The Mistaken Mail Order Bride (14 page)

Caroline relaxed. “I’ll have to pay you back
for your kindness.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Phoebe said. “We’re
just happy Eric got a good wife. Even if it wasn’t the one he was
expecting, it seems to have worked out wonderfully, and after all
he’s done for us, it’d be our way of thanking him.”

Touched, Caroline smiled. “Thank you.”

Caroline had missed her friends as they left
one by one to seek their futures as mail-order brides. There were
some things a lady could only share with another lady. While she
was thrilled to be with Eric, she was glad he’d introduced her to
Phoebe. She had a feeling they would become good friends in the
years to come. Again, she was thankful to Bee for encouraging her
to take a chance on the unknown by answering a mail-order bride
ad.

Chapter Eleven

I
t
wasn’t until the next day that Eric noticed people were looking at
him different than they usually did. He became aware of it when he
left the jailhouse to go to a man’s house to intervene on behalf of
a squabble he was having with his neighbor.

Halfway to the house, he came across Mike
and Jerry, who were having another one of their arguments.

“All your wife does is cause trouble,” Jerry
told Mike. “If it was me, I’d tie her to a chair and forbid her to
leave the house.”

“I don’t appreciate you talking about Ida
that way,” Mike replied, crossing his arms. “She happens to be
curious, that’s all.”

“Curious? She’s downright nosy. She has no
right butting her nose into other people’s lives. Who cares how
people want to live? That’s up to them. We have no right to pass
judgment on them. Your wife is worse than a snake in the Garden of
Eden.”

Mike gasped. “Oh yeah? At least my wife
doesn’t sound like a flock of ailing geese when she laughs.”

“Her laugh isn’t that bad.”

“No? Then why do my children want to know if
there’s a wounded animal whenever she cackles?”

Jerry let out a huff. “If you weren’t my
brother, I’d punch you out for that.”

“Oh? Just like I should be punching you for
comparing my wife to the devil?”

It was at this point Eric passed them, and
it was then that the two grew abnormally quiet. Eric slowed his
steps and glanced their way. Both men quickly looked away from him.
Before Eric could ask them what was wrong, they hurried off in
opposite directions.

That was odd enough as it was because those
two had never stopped arguing just because he was around.

But then when he was settling the dispute
between the two neighbors who couldn’t agree on where one’s
property ended and the other’s began, a group of kids were passing
by, and the kids stopped to stare at Eric.

Eric stopped talking to the men and looked
over at them.

One of the boys whispered to his companions.
The children all giggled and then hurried off.

Then, as Eric was heading back to the
jailhouse, he happened to pass Hank and his friend as they sat
outside the general store. Since he was coming up behind them, they
didn’t see him coming, and had it not been for the fact that both
men were over sixty and had bad hearing, they might not have said
as much as they did. But when Eric heard Hank say his name, he
slowed his steps and listened to them.

“If it was me,” Hank was telling his friend,
“I’d set my wife straight. A woman’s job is to take care of the
man. Eric needs to put his foot down and demand she do her
part.”

“Come on,” his friend replied. “She just got
here. You can’t expect her to do everything all at once.”

“Sure I can. Every woman needs to know the
basics. It’s her duty. She wasn’t raised right. I don’t know what’s
wrong with the younger generation. They don’t understand the
correct order of things. The day a woman can dictate what a man
does is the day we’re doomed as a country.”

“Marriage is more complicated than that,”
his friend replied. “But you wouldn’t know that since you never
married.”

Eric stepped in front of them. They gasped,
and Hank put his hand over his heart. “Goodness, Sheriff. You’re
going to give an old man a heart attack.”

“Yeah,” his friend agreed. “Why did you
sneak up on us like that?”

“I think a better question is why you’re
talking about me and my wife,” Eric said. “What do you mean about
me needing to put my foot down?”

Hank’s face went bright red, and he bolted
to his feet, a surprising feat for a man who claimed to have all
sorts of strange illnesses Eric had never heard of. “I just
remembered something I got to do.”

“Me, too,” his friend said, unable to get up
as fast as Hank had, though it wasn’t from lack of trying.

“Oh no you don’t,” Eric protested, jumping
in front of them as they turned to head off down the road. “This
involves me and my wife, and because of that, I have a right to
know.”

“If you want to know, then go ask Ida. She’s
the one who’s been spreading the rumors,” Hank’s friend said.

“Rumors? What rumors?” Eric asked.

Hank pointed at him. “That’s what you’re
supposed to ask her.”

“Why do that when I can ask you both?” Eric
demanded while they went around him.

“We don’t have time to talk, Sheriff,” Hank
called out as they shuffled down the road as fast as their age
allowed.

Eric had no trouble keeping up with them.
“Make time.”

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Hank
replied. “Talking isn’t a crime. We have a right to express our
opinions.”

“Freedom of speech,” his friend agreed.
“It’s in the Constitution.”

“And I have the freedom to hear it,” Eric
argued.

“Sorry, Sheriff, but we have a right to
privacy, too,” Hank replied.

“This isn’t right, and you know it,” Eric
snapped. “If someone’s going to say something bad about a man and
his wife, that man should know about it.”

“Oh, Sheriff, you sure are naïve about the
way the world works,” Hank said.

Eric couldn’t be sure, but he thought he
detected a chuckle in Hank’s voice. He stopped following them. They
weren’t going to give him an honest answer, and because of that, it
was pointless to waste his time. But he could leverage his position
in this town.

“Next time either of you need my assistance
because one of the children are too loud when they’re playing,
don’t come to me,” Eric called out after them. “You’ll just have to
deal with it!”

Unfortunately, he didn’t get the
satisfaction of having either man respond to his threat. Gritting
his teeth, Eric headed on home. Maybe Caroline knew what was going
on.

***

As it turned out, Caroline was blissfully
unaware of everything as she and Caleb made their way to the post
office. Eric had told her it was located in the general store.
“Once you get into the store, go to the left,” Eric had instructed.
“You’ll need to go past the fabrics, but you can’t miss it.” So she
had no trouble finding the little alcove inside the store.

A gentleman came over to her. “Do you have
something you need to mail out?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

She showed him two envelopes. One contained
a missive to Bee, updating her on how everything was going. Bee
couldn’t read, but one of her sons could, and he’d read the missive
to her. The other envelope contained the missive she’d written to
Charles Dunwick explaining why she hadn’t made it to Georgetown.
Hopefully, he’d understand. At the very least, he’d know she wasn’t
coming and could post for another mail-order bride.

“The stagecoach will be here in two days,”
he said.

“That’ll be fine,” she replied.

“Do you have the money to pay for this, or
should I bill your husband?”

“Do you know who my husband is?”

The corners of his lips turned up into a
smile. “Ma’am, around here, everyone knows everything about
everyone. And if you don’t, they will soon enough. You’re Sheriff
Johnson’s mistaken mail-order bride.”

Was that what people were
calling her? She returned his smile, though she wasn’t sure how she
felt about being called a
mistaken
mail-order bride. Yes, coming here had been a
mistake, but she didn’t know if she’d refer to the marriage itself
as a mistake. Forcing a polite good-bye, she led Caleb out of the
general store.

As they headed toward their home, she came
across a group of ladies. They all turned their gazes to her, so
she offered a polite greeting. One lady scanned her up and down as
if she found something wrong with her. Caroline’s steps slowed, but
the ladies all turned back to each other and hurried away from her.
Only one glanced back, and when she did, she shook her head in
disapproval.

Caroline frowned. What was that about?

Caleb wrapped his hand around hers, drawing
her attention to him. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she detected
sympathy in his eyes. What a curious thing. For a child, he seemed
to pick up on much more than a lot of adults did.

“All I know is that I couldn’t be married to
her,” came a gentleman’s voice. “I can’t help but feel bad for the
sheriff.”

She turned her head in the direction where
he’d spoken and saw he was coming out of the boot repair shop, a
gentleman following behind. She urged Caleb into the doorway of the
next shop and hid from the two gentlemen.

“Maybe the sheriff didn’t have a choice,”
the other gentleman said.

“Oh, he had a choice,” the first gentleman
replied. “He should have waited for the right woman to come in. I
mean, Caroline doesn’t know how to do anything. She sits around all
day and lets him wait on her hand and foot. Ida said she won’t even
take the time to learn how to do the things a wife ought to do,
like she’s better than everyone else.”

“That’s how those people are from
plantations. They had slaves, you know. They think everyone exists
to serve them.”

“Well, she’s useless out here, and what’s
worse, she brought that bastard kid with her. Like we need another
bastard in this town.”

The two gentlemen passed by, and thankfully,
they didn’t look in her or Caleb’s direction.

“She’s made a fool of the sheriff,” the
first one said.

“I don’t know whether to feel sorry for him
or not,” the second one replied. “I mean, he comes off as knowing
what he’s doing. Maybe he wants this.”

“Or maybe he feels bound to help her. She’s
not all that smart if she got off in the wrong town. It wouldn’t be
so bad if she was better looking. At least then Eric would have a
reason to want to do everything for her.”

From there, they turned down another road,
so she was free to step out into the road. She made sure no one
else was nearby before she urged Caleb to head on home with her. It
wasn’t far away, but it seemed to take forever to reach the small
cabin that had become the only sanctuary in the entire town.

When they finally got there, she opened the
door and let Caleb in before she slipped into the home. She glanced
out the window to see if anyone had seen them. This was foolish. It
didn’t matter if anyone saw them or not. They’d still be talking
about her in the most unflattering way possible.

She didn’t understand it. She’d thought her
visit with Ida Conner had been a good one. What had she said or
done to upset the lady?

She ran through the conversation they’d
shared, and she couldn’t think of a single thing she’d done wrong.
She’d behaved properly, doing everything her parents would have
instructed her to do. So why did Ida find it necessary to spread
such horrible rumors about her?

“Caroline?” Caleb softly asked.

Turning her gaze from the window, she was
surprised to see Caleb standing next to her, looking up at her with
compassion in his eyes.

It was then the tears came. She quickly
moved away from the window, in case anyone saw her—and knew they
could hurt her with their words. Under no circumstance would she
allow them to see her break down and cry.

“People only have power over you if they can
see they can get to you,” is what Bee had said.

And the last thing Caroline was going to do
was let them get power over her.

But that didn’t mean the words didn’t sting.
She collapsed on the couch and placed her face in her hands. She’d
been raised a lady. She was going to have to act like she hadn’t
heard anything. That was the only way she was going to be able to
face those people. Otherwise, she’d have to hide in this cabin for
the rest of her life, and she knew that wasn’t an option.

She felt a hand touch her shoulder. Not
wishing for Caleb to see her cry, she took a couple deep breaths to
hold her tears at bay. She had to think of him. Whatever happened
to her, it didn’t matter. She needed to be strong for him.

When she trusted herself to remain calm, she
looked up from her hands, once again surprised that someone so
young should seem older than his years.