Annie: A Bride For The Farmhand - A Clean Historical Western Romance (Stewart House Brides Book 3)

by Charity Phillips

  It wasn’t until nearly eleven that Lizzie was able to find an ad that passed her mother’s standards:

  March 2, 1871

  Frederic Knowles, a twenty-five-year-old sheep rancher of good means living in Cheyenne, Wyoming, seeks a lady with a good face and even better sense of humor with whom he can start a life and raise a family.

  Lizzie had thought her mother would be scandalized by the “good face” comment, but she just chuckled and announced, “I like him. Now go write your reply.”

  Lizzie didn’t know what she had done to deserve this torture. (Well, her relationship with Henry probably would have earned her plenty of Ada’s torture, but Lizzie was quite sure at this point that her mother didn’t know about that.) With a frustrated groan, she made her way upstairs to her room. There was no chance Henry was still waiting for her at this point, but she was tired. So, she decided to keep this short.

  She retrieved her quill and a sheet of stationery from her desk, dipped her quill in a jar of ink, and wrote:

  May 12, 1871

  Dear Mr. Knowles,

  I saw your ad in the March 8th issue of the “Matrimonial News” and I have just one question for you: Do you ever get so bored that you begin talking to the sheep?

  Sincerely,

  Miss Lizzie Perry

  For a moment, Lizzie thought about which photograph to include with her letter, but then her lips twisted into a wicked smile. Her mother had told her she had to respond to this man, but she had said nothing about Lizzie including a photograph…

  Lizzie’s mind tried to remind her that in fact Ada had told Lizzie to include a photograph, just not at the same particular moment that she’d told her to write a reply to Mr. Knowles, but Lizzie went ahead and sealed the letter anyway.

  Even in its brevity and lack of photograph, Lizzie still felt she was betraying Henry with this letter. But her mother was still awake and keeping a hawk’s eye on her when Lizzie came downstairs; she had to mail the letter right away—her mother wouldn’t stand for anything less.

  Now Lizzie just had to hope that Mr. Knowles never replied.

  ****

  Mr. Knowles responded only a month later. Lizzie was sorting through the mail on her way to the house when she saw a letter for her with Frederic Knowles’ name and address written in the upper left corner. The letter felt incredibly light—he was probably just writing to tell her that he had already found a perfect little farm wife since placing his ad.

  Lizzie could only hope.

  Lizzie’s mother was in the kitchen when Lizzie dropped the mail on the counter. Ada was nearly blind but must have heard Lizzie ripping open the letter. “Is that from him?” she asked. Ada had asked that same question each and every time Lizzie had gotten a letter over the last month.

  “Yes, Mama,” Lizzie replied in a sigh.

  “Read it to me,” her mother ordered.

  With another sigh, Lizzie cleared her throat and began:

  May 27, 1871

  Dear Miss Perry,

  I don’t find my work terribly boring, though I’m sure an East coast city like Binghamton offers more excitement. I do, however, tend to talk to the sheep quite often, and have also made up names for most of them: Flopsy, Moppet, and Gingie being just a few.

  Please tell me more about yourself. I fear attempting conversations with partners who don’t talk back is taking its toll on my sanity, and any help you could provide would be much appreciated.

  Best,

  Fred

  Lizzie frowned at the letter in surprise. “He didn’t…”

  “What?” her mother asked.

  Lizzie had been about to say, “…ask for a photograph.” But then she realized saying so would have meant revealing to her mother that this man didn’t already have a photograph of her in his possession and insist she send one.

  Lizzie couldn’t help being a little amazed. He has no idea what I look like … and he still wants to talk to me?

  She shook the smile that had been forming on her face away and turned to her mother. No matter what this “Fred” said, he wasn’t Henry. “Nothing, Mama. I was just going to say that this man sounds insane.”

  “Is that what you think, Maggie?” Ada asked in the direction of the doorway. Margaret was leaning against the doorjamb with a small smile on her lips—who knew how long she’d been there. She was quiet as a mouse.

  “I think he sounds like he has a sense of humor,” Margaret replied.

  “I agree,” their mother told Lizzie. “Now go write your reply.”

  Lizzie worked not to release yet another sigh as she left, though she did catch a glance at the grandfather clock in the foyer on her way upstairs. As long as she finished her reply before dinner, she would have plenty of time to meet Henry later that evening. Their nightly meetings had become a weekly ritual this past month.

  So, Lizzie put some time into her reply, making jokes about each of the lamb’s names he’d given her while adding a few suggestions of her own, like “Little Bo Sheep” and “Uncle Lamb”. She told him of her love of painting—an artistic talent she and her sisters had inherited from their father. She told him of the carriage rides she took with her friends and idyllic trips to the country she had taken with her family as a child.

  It was past dinnertime by the time Lizzie sealed the fat envelope containing her reply. For a moment, she worried that her reply constituted a betrayal to Henry, but she shook the worry away. She had been nothing more than friendly in either of her letters to Mr. Knowles (Fred, a voice in her mind insisted) and had not announced in any way that she planned to marry him—well, apart from responding to Fred’s ad looking for a wife to begin with. But it wasn’t like Lizzie had had much control over that.

  Since she was late to dinner, Lizzie was also late finishing. She rushed through putting on a dark blue dress that brought out her eyes, throwing a shawl over it to hide the dress’s low neckline, and announced to her family that she was going on an evening walk.

  From there, Lizzie jogged through backyards and farmland to reach Mrs. Adler’s property. She was a rich old widow with acres and acres of land. The sun had barely set and yet the lights in her mansion were already out.

  Lizzie slipped around the briar patch and inside the old, dilapidated barn she and Henry had found on their first rendezvous. Inside, she saw Henry sitting on a crate with a lantern beside him. He looked even handsomer by the soft, gentle light of the lantern. He didn’t look soft or gentle, though—he looked angry.

  “What took you so long?” he asked. And it didn’t sound passionate or tender—he just sounded mean.

  “I’m sorry, Henry,” Lizzie said quickly. “Dinner with my family ran late, and—”

  “Then you should’ve made an excuse. I mean, come on, Liz, I haven’t got all night to wait around for you. You’re lucky I didn’t leave.”

  Lizzie took off her shawl to reveal the low-cut bodice of her dress and pulled her hair down. That made Henry’s frowning lips twist into a smile. He stood. “You’re also lucky you happen to be the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen, Liz.”

  Then he kissed her, and any lingering thoughts of Fred were wiped clean from Lizzie’s mind.

  ****

  Lizzie had never thought she would have any interest in a sheep farmer, but Fred was turning out to be a good friend. Girls Lizzie’s age had never showed much interest in Lizzie, and men, while they showed tons of interest in Lizzie, none of it had been in anything but her face.

  Corresponding with Fred, though, was so relaxed and easy. It reminded Lizzie of how she and her sister Sarah would joke around with each other when Sarah had still lived at home. Lizzie and Fred had been corresponding for three months now, and the packets of letters got bigger each time. Fred told her of his childhood in Virginia and how his love of animals and farming inspired him to move west. Lizzie told him all about her parents and her sisters, and even the wild dreams she had of painting professionally one day. Sarah had always thought she was good e
nough. Then again, Sarah had never had anything but sweet things to say about Lizzie.

  Lizzie smiled when she saw a letter from Fred mixed in with the day’s mail in the postbox, though she was surprised there was only one. She’d come to expect at least three or four from him in each bundle. The kitchen was blissfully empty so Lizzie left the mail there then ran up to her bedroom to read Fred’s letter.

  August 28, 1871

  Dear Lizzie,

  I’m afraid I can’t keep writing letters back and forth like this for much longer. Your letters have made me too curious about the woman you are off the page. If you are even one fraction as clever and charming in person as you are in your letters, I would count myself a lucky man.

  I’d like for you to make arrangements to come see my estate in Wyoming. I’m not asking for a promise at this point—I’ve just become so impatient to meet the lovely girl I’ve started to consider such a good friend.

  Yours truly,

  Fred

  Lizzie’s stomach filled with butterflies as she read the letter over for a second time. Fred could say he wasn’t looking for a promise, but it wasn’t like she was going to travel all the way out to Wyoming without the intention of at least marrying him eventually. Her parents would never allow it.

  Henry’s face popped up in her mind. He still hadn’t proposed, though he had told her he loved her. And she had said it back. That meant a great deal more than her friendship with this near stranger … didn’t it?

  “Lizzie!” her mother called. “Lunch!”

  Her mind still tumbling with conflicting thoughts, Lizzie slipped Fred’s letter into the pocket of her dress. Cooking and cleaning kept her busy until nightfall, when Lizzie raced out for one of her “nightly strolls” the moment she’d swallowed her last bite of dinner.

  She arrived soon enough at the barn for Henry’s liking, since he greeted her with a kiss rather than a scowl. As he kissed her, Lizzie couldn’t imagine leaving Henry for the West. Perhaps she could just rip up Fred’s letter and pretend he’d stopped writing to her. Then Henry would propose, and all Lizzie would have to do is convince her parents that a shop boy was good enough for her to marry.

  In between kisses, Henry told Lizzie he loved her again, and after saying it back for the second time, Lizzie fell into a blissful sleep. Some time later, Henry shoved her shoulder, hard, to wake her up.

  Lizzie blinked a few times then saw that the hand that hadn’t shoved her was holding something white: Fred’s letter. It must have fallen out of her pocket while they’d slept.

  “Henry, I can explain—”

  “Explain how you’ve got a man you were planning on leaving me for out West?” Henry fumed.

  “It’s my parents,” Lizzie said. “My father has consumption, and my mother’s nearly blind—”

  Henry barely looked like he was listening. “You know I haven’t been with anyone else, not since we started meeting up like this. Now I find out you’ve been two-timing me with some farmer … well, you can just forget this, whatever it is we’ve been doing.”

  “We’ve been falling in love,” Lizzie said meekly. “It’s what I thought we were doing. Henry, if you’d just let me explain—”

  Henry shook his head and turned to leave. Lizzie grabbed at his hand and he shook her off hard enough that she fell into a bale of hay. He kept his arm raised. “You want some more, Liz? If not, then you’d better stay the heck away from me.”

  After that, he left Lizzie all alone in the pitch-black barn.

  Later, Lizzie tried to be as quiet as she could as she entered her house. She crept in the dark through the foyer toward the stairs, when a voice called, “Is that my Lizzie?” It was her father.

  Lizzie picked as many pieces of hay out of her hair as she could before she reached the lit-up kitchen. There her father sat hunched in a chair with his elbows on his knees.

  Lizzie quickly moved to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Papa? I could get you a handkerchief…”

  Her father shook his head. “If I cough any more, one of my lungs is likely to come out. I came out here to give your poor mother some peace. Now I’m not sure I could make it back to our bedroom if I wanted to. My ribs are so sore.”

  Lizzie practically fell into the chair beside him. It hurt her heart to see her father—her wonderful, loving father—in so much pain. She extended her hand on the table and he held it in his brittle grasp. “So, you’re just not feeling well?” she asked. “Or is something else wrong?”

  Her father looked down at the table. “Your mother and I are broke, Lizzie.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “But I thought Sarah and William were…”

  “They’ve been so busy building schools and churches out West that between those and running William’s farm, there hasn’t been much money left over for Sarah to send home.” He reached up to cup Lizzie’s cheek with his hand. “We’re just not sure what to do, Lizzie Lou.”

  Lizzie covered her father’s hand with her own. Even if Henry forgave her and proposed, he’d barely be able to support Lizzie, much less her parents. “I’ll write to Fred first thing in the morning to let him know I’m coming to Wyoming.” She stood and offered her father her arm. “Now let’s get you back to bed.”

  Her father put an arm around her shoulders and let Lizzie support him on the walk back toward his and Ada’s bedroom. He was so light that he could put all his weight on Lizzie and it was no trouble at all for her.

  By noon the next day, Lizzie had a one-way ticket to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

  ****

  Lizzie frowned as she watched acre after acre of green nothing go by through the window of her train. It had been weeks since her train had passed anything that could even begin to pass for civilization. Even the stations where the train stopped were in the middle of fields.

  What have I done? she wondered for the thousandth time since boarding this train three weeks earlier. For three weeks, Henry’s beautiful face had filled her mind. So, he’d gotten angry when he’d found out about Fred; she would have been angry, too, if she’d found out Henry had been corresponding with some farm girl behind her back.

  You never would have gotten that angry, a small, sensible voice in her mind reminded her.

  But that voice was nothing compared to the many others who chorused together to tell Lizzie what a mistake she’d made in leaving true love behind in Binghamton for a ranch in the middle of nowhere. She barely knew this man, and now she’d traveled across the country for him.

  What have I done? she thought again. Her only comfort was that she hadn’t agreed to marry Fred in her reply to him. She’d told him only that she would come, and that she wouldn’t marry him until she felt she knew him. Perhaps she would be able to find some way to refuse his advances and sneak back to Henry and Binghamton.

  “We’re almost at our stop,” said Mr. Stewart, Lizzie’s chaperone for her journey.

  Sarah had made her journey across the country sound if not fun, then at least interesting. But she’d had their father’s jolly friend, Matthew, along as her chaperone rather than Mr. Stewart. He was a near stranger—a man her father had once made shoes for who happened to have family in the Cheyenne area. Lizzie had only exchanged a small handful of words with him since boarding this train three weeks before.

  The train stopped and Mr. Stewart helped Lizzie with her luggage. They entered the train station and Mr. Stewart kept watch over their bags while Lizzie searched for Fred. She checked the photograph that had accompanied his ad in the Matrimonial News, but it was pointless. The photograph was so grainy that Lizzie could tell nothing aside from that he looked young and that (unlike Henry) Fred’s features weren’t dark.

  “Lizzie?” a voice asked behind her. She twirled to find a man just a few inches taller than her. She couldn’t even take in his features at first—all she could see was that his hair was red. It wasn’t carrot red, thank goodness—more of an auburn with highlights of strawberry blonde and gold. S
till, she’d never seen a man with red hair and associated the color more with women.

  He even had freckles, though only a light smattering of them over his nose.

  Aside from the hair and freckles he was perfectly fine looking—handsome, even. But he wasn’t Henry. Not by a long shot.

  He smiled wide at the sight of Lizzie and surprised her by pulling her into a hug. “Oh, Lizzie, you look just as I pictured you,” he said in a strong Southern drawl in her ear. He withdrew and looked her up and down. “But then I tend to have a rather wild imagination, so I’m not sure I expected…” His cheeks turned pink. “Well, anyway.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Fred,” Lizzie said, still thrown off by the hug. It was nice to finally meet the person behind all those friendly letters, but not anywhere as nice as it would have been to be back in Binghamton with Henry.

  Fred met Mr. Stewart then they both said goodbye to him and headed for Fred’s wagon. He drove her down a rocky gravel street and all Lizzie could see were green pastures, barns, a few cows, a few sheep, more barns, and even more pastures. She was a girl who had always thrived on a lively social life, and now she’d come west to a whole lot of nothing.

  Lizzie saw a particularly large swarm of sheep grazing and, sure enough, Fred parked his carriage nearby. He led her to a ranch house that Lizzie had to admit was sweet and cozy. Luckily it wasn’t so cozy that Lizzie couldn’t have her own room, which Fred gave her with no questions asked.

  As he handed her a stack of sheets, he said, “I’d give you the grand tour, but there’s not a whole lot more than what you’ve already seen. Just sheep as far as the eye can see. I could show you our shearing operation a few acres over, though, if you’d like.”