A Bargained-For Bride

by Marcia Lynn McClure

  She was nearly home when she saw Boone riding toward her. Jilly felt a smile curve her lips as she watched him approach. Oh, could the man sit a saddle! He was handsome, no matter what he was doing—a man—not a boy like Jack.

  Jilly reined in Romeo, though she’d been riding him at a slow walk anyway. Her smile broadened when Boone reined in his horse beside her, for he was smiling already as well.

  “Hey, wanna have some fun?” he asked.

  Though his question as a greeting was unexpected, Jilly answered, “Of course,” with a delighted giggled.

  Boone nodded, chuckled, and said, “Then follow me.”

  Turning his mount east, Jilly bit her lip with excitement as she followed. What could Boone be up to? She had no idea. But by the twinkle of mischief evident in his eyes, Jilly just knew it had to be tomfoolery of some sort, and she was wildly impatient to see what it was.

  *

  “We’ll have to go real slow and not make a sound,” Boone whispered as he lay next to Jilly in the tall grass near the pond.

  Jilly nodded and gritted her teeth to keep from giggling. If she and Boone were discovered, the fun would be over—and the consequences could be uncomfortable, to say the least.

  “Okay then…let’s go,” Boone whispered.

  As Jilly began to crawl toward the fallen tree where the three adolescent boys had deposited their clothing before wading naked into the pond, she could feel the smile on her face as wide as the Mississippi. When Boone had ridden up to her on her way home from her grandma and grandpa’s place, asking her if she wanted to have some fun, she had never imagined that he meant for them to steal the clothing of three boys he’d seen swimming in the nude.

  Boone had explained that snatching the clothes of naked swimmers was the oldest prank in the world—and that Willy Lillingston, Arthur Farley, and Davey Graham were nearly asking to be pranked by taking such a risk as swimming in the nude. Naturally, Jilly was wildly intrigued. She’d never done anything so brazen and daring in all her life!

  Boone had explained how he and Jilly were going to crawl on their stomachs through the tall grass toward the old fallen oak that lay on one side of the pond. The boys had left their clothes scattered on the old tree, and the tree was big enough to hide Boone and Jilly’s approach—if they stayed low enough.

  Of course, Jilly was certain the boys would get in all kinds of terrible trouble if they had to go skipping home without a stitch of clothing. But Boone assured her that they would put the boys’ clothes somewhere that the boys could find them—just not too easily.

  Thus Jilly had instantly agreed to help Boone prank the three boys—all three of whom were approximately thirteen years of age and all three of whom had about driven the entire town of Mourning Dove Creek to lunacy the Halloween almost a year before, with their own pranks of stealing fences posts and gates, tipping over outhouses, and other such rambunctious deeds.

  Boone had been out checking a fence line when he’d heard laughter and seen the three boys swimming in the nude. He’d told Jilly that of course he could’ve snatched their clothes on his own, but he figured the prank would be so much more entertaining if he had her to share the fun with him. So he’d ridden out to find her—and now Jilly was crawling through the grass next to him.

  Once they reached the fallen tree, however, Boone paused before reaching up to snatch any clothing.

  He put an index finger to his lips and mouthed, Hold on, to Jilly. Then, slowly, he raised himself just enough so that he could see over the log.

  “They’re still in the water,” he whispered. “We don’t want them to see us take their clothes or it’ll ruin everything. So just pull one thing at a time off…really slowly so there’s no quick motion to catch their eye, all right?”

  Jilly again gritted her teeth to keep from giggling with amusement. She nodded.

  She watched as Boone reached up, slowly pulling a pair of trousers off the fallen tree. “Like that,” he assured her.

  Jilly reached up and did the same with a shirt, and Boone smiled with approval.

  Carefully Boone and Jilly snatched three pair of trousers, three shirts, and three pairs of boys’ underwear. Wadding them up in their arms, they then turned on their bellies and hurriedly crawled away to the safety of the nearby tree line.

  “Now then,” Boone began, although quietly, “let’s just toss everything here and there under the trees, all right?”

  “Yes,” Jilly giggled.

  She watched as Boone tossed a pair of trousers onto a low tree limb—threw a pair of underwear up a little higher. He chuckled with amusement, and Jilly thought how delightful the sound of his laughter was.

  “I wish we could see the expressions on their faces when they realize their clothes have gone missin’,” Jilly whispered, “though I have no desire to see a bunch of boys runnin’ around naked.”

  “Well, the horses will be fine where we tied them up back there in the trees, and the boys won’t want to waste any time lookin’ to see who pranked them,” Boone explained. “So we’ll just climb up high in one of these trees close to where we’re leavin’ these clothes, and they’ll never know we’re witnessin’ it all.”

  Jilly’s smile broadened. “Perfect!” she giggled.

  And true as his word, a few minutes later, Jilly was nestled snug as a bug on a large limb some ways up in the lofty canopy of a strong old maple tree. She was a good tree-climber herself, but Boone was a gentleman and had helped her to climb high enough so that they could see the boys but where the boys would have to look very hard to see them.

  “And now we wait,” Boone sighed—a handsome smile of triumph perfectly complementing the twinkle in his eyes.

  Jilly smiled at him—sighed with experiencing a moment of pure contentment.

  “This was a good idea you had,” she whispered. “I’m glad you asked me along to help.”

  “Me too,” Boone said in a lowered voice. “I thought you might enjoy somethin’ a little out of the everyday.” He paused a moment and then asked, “How was your visit with your folks? Have you forgiven your grandpa for makin’ you marry me yet?”

  “My visit was wonderful,” she answered. Casting her gaze away from him a moment, she added, “And though I still don’t understand it all…yes…I’ve forgiven him.”

  “And have you forgiven me?”

  Jilly looked back to Boone to find him frowning with concern. She blushed as the realization washed over her that she’d never been angry with Boone for asking to marry her—not once.

  “I have nothin’ to forgive you for,” she said. “After all, all you did was ask Grandpa. He’s the one who agreed to it. I don’t see where you did anything wrong.” She was quiet a moment and then asked, “Why did you ask for me? There’re plenty of girls in Mourning Dove Creek that are at a marriageable age. If you simply wanted a wife the way you said you did…then why me? And don’t say it was because of the orange at Christmas so long back.”

  “I have my reasons,” Boone answered.

  Jilly rolled her eyes with exasperation. “That doesn’t tell me anything at all,” she mumbled.

  “I know,” Boone agreed. Then suddenly he straightened on the limb where he sat and whispered, “Shhh. They’re comin’ out of the water right now.”

  Jilly looked to see that, indeed, Boone was correct. Willy Lillingston, Arthur Farley, and Davey Graham were wading toward the grassy bank of the pond—toward the old fallen tree.

  “Oh my, no!” Jilly exclaimed in a whisper as she quickly covered her eyes with both hands. “They’ll be naked as the day they were born!”

  She heard Boone chuckle, “Yes, they will.”

  Jilly felt Boone’s hand on her knee then and spread several of her fingers to peer at him.

  He was grinning at her with amused reassurance. “They’re just boys, Jill. Do you really want to miss the fun just for worryin’ about bein’ so proper? They’re hardly out of their diapers.”

  It was true. She didn’t wan
t to miss the fun—the horrified expressions, the panic she was sure would follow when the boys found their clothes had disappeared.

  “Okay then. I’ll just watch through my fingers,” Jilly answered.

  Boone seemed satisfied with her choice—though he did continue to smile with amusement.

  Through the spaces between her fingers, Jilly watched as the boys talked and laughed without a care in the world as they stepped out of Mourning Dove Pond and into the grass at the bank. She watched as they shoved one another in teasing, sauntering toward the fallen tree entirely unsuspecting.

  However, Jilly’s hands moved from her eyes, where they’d been impairing her clear vision of the nude boys, to cover her mouth in order to dampen the volume of the laughter that filled her mouth when the boys arrived at the fallen tree to find nothing but their socks and boots.

  The scene that played out before Jilly and Boone was absolutely the most hysterical thing Jilly had ever witnessed in all her life! When Willy Lillingston, Arthur Farley, and Davey Graham arrived at the fallen tree to see that their clothes were missing, all three boys began hollering like their hair was on fire! Instantly their hands went to their fronts below their waist in sad attempts to cover their private parts as they looked around for any sign of their clothing.

  From his place on the large tree limb next to Jilly, Boone was trying to stay as quiet as possible, yet laughing so hard that tears of mirth were gathering at the outer corners of his eyes. Jilly held her hands clamped as hard as possible over her mouth to muffle her own laughter—though she figured, with the way the three naked boys were carrying on, they wouldn’t have heard a tornado setting down next to them.

  Scrambling this way and that, Willy, Arthur, and Davey began searching for their missing attire.

  “I found my drawers!” Davey Graham shouted at last. “I think our clothes are over this way, boys!”

  Wiping the moisture produced by profound amusement from his eyes, Boone looked to Jilly, putting an index finger to his lips. “Shhh. Here they come,” he whispered.

  “Who the devil done this?” Willy Lillingston grumbled as he fished his trousers down off a tree limb. “I swear, if I ever find out who done this…I’ll hang ’em high!”

  “You fellers don’t think it was girls who done this, do you?” Arthur asked.

  Jilly bit her lip as all three boys then blushed and began looking around again. Hands over their privates once more, they quickly gathered their clothes.

  “This ain’t funny!” Willy yelled to the wind. “Whoever you are…if you think this is funny…well, it ain’t!”

  Jilly watched Boone as he watched the boys angrily pulling on their clothes. His smile was so bright and so big it was dazzling! His eyes were shining with pure merriment.

  Oh, but he was handsome! He always had been. But something about seeing Boone so relaxed and entertained—something about the way he’d included Jilly in his plans to prank the boys—it made Boone Ramsey appear even more attractive in those moments.

  “And there they go,” Boone chuckled, drawing Jilly’s attention back to the boys.

  As she watched the humiliated and infuriated boys trudging off back toward town, Jilly asked, “Do you think they’ll tell on us?”

  Boone looked at her, smiling and frowning simultaneously. “Hell no!” he exclaimed, still relishing the foregoing entertainment. “They won’t tell a soul.”

  “But how do you know?” Jilly asked. “What if they tell their folks and then their folks figure out it was us?”

  But Boone just sighed with triumph and chuckled. “Honey, there ain’t no way anybody would ever figure out it was us…even if one of them did tell someone. But I can promise you that they’re not gonna tell a soul—least for another ten or fifteen years.” He shrugged, adding, “And besides, it happens to everyone sooner or later.”

  “What happens to everyone?” Jilly asked. “Gettin’ your clothes stolen while you’re swimmin’?”

  Boone nodded. “Gettin’ your clothes stolen while your swimmin’ naked,” he answered.

  Jilly’s eyes widened. “Did it happen to you?”

  “Hell yes!” Boone chuckled. “When I was about the same age. Me and a couple other boys skipped school to come on down to the pond and go swimmin’ in the nude. When we were finished—’cause we started thinkin’ we best be gettin’ home before our folks found out we’d skipped school and started wonderin’ where we were—we came up out of this very same pond to find our clothes missin’. The only difference was we never found ’em.”

  “What? You never found your clothes?” Jilly gasped.

  Boone shook his head. “Nope. I had to walk on home naked as a jaybird,” he answered. “I can’t tell you how glad I was that our home was so far out from town. I was lucky too…’cause Mama was out feeding the chickens, and my daddy was harvestin’.”

  “But what about the other boys? The ones you were with?” Jilly asked.

  “Truth be told, they were fortunate, in the end of it. Mrs. Brooks had been doin’ laundry that day. She had her boys’ clothes hangin’ out on the line, so Clarence and Robert just stole some of the Brooks’ boys’ clothes and headed on home.”

  “Clarence Farley? He was swimmin’ with you that day?” Jilly giggled.

  “Yep,” Boone confirmed. “But Robert’s family moved away shortly after that. Not sure you remember the Spaffords.”

  Jilly shook her head and said, “Nope. I don’t.”

  Boone shrugged. “Anyway…all boys get caught sooner or later. If you’re gonna swim naked, you’re gonna get caught.”

  “So that’s why you quit, hmm?” Jilly asked, smiling. “Because you finally got caught?”

  Boone smiled. “I never said I quit,” he answered. “I’ve just never been caught again.”

  Jilly blushed, asking, “B-but you quit when you grew up, right?”

  “Nope,” Boone answered. “In fact, that day I rode out here to find that little Lillingston boy washin’ away down the crick…I was actually out this way, plannin’ on havin’ myself a nice, refreshin’ swim.”

  Jilly’s eyes widened, her blush deepening. “Really?”

  Boone smiled. “Yep.”

  He began to climb down from the tree then. “You just follow me down, Jill,” he instructed. “I’ll go slow and help you if you need me to.”

  Jilly did climb down and slowly. But not because she lacked sure footing or was afraid she’d take a tumble—more for the fact her mind was reeling with the sudden awareness she now owned of men and boys and their rascally habits of swimming naked.

  Chapter Eight

  The days following the pranking of the three naked, swimming boys were less eventful by comparison perhaps, but very interesting all the same. As Jilly hung freshly washed sheets on the clothesline at the back of the house, several of the conversations she’d shared with Boone at their supper table lingered in her mind. During the past few evenings, she and Boone had talked lightheartedly about individual memories of their childhoods, discussed concerns over some of their fellow citizens of Mourning Dove Creek, and laughed together over trivial tidbits of life and living. They’d shared opinions on politics, guessed at what kind of weather the coming months would bring, and shared different family traditions they’d experienced.

  And as Jilly thought about it all, she had the sudden realization that not only were her conversations with Jack Taylor pitifully shallow but also that she and Boone thought quite alike in every regard, sharing similar views and opinions on every subject. Jilly also realized how well suited their characters were in humor. Nearly every conversation they had eventually led them to laughter.

  Again Jilly was struck by her own stupidity in the past—the very recent past—Jack Taylor the tomcat, nothing but a boy, whether or not his physical maturity tried to prove differently. Not one conversation she’d ever shared with Jack had been as stimulating as every sentence she exchanged with Boone.

  Pulling another wet sheet from the bask
et at her feet, Jilly whipped it to shake it out—whipped it several times unnecessarily in order to vent her ever-lingering frustration with herself where Jack Taylor was concerned. Oh, she’d been an idiot! And yet the past was past, and there was nothing she could change about it. Thus, she exhaled a heavy sigh and pinned the poor whipped sheet to the line.

  As she did so, however, the sun glinted on the gold band on her left ring finger. Jilly smiled as she studied the ring closely a moment. Just the night before, as she and Boone had been discussing his parents, Boone had casually mentioned that the wedding bands he’d brought to their wedding had belonged to his own mother and father. In fact, on her deathbed, Boone’s mother had requested that he remove her ring, and that of his dying father, and keep them safe until he married one day.

  Jilly found that, since the moment Boone had told her the story, she had an even greater appreciation for the ring he’d placed on her finger on their wedding day—for it had belonged to his mother once, and Jilly liked to imagine that his mother was in heaven, smiling down with approval at Jilly’s efforts to be a good wife to her son.

  Picking up the empty basket at her feet, Jilly started back into the house. Yet as she stepped up onto the back porch, she saw that Boone had discarded one of his shirts over the porch railing. The sight of Boone’s abandoned shirt caused a giggle to tickle Jilly’s throat—for, try as he might, Boone hadn’t quite discarded his old habit of disrobing whenever he had a mind to and leaving certain articles of clothing hither and yon as he did so. Gathering the shirt into one hand, Jilly drew it to her face, inhaling the scent of new grass, wood smoke, and fried ham—scents she’d quickly come to associate with her husband.

  Tossing the shirt into the basket in her arms, she smiled as she thought of Boone just the night before, sliding his suspenders from his shoulders to hang from his waist as he stripped off his shirt in readying for bed. Jilly felt her smile broaden and a warm blush pink up her cheeks as she thought of how wildly attractive Boone was in such a state of undress. Oh, she knew she could never confess the fact she adored the time Boone spent roaming the house in just his trousers, hanging suspenders, and socks each evening for an hour or so before he retired. But she was glad he owned the habit, for he was fiercely alluring in such a state.