by Joyce Wright
A knock at the door startled me from the mirror, there was no chance I could let anyone see me in this shape. I walked quietly to the door trying to listen to any sounds coming from the other side.
“Dahlia?” It was Walker’s voice. What was he doing here?
“Listen, Dahlia I need to talk to you. Please.” His voice sounded so pleading and urgent I couldn’t hold my ground and keep my silence.
“You shouldn’t be here.” I said, my voice cracked and meek from the tears I had cried.
“Open the door, are you okay?”
I couldn’t respond right away, only because his words brought more tears to my eyes.
I cleared my throat in hopes that my voice would sound stronger. “I’m okay but you can’t be here.”
“Dahlia I can’t leave. I need to tell you something. I was wrong to send you away. It wasn’t because I didn’t care about you.” He paused.
“I was afraid I cared too much. I had only just lost Victoria and I felt so badly for the feelings I was developing for you. Please just talk to me.”
Silence was my only response as I tried to stifle the sobs that broke free from my lips.
“Dahlia open the door, I can tell something is wrong. One way or another I’m coming in.” His voice warned me but never in a threatening way.
I opened the door tentatively and held my eyes to the floor, afraid of what his response would be when he saw my face.
“Jesus! The doctor did this to you?” He asked in horror as he took my face in his hands gently while looking me over.
“I’ll kill him!” The rage showed in both his face and his tone.
“No! There’s nothing you can do, Walker. This is my mess.” I pleaded.
“No it isn’t! I put you in this situation and I’m going to fix it. Get your things, we’re leaving.” He ordered.
I wanted so badly to leave with him but knew the doctor would never let me go so freely. I covered my face with my hands trying to stop the tears from falling from my face.
“Dahlia, please don’t cry.” His voice was so tender as he wiped the tears from my cheeks.
“I did this and I’m going to fix it. Please trust me.” He said and for the first time, gently kissed my lips.
I let my eyes stay closed for too long, taking in the moment.
“I’m going to fix this, I promise you.” He said while bringing my face up to his again.
We quickly gathered my meager belongings together as my mind raced trying to find a way out of my predicament.
Chapter 10:
On the ride back to Walker’s ranch I told him what happened; walking in on the doctor with the Sheriff’s wife and the doctor hitting me. The outrage seemed to boil over, making his face red with anger. When we arrived at the ranch he quickly grabbed his gun and showed me how to use it.
“If anyone comes back other than me, don’t let them in. If they come at you, shoot them.” He said with absolute seriousness.
My breath hitched in my throat and the tears found their way down my cheek again.
“Please don’t go! Maybe he won’t come after me.” I pleaded while holding on to the sleeve of his shirt.
“I have to go. We aren’t going to look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.”
My fear for Walker’s safety sat front most on my brain, but I played his last words over and over again in my mind. “The rest of our lives.” It was hard to imagine a happy ending but I wanted so badly for that to be the case.
It was three hours before I heard a horse making its way down the drive. Running to the window I looked out to find Walker making his way back home. I run from the door and made it to him just as he was dismounting his horse.
“Walker!” Before I could even utter another word I grabbed on to him, hugging him as tightly as I could.
“It’s okay, Dahlia, everything is fine.” He said while smoothing the hair on the back of my head.
“Fine? What happened?” I asked in disbelief.
Taking my hand Walker lead me back into the house.
“I let him know that his secret affair with the Sheriff's wife was safe with us. But if he ever tried to come near us I would go straight to the Sheriff. And then I punched him in the face.”
I laughed briefly but was immediately embarrassed that I would find such a thing funny.
“We may need to go to the next town if we need a doctor though.” He joked.
“Dahlia, will you stay with me now? I promise I’ll never let you go again.” His voice was pleading.
His hands caressed my face and felt the fullness of my lips with his fingertips.
Breaking our contact he pulled me to my feet and walked me the short distance from the table to his bed. I was facing the bed as he stood behind me. He pulled my hair to one shoulder and kissed the back of my neck.
“Tomorrow let me make you my wife.”
**THE END**
Chapter One
“Violet, if I lace you any tighter you’re going to do one of two things: either you’re going to fall over in a faint while you’re saying your vows, or your bosom is going to pop right out of your dress and you’ll scandalize Rev. Whitacre!”
“Just lace me tighter, please Lily. I want to look nice on my wedding day and I don’t want to disappoint Lucas.”
“If having a swooning bride doesn’t disappoint him, nothing will,” Lily Cavanaugh muttered. “What are you going to say when the corset comes off? You do know you can’t wear it on your wedding night, I hope?”
“I’ll think of something! Now just lace me tighter.”
Lily pulled fiercely. “That’s as good as it can be, Violet. You’re not some puny little miss, you know. Why would you want to be? I’ll tell you something about men---“
“Yes, yes, I know. A man doesn’t want to hold onto a tree branch. A man wants a woman with curves. A man wants a woman who looks like she’s alive and well, not dying of consumption. I know all that, Lily, and you’ve told me a dozen times. But sometimes, sometimes, I wish I was—I wish I was willowy.”
“Willowy? Willowy? What’s that? And where do you get these notions?”
Lily stepped back to survey her handiwork. “Don’t laugh too hard, don’t breath too deep, don’t chase after those twins or I won’t be responsible for what happens. Now what’s this willowy business?”
“Willowy. You know what willowy means.”
“I know what it means for a willow tree. I’m darned sure I don’t know what it means for a woman. Lucas Jackson isn’t coming all the way from West Texas to wrap his arms around a tree and you remember that. You’re a fine woman, Violet DeFlore, and even if I am your sister, I’m saying it and I stand by it.”
Lily DeFlore Landis was not a woman to scatter compliments as if she were sprinkling salt on beef, but she meant was she said. Violet appreciated the sentiment from her sister, but it didn’t change the fact that she wished she were dainty and petite like her sister Rose, or tall and rangy like Lily. Instead, she was packed into her corset on her wedding day so that her bridegroom, who had never seen his mail-order bride in person, would be impressed by her generous curves.
She knew what Lily would say if she could hear her sister’s thoughts. Look what being skinny had gotten Rose. Never strong after birthing the twins, Rose had just faded to nothing, and there was that husband of hers, already remarried, and to a wife who didn’t want the babies, because she wanted her own. And hadn’t that no account haberdasher knuckled under to his wife, leaving Violet with two babies , and she knowing nothing about children, having none of her own, nor a husband. And hadn’t Violet had to sell the boarding house that she’d run after Ma and Pa died because she couldn’t cook and clean for boarders when she was trying to raise two little hellions. It had been Lily who had told her that she needed a man to take care of the breadwinning so that she could be a mother to those children. Lily would have taken them, but she had a houseful of her own, and anyways, Violet had promised Rose that she’d be th
ere for them and Violet never was one to let go of a promise.
Lily frowned at her younger sister. “You are as God made you, Violet. With a heart as big as the state of Texas and a smile as bright as a moonlit night. I’ll tell you something else, though it’s not a ladylike thing to say. A man wants a woman he can hold onto.”
“Charlie doesn’t seem to mind you being spare,” Violet pointed out.
Lily guffawed. “Charlie knows where to find the holding spots,” she said.
Violet’s eyes grew wide. Charlie was as silent as Lily was voluble, a tall, slow-moving, quiet man whose conversation mainly consisted of ‘yes, ma’am,” “no, ma’am” and “mebbe.” Envisioning her laconic brother-in-law in the kind of bawdy activity that Lily referred to was too much of a stretch of the imagination. “I suppose Lucas will find plenty of holding spots,” she said worriedly.
Lily smacked her sister on her backside. “I reckon he will,” she declared, fire in her eyes. “I reckon he’ll be glad of them, too, a lonesome bachelor with a ranch and nothing to listen to but those cattle bawling all the way across the Red River. I’m telling you true, Violet DeFlore and you listen to me good. Don’t waste your youth thinking about what you’re not. You were the smartest of the three of us, the only one who could cook as good as Ma, and hear me out: Charlie loves me for sure, but if he wasn’t afraid of me hitting him over the head with a skillet, he’d admit that he’s more partial to your kiss pudding than anything I serve up.”
Violet looked up at her older sister, suspended between hope and doubt, her beautiful hazel eyes reflecting her emotions as if they were a pool into which all her feelings were swirling. “Truly?”
“Truly. If you weren’t my only living sister, I’d scratch your eyes out. Now let’s get into the parlor and see what those young’uns are up to. I don’t count on Charlie, Mack, and ‘Lige being able to keep them under control forever.”
As they went down the stairs, Lily reflected that if anything was going to scare Lucas Jackson back into bachelorhood, it wouldn’t be Violet’s size. It would be those twins. Two years old, quick as the devil and twice as mischievous, Rendell and Rosie Gregson didn’t remember their Ma, and they’d grown up without their Pa, who’d moved his sorry backside off to Missouri after marrying up with that snooty dressmaker who wanted a husband but not the children that he’d fathered with another wife. Minding those two was a full-time task; Violet was too lenient with them. Lily reckoned it was because she still saw them as motherless babes since Rose’s death, but Violet was a mother to them and a good one, too, for all that she spared the rod more than a birth mother would. Maybe Lucas Jackson could be firmer with them. If Violet would let him.
It had taken both Charlie and Mack to follow the twins to make certain that they didn’t break anything in the parlor, even though the children were drawn to the vases of autumn flowers that Lily had picked to spruce up the room. ‘Loge’s task had been to pick up the contents of Lily’s sewing basket that the twins had spilled onto the floor. A grown man and two boys couldn’t keep two wee ones under control, Lily thought; it was a good thing men weren’t in charge of raising children.
“Rosie Grace Gregson! Rendell James Gregson! You listen up or I’ll take a switch to you.” She wouldn’t, and hadn’t, but it was part of Lily’s delivery and with eight children of her own to raise, she wasn’t going to alter her script just because Violet had never raised a hand to the twins. “If you behave, you’ll get cake. If you don’t behave, you’ll go to bed without your supper.”
The twins understood the tone if not the concept, and they stared at their aunt, fascinated by her words and tone, but not subdued in the least. “Your Ma is getting married today and she doesn’t need to have you two setting things on edge with your harem-scarum ways---“
“I’m not their Ma,” Violet objected. “Rose—“
“See here, Violet. Rose is gone. I’m sorry it’s so, but sorry won’t bring her back. You’re the only Ma they’re going to know and it’s about time you stepped up to the name as well as the work. You’re getting a new name today; you’ll be Mrs. Jackson for the rest of your life. You might as well be Ma, too.”
“That’s so,” Charlie said, standing beside his wife as if they were making a formal pronouncement.
“Listen to him, chatting like a magpie,” Lily said indulgently. “Weddings just make him an old softie. Next he’ll be cryin’ when you say ‘I do.’”
Chapter Two
Lucas Jackson’s men had wanted to get him good and drunk as a send-off to his bachelor days, but Lucas kept his drinking to a single beer and a lot of smiling. He was glad of it the morning after when he dressed to leave for the train. He shaved with slow, painstaking care; ladies didn’t care for whiskers, he’d heard. But they did like cologne, at least that’s what he’d heard, so he splashed some on his face. He’d bathed the night before, and washed his hair with some fancy soap that he’d bought from the Colonel’s general store, then dressed in his brand new black suit, white shirt, and black string tie.
He studied himself in the floor-length mirror he’d bought when Miss DeFlore had consented to the proposal of marriage he’d written her; he’d heard that women were partial to mirrors for making sure that they looked just right for church and dances and other social occasions. He felt a durned fool in his fancy duds, but the broad-shouldered man with the dark brown hair and dark brown eyes who gazed back at him looked clean and sober and that was as much as he could hope for on his wedding day. Lucas put on his hat and headed outside.
He’d expected his men to be under the weather from all the drinking they’d done the night before, but the hands were all there, even Rock Flint, who’d nearly drunk the Yellow Rose Saloon dry. Whooping and hollering greeted Lucas when he stepped onto the porch.
“Boss, you look so pretty, some vixen’s gonna grab hold of you before you get off the train!”
“My, oh my, will you look at that? If you don’t look as fancy as an Eastern gentleman, I’m General Hood’s ghost.”
“Hey, boss, you must be planning plenty of kissin’, now that you’ve got your beard shaved.”
His horse was saddled and ready for him. Lyle Nottingham brought the stallion forward. Lucas would leave Figaro in town after he got on the train, and Lyle would bring him back to the ranch. Lyle was steady and reliable. He’d look after the ranch while Lucas was gone.
“I’ll be back by Friday,” he said to the men as he mounted Figaro, who snorted and paced as if he were party to the excitement.
“What kind of honeymoon is that?” Rock demanded.
Lucas grinned. “No honeymoon with two-year olds to bring home.”
The men responded to this with a mixture of ribald comments and snickers. Lucas wasn’t worried. They’d behave when he brought Miss Violet home; cowboys knew how to comport themselves in the presence of a lady, and there was no doubt that Miss Violet was a lady. After she’d responded to his advertisement seeking a mail-order bride, she’d sent him testimonials from her preacher, the president of the Women’s Missionary Society, and a church deacon affirming her character.
All three attested to Miss Violet’s honor and virtue; the president of the Women’s Missionary Society, less circumspect than the gentlemen, had declared that Violet DeFlore was a Christian woman of spirit and sense, skilled in the housewifely arts, an alto in the church choir and the winner of the town’s pie-baking contest for the past four years in a row. “Mr. Jackson,” the woman’s letter concluded. “You are taking our champion baker away from us. I only hope that you will prove worthy.”
The remark about her pie baking had meant more to him than anything the preacher had said. Lucas had been taking his meals in town most nights of his adult life and he would be thirty-one years old this December. Coming home to fresh-baked pie sounded like reason enough to wed Miss Violet, even if he hadn’t been tired of being alone. It hadn’t mattered so much when he was younger and all his energy went into building up the herds. Bu
t now that the ranch was prosperous, he didn’t need to eat, breathe and sleep beeves. He had a fine house that he’d built himself and he’d labored long and hard over its construction, but coming home to a dark kitchen and an empty bed made it seem as though his work had been in vain. What use was a ranch and a profitable income if he had no wife to share it with and no children to leave it to? He had a guitar and he used to be fond of playing in the evenings, but what reason was there to play if no one was there to sing along? It seemed that, as he considered his assets, everything he owned was incomplete without a wife.
Miss Violet had answered his advertisement quickly; she was looking for a husband, she told him. But she wanted him to know that she was raising her dead sister’s two-year old twins and they were spirited. Lucas guessed that spirited was a kind way of saying that they were into everything but bedtime, but he savored the idea of having children in the house. There would be more, no doubt, once he and Miss Violet were setting to a family, but Lucas figured that it wouldn’t hurt to have a head start.
There was no doubt in his mind as the train rolled through the varying landscapes of Texas but that he had made the right decision to marry. The round-up was over, autumn was here, and he and Miss Violet and the children would have time to get to know one another over the winter. Miss Violet might like singing with that alto voice of her while he played his guitar. He thought of the four of them in the parlor, the children sitting on the floor at his knee while he played and Miss Violet sang, after enjoying a fine supper with some of that pie that the church lady had spoken of. He spent the trip envisioning marriage: a table laden with good food, all of it made by Miss Violet; children clustered around it, eagerly enjoying the food which their mother had prepared; ponies for the children so that they’d learn to ride; having a son or two sons who would learn ranching from his example; sharing yarns with the other men at the church socials and the barbecues while his young’uns played games with the others and Miss Violet sat with the ladies, fanning themselves and talking about babies . . .