“Get whatever it is you want, I’ll put it on my tab, and take care of it when I get back to pick you up.” He could see her smile, but it seemed that there was something forced about it. He wanted to ask her about it, but he felt that it was a better idea for her to simply handle what she was there to handle, and he would catch up with her later.
He turned the buggy and drove up the street, but he couldn’t help but look over his shoulder as he reached the corner of the road. He was going to make the turn, but there was something inside him that told him to look back. Just as he did, he saw that another man was walking up to Charity and tipping his hat to her. He didn’t stop, but he did his best to turn around and watch her as he continued up the street—and he noticed that Charity didn’t seem to be at all upset or offended that this man was talking to her.
She wasn’t doing anything to encourage the man, but at the same time, she wasn’t doing anything to dissuade him, either. In fact, it was difficult to know how she felt about the situation. Part of Chase wanted to turn around and go back to see what they were talking about, but at the same time, he didn’t want her to feel like he was watching her or keeping an eye on her. After all, she was an adult, and she could talk to whomever she wished.
“Get out of the way!” a voice in front of him shouted. Chase turned back around in his seat just in time to see two men stumbling out of the saloon. One of them had nearly stumbled right into the path of his buggy.
“Get out of here! You drunk!” Chase shouted at the man who barely missed being hit by the horse.
“If you were watching where you were driving instead of staring at that lass back there, you wouldn’t have to worry about it!” he shouted back. Chase wanted to say something else, but he was too angry. He turned his attention back to the road in front of him and kept his eyes there. He wanted to turn around and see what else Charity was doing, but he dared not. The last thing he needed was for word to reach her that he was watching her as he drove away, so he would keep his eyes on the road in front of him.
Chase tried to focus when he reached the Jackson mansion, but all he could think about was what Charity was doing back at the general store. She had been acting strange for the past couple of days, and he wanted to know why, but without her telling him why, he had to just wait and see what happened.
“My boy! Annabelle tells me that you are getting along very well. I hope we are able to continue our contract for many, many years to come,” Mr. Jackson was saying. Chase looked at him with a strained smile.
“I suppose you can say that, but Mr. Jackson, I have to tell you that I really don’t want to have to rely on others like this for very long. With my brother working with me overseas, and with what I am able to do here, I don’t think that I am going to have to continue with this much past this year,” he smiled, hoping that the man wouldn’t see through the forced aspect of it.
“You say that, but Chase, you know that I have a lot to offer you and your estate. Why would you throw it away? Your brother is certainly taking his time with things, and you know that Annabelle is more than happy to work with you on all this”—
He was going to continue, but Chase cut him off. “I think that might be part of the problem, you see, I am afraid that your daughter might be hoping that there is going to be more between us than what there really is.”
Mr. Jackson looked at him with wide eyes, as though he had no idea what he was talking about. “Well, you aren’t married, so what is the problem there? You were together once before, why can’t it happen again?”
“Because she left me for another man—not to mention that she is not the kind of woman that I want to marry. I respect your daughter, Mr. Jackson, but I don’t want her to believe that there is going to be anything but business out of this relationship.” Chase spoke in a very direct manner, not wanting to upset the man, but at the same time, not wanting him to get any idea but utter seriousness from it.
“I say that you ought to give it time. You never know what is going to come of this,” Mr. Jackson said. He looked rather disappointed, but there was a resolution in his face that showed he wasn’t going to give up. Chase gave him a look of resolution, as though he wasn’t going to even consider going back to Annabelle, but neither one of them wanted to pursue the conversation any further.
They wrapped up their meeting with the contracts Chase had gone to see, and the two of them shook hands as they parted ways.
“It was good to see you, Mr. Cunningham, my daughter has been telling me a lot about you,” he said with a smile. Chase returned the smile, though it was forced. He didn’t want to talk about it any further, but he could see that the man wasn’t going to let up on it until he said his piece.
“I have appreciated working together, and I am sure for as long as we continue to do so, things are going to be profitable for both of us.” He shook hands with the man, but he was quick to get out of there as soon as possible. The last thing he wanted was for Annabelle to arrive—and since he didn’t know where she was, he didn’t want to risk her finding him before he had the chance to slip away. Chase hurried back to the buggy as quickly as he could, wanting to get away from the estate as soon as possible.
He turned the buggy back toward town, and slapped the reins on the horses. He didn’t like the thought of Charity still being in the general store, and he hoped that he would be able to find her alone. There were a couple of other stops he wanted to make along the way, but seeing her with the man outside the store made him want to check up on her and see if she really was alone. As beautiful as she was, and as rugged and unpredictable as the men in the west were, he knew that she wouldn’t have any trouble at all finding someone else to fall in love with.
Of course, he had never thought that she would do such a thing, but with the way she had been talking to the other men—and the way she had been acting after the last meeting with Annabelle, he didn’t know what she was thinking. Perhaps she did know that his parents were going to be leaving soon, and as such she was going to go through with the decision to find someone to fall in love with.
Then again, perhaps he was worrying about it altogether too much. He couldn’t keep Charity in his sights at all times, but at the same time, he didn’t want to think about what she might be doing with him out of there. She wasn’t like Annabelle, she was a much better woman than that—but at the same time, it was his own fault that she was going along with his plan in the first place.
Perhaps if he had decided to show her what a gentleman he could be, she would have changed her mind and wanted to be with him—as the thought ran through his mind, Chase pulled back on the reins of the horses, thinking. He had been at odds with Charity since she had come to the estate, and though they had had their good times every now and then, overall, they were at each other’s throats.
Suppose he were to do something differently, and prove to her what a gentleman he could be. He rode up to the front of the general store and tied the horses to the front. Skipping up the stairs, he burst through the door, eager to find Charity. His heart sank, however, when he saw that she was once again engaged in conversation with another man. This one was different from the one he had seen before, but he was a strange man nonetheless.
She looked at him and smiled as he stepped up, but she didn’t make any effort to introduce him to the other man.
“Hey! So glad you’re here. I already made the purchases and put it on your tab, as you said,” she smiled. Chase smiled back at her, then looked at the man she had been talking to. Charity still didn’t say anything about who he was, and instead of introducing the pair, she merely smiled at the man.
“It was so nice to meet you, and thank you for your advice,” she said. The man smiled and tipped his hat.
“Mr. Jacobs here has a fine eye for material. I would have been standing here all day if it wasn’t for his help,” Charity said to Chase with a smile. Once again, it was difficult for him to tell just how much she enjoyed the attention, as she seemed to be
neutral.
“No trouble at all, Ma’am, thank you,” he said. Chase looked from one to the other, but said nothing. Forcing a smile, he put his hand on the small of her back and led her toward the door. His thoughts were spinning, and his emotions were running freely through his heart. He didn’t know how to react to what he had just seen, but at the same time, he didn’t want to—he wanted to simply believe that it was all okay, and that was the end of that.
He wouldn’t marry Charity, and he certainly wouldn’t marry Annabelle. That was the end of that in his mind, and now he could move on with his life. Charity was going to fall in love with the person she chose to fall in love with, and there was nothing he could do about it—part of him would wonder what would have happened it if it was him, but most of him would force himself to forget about it and move on.
That was life, after all, and he could only deal with the things that happened to him—he couldn’t control any of it.
Chapter 17
Charity woke the next morning and walked to the window in her room, her thoughts spinning. She had hardly slept the night before, and she was very tired now. It was difficult for her to focus, and though she tried to follow a single thought, it was next to impossible for her to do so. Chase had been very quiet toward her the night before, and though she had wanted to talk to him, he didn’t seem to really want to talk to her about anything.
She had tried to get his attention about several of the things she had seen at the general store, and had even tried to tell him what she was going to do with the material she had purchased, but he didn’t seem interested in anything she had to say. He was even quiet about the visit he had paid the Jackson estate—though she had tried several times to hear how it went.
Charity didn’t know how to get him to open up and speak to her about those things, and though she very much wanted to hear how things were going for him, she didn’t want to pry. She still didn’t know how she fit into the mix with Annabelle working with Chase—or if she was just getting in the way. As jealous as she felt about the relationship that was growing between Annabelle and Chase, she didn’t want to do anything that would ruin his happiness.
If Chase wanted to be with Annabelle, there was nothing Charity could do about it, but at the same time, she didn’t know if she was willing to give up—just yet. She knew she was developing feelings for Chase, and she wanted to see where those feelings went. She didn’t know if she was in love with him, at least, not fully, but she wanted to know if she could find out. She liked how she felt when he was around her—there was a safety with him that she didn’t feel with anyone else—even with her own family.
To see him with Annabelle was enough to make her heart feel as though it was being ripped in two, and she hated it. She wanted Chase to be happy above all else, but she didn’t know if that meant she was going to have to give up on her own happiness to make it happen. He had acted very strange toward her when she had been riding home with him the day before, and she knew that it had to have something to do with the fact she had been talking to that man in the general store.
If she was perfectly honest with herself, she had to admit that she had done so to make him jealous, and she believed that it worked. He had certainly appeared to be jealous over her talking to the man, though he hadn’t mentioned it to her on the way home. He hadn’t really talked much about anything, and though she thought her own silence would be enough to get his attention, it hadn’t been.
Even dinner had been strained, with his mother trying to keep the conversation going between them with nothing either one of them wanted to add. Chase had only said the bare minimum of what he could get away with saying, and Charity hadn’t added much to the conversation, either. She had gone to bed shortly after, wanting to hide with her books and her thoughts, and not wanting to have anything to do with the Cunningham family. She knew that there had to be something going on that they weren’t telling her, and part of her wondered if the parents were getting ready to be leaving soon.
Of course, that would mean that Chase would think that she, too, was going to be leaving herself, and right now, she wasn’t at all sure that is what she wanted to do. She wanted to talk to him about it—to see if he did happen to change his mind the same way she had, but she was scared. The last thing she wanted was for him to tell her that he didn’t feel the same way about her that she felt about him—it would break her heart.
She had already written to her parents and told them that she was happier than she could ever imagine living with Chase in the mansion, but that wasn’t true. The fact of the matter was that she didn’t at all like living in this house not knowing if she was going to have to stay or go. Part of her still wanted to leave—to leave this all behind and find her own life somewhere else, but there was another part of her that told her it was going to be a much grander adventure if she were to stay here and marry Chase.
Marry Chase? It sounded so romantic the more she thought about it, but there was one problem—he didn’t seem to really want to marry her. She had done the little things she thought would get his attention, but it didn’t seem to matter at all what she did, he didn’t seem to notice her any more than he had the first day she had come. Perhaps if she were to do something that was bold and daring—something that would catch his attention more than any of the petty little things she had done so far.
Of course, he might think that she would want to marry someone rather than him. Perhaps he said nothing about her being in the general store with that man because he thought that she was going to want to stay in the area, but marry someone else. How could he think such a thing—with Annabelle there and the way she liked to talk? Though there was no way for her to know for sure, it was something she had to consider.
If he thought that she had no feelings for him but loved the area, why wouldn’t she go out and try to find someone else to take care of her? He wasn’t the only man there, and he certainly wasn’t the only one who would want to have a wife like her. It was true that there were far more men in the West than there were women, and many of them were just looking for a wife to start a family with and help run the farm.
If she wanted to get married, it wouldn’t at all be a difficult task—and Chase knew it. Perhaps that is why he had been so quiet the night before. Without being able to talk to each other, it was difficult for her to know what it was he was really thinking.
Charity sighed as she walked downstairs. The house was quiet. Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham were out in the garden, and Chase was out with several of the hired hands checking on the fences and the cattle that were in the back fields. Charity had been welcomed to ride along with them, but with the way Chase had been behaving that morning, she didn’t want to ride where she wasn’t welcome. Perhaps the day would come when she would be able to ride with them, or perhaps she would move on before that ever happened.
There was a feeling of depression settling over her, and though she wanted to push it out of her mind and brush it off as nothing, she knew that she couldn’t do that. Her mind was spinning so quickly, it was nearly impossible for her to think of one thought and pursue it for very long. It seemed that all her thoughts brought her back to Chase, and she wanted to do something that would get him to pay attention to her.
So far, nothing had worked for very long, and from all appearances, it didn’t seem like there was anything she could do that would get him to notice her—at least, not with Annabelle always coming around and sticking her nose into their business. Even with the girl, Charity had done her best to think of a way to prove to Chase that she was the better option, but it seemed as soon as Annabelle arrived, she took the center of all attention—even Charity’s.
She picked up the newspaper and flipping through it, trying to find some sort of article that would make her feel better. There were times when reading the news made her feel a lot better than what was going on in her own life—it was a distraction that made it easier for her to think of other things that were going on around the wor
ld. Perhaps she would read something about back home and see that her parents were doing alright.
With the war waging in the East, it was difficult for them to find the horses that they were wanting, as many of them were being sold and shipped back there to be used by the government and the soldiers. As Charity read the article, she wondered if her parents had to give up the horses they had in payment for the war. She hoped not—but then, she also hoped that they were able to get out of their home and move up North where it was much safer for the families with young children.
Sighing, Charity turned the page, trying to find something that was less depressing. She saw an article for some of the latest fashion that had come out in New York City, and she laughed to herself at first, but then her face took on a more serious expression as she thought about it more clearly. Of course, it was easy to laugh at the new fashion that was taking place on the other side of the country, because it didn’t seem to be real.
It was easy for Chase to always be thinking of Troy and what his brother was doing, because Troy was on the other side of the world, and it was easy for them to imagine the kind of life that he must be living, when there really was no way to know the kind of life he really was living. It seemed to her that such things were so much more appealing than the life that they really did live, because it was so much easier to imagine those lives were better than what they were living already. Charity set the paper down on the table and rose from the chair, walking across the room with her arms crossed in front of her chest. There were so many emotions running through her mind, it was difficult for her to know what was real, and what was just her feeling sentimental about the situation.
She thought back to what Mrs. Cunningham had said—about how they would always have their struggles in life—and she wondered if this was the struggle she was supposed to have. Was she making the right decision wanting to move away from this place, or would it be better for her if she were to stay here and marry Chase? Did Chase even consider the possibility of getting married to her?
Mail Order Bride: A Bride's Unexpected Love: A Western Romance Book Page 12