The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3)

by Lena Goldfinch

  “There’s no saving that now,” Ray muttered, crossing his arms over his chest, much like Jem imagined a judge giving a sentence. “Pup’s just going to keep after that, even if we did manage to get the stink off it.” He shook his head. “May as well get rid of it. Wasn’t much to start with.” He coughed and glanced guiltily at Annie.

  For her part, Annie let Mae slide down to the ground.

  His daughter immediately squealed and ran toward the puppy, giggling the whole way.

  Something snapped within Jem. He had to force down a laugh. It was all so...ridiculous.

  Then he saw Annie. Her face a pale papery white. One hand pressed over her mouth. The way women did when they were trying to hold themselves together.

  Was she going to cry? He didn’t think he could manage if she started weeping. He’d never been good with Lorelei’s tears either. He always felt bad, awkward, and sure as not would say just the wrong thing. It never failed. There was some quirk about a woman’s emotions that he’d never been able to grasp. Seems like they’d want you to explain their trouble away, or find a quick and easy solution—something clearly productive to get busy with—but no. It puzzled him to this day.

  Then it hit him. That was all she had.

  One dress, her boots, whatever underthings hadn’t been ruined by the pup.

  He supposed she could be excused for feeling a little upended.

  He braced himself for the tears.

  Then he heard a sound—something quite different from tears—coming from Annie. Laughter? Her hand fell from her face, and he could see. She was definitely laughing. Not crying.

  “Should we burn it then?” he asked, relieved.

  She stared back at him, seemingly stunned.

  In the next instant, a smile spread slowly across her face. She nodded. One finger to her chin: Yes, burn it. Then she was apparently overcome by mirth, hiding her laughter behind her cupped hands as if to muffle the sound.

  Jem couldn’t stop looking at her. What kind of woman could laugh at her only dress being sprayed by a skunk—and then ripped and dragged around and chewed on by a puppy, so badly it needed to be burned?

  Would Lorelei have laughed? She might have, he admitted. She just might have.

  He stroked his beard, contemplating that. Contemplating how much his life had changed in two short days. Just a few days ago, he hadn’t even known there was an Annie. Now she was here. They were married. But that didn’t change the fact that Lorelei was still gone. As if he could ever forget.

  The smell of skunk wafted over to him.

  “Well”—he grimaced and looked over at Ray—“let’s do this then. Ray?”

  FIFTEEN

  Mae ran around with the puppy as Annie watched the fire eating away at her dress. Jem and Ray had set then whole thing in a blackened cut-off kettle, about waist high on her, if she’d had the nerve to approach it. Instead she stood back at what she judged to be a fair distance and watched. The fabric hadn’t caught very quickly at first, but seemed to fight off the flames, unwilling to cooperate. Now, plumes of choking smoke rose up from the drum. Trails of black and white twisted together as they climbed high into the sky and faded to nothing.

  The smoke wafted toward her at times and filled her nose. It filled her mouth too, bringing with it the bitter taste of burnt charcoal and ash.

  She wondered if Ben’s old clothes were absorbing the smell too.

  Would she go to bed tonight with the smell in her hair, the taste still in her mouth? Was that all she’d have left of her dress?

  It was funny how something that was once so important could turn to nothing just like that. Gone. No longer important. A dress that was once all she had left of her life in Tennessee, and now it was useless. Making embers. It was like her old life going up with it.

  Should have made her sad.

  Should have bothered her more to lose it.

  On another day she might’ve taken time to wonder why it didn’t. She even vaguely realized it should have meant more.

  But all she felt was sort of free instead. Even standing there in Ben’s awful clothes that had made her so upset earlier. Even when Ben himself emerged from the stables and marched over to join them, wincing at the smell. Skunk and smothering smoke.

  “What’s that?” he asked Ray, waving his hat in front of his nose.

  “You don’t want to know,” Ray said. He shook his head, watching the kettle drum as if it were a mine full of dynamite ready to blow. He glanced cautiously at Annie, which was what he’d been doing since the moment she’d stepped off the back porch and seen the puppy dragging her dress around in the dirt. Cautious. Waiting for her to do something. What, she wasn’t sure. Cry, perhaps? He seemed incapable of relaxing with her standing there. Maybe she should have gone back inside, but she couldn’t make herself move away. She had to see it through to the end. All of it. Till the last of the fire burned down.

  Ben looked at her too. He smirked slightly at the sight of her in his old trousers and nightshirt and all, then grimaced at the stench in the air and moved on. It may have been her imagination, but he seemed to skirt wide past Jem and avoided meeting his eyes. He headed back to the stables muttering something about his mare, whom Annie gathered was named Peaches, and whom she also gathered was expecting a foal. He seemed concerned, but reluctant to talk to Jem about it. Jem, she knew, would’ve helped out if he was needed. She knew him enough by now to know that.

  For his part, Jem simply watched Ben walk away, then turned his attention back to the fire. He stirred the drum up with a long stick, giving it air to breathe.

  The flames flared up at him, and he stepped back neatly, avoiding getting burned. Or catching his beard on fire.

  Now that would’ve been a shame. Annie cared neither here nor there about beards, but she wouldn’t like to see Jem get hurt.

  She watched as Ray joined Jem by the fire and said something to him she couldn’t hear, but she didn’t miss the way they both glanced over at her.

  Pretending a disinterest in the men’s conversation she didn’t feel, Annie bent to “talk” to Mae and the puppy. The little girl rattled on excitedly about how the puppy was going to be called Sugar now. Annie smiled and scratched the puppy behind its ears. She made a long S sound—her best approximation of the word “sugar.” Mae beamed at her.

  Annie stayed low and kept patting Sugar.

  Mostly, her ear was fixed in the men’s direction.

  “Creed?” the older man was asking now, pulling his chin back a bit. She had the impression he was rejecting the notion, but there was something thoughtful in his gaze too, some sense that maybe he was hearing a true story. “Not Creed.”

  “It was a bad situation, Ray,” Jem replied quietly, poking at the fire. “You would’ve done the same.”

  They were talking about her, she sensed. It seemed Ray was questioning Jem about how he got stuck with her.

  “Would I?” Ray asked, shaking his head skeptically.

  “I think you would’ve.”

  “Don’t be so sure, Jem. Don’t be so sure.” Ray glanced at her again and went inside, probably back to his kitchen, where it seemed he spent most of his time.

  Annie was left crouching next to Mae, with the puppy lolling between them, panting from its exertions. It had something else now, batting at it with its front paws. Looked like a dirt-colored ball. Where it had found that, Annie didn’t know.

  Jem’s gaze turned thoughtful and sort of inward, like he wasn’t truly looking at her anymore. Was he regretting his decision to help her?

  He threw the stick into the drum.

  The fire was done. Her ruined dress gone.

  Annie lowered her gaze and found Mae staring at her strange attire with a marked curiosity. She mimicked Annie posture, crouching back on her heels. Annie forced a light smile and took the little girl’s hand, gesturing that they should return to the kitchen together.

  “You can choose some clothes from Lorelei’s things.” Jem came up be
side her unexpectedly, making her jump. He practically towered over her. “I’ll track them down just as soon as I get this pup cleaned up. Ray’s got breakfast waiting for you,” he added encouragingly.

  Annie nodded, suddenly shy. Unable to look up at him.

  She began to rise and suddenly Jem’s hand was in hers, supporting her as she stood.

  Warm tingles swam up her arm and filled her everywhere. Their eyes met, and in his she found a flicker of awareness that stunned her. He was looking at her. He saw her.

  Annie was struck anew by the color of his eyes. A sort of smoky blue, not unlike the sky before a storm. How dark his brows and eyelashes were. She studied him, rapt. They were quite attractive eyes. She felt herself falling into them, everything else fading away. Time stopped. It was as if they shared a passing of souls. A fanciful thought. As if you could share your soul with someone just looking at them. Nevertheless, the feeling lingered.

  His hand around hers was so warm, so strong. A hard-working kind of hand. A man’s hand. Lightly dusted with hair across the back of his fingers. Tanned.

  She ran her thumb over the back of his, marveling at the rush of sensation that small motion brought. How had she never realized how sensitive her thumb was?

  And then she had the almost irresistible urge to bring his hand up to her face and brush a kiss across his knuckles. Not that she would ever do something so daring, so improper and—and forward. She shouldn’t have even touched his thumb in such a way. Why, it was practically intimate the way it had felt, like something a real wife might do.

  But he was a stranger. For one short moment it might’ve felt like she’d known him forever, but that wasn’t how it was between them.

  Oh, Lord. She’d touched him.

  Annie blushed fiercely, becoming aware of Jem’s gaze on her, watching her in a rather fascinated fashion. She watched as his expression shifted through a range of emotions: surprise, confusion, and finally a shuttered expression she couldn’t read.

  In a similar way his gaze registered awareness of her regard.

  He dropped her hand as if it had become a hot ember and stepped back.

  He scooped the puppy up under one arm and muttered something about doing nothing this morning but cleaning up after it. The ball was bobbling about from Sugar’s mouth, a bit of cloth nipped between its sharp puppy teeth. Annie saw now that the ball was not a ball at all, but a bundled pair of socks that had been tossed through the dirt and turned brown with it. Her socks. Or rather, Ben’s old socks. Annie briefly closed her eyes in recognition, effectively releasing herself from the spell of Jem’s beautiful eyes and all her fanciful thoughts about souls passing back and forth in a simple gaze. The truth was, she was a woman standing there in bare feet, dressed in the world’s most awful clothes.

  What could Jem have possibly seen of interest in her?

  Nothing but her own wild imagination, that’s what.

  “Ray has food,” he said, as if forgetting he’d already told her that. “Go on and eat. I’ll fetch one of Lorelei’s trunks from the attic as soon as I get back from cleaning up this critter.” He raised the puppy slightly, then turned and strode off toward the stables. The faint scent of skunk hung in the air. Probably still clung to Sugar’s fur too. Did he intend to bathe the pup in a trough? Annie wondered. Or maybe he intended to give Sugar a good rubdown and brush out her fur. She wrinkled her nose, hoping whatever he did worked.

  Mae watched after her father, then faced Annie with a sense of purpose radiating off her.

  She reached out and tugged at Annie’s trouser leg. “Mae some.”

  By which Annie took to mean the little girl wanted a pair of trousers too.

  She shook her head regretfully, wishing she could explain that they weren’t proper clothes for a young lady. That they weren’t proper for her either.

  Annie sighed in defeat and pantomimed a spoon in her hand bringing imaginary food to her mouth. Her stomach responded with a sharp rumble.

  Mae frowned at first, obviously not pleased by Annie’s refusal to get her a pair of trousers too, but then she brightened.

  “Spoon.” She beamed, eating from her own imaginary spoon. How easily she’d accepted Annie’s inability to speak. “I show you,” Mae added, with an air of importance.

  Already the little girl knew Annie was different from other adults and had adjusted her actions and speech accordingly.

  As if it weren’t strange at all.

  It was really quite amazing, Annie thought as Mae put her hand in hers and skipped toward the back porch, tugging Annie along laughing helplessly behind her. For a moment she almost forgot she was wearing boy’s clothes, almost forgot she didn’t look anything near proper. Almost.

  Annie could feel Jem’s gaze resting on her and wished she had a dress, something she’d look pretty in. Although perhaps that was too much to hope for.

  SIXTEEN

  Jem found Lorelei’s trunks in the back of the attic, just as Ray had speculated. Ben must’ve brought them up, or perhaps some of the younger ranch hands had. Why else wouldn’t Ray know exactly where they were?

  The scent of old things had met his nose as soon as he’d pushed open the attic door. It had that smell of old barns and cellars, of places closed off for a long time. The air sat around heavy-like. He almost wished he didn’t have to breathe, but he couldn’t hold his breath forever. He took in a mouthful of stale air, full of dust motes.

  A bad memory came up of the old shanty he’d shared as a boy with his pa, only here there was no stench of dried-up whiskey spilled on the floor.

  Jem pushed the memory aside with a grimace of distaste and held the lantern aloft to light his way, following a winding path past trunks, wooden crates, and old furniture.

  The space ran half the length of the house above what Jem supposed was now Ben’s wing. The ceiling had open wood rafters, from which dusty spider webs hung in various states of use and disuse. It was tall enough to stand in, but only just, giving the overall feeling of entering a darkened house built for a very small person.

  To the far end, near where Jem figured Ben’s parents’ room would’ve been below, he came upon what almost seemed to be a parlor room. There were pieces of furniture laid out in a seating arrangement, even what looked to be a complete tea set on a cart. Jem wondered if they were Mrs. Castle’s old things, from days before the styles changed. Perhaps a grandmother’s items lovingly kept but not displayed downstairs. It had that feel about it.

  Jem set his lantern on a carved walnut side table with spindly claw legs, which was set next to a rather fancy little settee covered in a richly patterned brocade, featuring a forest scene of harts standing stock-still and a hunter on horseback. Though of superior quality, it looked like mice had gotten to it over the years, for one corner had been ripped open and bits of grayed white stuffing dangled to the floor.

  What must it be like to have treasures from grandmothers to store up, or from a mother even?

  Jem felt very foreign standing there. His life bore no resemblance to this place—his past life anyway.

  But this was the life he’d hoped Mae would have, what her mother would’ve wanted her to have someday, had she lived. And he was going to give it to her. That was why he’d returned after all, wasn’t it? Despite all the fortifying talk to himself about helping Ben out with the horses. There was that too, but now that he was around Ben...

  Well, that notion had soured a bit.

  Ben couldn’t stand the sight of him.

  Sweat trickled into Jem’s eyes. The salt burned, and he brushed it away with his sleeve.

  Land’s sakes, was it hot up here. Hot and oppressive.

  He looked around for Lorelei’s trunks, eager to find what he needed and leave as quickly as possible.

  He recognized them then, tucked to one side of the settee under the eaves, one stacked on top of the other though there was plenty of room for them to have been stored side by side. The two of them were nearly identical, except for one
being slightly smaller, both made of navy blue leather with polished brass fittings. Lorelei had always appreciated pretty things, even in her luggage.

  He seemed to remember the dresses and underthings being in the larger trunk, so he freed that up and opened the lid to it first. Feminine fabrics sprang up as soon as he did. Skirts, petticoats, and other fluffy white things with white ribbons and bows. Just as he’d thought.

  Things he didn’t want to see.

  His throat closed up as he reached in to run his fingers through the mess of them, stirring them up even more. They hadn’t been packed all that carefully, seeing as he’d been the one to do the packing. Lorelei would’ve taken her time and made sure everything was folded just so and packed in tissue, or whatever. He’d taken no such time, wanting only to have the task over as quickly as possible.

  Even now a wave of sadness struck him as he recalled that time.

  These were her things.

  Things she’d never wear again.

  Things that smelled faintly of cinnamon, because she’d liked to bake.

  And just like that he could see her: Lorelei standing in her kitchen, an apron tied at her waist. Delicious scents filling his nose. Daylight spilling in through the window behind her. Lorelei writing her stories. Lorelei dancing. Riding. Smiling.

  Jem pinched his nose and spun to pace away, angry with himself.

  He didn’t want to remember.

  He didn’t want to feel anything.

  Just as quickly, he turned back and slammed the lid shut, catching a bit of frilly white lace in the lid, but he ignored it and secured the latches without mercy. With an air of almost military precision, he hefted the trunk as best he could to one side and gathered up his lantern with the other, letting it hang from his fingertips so he could support the trunk.

  He couldn’t think of these things of Lorelei’s anymore.