The Bargain Mail Order Bride Read online

  He got down from the wagon and went over to Juliet. As he helped her down, she tripped on the hem of her dress and fell against him. He quickly steadied her then pushed her away from him as if she might bite him. What an odd way to react. He hadn’t expected that being so close to her would make him panic.

  “I’m sorry,” Juliet said as she adjusted the skirt of her dress. “All these layers of petticoats make it difficult to do much of anything.”

  Layers of petticoats? “Out here, I don’t think women wear any more than two. I know back East they wear more.” His mother had often bemoaned how unfashionable things were out here. “Do women wear a lot of petticoats in Texas?”

  “Oh, um, those who can afford them do.”

  And she was one of them? He hadn’t gotten that impression by her missive or the small trunk she’d brought.

  “You said the preacher’s here?” Juliet asked, motioning to the cabin.

  Right. The preacher. The wedding. The marriage to come. This was why he sent for her, and this was what he’d have to do, like it or not. With a resigned nod, he escorted her to the door of Caroline’s cabin.

  Chapter Two

  “Marriage is one of the most beautiful institutions ordained by God,” the preacher rambled during the wedding ceremony. “I never get tired of uniting two lives together. Why, I still remember the first couple I married. It was in a town just north of here and...”

  Juliet tried to pay attention to the preacher as he kept talking. Really, she did. But the trip in the stagecoach had been a long one, and the constant swaying back and forth on the bumpy road had made it impossible to sleep.

  Had she not been in such a hurry to get here, she would have stayed at a hotel at least once during the journey instead of hopping from one stagecoach right on to the other. She’d only taken enough of a break to get something to eat, and that food had left a lot to be desired.

  But it’d been worth it. She was finally here. Safe in the mountainside. Far from Texas. All the pent up anxiety she’d experienced on her journey had given way to relief, and in the relief came exhaustion.

  So was it really any wonder why her eyelids kept closing and she was finding it hard to remain standing up straight? At one point, she leaned against Carl who jerked away from her as if she might hurt him. She straightened back up and apologized. That was the second time he’d pulled away from her so abruptly. The first had been when she’d fallen against him as he’d helped her down from the wagon.

  She glanced over at him, but he didn’t look her way. He had posted the ad asking for a wife, making it clear he needed one who was untried by a man so he could ensure the child she’d conceive would legitimately be his. Given his request they try for a child as soon as possible, she hadn’t expected him to be so skittish. On the contrary, she had expected him to be groping her much like her brothers often groped women whenever they got the chance.

  But whatever caused Carl to be so shy about touching her was the least of her concerns. When he wanted the child, he would approach her then. All she needed was a safe place to hide, and all the way out here, far from civilization, was as safe as she was going to get. The man at the mercantile in Texas had been right. There was no place more rugged than this part of the country. If you want to get away from it all, that will do it, he’d said when she showed him Carl’s ad.

  So whatever the case was with Carl, it didn’t matter. She could handle the marriage any way he wanted it.

  “Then there was that couple I married two years later who were quite an unlikely match,” the preacher droned on.

  “Preacher,” Caroline spoke up from where she was standing next to her son Caleb, “it looks like Juliet is exhausted after her long trip here. Perhaps I can take you to her and Carl’s home tomorrow so you can tell her all about the couples you married. She’s bound to be more alert then.”

  “I’m sorry,” Juliet said, her face warming in embarrassment. “Was I drifting off to sleep?”

  “No,” Caroline assured her, “but I remember how exhausting the trip was when I came here.”

  “Yes, she’s right,” the preacher agreed. “You ought to get some rest. I can bore you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you’re boring,” Juliet quickly said, even though she did. She cleared her throat. She was lying, and to a preacher of all people! But if that was the worst of her sins, then she would have been doing well. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Which made lying seem even worse. “I promise I’ll be more attentive tomorrow.” And she would be. She’d be sure to pay close attention to every word he said the next time she saw him.

  “I’ll bring him out around one,” Caroline replied, “if that’s alright?”

  Juliet glanced at Carl, who shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him either way. Turning her gaze back to Caroline and the preacher, she nodded. “One will be fine.”

  “Good. We’ll get on with the ceremony then,” the preacher said, seeming more than happy at the promise of visiting with her and Carl.

  She released her breath and offered the man a hesitant smile. It just occurred to her that having a preacher in her home could be her undoing. Though he couldn’t possibly know about her past, maybe he suspected it. Did men of God have special insight into a person’s life? Could they discern the human heart in a way others couldn’t?

  She wished she’d thought this matter through before agreeing with Caroline that it was fine for him to come out to see her tomorrow. She glanced at Carl. Well, he’d be there, too. Maybe the two could talk so much that all she’d have to do was sit in the background while she poured their coffee and offered them a snack to eat. Besides, how much were men really interested in women anyway? According to her brothers, women were best seen and not heard.

  “Carl, do you take Juliet Gilbert to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the preacher began. “Will you honor and protect her? Will you keep her in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, forsaking all others for as long as you both shall live?”

  “I do,” Carl replied.

  Juliet thought there was an underlying reluctance in Carl’s response, but she decided she was imagining it. She was letting her guilt catch up to her. If Carl knew the things she’d done, he most likely would never agree to this. Which was why she was determined he never find out. And she’d keep that vow as long as she’d keep the others she was promising during this ceremony.

  “And do you,” the preacher turned to her, “take Carl Richie to be your lawfully wedded husband? Will you respect him and be his helpmate? Will you keep him in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, forsaking all others for as long as you both shall live?”

  “I do,” Juliet said.

  “Then by the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Carl, you may kiss the bride.”

  She turned to Carl. He quickly leaned forward and kissed her, his lips so light against hers that she barely felt them. Had she not seen him kiss her, she would have doubted he’d actually done it.

  “Congratulations,” the preacher called out and shook Carl’s hand.

  Carl smiled, but it seemed forced.

  Juliet clasped her hands together. It didn’t seem that Carl was all that happy to be marrying her. She’d need to address this issue as soon as possible. The sooner the two could come to an understanding, the better.

  Caroline went over to her and hugged her. “I’ll bring something out for you and Carl to eat tomorrow. The last thing you need to do is worry about serving food to your guests.”

  Since Juliet didn’t know what else to say, she settled for a, “Thank you,” and followed Carl out of the cabin.

  He waited until they were at the wagon before he said, “A part of me wishes you had fallen asleep in there. It might’ve been the only way the preacher would understand how boring he is. No one cares about how happy other couples are.”

  He turned and offered his hand to help her in. She gathered her skirt and petticoats and lifted them high enough to guarantee tha
t she wouldn’t trip on them this time. Then she accepted his hand and got in. Once she was settled on her seat, she adjusted the skirt around her so she was comfortable.

  “How long is it to your cabin?” she asked.

  He climbed in next to her and released the brake. “It’ll take about an hour to get there, especially since the path is uphill and winding. If you don’t know the correct paths to take, you can get lost, so I suggest you don’t go into town by yourself until you’re familiar with the route.”

  He lived in a place where it’d be easy for a stranger to get lost? She’d thought the remote town was good enough, but this was even better. This was turning out to be the ideal place. She was glad she went with her gut and picked his ad. It was nice to be able to stop looking over her shoulder all the time.

  Carl snapped the reins, and the horses took them away from Caroline’s cabin and down through town. A few people stopped to stare, so she offered a wave. If she was going to live here, she might as well be nice to the people.

  Most of them waved back, but two old men persisted in staring at her as if they’d never seen a stranger before.

  “Don’t mind them,” Carl told her. “Hank and Wilber aren’t friendly to anyone.”

  So those were the names of the old men.

  “Ida’s alright, I suppose,” Carl said, his gaze going to the woman who was waving enthusiastically at her as a couple of children buzzed around her. “You might want to watch how much you tell her, though. She has a tendency to gossip.”

  “I think that’s true of most people,” Juliet replied. “I learned long ago to keep things to myself.”

  “With a town this small, that’s a good idea. You can’t believe everything they tell you, either. Some like to distort the truth.”

  As he was listing off the names of the others who waved to her, she asked, “Do you know everyone?”

  “I came here when I was four, and it’s a small town. It’s hard not to know who people are.”

  He led the wagon on a trail that would take them out of town, and she turned to face him. “You don’t like it here, do you?”

  “I didn’t mention this in the ad or in my missive, but I think there’s a lot of gold in the stream on my property.”

  “A lot of gold?”

  “The man my father bought it from swore up and down there’s a lot of it there. The problem is, I need to find it. Up to now, I’ve found a little, but it’s not nearly enough to get out of this town. More than anything, what I really want is to make a new life somewhere else.”

  “Is that why you wanted to get married? So you could have help searching for it?”

  “I got married because I need to have a child before I turn thirty in order to keep the claim to the stream.” He glanced over at her. “I’ll be twenty-nine next month. That doesn’t leave me much time to have the child, and it has to be a legitimate one, which is why I needed a wife.”

  Oh, so that was why he was so urgent to bring her up here. Not that she’d minded the urgency. She had her own reasons for wanting to escape Texas.

  “I’ll do everything I can to help you get the child,” she assured him.

  “You’re a virgin, right? You didn’t lie about that?”

  “No, I wouldn’t lie about something like that.” Sure, she lied about some things in her life, but that was one thing she would never lie about.

  “Pardon me if this is getting too personal, but have you ever been with a man in other ways?”

  “Other ways?”

  “Well, just because you’re a virgin, it doesn’t mean you couldn’t have done other things.” When her eyebrows furrowed, he explained, “Like you could have been alone with someone and taken your clothes off. Or maybe a man touched you in certain places.”

  “Oh!” So that’s what he was getting at. “No. I’ve never been undressed around a man, nor has one ever touched me inappropriately. I’ve never even been kissed except for today when the preacher married us.”

  He relaxed. “Good. That’s what I was hoping for.”

  She supposed all men wished to marry women who were as inexperienced as she was. Her brothers had often said that a wife should be a woman who was as pure as a fresh layer of snow, but if a man wanted to sow his wild oats, he was better off going to those who knew what they were doing.

  “I’d like us to be partners in this marriage,” Carl told her. “For helping me get a child, I’ll give you half of all the gold I find. If there is as much gold in the stream as my father believed, then you’ll be rich.”

  Gold must be something all men desired. It’d certainly been something her brothers aspired to accumulate. She shouldn’t have expected Carl to be any different. But at least he was willing to honestly seek it out. It wasn’t like he was robbing anyone to get it. And that being the case, his offer was a generous one, but it did lead to a more pressing issue.

  “If we do find enough gold for you to leave this town,” she began, “what does that mean for our marriage? Will we go to another place together, or will we go our separate ways?”

  Though he didn’t answer her right away, she could tell that he didn’t want the marriage to be a romantic relationship. He wanted it to be strictly business.

  She didn’t know how she felt about that. All the way here, she’d been so preoccupied with running away that she hadn’t given any real thought to what marriage would entail. It’d been hard to give much thought to sentimental feelings when she’d been afraid of getting caught.

  “I suppose I should tell you about Lydia,” Carl said, breaking her out of her thoughts. “I’m a widower. Lydia was my first wife.”

  Noting the way he slightly grimaced, she said, “It doesn’t sound like you were happy with her.”

  “I wasn’t. The marriage was arranged between my father and hers when I was eighteen, and from the very beginning, we didn’t like each other. I don’t want to go into the details of our life together, but suffice it to say, when she died, I didn’t shed a single tear for her.”

  Lydia sure had died at an awfully young age, even though she had probably been older than her. Juliet was only twenty-two. She should have been married already, but her brothers had found it much too useful to keep her single. And with what she was doing, who would want to marry her anyway?

  “Lydia was murdered,” Carl blurted out.

  “Murdered?”

  “I didn’t kill her. Jerry Conner did. I might not have liked Lydia, but I never would have killed her.” He took a deep breath then continued, “Sooner or later, you’re bound to hear something in town about her murder, and I wanted you to learn about it from me. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

  She’d been around men who were worthy of fear, and she could tell that Carl wasn’t one of them. He was closed off. A recluse. Very private. She suspected he was even hurting. But she knew she had nothing to be afraid of. If anything, he might be afraid of her, though she had no idea how she could possibly scare anyone.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she told him. “You don’t strike me as a killer.”

  “That’s good because I’m not. I might not be perfect, but murder isn’t one of my sins.” He cleared his throat. “I also told you about Lydia because I wanted you to know that after being married to her, I don’t think I have it in me to share anything of a romantic nature with anyone. I’d feel…safer…if we looked at this marriage as a business arrangement.”

  If she’d been through a difficult marriage, she’d probably feel the same way, too. And who knew? Maybe it was better this way. If they were business partners, then he wouldn’t feel the need to pry into her past. He’d have no interest in her beyond what she could do for him right now. Then, if he did find gold and give her half of it, she could afford to go anywhere she wanted. So, a business arrangement might be the best strategy in the long run.

  But what if they had a baby? Then what? Well, she supposed if she was rich, she could afford to care for the boy or girl. Money certainly wouldn�
��t be an issue. And if there was no money, if they didn’t find enough gold in the stream to get out of here, then she supposed they would raise the child together.

  “May we make a deal?” she asked.

  He glanced her way. “A deal?”

  She nodded. “If I honor your desire to keep this marriage a business arrangement, then will you not ask me anything about my past?”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t have another husband somewhere, do you?”

  “No. I don’t have another husband, and I haven’t been with any man. Those two things I promise you.”

  He relaxed. “As long as that’s the case, then I see no reason why I should need to know anything about your past.”

  Good. “In that case, I don’t see why we should have any problems. I’ll do what I can to help you find gold in the stream and I’ll try for a baby.”

  “And in return, you get to keep half the gold we find, and I won’t ask about your past.”

  From there, they grew quiet, and she turned her attention to the winding path that led him into the trees. This arrangement might very well work to her advantage. And his, too, though he didn’t realize it. The less he knew about her past, the better. Because if the past ever caught up to her, at least he’d be innocent, and she’d be the only one sitting in a jail cell.

  Chapter Three

  Carl’s hands shook as he set Juliet’s trunk in the one-room cabin. There wasn’t much room in the place. There was one bed, a small desk, a cookstove, two wooden chairs, a table, and a small worktable. There were two small windows to light the place, shelves to put things like flour and baking powder on, and hooks to hang pots and pans. Since everything was crammed into one room, it seemed awfully small.

  He could still hear Lydia complaining about the lack of space in here. This is awful. Just awful. If you weren’t such a failure, we could get something worth living in. The only saving grace is that I don’t have to sleep in the bed with you.