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

by Charity Phillips

  Lizzie shook her head quickly. She’d traveled across the country and the most exciting thing he had to offer her was sheep shearing? “I’m so tired from my journey—I think I’m just going to sleep,” she told him.

  He frowned a little at that but shook the expression away to give her a smile. “Of course, Lizzie. It’s so nice to meet you finally. I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”

  Lizzie knew it would have been kinder to reply, but instead she entered her room and shut the door behind her. She put sheets on the queen-sized bed, took off her shoes, and cried into the pillow until she fell asleep.

  ****

  Lizzie’s opinion of the ranch didn’t improve as the days wore on. There was very little for her to do during her first week at the ranch—Fred had a woman named Mrs. Fitzgibbon who kept his house and did the cooking (not that cooking had ever been Lizzie’s forte anyway). One whole room served as Fred’s library and would have delighted Sarah or Ann, but all the books inside only served to bore Lizzie even more.

  Fred was friendly as he’d been in his letters, but he was so incredibly not Henry that Lizzie could barely pay him a scrap of attention. She began sleeping late in the morning and early at night so she barely saw him.

  Her only solace was drawing. With her set of pencils, over and over she drew the beautiful lines of Henry’s face: his strong jaw, his dark brow, his full-to-bursting lips.

  She was completing another of these drawings when she sensed someone was standing in the doorway of her bedroom. She quickly crumpled the drawing and looked up, expecting Mrs. Fitzgibbon. But it was Fred. He wore a checkered shirt and tight trousers. “I have a surprise for you,” he told her.

  She stood, slipping the crumpled drawing into her pocket, and followed him through to the back of the house where beautiful light came in through numerous windows. Here, an easel was set up with a set of oil paints next to it. “I thought it was time I saw some of these paintings you’re going to be famous for.”

  Lizzie’s face broke into the first smile she’d had since arriving in Wyoming. She leapt up to give him a hug. “Oh, Freddie, thank you!”

  He squeezed her tight. “No, thank you, Lizzie, for coming.”

  She withdrew, a blush rising in her cheeks. “Of course.”

  “You’ve lit this place up since you arrived … even though I know you haven’t been very happy.”

  “No, I…” Lizzie began.

  “It’s alright, Lizzie,” he assured her. “We still have some getting to know each other to do is all. Which is why I thought you might like to come with me for a ride.”

  “Ride … a sheep?”

  He laughed a big, bubbling laugh. Lizzie had to admit that it was a delightful sound. “No, horses.”

  “You have horses here?”

  “Of course, Lizzie. How else would I get the sheep where I need them to go? It looks like you’re going to need a tour of this place after all.”

  After Lizzie put on some riding boots (another surprise gift from Fred), the two walked together to the stables. He introduced her to various sheep along the way like Flopsy and Gingie, and one he’d actually named Bo Sheep at her suggestion. Lizzie laughed with him, feeling lighter than she had before leaving Binghamton. Before that, even.

  They reached the stables and Fred showed her how to saddle a horse. He watched as she hesitantly pulled herself into the saddle and slung both her legs over the side.

  “You can’t ride sidesaddle on a ranch, Lizzie,” he told her. “It just ain’t the way.”

  Lizzie smiled a wicked smile at the impropriety of learning to ride like a man and wrapped both her legs around the chestnut brown horse beneath her as Fred instructed. She felt so much more balanced and in control when they rode out into the pasture—she wished she had always rode horses this way.

  On an impulse, she untwisted her bun, wearing her hair down for the first time since Binghamton. Since Henry.

  Fred smiled wide when he saw her, and it was a lovely smile to gaze upon. Even when he’d smiled, there had been something snide about Henry’s face, but Fred’s smile seemed so happy and open. “You’re so beautiful it hurts to look at you sometimes, you know,” he told her.

  Lizzie looked down at the ground and frowned. It was the sort of thing Henry would have said. Perhaps he wasn’t always the kindest, but Henry had always made her feel attractive.

  They rode on until they were past what Lizzie thought were the boundaries of Fred’s ranch. “Are we still on your property?” she asked him.

  Fred shrugged. “This is a bit of a no-man’s land between my ranch and the Jacobsons’, but we’re friendly so it doesn’t really matter too much. There’s some of ’em now.” He raised his hand in a wave.

  Lizzie followed his gaze to where a whole family was riding horses only a few yards away. Fred took off toward the family. Lizzie quickly pinned her hair back up and followed.

  Fred was already laughing with a woman who looked about thirty. She had a slightly older husband with a bushy mustache and three young boys, though none too young to be atop his own horse.

  “Beth, I’d like you to meet my friend, Lizzie,” Fred said.

  Beth held out her hand and gave Lizzie a smile as open as Fred’s. “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” she said in a British accent. “We heard all about this enchanting girl Fred’s been corresponding with.”

  “And you are very enchanting indeed,” her husband said, shaking her hand as well. “George Jacobson. It’s lovely to meet you.”

  “We’ve got to get back to our flock,” Beth said. “But we’re having a bonfire tomorrow night and would love it if you would both come!”

  With that, the Jacobsons rode away from Fred’s ranch and back toward their own.

  “We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Fred told Lizzie once they’d gone.

  “No, I’d love to!” Lizzie had no interest in spending another evening eating stew with no one but Mrs. Fitzgibbon for company.

  ****

  The next day was the happiest that Lizzie had spent with Fred on the ranch thus far. He woke her at the crack of dawn and asked if she would like to come out with him and the other ranch hands to see what he did all day. On an impulse, she agreed.

  Dressed in pants and riding boots, Lizzie rode alongside Fred and his ranch hands, corralling the sheep from one side of the ranch to the other. She and Fred joked around with one another just as they had in their letters. Even the ranch’s sheep shearing operation was interesting—Lizzie was relieved to learn that sheep didn’t have to die to provide wool (though the ones who went to the slaughterhouse did die, of course).

  Throughout the day, Lizzie couldn’t help but notice how the highlights in Fred’s hair made it look like burnt gold in the sunlight, like he had the mane of a lion. She also couldn’t help noticing that unlike most redheads, he had golden-brown skin that tanned in the sun. When he looked at her, she saw that his eyes were a clear, startling green.

  Lizzie chose her favorite pale blue frock to wear that evening and she and Fred walked arm-in-arm over to the Jacobsons’ ranch. The air smelled wonderfully of cooking meat and wood smoke. More stars than Lizzie had ever been able to see in Binghamton shone above.

  Lizzie was surprised by how many other people were at the barbecue—many of them only a bit older than Lizzie. And they weren’t boring at all; they were some of the friendliest people Lizzie had ever met, without some of the snobbishness that infected some of the young people back in New York.

  When Lizzie took a bite of a hunk of smoked meat, she literally groaned in pleasure. “What is this?” she asked as she ate the rest of it and threw the bone into the fire. “I’ve never tasted anything like it!”

  “Lamb,” Fred replied, sitting next to her on a log. “I donated this one, actually, since the Jacobson’s flock has been a little sickly this season.”

  Lizzie’s eyes widened. “It’s not Bo Sheep, is it?”

  Fred laughed. “Never Bo
Sheep. She and Uncle Lamb will be strictly shearing sheep from now on, along with all the others you named.”

  “I’ll just have to name them all then,” Lizzie replied. A week ago, the idea of coming up with names for all of Fred’s sheep would have bored her to tears, but now it sounded kind of fun.

  “It’s nice to see you smiling,” he said. “Between that and the firelight … well, I don’t have to tell you again how beautiful you are, do I?”

  Lizzie looked down at the ground, her heart plummeting. “No, you don’t,” she replied.

  It made her feel so wonderful when Henry had complimented her looks, but she found she didn’t like it at all when Fred did so. Was it only because of how much it reminded her of Henry? She wasn’t sure.

  She gasped, startled, when Fred caught her chin with his hand and forced her to look up into his deep green eyes. “You know it’s not your looks I’m in love with, right? I was in love with you before I ever even saw you. Your beauty is just a nice bonus.”

  “But…” she said, “you said you wanted a woman with a ‘good face’…”

  “Yes, but I saw plenty of good faces in the other replies I got to my ad,” he told her, still holding her chin in place so that there was nowhere to look but directly into his eyes. “At the end of it, the only letter I wanted to reply to was yours.”

  “And you never asked for a photograph,” Lizzie said in wonder. “Even though you could have.”

  “I never needed one. I would still love you, Lizzie, even if you looked like our friend Martha over there.”

  Martha was another rancher’s wife with a very unfortunate nose sitting a few logs over. Lizzie chuckled and as her head pitched downward, Fred’s lips accidentally caught hers. A shock went through her and she looked around to make sure no one had seen.

  “I’d like to go home, I think,” she told him, her lips still burning from the brief contact they’d had with his.

  “Home it is,” he replied with a smile that gave her goosebumps.

  As soon as they were through the door of the ranch house, Fred kissed Lizzie on the lips. It wasn’t the same as kissing Henry. It was still passionate—Fred’s hands tangled in her hair until it came tumbling free of the pins and down her back. But there wasn’t the same hunger, the same urgency coming from Fred. He seemed like he would be happy to give her soft, sweet kisses until the end of time.

  Lizzie raised her hand and placed it over Fred’s lips. “I … there’s something I should tell you,” she said.

  From there it all came out—her summer romance with Henry and how it had gone on all throughout her correspondence with Fred. She and Fred drifted inside the master bedroom and sat across from each other on the white lace blanket as Lizzie spoke. As Lizzie told the story, she realized how cruel Henry had been to her. Unlike Fred, he was only interested in what she looked like on the outside. She couldn’t think of a single instance when he’d asked her a single thing about himself, and he’d always pushed her away when she’d tried to learn more about him.

  Fred was scowling by the time she got to the end of her story. She’d known it would end this way once he knew she’d been carrying on with someone else throughout their correspondence. He would send her back to Binghamton at the exact moment she’d realized how much potential for happiness there was for her here out West.

  “Do you mean to tell me that this man shoved you and threatened to hit you?” Fred asked, surprising her.

  “What? Oh, well, yes, I suppose he did.”

  Fred’s cheeks reddened with anger. “All I can say is that it’s a good thing this Henry doesn’t live anywhere nearby. If he did, I would go over to his house and teach him a thing or two for treating you so horribly.”

  It was a good thing for Henry. A skinny shop boy wouldn’t have stood a chance against a burly rancher like Fred.

  “So, you’re not angry?” Lizzie asked. “With me?”

  He blinked. “Why would I be angry with you? We’ve all had our youthful dalliances. I don’t want this to be a dalliance, though—I want it to be a marriage.”

  “I want that too,” she whispered.

  “Oh yeah?” Fred leaned over her and pulled a small velvet box out of the wooden end table. “Well, I guess you can have this, then.” He kneeled on the floor, opened the box, and held it up to her. The ring was a simple diamond on a gold band, but it was beautiful and elegant.

  “Marry me?” he asked.

  Those are the words Lizzie had been waiting so long for Henry to say. Thank goodness he’d never gotten the chance to.

  “I will,” she told Fred, and he slipped the ring onto her finger.

  He stood and Lizzie did as well, leaping up to give him a kiss on the lips. Afterward he held her close and squeezed her tight. Lizzie chuckled in his ear.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “It’s just…what kind of rancher uses a word like ‘dalliance’?”

  “I love to read; you know that,” he replied.

  She did. He’d told her all about his favorite books in his letters. “Read to me,” she whispered.

  He surprised her by lifting her up and carrying her to the library where he read her Charles Dickens until they both fell asleep.

  Three weeks later, Fred and Lizzie went to the train station to pick up Sarah and her husband, William. William was far handsomer in person than he’d looked in the photograph that had accompanied his ad—thank goodness he’d shaved his old bushy mustache.

  But no one could hold a candle to Lizzie’s Fred. She could hardly believe the negative reaction she’d had to his beautiful red hair when she’d first seen it. Now it was her favorite feature of his, though his emerald eyes were a close second.

  At the ranch house, Lizzie and Sarah caught up. Lizzie felt Sarah’s large belly and felt her little niece or nephew kick at her hand. They also showed each other the dresses they had sewn for tomorrow’s event—each had turned out perfect.

  As Sarah looked over Lizzie’s white dress, she peered at Lizzie out of the corner of her eye. “And you’re sure you love this one?”

  Lizzie nodded. “I thought I was in love before.” Through their letters, Lizzie had told Sarah all about the Henry debacle, and Sarah actually hadn’t disapproved as much as Lizzie had expected. (She still disapproved, though.) “But now I know what the real thing feels like, and it’s so wonderful.”

  Sarah gazed through the window to where William was helping Fred and the other ranch hands complete an ornate wooden arch on the front lawn to be used tomorrow. “It is, isn’t it?” she said.

  The next morning, about thirty of Lizzie and Fred’s friends, including the Jacobsons, sat on wooden chairs on the lawn in front of the ranch house. With Sarah standing beside her as her matron of honor, Lizzie married her wonderful sheep rancher. After the priest pronounced them man and wife, Fred gave her a peck on the lips then held her tight in an embrace.

  “No regrets, Mrs. Knowles?” he asked her.

  “No regrets whatsoever, Mr. Knowles,” she told him. “Now let’s go tell Little Bo Sheep the good news.”

  So, they walked out into the pasture—him in a suit and her in her wedding dress—and did just that. Little Bo Sheep didn’t say anything, but Mr. and Mrs. Knowles were both convinced that she was quite pleased to hear they’d finally married.

  From there, they walked over to the Jacobsons’ where their friends set up another roaring bonfire. George Jacobson and a few of Fred’s ranch hands pulled out fiddles and Lizzie and Fred had their first dance in front of a roaring bonfire. Later, Lizzie managed to get lamb grease on her wedding dress, but the once fashion-conscious woman hardly cared. What did a little stain matter when she had the best husband in the world? She was a rancher’s wife now, and proud.

  THE END

  Mail Order Bride: Jane's Story

  Story Description

  Boston, 1865

  Jane Adams is still reeling from the deaths of both her father and her fiancée in the War. Though it
has been more than a year since Adam's death, and nearly two since her father's, she still cannot convince her mind to believe that it is real.

  Her three sisters decide it’s time for the four of them to leave Boston and start new lives away from the pain and difficult memories that haunt them. When they tell Jane about their idea to become mail order brides for men in the Frontier, Jane finds it hard to accept at first; her heart is still with Adam, and she cannot bear the thought of leaving the only home she has ever known—and what's left of the life that they could have had.

  In the newspaper, however, she finds an intriguing advertisement from a man in Oregon named John Grey. He has suffered heartbreak, too, and Jane thinks that perhaps this just might be the opportunity she needs after all. She makes plans to head out West to help him raise his daughter—which will get her out of Boston—but ultimately, his pain will keep him from wanting the type of relationship she thinks she can never have again. That is, until the letters start.

  Can these two overcome their own heartaches and find that sometimes it’s what is behind us that keeps us going forward?

  December, 1865

  Dear Diary,

  It has been eight months since the War ended, and I am still reeling. I cannot get my mind around the idea that it is truly over. If I admit to myself that the fighting is finished, I will have to accept that Father and Adam are really gone.

  For now, I convince myself that the fighting is still going on and that they are simply so far away that they cannot write back to me. I still write them letters, even though I know there is nowhere for the post to deliver them. I often find myself looking up and expecting one of them to walk through the door, for a moment forgetting that their bodies were buried where they fell, so far from home and where I will never be able to visit them.