ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories)

by Jane Prescott

  Maggie chuckled, watching her man run away towards the woods. A few fat drops of rain splattered across the back of her hand.

  “Not again.” She muttered, seemingly to herself. Sven looked up as she spoke, scanning the sky.

  “Again, I’m afraid. Rains are coming for sure. Maybe even rough one.”

  “I’m tired of it. You’d think that’s all it does here, rain.”

  “You’ll be glad enough of it when the summer heat returns in full. As you saw this winter, the seasons are harsh in the west. Not like your soft Virginia weather.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I’ll take what comes and be glad of it. Say, who is that?”

  A trio of riders on horseback passed alongside their farm. They looked to be two young people, a man and a woman, and an older woman. The three watched as the Olanders worked, then rode out of sight.

  Henry was returning, gripping his hat. He was leaning into the wind. “We can’t plant much more today.” He called out. He was right; it was getting later in the day and those few drops now became a steady patter.

  Maggie looked about her, disappointed. They still had two more rows to do, and it was the last field between the two farms. She had hoped to celebrate the completion of their task. But they would have to wait until tomorrow.

  They gathered up their implements and trudged back to Henry and Maggie’s house. “Stay with us for some coffee before you go?” Maggie suggested. But the Sven declined.

  “This could be a real storm, and I’d rather get back to the house, put everything away before things begin in earnest.”

  Tom hesitated. “Would you mind if I stayed here? I’d like to be up at dawn and to work right away. Make an early start of it.”

  “Fine with me. Just leave the tools in my shed and you can use our spare blankets to make yourself a bed. Sorry we’ve no guest bed.” Henry suggested.

  Tom shrugged. “Floor is fine for me, thanks. All I need is something to lay on and I’ll be comfortable enough.”

  They hurriedly put their things away and after wishing each other a good night, Sven trotted down the road towards his own home. Judging by the increasing winds and rain, he was wasting no time about it.

  Tom warmed himself by the fire as Maggie put the kettle on. “Hope those strangers have a place to stay. I wouldn’t want to be caught out in this.”

  Henry went to the front window to look out. A bolt of lightning marked the sky, followed shortly after by booming thunder.

  “We get the last of the corn in tomorrow, we’ll be fine. Don’t want to go into late May, or you’re too late.” He explained to his bride. But she already knew that.

  “Dear, how bad is it out there?”

  “Terrible.” He cautioned, then took note at something he’d spied out in the darkness. “Horses. Three of them- oh no.”

  Tom ran to the window and gasped. “What is it?” Maggie called out.

  Henry grabbed his coat, as did Tom and they hurriedly put their boots on. Henry pointed to his wife. “Stay here, hon! Don’t move. We’ll be back as soon as we can. There’s been an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “Just stay here.”

  Before she could object, the two men were out in the darkness and downpour. She went to the window to see them. There were three horses milling about the yard, and the men quickly mounted them and rode off. The third was left to stand forlornly in the rain.

  She saw more lightning on the open, gloomy horizon and drew in her breath. The house was creaking from the buffeting it was taking from the strong prairie winds. She looked at the lone horse, and it looked back at her, miserable. It had been the horse the young female stranger had been riding when they’d trotted past the Olander field.

  It was impossible to say where the horse’s riders were.

  She thought about the storm, the rising river not far from where they were down the road. What if the river had risen and spilled across the road? Possibly the three strangers had tried to lead the horses across and, instead, been caught up in the raging flood? Such things could happen, she thought.

  She could sit and wait for the men to sort it all out. But that wasn’t Margaret Olander’s way.

  She put out the fire, wrapped herself up tightly in her best waterproofed coat, and ventured out into the yard. She was nearly immediately pushed to the ground by the winds. Determined, she trudged through the wet and muck to the lone, nervously prancing horse.

  She brushed his nose quickly to reassure him that she was okay, and then mounted the horse. The ride would be much harder than it had been on the day of Sven’s accident, so this was no race. Instead, she trotted the horse in the direction the strangers had been headed.

  It was a few miles of difficult riding and the road was in danger of becoming a river itself from all of the unabsorbable standing water filling it. She eventually reached a point at which the road had, in fact, washed out much as she’d worried. It was difficult to see in the dark, but she couldn’t see Tom or Henry.

  The water was flowing south. She reasoned that if anyone were caught in the flood, they would be swept in that direction. Maggie turned the horse aside into the drenched field in that direction, keeping a watchful eye on the encroaching, newly formed river to her right. As she continued on, she saw a stand of trees and the other two horses tied up there. She spurred her horse forward even as lighting twisted in the distance and spooked the roan with its accompanying thunder claps.

  She let the mare lope towards the standing horses and once there, immediately saw what they were trying to do. The young girl was there, clinging desperately to a log. Henry and Thomas had formed a chain, Henry on land, Thomas partially in the water, and were using rope to secure themselves as best they could. Thomas had hold of the girl and was aiding her in getting back.

  The situation was already resolving itself, so she rode on. There were, after all, two others to be concerned about.

  She found her second washed ashore a distance beyond. The old woman was laying on her back, her eyes open and her mouth wide. There was no need to get off her horse to check on her, for it appeared her neck was snapped, in addition to her probable drowning. She road on.

  There was a boy, in fact, also washed up. He was young, much younger than she had expected when seeing him ride the horse. She couldn’t tell his condition, so she got off the horse to look.

  A quick check and she could see he was breathing, but unconscious. He looked to be much lighter than her; perhaps only a boy of 11 or 12. Though heavy, with a great deal of effort she was able to drag him towards the horse.

  It took even greater effort to lift him up and place him over the back of her horse. Where she found the strength, she never knew. When he was safely on the back of the horse, she mounted the horse herself and rode slowly through the storm back along the way she’d come.

  It seemed to take forever to return home. The others had ridden on without her and when she was very close to her destination, Henry came riding back to her in alarm. “What have you done?” He shouted at her, surprised that she had gone on. When he saw the boy across the back of the horse, he clammed up and rode beside her home. They hardly spoke, but she did quickly let him know that the older woman had died.

  Instead of returning directly to their own home, they rode the short distance down the road to Sven’s house, which Tom and his rescue had apparently done. With help, she was able to get the boy into the house, while Sven and Henry put the horses in the barn.

  Inside the warmth of the house, Rose handed her a change of clothes and pointed her upstairs. After she’d changed, she came down to find that the boy was awake and alert, but crying. Both of their rescues were.

  After she descended the stairs, Henry took her aside into the shadows and whispered in her ear. “The woman was their grandmother. They’re brother and sister.” After he whispered, he discretely kissed her gently on the neck so that none could see it.

  “What was that for?” She asked.
<
br />   “For disobeying your husband and saving a child’s life.” He told her.

  “Oh.” She turned and gave him a kiss on the neck as well.

  “And that?” He queried with a raised eyebrow.

  “For being silly, thinking you can give me orders husband or no, and for saving that woman’s life.”

  He smiled in return. “I shall know better in future.”

  “There’s a good husband.”

  ###

  The Christmas wedding of Thomas Woodson and Marian Fuller was well attended. Marian’s little brother, Charles, was there, of course; the two survivors of the flood were accompanied by many Olanders, including Sven, Rose, Henry, Maggie, and the toddler Hilda. Sven and Henry’s parents attended as well, having taken the newly-built train in from Rochester.

  At the invitation of Maggie, one Inga Snell and her husband Robert were there as well. In the past two years, Inga’s English had improved greatly from daily practice and through letters exchanged with her old friend Maggie. Members of the Fuller family, a surprisingly large clan with farms of their own in the next town west of Jonkoping, helped fill the church along with most of the families of the two towns.

  The wedding took place in the Jonkoping Lutheran Church with a massive feast planned for the reception at Sven and Rose’s barn. The Woodsons would live with Sven and Rose until spring when yet another house would be built on land recently purchased five miles down the road from the Olanders.

  “It makes for a cozy arrangement.” Mr. Robert Snell suggested, cutting his pork chops and looking about him on the farm. A group of local farmers had brought instruments with them, and it was expected that after they’d eaten the tables would be cleared away from dancing. “You can all live nearby and call upon one another for help as needed. It’s a good system and will serve your families well, I should say!”

  Inga gave her husband a gentle push. “Husband! This is how it is in country life. It is the same in Norway, you know?”

  The man laughed. “Well, all I know is finances and transport. And I can tell you that this new railway is going to lead to the small town of Sioux Falls, on into Dakota Territory. Who knows how far west the train will go?”

  Maggie sighed, passing a basket of biscuits down the table. “This land has given us so much. But I can’t help but think of the people who were here before.”

  “People? You mean Indians?” Snell scoffed.

  “They’re people. Yes. We’ve built good lives here, but I am sure the people who dwelled here before faced the same trials we did. Storms, accidents, heat, freezing winter. There’s much history here, I think.”

  “You have a wife who thinks deep thoughts.” Snell said to Henry. “Were she a man, she’d go far in this world.”

  She looked to Henry, who lowered his head. “Mr. Snell,” he said quickly, “Margaret has gone far already in this world, farther than you or eye. Without her, two people would be dead and a third would be a lost soul.” He leaned over and kissed his wife on the lips, uninterested in whether it would scandalize the banker.

  After the feast, everyone did their part to clear away the food and tables. Of late, Henry was doing more of the so-called “woman’s work” while Maggie could easily be found in the fields. Their neighbors noted it and decided they were eccentrics, a label Maggie didn’t mind nearly so much here in her new home. Here the word was used without the hate and malice.

  The fiddles, drums, and banjos began to play and the Olanders, Woodsons, and their guests began to whirl around the straw covered dance floor, bundled up against the outdoor chill. Henry and Maggie danced, smiling and in love as she had always dreamed would be the case.

  “Do you miss Virginia now?” He asked as he twirled her around in a little circle. She minded her steps, careful to recall the dancing she’d been taught by Rose.

  “Never! No matter how cold it gets here. I’ll never go back.”

  “That’s the spirit, my beautiful Maggie.”

  “Besides,” she added with a coy smile as they danced. “I can’t go back if I wanted to.”

  He looked confused. “Why?”

  The song ended and she took his hand, leading him out into the fresh, glistening snow-covered farm. “What did you bring me out here for, my dear?”

  She led him a short distance from the barn, practically gliding as she felt the light snow crunch beneath her feet. Through all the challenges and dreads, their lives were precisely as she’d hoped they might go, with one small thing missing. She wanted to be alone when she told him.

  “That was my last dance, Henry.” She said, then pressed in close snuggle in against the cold. “For a good long time.

  “You’re having a lot of fun with me!” Henry proclaimed. “Nothing but riddles.”

  “I wonder- do you think you could add room to the house sometime next year? Not too far from our own.”

  His eyes slowly grew as the meaning of what she was saying began to make sense him. His smile widened to joy. “You’re talking… you’re talking about child, aren’t you?”

  She put his hand down on her stomach. “Henry Olander, meet your son or daughter.”

  THE END

  Retiring from his life as a smart thief, Ted Wilkins decided that going back to Texas was the best thing for him. He had landed huge deal yielding a very large amount of money, and he intended to purchase a ranch there and begin his life again. He wondered how his brother, Alex, was doing. He had not seen Alex in almost ten years, although they had communicated quite a lot while he was in the Middle East thinking up ways of making money off the Arab oil lords. He had finally gotten his break when he had managed to convince one of the old oil don's to give him his inheritance before he died and he had finally achieved what he had been looking for his whole life. He was now one of the richest men in the state and he would finally gain the respect of those who had treated him as a loser. There was only one thing left missing in his life: love. Ted had never had time for relationships while in the Middle East, although when he had been back in Texas, he’d had several flings and even married.

  He had then gone out to the Middle East with the main aim of making enough money to make him and his wife live a comfortable life, but when he had been there he got wind that she had moved in with another man despite the fact that she had his child. He even began doubting if her son was his, and he decided that he would never give his heart to another woman again. Alex had already gotten married and even had a little daughter named Mia, a cute little girl who had the looks of her mother. They sent Ted photographs often and so he was kept up to date. Ted had lied to them, saying that he was in the military so that they would not have to worry about him. He even wore military tags around his neck to keep up this façade to people he knew. Now he was going back home and he wondered how things were going to be. Would they be the same as they always were?

  *****

  “I'm sorry I had to leave so suddenly, but I really need to get this inheritance issue sorted out,” Diana Blake said into the mouthpiece as she steered the rental through the Texas heat. “I promise you that I'll be back in Chicago as soon as I am done.”

  “Why didn’t you call me? I would have cancelled the trip just to accompany you to Texas.” Her fiancée Mark Lindel complained.

  “It was all at such short notice, with my mom’s death and the conditions of her will, but I promise that I'll come back as soon as I am done here,” she replied, imagining that she would be going to the Bahamas with her rich fiancée for the weekend instead of having to go to Texas to fulfill her late mothers wishes, which were to stay at the ranch where she to stay for a whole week if she was to inherit her life insurance money.

  “Well then, you have a good time, and don’t forget to call me when you get there,” Mark replied.

  “I will, as long as there is damn reception in this God forbidden place,” she said, hanging up and tossing the cell phone onto the passenger seat.

  She then recalled the incidents that had led to her
trip to Texas. Diana had been brought up in Texas on a ranch, but had been mistreated by her step father, who was an emotionally abusive jerk. As a result, the moment that she had turned 18, she ran away to Chicago with her savings and began a new life there. She had abandoned her mother, who had never seemed to be able to protect her from her step dad, and went ahead and paid for her own college education with the few savings that she had and a couple of jobs that she held to help her get by. After graduation, she launched her own fashion house from scratch with the help of her best friend, Amanda. Slowly her company had begun to gain recognition in the Chicago fashion world, and she started to become successful very.

  After an amazingly successful fashion event, she ended up hooking up with Mark, the spoiled son of one of the richest families in the state, and they started to see each other regularly and eventually got engaged. Although, for Diana, their whole relationship was more for convenience, since she wanted him to finance the expansion of her company. By marrying Diana, it was a way for Mark to show his parents that he had matured and was ready to run their businesses. Amanda had sworn never to go back to Texas, but after the death of her mother, she realized that one of the clauses of the will stated that she had to go back to the ranch house and stay there for a week before she got the ten million dollars life insurance money. She needed the money if she was to expand her business, and since she had been told that her step dad had died years ago, she decided that it would not really harm anyone to go back there, especially if it was only for a week. Her phone went off again interrupting her thoughts, and she reached over to it and picked the call.