His Make-Believe Bride

by Martha Hix

  She flushed deeply.

  “Yeah, right. Married. Well, come on in.”

  “Good mornin,’ Miz Ermentrude,” the elder of the men boomed. “Brought y’all a pail o’ milk for your porridge. Beulah’s been right nice this morning. I reckon the old girl is thinking to celebrate two fine marriages!”

  “Good for you,” Sam put in sourly. “Guess you got over your need for shade and warmth . . .”

  What an odd thing to say, Linnea decided as Charlie smilingly answered, “That little girl o’ mine—why, I wouldn’t change a thing. Our supper last night, mmm-mmm! She made a potato and side-meat soup that settled just right, where we could both enjoy the evening. It’s still heating on the hearth so’s we can have seconds tonight. It’s not for dinner, no sirree. My Jewel is making a special meal for dinner, she is. I haven’t had good roast beef and taters in I don’t know when. Prob’ly back in Natchez. But that ain’t important right now. How I do like my blushing bride! I’ll never get tired of her seconds.”

  Truth to tell, Linnea felt a pang of envy.

  “Well, I gotta get back. Jewel’s making that nice big roast for dinner for the four of us. We’ll have plenty. Y’all drop on in about noon.”

  Dinner at noon? What happened to supper? “What about returning the surreys?” Linnea wanted to know.

  “Oh, they’re back at the livery. Your Aunt Jewel and I took ’em back, soon as she got that roast in the Dutch oven.”

  Imagine that. Was there anything the Eighth Wonder of the World couldn’t do?

  “Thank you for the invite.” Sam smiled, of all things! “Nothing goes down sweeter than a roast beef dinner.”

  My goodness, didn’t Sam jump on that, quick as a cricket! Had he made up a story last night, complimenting Linnea’s food? Probably. She had been too nervous to eat, but she had figured it was pretty good, considering his praise.

  “I could make cornbread,” she offered.

  “Ahh, no.” Sam shook his head. “Sh-she’s probably got biscuits started, hasn’t she, Charles?”

  Charles?

  “Why, why—certainly,” Charlie came back, his face plastered with a smile that looked fairly fake. “She’s just waiting on me to get back with our own bucket of milk.”

  “You are both very generous,” Linnea said honestly. “Thank you, Mr. Craig.”

  “It’s Uncle Charlie to you, Miz Ermentrude.”

  “She wants us to call her Linnea.” Sam glanced toward his uncle. “That’s her middle name.”

  “Fine, I reckon. Linnea it is. But that’s not important right now. My wife ain’t only generous, she’s thrifty. Said she’s got our sheets soaking in cold water, and you can bring yours, if you please, Miz Erm—Miz Linnea. She says she’s a champ at getting stains out of laundry. That way y’all won’t have to waste lye soap.”

  “No, no,” was Linnea’s quick reply, hurt that she and her make-believe husband would never have the satisfaction of ruining sheets with virginal blood. She wouldn’t give Jewel an opportunity to make a remark about the lack thereof. “I’ll take care of our laundry.”

  “Well, do as you please. See y’all about noon?”

  “We’ll be there,” Sam said with a nod . . . and with another smile that Linnea noticed seemed to stretch all the way from one ear to the opposite.

  Linnea? Well, she found great relief in not having to murder that poor, defenseless hen.

  * * *

  Dinner—in the Rutherford G. Reston household, noon meals had been called “lunch”—turned out to be roast beef from Charlie’s smokehouse, boiled potatoes purchased the previous day, dandelion greens, and fluffy biscuits perfectly browned and baked in a Dutch oven.

  It didn’t take much to notice that Sam was wolfing it all down, as if he were a starving man on the streets of Calcutta. Linnea had never been to India, true, but she did enjoy reading. That was the best thing she got out of being reared in an orphanage. She could read and write.

  Not only had Miz Myrtie regularly allowed her to borrow from her library, she had encouraged Linnea to discuss books, with their fascinating people, places, and circumstances.

  And in this place of peculiar people and circumstances, Charlie and Jewel appeared to be nothing less than enamored with each other. It was a dugout, their quarters, yet it already seemed comfortable and lived-in.

  I could learn a lot from her. The multitalented paragon holding court across from her—wearing a fine cameo brooch, of course—was being all neighborly if not “family.” Linnea, nonetheless, reminded herself she mustn’t forget the meanness of Jewel’s attack in the dining room at the Fort Worth depot, or how she had snapped up the cameo as payment to keep her mouth shut.

  Despite all that, the new Mrs. Craig did have much to offer, provided she would offer.

  “Charlie and I discussed our putting in a vegetable garden.” Jewel flicked the board-straight edge of her shockingly unfashionable, blunt-cut coiffure. “I’m thinking green beans, yellow squash, okra. Matter of fact, we picked up some seeds at the general store, while we were returning the surreys. I’m hoping to find cantaloupe seeds, next time I’m there. And the makings for my homemade cure for infections and ringworm. A homemaker can never be too prepared.”

  Well, just climb on your broomstick and fly on over to Jones Feed & General. But be back in a snap—where you can tidy up these dishes and then cure typhoid and syphilis before it’s time to start whatever these country bumpkins are calling the last meal of the day.

  The devil still rife within her, Linnea said, “You must have flown back! Surely you couldn’t have walked. Did someone give you a ride? How did you get back from town so quickly?”

  “How the hell do you think?” Sam was scowling. He obviously had no trouble catching on to a snide remark.

  In a way-too-familiar manner, Jewel’s mouth flattened with disapproval.

  Immediate shame washed over Linnea for spoiling the mood. “My apologies.”

  After last night—after her every scheme!—she couldn’t blame him for being upset about her dig at his finances. Actually, her dig was uncalled for, period. “I . . . you . . . neither of you mentioned a saddle horse. I meant no insult,” she fibbed. “I thought maybe you were strictly farmers.”

  “We are ranchers,” her husband replied, his blue eyes darkening. “We are ranchers who grew up on a cotton farm near Natchez, Mississippi. We may be financially embarrassed at the moment, but we have a good herd of horses. Four, even a strawberry roan. We own saddles for each, and we have a mule and a buckboard for drayage. And if that’s not good enough for you, missus, then I’ll be happy to carry you to the depot and buy you a ticket back to wherever you came from.”

  Before Linnea could reply, Jewel spoke up. And she had plastered on a smile. “Why, isn’t it a small world? I’m from Biloxi on the Mississippi coast. I am a Southern belle, through and through. I have a hankering for some good ol’ country ham and redeye gravy.” She looked from one person to the next. “Sound good to all of you?”

  It didn’t go without notice—Jewel had broken the tension. Linnea appreciated that. “It certainly does to me,” she answered quickly. “I’d very much like to work with you, planting and tending your garden. If you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t mind atall, not atall. Four hands always beat two when it comes to getting a job done. Only got one hoe, according to my Charlie, but we can take turns.”

  “That’s not quite right, Aunt Jewel,” Sam corrected. “I’ve got my own hoe that Linnea can use.”

  Jewel nodded, turning to her husband and new nephew. “You gents certain that new well can handle a vegetable garden and a cotton patch?”

  “Absolutely” rang out from both of them, with Charlie explaining, “We’re tapped into an underground river, same as they use in Lubbock town. We hocked ever’thing to hire those well-diggers out of Plainview, but they were worth every penny.”

  “Let us all give thanks to the Good Lord above for our bounty,” Jewel exclaimed, a hand
covering her heart.

  Charlie continued. “People around here—with the exception of a Georgia man living in Hockley County—think Sam and I are crazy, planting cotton in this dried-up part of the country. Even Sam’s cousin Grant Kincaid thinks we’re crazy to plant cotton.”

  “How is he Sam’s cousin, but not your kin?” Linnea asked Uncle Charlie. “Is he not somehow related?”

  “He’s on my mother’s side.”

  Charlie chuckled. “Grant is on Sam’s mum’s side. The hoity-toity Kincaids of Virginy-cum-Alabama. His Highness the Barrister Grant Kincaid left Brighton, Alabama, for the better life hereabouts.”

  Linnea shuddered to think what Brighton must have to offer.

  “Appreciate your not criticizing my cousin.” Sam used his thumbs to inch his plate toward the center of the table.

  Charlie ignored his nephew. “He’s a two-bit mouthpiece who makes his true living bettin’ on cards.”

  Linnea winced. There was no room in her life for another gambler, not even a cousin. “I was given to understand he’s a nice man.”

  “He is a nice man,” Sam barked.

  Linnea couldn’t stifle her feelings. “I’ve never known a gambling man to be worth the gunpowder to shoot him.”

  “Where’d you learn that?” Charlie wanted to know.

  Sam slammed the heel of his fist on the table, cutlery and crockery jumping. “Stop! We’re not here either to praise or to skewer Grant Kincaid. But you might keep something in mind. Cousin Grant and our very own sheriff, Wes Alington, have made friends. Alington is a good judge of character, and he is a teetotaler who won’t have a danged thing to do with gambling. I’d bet my bottom dollar his trust in Cousin Grant is not misplaced!”

  Linnea cringed at the bottom-dollar suggestion. Please, dear God, don’t let this man of mine turn out to be a gambler!

  Sam added, “What is important? This place. The High Hopes. Right here, right now, we know from the depths of our beings that this is where we will make our marks. This isn’t a gamble, it is an absolute.”

  He stood, his shoulders and spine stiff. “It hasn’t been easy. It won’t be easy. No one is promised easy, not around here. But we will put down seeds, pipe water to the rows—that’s the important part, getting water to the rows—and cotton will bloom. Bet my bottom dollar . . . which I have.”

  He aimed a determined, steady gaze at Linnea. “Would you like to see what we have, along with where and how we plan to turn this land into a sea of green leaves and balls of white?”

  “I would love a tour, Samson.”

  “Sam. I am called Sam by people who know me.” He gathered his hat and set it atop his dark head. “That would include my wife.”

  Unwilling to squirm under his hard glare, she elevated her chin. “I would love a tour.”

  “Don’t get too tired out,” Charlie told his nephew. “We gotta be with the calves afore first light. Once we finish branding and castratin’ those calves, we can bring the mountain oysters back here for my wife to fry. Won’t be many, but—mmm-mmm!”

  “Aren’t I the luckiest woman in Lubbock County,” Jewel bellowed, hands on the vicinity of what would be her waist, if she had a few pounds of curves. “A hard-working husband bringing in the catch for me to cook in my own fry-pan!”

  Charlie spoke up again. “Maybe you girls can get a start on this year’s rows, while we’re doin’ the branding. Won’t be too hard. It’s only two acres, what we set aside to get started. We had Manuel and Luis dig ’em last year. But that’s not important right now. Linnea girl, have you ever tasted calf fries? They sure are good!”

  She didn’t know or care about the calf fries. Over and above yearning for distance between herself and Mrs. All-Talent, she regretted that she and Sam had gotten off on the wrong foot in more ways than one. While it was obvious he and Charlie had delved into more than a dollop of exaggeration, or even lies, about being “well-fixed,” they might actually consider themselves well-to-do.

  Given their rough edges and her acquaintance with a goodly number of well-heeled callers at Reston mansion, she couldn’t quite equate the Mississippians with withdrawing rooms. A fact which, truth be known, she liked. She knew she had a real man this time . . . if she could manage to hold on to him.

  What did she have to offer? Some knowledge of planting and growing, a requirement for the inmates at the orphanage. The girls were made to grow whatever vegetables and fruit that they ate. Linnea hoped this training would be good enough for a start.

  “I’m ready for that tour of the cotton patch, Sam.”

  Sam offered an arm. “Mrs. Kincaid, would you do me the honor?”

  “Why, certainly, sir. I would indeed feel honored.”

  * * *

  It went against a man’s pride, taking back something already said, and Samson Kincaid had a lot of pride.

  After he and his bride left the dugout Uncle Charlie and Aunt Jewel were making into a home, Sam kept quiet, leading his bride toward last year’s cotton patch. While he still felt the sting of her intimating that he and Charlie didn’t even own so much as a saddle horse, he guessed he had that one coming.

  She sure was a mystery, his missus. But given her obvious vulnerability over her past marriage, he figured the guy must not have been much, considering that a pretty girl like Linnea had accepted a mail-order marriage. It was up to Sam to make her second marriage the better one.

  Stopping as they made their way through the ruins of last year’s cotton, he took her hand and brought it to his lips to place a tender kiss there. He detected a tremble. She refused to look at him, her attention on those twigs of wasted cotton.

  She kneeled down to touch a dead plant.

  While she might not acknowledge him, he took heart over that little tremble. His gaze locked on his wife’s profile and her lustrous red hair. He wanted, more than ever, to run his hands through its softness . . . and its fire.

  He caught his beautiful bride glancing up at him.

  She quickly looked away. “My goodness, Sam. This patch may just be two acres, but it needs lots of work. I’m no planter, but . . . heavens, what we have is a mess.”

  “I reckon,” was all he allowed.

  Sam recalled the family circle they had just left. Charlie and the new aunt had fawned over each other to the point of nausea, but he’d thought of little but this puzzling lady, his Linnea. It dawned on him—how could he cast stones at her lies of omission, when he’d been every bit as guilty of deceiving her?

  She had fessed up.

  So had he.

  That was the important part.

  After all, was there ever a human being who hadn’t fallen to a fib? Truth to tell, storying about financial conditions and marital situations constituted a lot more than mere fibs, but neither he nor she had carried on with the lies. They both fessed up. It would have been bad, real bad, were they to continue lying to each other.

  Surely lying about the results of her cooking didn’t count. Shading her brow with fingers, she eyed the patch with . . . with what? He was at a loss both for comprehending her silence and for words to make things better.

  He kicked at a clod of dry, dry earth.

  “Do you have a bonnet?” he wanted to know, wishing he didn’t need to work his wife like a field hand. “This mean old sun, I’d hate to think what it would do to your pretty face. You do have such a pretty face,” he said with all sincerity. “I could not be happier with the way you look.”

  “That is sweet of you to say, Sam. I . . . I find a lot to like in your looks, too.”

  “Do ya now?” he asked with a sudden grin.

  Sam found himself here in the year 1904, a mixture of Texas pioneer, Southern gentleman, and pigheaded Scotsman. There wasn’t much he could do about those.

  What he did know? He had made a cake of himself with his bride. He wanted a wife. Surely that first husband of hers hadn’t used her up.

  On top of that, Sam read her vulnerability. And her mystery. He found tho
se things appealing—he hankered to make everything right for his little lady.

  A smart man would do everything he could to be on the receiving end of the pleasures a happy bride would likely bestow upon him. If there was one thing he’d never been accused of—before now, anyway—it was being dumb. An ignorant hick, but not stupid.

  Now that Sam recognized fully that he’d shot himself in the foot the night before, what could he do to make amends?

  He had no idea.

  But he would work on it.

  Yes indeed, beginning this minute—and on their walk back home—he would let his Linnea know how big a fool he’d been. Then and only then would it be possible for them to enjoy this night fully.

  “I’d like to buy you a bonnet . . . and a penny’s worth of flower seeds.”

  Was it his imagination, or were the edges of her lips curled upward in the slightest of smiles? He hoped so . . . and wondered once again about the placement of those freckles she’d admitted to, that were hidden from the sun and his yearning eyes.

  “I’d give you the world if I could,” he murmured truthfully.

  “Don’t fret about the bonnet. I’m a Louisiana girl. I know the finer points of a do-rag. It’ll do until you can buy me a nice, proper farm-woman bonnet. I prefer yellow and gingham.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Sam . . . you can have the greatest well in the world, but if you can’t pipe it to your crops, you might just as well have saved your well-digging money.”

  “We’ve got the pipes. See that dugout over there?” He pointed westward. “Over there on the far side of the windmill, we’ve stored pipes. Charlie and I will start layin’ ’em, once we finish with the calves.”

  “That will be good.”

  “Beyond the water part, do you know much about raising cotton?”

  “I’ve seen it growing, and I’ve seen it ginned once or twice. My experience is limited to things that take to the Louisiana climate. Cotton is part of that, but not my part. That’s about it.”

  “You grow up in the country?” he asked—well, baited. She had written in more than one letter about how she had not grown up in the country, but had a great interest in becoming a country wife.