Mail Order Bride Collection (A Timeless Romance Anthology Book 16) Page 16

  The sound of an approaching train whistle pulled him from his distraction. This was the moment of truth. She was here.

  He stood up straighter as the sleek, black steam engine ground its way to a halt in front of the depot. The screech of metal on metal never had been a pleasant sound, but he found it almost welcome in that moment. Fetching himself a bride hadn’t exactly been a dream of his, but now that the time had come, he felt a pulse of anticipation pounding in his neck. Things were going to change now; he hoped for the better.

  The train stood utterly still. Passengers looked out of the soot-stained windows, eying the tiny place with equal parts confusion and dismissiveness.

  The man who ran the depot didn’t step outside to greet the train. He likely wasn’t even in today. There was little point being there unless a large delivery was scheduled. Only Gerald met the train. And only one train door opened.

  A porter hopped out of the second passenger compartment, a trunk in hand. He set down his armful, then turned around and held a hand out in anticipation of a passenger.

  Gerald stepped closer, eying the empty doorway. Tall? Short? Pretty? Plain? How would the woman turn out?

  The quickest flutter of yellow skirts skimmed the edges of the doorway before disappearing once more. Yellow? That was not a very practical color.

  He moved closer still, wanting a better view when Miss Hill finally made her full appearance.

  “I almost forgot my bonnet.” A woman’s voice emerged in the exact moment the yellow dress reappeared. In the next instant, she stepped out into the light.

  “You’re Miss Hill?” he asked.

  “I am.” She looked back at the train as she answered him, then down at her traveling bag. “I don’t suppose you have brought a wagon. Even if the porter were to allow me to carry my trunk, I don’t imagine I could get very far with—”

  Her words stopped the moment she looked directly at him. Her blue eyes pulled wide. Her dark eyebrows shot upward. “Gerald? Gerald Smith?”

  He narrowed his gaze. She did look familiar, though he couldn’t identify her.

  “No.” She shook her head and stepped back. “You can’t be my Mr. Smith.”

  “If you’re Miss Hill, I’m your Mr. Smith.” He studied her even as he spoke. Heavens, but he was certain he knew her.

  A terrible suspicion entered his thoughts. He’d known another Miss Hill; he’d been thinking of her only a moment earlier. If this Miss Hill looked familiar, and he’d known only one Miss Hill, then this woman was...

  “Ah, blasted, doggone—”

  Miss Hill— Mary— spun on her heels and stepped back toward the train. It, however, began moving in the very instant she approached, having completed its brief business in Greenborough.

  Mary stood with her back to him, watching the train pull away. She didn’t say a word; he suspected he knew exactly what she was thinking and feeling. An arranged marriage to a complete stranger was one thing. An arranged marriage to a person one already disliked was quite another entirely.

  “This must be some kind of gull. I’ve been hornswoggled or something,” Gerald said.

  Mary snatched the handle of her traveling trunk and dragged it along the train platform toward the small one-room building that served as the depot office.

  How had this happened? Of all the women in all the country who might’ve been picked to come West and fill his house, why had he been sent this one? They’d not cared for each other as young people; they’d certainly not do so now. It was Bob Attley’s fault. He’d been the one to put the idea in Gerald’s head. Without that prodding, he’d never have found himself in this mess.

  Mary, having tested the door and found it locked, had resorted to knocking on the window. “Hello?” she called out.

  She could knock all afternoon for all the good it’d do her. The building was empty and likely would remain so for days, perhaps weeks.

  Gerald set his hat on his head once more and stomped back to his waiting horse and wagon. The sooner he returned home and put the entire ordeal behind him the better. He would simply write to the marriage-arranging company and tell them to send someone else. Anyone else.

  He climbed onto the wagon bench and took up the reins. No one could expect him to do anything other than return home.

  But he made the mistake of looking back at the depot. Mary stood there, a look of worried confusion on her features as she peered up and down the railroad tracks, one hand on her hip, the other brushing a stray bit of brown hair away from her face.

  I can’t leave her here. But neither could he take her home with him. Doing so would require they be married. Nothing else would do. He might’ve been rough about the edges, living in the uncivilized West, but he was no scoundrel. But marry her? Mary Hill, of all people. Mary Hill, who’d driven him mad and pestered him clear out of temper for years.

  He rested his elbows on his legs and leaned forward. He’d once resorted to hiding in an outhouse for more than hour, waiting for her to give up searching for him just to be free of her for one blessed afternoon. She’d followed him through their small town, into his family’s fields; anywhere he went, she was there.

  The experience might’ve been a flattering one if she hadn’t been so blasted pestery. “What are you doing? Why are you doing that? May I see? May I help? What should we do today? Why won’t you do what I want to do?” Ceaseless questions.

  And now she’s meant to be my wife. I’ll never escape. Not ever.

  Nope. He wouldn’t go through with it. Mary’d simply have to fend for herself. She was a woman grown; she could manage that.

  He looked over at her again, apparently not one to learn from his mistakes. She sat on her traveling trunk, facing the empty track. Hers was a posture of waiting. Did she mean to simply remain until a passenger train stopped in Greenborough? Heavens, she might be sitting there for weeks.

  He muttered to himself as he climbed down once more. For four years he’d been free of Mary Hill dogging his heels. Now he was responsible for pulling her out of another scrape. Why was it the fates hated him so much?

  His boots hit the planks of the platform with a forceful rhythm borne of frustration and disappointment. He’d let himself imagine pleasant things about the woman he’d been sent. He ought to have imagined the worst outcome possible. Then at least he wouldn’t have felt so misled.

  “You can’t sit here forever, Mary,” he said. “You’ll have to be coming along with me.”

  She shook her head firmly. “I’ll simply wait for the next train.”

  “The last time a train stopped to take on or let off passengers was well over a month ago. You’d be a fool to sit here for weeks on end.”

  She folded her arms, lifted her chin, and turned her head in the direction her train had come. “I’d be a fool to marry a man whose poor opinion of me I remember very clearly.”

  “Who said anything at all about marrying you, woman?”

  “That is why I am here. We both know that.”

  She’d be in for quite a surprise if she thought he meant to move forward with that plan. “I ain’t marrying a woman I’d likely throttle in the first week. But I also ain’t leaving you here all by yourself.”

  “If you are suggesting I live in your house without—”

  He pushed out a frustrated sigh. “I’m taking you to the preacher’s house. He’ll know what to do you with you until you can find a train back to Ohio.”

  “I haven’t lived in Ohio for years. You aren’t the only one who has had adventures.”

  Adventures. He shook his head at the poor fit of that word. His time in Colorado had been a lot of things, but an adventure wasn’t one of them.

  “A train back to wherever in the world you’d be heading back to,” he amended. “It don’t matter a lick to me. Come on, then.”

  She must have gained some sense over the years since he’d last seen her. With no more argument than her small bit of protest from a moment earlier, she began dragging her trunk
toward his waiting wagon.

  He took it from her and hefted it into the wagon bed. She climbed up on the wagon bench, hugging the far side, leaving a canyon-sized gap between them. Gerald held a rather neutral position on religion, but in that moment he thanked the heavens for Reverend Carter.

  Chapter Three

  Mary prided herself on being clever, but she’d been a fool this time. The security of a home of her own, the call of the West, the hope, however vague, of being cared about had spoken to a deep need in her. She’d known the decision was a gamble, that there was no guarantee the stranger she’d pledged herself to would prove kind or loving or good. But there’d been nothing for her in Nebraska.

  Colorado had been her promised land and “Mr. Smith” her last thread of hope.

  Gerald. Why did he have to be Gerald Smith? She knew perfectly well how little the man thought of her. He’d disliked her when they were younger. He’d told her the day he and Tommy had left to seek their fortunes that he wouldn’t miss her for even a moment.

  She’d mourned his departure, though not for the reasons he would likely have assumed. Mary knew full well that Gerald believed she’d dogged his heels in order to make a nuisance of herself. He’d thought her little more than an irritant— he’d told her as much often enough. It was far more than that, however. Far more.

  Her uncle Bill had come to live with them not long after they moved to Ohio. He had made her life a nightmare. But Bill kept away when Gerald was around. Something about the younger man had intimidated him. She had, therefore, kept close to her neighbor for years, despite knowing he rather hated her, because when she had been with Gerald she had been safe.

  For two years she’d spent hours every day with Gerald. Sometimes she’d talk; sometimes she’d listen. She had, for two years, spent more time with him than any other person, and he’d never stopped disliking her. Spending a lifetime with him wasn’t likely to change that.

  “Either you’ve stopped being chatty over the past four years or I’ve lost my hearing.” Gerald always had been a touch grumpy. That much hadn’t changed.

  “I’m rather tired is all.”

  Her stomach chose that exact moment to loudly protest its empty state. Mary set her gaze on the horizon, hoping Gerald hadn’t heard the telltale rumble.

  He gently pulled back on the reins and brought the team to a stop. Mary could see no reason for him to do so. No home sat nearby. No church. This wide-open area hardly seemed the place to find the preacher.

  Gerald reached behind the bench and pulled a small paper-wrapped parcel from the back. He set it on the wagon beside her. “Here,” was all he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  He clicked his tongue at the horses and flicked the reins, setting the wagon in motion once more. “They’re meat pies,” he said, tipping his head in the direction of the parcel between them. “It was meant to be dinner tonight.”

  “Dinner for you and your wife,” she countered. “Since that is not going to be me after all, I won’t take your food away from—”

  “Stubborn and prickly. You’ve not changed.”

  “Unfortunately,” she muttered, “neither have you.”

  They continued on in stony silence as the minutes passed. The parcel sat, unopened, the contents uneaten, all the way to a turn in the road where a small church sat beside an equally small house. Both were tinted with the thinnest layer of white as if there’d not been enough paint to do the full job.

  Gerald stopped the wagon directly in front of the buildings, but didn’t immediately hop down. “There’re enough meat pies for the both of us, as that’d been my plan. So it does me no good to keep ’em all to myself. You’d do well to eat one while the preacher sorts things out.”

  “Eating in front of people would be rude,” she pointed out.

  “Requiring Reverend and Mrs. Carter to feed you when they hadn’t been planning on doing so would be ruder.” He shot her a look of tried patience. “Eat, woman.”

  “I would far prefer you call me Mary.”

  His shoulders dropped. “Eat, Mary,” he corrected. “Please.”

  The “please” was unexpected and, if she wasn’t entirely deceiving herself, sincere.

  She took up the parcel and offered a quiet, “Thank you.”

  A moment later they were standing at the preacher’s front door. Gerald stood with his hat in his hands. It might have been a humble posture on anyone else. He had been intimidating even at seventeen. Now twenty-three, he likely could be quite frightening when he chose to be.

  The door opened, and a woman, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a loose bun, greeted them.

  “Ah, Gerald. And—” Her eyes darted from one of them to the other. “I don’t believe I met your—?”

  Apparently, he hadn’t told anyone his plans to bring home a wife.

  “Is the reverend about?” Gerald asked.

  “Of course, of course.” She stepped back, motioning them inside. “Come in, please.”

  Gerald met Mary’s eyes and pointed his chin in the direction of the house. That, it seemed, was his way of offering to allow her to step inside first. She kept the paper-wrapped meat pies close to her. They were no longer warm and, more likely than not, would leave grease marks on her dress. But having something to cling to— anything to cling to— brought a certain comfort.

  Their hostess stepped into a simply furnished parlor. “Dearest, Gerald Smith has arrived.”

  Mary looked at Gerald, unsure how he meant to go about explaining their situation. She would have gone about it herself, but he actually knew these people. It made far more sense for him to undertake the explanation.

  “We’ve a problem, preacher,” Gerald said. “I sent for a wife, a mail order bride, but they sent me Miss Hill here.”

  That was one way to summarize the situation.

  “And you object to Miss Hill?” the preacher asked.

  Gerald nodded. “Things won’t work out between us.”

  Reverend Carter looked up at last, his heavily wrinkled brow pulled deep. “You’ve realized this in the short time required to drive from the train depot?” He shook his head. “That seems a rather drastic conclusion, especially from two people who willingly agreed to marry complete strangers.”

  “I’d’ve married a complete stranger,” Gerald said. “But I know Mary. Knew her when we both lived in Ohio.”

  “You are acquaintances?” Mrs. Carter clapped her hands together, a wide smile touching her maternal features. “What a joyful coincidence.”

  “No, dear,” Reverend Carter said. “Gerald has declared he hasn’t come here to be married. That is hardly joyful.”

  “Why in heaven’s name would you rather marry someone you don’t know than someone you do?”

  Mary felt it time and past that she spoke on her own behalf. “Because we had two years in which to decide if we cared for each other. We discovered we didn’t.”

  “But you might now,” Reverend Carter insisted. “You would both have been quite young all those years ago.”

  “Some things don’t change,” Gerald said. “But now I don’t know what to do with her.”

  Reverend Carter’s expression turned immediately stern. “‘What to do with her’? Gerald, you’ve brought her all the way to Colorado on the promise of a home. You had better do right by her.”

  Mary was no wilting flower, shriveling at the thought of not having a man to look over her. “I would really rather not marry a man who clearly does not wish to marry me.”

  “My dear, you agreed to marry a stranger. The time for being picky has passed.”

  She didn’t want to admit that the preacher was likely right, but he was. Frustration bubbled anew. This had been a bad idea from the beginning.

  “What, precisely, were you hoping to accomplish here, if not a wedding?” Reverend Carter asked Gerald.

  “Mary needs a place to stay and food to eat. She can’t sit at the train depot for days on end, hoping a train
stops.”

  Reverend Carter began shaking his head before Gerald had even finished his explanation. “We do not have the room for nor the provisions to feed another person. Ours is a poor community with little to give. Mine and Helen’s circumstances are no better than most.”

  Mrs. Carter set an arm around Mary’s shoulders. “Come, let’s step into the lean-to and leave the men to discuss their business.”

  “As that business impacts my future, I would like to remain and participate in their discussion.”

  Mrs. Carter was, apparently, not expecting that. She sputtered a moment before trying once more. “The men can manage this. We’ll just step away and give them a moment’s privacy.”

  “I would prefer to stay.”

  “She’s stubborn as a polecat, Mrs. Carter,” Gerald said. “You’ll be wasting your breath by arguing.”

  Stubborn? Did he truly think her insistence on having a choice in her own future was merely a matter of being stubborn?

  “Perhaps, Gerald, you might step into the lean-to with Mrs. Carter to discuss something mundane while I decide what is to be done. I will be certain to let you know what path I have decided you ought to walk.”

  “Retract the claws. I wasn’t going to insist you leave.” His attention returned to Reverend Carter. “There must be someone nearby who needs a woman to do some work, who has room enough for another body and food enough for another mouth.”

  It wasn’t the most personal appeal for her well-being. Besides, she’d spent enough time as a servant. She’d come West to find a home.

  “You sent for a wife, Gerald. And you’ve received one.” For a man with a stooped posture and quiet, unassuming demeanor, Reverend Carter was proving unmovable. “Now it’s time for you to fulfill your commitment.”

  “Reverend,” Mary stepped into the conversation. “He doesn’t wish to marry me. He didn’t like me when we were younger. There is little reason to believe he could learn to do so now.”

  The Reverend’s eyes narrowed on her in a studying manner. “This is the second time you’ve told me he doesn’t want to marry you. The only objections I’ve heard from you are the result of his. How do you feel about marrying Gerald Smith? Do you dislike him as much as he dislikes you?”