Mail Order Regrets

by Julianna Blake

  “Really?” She raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Would you like to see?”

  “No, thank you,” she chuckled. “I doubt there could be homes of any consequence here.”

  “You’d be surprised. But then, if ‘homes of consequence’ are so important to you, maybe you should have chosen to marry one of them ‘mining millionaires’ around here, instead of a rancher.”

  He was treated to a scathing glare before she sniffed and turned her attention to the road ahead.

  That got her goat. He grinned, and turned onto the road that led north, across the valley, and through the mountains.

  Chapter 3

  The man was infuriating. Simply infuriating!

  It was bad enough to end a cross-country train journey by being met by a hired driver instead of her betrothed, and then to find that she must endure a two-day sleigh ride across a wild prairie and through the mountains. But on top of it all, to be laughed at by a ragged young man who appeared to have no idea what a comb is used for? It was more than Madeline could bear.

  Mr. Croft would have to out-do himself to make it up to her. Not meeting her at the station was quite rude, but she imagined that he must be a very busy gentleman rancher and unable to stay away from his duties. If it was a two-day trip to the ranch for her, it would be nearly a four-day journey, round-trip, for him. So his absence could be excused.

  But still—couldn’t he at least have sent a proper driver, with a proper sleigh? She was dreadfully upset at having to leave her belongings behind. Were men so daft that they wouldn’t expect a lady who was moving across the country to need more than one or two bags? She hadn’t even had the chance to retrieve any necessities from her trunks. All she had in her valise was one extra dress, a nightdress, some books, and sundry toiletries and personal items.

  How could it be that the daughter of Chandler Barstow should end up so destitute, with nothing but a simple bag of possessions, stranded in the prairies of Montana? Tears threatened to overtake her, but she forced them back. She mustn’t cry. Not in front of the likes of Clay Porter.

  As they set out across the prairie, the wind picked up, howling around them. She’d never seen such wind. In Boston, the wind whistled along the rows of connected brownstones in the Back Bay, but never with such force, or with such frigid bitterness.

  Madeline settled back into the layers of warm blankets, glad for the little foot warmer, no matter how ugly it may be. Its heat spread up through the covers, up her skirts, keeping her legs warm. Her bottom still felt cold against the leather seat, and her back felt as if she rested on ice, but at least her extremities were comfortable.

  A long time passed in silence. As they left the town of Helena—which she’d never really gotten chance to see, since the railroad station was a mile north of the town proper—the narrow gulch that the town was nestled into fell back into the distance, and the sleigh made its way across the open prairie of the Helena valley.

  She had to admit, the view was lovely, with the low, snow-capped mountains ringing the valley and providing a scenic view in every direction. The sleigh climbed the trail up a long, nearly treeless hill. As they neared the top, she looked back, in awe of the lovely valley below. She wondered how long people had lived in this area, and if there were prairies beyond the visible mountains. Though she was curious about the landscape, she wouldn’t allow him the satisfaction of hearing her break their tense silence first.

  Until her feet got cold.

  “My toes are like ice,” she spoke up with reluctance. “Can we stop to add more coal?”

  Clay frowned at her. “We have to make it last two days, preferably. Or at the very least, until we get to my sister’s.”

  “But I’m cold, and—wait, what did you say about your sister?”

  “We’ll be staying at my sister’s home in the foothills of the mountains. In the morning, we’ll leave early so we can get to the ranch before dark tomorrow.”

  “We’re not staying at a hotel? Or an inn?” Her mouth hung open in a most unattractive way, so she snapped it shut.

  Another laugh erupted from the impudent man. “No, Miss Barstow. Do you see a town ahead of us?” He gestured across the landscape—more flat, open plain stretching to the east, and the mountains looming before them. “There are no inns, no shops, no electricity.”

  “No electricity?!” she squeaked. “You can’t be serious.”

  He cast an amused glance her way. “No one has electricity out this far. It’s mostly right in town. And a few farmers close to town have telephone service.”

  Madeline’s breath caught. Mr. Croft had mentioned in his letters that Helena had electricity, and though he hadn’t specified whether his ranch was electrified or not, she had assumed it must be—or that the electric lines would soon reach his property. But that had been when she was under the impression that his ranch was just outside of Helena. She now realized that if the ranch was as far as Mr. Porter indicated, she might be a very old woman before electricity reached the Croft ranch.

  Her head whirled, and her stomach roiled. A mistake. This was a dire mistake. Suddenly, the weight of all that she had lost and all she was about to lose pressed upon her. “I...I can’t...breathe...”

  “Miss Barstow?”

  “I...too much...” She bore down, viciously fighting to keep the tears at bay, but it cost her. Madeline’s chest tightened, and a flush of heat spread up her neck. She panted, throwing off the blankets.

  “Are you alright?”

  Clay Porter’s voice was alarmed…and fading into the distance, drowned out by the deafening sound of her own racing heart in her ears.

  She felt the sleigh coming to a stop, and as soon as it did, she hiked up her skirts and scrambled out. Crunching across the snow, she stopped at a boulder that emerged from the sloping ground, near a small fir tree. The cool air felt good against her heated neck, and she unbuttoned the top button of her coat.

  Madeline sank down onto the snow-dusted boulder, her mind awash with the depth of her loss. She had kept it out of her mind for months now, only beginning to let herself feel it when she realized the precariousness of her situation, and the need to do something about it. It came crashing down upon her now, the full truth of it all, and she couldn’t bear it.

  She didn’t hear the footsteps crunching up behind her, nor the wind whistling in her ears. She merely sat staring out at the landscape of ground sloping away behind them, toward the valley, sprinkled here and there with young pines and scrubby weeds.

  It had a stark beauty, she realized, but she couldn’t appreciate it. It seemed so cold and barren. Forlorn.

  “Desolate,” she whispered.

  A deep voice spoke nearby, with rising pitch. But it was little more than background noise, a murmur, like the wind swishing through the dry, woody weeds that poked out from the light covering of snow on the ground.

  “Miss Barstow? Madeline!” The voice yelled now, and her shoulders were being shaken, violently. Only then did she realize that she no longer stared at the landscape, but at the worried blue-grey eyes of Clay Porter.

  She blinked, but said nothing. For a moment, she wasn’t sure where she was, or how she’d come to be there.

  “What’s wrong? Why won’t you answer me?”

  “I...” she was at a loss for words.

  “Come back to the sleigh, please.” He looked back over his shoulder. “The sky is changing, and I don’t like the look of it. We’re losing daylight, and if we don’t go, we won’t make it by dark. If I’m right about those clouds, we won’t make it far, anyway.”

  She allowed him to take her by the hand and lead her back to the sleigh. The seat was ice cold, as were the blankets that he laid over her. He lifted her feet and placed the warmer underneath them, but there was little heat coming from the metal box. Her teeth chattered.

  “The coals are going out. I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to stoke them or add more.” He left her peripheral vision, then a short time later
, the sleigh shook, and he was sitting beside her.

  Madeline’s vision came into focus, and she realized that both horses were now hitched to the sleigh. “I thought...”

  “We need speed right now.” He made a slapping noise with the reins, and the horses started off, stepping lively in the snow, bells ringing.

  The wind rushed past her ears, and Madeline tied her bonnet tighter. Her cheeks were numb within a minute, and she pulled the covers over most of her face.

  “What the hell was that, back there?” the driver demanded.

  “There’s no need for cursing—” her voice was muffled under the furs.

  “The hell there isn’t! You had some kind of fit—I couldn’t snap you out of it until I grabbed hold of you!”

  “I just—”

  “Do you realize what kind of danger we’re in?” His voice rumbled with fury.

  Madeline saw his face, then turned to look over her shoulder.

  Sweeping in from the southwest, low, angry clouds in shades of grey headed northeast. The bank of clouds loomed over the town of Helena, and headed their way.

  “Where did those come from?”

  “Miss Barstow, you’ve been catatonic for over fifteen minutes. While you had your little mental nap, the temperature has dropped rapidly, and now a storm is moving in.”

  “I...fifteen minutes? That’s not possible.”

  “At least fifteen minutes. I didn’t want to startle you. You seemed very upset, and I didn’t know what to do. I gave you time to come to your senses, then I tried patting your hand, calling your name. Nothing. When I saw the clouds rolling in, I got a little worried, but when the temperature started to drop and the clouds darkened, I realized we were in for it. I was about to throw you over my shoulder if you hadn’t come to.”

  “Shouldn’t we turn around and go back to town?”

  Clay’s jaw tensed. “Probably. But we’d be heading straight into the storm. It would hit while we were on the prairie, with no protection. No landmarks. We could get lost and die, even if we were only a hundred feet from a farmhouse.”

  “Then where will we go?” Madeline looked around for shelter, but saw none…except the treeline up ahead.

  “There’s a cabin north of here, not far off the trail. It’s not much, but it’s shelter. We’re about halfway there, and we have a better chance of reaching it in time than we do of making it back to Helena.”

  “I…I’m sorry. This is my fault.” How could I have lost fifteen minutes? It seemed like I only sat there for a minute, at most. Madeline was frightened. This wasn’t like her. She was a strong woman. Everyone said so. Perhaps sometimes too strong, too opinionated. But she had never allowed herself to grieve...

  He flashed a look of irritation that melted—somewhat—into compassion. “Tell me what had you so spooked, because that can’t happen again.”

  “I just...” she glanced back over her shoulder, watching the clouds that seemed to chase them, and shivered. “I don’t know what came over me. I suppose I was overwhelmed. This isn’t the situation I imagined, after reading Mr. Croft’s letters. I must have misunderstood his description of the ranch, somehow.”

  Mr. Porter cast her a strange look. “It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “It’s not that I’m completely spoiled, Mr. Porter. We only had electricity in my family home for a few years. Father was enthralled with electric lighting after he experienced it at the Vendrome Hotel. He was quite taken with the latest advancements, and had our home wired as soon as possible. But you get used to it rather quickly—very used to it. Whenever there was a blizzard, we’d have power outages, and we always felt as if we had been thrown into the Dark Ages. I was delighted to find out from Mr. Croft that Helena has electricity already, and to be frank, I probably would not have agreed to come, had I known that Mr. Croft was not close enough to receive electricity any time soon.”

  “We can always turn back tomorrow, if you like.”

  Madeline’s heart skipped a beat. She would not let a sleigh driver know the true nature of her situation. “Not at all. I made a commitment. I intend to keep it.” Though I might come to regret that commitment every day hence.

  “Whatever you say.”

  They drove on another half hour, racing to beat the darkening sky. It was too cold to talk—Madeline kept the covers pulled up over her nose. Mr. Porter had wrapped a scarf around his neck and mouth, and tucked the lapels of his coat up into it. He refused her offer to give up one of the blankets. His legs had to be frozen, with his legs just barely covered with the edges of the blankets that overlapped his legs. But perhaps he was more used to the low temperatures than she.

  The worst of the storm passed just to the northwest of them, but snow still came swirling down, forcing them to take a slower pace. For a time they passed through a more open, hilly area, before they made it to a narrow, winding part of the road that meandered with tall, craggy cliffs and hills on either side. The sky was obscured by the clouds, and the last bit of light was fading as they pulled off the main road and down a long trail to a small cabin nestled in the foothills. There was no glow of lamplight coming from the windows, nor was there any smoke billowing from the chimney.

  “We’ll rest here a while before we go on?” she asked, pulling down the covers.

  He brought the horses to a stop in front of the door. “No. We’re not going to make it tonight. We’ll have to stay here.”

  “You can’t mean that.” She clutched the furs to her bosom. “You said we’d take shelter—not sleep here!”

  He hopped out and started unhitching the horses. “I do. It’s another two hours to my sister’s place, and the visibility is only getting worse. There’s nowhere decent between here and my sister’s house to take shelter. This is it. We’re lucky I found it—I almost missed the turn-off.”

  “But—but—” she stammered, “there is no one else here.”

  “And we’re lucky for that. There are only accommodations for two here. Assuming someone hasn’t made off with one of the two chairs that were here last time, that is.”

  “You are not funny, Mr. Porter.” She stood up in the sleigh and stomped her foot. “I insist you take me to a proper place to stay.”

  The horses whinnied and stomped in place, jostling the sleigh. Madeline slipped fell back into her seat with a hard thump. The driver took the horses by their bridles and spoke in soothing tones until they quieted. Then he stalked back to the sleigh.

  “If you insist on throwing a childish fit,” he snarled, “please do it outside the sleigh, before you provoke my horses into bolting. They are tired and so am I, and I don’t want to lose them and my sleigh in a snowstorm because you are indulging in a tantrum over not having a soft, fancy place to lay your head tonight.”

  She swallowed her rage at being spoken to with such disrespect, only because she realized he was right—she could have caused a dreadful accident. “I’m sorry. I am. But it has nothing to do with a fancy place to lay my head. That—” she pointed at the ramshackle habitation, “is a very small cabin which, according to you, can only sleep two. Two! There is no one here to act as chaperone. What is my future husband to think when he finds out I spent the night alone with the sleigh driver?”

  “If he had any sense, he’d be glad that I made a level-headed decision that kept his bride-to-be safe and alive! Not that I’d accuse Croft of having any sense.” He muttered the last part as he walked back to his horses, but Madeline caught it.

  “What is your problem with Mr. Croft? Clearly you don’t like him. What has he done to you?”

  He kept his eyes on the horse’s harness, heaving a heavy sigh. “Nothing. He has always paid me what I earned. He’s brash, but hasn’t mistreated me, personally. I have no reason not to like him.”

  “And yet you don’t.” She tilted her head, waiting for an answer.

  “Get back under your covers, Miss Barstow, before you let out all the heat.”

  “What heat?” she mumbled as sh
e sat back and pulled the blankets over her. “You let the coal burn out ages ago.”

  He shot her a look of irritation, then led the horses over to a water trough and tied them to the hitching post above it. “Don’t worry girls, I’ll fetch you some water from the creek in just a minute.” He patted each horse, stroking their necks, then turned to Madeline. “I need to take care of the horses before it gets dark. Can you help me by getting the cabin prepared for us?”

  She nodded, then cast the blankets aside and climbed out into the cold. Porter helped her down, and started unloading the sleigh quickly. Madeline went ahead, opening the cabin door for him.

  She was aghast. The cabin was coated with dust everywhere. It looked as if savages had lived there. A sideboard ran along the west wall, with a shelf above it for the meager dishes and supplies. A small table and two rickety chairs stood in the center of the room, while a narrow bed that she supposed was meant for two people was pushed up against the eastern wall. Her mouth dropped open in horror. Surely he didn’t mean for both of them to—

  “Light the lamps and make up the bed, please, while I get the horses settled. There should be kerosene in them, if not, look under the sideboard. There should be firewood, too, and more under a shelter out back if you need it. Matches were in a small tin on the table, last I checked.”

  “Whose place is this?”

  “Josiah’s—a friend of my brother-in-law’s. We stayed up here for a week this fall. Good hunting. Nice and quiet, too.”

  That’s because no one lives here but the deer. She made a sour face when he wasn’t looking.

  Porter brought in the second load of things from the sleigh and grabbed a metal bucket before heading back out into the snow. Madeline lit the kerosene lanterns, marveling at how many times she was forced to brush the dust off her fingers. This is obviously a bachelor cabin—this hovel has never seen a woman’s touch.

  After a few minutes, Porter came back to take one of the lanterns, and left again. It was already dark. Madeline found a broom and tried to tidy up, but she was fighting a losing battle. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she wouldn’t let herself cry. My home with Mr. Croft will not be like this. There may not be electricity, but he will surely have everything that a lady truly needs.