by Natalie Dean
Elsie laughed. “Just drink it and see for yourself.”
“There’s plenty of work to get you going,” Will Henry said. “I noticed some fencing that needed repairing.”
“You out for another one of those midnight walks of yours?”
Bonnie’s back was to the table as she was scrambling more eggs. So it had been Will Henry, just as she’d thought, out walking last night by himself. From what his brother said, it was a common occurrence. Was he walking because he couldn’t sleep or because he couldn’t forget that girl that he’d loved?
“Couldn’t sleep. You might want to see if you notice any trace of coyotes. Diego thought they might be around.”
“I’ll take a look. You know the Watsons are having a dance on Friday night.”
“Hear that, Bonnie? I think Z is going to introduce you to the town.”
“You do dance, don’t you?” Zachary Taylor asked in a jesting tone, as if, because she didn’t kiss and cuddle in a buggy, she might be disinclined to dance.
“If I’m asked,” she replied.
Elsie’s warm, round chuckle that came from her throat like plump little circles of mirth, started it off, and then Will Henry followed, his laugh deeper and more resonant.
“Well, I’m asking,” Zachary Taylor declared.
“What are you all chattering about?” demanded Mrs. Kennesaw, whose expression was not nearly as stern as her tone. “There’s work to be done, and you’re talking about dancing?”
“Don’t you want me to show off my girl, Grandmother?”
“Bonnie? Don’t you like Elsie’s cooking?”
“I like it so much that I want to learn how to cook just like her,” Bonnie answered, splitting the eggs neatly in half with a single crack against the skillet and emptying the contents into the pan.
“Hmmm. You sound as impudent as that grandson of mine.”
Mrs. Kennesaw, leaning heavily on her two canes, neared the table. Immediately the boys rose to help her into her chair.
“Watch out for the coffee, Grandmother,” Zachary Taylor warned. “We don’t know who brewed it.”
Mrs. Kennesaw accepted the cup that Elsie poured for her. “I reckon there’s more than one way to brew coffee,” she said.
Chapter Eight
By the time Friday night came, Bonnie knew that her wedding would be held at the end of October because heading into November wasn’t as busy and Mrs. Kennesaw thought it would give the couple time to get comfortable with each other. Bonnie knew that Kennesaw kinfolks from eastern Texas would be showing up for the wedding, and that Elsie would be cooking and baking for three days solid before the wedding in order to have enough food for everyone. Bonnie found that with a bit of altering, she could fit into the wedding dress that Mrs. Kennesaw had worn on her wedding day; she was as touched by the offer to let her wear it as Mrs. Kennesaw was pleased that Bonnie was willing to do so. Zachary Taylor had had her finger sized at the general store so that he could have a ring ready for her, but he refused to let her see it in advance.
“I’ve got little enough to do with this wedding,” he grumbled. “At least let me have some say in it.”
It was true that Mrs. Kennesaw excluded her grandson from wedding planning. Weddings are women’s business, she told him, and men didn’t know anything about planning them.
But Zachary Taylor’s mood had improved immensely on Thursday night when he took Bonnie on another buggy ride, and this time, she let him kiss her. And she kissed him back. Aware that he was on trial and that Bonnie could just as readily refuse him, Zachary had not pressed for more, although he’d managed to get another kiss out of her before Cabot headed for home.
That night, again not able to sleep because she felt as though her very skin was singing at the recollection of Zachary Taylor’s touch, Bonnie went to the window late at night. The moon was concealed by the weight of the clouds that occupied the sky, but before long she saw him. Will Henry, his long stride moving slowly through the grass, his head bowed as if he were deep in thought, passing by the house, and then stopping, yards away, in front of her window. She stayed hidden behind the curtains. The windows were closed now because the night air was chilly, but she watched through the panels of the curtain until Will Henry began walking again. The front door opened and closed, signaling that he had returned.
There was a lot of mystery in Will Henry. There wasn’t any mystery at all in Zachary Taylor, except for the fundamental mystery of how a man became a husband, but as she dressed for the dance and imagined the way her fiancé’s eyes would light up when he saw her in her green and white gingham dress, with green ribbons in her hair, she didn’t think she wanted a mystery. She wanted to dance and have fun and meet other young people and maybe, she’d want Zachary Taylor to kiss her before they returned home to the ranch.
Before they left, Mrs. Kennesaw summoned Bonnie into her sitting room.
“There’s not a prettier girl in Mesquite, Texas,” Mrs. Kennesaw said approvingly. “You’re going to be fighting off the young men.”
“I expect I’ll be dancing with Zachary Taylor all night.”
“I expect so,” his grandmother confirmed. “You’re something worth showing off, and that boy will do it, but a pretty girl should know she’s pretty. Now, people are going to wonder where you’re from.”
“I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”
“Yes . . . but they don’t need to know that you and my grandson met up in a magazine advertisement. I’ve been thinking of what you should tell people.”
“Mrs. Kennesaw, the truth is just easier to remember.”
“Now, listen to me. I have family in Maryland. You could just as easily be from there.”
“Mrs. Kennesaw, I’m not from Maryland. I’m a Polish girl from Pittsburgh, and that’s all I know how to be. If you’re ashamed of me being a mail-order bride, I can’t fabricate another identity to save your pride.”
Mrs. Kennesaw’s deep-set brown eyes seemed to burn. “Don’t you know to listen to your elders?”
“I do. But not when I’m expected to lie. I left my home, and I traveled across the country to marry Zachary Taylor. Since he’s willing to marry me, I guess he isn’t pining of a broken heart for any of the local girls. That’ll have to do.”
Mrs. Kennesaw tilted her head to study the brunette daughter of immigrants who was standing in front of her. “You know,” she said, “you’re no bigger than a minute, and you look as if a tumbleweed could knock you over. But you don’t knock down easily.”
“No, I don’t.”
“All right, then. We’ll do it your way.”
When Bonnie told Zachary Taylor what had transpired in his grandmother’s sitting room, he let out a long, low whistle of approval. “Grandmother said that? She said ‘we’ll do it your way’?” he repeated. “Bonnie Yankovich, I am going to dance you off your feet tonight!”
He very nearly did, too, but Bonnie, who loved to dance and quickly learned the steps to the new dances she didn’t know, kept up with him. Zachary Taylor was quick on his feet and didn’t trample on her toes; he moved gracefully and athletically to the tune of the fiddle, and as they danced, he grinned at her in a way that seemed like secrets were being shared.
The other men noticed as well and began teasing Zachary Taylor about the girl he’d been hiding. Zachary Taylor, who was so set on doing exactly what he wanted to do that it was unlikely that he’d have heeded any instructions from his grandmother to pretend, told them that he’d had to order his wife out of a catalog. Everyone thought he was joking, and before long, the others were joshing that he’d found a sweetheart on the cattle drive, or that he’d met her when he and his brother had to go to Austin on business. Zachary Taylor went along with every outlandish notion they came up with. When one young man, who had, judging from his speech, been drinking more than punch, declared that she sounded foreign so she must be royalty from another country, Zachary Taylor announced that she was one of Queen Victoria’s many daugh
ters, come to Texas because she was tired of all those English fops.
Bonnie was careful to stay close to Zachary Taylor, well aware that the belles of the town were unlikely to welcome her in friendship if they thought she had designs on their beaux. During a break in the fiddling, the girls clustered around her while the young men gathered outside. They sipped the punch that their gentlemen had gotten for them and chattered, asking Bonnie about the wedding. Thanks to Mrs. Kennesaw’s planning, Bonnie was able to provide details. No, her family couldn’t come, they lived too far away. She found out that for Texas, it didn’t matter where someone hailed from if they belonged ‘back East,' as if the East were another country, somehow attached to the United States by certain geographical markers, but separate, too, because it wasn’t the West, and it wasn’t Texas.
Chapter Nine
As she and Zachary Taylor were preparing to go, a young man called out, “Don’t forget, Z. Pretty soon, you’ll be tied up in apron strings. Better keep it loose before then.”
Zachary Taylor laughed. “No apron strings for me,” he called out. “Saturday night is still Saturday night.”
“What did he mean?” Bonnie asked as the horse, not Cabot this time, but a sprightly chestnut with a quicker gait that seemed eager to sprint if he were allowed, moved quickly along the path. The moon tonight was not full, but it was still bright.
“Nothing, that’s just his way,” Zachary Taylor answered. “You know how to dance. Did you have fun?
“I did,” she nodded.
“Good,” Zachary Taylor said in a voice that reminded her of a purring cat.
“But I’m so tired that I can’t keep my eyes open.”
Zachary Taylor pulled the reins, and the horse came to a stop reluctantly. “Then close ‘em,” he said, pulling her into his arms. His lips were warm and searching; this kiss was a claim, not like the other searching ones earlier in the week. This kiss told her that she was his and his alone and she put her arms around his back to accept the ownership that she felt for him as well. When he stirred in her arms and nuzzled her neck, she pushed him away gently. “Your grandmother will be waiting up for us,” she said gently.
Zachary Taylor drew in a long, ragged breath. “We’ll be married soon,” he said. “Things will change.”
“Some will.”
“I’m used to my freedom.”
“I’m not trying to take your freedom,” she said, a little hurt by the comment. He’d just kissed her the way a lover kissed his beloved, and then he said he was used to his freedom.
“Marriage changes things.”
“Do you want me to go back to Pittsburgh so that things won’t change?” she demanded.
“No! You sure do fly off the handle mighty fast sometimes. Linc was right.”
“Who’s Linc and what was he right about?”
“He’s a friend. He said that women want to shackle a man when they’re married to him.”
“He’s married?”
“Linc? No, not Linc,” Zachary Taylor scoffed. “He’s footloose and fancy-free.”
“Then he doesn’t know anything about it, does he? You listen to me, Zachary Taylor. If you don’t want to marry me, you say so now.” Bonnie was perplexed by Zachary Taylor’s conduct. They’d had a wonderful time at the dance. It was the most time they’d spent in each other’s company since she’d arrived in Texas and she had thought it was a real courtship and not just a mail-order marriage. To have her fledgling hopes suddenly dashed was hurtful, and she’d rather be angry than hurt.
“That’s not what I said,” he replied in an aggrieved tone. “You don’t need to act like that.”
She withdrew to the side of the buggy. “We’d better get home. Your grandmother will be worried.”
That would usually have been the time when Zachary Taylor would have responded with a quip, slightly suggestive, but not lewd or insulting. But instead, he simply slapped the reins, and the horse took off at a smart pace, rather than the leisurely one that, one would think, would have been preferred by a young man who wanted to stretch the night out a little longer, so he had more time with his girl.
“Miss Bonnie,” Zachary Taylor said as he helped her out of the buggy, “I didn’t mean…”
But Bonnie, fearful that tears would begin to fall, pushed past him into the house. She was relieved to see no lamp light in Mrs. Kennesaw’s sitting room, indicating that she’d gone to bed. Elsie was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Will Henry. Grateful for the unexpected privacy, Bonnie hurried to her bedroom before Zachary Taylor finished unhitching his horse and came into the house.
As she lay in bed, her memory traveled through the scenes of the night that were so vivid they could have been photographs. They had danced, laughed, talked with other couples; they’d drunk punch and eaten pie and joked. And then they’d danced some more. Everything had been fine until the end.
What had his friend said? Something about apron strings. And who was the friend? Linc somebody . . . where had she heard the name?
“Linc Duffy had better cards.”
When Will Henry had arrived at the general store and asked his brother what he was doing out in broad daylight without a shirt, Zachary Taylor had mentioned someone named Linc, who had better cards. Linc, who was footloose and fancy-free, and had warned Zachary Taylor about keeping the apron strings loose.
A quick flame of temper ignited Bonnie’s mood. She was angry at Zachary Taylor for being so malleable that a friend’s derisive words could make him doubt her and the marriage he’d pledged to; angry at the unknown Linc, one of a dozen young men she had likely met that night, but who hadn’t distinguished himself enough for her to attach a face to that name; and she was angry at herself as well, for having allowed herself to fall so close to the edge of being in love with the handsome, winning Zachary Taylor that she’d failed to keep the pitfalls in mind.
Bonnie tossed the sheets away from her body. It was a warm night, warmer than usual for autumn, they said. By now, at home, the evenings would have a crisp flavor to them. The summer gave Pittsburghers a little respite from the coal dust, but come autumn and the cooler nights, and once again, the black dust that lay over the city like a veneer would be dominant again. Texas was warmer, but the nights had grown cooler, except tonight.
She abandoned rest and went over to the window, opening it so that the night air could refresh her. The full moon was gone, and the light from its smaller replica was not as bright. But it was still a consolation, as she leaned on the sill and gazed out onto the endless landscape, unbroken by the mountains and hills that hewed boundaries in her Pennsylvania home.
She saw him walking. Maybe she’d been expecting to see him, and maybe that was the reason she’d opened the window.
“Will Henry!” she called out softly, not wishing to be overheard by anyone else, although she knew that hers was the only occupied bedroom on this side of the ranch.
Will Henry, startled by the sound of a voice where he expected silence, looked up.
“It’s me, Bonnie.”
He headed over to the window and stood in front of it. “Don’t tell me you’re another one who sees a lot of the night with open eyes,” he said.
“Sometimes . . . “
“Too much dancing?” he teased.
“No . . . Will Henry, who’s Linc?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering.”
He accepted her evasion. “Linc and Z have been friends since they were kids. Linc has a wild streak in him. Z doesn’t, but sometimes he gets caught up in Linc’s scrapes. Linc’s a hand, he works the ranch. Why?”
“He’s the one who beat Zachary Taylor in cards and won his shirt and his horse.”
“And his hat and his boots. That’s Linc.”
“You don’t like him?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I like him or not; Z is old enough to pick his own pals.”
There was more, she sensed. Perhaps the code of twin brothers prevented Will Henry
from saying more. Either that, or he judged some of the scrapes that Linc had inspired as being unsuitable to mention in a lady’s presence.
“Why?” Will Henry asked when she fell silent.
“I think he’s making your brother doubt that marriage is right for him.”
“I reckon all men go through that,” Will Henry said.
“Did you?” It was a question she’d never have asked him so boldly in daylight, but shielded by the unassuming darkness of the night, she was more comfortable with her curiosity.
“No,” he said. “Grandmother told you about Mary Ellen?”
“Not her name.”
“We were going to get married. Then she fell sick and died. Last year.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He nodded. “Sometimes . . . sometimes I just want to find a way to bring her back, and I can’t. So I walk at night. Z says I’m like an unquiet spirit.”
“You still love her.”
“I don’t know how not to love her. And seeing you and Z, and watching while the two of you fall more and more and more in place with each other, just reminds me of what I can’t have.”
“I guess it’s no good saying that you might meet someone who makes you feel the way Mary Ellen did.” Or that, after tonight, she was not at all sure that she and Zachary Taylor were falling into place.
“No; everyone says it. Even people who’ve had it happen. They’ve lost someone, and they’ve gone on with someone else.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in love before. I’m not sure I like it,” she admitted.
“You will,” he said. “Just give Z a chance. He’s got some growing up to do; part of him will always be a boy, just like part of me will always be old. Give him time. He loves you, but the boy in him is afraid to be in love, and the man doesn’t recognize that it’s what he’s supposed to do now. Give him time.”
Chapter Ten
But how much time, Bonnie wondered the next day when half the day had gone by, and she hadn’t seen Zachary Taylor since the night before. No one else seemed to think his absence was odd. It was Saturday, and Will Henry didn’t comment on his brother’s absence from the breakfast table except to say that he’d be disappointed he missed sausage and French toast. After breakfast, Bonnie washed the dishes, Elsie shaking her head as she began to prepare the lunchtime meal. Mrs. Kennesaw wasn’t out of her room yet; Elsie explained that she generally spent Saturday in bed so that she’d have enough strength to sit through church the next morning.
