Romance: Mail Order Bride "The Ideal Bride" Clean Christian Western Historical Romance (Western Mail Order Bride Short Shorties Series) (183 page)

Chapter Two

Alice could not sleep, no matter how hard she tried and how desperately she wanted to.  Wasn’t that always the way of it?  The moments when one was most keen on falling into an easy sleep, when one felt that doing so was of the utmost importance, those were the nights when sleep was the most elusive.

Alice knew that both anecdotally and from her own personal experience, but the knowing didn’t make it any less frustrating.  She tossed and turned fitfully in her lovely canopied bed for what felt like an eternity before sitting up and swinging her feet over the edge of the bed.  She let out a little shiver (the fire the maids had set for her before she went to bed was now more ember than flame) and lit the little gas lamp that sat on the table beside her.  There was simply no use.  What was the point in her just lying there feeling helpless?  If sleep was not ready to come, well then who was she to challenge him?  She knew that it was better to treat him like an old friend, to allow him to make his presence known in his own good time.  She had never been one to struggle with sleep, not in any real way, and she trusted that this anomaly would not continue for long.  It would just be too awful if she were to have her only completely sleepless night the very night before her wedding.  It would be such an unfortunate time to make her journey into insomnia that it would be almost laughable.  Almost.

“Oh stop it, you’re being silly.”

She spoke the words out loud and was startled by the sound of her own voice.  She did not know precisely what time it was, but she could tell by the heaviness of the dark that lingered outside of her window that it was very late indeed.  She was a solitary passenger in that journey that was the no man’s land of in between, those hours when almost nothing seems recognizable and it is very easy to feel entirely alone.  It was sort of a terrifying feeling, but somehow a beautiful one as well.  It seemed almost fitting to be the only one awake in this massive house that she loved so well.  It was as if, subconsciously, she had set aside a time for saying her goodbyes.  Because this house was the only one she had ever known, after all.  This house was the place where she had been born and had continued on to be the setting of a great number of the most important events in her admittedly short life.  She loved it well, as well as any person could love a thing without a real live beating heart.  She couldn’t imagine not calling it home.  She couldn’t comprehend what it would be like when, after her wedding, she went to some other building and began to call it home instead.  Although she felt herself to be slightly ridiculous, just the thought of it brought the prick of hot tears to her eyes.  She ran her hand along the rich mahogany of her bed post and did not bother to wipe those tears away.  If she was being ridiculous, then so be it.  She would be an adult again in the morning.  For now she allowed herself to feel like the child that still lived inside of her heart. 

She sat that way for a long time, grieving a little and saying her silly goodbyes.  She sat that way until the oil in her lamp began to run low and even the embers of the fire began to seem like a distant memory.  Finally, when her eyes burned from fatigue as well as tears both shed and unshed, she blew out the light and buried herself back down under her plush quilt.  Her thoughts traveled involuntarily to the conversation she had had with Gretta and Talia.  How many times had they had some variation of that exact same conversation?  How many more times had Gretta wanted to have the conversation and instead bit her tongue?  Thinking about it was unsettling to Alice.  There was something that didn’t feel quite right about one of her closest friends harboring so much dislike for her future husband.  As tired as she was, a tiny little voice spoke to her from the back of her head.  What if there was some truth to the many times she’d voiced concerns for her friend?  What if the man who was to be her husband was something other than what she believed?  But no, she couldn’t think that way.  That was just her fatigue getting the better of her, that and her exceedingly strong desire to get along with every person she knew as well as humanly possible.  That desire was even greater when it was her best friend she was at odds with.  But she had made the decision to be positive and have faith and that was what she was going to continue to do.  That was the thought she held on to as she finally allowed herself to drift off to sleep.  With not insignificant effort, she pushed all of her fears aside.  She fancied that she could see the light in the sky blanketing the city beginning to change, and she pushed that thought aside as well.  She needed to sleep, needed to get some small amount of rest if she was to survive the day ahead of her.  And once everything was said and done, there was nothing that could rob her of the fact that she was finally going to be joined with Travis and after that everything else would fall into place.

“Didn’t you sleep last night, darling?”

“Oh dear, not nearly as well as I would have liked.  So then it shows, does it?  How bad do I look?”

“No, no,” Alice’s mother reassured gently, “you don’t look bad at all.  Not even close.  I only see it because you’re my daughter.  I’ve been trained to see it, you see.”

“Are you sure?  Are you absolutely sure, mother?”

Alice had hoped that when she awoke the nerves from her late night musings would have been a thing of the past.  Unfortunately, that did not seem to be the case.  If anything, she was feeling even more unsettled and anxious than she had been in the dark hours before the morning came.  But how?  Why?  Was this how one was supposed to feel as she made her way to join her betrothed in marriage?  Upon asking herself that question, Alice realized that she had no idea what the answer should be.  And why should she?  Never in her life had she received any kind of advice about what it was like once a proposal had been accepted and a ceremony was imminent.  All she had ever heard about, and on this topic she had received copious amounts of advice, was the process of becoming available for marriage and then landing a man who wanted her hand.  Now that she had done that, the well of advice and knowledge seemed to have dried up completely.  What happened after the wedding was never spoken about.  It wasn’t proper, she supposed.  Once she became a wife it was right that the details of her experiences remained between her and her husband.  She understood this, in some ways agreed with it even, but that didn’t make the day feel any easier.  It didn’t make things feel any less terrifying not to know how much (if any) of her experience of and feelings about the day were normal.  She was surrounded by all of the women she loved and cherished and yet, somehow, she still felt as if she was entirely on her own.  She smiled at her mother, appreciating her fussing and reassurance of how beautiful she looked but not really listening any longer.  She was very much inside of her own mind, unsure of how to calm herself and feeling just a tad bit silly.

“Alice?”

The sound of Gretta’s voice pulled her back to her surroundings again.  She turned to her friend and saw the tears in her eyes.  Were those tears of happiness or of sorrow?  Alice had a feeling that maybe it was a bit of both and she took her friend in her arms, hugged her tight before letting out a nervous little laugh. 

“Gretta!  You’re here.”

“Of course I’m here.  How could I not be?”

“I don’t know.  I suppose part of me thought that you might not come.”

“Not possible.  Alice, you are my dearest friend and you always will be.  I will never choose to be anywhere other than where you need me.  I’ve said my piece, have I not?”

“I--I think so.”

“I have and now that it’s done, I will be there for you.  Whenever you need me.  That’s the promise I make to you.”

Alice knew that saying a thing like that did not come easily to Gretta.  She was not the sort of girl to speak words like that unless she had thought them through, thought about them from every possible angle.  She found that she had no words in return and so she gave her a reassuring squeeze and a smile.  Gretta hadn’t said much, but somehow it was enough.  It did not rid Alice of every fear that had gripped her, she didn’t think anything but time could do a thing like that.  What it did accomplish, however, was a far more profound sense of peace than she could remember having in a long time.  She hadn’t even realized the amount of pressure she had piled upon herself until she felt a portion of it released but the weightlessness upon that release was heavenly.  It made her feel as if she really could make the long walk down the aisle of the church where she had been raised and when the double doors opened and revealed everyone she cared for standing and smiling back at her she was overjoyed.  This was really happening.  Every step she took was another step she was taking towards the rest of her life and knowing that caused her imagination to run wild.  She saw the children that she and Travis would have, the home they would build up for themselves and the business she would help him grow (assuming that he ever let her in enough to do such a thing).  She saw an entire life unfolding before her and by the time she was standing beside Travis she could not wait for the nuptials to be complete.  She was so deeply immersed in her joyous thoughts, in fact, that she did not notice the look on Travis’s face.  At least not at first.  When the minister began to speak was when she really took a look at him, got a real glimpse of his expression, and when she did she felt her heart leap into her throat.  It felt so entirely lodged there that she was almost sure she would be sick.  She knew she shouldn't say anything while the minister was talking.  She knew that to interrupt was terribly rude and, after all, who on earth spoke over the minister at her own wedding?  She wanted to bite her tongue, really she did, but she just couldn’t.  Not with Travis looking at her that way. 

“Travis?”

The minister’s voice faltered but did not cease.  She could feel her mother’s concerned eyes boring into her back and hear the beginnings of her guests’ soft whispers.  Still, all she could look at was him.  His eyes were bloodshot, his hair disheveled.  She would have assumed that he had been struck by the same sleeplessness as she had, but the pervasive stink of alcohol made it clear that he had been drinking into the small hours of the night.  At first he would not even look at her, despite the fact that she had just interrupted their wedding to make sure that he was ok.  When he finally
did
look at her, she wished that he had not.  She knew what was going to happen before anything actually did.  She could feel it in the slick sweat that sprung up in a fine film across every inch of her skin and in the heart beating much too quickly and still stuck in her throat.  She felt like she might faint, felt sure that she was going to suffocate if he didn’t say something to her quickly.  She needed him to tell her that everything was alright.  If he couldn’t find the words, she needed him to smile at her.  Just that small gesture would be enough, but it was not to be.  He looked at her with tormented, almost angry eyes and shook his head slightly.  She reached out one shaking hand but her fingertips never touched him.  They would never touch him again.  Because instead of offering her reassurance he turned to their two hundred guests with a sad smile, his eyes darting back and forth quickly in a way that she thought a criminal’s might.

“I’m terribly sorry, so terribly sorry, but I’m afraid you’ve all come out in the cold for nothing.  There is not going to be any wedding today.”

Chapter Three

“Excuse me miss?  You waiting for something, or just planning on making that very spot there your new home?”

Alice looked up, feeling very startled and very exposed.  The sun shone so brightly in her tired eyes that she felt like she might go blind from exposure to it and a large part of her wished very much that she could just step back onto the train that had spirited her off West and go back home again.  Alice had never been the sort of girl to make rash, spur of the moment decisions.  She felt confident that the most unpredictable thing she had ever done had been to accept Travis’s proposal, and the only thing that had made that a tad unorthodox was how quickly it had taken place.  So no, she had never done a truly unpredictable thing in the whole of her life and somehow she still found herself standing in the middle of a vast land that was, to her, entirely foreign.  It felt like she was moving through a dream and she might have actually allowed herself to believe that’s what it was if it weren’t for the little beads of sweat dripping down her back and the skin she could already feel beginning to burn under the face of the relentless sun.  There was no way around her.  She was most definitely not in New York City any longer.  She couldn’t even guess how many miles away from her home she had fled, but she knew that she was nowhere close.  It was sickeningly disorienting and now, on top of that, there was some man she did not know speaking to her and confusing her even further.

“I’m sorry?  I don’t think I understand.”

The man laughed and hopped down from the horse drawn wagon he occupied with an athletic ease.  She took an involuntary step back.  She had in no way meant to offend the man, but she was far from accustomed to being addressed so informally by men who were strangers to her.  It was already becoming clear to her that things were done differently in the West.  She looked at the man searchingly, still trying to bring align herself with her current reality, and noted that he was looking at her with an open and slightly mischievous grin.  His eyes were a bright and merry green, his skin sporting the ghost of burns gone by, and Alice felt her own face light up with a furious blush.  It was ridiculous for her to be reacting to him this way, she did not even know him, but the reaction was there all the same.  Oh why had she come here?  Her grandmother had told her when she was young that the first thing a person did after suffering a great disappointment was often times a mistake and Alice was almost paralyzed by the thought that this trip was that mistake for her.  She could still hear the disbelief in Talia’s voice when she had delivered her news.

“You’ve done what?!” she had cried out in a louder voice than she was ever likely to use again. “You’re going
where
?”

Alice had been sequestered in her bedroom for what felt like years but had actually been only two weeks.  Only two weeks since Travis had announced to the church and the world at large that he would not be marrying her after all.  In that week she had refused to see anybody except for the maids who stocked her fire and delivered her papers, the maids that would take care of any correspondence she might wish to send or receive.  At first she had been sure that she would not wish to do either of those things.  She had been so sick from heartbreak and lack of food or sleep that she had been sure that she would never want to communicate with another living soul again, but flipping listlessly through her paper one morning had shown that assumption to be wrong.

“Is this real?” she had whispered to herself, not even realizing that she was speaking out loud.  She had gone through the paper three times already and had only opened it again for lack of anything better to do.  It was on that third perusal that she had come upon something she hadn’t even known existed but felt like it might just be the lifeline she needed to pull herself out of her current mess.  There, amongst a whole host of advertisements she had never paid any mind to before, were adverts written by men who were looking for brides.  It seemed impossible to Alice that something like that really happened, but there was the proof looking her in the face.  There were several of them and she poured over them with a kind of macabre fascination.  All of her life she had believed that there was really only one way of approaching the idea of marriage and courtship.  Operating under this belief, she had gone about her own courtship according to those presupposed ideas.  She had done everything just the way she was supposed to and nothing had happened the way it was supposed to.  Instead of being off on her honeymoon she was locked in her childhood bedroom like some kind of a pariah.  Was that not proof in of itself that conventional methods did not always yield what they were promised to?  There was no doubt that using an advert in a paper to find a wife was anything but conventional but at the moment, that didn’t strike Alice as such a bad thing. 

That line of thought might have been where her consideration of the idea came to an end if one ad in particular hadn’t caught her eye.  It was nothing fancy, nothing spectacular she supposed.  There was no way she would have been able to explain her attachment to it to another living soul.  If she was being honest with herself however, and if she couldn’t do that at this point then she must admit herself entirely lost, it was the simplicity of his request.  He wanted a wife, that was true, but he also wrote of wanting a friend.  That seemed to be the most a woman could hope for, when it was all said and done.  For Alice, the idea of boiling passion had lost much of its luster.  She was far more interested in something safe, perhaps something where she could be left alone to nurse her wounds without also having to suffer the stigma of forever being the jilted girl who would in no time at all become an old maid.  Because when Travis had left her at the altar in such an appalling fashion he had not only tossed her aside himself.  He had also created such a stir that there was no bachelor in New York or its general vicinity who had not heard of her jilting.  She simply could not tolerate the idea of having to relive that with every potential suitor.  Not to mention the fact that every person she saw on the street looked at her with mingled voyeuristic interest and pity.  No, the idea of taking herself out west seemed to her to be the perfect solution and so she had written back and agreed to come.  She had done everything but buy the railway ticket before telling her friends, and by that time there was nothing either girl could say or do to change her mind (although that hadn’t stopped Talia from trying her very hardest).

“But you can’t!  You just
can’t
, Alice.  I won’t allow it.”

Alice just smiled and shook her head.  She had done everything she could think of to assuage sweet Talia’s fears and had not succeeded in any way.  She was set to leave the next morning and she had already spent hours of her day convincing her parents that she was not insane.  She simply did not have the energy to go through that process again with her friends.  She sighed deeply, opening her mouth to feebly defend herself, but much to her surprise Gretta began to speak before she could even say a word. 

“I think you should go.”

She spoke so quietly that Alice couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t conjured the words out of thin air from her desire to hear them.  But the look of indignation on Talia’s face told her that Gretta’s words had not been imaginary, nor had they been misunderstood.  Alice’s eyes welled up with tears of relief and gratitude and Gretta took her hand and squeezed it tightly, making it clear that she would not let it go.

“You heard me correctly, Talia, and I don’t want to hear all of your reasons for why it is a mistake.  More importantly, Alice doesn’t need to hear them.  I have no doubt that they have all been sufficiently presented to her by her parents.  Am I right?”

Alice nodded, not trusting herself to speak.  She couldn’t believe that this was happening but she was beyond grateful.  She felt like Gretta’s agreement was the permission she needed to go.    

“See?  There you have it.  She’s heard all of the reasons for why she should stay.  What she really needs, what she truly needs from us, is our support.  It’s something I should have done more of in the past and something I intend to excel with in the future.  So you go, Alice.  If that’s what you want and what you feel will heal you, go.  The people who love you will go on doing so whether you are in New York or out in the West.”

And so that’s what she had done.  She had said farewell to her parents (with the understanding that she could return home at any time with no questions asked and no further admonishments) and purchased her ticket and now she was in the west with nothing more than a couple of suitcases.  She was looking for a man named Bradan Shaw, a ranch owner and the man who was to be her husband.  She had felt alright about what she was doing, too, until she was standing in confusion with no idea of what this Bradan Shaw looked like and entirely unsure of what to make of the first person in the west to speak to her.  She had a feeling that he could see how completely out of place she was and she got the distinct impression that he found it to be funny.  That thought was immensely frustrating to her and part of her wanted to take out all of her weeks’ worth of frustration on him, but she was not quite capable of being so rude to a stranger.  So instead she smiled politely, trying very hard to ignore the beads of sweat rolling merrily down her back, waiting for him to explain himself so that she could go on about her way.  He laughed again, more heartily than he had before, and his whole body shook with the effort.  His green eyes twinkled at her as he pushed the slightly too long auburn hair out of his face.

“All I meant was that you seem to be fairly rooted to the spot where you’re standing.  You’re looking a little bit lost.  Is there something I could help you with?  Something you’re looking for?”

“Actually, yes, there is.  I’m supposed to find the ranch of Bradan Shaw, and, as it turns out, I haven’t the faintest idea how to go about doing that.”

“Oh ho ho!” the man crowed, his voice loud and quite startling to Alice, “It looks like you’re in luck then, if that’s where you’re aiming to go.”

“I am?  Why is that?”

“Because, I happen to
be
Bradan Shaw.  And I would be more than happy to show you to my ranch.”