Mail Order Ruse (Kansas Brides Series #3)

by Barbara Goss

  “I’ll see that you get to church every Sunday,” he said hesitantly, as if he were unsure of what to say next, “but Chase and I will not be accompanying you.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, “but how will I get there?”

  “I’ll give you a ride there and pick you up. You have my permission to take Dora and Olive, if they would like to go. I’ll even ask Chase if Chloe can go with you—but don’t hold your breath on that one.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Chloe will turn five in a few months, and we’re planning a party for her. I’d love your help organizing it,” he said, seemingly anxious to get off the subject of church.

  “I’d love to. How many people are we inviting?”

  “About twenty-five, unless Mary’s parents come, then twenty-seven.”

  “Mary’s parents? Chase said she was an orphan, like me.”

  “She was, originally, but was fortunate enough to be adopted as an infant by Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Somerville, of Hays. They used to live about two miles from us, but they moved after the accident. There were too many memories here for them,” he said.

  “Have they not seen their grandchild since then?”

  “They usually visit each year on her birthday,” Graham said, “but Ralph had some health problems recently, so his wife, Emma, wrote that their plans were sort of up in the air.”

  “Mary was fortunate to be adopted,” Grace said, feeling somewhat melancholy. “I was told I wasn’t adoptable owing to my health problems.”

  “What kind of health problems?”

  “According to the nuns, I was born small and extremely underweight. I had asthma, eczema, bronchitis, whooping cough, and ailed on and off for the first eight years of my life. They said they nearly lost me to the asthma when I was just an infant. Eventually, with all the illnesses behind me, I regained my health.

  “You still are very slight, but Olive will fix that. She’s a great cook, isn’t she?” he asked.

  “Not only is she a great cook,” Grace said, “but she is a lovely woman.”

  Graham smiled, a smile she hadn’t seen so far that day. “She is lovely, and she takes wonderful care of us all.”

  After playtime, Chase came to pick Chloe up to take her to the cemetery. As usual, Chloe threw herself into his arms and hugged him. He kissed her and passed her to Dora.

  “Would you keep Chloe for five minutes while I have a word with Miss Grace?”

  Dora nodded and took Chloe’s hand.

  Grace was surprised because he’d never sought her out before. Besides the apology outside his bedroom that night, he hadn’t spoken much to her at all.

  “Grace,” he began, “I thank you for the offer to take Chloe to church with you, but I think she might be a bit young. However, I do know the scriptures, and I know it’s my duty to instruct her in God and the Bible.” He hesitated before continuing, “Maybe next year you can take her.”

  Grace nodded. “I understand completely, and thank you Chase.”

  “Hey,” he said with a small bit of cheerfulness, “by then you’ll probably be her grandmother.”

  Was it what he had said, or how he’d said it that had rubbed Grace the wrong way? Still, it was the truth: she would be Chloe’s grandmother.

  “One would think so,” she said, sadly.

  “Has my father not set a date yet?” he asked.

  Grace shook her head. She yearned to tell him everything, to tell someone everything, like how slow moving Graham was in progressing their relationship.

  “What?” he asked. “I was under the impression it was forthcoming.”

  “So was I,” she said under her breath, but when she saw Chase’s eyebrows raise she knew he’d overheard it.

  “Would you like me to talk to him about it?” he asked, softly.

  For some reason Chase’s sincere concern brought tears to her eyes. She’d fought with how she'd felt about Graham being remiss in his courting, but to hear someone else sympathizing with her was more than she could bear. She turned her head from him quickly, so he wouldn’t see her tears.

  He followed her as she moved away from him and stood before her. “What is it? What’s wrong, Grace? Have I said something wrong?”

  All she could do was shake her head.

  He then reached for her hand and squeezed it. “If I’ve said something I shouldn’t have, please forgive me. I’m not good at this kind of thing.” Suddenly, he dropped her hand like it was a hot potato.

  “It’s nothing,” she said finally. “I guess I’m just homesick.”

  “For an orphanage?” he asked, in surprise.

  She didn’t answer, for she had none.

  “Listen: you’ve been so good for my Chloe, who’s my whole world, and you’ve made her the happiest little girl. For that, I’ll do anything for you. Is there anything at all that I can do? It’s sad to see Chloe’s favorite playmate crying. You’re a good person, Grace.”

  Grace smiled at him through her tearing eyes. “I love Chloe. I look forward to our playtime, and there’s nothing you can do, but thank you.”

  “I want you to remember this: if you ever need anything—anything at all—you come to me, do you hear? I owe you, Grace. You’ve woken me up to the fact that I was a horrible father—”

  “Oh, no!” Grace interrupted. “You weren’t.”

  He reached out and took her hand again, then quickly dropped it. “Like I said, this is awkward for me.” Chase seemed to be struggling for words. “I was not being a good father by letting my grief affect my daughter’s life. You were right: she needs fun and gaiety, not a sad, morose father. I was being selfish.”

  “No—” Grace began to say.

  “Yes. I was thinking only of my own grief and not what was best for the person I love most in the world,” he said. “I spend time with her at breakfast and at bedtime, but it was never happy times. It was just stories and talking, but now things are different, and I owe it all to you.”

  Grace didn’t know what to say, so she just mumbled, “Thank you.”

  “In fact, I was going to ask if you could join us at bedtime, and see how we do things, and maybe suggest something I can add to our ritual to make it happier for Chloe.”

  Grace dried her eyes and smiled. “I’d love to.”

  Chapter 7

  Grace walked up the stairs to meet Chase in Chloe’s room. He was just helping her slide the nightgown over her head when she walked in.

  “Miss Grace! Miss Grace! Look!” she squealed and held up a straw doll dressed in baby clothes. “This is Sadie.”

  “How do you do, Miss Sadie,” Grace said.

  “Oh, she isn’t Miss Sadie; she’s just Sadie,” Chloe said as she picked up another straw doll. “This one is Winifred, like my papa’s horse.”

  “They’re very pretty dolls.” She looked up at Chase to find a proud smile on his face.

  “Papa and I play dolls together,” she said. “He gets Winifred.”

  Grace looked up to see an embarrassed Chase, and said, “I think that’s brilliant! Not every father plays dolls with his little girl. You’re very lucky.”

  “Winifred’s always sad,” Chloe said.

  “She won’t be anymore,” Chase said. “Now, which of our games would you like to play tonight? I asked Miss Grace to join us. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, Papa! I love Miss Grace.” She ran over and put her arms around Grace’s legs and hugging them, then she walked back to her father. “I’d like to play tiddlywinks,” she said. She turned to Grace. “It’s easy, and I can show you how to play it.”

  “I hope you can, because I’ve never played it before,” Grace said.

  Chase brought down a box from the shelf.

  “We have to sit on the floor,” Chloe said to Grace, as she plopped down on the floor, and crossed her legs.

  Grace slipped down on her knees. “All right. I can do this. Now what?”

  Chase spilled the tiddlywinks out of a cup onto the wooden floo
r, and he let Chloe explain the game to Grace. He kept silent, but wore an amused grin.

  Grace purposely made her tiddlywink fly off in the wrong direction. “Oops,” she’d say, and Chloe would laugh and show her again.

  “I’m sure I’ll get better at this,” Grace said.

  Chloe looked up at Grace and moved over to hug her. “I’ll teach you.” She kissed Grace’s cheek, and proceeded to teach her how to maneuver the tiddlywink, while Chase simply played normally. Finally, he caught onto what Grace was doing and he started to miss his shots, too, not because they wanted her to win, but to hear her laugh. Grace actually saw Chase laughing with them.

  After two games of tiddlywinks, Chase announced. “Story time. Can you pick a book you’d like for me to read?”

  “Oh, Papa, we only have two and I know them both by heart,” she said.

  “Well, I have more ordered, but they haven’t come in yet.” Chase took down the worn children’s book. “We’ll read about the cats again, shall we?”

  Chloe sadly said, “All right.”

  “Wait!” Grace said. “We don’t need a book.”

  “We don’t?” Chase frowned. “How can we read her a story without a book?”

  “I’ll tell her a story. Would you like that, Chloe?”

  Chloe jumped up and down, “Yes, yes, yes!”

  Chase smiled. “All right. We’ll let Miss Grace do the story tonight. Come on, jump into bed, Chloebird.”

  Chloe dove onto the bed and covered herself with the quilt before Chase or Grace could even get close to it. Grace sat at the bottom of the bed while Chase sat by Chloe’s head.

  Chloe smiled from ear to ear, anxiously awaiting a story.

  “Once upon a time,” Grace began, “there was a little girl…” Grace tapped her chin, “What should her name be?”

  “Chloe! Chloe!” the child exclaimed.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, she was named Chloe, and she had big blue eyes and hair the color of straw—but much prettier. One day, Chloe’s father told her never to climb trees because it was dangerous. Chloe told her father she would never do that. As the day grew to late afternoon, Chloe felt bored. She watched a squirrel scurry up a tree, and she thought, how much fun it would be if she could climb trees like the squirrel.”

  “Uh oh,” Chloe said.

  Grace nodded. “Yes, she was tempted. She thought she’d just climb it a little and her father would never find out. She managed to climb to the lowest branch and from up there she could see things she couldn’t see from the ground. She liked it up there, but…”

  “What? What happened, Miss Grace? Did she fall?” Chloe asked.

  “But…while she was up there, she saw her father coming her way. She didn’t know what to do. She knew she’d be in trouble if he saw her, so she stayed up there, hoping he wouldn’t see her. She saw her father shrug and walk away. He probably thought Chloe was somewhere else, playing.”

  “Then what happened?” Chloe asked.

  She saw the look of love Chase gave Chloe and how happy he seemed when he saw her so happy.

  “Well, what happened next was she tried to get down from the tree before her father came looking for her again. She wiggled,” Grace wiggled her upper body, “she squirmed,” Grace imitated that, as well, “but she didn’t go anywhere. Chloe was stuck in the tree.”

  “Oh, dear,” Chloe clutched her quilt. “What happened then?”

  “It started to get dark.”

  Chloe sighed with wide eyes. “How’d she get down?”

  “She couldn’t. Pretty soon her father came out of the house and he called her,” Grace put her hands to her mouth and called, “‘Chloe. Chloe.’ But there was no answer.”

  “Why not? Why didn’t she answer him, Miss Grace?”

  “Why do you think she didn’t answer him, Chloe?”

  Chloe’s face took on a look of thoughtfulness. “Maybe because she was afraid he’d be angry with her?”

  “That’s exactly right. But she did want to get down. It was dark, and she didn’t want to be left up there all night. She had to make a choice—get scolded or stay in the dark all night up in a tree.”

  “What did she do?” Chloe asked.

  “Just then, an owl hooted from above her in the tree, and it scared Chloe. So she made a quick choice. She answered her father and said, ‘Here I am Father.’”

  “Was he angry?”

  “Not at first. You see, he loved Chloe so much he was relieved and happy. He felt joyful to have found her, because he thought she was lost.”

  Grace noticed she even had Chase interested. “He reached up, and lifted her from the tree, and he hugged her. He told her over and over again how much he loved her. He, got just a little bit angry with her because she’d disobeyed him.

  “He asked her if she knew why he didn’t want her to climb trees. She said she didn’t. He hugged her and said, ‘Because I was afraid you’d fall out of the tree and get hurt, and when you hurt, I hurt.’

  “Chloe promised her father never disobey him again.”

  Chloe smiled. “Another story, please, one more.”

  “I can only tell one story a night, Chloe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m tired. It’s bedtime for Papa, and Miss Grace too.”

  “I liked your story.”

  “I know you did, and I’ll try to think up another one for the next time,” Grace said.

  “Oh, no. You can tell me that one again and again,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Chase said, “but not tonight.”

  “Time for kisses,” Chase said, bending over to kiss her forehead. “Goodnight Chloebird.”

  “Goodnight, Papa. Can I get a kiss from Miss Grace, too?”

  Chase gave Grace a strange look, but then nodded.

  She bent over and kissed her on the forehead. When she looked up she saw a pained expression on Chase’s face. She quickly scurried to the door, waved and disappeared.

  Though Chase was happy with Grace and how she had brought fun back into their lives, her kissing Chloe goodnight had bothered him, and he couldn’t figure out why.

  As he undressed for bed, it finally dawned on him why it had bothered him so much‒the goodnight kisses were something he and Mary should be doing together, not him and Grace.

  It should be Mary!

  He sat down on the bed and nearly cried.

  It should be Mary.

  He liked Grace well enough, and he’d felt sincerely bad earlier in the day when he saw her crying. Something was bothering her, and he felt she was too kind a person to be so unhappy. Yet he'd felt awkward when he'd touched her hand. He wanted to touch her in a soothing way, but when he did, it didn’t feel right.

  It should be Mary.

  Graham watched Grace scurry up the stairs to join Chase and Chloe. He smiled at Olive and winked.

  Chapter 8

  Most evenings, Graham asked Grace to walk with him, but some nights he took the larger carriage and rode into town. Grace often wondered where he went. He always dressed up and wore something with a manly, pungent aroma. The thought crossed her mind that perhaps that was how he could always behave so properly; he had a lover in town, possibly a saloon woman. She shrugged it off, since those relationships never amounted to anything and she was the betrothed. She’d just have to make sure he stopped his trips after the ceremony—if there ever was one.

  She decided to confront Olive, since Grace felt she was trustworthy.

  She found the housekeeper in the kitchen. “Olive, has Graham said anything to you about setting a wedding date?”

  The housekeeper quickly spun around from the sink where she was washing dishes and glared at Grace, as if the question had surprised her, but then she smiled and said, "I would guess it's coming very soon." She turned and went back to her dishes.

  “Our relationship doesn’t seem to be moving forward, Olive. Where does Graham go all dressed up some nights?” Grace asked.

  “As the house
keeper, you know I don’t ask questions about personal things as it’s none of my concern,” Olive said.

  “Nonsense,” Grace said. “You are like family to the Eastons.”

  Olive smiled. “I’m very fond of them. I’ve worked for them for almost ten years now, but I still don’t ask personal questions like, ‘Where are you going?’ to Graham or Chase.”

  “Oh. Put that way, I suppose it would be unethical,” Grace said.

  Grace left Olive to go in search of Chloe for their playtime. She hadn’t spoken to Chase in days, because when he came to collect Chloe, he usually just nodded or waved, as he carried her away. Chloe always ran right to him, so there was no need for them to speak. For the past week she’d worried she’d overstepped her bounds with Chloe's bedtime activity. Maybe he'd felt she was overshadowing him. He hadn’t asked her to join them since that night, even though each day Chloe begged for another story and for her to come up at bedtime. She was running out of excuses to tell Chloe as to why she couldn’t make it. Unless he invited her, she couldn’t possibly join them.

  When Sunday came, Grace donned a new gown and hat and came down to breakfast to find Dora had also dressed for church. Olive wasn't similarly dressed. The men and Chloe were already eating.

  Grace took a seat. “You aren’t going with us, Olive?”

  “I’ve already put the chicken in the oven, and I need to baste it and peel the potatoes—”

  “Where I come from,” Grace said, gazing at the men with a frown, “Sunday is a day of rest. No one works. Certainly sandwiches would do on Sunday so you could have a day of rest, Olive.”

  Chase and his father exchanged guilty looks.

  After an embarrassed pause, Graham said, “You’re right, Grace. Starting next Sunday, we’ll have sandwiches so Olive can go to church.”

  Grace smiled at Olive who mouthed a thank you.

  Graham turned to Chase. “I have a calf birthing, and it looks to be a difficult one. Would you mind dropping the women off at church and then picking them up if I’m still busy with the birthing?”