He could imagine taking her in his arms and telling her that her loved her—that he wanted her to be his wife, and that he was sorry for what had happened. He knew that he hadn’t done anything wrong, but at the same time, he didn’t want to make excuses—he wanted to face what he had done, and he wanted to make sure she was happy once again. But, he couldn’t do that if she refused to talk to him.
At last, it was time for dinner, and he hurried down to the dining room. Chase wasn’t at all hungry. He had lost his appetite after Annabelle had kissed him, but he was going to leap at the opportunity to be able to speak with Charity. Mrs. Cunningham was already at the table when he walked down, and he quickly took his seat.
“Have you seen Charity yet?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“I’ve been upstairs all day with your father, what have you been doing? It seems like it’s been a rather quiet day for you,” she said with a smile. Chase nodded, not answering. He didn’t want to get his mother involved in what had happened, and he was relieved when she quickly gathered her plate and put it on the tray with his father’s things.
“I am going to eat with your father tonight—he isn’t doing as well as usual, and I want to make sure that he is comfortable enough for us to travel. I have no doubt that he is, I just want to make sure he gets enough rest in the meantime.” She smiled at him, and Chase nodded. “Please extend my regrets to Charity.”
“I will,” he said. Chase was relieved when she was gone, now that he would get to speak with Charity in private. Of course, he would be able to ask his mother for privacy if he needed to, but he didn’t want her to think that there was anything wrong. He knew that she had gone up for the night—as she always did after dinner. He waited for a few minutes, then he tapped his fingers on the table impatiently, waiting for Charity to arrive.
Those minutes turned into ten, then fifteen, then twenty, and Chase began to worry that Charity wasn’t going to come. When Olga walked past, he asked her if she had heard from Charity, too. But, Olga hadn’t heard from her either. Worried, Chase got up and walked up the stairs, wondering what he was going to say. He imagined Charity was going to be angry with him for going to see her after she told him that she wanted to be left alone, and it was against his better judgement, as he assumed that she needed space to calm down after what happened, but he couldn’t wait forever—he needed to talk to her.
He knocked on the door lightly, but there was no answer. He sighed, then knocked on the door once more. But, there was still no answer. He felt his heart pound in his chest, and his palms were sweaty. The last thing he wanted was for her to be so angry with him, but at the same time, he needed to be able to talk to her for her to realize what really happened. Part of him wanted to let her have the night to think about it, and perhaps she would be feeling better in the morning, but there was another nagging voice inside him that told him that he shouldn’t walk away from what had happened.
It was unlike her to be quiet and not answer the door at all, and he worried that she was ill, or that she had fallen sick from the sorrow. At first, he thought he should simply walk away, but then, he decided once more that he was going to try—he would just open the door a little and see if she was doing alright, and if she wanted him to leave her alone, he would do that. Chase knocked once more, but there was still no answer from the inside.
Pressing his ear to the door, he couldn’t hear anything at all from the inside. The complete silence worried him, and he tried the doorknob. To his surprise, it was unlocked, and he quickly pushed it open.
“Charity?” he asked as he looked around inside the room. He didn’t know what to expect, but he certainly didn’t think that the room was going to be empty. He looked quickly around, his heart pounding in his chest. How could she be gone? Where could she have gone? Was she even gone?
“Charity!” he called out, this time a little louder. He still didn’t want to upset his parents, especially if she had just gone out of the house for a bit of a walk. Perhaps she had gone for a ride as he always did when he was feeling upset or overwhelmed. She had every right to be mad at him, he just worried that she was going to do something terrible while she was—perhaps she would get on a horse and ride and ride—never stopping and never looking back. Chase knew that his imagination was getting the best of him, but he had never had to deal with such a thing in the past, and he didn’t know what to do.
Suddenly, his eyes fell on the letter that was on the pillow, and with his heart pounding in his chest, he ran over to it and picked it up. Charity hadn’t left any seal on the paper, so he merely unfolded it and skimmed the contents, his heart sinking with each line that he read. When he had finished skimming it, he looked around the room, suddenly worried that she really had gone.
It was then that he noticed that the door to her wardrobe had been left slightly open. If there was something that he knew about Charity, it was that she was not the kind of girl to leave her doors partly open when she was able to take her time with things. She had to have been in some sort of a hurry when she had gotten into the wardrobe if she left the door open at all—though he didn’t want to consider that she had really done so.
He scanned the room quickly not wanting to see that anything was gone, having to know for certain.
Chase wasn’t certain what to look for in particular, as he hadn’t been in her room except for a single time right after she had moved in. But, looking about the room, he could see that there were a few things gone—things that would indicate that she had left for good.
Her carpet bag was gone from beneath the bed, and her two favorite dresses were gone from within the wardrobe. He ran over to the vanity and pulled open the drawers, and he immediately noticed that her brush was gone as well as her ribbons. It was clear she had taken the things that she would need when she moved to another location, but she hadn’t taken anything extra.
His heart was pounding in his chest as he walked over to the end of the bed and sat down, burying his face in his hands. He crumbled the letter in his hand before he threw it across the room, suddenly angry with the entire situation. He was furious with Annabelle, knowing if he had gotten rid of her sooner, none of this would have ever happened. Charity had warned him, and he had refused to listen, now once again that woman was making his life harder than he ever thought it was going to be.
His heart was breaking, and it was Annabelle’s fault all over again. To make matters worse, he knew that she would be pleased to hear that if she could.
He could have told Annabelle from the beginning that he wasn’t going to deal with her—even if he did deal with her family. He could have told her that he wasn’t going to have anything to do with the contract, no matter what his father had to say about it. He could have even told her that he didn’t want his father to be able to make any of the decisions that they were asking him to make in the condition that he was in—but, with all these thoughts coming to him now, Chase realized that it was too late for him to think such things.
Of course, now that he was away from it and looking back, it was easy for him to see all the things that he should or should not have done. He could see all the things he should have said, and all the things that he wanted to say—but now, he could also see that it was too late. Charity was gone, and so were her things. Everything she had taken indicated that she was leaving for good—and to make matters worse, she had told him in the letter that she was leaving, too.
Though he didn’t want to believe it, there was no way to deny the fact that she was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it. He could worry, he could be sorry, and he could wish against all wishes that he could take back what happened, but now that she was gone, he felt that it was too late—and that there was nothing he could do to change it now.
Chase got up and walked over to her pillow. He picked it up and buried his face in it, taking in a deep breath and breathing in her rich scent. The pillow smelled just like her hair, and Chase felt a fresh flood of emotions wash over
him.
This scent would fade off this pillow, and he would never hear from her again. Sure, she might send him a letter with the money that she thought she still owed him in it, but that was so different than hearing from her. He would never get the chance to tell her that he was sorry for what happened, and he would never get the chance to tell her that he was sorry for the way he had treated her. Sure, they had been difficult toward each other from the beginning, and as the letter said, they had made a bet with each other, but that didn’t change the fact that she was gone and he was devastated.
She was right—the wager was nothing more than a wager, and they had proved to each other that they were different than what they thought the other person was going to be. Charity wasn’t at all hungry for his money, and she had never asked him for a thing in her entire stay there. In fact, she had insisted that she was going to pay him back for the money that he had gifted to her family, though he himself had never told her that he wanted her to do that.
He sighed. If he could just see her one more time, he would tell her that he made the biggest mistake of his life by not telling her from the beginning that he was in love with her—and if he ever got the chance to see her again, he would do that before he did anything else. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again, and he would make sure that she knew without a doubt that she was the one that he wanted. Chase suddenly didn’t care what mattered anymore. He didn’t have to be right, and he didn’t have to prove any points. All he wanted was to have Annabelle back in his life. Not even his brother would be able to fix this for him, though he wished that Troy was there for him to talk to at that moment. Resolve was filling in heart, and he was going to have to do something before it was too late.
He put the pillow back on the bed, then he walked over to the vanity and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked himself in the eyes and shook his head.
“What have you done, Chase? You thought that you had it all, but you let the one thing that meant the most to you of all slip through your fingers—and you have nothing to show for it. What are you going to do now? Live the rest of your life alone?” He talked to himself as though there was another person speaking with him, and he shook his head with frustration as he did so. He couldn’t believe the mistake that he made, and he would do anything to fix it.
Suddenly, Chase had a thought. He looked up at himself in the mirror once more, and meeting his own eyes, he pointed at himself—just as though he were his own father or his own brother talking to him.
“You’ve made a huge mistake here, Chase, and you are going to have to fix it. You don’t know where that girl went, but you do know that she couldn’t have gotten too far without you knowing. What are you going to do? Find her!” He spoke with such conviction, Chase almost believed that there was someone else talking to him.
He turned and walked out the door with a resolution in his heart. He was going to find Charity, and he was going to tell her how he really felt. He loved her too much to worry about being right anymore. All he cared about was that the two of them were happy, and he could never be happy with himself if he didn’t know how she felt—and that would never happen if he didn’t try.
Chase walked down the stairs and right out the door, headed for the stable. He would take the fastest horse that he had and he would ride toward town with as much speed as he could coax out of the animal. He had to find Charity, and he had to catch her—and he was going to tell her how he thought about her.
There was no other option.
Chapter 31
Charity had tears in her eyes as she walked along the road, her carpet bag in one hand, her shawl in the other. She had left so quickly, she didn’t have the time to throw her shawl around her shoulders, and she didn’t care to do it now. It was a nice evening, the sun wasn’t going down yet in the west, and she would have liked to have gone for a ride on one of the horses if the circumstances had been better. But it didn’t matter how bright the sky was, or how orange the clouds looked—her heart was too heavy to notice any of the beauty that was around her.
It was unusual for her to not notice the sunset—for weeks he had made a point of watching it every night that she could. The sun in the West seemed to be so much larger than the sun in the East, and she had greatly enjoyed the colors the sky was painted each night that the sun was visible. But, tonight, it was as though there was a cloud that was thrown over everything, and though she would normally appreciate the beauty in anything, tonight, everything looked ugly.
Though Charity was doing her best to ignore the thoughts that were swirling around in her mind, she couldn’t get the sight of Chase kissing Annabelle to disappear. It wasn’t that she wanted to keep thinking about it, but the more she tried not to, the more it popped up in her mind, and the more she just wanted to find somewhere to cry. She wished there was a way she could crawl into some cave or some hole and disappear from the world.
She didn’t want to see anyone, she didn’t want to talk to anyone, and she didn’t want to even consider what it would be like to fall in love with anyone again. She felt that her heart had been shattered, and there was nothing that could fix it. Charity had tried to fall asleep, hoping that she would feel better when she woke up, but once she had the letter written, she knew that she had to leave as soon as possible.
Charity didn’t know where she was going to go—she didn’t know where she would eventually end up, and part of her really didn’t care. All she wanted was to get away from town—to get away from the estate, and to get away from anything that reminded her of the Cunninghams—especially Chase. She didn’t care how much it cost her to get away from here, as long as she never had to see any one of them again.
If only she hadn’t let her pride get in the way. It was even worse now, knowing that Chase had lied to her. She wanted to forget all about the happiness that she had thought she could have. She wished she had never met him.
She sighed as she held her things closer to her. She could see the buildings in town rising up in front of her, and she knew she was going to be at the train station soon enough. She didn’t know what she was going to tell the man at the ticket booth. She would give him all the money she had, and she would tell him that she wanted to get as far as she possibly could with that.
As soon as she was able to get away from there, she would be able to start forgetting about what happened between her and Chase, and she would be able to move on with her life.
As she walked along, she wanted to think about what was going to happen when she met someone else—the way things were going to be when she was able to let herself love someone and not have to worry that they weren’t going to love her back. She knew that it was going to be difficult for her to move on, but with time, she was going to be able to do that very thing.
She tried to tell herself that it was going to be fast, and with as pretty as she was, she would be able to do so quickly. But, she knew that it likely was going to be forever before she was able to open herself up and fall in love with anyone else—if it was ever going to happen at all. She didn’t want to open up to anyone. She didn’t want to think about someone else breaking her heart, and she certainly didn’t want to think about what she would do if she ever found out that Chase had found someone to fall in love with.
She talked to herself as she walked along, hoping that hearing the sound of someone’s voice in her ears would make her feel better, even if it was her own voice that was speaking.
“I’m going to be alright. I’ve been through a lot worse than this in my life—I’ve lived through a war, left my family, and moved in with another family that I didn’t even know! This might seem bad, but I can think of things in my life that were a lot worse than this—and I was fine then. I’ll be fine now, too!”
Charity didn’t care if anyone heard her as she walked along—in fact, she didn’t think that there would be anyone else in the road to hear her. Though it was a beautiful evening, it seemed that she was the only one on her way to town, but sh
e liked it that way.
The fewer people she met on the road, the less likely she was to have to tell them where she was going, and why she didn’t want to have a ride to get there.
Charity tried to ignore the pain that was swirling about in her heart, but she was suddenly distracted at the sound of someone calling her name. Confused, she turned slightly, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw Cory Jones running toward her. Charity thought about picking up the pace, getting to town even faster, but at the same time, she didn’t want to be rude to the man.
He had never done anything to make her feel uncomfortable, but yet, she always did when he was around. There was something about him that made her feel very nervous, and when he reached her, she wanted to hurry to get to town quickly.
“Where are you going so quickly?” he asked as he fell into step with her, and Charity forced a smile.
“I have business in town, thank you—what are you doing out, Mr. Jones?” she was trying to be polite, though she wanted to get away from the man as soon as possible.
“I was out seeing if there were any young ladies who were in need of assistance, and as it turns out, here is a young lady right in front of me who is in need.” He winked at her, and she gave him a look that told him he needed to leave her be.
“I am not in any need, thank you—I have this all sorted, thank you. I am just on my way into town, that’s all.” She picked up her pace, but so did Cory, making her feel even more nervous. She wondered if she should tell him that she was going to scream, or if she should tell him that she wanted to be left alone. He still wasn’t doing anything to make her feel threatened by him, but, with him walking so close to her, she thought that he was threatening her enough.
Mail Order Bride: A Bride's Unexpected Love: A Western Romance Book Page 21