The Bride Lottery

by Tatiana March

  Miranda held the child’s hand gently and clamped her teeth over her bottom lip to contain the mix of emotions—pity, anger at the cruelty of fate, and a hollow sense of helplessness.

  And, eclipsing them all, a deep, aching surge of protectiveness. As the brave one, she’d used her courage to shield her sisters whenever she could. Now she would need every bit of that courage to help Nora through her final months.

  Courage for Nora, and courage for herself. For, inevitably, a bond would form between them. With her quiet dignity, with her pretty features and big brown eyes, with her sincerity and her thinly disguised need for affection, Nora would be an easy child to love. And her tragic situation, with each passing minute precious, would make that love grow and flourish like weeds after the rain.

  With a sigh, Miranda gave Nora’s fingers a light squeeze as they set off down the dusty street, leaving behind the unfriendly home of Mrs. Van Cleef.

  To see a dying child to her grave.

  That’s what James Blackburn required from her.

  * * *

  Miranda studied the small room at the end of the upstairs corridor at the Carousel. It contained two narrow beds, one on either side, with little space in between. A window let in northern light and gave a view of the mountains. The beds had been stripped bare. The walls had no pictures. Cooking smells from the kitchen rose through the floorboards.

  “Not very cozy,” she remarked.

  “We’ll fix it the way it used to be,” Nora said. “I have Mama’s things in my bag.”

  Miranda settled the child to sit on one of the beds and crouched in front of her, ignoring Blackburn, who stood hovering in the doorway. She’d been ignoring him ever since they left Mrs. Van Cleef’s house. It hadn’t been easy to ignore a man who’d ushered her along with a firm grip on her arm and introduced her to the saloon owner as his wife, but somehow she’d managed the feat.

  Mr. Nordgren, the man who owned the saloon, spoke English without an accent but showed his Nordic origins by saying “jaa” instead of “yes.” He looked her up and down and told her it was five dollars a week plus room and board. He finished the interview by asking her to keep the child quiet and do the cleaning between dawn and afternoon and learn to call him Nordgren, without the prefix of “Mr.” in front of it.

  That had been all. She was employed.

  “Maybe you can call me Miranda,” she told the child. “If you call me Mama we’ll just get confused. And I’ll call you Nora, or Skylark.”

  The little girl nodded. “I have Mama’s pictures in my bag.”

  “We’ll put them up later. I need to talk to your Uncle Jamie first. Then I’ll get us something to eat and we can put the pictures up on the wall before we go to bed.”

  She rose and followed Blackburn, who had retreated into the corridor. He didn’t protest when she closed the door so the child wouldn’t overhear the conversation. Miranda faced him squarely, finally acknowledging his presence. “I want to make sure there is a clear understanding between us,” she told him. “Is Nora the only reason you married me?”

  Blackburn shrugged, but the gesture lacked his usual confidence. “You’ll save me a lot of money. I was paying Mrs. Van Cleef five dollars a week to look after Nora. I got you for ten. I’ll break even on you in two weeks.”

  “With what you spent on the Appaloosa and on my clothes, it will take you at least a year to break even.”

  “I’m selling the Appaloosa. You don’t need a horse. There’s nowhere for you to go and I need the money. I owe for doctor’s bills and my sister’s burial.”

  “What did your sister die of?”

  “Bullet in the chest. Louise was caught in the gunfire when the bank was robbed a few weeks ago. The robbers got eleven thousand dollars and it cost my sister’s life.”

  A shiver ran over Miranda. “Those four men you killed?”

  Blackburn nodded. “Bounty hunting is my trade, but sometimes I get to mix business with pleasure.” He made that jerky motion with his head again, the one that made his raven locks skim his shoulders. “You’d best remember that I track people down for a living. I’ll be riding out tomorrow morning but I’ll look in on you in about a month. If I discover that you’ve abandoned Nora while I was gone, I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you.”

  “Dear me.” Miranda lifted a single eyebrow. “I’m shaking in my boots.”

  She saw one corner of the bounty hunter’s wide mouth tug up in the reluctant smile he sometimes failed to hide. “And very expensive boots they are, too,” he replied.

  “I’d like two things from you.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t let you keep Alfie. I need the money, and it would cost too much to keep a horse at the livery stable. More than you make cleaning in the saloon.”

  “Wait to hear what I’m asking before you refuse.” Miranda paused, making sure she had Blackburn’s full attention before she continued. “I want you to give me a better reason why you married me. You didn’t do it just to save money. It is important for me to hear you spell it out.”

  Blackburn pushed the edges of his long duster apart and curled his hands over the butts of his revolvers. The gesture might have threatened another gunfighter, but it didn’t scare Miranda one bit. “Say it,” she demanded.

  His dark brows gathered into a frown and he spoke in a low, gruff voice. “You saw Mrs. Van Cleef. She’s a sour old coot, but she was the only woman in town prepared to take in a kid who is part Indian. I want something better for Nora, for her last few weeks. She’s lost her mother. I can’t look after her. I need to be out there, making money for doctor’s bills. I saw you in that saloon, in your blue dress, looking like an angel. I hoped you might give her love. At least I hoped you might give her more affection than Mrs. Van Cleef ever could.”

  “I’ll try,” Miranda promised. “But I have one condition.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “As long as I live at the Carousel, I never, ever want to hear you creep along the corridor into the bed of one of the saloon girls. We might be married in name only, but I will not suffer the humiliation of seeing my husband with another woman, the way you went with Nellie on the eve of our wedding.”

  There. She’d said her piece. Now she could go back to ignoring him. Miranda turned toward the door, curled her hand over the knob.

  “Wait,” Blackburn said. Miranda glanced back over her shoulder. He’d pulled a rolled-up exercise book from inside his duster and was holding it out to her. “You might like to read to Nora from this in the evenings.”

  Miranda took the booklet, flicked through the pages. It was a collection of poems, hand written, in an educated, artistic hand. The first page said: “Eleanor Wilkinson. My favorite poems.”

  “It belonged to my mother,” Blackburn said. “Lucky you picked Tennyson for your question. That particular poem is on the second page. My mother wasn’t so fond of Keats.”

  Something fell into place in Miranda’s mind. “Before you bought a ticket for the bride lottery, you asked me to read from the Bible... I thought it was because you wanted to hear my voice...but you were making sure I wasn’t just holding the book for show.”

  “I wanted to check that you could read out for the child.” He tugged his hat deeper on his head and made a move to leave. “I’ll go and see to the horses.” Halfway along the hall, he turned to look back at her. “I’ll come by later to say goodbye to Nora.”

  Chapter Nine

  Miranda knelt by the narrow bed. “How are you feeling, Skylark? Ready to have lunch?”

  She would have liked to stroke the child’s brow, but her hands were wrapped in strips of cotton torn from an old pillowcase. It had turned out her skin couldn’t tolerate the lotions to polish the mahogany counters and brass rails in the saloon.

  Nora gave her a quivering smile. “I am tir
ed.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I’ll fetch you some broth.”

  Miranda got to her feet, looked down at the pale face framed by the blunt wedge of black hair. A lump swelled in her chest. Valiant and brave, the child never complained but bore her illness and the loss of her mother with stoicism beyond her years. And every display of affection made her bloom, like a flower bloomed in sunlight.

  The slightest praise made her glow. A hug brought out a radiant smile. Magic tricks caused her to laugh with joy. Learning about the wind and the stars filled her with wonder, and a bedtime story made her eyes shine with delight.

  How could one resist such a child? In only a week, Miranda had grown to love her with a fervor that hurt. Perhaps it was because her sisters were so far away. All the affection she normally gave them was now poured on Nora.

  “I won’t be long,” Miranda said and set off for the kitchen.

  Downstairs, she paused by Nordgren’s office, a small, wood-paneled room with a hatch that opened through to the saloon, allowing the owner to keep an eye on the gambling tables. Now, midmorning, the saloon was quiet, with only a few muffled voices drifting through.

  “I’ve come for my pay,” Miranda said.

  Nordgren, a tall, broad-shouldered man in his forties with red-gold hair, looked up from his ledgers. His eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with your hands?”

  “Blisters.” Miranda inspected the bandages. “My skin reacts to the soaps.”

  Frowning, Nordgren bounced a pencil in his fingers. “It will get worse. I had another girl like that once. The skin just peeled off in strips.” He gave her one of his penetrating up and down looks. “Can you do anything else? Sing? Dance?”

  Sing? Dance? In a saloon?

  The suggestion ought to shock her, but instead a flicker of excitement sparked within Miranda. When she fled from Merlin’s Leap in the night darkness, she had felt the constraints of society fall away, like shackles from a slave.

  I can be anything I want to be.

  A slow, wicked smile tugged at her mouth. “I can sing. Opera arias and sea shanties.”

  Nordgren’s pencil stilled. He gave her another perusal. “Don’t matter what you sing. Just make sure you give the men something to look at. The stage costumes are in the storage room.”

  He pulled open a desk drawer, took out a handful of silver dollars, counted out five and pushed the stack over to her. “This is for last week. We can talk about an increase in pay once I’ve seen how you perform on the stage.”

  Her thoughts awhirl, Miranda hurried out of the room. A doubt niggled in her mind that Mama and Papa would have disapproved of one of their daughters singing and dancing on a saloon stage.

  She dismissed the concern. Her parents had always taught her to rely on her own judgment, and now it seemed more important to secure gainful employment than to cling to social propriety.

  The huge, spotlessly clean kitchen was unoccupied but sweltering with heat. Miranda filled a bowl with chicken broth from the pot bubbling on the stovetop. Then she returned upstairs and fed Nora until the child grew too tired and slumped against the pillows.

  “When will Uncle Jamie come back?”

  There was such longing in the question, such worship in the child’s eyes, anger stirred in Miranda. How could James Fast Elk Blackburn remain absent at a time like this? She hated to admit it, but she missed him, too. She had not realized how much during those silent days of riding she had grown to rely on his quiet strength.

  “I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” Miranda reassured the child.

  With a soft sigh, Nora closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. Miranda used the time to compose a telegram to Charlotte. She had decided to postpone writing to Annabel. If Cousin Gareth had returned to Merlin’s Leap, he would intercept the message. The excuse of a letter of condolence could only be used once and she preferred to save it for later.

  Jotting down words, striking them out again, pausing every now and then to check on the sleeping child, Miranda composed her message as the sun crested in the sky.

  Mrs. Maude Greenwood, Gold Crossing, Arizona Territory. Traveling to join you. Delayed with important work. Annabel alone home. Cousin Gareth followed me until Chicago. After that whereabouts unknown. Perhaps back Merlins Leap. Send news. Carousel Saloon, Devils Hall, Wyoming Territory. Love. Miranda.

  Satisfied, Miranda counted the number of words. Forty-two. Just as well she had decided to postpone writing to Annabel, for sending the telegram would eat up most of her five dollars.

  * * *

  Lamps in wall brackets with reflectors behind them illuminated the small stage at the rear of the Carousel Saloon. Miranda had turned the wicks right down, to dim the lights for her first performance. She had rejected the skimpy costumes in the storage room, instead altering her pale blue wool gown to be low-cut at the bodice.

  Although the saloon was crowded, with men sitting at the tables and standing along the counter, hardly anyone was looking in her direction. Nordgren had not advertised her debut, allowing for the possibility that she might back out at the last minute.

  Miranda took a deep breath and stepped out from the shadow of the velvet curtain. She lifted her parasol and twirled it overhead. Her experience with Madam Lucille had served as a valuable lesson. The storage room had provided a frilly parasol and Moses, the elderly black cook, had sharpened the steel point, turning it into a more effective weapon.

  The piano players at the Carousel were miners who played music to their own liking and came and went as they pleased. Miranda had decided to perform without accompaniment. Foregoing any introduction, she burst into a song.

  “As I walked out one morning fair

  Out there I met Miss Nancy Blair

  I shook her up and I shook her down

  I shook her all around the town

  I run her all night, I run her all day

  And I run her until we sailed away

  Only one thing grieves me mind

  To leave Miss Nancy Blair behind.”

  Silence fell at the tables. Men turned to watch. Whiskey glasses halted in midair. Vaguely, Miranda was aware of the attention as she sang and twirled the parasol and moved about with tiny mincing steps and rolled her eyes to emphasize the comedy of the words.

  She should have been ashamed of making a spectacle of herself. She should have been afraid of the roomful of lusty, drunken men. But she was neither. She could sense a wall of emotion coming toward her, but it was not lust. It was laughter and friendship and admiration and gratitude. She had sensed the same as a girl when crews from Papa’s ships came to visit Merlin’s Leap.

  The miners in the saloon, just as the sailors on the ships, were men far away from home. Lonely men, separated from loved ones. The music would entertain them, and if they looked at her with longing in their eyes, it was not her they were pining for—she was the symbol for every sweetheart they had left behind or hoped yet to meet.

  Emboldened, Miranda walked to the edge of the stage and halted there. She sang the final verse, smiled at the audience. “Hello, gentlemen.”

  A few hoots and rowdy protests rose from the crowd. Miranda tilted her head to one side and lifted her brows. “I’m calling you gentlemen, because that is what I expect you to be. I am here to entertain you with my songs. They are called sea shanties. I grew up by the ocean, the daughter of a sea captain. Sea shanties are songs sailors sing on ships to accompany their work.”

  They were staring raptly at her. Miranda waited a beat, to make sure she had their undivided attention. Then she lowered the parasol and took a step to where a straw-filled flour sack she had prepared for the purpose sat leaning against the wall.

  “If anyone should be tempted to try anything ungentlemanly, be warned.” She lowered her parasol and struck the point like a rapier into the sack of s
traw, drawing laughter and cries of mock horror from the audience.

  “And if that isn’t enough, you should know that my husband is a bounty hunter. He hunts men down for a living, and he is very jealous.” She smiled, twirled her parasol, put one hand on her hip and gave a little wiggle. “Now that we have all that cleared up, enjoy the music.”

  “What do we call you, darling?”

  “You can call me Miss Randi.”

  She turned her back on the men, walked a few steps, peered coquettishly over her shoulder and burst into another song. Oh, she was having such fun. Much better than scrubbing and cleaning. In all honesty, she would be lying if she claimed not to enjoy male admiration, as long as the admiration did not cross a line.

  I can be whatever I want to be.

  And now that something was a saloon singer. She would make sure to negotiate a higher salary with Nordgren. If her parents were looking down from heaven, Miranda suspected they might be chuckling with amusement, even as they shook their heads in disapproval.

  And, if seeing his wife parade in a low-cut gown in front of a crowd of men annoyed the bounty hunter, who had tricked her into marriage and had given her the heartbreaking task of caring for a dying child, Miranda would regard it as a bonus.

  However, the best part of her new role was the working hours. Nora was at her strongest in the mornings, and Miranda hated to leave her alone then. Because she would be performing in the evenings, she could spend more time with Nora, take the child on outings, make her final weeks as happy and fulfilling as possible.

  * * *

  Miranda checked her upsweep in the mirror and tugged the bodice of her gown higher over her breasts. For eight days now, she had been singing in the saloon, with great success. If only Charlotte would reply to her telegram!

  Downstairs, Miranda made her way to the stage. The crowd parted to give her unfettered passage. Mostly, the men treated her with respect. The few exceptions had tasted the sharp point of her parasol or the fists of the more gentlemanly customers.

  As an added precaution, she kept reminding the men about her jealous bounty hunter husband. By now, her frequent comments about James Fast Elk Blackburn had created an illusion of a loyal wife devoted to her absent husband.