by Diane Noble
Sarah had lost two babies since marrying the apostle, one by a miscarriage just weeks after conception; the second, stillborn soon after the wagon company rolled out of Winter Quarters.
She seemed to blossom when visiting with the lively MacKays in the evenings, especially in the presence of Mary Rose. Bronwyn suspected it was because Mary Rose knew what it felt like to suffer such a loss. Since the Riordan wagon company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, Sarah spent more time at the MacKays than she did in the apostle’s home.
Mary Rose came out to join Bronwyn in the garden, knelt beside her to help with the weeds, and kept her voice low as she spoke. “Sarah mentioned she heard a wagon company is coming through soon—they’re just north of us, coming out of Fort Bridger. Scheduled to come through Salt Lake the week after next.”
Bronwyn’s heartbeat quickened. “We’re not ready.” She looked up at Mary Rose. “We have only begun to plan.”
“We have enough food,” Mary Rose said, “now that Cordelia finished drying the last of the jerky. And clothing for the children. This morning Pearl showed me the little sweaters she just finish knitting for Joey and Spence. She made two others last week.”
“No wonder the dear looks so bleary-eyed at breakfast.” Bronwyn stood, brushed off her apron, and stretched her back. “But we can’t just ride out of here. It’s impossible. Too many lives are at stake. As much as I want to go, I think we need to wait. I still think it’s too soon. What does Cordelia say about it?”
“She agrees with you. She doesn’t think we’re ready.”
They never spoke of their journey in the daylight hours, especially if the children were near, but waited until the children were in school or in bed. Tonight was the exception.
Bronwyn knelt again and sliced her spade through the soil near a cabbage plant to get at the deep roots of a milkweed. The squawks and screeches of the girls’ fiddling inside the house wrapped around her heart and squeezed it tight.
“No matter when it is that we leave, the children will miss Gabe,” Mary Rose said, a deep sadness in her voice. “They’ll never see him again.”
Bronwyn put down the spade and plucked another weed. “We will all miss him.” She didn’t look up to meet Mary Rose’s gaze. “How about you?” she asked. “Will you miss him?”
Mary Rose let out a deep breath. “If I said no, I would be lying.” She put down the spade, and rocked back on her heels. “I will always miss the Gabe who fell in love with me and married me. I ache when I see him, thinking of those days. But he’s changed. I won’t miss the man he’s become.”
Bronwyn pondered her words . . . and the knowledge that, try as she might to resist the emotion, Gabe still had the ability to make her pulse race. She patted the roots of the cabbage seedling, added a handful of soil, and tamped it down. It seemed several had loosened themselves in the soil since the last weeding.
“What about your feelings for Gabe?” Mary Rose’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You said you’d miss him. Do you love him . . . love the man he is now?”
“I don’t know who he is now either. I often compare him to Griffin to try to figure it out. Griffin offered me respect and friendship. He didn’t talk much, even when we were courting, but he loved to hear me chatter on and on about anything and everything. Hardworking? Aye. And he did it for me. At heart he was a dreamer. Lived somewhere inside himself. Sometimes even when I was with him, I felt lonely. I longed for him to show me his feelings. His love.
“If it had been left to him we never would have left Hanmer. In fact, we never would have met the Mormon missionary, been converted, and crossed the Atlantic on the Sea Hawk.
“I got tired one night of sitting in our little cottage, longed to go to the Hanmer Arms and see our friends, have a pint, and talk and laugh until the wee hours of morning . . .”
She stopped, lost for a moment in reverie as she pictured that drizzly, foggy night. “Griffin knew how much it would mean to me, so he agreed. That night, one of the twelve missionary apostles was holding a meeting there. We were invited in.
“Griffin didn’t want to stay. He’d worked hard all day, chopping wood for my father at the estate. I implored him to stay . . . for my sake.” She plucked at another weed and tossed it aside. “He would have done anything for me. The rest you know. Once we converted, they promised Griffin the world if we came to America, starting with our first positions as your employees.”
It was growing darker, and from the corral, a horse nickered. A few peeps could be heard from inside the chicken coop by the barn, and farther out, crickets chirped and frogs started up a racket of song.
After a moment, Mary Rose said, “What about passion?”
“Griffin wasn’t a passionate man.” Her memory drifted back to Wales when they courted and wed, to the voyage aboard the clipper, to their trek to Nauvoo. “I knew he loved me in his own way, but he wasn’t able to show it.”
“Gabe offers you passion,” Mary Rose said. The note of deep sadness in her voice didn’t go unnoticed. “The missing ingredient with Griffin.”
Bronwyn didn’t answer, but she knew Mary Rose was right. Instead, she laughed lightly. “If God could only create a perfect man whose heart is honest and straightforward, brave and just, one who shows his lady love respect, friendship, and deep, abiding love. Gabe is not that man, at least not to me.” She looked across the few feet that divided them, her gaze settling on Mary Rose’s face.
For an instant, Mary Rose’s expression softened and her eyes shone, much as they had the first time Bronwyn observed her and Gabe and together on the Sea Hawk—he, the architect of the fastest ship in the world and close friend of the ship’s captain; she, Lady Mary Rose Ashley, elegant and beautiful, granddaughter of an earl, brought up in an English manor house. Oh, how her face glowed whenever her new love came near. And his adoration for her was palpable.
It took one’s breath away to see their love blossom aboard that clipper.
Now, in the dwindling light, only a hint of that grand and glorious first love remained in Mary Rose’s eyes. Something sad settled into Bronwyn’s heart as she thought about the changes the years had wrought, changes none of them could have known.
“He was that love to you, though, wasn’t he?”
“Once,” Mary Rose said, “a long time ago.”
They worked together in silence for a few minutes, and then Mary Rose said, “Isn’t that what we all want? You, Enid, and me . . . to be loved by someone as if we’re the only one in the world to love?” Mary Rose smiled gently. “I heard you tell Pearl and Ruby to hold out for that kind of love, that they deserve nothing less.”
“The best thing we can do to assure they find that kind of love is to get them out of the territory as soon it is safe.”
“When it’s time, we’ll make it out, even if the Danites shout ‘blood atonement’ from the mountains to every Saint within earshot.” Mary Rose shivered visibly. “We’ll speak of details later. For now, I’ll go in and get the little ones to bed.”
Reluctant to go inside, Bronwyn went to the barn for a lantern, brought it back, and set it beside the garden. Instantly, moths clustered, hurling their bodies against the glass chimney. Some, merely stunned, fell to the ground. Others found their way closer to the flame, and like miniature torches, flared briefly and died.
The fiddling quieted and, through the open window, Bronwyn heard Gabe give the children a blessing before they scampered off to bed. Even Sarah James stayed and received a blessing before racing out of the house, mounting, and riding toward the Riordan ranch.
Though the images were mere shadows through the flour-sack window curtains, she could see Mary Rose ascending the stairs with the children who were like stair steps themselves as they climbed. First the tallest, Ruby and Pearl tromped up, then Little Grace, followed by Joey and Spence. As they stepped into the loft that served as a nursery, Gabe said something that made them all laugh. She could still hear them giggling when he opened the door, stepped from th
e house, and strode toward Bronwyn with a purposeful gait.
“I spoke with Brother Brigham today,” he said, “and he gave me his blessing to talk to you about a new beginning.” His smile widened as he came closer.
Bronwyn dusted the soil from her hands and stood. “A new beginning?”
“For our marriage,” he said.
Chapter Nineteen
What do you mean, a new beginning for our marriage?”
Gabe chuckled. “All in good time. First I want to say how pleased I am with the education and comportment you’re teaching our children. Your work with them hasn’t gone unnoticed. You and Mary Rose are good mothers.”
She gave him a sharp look. “In spite of what Brother Foley and others said about my influence back in Winter Quarters?” When he didn’t comment, she studied his expression. “They still hold a grudge, am I right?”
“You judge them too harshly.”
She laughed. “I judge them?”
“They have a right to judge. Word gets out. Only recently, Brother Brigham heard about the comments you made to other women, criticizing him and others. He says you’re firing up some of his own wives—especially when it comes to the topic of celestial marriage. One told him just the other day that she wants a divorce.”
She bit back a smile. “Fanny Sten—”
He laced his fingers, steepling them at his lips, his disapproval evident even before he spoke. “This is no laughing matter. I’ve said this before, Bronwyn. You’ve changed. You once were sunny-spirited and easygoing, now you’ve got a mind of your own.”
“A mind of my own?” She gave him a half-smile. “Aye, that once would have been seen by you—dear husband—as a good thing. I’ve told you before, I’m no longer the nanny I was when you first set eyes upon me. This place, this wild country, makes a woman tough. If it doesn’t, we won’t survive.”
“Being strong is one thing. Being foolish is quite another. Being outspoken is downright dangerous.” He paused. “He said you spoke to the ladies at the last quilting bee, telling them you advocate raising children with minds of their own. You said they need to inform their daughters—as you do ours— from their earliest years that they do not need to obey Church authority, or even their parents, if told they must marry young.” His eyes bored in. “Did you realize who you were speaking to? Didn’t you know the word might get back to Brigham?”
She stared at him, unblinking. “What I cannot understand is why you—or anyone else—would not stand up for those who have no one to speak for them.”
He ignored her words. “They told their husbands—just as you knew they would. Your actions and words reflect badly on me, on Mary Rose, Enid—on our entire family. Didn’t you consider the repercussions?”
“I didn’t say anything they hadn’t already thought of themselves.” She stood and took a few steps away from him, leaning against the fence that divided the garden from the corral.
“You must take greater care,” he said.
“What are you afraid of? That if I speak the truth, you’ll lose your good standing in the Church? That you’ll not be chosen as one of the Quorum of Twelve? Or that I’ll be tried and convicted of apostasy and, because of me, you will lose your priesthood? Are honor and dignity and moral purpose less important?”
“You sound like you don’t care what happens to us.”
She stared at him for a moment. The frogs hushed in a singular voice as if an animal of prey were near. The only sound was the sizzle of moths hitting the flame inside the lantern.
“Maybe I care too much,” she said.
He stepped closer, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“I will do anything to save my children—all of them—the twins, Little Grace, Joey, and Spence. Coal too, if he were here.”
“You won’t save any of them if they’re taken away from you.”
Though the air was balmy, a chill traveled up her spine. “You would never let that happen.”
“There could come a time when I would have no choice.” He took hold of her shoulders. “You don’t realize the seriousness of this. You might as well come right out and tell me your plans.”
She slipped from his grasp, a flicker of apprehension coursing through her. “What plans?”
“Brother Foley is having you watched. There are rumors . . .” He looked up into the pale sky where stars were just beginning to appear.
“Rumors about what?”
“I can’t say.”
“That’s what your announcement is really all about. A blessing for our marriage. It’s likely Foley’s idea of keeping watch over me day and night to make sure I don’t slip away.” She attempted to laugh, but it came out in a hoarse, frightened whisper. “I suppose you plan to move back here, bringing Enid with you. You’ll make up a rotation sheet—Brigham himself probably showed you how. Fanny Stenhouse, the wife who’s divorcing him, told me all about how it works.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Gabe said gently. “You know me better than that.”
“I don’t think I know you at all.”
He ignored the barb. “Brigham trusts me more than even his closest advisors. I am to be his ambassador, his representative to places he cannot travel. I will begin a new settlement in the south of the territory. Our people are already moving there. I am to be in charge of the building of this new community. He has blessed our marriage and ordained that you will be the one chosen above my other wives to accompany me there.”
For a moment Bronwyn didn’t think she could breathe. “Go with you . . . ?” she finally managed. “Alone?”
He stepped closer, cupped her cheeks, and gently tilted her head upward. Captivated by his gaze, she felt powerless to move.
“You told me one night in Winter Quarters that if I would love you alone, you would be a wife to me.”
Her heart raced. What was he talking about? “What about Enid? And Mary Rose? I don’t understand . . .”
Still holding her face gently, he kissed her lips. “I am your husband,” he breathed, so close to her ear she could feel his breath. “Our union has been blessed again by the prophet, God’s representative on earth. He hears from God about these matters, and he has heard from God about us. We are being given a second chance to make things right in the eyes of God.”
He kissed her again, this time lingering. And then he whispered, “I beg your forgiveness for those times I have hurt you. I also ask if you will give me a chance to prove how much I care for you.”
For an instant, nay longer, she wanted to believe him. Longed to believe him. She looked into his eyes and swallowed hard.
“It will be as you’ve always wanted,” he said. “You will have me to yourself. Brigham is having a ranch house built for us on a hillside overlooking Mountain Meadows. It will be the place of new beginnings for a marriage that will last through time and all eternity, a holy place. He has been there himself, chose it with me, his adopted son, and you, my bride, in mind.”
“I can’t love you . . . I don’t love you. As long as you believe in plural marriage—that it’s the only means to reach the highest place in heaven—I cannot. As long as you say you can love three women equally—when I know, we all know, you can’t—I cannot.” She narrowed her eyes. “Tell me I am your only love, that there are no others.”
It took only a heartbeat to realize she didn’t want to know the answer. What if he told her what she’d dreamed of hearing him say? Could she bear the pain, the guilt, the disappointment in herself for not being stronger? Of betraying her best friend? The pain of it all almost became physical as she waited for Gabe to speak.
He reached out to gather her into his arms. “Surely you know by now how much I want to be with you. You are different from the others. You are the grand passion of my heart. Brother Brigham is giving us this chance to make things right, to start all over again. He wants to bless our union before we leave.”
“I can’t leave Mary Rose and Cordelia. I wouldn’t think of splitting up th
e children. No, Gabe, we can’t go with you,” she said. Fear tied her stomach into a knot.
“I need you to think about it,” he said. “It wouldn’t be forever. You will be free to come back to visit; Joey and Little Grace will be with us part-time, then we’ll bring them back to visit with Mary Rose, Cordelia, and the others. I will need to make numerous trips back and forth to present reports to Brigham. You and the children could come with me as often as you like. Think of it as a grand adventure for us all, a new beginning that in the end will bring us closer.”
Her mind raced ahead, thinking of the children, of Mary Rose, and Enid. “You would consider splitting up the children? They think of Mary Rose and me as their mothers. They love us both. You would force them to only have one of us? What about Enid?”
“There will be some adjustment for us all. But many men practicing the sacrament of plural marriage have moved their wives into separate houses. At least, those who can afford it. As for us, we’ll of course take Joey and Little Grace. Maybe Ruby or Pearl, whichever one would like to go. One of them needs to stay here to help Mary Rose with Spence.”
He looked into her eyes in that way he had, staring as if into the depths of her being, making her knees go weak. “My preference, and the prophet’s, is that we spend a few months together without the children. He suggests that if we are to bring spirit children into this physical world, as good and righteous Saints, we need to spend time alone.”
She thought of the implications, and her heart fluttered. But the fluttering didn’t bring with it a pleasant image. Nay, it was one of a battered, dying butterfly trying to take flight, only to see the ground nearing as it fell.
“I don’t believe you’re telling me the whole truth. You love our children. You wouldn’t put four hundred miles between them and us without a reason. You know the heartache it would cause. They’re still not over Coal’s disappearance. The twins, especially. How can you even consider taking one away from the other? What you suggest would be devastating for all.”