Romance: Mail Order Bride "The Ideal Bride" Clean Christian Western Historical Romance (Western Mail Order Bride Short Shorties Series) (187 page)

“Here, drink this. It will make you feel better. You’re looking mighty pale, I don’t mind telling you. I don’t like it. I don’t care for that look. It isn’t pretty. It’s not what I want from my wife.”

He was pushing a glass of some kind of dark, disgusting liquid towards her with an odor so foul it made her mouth fill with saliva the way it did right before she was going to get sick.  She thought it was whiskey, but she couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t a drinker and if there was a worse time to start, she couldn’t think of one. She needed to keep her wits about her. If there was any chance of her getting out of this instead of being dragged back to her uncle’s massive, dreary house, keeping her wits about her was imperative.

“No, thank you. I-I don’t think I would like it. I don’t like the smell.”

“Drink it,” he commanded with a voice that reminded her that he was not accustomed to being refused. She was afraid of what he might do if she refused again and so she pulled the glass closer to her, taking the smallest sip she could possibly manage. It felt like fire going down her throat and she wondered to herself why in the world anyone would put a thing like this in his or her body on purpose?  But Jack was beginning to talk again and she knew that she needed to hear what he was saying. Maybe if she could keep him talking she could figure out a way to get herself out of this mess.

“I bet you’re wondering how I found you, aren’t you? That’s what
I
would be wondering, if I were you.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, wishing that she didn’t care so much. “I am.”

“It was your mother. She really can come in handy, and when I least expect it, too.”

“But how?”

“It was your letters. Oh, come now, why the look of surprise? You weren’t half so clever as you thought you were. Or perhaps you just left in too big of a hurry to do a clean sweep of your dismal little room. But you left one of your letters there and after you vanished your mother found it. She turned that little hovel upside down looking for some kind of evidence of where you were. She can be very helpful when properly motivated.”

“Motivated?”

“Sure. Apparently the threat of losing every pathetic little thing that she owns was motivation enough. She found the address on the envelopes being sent to you. She brought them to me, and the rest is history, so to speak.”

“But
why
?” she asked desperately, understanding the how but still struggling to wrap her head around the concept. “I don’t understand. Why come all of this way just for me? You’ve got so much money, uncle, enough money to get whatever you like,
whoever
you like. Why can’t you just let me be happy?”

“Because,” he said in a low, threatening growl, “you’re
mine
. You belong to me and I don’t like to lose what’s mine. I don’t like to lose,
period
. You don’t get to run away from me.  You don’t get to tell me no. And for what? For some dirty rancher out in the middle of nowhere?  There is absolutely nothing he has that you need.”

“What about love?”

“Love,” he spat with a depressing amount of disgust. “What a silly, childish notion. No matter. You’ll be rid of it soon. I doubt you’ll hold onto that need for love once we return home.”

She opened her mouth to speak again, but the sound of him slamming his fist on the bar stopped her cold. He threw back his rather large drink and then grabbed her by the arm again.  He pulled her up, her muscles screaming at the way he tugged on them, without any regard to what he might be doing to her, and started to drag her towards the stairs. This had been her worst fear, that he would have a room here, that he would take her to it. If he got her up those stairs her hope would be lost for good and these last weeks truly would be nothing more than a dream.  Two, three, she counted the stairs as she went up them, the steps to her doom. Five, six. Only a few more to go now. How silly she had been to think she could have anything else but this.

“Excuse me!  I’m going to have to ask you to stop right there.”

Somehow Jack just knew that the booming voice was talking to him and he started to laugh before he even turned around. He was right, it
was
for him. Meg knew it, too. She would have known that voice anywhere, although she had no idea how he had found her. She practically sobbed with relief and began to tug against him, to try and wrench her arm free.  Surprised, his grip loosened and she heard him mutter words not usually used in front of girls like her before he turned around to face his challenger. As he turned, his grip loosened even further and with one final push, Meg found that she was free. She flew back down the stairs, knowing exactly how many she had climbed and how close she had gotten to the point of no return, and ran into Charles’s open, waiting arms. He kissed the top of her head gently but his eyes never left the angry figure of uncle Jack.

“You should be going, old man. You aren’t welcome in this town anymore.”

“Is that right? And who's going to make me leave? Last time I checked, this town didn’t belong to you. And in case Meg hasn’t told you already, I’ve got enough money to convince anyone in this pitiful place to do whatever I want. Haven’t you heard? Money talks.”

It was a saying that Meg had heard before and one that she was sure was true in four out of five cases. Unfortunately for uncle Jack, the case he had found himself in was number five.  All around the bar, men began to rise. Some had weapons on their person and some had only their menacing expressions, but all of them moved behind Charles and Meg to create an actual wall of opposition should Jack try anything stupid. 

“That may be true where you’re from,” Charles said in a strong voice that made Meg proud to call him her own, “but in this town loyalty talks louder. Now, I’m going to ask you to leave one more time, and if you refuse me things are going to get ugly.”

“And what makes you think that I won’t just come back when you aren’t expecting it?”

“Nothing. But by the time you come back she will be my wife, and I can tell you right now, I plan to keep my family protected.”

Meg could see that her uncle was practically bursting with rage, but he was a shrewd man and he knew when he was beat. He stormed down the stairs, more of that foul language sticking to him as he went, and pushed through her wall of champions. They swallowed him up, made him obsolete, and then it was like he had never been there at all.  She was safe,
really
safe this time, and she could feel tears of gratitude and overwhelming joy begin to spill down her cheeks. 

She turned to Charles and smiled as he wiped her tears away.

“What is it, darling? Why are you crying?”

“It’s nothing. It’s just that, well, you’re him. You’re really him.”

“I’m who?”

“My prince charming. My knight in shining armor. I can’t think of anyone else I would rather marry, not anyone in the world.”

He said nothing in return, but the kiss he planted on her told her that he very much felt the same.

THE END

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Return to TOC

Chapter One

“Sacha!  Where on earth have you gone?  I swear, you are the flightiest girl I’ve ever met.  I swear, if it weren’t attached to your body, you would absolutely misplace your own head.  Just set it down and forget where you put it the next moment.”

Sacha Clarkson smiled distractedly.  She knew her sister meant her admonishments in only the kindest of ways, and after all, they weren’t all that far off the mark.  The kind of forgetfulness (as it was perceived by the world around her at large) that Georgette Clarkson was describing was one of the overarching characteristics that had been ascribed to Sacha practically since birth.  It wasn’t a malicious thing, at least not when coming from those who were dear to her as Georgette was, but it wasn’t exactly accurate, either.  It had been, back when she was very small.  She had been the sort of little girl who always had her head in the clouds.  There was a whole other world out there for her that she need only reach out and touch with her fingertips, her tiny little chubby fingertips that were only just too short to do the job.  Back then she really had been forgetful because her mind had never been in the present.  She had so much preferred the world of her imagination to the world she really belonged to.  As she grew older, however, she realized that that world did not, could not, be all that she hoped for and so she gradually moved from that to the world she was supposed to be a part of. 

Not to say that giving up her fantasy world had meant that she immediately became the most practical and steadfast of women.  She had stopped talking about fairies and mermaids and the other lovely things all little girls secretly believed to be true, but she hadn’t embraced the reality she found instead.  Or, to be more precise, it had not embraced her.  It hadn’t embraced her the way she hoped to be embraced.  It would not acknowledge all of who she was.  It wasn’t that society was bad or that it meant to do her harm.  It was nothing as malignant as all of that.  The true problem (and Sacha was well aware that most people would not have considered it to be a problem at all) was that she was very, very beautiful.  It sounded awful and shallow even to think a thing like that, but nevertheless it was true.  Her father had been Black Irish with a shock of black hair and striking blue eyes, her mother of gypsy origin with dark hair and dark almond-shaped eyes.  What had resulted was a living anomaly of a girl, an extraordinarily beautiful girl who grew to be an even more extraordinarily beautiful woman.  She supposed that’s what she was now.  She could only be considered a woman at this point, being the age she was.  She had deep brown hair that seemed to change with whatever light she was in.  Sometimes it seemed black, sometimes almost red as if it were lit from the inside out.  Her eyes had the almond shape passed down to her from her mother but were the deep cobalt blue of her father.  She had the pink flush that could only be boasted by the young and exceedingly healthy and the natural womanly shape that told people she would be excellent at bearing children.  She looked such that men and women alike would actually stop in the streets and look at her, quite possibly whispering to each other and sometimes even being as bold as to point at her.  So she was beautiful.  She was also twenty-five and as of yet unmarried.

And how was it that a girl graced with the kind of beauty that Sacha had been, along with the extreme wealth amassed by her father (which provided whoever married her with more than a satisfactory dowry) could have reached the age of twenty-five and not gotten herself a husband?  It might have seemed like a big joke to her loved ones and acquaintances, but it was precisely that shocking beauty that made that feel impossible for her.  It was the beauty and the fact that she was not content to be taken on as a bauble or trinket.  She did not care for the notion of being a decorative piece for some man who would only take her down from the shelf to show her off at the events where such a thing was beneficial to him.  Her father loved her dearly, as she loved him equally as well, but as she had grown into the most lovely woman that he or any of his friends and colleagues had ever seen, he had begun to treat her more and more like an object to be gawked at and less like a young person with a mind of her own.  He did not take her opinions on things seriously, regardless of what those opinions were.  He seemed to care less for her ideas as she grew older, in fact, than he had when she had been only a little girl and living almost always inside of her world of imagination.  It felt to Sacha as if her beauty negated her mind, not only for her father but for most people she interacted with.  She did not lament this for fear of being thought spoiled, but it irked her.  Truth be told, it hurt her.  It was a hurt she held close to her heart and revealed to nobody other than her God, but it was there and colored most of what she did.  If her own father could not see the worth she possessed beyond a pretty face and a desirable figure, how on Earth could she hope to find another man who would?  That thought was with her all of the time and it caused her to be more and more guarded as her years passed and although she had been pursued by many a gentleman who positively ached to be her husband, to be afforded the
privilege
of calling her their wife, she had sent them all away.  She had been gentle, of course, having no desire to hurt another human being, but she had sent them away empty-handed and broken-hearted, nonetheless.

“Sacha!  My dear, you really do seem to be off in a far off place today, even more so than usual.  What is it that’s on your mind?  And don’t tell me nothing, because I can see that it’s
something
.  What is it, little dove?  What’s troubling you?  Is it William?  Please tell me that’s it’s not, love, because that would be such a shame.  It’s taken you so long to settle on a man as it is!  No sense in going back on matters now.  If you aren’t careful you’ll wind up just another sad old spinster.  That would be a travesty with a true beauty like you.”

“No, sister,” Sacha said softly, feeling shaky and not entirely sure why, “I’m not planning on going back on matters.  Just thinking about tonight.  Just a bit nervous, I suppose.”

“Well of course you are!  There’s nothing to be ashamed about, little sister.  Any person in her right mind would be nervous about a night like tonight.  I’m sure that half of the city will be here tonight, here inside of our own house and all to celebrate you.”

“No, not just me.  Also William.  It’s about the both of us.”

“Of course,” Georgette said with a bemused look on her face that made it clear that she did not agree with that take on things in any form or fashion, “it’s about the both of you.  I’m sure everyone in New York is coming to see what
William
is going to wear.”

“Georgette!  They aren’t coming to see what I wear.”

“Well then why do you suppose they’ve dedicated their evening to come and revel in our humble abode?”

“To celebrate our impending union?”

Is that an answer or a question?  I couldn’t quite tell.”

Sacha smiled wanly at her sister, knowing this was not a road she felt like travelling down.  Georgette was a good big sister, really she was, but she also had a tendency to act like a bit of a bully when given the chance.  It wasn’t her fault, Sacha thought to herself, it was just in her nature.  That, and the fact that sometimes being the older sister to a girl celebrated citywide for her beauty.  The two of them had only spoken about it once, the night of Georgette’s own engagement party.  Georgette had been exceedingly happy to be marrying her now husband, Hugh Hardy, and perhaps she had become too taken up with the festivities.  She had certainly imbibed a few too many cordials, and at the end of the night she had taken Sacha aside with the intent of bearing her soul.  No amount of protestation had put her off and although they had never discussed the conversation again, it existed between them still, the great elephant in the room that would go on being ignored until it got bored and traveled on to more interesting pastures.

“I’ve done it,” Georgette had said with a flushed face and eyes that were slightly glassy, “I’ve managed to do it when everything was going against me.”

“Going against you?” Sacha had asked, feeling confusion and dread all at the same time.

“Of course!  For who would want to marry the light of a lamp when they could have a star instead?  Who would settle for a lump of coal when they could have a diamond?  I know what you are, little dove, and I know what I amount to while I exist beside you.”

“No!  No, please.  Don’t talk that way about yourself, Georgette.  You’re perfectly lovely, you really are.”

“Bah,” she had scoffed, waving Sacha’s comments off like a fly that would not stop bothering her, “say what you will.  We both know the truth.  Everyone in this house knows the truth, everyone in the city.  But it doesn’t matter now, does it?  Hugh may not be the most interesting man in the world, not the most intelligent or handsome, but he seems to love me well enough and he wants me to be his wife, so that’s enough.  I won’t have to worry about it anymore, will I?  I won’t have to worry about moving through my years alone.”

Sacha hadn’t known what to say then and thinking about it now, she still wasn’t sure what to feel.  Who wanted to be given coal when they could have a diamond instead?  What a horrid way to think of oneself!  But then again, and this was the question she would never speak out loud, who wanted to be thought of as a diamond and as nothing else?  William Shaw didn’t seem to think of her in those terms.  He asked her opinion on matters and even seemed to listen to her answers (or most of the time at least, and really, who could expect to be listened to all of the time?).  He knew that she had hobbies and he seemed to appreciate her skills and excellence in those arenas.  When he had first come to court her she had thought that he must be the same as every other gentleman who had come calling.  He himself was quite good looking and had the easy charm of a man who knew it without the arrogance that often times accompanied that sort of knowledge.  In the beginning she had entertained him because she was polite and because her parents had insisted upon her doing so.  But his continued presence had made an impression on her and by the time he asked for her hand in marriage, she had honestly (albeit it tentatively) believed that he valued her for her mind and her heart as well as her beauty and her wealth.  And so she had accepted his proposal six months ago and the time had flown.  Tonight was the night of her engagement party and very soon she would be somebody’s wife.  Somebody’s wife.  She couldn't help wondering to herself how long it would take before she felt like that was really true.