The True Love Wedding Dress

by Barbara Metzger, Connie Brockway, Casey Claybourne; Catherine Anderson

  When he came to a halt about five feet from the fence, his stance was that of a dock ruffian, hands resting at his lean waist, one hip cocked, his opposite leg bent at the knee. He wore faded denim pants and a blue work shirt patched at the elbows. The wash-worn clothing hugged his body, displaying the powerful breadth of his shoulders and bulging upper arms. In a rough and very earthy way, he was extraordinarily handsome, the kind of man Faith might have admired at a distance in the recent past, but not someone to whom she ever would have spoken.

  “I, um—” Angry with herself for losing her train of thought, she swallowed and started over. “I’m looking for Mr. O’Shannessy.”

  “You’ve found him.” His brilliant blue eyes met hers, the directness of his gaze unsettling. “I’m Patrick O’Shannessy.” He looked past her at the road. Then he cut a quick glance at Charity, who had pressed close to Faith’s skirts. “How’d you get here?”

  “We walked, sir.”

  “All the way from town?” Incredulity laced his voice. “Jesus H. Christ. Are you out of your mind, lady?”

  Faith’s spine snapped taut. Before caution could still her tongue, she said, “My good sir, with all due respect I will remind you that a child is present.”

  He gave her a bewildered look, prompting Faith to add, “Your language. Some phrases are inappropriate in the presence of a little girl.” Or in the presence of a lady, for that matter.

  “My apologies.” His thick auburn brows arched high. Then he swiped a hand over his mouth. “Sounds to me like you hail from some place back east.”

  “Brooklyn.” Faith immediately wanted to bite her tongue. The less this man knew about them, the better. There was no doubt a large and very attractive reward being offered by her father for information about her and Charity’s whereabouts.

  “Brooklyn, New York?” When she nodded, he said, “You’re a long way from home. What exactly can I do for you?”

  “I saw your advertisement at the mercantile.”

  “I’ll be damned. I had about given up on that. Are you experienced?”

  Faith felt confident that she could learn to do almost anything. “I am, most certainly.” It was only half a lie. She had supervised housekeepers, after all.

  “I was hoping to find someone older.”

  “What I lack in years I make up for in knowledge and skill, Mr. O’Shannessy.”

  “It isn’t that.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the house. “I’m a bachelor. I’m not sure how it would work with you living here. I sure as hell don’t plan to sleep in the barn in order to keep tongues from wagging.”

  Faith was encouraged to learn that he even recognized the impropriety of such an arrangement. His language was appalling. In Brooklyn, the gentlemen cursed only while in the company of other gentlemen.

  Patrick took thoughtful measure of the woman and her kid. Ever since his sister, Caitlin, had married Ace Keegan two years ago and moved to the neighboring Paradise Ranch, he’d been in desperate need of a housekeeper. For several months after Caitlin’s marriage, he’d convalesced from a bullet wound in his back, and then, after regaining his strength, he’d spent most of his waking hours trying to get his ranch back on its feet. In a nutshell, he was tired of working himself into an exhausted stupor only to come in at night to a dirty house and no food on the table.

  He’d been advertising for help for almost a year, hoping that a stocky, no-nonsense widow might apply for the job. Never in his wildest dreams had he pictured a beautiful young woman like this. She had a wealth of curly dark hair, some of which had escaped from its pins to trail like dribbles of hot fudge over her slender shoulders. Even worse, she had large, pleading brown eyes that he found irresistibly appealing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to gentle the words with a smile, “but I don’t think you’re right for the job.” She looked ready to drop in her tracks. He couldn’t see her milking the cows of a morning or managing to carry the brimming five-gallon buckets back to the house. “I need someone with a little more bulk.”

  Her small chin came up. “I’m stronger than I look, Mr. O’Shannessy.” A telltale quiver attacked one corner of her soft mouth. “You shan’t regret hiring me.”

  Her fancy speech alone was enough to make him run in the opposite direction. Shan’t? Nobody hereabouts talked like that.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, trying to avoid looking at the child. He felt terrible about turning them away. “I need an older woman.”

  She finally nodded. “Very well. I apologize for taking up your time.”

  Patrick was about to offer them a ride back to town when all the starch suddenly left the woman’s spine. The next second, she crumpled like a rag doll, hitting the weed-pocked dirt in a limp sprawl.

  Bracing a hand on the fence, Patrick vaulted over the pickets. “Lady?” He dropped to his knees beside her. The little girl started to cry, a shrill, broken wail that made his ears ring. “Jesus,” he whispered as he felt the woman’s wrist for a pulse. “It’s okay,” he told the child. “She’s just fainted.”

  “Maman!” the child sobbed, tugging on her mother’s sleeve. “Maman, wake up. Please, wake up!”

  Maman? Mother and child were ducks out of water in a place like this. Patrick lightly tapped the woman’s cheeks, hoping to revive her. Not even a flutter of lashes rewarded his efforts. “Get back,” he ordered the child as he lifted the mother into his arms.

  She weighed little more than a child herself, he thought. Her head lolled over his arm, exposing the delicate arch of her throat. He tried to shift his hold to support her neck, but it was like trying to juggle a limp rag, and no matter how hard he tried, his hands seemed to find feminine softness better left untouched.

  Angling sideways to get through the gate, Patrick carried his burden toward the house, the child wailing at his heels. Once inside, he hurried up the hallway that bisected the first floor, his goal the kitchen at the rear.

  Once there, he rested the woman’s rump on the edge of the table and cleared the surface behind her with a sweep of one arm, sending his breakfast plate and coffee mug clattering to the bare planked floor.

  “Quiet!” he barked at the child, his voice much harsher than he intended. He tipped the mother over onto her back and winced when her head struck the wood with a loud thunk. “She’s going to be fine, sweetheart. She just fainted, is all.”

  “Maman never faints.”

  “It’s a long way from town in the heat of the afternoon,” he mused aloud. He’d seen strong men pass out in the fields when they worked too long under the hot summer sun. “We’ll get some water down her. That’ll probably bring her around.”

  “She’s hungry, too,” the little girl revealed brokenly. “She’s been giving all the garbage she finds to me.”

  Patrick’s heart caught. He gave the child a horrified look, hoping to God he’d misunderstood her. “Garbage, did you say?”

  The child nodded, her dark curls bobbing. “Someone stole all our money while we were sleeping at a stage station. All Maman has left is a penny they missed at the bottom of her reticule. She’s been trying to find a position of gainful employment ever since we arrived in No Name, but there are no jobs.”

  The child used words twice as big as she was, her eastern twang sounding strange to Patrick’s ears. “Where on earth have you been staying?”

  The little girl blinked her huge brown eyes and swallowed convulsively. “We’ve been sneaking into the livery stable to sleep in the hay. Maman hid our satchels under an overturned trough out back.”

  Patrick almost let fly with another “Jesus H. Christ.” He managed to hold his tongue and said instead, “You’ll find some corn bread in the warmer and some milk in the icebox, honey. Get yourself something to eat while I tend to your ma.”

  The child cast an anxious glance at her mother.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Patrick assured her with far more confidence than he felt. “Before you’ve finished eating, she’ll be awake
and right as rain, I’ll wager.”

  “Are you quite certain?” the child asked in a quivering voice.

  The woman’s pallor concerned Patrick, and her pulse felt weak and irregular. “I’m pretty certain. Mind what I say, now. You need to get some food in your belly. I can only care for one fainting lady at a time.”

  The child licked her lips and glanced hungrily around the kitchen. “Where’s the warmer?”

  The question brought Patrick’s head up. Had she never seen a kitchen? “The top shelf of the stove.”

  She turned to stare at the old cooking range.

  “There’s a stool in the corner,” Patrick told her as he unfastened the woman’s collar. “You can use it to climb up. And mind you, don’t go spilling the milk. You’ll find a clean glass there in the cupboard to the right of the sink.”

  The little girl made short work of dragging the stool across the floor. While she fetched the corn bread, Patrick unfastened the woman’s threadbare gown to mid-chest, trying his best to ignore the swell of her breasts above the lacy chemise and the flawless ivory of her skin. No luck. It wasn’t every day that he found himself partly disrobing an unconscious female, after all. Suddenly all thumbs, he placed a cool, damp cloth at the base of her slender throat and pumped a glass of water to moisten her parched lips.

  Her cheeks bulging with bread, the child asked, “And where, pray tell, is your icebox, sir?”

  A recent addition to the outdated kitchen, the icebox sat in plain sight at the end of the counter. Patrick gave the little girl another wondering look. The drab and worn condition of her clothing indicated to Patrick that she and her mother were poor, not members of the pampered upper class who supped at fine tables on food prepared by servants.

  After directing the child to the icebox, Patrick returned his attention to his patient. Her pallor alarmed him, and he wished now that he’d thought to ask her name. If the worst happened, he would have to contact her relatives back east and arrange for someone to come fetch the child.

  “What’s your name, honey?” he asked the little girl.

  Her rosebud mouth ringed with milk, she stared at him with wary eyes. “Charity,” she finally revealed.

  Patrick offered her a smile. “My name is Patrick, Paddy to my friends. My last name is O’Shannessy.” He let that hang there for a moment. Then he asked, “What’s yours?”

  She pursed her lips. “I’m not allowed to say, sir.”

  “Not allowed to tell me your last name?” He gave a low laugh. “Why not?”

  “Because we’ve run away.”

  “Run away?” The phrase filled his mind with memories that he had tried very hard to forget. “Who are you running away from?”

  “My grandfathers. My papa passed away two years ago, and they are trying to make Maman get married again to a perfectly awful man. He has a nasty disposition, and he quite dislikes me. When Maman discovered that he had enrolled me in a boarding school far away from Brooklyn and planned to keep me there all year long, she decided we had to leave.” The child shrugged and nibbled her lower lip, the glass of milk clutched to her narrow chest. “One night when everyone was asleep, she sneaked me out of the house, and we embarked on our journey here.”

  “In servants’ clothing,” he guessed aloud.

  Charity nodded. “It’s not as if she stole the clothing. She replaced everything she took with garments of ours, which were much finer. I’m sure the upstairs maid and her little girl were delighted when they awakened the next morning.”

  “I imagine they were.”

  The picture forming in Patrick’s mind wasn’t pretty. In Colorado, a young woman was still occasionally coerced into marrying a man not of her choosing, but for the most part, such archaic marital arrangements were a thing of the past.

  Charity dimpled her cheek in a mischievous grin. “I doubt that Grandfather Maxwell, Maman’s papa, was very pleased, though. Maman emptied all his household coffers before we left.”

  Patrick chuckled, then returned his attention to his patient. When he trickled some water into her mouth, she choked and moaned.

  “How on earth did you end up here?” he asked.

  “We hoped to reach a place called San Francisco, but when our money was stolen, we couldn’t go on.”

  San Francisco was the devil’s lair for impoverished young women, especially beautiful ones. In Patrick’s estimation, it was probably a blessing in disguise that they had been robbed and ended up stranded in No Name.

  “Now,” the little girl added forlornly, “we are without resources and have nowhere to go.”

  Patrick didn’t consider himself to be an overly charitable man, but he wasn’t so coldhearted that he could turn away an impoverished young mother and child. Tomorrow he’d go into No Name to retrieve their satchels. While he was there, he would visit the community church. Surely there was a respectable family in town that needed a housekeeper.

  Chapter Three

  Faith drifted slowly awake to the morning sunlight.

  After blinking her surroundings into focus, she was startled to discover that she was abed in a strange room. There were feminine touches—lace curtains at the windows, an ornate hurricane lamp on the bedside table, and tatted lace doilies on the battered surfaces of the dresser. An old, scarred armoire loomed like a dark specter in one corner of the room.

  Faith pushed slowly to a sitting position. Her head spun sickeningly, and she pressed a trembling hand to her throat. Where was she? More important, where was her daughter?

  Memory of the previous day came rushing back to her. Patrick O’Shannessy. She recalled his saying that she wouldn’t suit for the housekeeping position. After that, she had no memory at all.

  She trailed a hand from her throat to her upper chest and gasped in dismay. She wore only her chemise. Her gown, pantalets, and corset had vanished. Appalled, she pulled the faded coverlet taut over her bare legs and cast a frantic look around the room in search of her clothing.

  The faint sound of a child’s laughter drifted to her ears. She swung out of bed, pushed to her feet, and promptly almost fell on her face. Putting a hand on the wall to keep her balance, she went to the armoire, where she found her missing garments hanging inside on the rod. The ruined wedding gown was nowhere in sight, but Faith had more pressing concerns at the moment, namely getting some clothes on.

  Making her precarious way back to the bed, she grasped the bedpost for support while she dressed. Then she sat on the edge of the mattress to lace her kid boots, which proved to be more of a challenge. She was so light-headed that every time she leaned over she almost pitched to the floor.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?”

  Faith glanced up. Patrick O’Shannessy loomed in the open doorway. This morning he wore a fresh pair of faded denim trousers topped by a green work shirt. The neck of the shirt hung open, revealing burnished chest hair and more muscle than a woman cared to see when at the mercy of a stranger.

  “I am en dishabille, sir,” she said with as much hauteur as she could manage. “A gentleman would refrain from entering my bedchamber uninvited.”

  “You’re on dissa what?”

  “En dishabille,” she repeated. “In an improper state of dress.”

  “Ah.” The corner of his firm mouth twitched. He ran an unsettling blue gaze over her as he rested a brawny shoulder against the doorjamb. “One thing I’ve never claimed to be is a gentleman.”

  Faith had determined that for herself the previous afternoon.

  “And, beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but this bedchamber happens to be mine, not yours. If I want to enter uninvited, I reckon I can.”

  Faith had no ready comeback for that, either. The bedchamber did indeed belong to him. It was she who was the interloper. “That being the case, I shall collect my daughter and relieve you of our presence, Mr. O’-Shannessy.” She ran trembling fingers up the front of her bodice to be sure it was properly fastened, the thought not far from her mind that it had undoubt
edly been his strong fingers that had last touched the buttons. “I appreciate your generous hospitality and apologize for the imposition.” She pushed weakly to her feet. “I must have swooned from the heat.”

  “I’m glad to see that you found your things.” He pointed to a trunk at the foot of the bed. “I stowed the wedding gown in there.” His gaze moved slowly over her. “It’s a real pretty dress. You plannin’ on using it anytime soon?”

  “Using it?”

  “Yeah, you know, to get hitched.”

  Hitched? She could only surmise that he referred to the institution of marriage. “Most assuredly not.” She recalled the dirt stains all over the skirt. “And even if I were, the dress is ruined.”

  He frowned slightly. “It looked fine to me.”

  Faith seriously doubted that the dress would ever look fine again, but she chose to let the comment pass and concentrate on more imminent concerns, namely getting out of there. Despite her announcement that she intended to leave, he remained in the doorway, much like a huge tree that had put down roots.

  “Do you always talk like that?” he asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’ve got a bad case of the highfalutins.”

  Faith swayed and grabbed the bedpost. O’Shannessy was across the room in a beat. Instead of grasping her elbow as a gentleman might, he cinched a strong arm around her waist, his big hand splayed familiarly over her side, his thumb resting in unacceptably close proximity to the underside of her breast.

  “Please, Mr. O’Shannessy, unhand me.”

  “Damned if I will. You’re so weak you can barely stand.” If anything, he tightened his hold. “Let me help you downstairs. You’ll feel better with some food in your belly.”

  “I must collect my daughter and go. It’s no short distance back to town.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he informed her as he half carried her toward the door. “The way Charity tells it, you have no place to go and no money to get there. I’ll check around in town today to see if I can come up with a more suitable arrangement. If not, there’s no denying that I need a housekeeper, and you clearly need a job. We’ll have to iron out the wrinkles somehow.”