Historical Cowboy Romance Two Book Box Set - Mail Order Brides (14 page)

She hadn’t relished the idea of contravening
his desires by marrying a mail-order husband. She’d spent her life
trying to please him. After her parents died, Cornell took over the
management of Rocking Horse Ranch as well as the guardianship of
Violet and her sisters. So Violet always treated him as a third
parent. She never questioned his motives or his competence at
handling their affairs.

But when he decided to arrange their
marriages, Violet began to question her loyalty to Cornell. When
she discussed the matter with her sisters, they agreed they
wouldn’t allow Cornell to determine the rest of their lives.

Violet heard a door slam somewhere in another
part of the house, and the next moment, the library door opened,
and a young woman entered. Her blonde hair hung free around her
face, and her sun-kissed cheeks glowed with the flush of activity.
Violet exchanged a knowing smile with her middle sister.

Iris Kilburn wore beaten canvas trousers, a
buckskin jacket fringed up the sleeves, and rawhide chaps down her
legs. She didn’t notice her tattered work boots leaving dusty
footprints on the carpet. She carried a crumpled felt hat in hands
covered by worn leather gloves,

Cornell glared at her. “Honestly, Iris, I’ve
asked you to change out of your work clothes before you come into
the house. Look, you’re getting dust all over the place.”

“I didn’t change my clothes because I’m going
right back out,” Iris replied. “I only came in to ask Violet when
she wants to leave for Butte. I’ll change my clothes before we
leave.”

“You’ll change your clothes before you leave
for Butte,” Cornell shot back. “But you won’t change your clothes
to keep the house clean.”

“That’s right,” Iris replied. “When do you
want to leave, Violet?”

“As soon as you’re finished working,” Violet
replied. “I’m waiting for you. We should leave as soon as possible.
We have to get to the train station in time to pick up the men and
get home before dark. That doesn’t give us much time.”

“Is Rose ready to go?” Iris asked.

“As far as I know, she is.” Violet looked
around as if searching for their youngest sister. “I haven’t seen
her yet this morning.”

“All right.” Iris headed back toward the
door. “You hunt up Rose, and I’ll put my horse away and change.
Then we can leave.”

“I suppose you’re champing at the bit to get
a mail-order husband, are you, Iris?” Cornell scoffed. “I didn’t
know you’d suddenly taken such an interest in men.”

“I haven’t taken a sudden interest in men,”
Iris replied. “Does it surprise you to learn that I’ve been
interested in men all along? Well, I have. But I think Violet’s
plan for us to get mail-order husbands is a sensible one, and I’m
willing to go along with it.”

“And what exactly do you think is sensible
about it?” Cornell asked.

“I’ve told you a million times, Cornell,”
Iris answered. “This ranch desperately needs men—and not the kind
of men you’d pick for us. The ranch doesn’t need any graduates of
Eastern universities with specialties in politics or literature. It
doesn’t need the sons of railroad magnates or shipping tycoons.
What this ranch needs—and badly—are cowboys. We need men who know
how to work cattle and run a cattle ranch. That’s what we need, and
that’s what we got. That’s why I think it’s sensible.”

“This ranch doesn’t need any more cowboys
than it already has,” Cornell argued. “We have Pete Kershaw and
Wade Jackson. What else do we need? They do a good job, and the
ranch is running fine. We don’t need any cowboys.”

“Pete is fifty, and Wade is pushing sixty,”
Iris shot back. “They can barely do the work now, and they’ll only
weaken further as they age.”

“Nonsense!” Cornell spluttered. “You’re
exaggerating again, Iris.”

“I’ve explained this to you so many times,”
Iris went on. “And you’ve ignored me and told me I’m a silly girl
who should stick to my knitting. So I’m not going to waste my time
going through it again. If you don’t understand by now why we need
cowboys, then you aren’t going to understand it. I’ve given up on
trying to convince you.”

“I’ll be the one to decide what this ranch
needs,” Cornell growled. “I know what goes on around this ranch a
lot better than you do, Iris. You’re a twenty-year-old girl with a
lot of fanciful ideas that don’t measure up on the ground. You
would do well to leave the management of this ranch to me.”

“I know your opinion perfectly well,” Iris
replied. “And right now, I have better things to do than argue with
you about it. I’m going out to put my horse away. Then I’ll change
my clothes. Violet, you find Rose. By the time I finish changing,
we should all be ready to go.”

“Good,” Violet exclaimed. “I’ll get Rose. By
the way, Iris, while you’re out there, could you ask Pete to get
the buggy hitched up for us? And we’ll need three horses saddled
for the men to ride home.”

“I’ll tell him.” Iris disappeared out the
door.

Cornell scowled at the door after she left.
“That sister of yours will never make any man a good wife. She’s
too headstrong, and she doesn’t understand a woman’s role in the
family. Look at her! She even has the temerity to wear pants! No
man will put up with that. Whoever you got to be her mail-order
husband will want her to stay at home and wear a dress the way a
woman should.”

“You don’t know what Iris is made of,” Violet
told him. “You don’t know what she does around here, or how
valuable she is to this ranch.”

“Oh, really?” Cornell asked. “Tell me, then.
Tell me what she does, and what her value is to this ranch.”

“I would, but she doesn’t want me to.” Violet
sat up on her divan. “She’s sworn me and Rose to secrecy. And that
should give you some idea of how deeply you’ve hurt her with your
comments about her clothes and her interest in men. You should be
ashamed of yourself for treating her so badly.”

“Ashamed of myself?” Cornell scoffed.
“Treating her badly? I never did! I’ve never treated any of you
girls badly in your lives. I’ve worked from dawn ‘til dusk to make
your lives as pleasant as possible, and this is the thanks I get
for it!”

“If you really wanted to do the best for us,”
Violet declared. “You would listen to what we have to say. You
might learn something you never thought you needed to know. Some of
us know things even you don’t, Cornell—especially Iris. And look,
you’re so pig-headed about things that poor little Rose won’t even
say a word to contradict you. She’s that afraid of offending
you.”

“Pig-headed, am I?” Cornell fumed. “Since
when am I pig-headed?”

“All the time,” Violet shot back. “You won’t
listen to a word from anyone else. You won’t take advice on what’s
going on with the ranch or what we need to do from Iris or anyone
else. It’s Cornell or nothing around here.”

Cornell pulled his head down between his
shoulders. “I should say it is Cornell or nothing around here. I’m
your guardian and the executor of your estate. I’m responsible for
administering the Kilburn family fortune. I would be remiss in my
duty if I
did
take advice from a little whip of a girl on
how to run this ranch.”

“You think all three of us are nothing more
than little whips of girls,” Violet remarked. “And to you, that’s
all we’ll ever be. Well, one of these days, Cornell, you’re going
to wake up and realize just how wrong you are.”

Cornell let his hands and his papers fall
onto the desk in front of him. He stared at Violet. “What has
gotten into you, Violet? You’ve always deferred to me in the past.
You’ve always encouraged your sisters to follow my direction and my
vision for the ranch. I don’t understand what has induced you to
attack me so blatantly now.”

“I’ve always backed you before, Cornell,”
Violet agreed. “And now I’m not. I guess there’s a first time for
everything.”

“But why?” Cornell asked. “Why now?”

Violet stood up and smoothed down the skirts
of her dark brown dress. “I don’t have time to discuss this any
further right now. If you’re still up when we get back from Butte,
we can talk again then. But I’m telling you for the last time,
Cornell, we won’t discuss it in front of the men.”

“But, Violet….” Cornell began.

Violet interrupted him. “And I’ll tell you
something else, Cornell. We won’t discuss the advisability of my
sisters and me marrying mail-order husbands
at all
after the
marriage service on Friday. Once we marry these men, you aren’t to
bring it up again—ever! Do you understand me?”

“But, Violet….” Cornell whimpered.

“I’m leaving now, Cornell. I’ll see you for
supper this evening. We should be back from Butte by then.” Violet
swept out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

Violet leaned her back against the wall in
the passage just outside the library, her heart racing and her
breath coming out in gasps. She’d never stood up to Cornell before
or spoken to him in such an insolent manner.

She could only pray he’d be too shocked by
her defiance to retaliate. No one could hold a grudge or repay it
with more vindictive cruelty than Cornell Pollard. He acted
defeated now, but he held all the purse strings on the sisters’
lives.

He had the legal power and the financial
interest, not to mention the vengeful spite, to disinherit all
three of them for marrying without his permission. Violet certainly
saw him do as bad, or worse, enough times in the past.

But she didn’t have time to wait until she
recovered. She hurried along the passage to the foot of the stairs
to fetch her youngest sister, Rose. But she spotted Iris coming the
other direction from the kitchen, still wearing her work
clothes.

“I’m just on my way up to change,” Iris told
her.

Violet laughed. “What’s the matter? Don’t you
want your fiancé to see you in your work clothes?”

Iris threw her hair back out of her eyes. “If
he can’t handle this, he won’t be able to handle anything else
about me. But he doesn’t need to find out the sordid details when
he lays eyes on me for the first time at the train station, does
he?”

“Are you going to save that for your wedding
night?” Violet asked.

Iris tilted her head to one side. “I don’t
know how I’ll break it to him, but I’ll have to do it gently and
gradually. I don’t think any man could understand the work I’ve
done around here.”

“I agree with you,” Violet replied. “Cornell
especially would probably lose his mind if he ever found out you
were running the ranch behind his back. He knows you ride out with
Pete and Wade, but he doesn’t know you’ve been overriding all his
instructions and making your own instead.”

“We would all be out on the street, including
Cornell, if I hadn’t,” Iris shot back.

“I understand that,” Violet assured her. “But
I think you’ve done the right thing keeping your activities a
secret. You would probably do well to keep it a secret from your
new husband, too.”

Iris sighed. “I know you’re right. Anyway,
once the men get here and we all get married, they’ll probably
start running the ranch their own way. Then it won’t matter what I
did before they came. I might stop riding out with the cowboys
altogether.”

Violet smiled. “Somehow I doubt that. I don’t
see you giving up the reins so easily.”

“I might have to,” Iris pointed out. “If my
new husband thinks I should stay home and mind the house, I’ll have
to do what he says, won’t I?”

“Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen,” Violet
replied. “Let’s hope all three of these men understand why you had
to take over the ranch and are as grateful to you for what you’ve
done as Rose and I are. If that happens, your mail-order husband
will probably be glad to have you ride out and do the same work
you’re doing now.”

“I hope you’re right,” Iris murmured. “I hope
you’re right, for the sake of the ranch, because three cowboys
aren’t going to be able to run this operation by themselves.
They’ll need Pete and Wade working with them, and even five cowboys
will be hard pressed to bring our herd to the sale yards come the
end of the summer. They’ll need me working with them to do the job
right.”

“Then we’ll just have to break the news to
your fiancé gently,” Violet replied.

“And it isn’t just him, you know,” Iris
continued. “The other two will have to agree to it as well. Even if
my husband consents to me working the cattle, I still won’t be able
to do it if your husband and Rose’s husband don’t want me there.
Some men won’t ride with a woman, no matter how good she is or how
much they need her help. All three will have to understand and
agree.”

“Then let’s just hope for the best,” Violet
told her.

“It isn’t just me that has to worry about how
the men will react, either,” Iris remarked. “How do you think your
husband will take it when he finds out
you’ve
been running
the ranch behind Cornell’s back?”

“That’s different,” Violet replied. “I
haven’t been doing anything any other woman would do. I’ve only
kept the house. That’s a woman’s work.”

“Maybe, “ Iris admitted. “But you’re still
overriding Cornell’s orders. You decide what food Rita cooks, you
decide how much firewood we use to heat the house, and you manage
all the other domestic affairs. You even keep the books. If Cornell
ever found out, he’d be a lot angrier at you than he would be to
find out I managed the livestock. He prides himself on running this
place without any interference from any of us.”

Violet touched her fingers to her lips. “I
know. I dread the day he finds out.”

“You shouldn’t,” Iris told her. “You should
be proud of what you’ve done. You’ve done an excellent job keeping
all of us fed and clothed and warmed in spite of Cornell’s efforts
to impoverish us.”