “I guess it is about what men make you believe.”

  “All the more reason for you to abstain from it,” Mrs. Kennesaw declared. “It’s far too costly.”

  But Zachary Taylor, his good humor restored, took the bowl of potatoes from Elsie’s hand and asked where she was hiding that cake he’d seen her icing that morning. Elsie beamed and said she’d be cutting it for dessert shortly, as soon as everyone had finished eating their meal. The dinner ended on a merry note as Zachary Taylor argued that dessert was part of the meal and oughtn’t to be treated as if it were an afterthought.

  Bonnie was so full that she doubted she could fit in a single bite more, but when Elsie handed her a plate with a generous slice of chocolate cake on it, she found that her objections were groundless. There was indeed room for cake. She wasn’t sure what she thought of her intended husband, or what to make of his grandmother, but she was sure that she’d never go hungry living under the Kennesaw roof.

  Chapter Five

  Mrs. Kennesaw directed Bonnie to accompany her to her sitting room so that they could plan the wedding. Zachary Taylor protested at being excluded, but his grandmother told him that in order to make up for missing church and failing to give his bride a decent welcome to town, he could just further defile the Sabbath by finding some work to do.

  “I haven’t even kissed her yet,” he complained with a jovial grin as he rose from the table.

  “You’ll have plenty of time for courting,” Mrs. Kennesaw said. “But we’re planning first, and you aren’t needed.”

  Zachary Taylor winked at her. “We’ll go out for a ride this evening,” he promised.

  “Not after dark,” his grandmother warned.

  “Come on, Z,” Will Henry said. “We’re not wanted, and Grandmother is telling us to make ourselves useful.”

  “I thought bridegrooms were plenty useful,” his brother disputed, following his twin out of the kitchen.

  With Elise on one side and Bonnie on the other, they were able to assist Mrs. Kennesaw up from her chair, away from the table, and into her sitting room. Mrs. Kennesaw’s study was located immediately off from the kitchen. It had previously been the sitting room where the family gathered after the evening meal, she explained. “But since this,” she gestured toward her legs, “it’s my room now, so I don’t have as far to walk. If I want family with me, I tell them so, and if I don’t, they leave me alone. Now you sit down right here, next to me,” she said, pounding the space on the sofa next to her, “so I can get to know you. Elsie, why don’t you bring us some of that lemonade you made. If the boys knew she’d made lemonade,” she explained to Bonnie, “they’d have finished it before we got to it. But sending them out of the house gives us the first chance at it. Tell me about your family? Who are your people?”

  “My father left Poland when he was eighteen years old to come to Pittsburgh. He’d been a miner, and he’d heard there was work in Pittsburgh. My mother
was born in Pittsburgh; her parents came over when they got married.”

  “Did your grandfather work in the mines too?”

  Bonnie nodded. In the section of Pittsburgh where she had been born, everyone worked in the mines. Compared to wages in Poland, they felt they were living better. But her mother and grandmother had been widowed on the same day when the mine caved in, killing everyone who was working. But she didn’t want to discuss that.

  “Everyone did.”

  Mrs. Kennesaw nodded. “Just like everyone here ranches. We all do a little farming but make no mistake, our money comes from beef. We had our cattle drive this summer and turned a nice profit. Easterners like Texas beef.”

  Meat was a rarity in the Yankovich home. But that wasn’t something to be discussed either. Her family was poor, she knew that; everyone in the community was poor. But they were proud of how hard they worked, and they wanted no one’s pity. Nor did Bonnie want it. “I can see why,” she said.

  “It’s hard work, but after the drive, autumn isn’t as demanding as summer, and there’s more time for things like weddings. That’s why it took so long for Zachary Taylor to settle things on marrying you. He had to get the cattle drive out of the way first.” Mrs. Kennesaw fixed her unyielding gaze upon Bonnie. “I suppose you’re wondering why he sent for a mail-order bride.”

  The thought had crossed Bonnie’s mind, and she’d revisited the riddle frequently as she traveled across the American landscape to Texas. Since that memorable encounter with the handsome, charming young Texan, arriving at his home and meeting his family, she was even more mystified why he had sent for a stranger to be his bride.

  “Yes,” Bonnie answered simply. “I do wonder that.”

  Mrs. Kennesaw smiled. “Because all the young girls in Mesquite are afraid of me,” she said smugly. “My grandson is as good-looking as a young man can be, and he’s got good bloodlines in his family: both his grandfather and his father went to West Point and served with distinction in the military. His great grandfather built this ranch from nothing when he came here from Georgia. There’s not a more distinguished family in the county than the Kennesaws.”