New Beginnings Spring 20 Book Box Set

by Hope Sinclair

  But Alice also felt excited. She already felt an overwhelming sense of love for the baby growing inside of her, and she felt a renewed sense of faith and awe in the Lord. She had committed a great sin—she had laid with a man before entering the holy covenant of marriage—but rather than punish her, the Lord had bestowed upon her the greatest gift of all: a child.

  Alice hadn’t known James for very long, but she hoped desperately that he would do the right thing, that he would make her his bride, so that they could raise this baby together. She had been confident that he would agree. She had been convinced that if their love was strong enough, if their faith in God was strong enough, that that would be enough to navigate them through this.

  But now, as she watched James focus his sights on anything but her, Alice began to have second thoughts.

  “I am sorry,” he said finally. “None of this was my intention.”

  Alice lifted the hand on her stomach a bit higher, and as she did, she realized that the gesture wasn’t merely one of affection, but one of maternal protection.

  “I understand,” she said calmly. “It wasn’t my intention either. But we must accept the path that we’ve chosen. We must make this right in the eyes of our families, and in the eyes of the Lord.”

  James was silent as he finally turned to face Alice. Staring into his face, she was reminded instantly of why falling in love with him had been so easy. He was impossibly handsome, his features both strong, yet refined. He had a perfectly sculpted face, made intricate by the contours of his cheekbones and the gentle intrusion of his deep brown eyes, the shadow of his dark hair hiding under a freshly shaven jaw, and the dimple that punctuated his chin.

  Alice had never been the type to give affection freely or easily, she had never been in love before, and she had never given much thought or concern to matters of marriage or romance. In fact, part of the motive behind her visit to Cimarron, New Mexico had been to escape the endless pestering of her parents, who were anxious to see their twenty-year-old daughter wed to an honorable husband by year’s end. They had even suggested that, should Alice not elect a suitor of her own volition, that they would take it upon themselves to make their own arrangements to find a suitable groom.

  Overwhelmed by all the talk of marriage, Alice had eagerly accepted her cousin Lucille’s invitation to travel to New Mexico and visit for a few months. Anxious to escape her parents, Alice would have readily traveled anywhere, so the fact that she regarded Lucille as her dearest and closest friend made the arrangement even that much better.

  Of course Alice had never traveled to Cimarron with the intention of meeting a devastatingly handsome soldier and being swept up in a whirlwind romance. Such a turn of events was dramatically out of character, especially when the motivation behind her visit had been to avoid male suitors in the first place.

  But Alice had been captivated, first by his handsome appearance, then by his gentlemanly demeanor, and finally by his irresistible charms. They had skipped all formalities and fallen madly in love, and now the consequences of that love stretched against the bodice of Alice’s gown.

  “I am sorry,” James said again, “but I can’t.”

  “You… can’t?” Alice repeated. She was certain she had misunderstood, and for that reason, she felt the sudden urge to laugh. The suggestion that James’s response to the predicament could be anything but honorable and noble was simply farcical. Yet the stone-cold look on his face indicated that his dismissal of responsibility wasn’t said in jest.

  “I’ve enjoyed our time together,” James said. “I’ll treasure these memories always, and I will always think of you with the utmost admiration and affection. But I simply can’t provide what you’re asking for.”

  Alice swallowed, she was too numb to respond with anything besides a furrowed brow and bewildered stare.

  “I’ve just been promoted to cavalry commander,” he said. “I’ve never wanted for anything more in my entire life. This moment is the culmination of everything that I’ve been working for.”

  “I understand,” Alice replied in a monotone voice. She felt the weight of anxiety sink heavier on her heart, the tingle of shock spread through her veins and fizzle through her limbs, burning just as hot under her skin as if she’d been slapped.

  “This isn’t just about me,” James said, and he had the audacity to speak with a tone of nobility, as if abandoning Alice and their unborn child was somehow an act of honor rather than cowardice and utter selfishness. “It’s about the solemn promise I made to protect and serve. It’s about my duty to the Confederacy.”

  “What about your duty to me?” Alice asked. “What about your duty to our child?”

  Her voice trembled with emotion, but it wasn’t desperation or fear, rather it was anger. Alice felt many emotions—shame, guilt, remorse, frustration, fear, hopelessness—but above all, she was furious.

  She was furious that James had proven himself to be a man of so little substance and moral strength, and she was furious with herself for falling in love with the illusion of a man. All of the things she had thought she loved about James—his strength, integrity, morality—she realized now that they had all been an act.

  “I am sorry,” James said again, and this time Alice realized that he wasn’t really sorry at all, he was merely using the apology as a placeholder, in lieu of actual remorse or concern.

  And that was when Alice realized just how utterly alone she really was.

  TWO

  “Oh, Alice!” Lucille Brown gasped, clenching her teeth into her bottom lip and blinking away tears. “I can’t believe he said that to you!”

  “I know,” Alice said. She clutched the ivory handle of her hairbrush in one hand, running it gracefully through the wispy golden tendrils that fell over the shoulders of her white nightgown.

  “‘I have a duty to the confederacy,’” Lucille repeated, imitating James’s deep voice and false sense of bravado, then letting her shoulders collapse as she shook her head at the sheer awfulness of the line. Then she turned back to Alice and asked, “What did you say next?”

  “I told him that he wasn’t the man I had fallen in love with,” Alice admitted, studying her reflection in the small glass mirror of the bedroom she shared with her cousin. Her cheeks turned a soft pink, reacting to the vulnerability she felt from revealing her feelings. “I told him that a true man of honor and integrity wouldn’t abandon the consequences of his actions.”

  “Oh!” Lucille gasped, this time shocked by her cousin’s actions. Lucille and Alice had long been best friends, united by the special bond that is forged from growing up together and sharing a lifetime of experiences.

  While they shared many memories—both good and bad—the pair of cousins couldn’t be any more different in terms of personality. Alice was bold, strong, and defiant. A natural beauty with golden curls, bright violet eyes, and petite curves, she was unbothered with superficial matters. She wasn’t one to pay much consideration to clothing or other vain pursuits, and cared more about practical endeavors. She had a fascination for gardening and was a passionate cook, and had spent years honing both her green thumb and her culinary skills to near perfection.

  Alice’s pursuits came much to her parents’ chagrin. They didn’t appreciate their daughter’s voracious appetite for experience and wished instead that she could be a simple girl who found joy in more acceptable pursuits: cross-stitching or planning a wedding. Really, Alice’s parents wished for a daughter like Lucille.

  Lucille was the opposite of Alice: reserved and soft spoken, and above all else a hopeless romantic. She possessed many of the same wild ambitions and dreams as her cousin, but she had the good sense to keep them hidden in her heart, rather than worn defiantly on her sleeve. She was eager to marry and have children, but without her cousin’s natural beauty and courageous charms, she found herself in short supply of worthy suitors.

  In the absence of her own love interest, Lucille had allowed herself to become engulfed in her cousin�
�s developing romance with James. She had followed their passionate affair with every bit of excitement and glee, as if it were her own. It was understandable then, that learning of the relationship’s demise was particularly devastating to her, enough so to cause a stream of tears to flow down her cheeks.

  “I admire you for speaking so honestly,” Lucille admitted, dabbing her damp eyes with a handkerchief. “I certainly wouldn’t have been so brave.”

  “That wasn’t bravery,” Alice said glumly. “If I had truly been speaking my mind, I would have told him that any earthly consequences he avoids now will pale in comparison to the wrath he’ll certainly face from the Lord when he stands before the gates of Heaven.”

  “Oh, Alice!” Lucille bit her lip again, and even though the idea of speaking so venomously to a man filled her with a flutter of anxiety, she couldn’t help but admire her cousin’s bravery.

  “Perhaps I should have said that.” Alice shrugged. “Instead, I told him that he could have his wish: he would never hear from me or see me again.”

  “And what did he say?” Lucille asked.

  Alice sighed, and she set the ivory-handled hairbrush onto the lacquered vanity table beneath the mirror. She studied her reflection, admiring the healthy glow of her skin, the glow of life growing inside of her.

  “He thanked me for my discretion,” Alice said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion.

  “What a pig!” Lucille clucked in disgust, shaking her head as she felt a fresh wave of tears. “What an absolute pig!”

  Alice didn’t contradict the statement. She just swallowed heavily, holding her own gaze in the mirror’s reflection.

  “So what will we do now?” Lucille asked. “You’re expected back in Texas soon… perhaps your parents would allow you to stay here a while longer? Not long enough, I suppose…”

  “I doubt they’ll forgive me,” Alice said, her voice tinged not with sadness but with grave sincerity. “The only chance I had of gaining their acceptance was if I came home with a groom. But without James… well, I don’t know if they’d ever be able to recover from the shame and embarrassment that I would cause them.”

  Lucille took the ivory-handled brush and rolled it over in her hands thoughtfully before raising it up and running it through her own head of hair. Then she had an idea. “You need a groom,” she said.

  Alice nodded.

  “The groom doesn’t need to be James, though,” Lucille pointed out.

  Alice turned away from her own reflection, angling her body toward Lucille so they were face to face. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re suggesting,” Alice said, blinking thoughtfully at her cousin as Lucille continued to work the brush through a dense clot of tangled hair.

  “You just need a groom,” Lucille said.

  “Yes,” Alice said. “But I’m not foolish enough to believe that there’s a long line of eligible bachelors eager to wed a woman pregnant with the bastard child of another man.”

  Lucille cringed at her cousin’s bluntness, then persisted. “Perhaps not,” she admitted. “But what if we hired someone to play the role?”

  “Have you gone absolutely mad?” Alice asked her cousin.

  “Wait here,” Lucille said. She flew up from her seat and scurried from the room. Alice listened to her soft footsteps padding down the hall and through the quiet house, then she turned her attention to the fire flickering softly from the gas lamp.

  She entertained the possibility of telling her parents the truth, or perhaps, a version of it. Perhaps she could justify James’s absence by explaining that he had been called away by the war. Perhaps she could promise her parents that he had every intention of behaving honorably upon his return.

  No, she decided. There was simply no point in protecting or defending the reputation of a man who had no intention of returning to her, or their child. And besides, whether the father of her child was a brave and stoic cavalry commander for the Confederate Army, or just a coward who abandoned her… he was gone, all the same. And in her parents’ eyes, that meant that the fault would fall entirely on her own shoulders, regardless of what she told them about James.

  Lucille hurried back into the room, shutting the door softly behind her, then fluttering to Alice’s side. She was holding a newspaper, soft and wrinkled from being read and passed around several times already. Lucille furtively flipped through the pages, then found what she was looking for and held the paper out so it rested between their two laps.

  “Look here,” she said, pointing a finger to a spot on the page. Alice squinted down and saw that she was looking at the Classifieds page, which was full of listings… items, land, and livestock available or desired for sale.

  Alice redirected her focus to the spot where Lucille was pointing, and her brow wrinkled when she read the line of neat black print.

  Thirty year old bachelor rancher seeks woman of faith, virtue, and childbearing age to join him as bride in New Mexico Territory.

  “I’m not sure responding to a mail-order-bride ad is the right course of action,” Alice said, glancing up at her cousin. Then she added darkly, “And besides, I only meet two of those three requirements.”

  “No!” Lucille said quickly, tearing the paper away. “I’m not suggesting that you respond to an ad… I’m suggesting you place one!”

  “Place an ad?” Alice repeated, shocked by her cousin’s suggestion. Lucille was usually so passive and reserved!

  “Why not?” Lucille asked. Then, in an exaggerated tone of voice, as if reading off what a prospective listing might say, she dictated, “Husband for hire! Seeking candidate to impersonate husband. Short-term role, well compensated!”

  “You’re mad,” Alice said dryly.

  “Not at all!” Lucille countered. “You’re not actually buying a husband, you’re simply buying time, time to decide what you’re going to do!”

  “I hardly think that hiring an imposter to pose as my betrothed will do much to appease my parents,” Alice said.

  “It might be the only way,” Lucille said. “You said so yourself… your only chance at forgiveness was if you went home with a groom. This way you can.”

  “And what will my parents think when the truth inevitably comes out?” Alice asked pointedly.

  “It won’t,” Lucille said. “Once you’ve proven that you’re happily engaged, you can leave their home—return to Cimarron, or move to Montana like you’ve always dreamed of!”

  “Surely they’ll notice eventually that I’m missing a husband,” Alice pointed out.

  “When enough time has passed, you can write them a letter,” Lucille suggested. “Tell them that he abandoned you before the wedding, or that he was called away to war, or… well, you can tell them anything, really. By then, you’ll be free. You’ll be established and independent, and they won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  It was an outrageous plan. So outrageous, that even the thought of orchestrating such an endeavor made Alice’s mind numb with concentration and anxiety.

  But however far-fetched it might be, Alice had to admit that Lucille had a point: it might be the only plan that she had.

  That night as she tossed and turned in bed, rendered sleepless with anxiety and dread, her cousin’s plan began to seem more and more appealing.

  It was certainly crazy. But maybe, just maybe, it could work.

  THREE

  Charles Douglas hadn’t been entirely sure what to expect when he arrived in the New Mexico Territory.

  An actor by trade, the man prided himself in having an active and voracious imagination, and he had spent much of the journey west contemplating the possibilities that awaited him in Cimarron. He imagined a dusty terrain spotted with sagebrush that rattled in the wind. He imagined a flat expanse of land, upon which a makeshift town of shanties and lean-tos had been erected out of worn wooden boards and tired metal roofs. He imagined earth the color of cinnamon, and air scented like spice.

  Of course Charles’s imagining of the New Mexico
Territory wasn’t based on experience. The young man had never actually traveled to the great deserts and plains and mountains of the west. In fact, he had never even traveled beyond the city he called home.

  Born and raised in New York, Charles had never known an America beyond the cobblestone streets and rusty red brick buildings of the city. His universe was bordered by the choppy black waters of the Hudson River, and the only mountain vista that he knew was the range of mountainous buildings that towered over the city streets.

  Despite never stepping foot outside of New York City, Charles considered himself an active adventurer and pioneer of the world, thanks to his career on the stage. As an actor, the young man found himself exploring new locales and cultures without ever stepping foot outside of the theater.

  In fact, it was Charles’s experience acting on the stage that formed the basis for his imagining of the New Mexico Territory. He had recently been cast as a down-on-his-luck cowboy who faced the dire prospect of rehabilitating a cattle ranch in the rugged California desert. Charles had poured his heart into the role, adapting a western twang accent and attaching a pair of silver spurs to the only pair of shoes he owned. He had become an avid pupil of all things west, poring over literature and newspaper articles.

  The performance had been met with a dismal response, and even poorer ticket sales. Amidst the war, it seemed that theatergoers had little interest in splashy western stage productions. The only show still selling tickets was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and unfortunately for Charles, the directors and producers in charge of the production had little interest in an out-of-work actor with silver spurs on his boots. Charles had been cut from the first round of auditions, and he hadn’t booked a job since.

  And then… then he had found the advertisement in the newspaper. He still remembered the night it happened. He had been sipping a cup of bitter black coffee—his only meal for the day—while scanning the newspaper for new listings. And then he had spotted the ad. It wasn’t an open call for auditions, or casting for a new play coming to town… rather, it was a most unconventional job. And perhaps that was what intrigued him the most.