The Bride Price (Misled Mail Order Brides Book 1)

by Ruth Ann Nordin

  ***

  By the time Owen pulled his wagon up to Sep’s farm, Angela had fallen asleep. Sep wasn’t surprised. She had started yawning as soon as Owen left Rick’s house. He had put his arm around her shoulders to support her so she wouldn’t fall over when she started to doze off. He could only guess how long she’d been up. If she came in on a train earlier that day, then she could have been up for days.

  The hour was well past midnight. Judging by the position of the moon in the sky, it was almost two. At this point, even he was ready to fall into bed and get to sleep.

  Owen stopped the wagon in front of his house and set the brake. “I’ll bring her carpetbag inside.”

  With a nod, Sep gathered Angela into his arms and carefully stepped down from the wagon as Owen retrieved her luggage. Following Owen up the porch to his front door, Sep did his best not to wake her up. As soon as Owen opened the door, Sep’s dog, an American Foxhound named Fred, came rushing over to them.

  Fred let out an excited bark, and Angela stirred in Sep’s arms. “Shh…” Sep told Fred. “You need to be quiet. She’s asleep.”

  Fred quieted down and backed up so that Sep could carry Angela across the parlor and up the stairs, Owen following close behind. Fred, meanwhile, followed Owen.

  Sep went to his bedroom and placed Angela on the bed. Owen set the carpetbag in the center of the room. While Sep removed her boots, Angela opened her eyes and looked over at Sep.

  He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “You’re home. You’re safe here.”

  She gave him a nod and then closed her eyes. It seemed that she had fallen back to sleep.

  He glanced over at Owen, who was standing in the doorway. Sep straightened up and went over to him.

  “Is there anything else you need?” Owen whispered.

  Sep shook his head. “No. I’ll be fine. You should get on back to the jailhouse and take care of those men.”

  “Oh, I will. Sep, I want to thank you for marrying Angela. I know you’ll be good to her.” He paused then added, “In all of my years of being a lawman, I’ve never seen anyone try to sell women off in an auction. Those women must’ve been scared. It’s nice to know that they’ll be alright.”

  “I can’t guarantee Mark or Anthony will want to marry the other two.”

  “I’m sure they will. They’re Larsons, and Larsons can be depended on to do the right thing.” He gave Sep’s shoulder a kind pat. “I’ll see you around.”

  Sep went downstairs to see Owen out. As Owen led his wagon off the property, Sep let his dog take care of business.

  Shortly after Joel and April moved out, Sep brought his things over to the large bedroom since it had the biggest bed in the house. Because the bed was big, he had let Fred sleep on it, too. But now that Angela was his wife, the spot next to him now belonged to her. He could only hope Fred would understand.

  When Fred came back into the house, he knelt down and petted the dog. “I know I didn’t have time to warn you that someone else was coming to live with us, but she was in real trouble. She needed someone to marry her right away. I hate to tell you this, but from now on, you’re going to have to sleep on the floor next to the bed.”

  The dog panted in excitement and wagged his tail.

  “I’m going to assume you’re alright with the new sleeping arrangements,” Sep said, giving the dog another pat on the head.

  Sep went back up the stairs, Fred on his heels. Sep went into his old bedroom, retrieved a blanket, and set it on the floor next to the bed. Sep patted the blanket, and Fred rested on it.

  “Good boy,” Sep whispered. “I’ll give you an extra treat tomorrow at breakfast.”

  After he gave the dog another pat, he stood up and took off his shirt and pants. As was his habit, he left his drawers on. He didn’t know how many people slept in their underwear, but at night, he had a tendency to get hot. If he wore anything else, he would sweat the whole night away, even though the window was open. He only hoped Angela wouldn’t panic when she woke up and saw that he wasn’t fully dressed.

  He went to the bed and got into it, careful not to wake her.

  She mumbled something, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

  He was tempted to lift the veil so he could get a better look at her face. But he didn’t. Maybe in the morning when she saw the scars on his back, she would feel better about her own scars. The only difference between them was that he could hide his with a shirt, and she needed to hide hers with a veil.

  He closed his eyes and slowly exhaled. Now that the activities of the day had caught up to him, he realized how exhausted he was. Usually, he would count backwards until he fell asleep, and most of the time, he made it from 500 on down to 250. Tonight, however, he didn’t even make it to 450 before he dozed off to sleep.

  Chapter Five

  When Angela woke up, she was aware of sunlight. Morning. It was already morning. She opened her eyes and right away regretted it because the morning light was directly on her.

  She turned onto her side, and that was when she realized she was in a strange room. She didn’t recognize the old dresser, the old chair, or even the dog that was sleeping on the rug by the bed. The only thing she recognized was the carpetbag she owned that was by the dresser. She was ready to bolt out of the bed and run right out the door when someone behind her mumbled something she couldn’t make out.

  Looking over her shoulder, she saw a man lying on his back, asleep. She almost screamed, but then she realized she had seen him before. He was the nice man from last night who had helped rescue her, Velma, and Natalie. Had it not been for him, she would be auctioned off to the highest bidder today. Sep. That was his name. Sep Wilson. And she had married him.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. So she had not been abducted and taken to a strange place, after all. She didn’t remember falling asleep on the way here from the judge’s house, but she had been so tired after everything that had happened yesterday, she wasn’t surprised she did. Her parents often said she was a sound sleeper—that it would take God himself to wake her up—and now she knew they had not been exaggerating.

  She didn’t remember Sep bringing her to this bed. She didn’t remember Sep taking off her boots. She reached up and touched her face. Was her veil still there?

  It was. Good.

  She knew she would have to show him her face sooner or later, but she really wanted to do that after she warned him. He wasn’t going to like what he saw.

  She was surprised she slept so well with the thing on. The veil wasn’t all that comfortable. Sometimes it made it hard for her to breathe, and it made her face and neck sweaty. She’d love to take it off. But did she dare?

  What if Sep woke up before she had time to put it back on? She took another look over at Sep to see just how deep in sleep he was. She leaned toward him and noted the way his eyes were closed. If she listened hard enough, she could make out his breathing. He seemed to be in a very deep sleep. Perhaps, she might get away with not wearing the veil for a small period of time.

  Just as she was about to reach up and take it off, Sep rolled onto his side so that he was facing away from her. At once, she saw scars lining his back. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to them. They were haphazardly put there, and there were many of them. Eyebrows furrowed, she lifted the blanket that was tucked under his arm and saw that the scars went all the way down to his drawers.

  What had happened to him? His scars were not at all like the ones she had. Hers had been due to a fire, but his were due to something else. Maybe a thick twig from a tree? A whip?

  She shivered and let the blanket fall back into place. She’d never seen anything like that before, and she wished she hadn’t seen this, either.

  From the rug, the dog whimpered. She turned her attention to the animal. The dog got up from his spot and went over to her. At first, she didn’t know what to do. Not all dogs were friendly.

  The dog put his head on her knee and looked up at her with the sweetest eyes she
had ever seen. Smiling, she petted him. The dog was well behaved. In fact, he was one of the best behaved dogs she had ever seen.

  She wondered if he needed to go outside and take care of business. She glanced over at Sep. Would he mind it if she took his dog outside?

  After a moment’s debate, she got up from the bed, slipped on her boots, and led the dog out of the room. She gave a quick scan of the hallway, noting the other two bedrooms on this level, before she followed the dog down the stairs. Once she made it to the first level of the house, she crossed the parlor and went into the kitchen.

  The dog waited expectantly at the kitchen door. Well, that proved she had made the right decision in letting him go outside to relieve his bladder. She opened the door and let him out.

  Then, curious about her new home, she stepped out onto the porch. There was a barn not too far from where she was standing, and next to the barn was a fenced-in pasture where three cows and two horses were eating grass. And on the other side of the barn, she saw a henhouse.

  From the looks of it, Sep owned a lot of land because she didn’t see anyone else’s house. She went down the porch steps and went to the other side of her new home, and as she suspected, there wasn’t any other house in sight for miles from this angle, either. Which meant, if Sep didn’t mind her scars, she could take off her veil all the time. She would only have to wear it when she was in town.

  That would be wonderful. It would be nice to be able to go freely around this property without worrying that she might offend somebody by the way she looked.

  “Angela? Are you out here?”

  She turned to the sound of Sep’s voice and saw him rounding the corner of the house.

  Sep was wearing the same pants that he’d had on the day before, but he was wearing a new shirt. “When I woke up, you weren’t with me. I thought maybe you had second thoughts and was on your way back to town,” he said.

  “No,” she replied. “I came down here to take the dog out so he could relieve his bladder. While I was at it, I figured I would take a look around my new home.” Her cheeks warmed. It was one thing to think of this place as her home, but saying it aloud made it more real.

  He crossed the yard and stopped once he was by her side. “What do you think?”

  “I like it. You have a lot of privacy out here. In my hometown, I lived close to other people. I couldn’t do anything without someone knowing about it. It’s nice to know that when I go outside and do something, someone isn’t going to be watching.”

  He gave her a charming grin. “Did you have neighbors who tattled on you?”

  Though he couldn’t see it because of the veil, a slight smile crossed her face. “I never got in any serious trouble, but yes, there were a couple of neighbors who told on me when I wasn’t perfect.”

  His eyes lit up in interest. “What kinds of things did you do?”

  “When I was a child, I would go over to a neighbor’s yard to snatch a few apples that had fallen off her tree. It wasn’t like she was going to eat them. She never did. But if someone saw me taking them, my parents would hear about it, and then they would let me know that they didn’t like me doing it.”

  “That makes no sense. If she wasn’t going to eat them, why did you get in trouble?”

  She shrugged. “I guess it’s because she didn’t want anyone touching them.”

  “What else did you do when you were little?”

  “I used to climb trees all the time. The boys did it, but for some reason, no one liked girls doing it. I tried to be sneaky and not get caught, but most of the time, someone found me.”

  He shook his head. “What a shame. A girl should be able to climb trees if she wants to.”

  Before he thought her motives had always been good, she added, “Sometimes when I climbed trees, I would take one of my neighbor’s cats with me. My parents didn’t want a pet, and the cat was the closest thing I had to one. The cat was always running around that area anyway, but whenever that cat got in the tree, it didn’t like to come back down. I never had trouble getting down, but the cat would always get stuck. The cat’s owner didn’t like that.”

  He chuckled. “Are you telling me you had a spark of mischief in you?”

  “Only a tiny one.”

  “What were you doing while you were in the trees?”

  “Daydreaming, mostly.”

  “What did you daydream about?”

  Her face flushed. “Silly things. The kinds of things girls daydream about.”

  His lips curled up into a teasing smile. “Like what?”

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought her face turned the brightest shade of red it’d ever been. It was a good thing her veil was hiding it.

  “I won’t laugh.” He put his hand over his heart. “I promise.”

  She still couldn’t tell him. It was silly that she used to dream about being a wife and mother.

  Probably realizing she wasn’t going to answer the question, he said, “I dreamt of silly things, too. When I was a kid, I used to imagine that I could fly like a bird. One time, I even went up into the barn loft and jumped down from it. I thought if I flapped my arms fast enough, I would fly.”

  She gasped. “Did you get hurt?”

  “No. I got lucky. I landed in a pile of hay that my father had just raked into the barn. He wasn’t all that happy about it. He had just taken the time to rake all of the hay into a really neat pile. When I fell into it, the hay scattered everywhere.”

  She laughed. “Oh, no!”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Once she stopped laughing, she said, “I bet your father would rather have had you unharmed than have the neat pile of hay.”

  “You wouldn’t have known it by the way he yelled at me.”

  Wondering if his father had been the one to cause the scars on his back, she asked, “Did he hurt you?”

  “No. My father was a good man. He was the kind of man who would give another person the shirt off his back.” He hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Did you see the scars on my back?”

  She almost said no, but starting off her marriage with a lie didn’t seem like a good idea. She cleared her throat and nodded.

  “My father didn’t put those scars there,” Sep said. “My sister’s first husband did. He was a drunk. It didn’t take much to upset him. If the meal wasn’t cooked right, if the horses were neighing too loudly, if his chair wasn’t positioned just right, or if one of us happened to drop something that belonged to him, he would get into a violent rage. It took me a long time to get over the things he did. And he was mean to her, too, though he never was as mean to her as he was to me. I wasn’t all that upset when he died. In fact, I was relieved, but I suspect my sister was much more so. She’s much better off now because she has a husband who treats her better.” He cleared his throat. “I only say all of this because you don’t have to be self-conscious about the scars that are under your veil.”

  Without thinking, her hands went to the veil covering most of her face. “How did you know about them?”

  “I saw them last night when you tripped on that rock in the livery stable. I bent down to get it out of your way, and when I looked up, I saw the scars under the veil.”

  “If you saw the scars, then why did you marry me?”

  “I married you because of the scars. We have something in common.”

  “But I got mine because I got caught in a fire. I was seven, and I was playing in my uncle’s barn. My cousin dropped the lantern by accident, and my uncle didn’t find me in time. The right side of my face, neck, and part of my right leg got burned.”

  “I would much rather have scars because of a fire than because my first brother-in-law was a jerk.”

  She thought over his words and realized he was right. She would rather have her scars due to a fire, too. Her scars were painful because of people’s reactions to them, not from getting them.

  Sep reached up to her veil. “Do you mind if I take it off?”

  Despite the f
act that he knew what to expect, she hesitated. But something in his eyes—something tender and kind—prompted her to lower her hands and let him remove it.

  When he had taken it away from her face, he smiled. “It’s nice to see all of your face. You’re a pretty woman.”

  “But… But my scars.”

  “Are hardly noticeable.” He brought his fingers up to her right cheek and traced her scars, his touch so gentle she could hardly feel it. “How far do the scars go again?”

  His fingers had reached the collar of her dress, so he wasn’t able to go further down than what her clothing allowed. “They go down my neck and to my right shoulder. I also have some scars on my lower right leg.”

  “And the people back in your hometown… They were disgusted by them?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t wear the veil there since they already knew about them. I only put the veil on for the trip out here.”

  “Were you planning on telling the man you were going to marry about them?”

  Now came the hard part. She had to be honest with him. He had not been as shocked by her scars as she had expected him to be, and that was a very nice surprise. However, his reaction to what she was going to admit next might not be so pleasant. She took a deep breath. “I wasn’t planning to tell him until after we married, and to be honest, I was planning to hide my face for as long as possible.”

  “You wouldn’t have been able to hide it for too long. Some of the scars run down your neck and are on your leg. He was going to find out about them when you two were in bed.”

  “I figured we would be intimate at night, and if the kerosene lamp was out and the curtains were drawn shut, he wouldn’t see them.”

  His eyes widened. “I hadn’t thought of that. I have to admit, that’s pretty clever.”

  “Are you upset with me?”

  “Why would I be upset?”

  “Because I was being dishonest. I was planning to lie for as long as possible.”

  His expression softened. “Only to avoid being hurt. Just how did those people back in your hometown treat you?”