by Joyce Wright
“She has an aunt.” He smoothed the fair, feathery hair on top of his daughter’s head. Yellow hair like her mother, and blue eyes like her mother. So much like Aimee that it hurt to look at her. Maybe it wouldn’t be so painful if he saw her every day, but that wasn’t possible. He had a ranch to run, and he didn’t know anything about rearing young ones. “A good aunt,” he amended, smiling at his widowed older sister, who’d agreed to care for the baby in her home, with five sons ranging in age from twelve to eighteen who were of an age that allowed their mother to mind a baby. “I know it’s imposing, Sarah, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“You need a wife,” Sarah said.
Jesse drew in his breath sharply, then exhaled slowly so that he had time to word his response with care. “I don’t want a wife,” he said.
“Jesse, I know you’re hurting. But you can’t be selfish. She needs a mother and you need a wife. You need a woman, Jesse.”
As always, his sister’s delicate candor caught him off guard. He rubbed his chin. He’d forgotten to shave that morning, even though it was Sunday and he’d ridden over to Sarah’s ranch, as he did every Sunday, to join the family for church and spend the day with his sister, nephews, and baby daughter.
“Where am I going to find a wife out here?”
“You could start by looking for one. There are some mighty pretty girls in town. You saw some of them in worship this morning.”
He’d seen them. Bright, giddy things, wearing their Sunday best with ribbons in their hair. No more pretty young girls with dreams of a family, not in Montana, where the winter could take those dreams and send them straight into a pine box.
Jesse shook his head. Sarah smoothed back a lock of his hair. “You need a woman, Jesse,”
How long had it been since he’d gotten his hair cut? He couldn’t remember. Aimee had taken care of those kinds of things; trimming the wild mane of hair that Aimee told him was the color of a field of wheat; reminding him that if he didn’t shave soon, she wasn’t going to let him kiss her; sewing his shirts and remembering his birthday with a molasses cake. He reckoned he looked like a mountain man by now. If he kept this up, his own daughter would be fearful to lay eyes on him when she was old enough to know who he was.
“Aimee-Anne needs brothers and sisters,” Sarah continued, tender and relentless in the same breath.
He looked up at her, his dark brown eyes raw with pain. “No more babies,” he said gruffly. “I’m done with that.”
“Jesse, you’re a young man. Too young to be a bachelor for long.”
“I’m not a bachelor, Sarah, I’m a widower. This is no place for a woman who’s---“
“Jesse, Montana didn’t kill Aimee.”
No, he acknowledged silently. He had killed Aimee. She’d given birth in the middle of a blizzard, and something went wrong, but he couldn’t leave her to get the doctor or a woman to help with the delivery, the baby had come early and the wrong way, and Aimee had poured all her waning strength into giving her daughter life. “I never should have taken her from San Francisco.”
“She wanted to marry you and be here with you. She didn’t regret her choice.”
“If she’d known it would kill her, she might have thought twice.”
“Jesse,” Sarah took him by the arms, just as she had when he’d been an unruly boy who didn’t want to do his schoolwork, and she was going to make him do it by sheer force of her will. She’d been as much mother as sister to him after Ma’s death. “I bore five big, strapping baby boys right here in Montana. There’s a time for the grieving to stop and life to pick itself back up and go on and that time is now. Aimee-Anne deserves a home with her father and some brothers and sisters. You owe Aimee that much.”
He thought of Aimee, laughing merrily as her waistbands grew tighter with the baby inside her, chattering away to him in the mornings as she prepared breakfast, full of silly talk about the babies they’d have. “Where am I going to find a wife? And don’t tell me there are plenty of women in town. There aren’t plenty, and those that are out there are young girls and widow women who’ll smother me with cakes and homemade preserves.”
“It’s how women do the courting, Jesse,” Sarah smiled indulgently. At least he was paying some attention to her suggestion.
“I don’t want to court anyone and I don’t want to be courted,” he said roughly. “I told you, I’m done with that.”
Silly nonsense. Hand-picked flowers and his best shirt, polished boots, and for what? To take a delicate young thing from her family and her home to a voracious Western land that would claim her youth and health and life.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything. You’re the one fussing over it.”
It was time to broach the idea she’d had, but she knew she’d have to do it with precision. “If you send for a mail-order bride,” she began, “you can say what you want in a wife, right up front.”
“Mail-order bride!” he exclaimed. “Are you daft? Put out an advertisement for a wife like I’m ordering equipment for the ranch?”
“Amos Blythe did it, and he’s happy with his wife.”
“Amos Blythe―“
“Is very happy with Marta, and she’s happy with him. They’re suited.”
“Suited.” He and Aimee hadn’t been suited, but they’d been in love.
“Yes. She’s not a little miss who was waiting for a chevalier to carry her off on his steed. She’s strong and wise and willing to work to keep a home. You need a woman who knows what she’s getting into.” Sarah squeezed his arm. “Jesse, promise me you’ll think about it? Not just for your sake, but for Aimee-Anne’s sake?”
Looking down at his sleeping daughter, feeling the pain of leaving her, Jesse nodded. Aimee’s death wasn’t the end of his obligation to his wife.
That night, back in his house which, he admitted ruefully was as greatly in need of a woman’s attention as his untrimmed hair, the oil lamp burned into the night as he struggled with the words that would lead a woman to come out here to marry him without promising more than he could give. Finally, tired and by now angry with himself for entertaining the idea, he finished writing and went to bed. No woman was likely to respond to an offer so ungraciously written, but he could at least tell Sarah that he’d tried.
Wanted: a wife for a widowed rancher in Montana with infant daughter. 2,000 head of cattle; ranch is owned and paid for. Cooking, cleaning, sewing, child, much work. Winter is hard. Must be healthy. Young enough for childbearing. Must know how to do without.
Chapter Two
His first thought as she alighted from the railroad car was that she was prettier than he’d expected. Not as pretty as Aimee, but that was better. Nor as young as Aimee. Malinna McCourt was closer to thirty than twenty, he judged, but probably somewhere in the middle. She wore spectacles, but when she removed them from her face to clean the railroad dust from the lenses, he saw that she had fine eyes of dark gray-blue, restful and calm.
“Mr. Greenhow!” She saw him standing on the platform when she put her spectacles back on. “There is no one else waiting, and no one else getting off, so you must be Jesse Greenhow.” She thrust out her gloved hand. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
A strong handshake, for a woman. She gripped his hand as if she intended to prove that she kept her word. She was dressed for travel and her garments were gray with the dust from the trip. Beneath her bonnet, he could see strands of auburn hair coming loose; like her clothes, her hair was lightly coated with travel dust.
“Is there water, Mr. Greenhow? I am that parched.” Her voice was pleasant and rich; it sounded like a musical instrument, he thought, and then frowned at such a frivolous thought.
He’d brought a canteen with him. “In the wagon,” he gestured to the side where Blister and Burn waited patiently. Aimee had named them; he’d bought them soon after they were married and she’d found that driving a wagon without gloves or a sunbonnet was ruinous to a woman’s ha
nds and skin. She’d laughed about it as she’d smeared grease on her hands. No time to be thinking of that now. “Where is your—“ he stared at the four large trunks on the platform that had been unloaded while he was watching for a passenger to step down. “All that is yours?”
She smiled at him. “Yes, Mr. Greenhow. I did not know how far I will be from supplies, so I brought my clothes, of course, and my belongings, and my books. I also brought fabric for sewing. I account myself somewhat of an accomplished seamstress and you did list that as one of the requirements for a wife. I have also brought seeds with me. I am willing to do without, Mr. Greenhow, as long as I have flowers growing about me. Flowers make such a difference.”
Flowers. And books. He closed his eyes for a moment, wishing himself back in his untidy, womanless home where he was under no obligation to accommodate the feminine frills of a stranger who was about to lay claim to his life and his name and the private intimacy that had belonged to Aimee.
The trunks were heavy and by the time he’d loaded them into the wagon, he was silently cursing Sarah for meddling in his life and saddling him with this woman who talked too much, packed too much, and was inevitably going to expect too much. It was the way women were; maybe they couldn’t help it, he thought as he helped her into the wagon. A man knew what he brought to a marriage and he knew what he needed to receive from it. But women . . .
As the horses plodded along, her conversation drifted around his ears. She marveled over the sky, declaring that she’d never seen such a sky, and Virginia certainly had nothing to compare to it. She had a pleasant voice, he grudgingly admitted to himself; it reminded him again of a musical instrument, something like Lucas Fyle’s fiddle, but richer, the way it might sound if it were one of those fancy violins out East. Her words curved inside her voice like it was a vessel; he reckoned that Rev. Carlysle had a new alto voice in the church choir.
After a few miles, he found that her chatter wasn’t so irritating. The timbre of her voice was pleasant to listen to and much of what she said did not require a response, except when they passed spreads that belonged to people in the community. He provided a brief biography of each name; she didn’t require much more to continue a conversation. He wondered if she’d talked this much on the train. If she was this talkative with just a single human being and two horses, he wondered what she’d been like with a railroad car filled with people; the thought amused him.
“Mr. Greenhow, I have amused you.”
“What? No, I—just thinking of somethin’. How was your trip?”
“It was very long, Mr. Greenhow, but fortunately I was prepared for that. I worked on my embroidery; I am making a dress for Aimee-Ann.”
He felt the organs inside his body constrict. She didn’t even know his daughter, hadn’t even met her and she was already intruding, making a dress for the child that Aimee had only lived long enough to see, and hold for a few hours. “She’s got clothes,” he said gruffly.
There was a brief pause. “I do not doubt it. But she is a girl, and girls always enjoy new frocks.”
He realized that he had been in the wrong. He could not voice an apology, but he tried to make amends. “I reckon that’s so. Might be awhile yet before she appreciates new duds, though, since she’s young yet.”
The next mile was silent, but then she began to chatter again and he supposed that he’d been forgiven. Sarah would not have been so tolerant. He supposed he owed it to the woman to contribute something to the conversation.
“We’ll stop at my sister’s. Rev. Carlysle will be there; he’ll say the words. Then we’ll head on to home.”
“With Aimee-Anne?” she asked eagerly.
“That’s the plan.”
Sarah had spent the better part of the last two days at his ranch, scrubbing and dusting and cleaning so that the house would be presentable. He was grateful to her for the work, but he also resented having his last days of privacy taken from him so that his mail-order bride could be welcomed with good housekeeping. If Aimee couldn’t be there with him, he was just as content to be solitary.
When they arrived at the farm where Sarah, her boys, and Aimee-Anne lived, his sister was out on the porch almost as soon as he turned in to her property. She must have been looking for him. She waved; Malinna waved back enthusiastically and was halfway out of the seat before he’d hitched the horses. Sarah reached the wagon just as Jesse had helped Malinna to the ground.
Sarah was not particularly demonstrative but when Malinna encircled her in an embrace, she returned the hug. “It is so pleasant to meet you,” Malinna declared. “I have been looking forward to meeting my new family.”
“Then you’ll want to meet Aimee-Anne,” Sarah replied, taking Malinna’s arm in hers and heading to the house. Jesse followed behind. This was when he noticed her. Her outer garments didn’t conceal the curves of her hips and as she walked, he noticed that her stride was brisk and purposeful, but also graceful. She was probably used to dancing, he thought. He could see her with a partner, her hand on a gentleman’s shoulder while his hand would encircle her waist as they moved in step. He wasn’t much of a dancer. Aimee hadn’t minded; she liked dancing with him.
Sarah’s home was always neat, but always offering evidence of occupation. Matthias and Carlton were home from school; he saw their books on the table in the dining room. “Aimee-Ann is in the parlor,” Sarah said. “She should be waking up soon from her nap.”
Malinna’s pace quickened. “I’m eager to meet her. I would appreciate everything you can tell me about her care.”
Aimee-Anne was still asleep, her long lashes like tiny fans against her smooth cheeks, her little hand raised against her head as if she were hailing visitors in her sleep. Malinna bent low over the cradle, removed her glove, and touched the baby’s hand. Aimee-Anne’s fingers curled slightly.
Malinna stood up. “She is a jewel. Mr. Greenhow, you have a beautiful daughter. Does she favor your late wife?”
The straightforward question caught Jesse off guard. He looked to Sarah, who returned his gaze calmly. “Yes . . .” he stammered. “Yes, she does.”
“Then Mrs. Greenhow must have been a beautiful woman.”
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t prepared for that; a new wife willing to praise the previous one. What sort of woman was this Malinna McCourt? He could tell that Sarah was impressed as she urged Jesse and Malinna to be seated. Malinna produced a small book from the purse she wore hanging from a chain around her waist. “I would like to write everything down so that I will know how to tend to her needs,” Malinna explained in answer to their surprised looks. Pencil in hand, book opened, she waited for Sarah to speak.
“Have you . . . are you acquainted with infants?” Sarah asked.
“She said she is,” Jesse said grimly. “In our correspondence.”
Ignoring his tone, Sarah went on. “I don’t wish to belabor you with unnecessary details.”
“I lived in my grandmother’s home with my nieces, nephews, and cousins and there have always been children of all ages. My mother was ill much of my childhood so I spent much of my time with my aunts and it was thanks to them that I acquired knowledge of the care for young children. Although that was in Virginia, I am sure that methods are the same. I realize that I will need to adapt some things to suit Montana. I brought fabric for diapers, and safety pins. Safety pins are most useful. I brought feeding bottles as well; I didn’t know what I would need for the baby. I did not know if I would find such things readily at hand so I did quite a bit of shopping before boarding the train. I am afraid that Mr. Greenhow was not expecting to see so much luggage.”
“You’ve come a very long way,” Sarah said. “You were wise to plan accordingly. Jesse will appreciate your forethought.”
He perceived the warning in Sarah’s modulated voice.
“Yes,” he said gruffly.
“Do you sing to Aimee-Anne when you are rocking her to sleep?”
Jesse stared at her. This woman was unlike an
y he’d ever met. She appeared to be interviewing his sister.
After a moment, Sarah regained her composure. “Yes,” she answered. “I sing hymns to her.”
Malinna’s head was bent over her book. “Are there any particular favorites that you sing? I had a young niece who, I regret to confess, had a great fondness not for hymns, but for the tavern songs that she heard our field hands singing.” Her eyes were sparkling as if she found the preference amusing rather than regretful. “My grandmother was most perturbed.”
Sarah laughed. “When a child is fussing and needs to sleep, I’d be grateful for any tune at all that accomplished the aim.”
“You two don’t need me,” Jesse rose. “I’ll head outside.”
Outside on the porch, he leaned against the railing. Why had this woman come West? She was attractive, well-dressed—he’d spied Sarah eyeing the purse with that look that women got when a new piece of frippery was there for the seeing, as if they might never see something so extraordinary again—she was of means, judging by the look and weight of the trunks. She should have been able to find a husband back in Virginia. He was pondering this enigma when he heard the sound of a horse’s hooves, riding fast, galloping up the road.
Jesse went out to meet him. “Mr. Greenhow,” the rider slid off the back of his mount. “I’m in service with Mr. Kleiger. Rev. Carlysle sent me from the Kleiger spread. Old lady Kleiger is failing and he’s called to stay there. He won’t be able to do your wedding. He’s most sorry, he says, but your wedding must be postponed.”