by Linda Bridey
Iris ran up the stairs with her fringe flying, and Violet went to the kitchen to hunt up Rita, the cook. She found the kitchen empty, and after a quick glance into the scullery and the pantry, gave up the search. She had no time to look for the older woman before they left for Butte.
She checked the fire in the big iron stove and added more wood to it. She peeked into the oven and found the haunch of beef roasting for their supper. She basted it with the juice in the pan and turned it around on the rack to brown on the other side.
On the lower rack in the oven, she checked the plum cake for doneness. Then she shut the oven door and trimmed the vents on the stove. Rita wouldn’t be too far away. She would come back to the kitchen from wherever she was and finish cooking supper before the sisters came back.
Satisfied with the preparations for their mail-order husbands’ arrival, Violet hurried upstairs. On the upper landing, she turned down the hall to the row of bedrooms at the back of the house. She knocked at the last door at the end of the landing and pushed it open without waiting for an answer.
Rose sat at her dressing table. She gazed into the mirror but didn’t see herself. She often fell into a reverie in front of the mirror, seeing nothing but the passage of images in her own mind. An outsider might consider Rose intolerably vain for the time she spent in front of her mirror, apparently admiring herself. But this was simply Rose’s way of thinking about things.
Rose snapped out of her trance when Violet entered the room. “Oh, you’re here. Are you and Iris ready to go?”
“I am,” Violet replied. “Iris is changing her clothes. Pete is hitching up the buggy for us, and then we’ll go. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Rose pushed back her stool and crossed the room to her bed, where she picked up a satin shawl from the foot rail of the iron bedstead. “Shall we go down?”
“Just a moment, Rose.” Violet laid a hand on her sister’s arm. “I want to talk to you about something before we go down. Here, sit down next to me.” Violet pulled Rose down onto the edge of the bed.
Rose’s eyes flew open. “What is it?”
“I just had a confrontation with Cornell about this whole mail-order husband business,” Violet explained. “So he’s a little bit emotional about it. You know he doesn’t approve of our plan.”
“Yes, I know,” Rose replied.
“I just want to make sure you don’t have any second thoughts about our plan,” Violet continued. “If any of us weakens, Cornell will attack, and the whole plan will fall apart. All three of us have to be firm in our resolve to go through with our marriages.”
Rose stared at her eldest sister with wide black eyes. Violet saw her sister as a delicate fawn, blinking her soft, innocent eyes at a world of danger she couldn’t understand. But Rose was no innocent fawn. Even at the tender age of eighteen, she understood danger better than anyone could guess, and under her soft, gentle exterior beat a heart of iron.
Rose would never waver on their agreement to marry mail-order husbands. If anyone second-guessed the plan, it was Violet herself. Her own loyalty to Cornell and her long history of complying with his wishes made her the most vulnerable link in their armor.
“You know I won’t weaken, Violet,” Rose assured her. “You know I agree with you and Iris on why we need to do this. If Cornell asks me, I’ll tell him so. You know you can count on me, Violet.”
“I know I can.” Violet patted her sister’s arm, but in her heart, she shuddered. In spite of all her assurances, Violet never fully trusted Rose. Her young mind seethed with secret thoughts and schemes. She noticed every nuance of every face around her at all times. Yet she knew how to tell people exactly what they wanted to hear in order to get what she wanted.
Rose kept Cornell wrapped around her little finger. Cornell would never doubt Rose’s sincerity about anything. Cornell would never accuse Rose of disloyalty or foolishness, because Rose would never tell Cornell her real plans.
When Cornell asked Rose about her agreement with Violet’s mail-order husband arrangement, Rose assuaged his concerns with flattery and declarations of her own helplessness. She spun the wool over his eyes until he lost the ability to accuse her of anything more than falling under her sisters’ influence.
Violet didn’t like being forced to count on Rose but the three sisters had to form a united front against Cornell to bring this triple marriage to fruition. Their future and their fortune depended on it.
“I know I can count on you,” Violet squeezed Rose’s hand and moved back toward the door. “Now let’s go down and see if the buggy’s ready. Cornell is in the library, so we can go out through the kitchen, and we won’t see him.”
Rose smiled at Violet, and they went downstairs together. Violet glanced right and left when they reached the passage, but Rose didn’t give the surroundings the slightest consideration. She followed Violet to the kitchen, where they pinned on their hats before going out into the yard.
The small yard separated the kitchen from the barn, and in the yard, they found Iris just about to get up into the driver’s seat of the covered buggy. Two horses stood between the shafts, while three others waited behind the vehicle, fully saddled and bridled.
Iris’s attire couldn’t have differed more from her work clothes if she’d been a completely different person. She wore a gingham dress checked in beige and white. Crisp white cotton gloves covered her hands, and a feathered hat perched on top of the pile of hair on her head.
When she spotted her sisters, Iris stepped up into the driver’s seat and took the reins. Violet handed Rose up into the back seat. Then she sat up front next to Iris. Iris clucked to the horses and drove the buggy away from the ranch house with the three saddled horses trotting easily behind it. The three sisters rode past the wide ranges with herds of cattle grazing, past a few other houses, barns, and outbuildings, and at last, hit the road leading out to the highway.
Chapter 5