Taming the Rancher: Mail Order Bride (Brides and Twins Book 2)

by Natalie Dean

  “But you couldn’t find a woman who would marry your grandson,” Bonnie deduced, giving voice to the obvious interpretation of facts she assembled from Mrs. Kennesaw’s account.

  “I couldn’t find a lady who would marry him,” Mrs. Kennesaw corrected, peering at Bonnie to determine whether she understood the nuances of what was said.

  Bonnie understood. “I see. And so you told your grandson that he needed to find a wife who would tolerate philandering and poker losses?

  “No! I told him that if he was going to marry a decent woman, it was time to be a man. He’s twenty-five years old, and it’s time he was married. I want to see the next generation get started here before I leave this earth. Tell me . . . I thought Bonnie was a Scottish name. How’d you end up with it?”

  “I was christened Bona, but I heard the name ‘Bonnie’ when I was still young, and I insisted that I was to be called by it.”

  Slowly, a smile spread across Mrs. Kennesaw’s lean checks. “Did you now,” she said, as if the story pleased her. “What did your parents say?”

  “My mother was displeased.”

  “And your Pa?”

  “He died when I was eight.”

  “Died? Was he sickly?”

  “No.”

  Then, because Mrs. Kennesaw was expecting an answer, Bonnie continued, “He died in a mine cave-in.”

  “Dangerous work, mining. You have brothers in the mines?”

  “Yes. And sisters married to miners.”

  “How many?”

  “There were thirteen of us. I have five brothers and seven sisters.”

  “Thirteen! All born living?”

  “Yes,” Bonnie answered, puzzled by the question.

  “Your mother is a lucky woman. I had hopes of six children; only two were born alive. Daniel, my boy, was father to the twins. He died in 1862 when they were just five. They remember him a bit. Two years later, my husband died. I reckon the War was my coal mine. My daughter, Dora, was born in 1845; that’s the year that Texas became an American state. She was never very strong, and childbirth took her and the baby she bore as well. Her husband left Texas. This is a big house. There are too many empty rooms in it. You give me hope. If your mother had that many children, then maybe those empty rooms will have children in them one day.”

  “You said you wanted to plan the wedding,” Bonnie reminded her. Thirteen children wasn’t something that sounded as inviting to Bonnie as it did to Mrs. Kennesaw, so it was wiser to distract her from the subject of her mother’s fertility.

  “And so I do, but first, I had to make sure that you’re the kind of wife that my grandson needs. He’s got a smooth tongue on him that gets him out of trouble as fast as he gets into it. He could charm the Angel Gabriel. He’s good looking; there’s not a more handsome man in town.”

  “There’s his brother. They are twins, after all.”

  “Will Henry was engaged to a girl who died last year. Some days, I think he can’t decide whether or not he died with her. He’s got a serious side to him, like his grandfather had. Zachary Taylor is all Daniel, that’s his Pa. Daniel could dance and pay court and play poker and never miss a step.”

  “And Mrs. Daniel Kennesaw? Where is she?”

  “Dead. She died after my son died; she didn’t have the strength to go on, even though she had those boys. A woman can’t let sorrow do that to her. You have to set your mind to it, that come what may, you’ll keep going. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Bonnie replied. What else was there to do? Her mother had been pregnant with Anuska, the youngest, when the word spread that the mine had caved in and all the men below were lost. She had a child in her womb and one at her breast, and eleven other children to feed, clothe, and raise, and then a dead husband to mourn. She hadn’t put it in the same words as Mrs. Kennesaw, but Mrs. Yankovich knew that there was no option but to keep going. Dying would have been surrendering, and the Yankoviches hadn’t come to America to give up.

  Chapter Six

  True to his word, Zachary Taylor, wearing a fresh shirt and a hat that he’d acquired from somewhere, invaded his grandmother’s sitting room to announce that he had the buggy outside.

  “If it’s all the same to you Grandmother, I’d like to get a little courting in before you have the wedding all planned out.”

  “Home before dark. I don’t want people talking.”

  Zachary Taylor grinned. “We’re getting married,” he pointed out. “I don’t see why you need to worry what people say.”

  “I should not wish to have people think ill of me,” Bonnie informed him. “I am a stranger here, and people will be deciding what they think about me.”

  “They probably think you’re plumb crazy for marrying me,” he laughed.

  “Why should they think that?”

  Mrs. Kennesaw was listening to the exchange with interest, her eyes traveling from Bonnie to her grandson as the speaker shifted.

  “I’ll explain in the buggy,” he said. “If we stay in here talking, there won’t be time for a buggy ride. By now, Grandmother has told you all my sins, and probably gotten you afraid to be with me.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said, getting to her feet.

  “She has five brothers, Zachary Taylor. I expect they’ve taught her a thing or two about importunate young men.”

  “Five brothers!”

  “She has seven sisters.”

  “Are they all as pretty as you?” he asked, sweeping her with a long, surveying glance that showed his appreciation of her appearance.

  “Three are married,” she answered.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “My brothers-in-law seem to be pleased.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” he told her, amused by the diversionary way she responded to his query.

  “She certainly has, Zachary Taylor Kennesaw, but as usual, you failed to realize it. She’s a smart woman, my boy and you hold on tight to her because now that she’s in Texas, she’s going to attract a fair share of attention if you take your eyes off her.”

  “It’s generally not my eyes that you’re fussing about,” he said. “But I’m more than happy to hold on tight, Grandmother,” he answered. “Now, if there’s nothing more that you two ladies have to talk about together . . . “

  “There’s plenty more, but I suppose that she might as well get to know you before she says ‘I do.,” Mrs. Kennesaw decided. “Bonnie, you and I will talk about the wedding tomorrow. Zachary Taylor…”

  “I know. Before dark. C’mon, Miss Bonnie, before she changes her mind and locks you inside your room!”

  She couldn’t keep from laughing as he grabbed her hand and pulled her along, running out the front door as if he were serious. “In you go,” he said, putting his hands around her waist. His hands lingered. “You’re mighty pretty, Miss Bonnie. Would you slap me right now if I tried to kiss you?”

  “Your grandmother might.”

  He lifted her into the buggy. “You have to keep my secrets, or I’ll tell her you don’t know how to ride a horse.”

  “I might tell her myself,” Bonnie said when he got in the buggy.

  Zachary Taylor let the reins fall slack in his hand. Bonnie noticed that the horse stayed where he was, as if it was all the same to him. “You would?” he said, reading her expression.

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Most people are afraid of Grandmother.”

  But Bonnie didn’t find the older woman intimidating. Forthright, yes, but in the Polish neighborhood where Bonnie had grown up, the women had to face life as it was, not as frilly customs and refined artifice would have it. They humbled themselves before their God because God alone could deliver them by giving them the strength that they needed. They recognized that the mine was a tyrant that ruled their lives; they had husbands who coughed up the death from the lungs that the mines begat; they had to wrest wages from their menfolk before it was spent on the hard drink that numbed a man so
that he could go back down into the buried bowels of the earth; they watched their sons follow their fathers into the ground that could swallow them without warning. And they did it all in a country that was foreign to them, in a language that was foreign to the people who were rich from the coal that the immigrants dug out of the earth. Eldora Kennesaw was a strong woman, but she wasn’t any stronger than Babcia, who was able to make a meal out of cabbages and noodles that tasted better than anything the Fricks or the Carnegies were eating at their fine tables, and whose family had grown strong with the nourishment that she provided for them.

  “I don’t see why,” she answered.

  “You could sit a little closer. We’re courting, you know.”

  “I don’t want to shame your family.”

  “I wasn’t planning to parade through town. You’re mighty pretty,” he said again, but this time, his voice was low-pitched and husky. It was pleasant to hear. But she’d been told before that she was pretty.

  “So are you,” she said generously.

  He laughed. “Pretty? That’s not quite what I want my future wife to say.”

  “Handsome, then.”

  “That’s better.” Holding the reins with one hand, he took hold of her fingers with the other. “There’s a pretty spot by the creek that we’ll go to. We can talk and get to know each other”

  Bonnie removed her fingers from his grasp. “You’d better mind the horse,” she said.

  “This is Cabot, the horse we told you about. The one you’ll learn to ride. He’s as gentle as a kid’s pony, and he knows his way all over the town. He doesn’t need to be told.”

  Bonnie watched; the horse did seem to be able to manage on his own; Zachary Taylor’s grip on the reins was very relaxed. But she kept her hands in her lap, all the same, as the horse ambled along a quiet path.

  “Here we are,” Zachary Taylor said, pulling the buggy up in front of a creek. It looked to be wide enough for wading. If she’d been by herself, she’d have taken off her shoes, unrolled her stockings, and gotten her feet wet, but that wasn’t the sort of thing that a bride-to-be did in front of her fiancé.

  Zachary Taylor settled back in the buggy and put his arm around her shoulders. “You don’t need to sit all the way over there,” he said. “You look like you’re trying to light out for Mexico, you’re so far away from me. Stay in central Texas and scoot in a little closer.”

  His lips brushed her cheek, just the lightest of touches, but enough to make Bonnie realize that kissing Zachary Taylor would be much different from kissing any of the young men in Polish Hill. She hadn’t wanted to kiss any of them back, but Zachary Taylor was different, maybe because he knew just how close to get to her lips without actually touching them with his. Or maybe because his arm was tight and cozy around her shoulders and she could feel the strength in him, strength that she’d seen rather too much of because he’d been shirtless and sinewy when she first laid eyes on him. Or maybe it was just because there was something between a man and a woman and kissing that meant that a female had to keep her wits about her, or else what happened in a buggy seat might be too much like what happened between a husband and a wife in their bedroom.

  And that wasn’t going to happen. She’d been raised by a stern mother and schooled by the nuns, and marriage was where those things happened between a man and a woman.

  Unaware of the resolve building in Bonnie’s mind, Zachary Taylor released the reins and put his free arm around her waist, pressing his fingers against the fabric of her dress. Without taking the time to think about what she was doing, Bonnie grabbed the reins of the horse and slapped his rump. Cabot, startled by the unexpected summons to move, abandoned his leisurely nibbling on grass and took off. He wasn’t running wild, or out of control, he was heading home, but he was doing so at a much more accelerated pace than his master, who had been thrown back against the buggy seat by the sudden motion, had planned.

  Chapter Seven

  “I thought you said you didn’t know how to handle a horse,” Zachary Taylor said when Cabot brought them home, both of them a trifle breathless and slightly disheveled, but from the liveliness of the ride rather than anything improper.

  Demurely, Bonnie handed the reins back to him. “I don’t,” she answered. “But I wasn’t riding.”

  Zachary Taylor’s eyes were alight with a potent mix of amusement and desire. “Miss Bonnie,” he said, “Grandmother says I know too much about women and not enough about ladies. But I have a feeling I’m going to like learning the difference from you.”

  A stray curl had come loose from its pins. Zachary Taylor reached out to wind the curl around his little finger. “You’re mighty pretty, Miss Bonnie.” Blue-green eyes roamed around her face as if he were making sure that he remembered where he’d been. Then his eyes met hers and he grinned. It was a cocky grin, from a man who knew that he’d stirred a response in her, but it was also a grin of respect, as if a lady who guarded her virtue was an unfamiliar, but worthy, adversary.

  Later that night, in her bedroom, Bonnie found that sleep refused to come. It had been a bold, audacious sort of a day she thought, as she abandoned hope of slumber and got up to look out the window, where she could see a generous moon spilling golden light upon the quiet land. Was she in love now, just because Zachary Taylor had kissed her as she’d never been kissed before? Was it that easy to fall in love? Zachary Taylor was the sort of man that a girl dreamed of but didn’t really expect to meet, much less marry. She remembered, as if she’d been branded, the texture of his skin against her face and the dizzying closeness that had made her feel as if a kiss on the lips from him would surely make her drunk.

  She had been more fearful than she was willing to admit about being a mail-order bride. Marrying a stranger known only to her by letters and a name seemed a terrible risk. Mama, who knew of plenty of girls who had crossed the Atlantic in a crowded ship to marry men they’d never met before, was more philosophical. “No one knows what marriage will be until you’re married,” she had told her daughter, knowing that Bonnie was too stubborn to admit that she might be having second thoughts. “The priest says you’re married in the eyes of God and everyone drinks to the bride and groom to wish them happy years together. Some of the years are happy. Some not so happy. But you’ll have children and a home, and a happy man keeps you warm at night.”

  That seemed to be Mama’s recipe for marriage, Bonnie thought. No mention of runaway buggy rides because a kiss was too much temptation, or eyes that sparkled like jewels when he laughed. No mention of anything, really, but Mama loved Papa. Loved him still, even though he was gone. What kind of love was so powerful that it lasted when someone wasn’t there anymore?

  Suddenly she noticed a shadow in the moonlight as a man’s form walked across the grounds. Bonnie shrank back behind the curtains so that she wouldn’t be visible. Was it Zachary Taylor? He didn’t seem the sort of man who’d spend his nights roaming outside alone in the moonlight. It looked like him---no, she realized as the moonlight revealed his face. It was Will Henry. She wasn’t sure how she could tell the twins apart already. They looked alike, but they didn’t walk alike. Zachary Taylor’s gait revealed the pent-up energy of a man who would always choose action over inertia. Will Henry had a slower pace, as if his thoughts shackled him.

  What had Mrs. Kennesaw said? “Will Henry was engaged to a girl who died last year. Somedays, I think he can’t decide whether or not he died with her.”

  Was that the kind of love that Mama had for Papa, the kind that didn’t stop? Was that the kind of love she wanted? What kind of husband would Zachary Taylor be?

  She didn’t know. There were two brothers; in looks, they were exactly alike. But they were entirely different in character. Would there be times when she’d wish that she was married to Will Henry instead of Zachary Taylor? Would she long for the solid assurance of a man like Will Henry Kennesaw, whose love lasted beyond the grave?

  Suddenly, as if he had heard the thoughts in her head,
Will Henry looked up at her window. Bonnie felt her heart begin to pound faster as she concealed herself behind the curtain, making no movement so that he would not know that she was there, thinking of him, and wondering things that an engaged woman should not have in her mind. He stood there for a moment or two, seeming to wait, but then finally, he went on his way. Soon after, she heard the front door open and close as he came inside once more. She remained by the window as if bound to the wall until she heard his tread pass her bedroom door on his way to his own room.

  She awoke the next morning feeling out of sorts, even though the sunlight was streaming into the room to herald a beautiful autumn day in store. Taking Mama’s advice that the best cure for a bad night’s sleep was a busy morning, Bonnie dressed quickly in a plain blue dress with nothing more decorative to distinguish it than blue buttons down the front of the bodice.

  Elsie was already in the kitchen, getting breakfast ready. Without a word, Bonnie began cracking eggs into the skillet. “Miss Bonnie,” Elsie protested, “this ain’t your work.”

  “Why not? I’m planning to eat, aren’t I?”

  “You didn’t come all the way from Pennsylvania to cook eggs.”

  The woman’s genuine disapproval made Bonnie smile. “What should I be doing then?”

  “Planning your wedding, for sure.”

  “Better to do that on a full stomach.”

  Elsie chuckled. “You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  By the time the twins came down to breakfast, summoned as much by the aroma of potatoes frying in a pan and toast browning on the hearth, Bonnie and Elsie were chattering away.

  “Who made the coffee?” Zachary Taylor wanted to know. “Only Elsie’s coffee can get me going in the morning.”