Mail Order Josephine - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides) (11 page)

In thinking this way, she remembered something about a different kind of woman living a different kind of life. She opened the doors and strolled out onto the balcony. Below her in the doorways and windows and alleys of the town, the women of the Western frontier pursued their daily occupations, scrubbing laundry and calling to their children and carrying firewood into their houses. Certainly here, at this far-off limit of human civilization, women conducted themselves very differently than their counterparts in New York. Every facet of their lives, from the food they ate to the heat warming their houses to the individual fibers of their children’s clothing, bore the imprint of their fingerprints, infusing the lives of everyone around them with the physical bodily essence of their care and attention. Josephine knew she didn’t necessarily want to abandon her heritage as a society lady so utterly that she would descend into their difficult world of hard labor and constant drudgery. Still, their presence offered a powerful counterpoint to the distant ennui of her high society upbringing. Their presence implied some third alternative Josephine hadn’t thought of yet, a path offering a perfect synergy between marriage, motherhood, and the perceived freedom of spinsterhood.

As she gazed down on the town from the balcony, a huge harvest moon rose over the eastern horizon, lighting up the rainbow colors in the dusky sky. The evening star hung near it, and the muted softness of night settled over the voices and noises in the town. The gathering dusk reduced the people to the human equivalents of the blackened silhouettes of the jagged pine trees against the pale sky. Each person occupying his or her little niche in the life of the town appeared to Josephine as an archetype of one unique place in the broader context of human interaction. The peaceful happiness she once experienced at the notion of staying and living in this place and the optimism of changing her life and her destiny by aligning herself with it returned to her now. But this time, Aunt Agatha’s assertion that she carried this possibility within herself inspired her with still greater hope. She knew she could leave this town and go back to New York without sacrificing her ability to define herself and to determine her own destiny.

She turned her back on the town drifting into nightfall and observed Aunt Agatha through the balcony doors as the older woman flitted around the hotel room, attending to her chores by the light of a lamp. Josephine experienced a pang of affection for her aunt and a wave of gratitude that she chose this time and place to reveal to Josephine her true feelings. Her aunt’s revelations cast Josephine’s prospects in a wholly unprecedented light. She knew she would cherish this moment for the rest of her life, and she would forever carry her gratitude toward her aunt in her heart. She rejoined Aunt Agatha and applied herself with more peace of mind than she felt in many days to the job of organizing her own travelling kit.

The two women sallied forth to the town, purchasing their separate articles from the haberdasher’s shop and inquiring at the train station about Josephine’s return fare to New York via Chicago. They returned to the hotel for lunch, full of friendly and cheerful chatter about anything and everything, but at the dining room door, the hotel clerk accosted them, waving a folded paper in his hand.

“Message for you, Ma’am,” he addressed Aunt Agatha.

Aunt Agatha took the proffered paper with a crisp “Thank you,” to the clerk and carried it with her, unopened, into the dining room. She tucked it next to her plate and gave it no further notice until their food arrived.

“Aren’t you going to read the message?” Josephine suggested at last.

Almost reluctantly, Aunt Agatha picked up the paper and unfolded it. Josephine scarcely breathed while she read the writing. “It’s from Mr. Paul Stockton, Sr.”

“What does he want?” Josephine panted.

“He invites us to dinner tomorrow afternoon,” Aunt Agatha related. “He says he’ll send his boy to pick us up in the gig at half past three in the afternoon.”

“What does he want to do that for?” Josephine speculated.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Aunt Agatha replaced the note under the edge of her plate. “He doesn’t state the nature of his business with us. I suppose he simply wants to wish us a pleasant trip home and all that sort of thing. What else could it be?”

“That’s the only explanation I can think of,” Josephine agreed.

“I won’t be sorry to leave this whole unpleasant experience behind me,” Aunt Agatha growled.

“Why, Aunt Agatha,” Josephine exclaimed, “I thought you were feeling quite forgiving of the place.”

“I only mean that, for your sake, I won’t be sorry to leave it behind,” Aunt Agatha explained. “I feel quite sick when I think how you’ve been humiliated by coming all the way out here, only to be sent home again empty-handed.”

“I haven’t been humiliated,” Josephine retorted. “It isn’t my fault Paul Stockton died, and it isn’t his family’s fault, either. It was an unfortunate accident. An act of God, you might say. I can’t understand why you feel so strongly about it.”

“I suppose it
rankles me to remember when I experienced the same sort of disappointment,” Aunt Agatha pondered. “I don’t like to see the same thing happen to you that happened to me.”

“But it isn’t the same thing,” Josephine declared. “Paul is dead. It’s not as though his family concocted the whole thing to undermine our betrothal. And besides, you don’t know what happened to your betrothed. You don’t know that he or his family deliberately deceived you, or that they left you in the lurch, or that they did anything else blame-worthy. For all you know, they experienced some other unforeseen circumstance that prevented them from going through with the arrangements for your marriage. Maybe your betrothed died, too. Maybe the whole family was wiped out by cholera. You can’t assign guilt to them or to your betrothed when you don’t know the details.”

“You’re right,” Aunt Agatha conceded. “I don’t know what happened to them. And even if I did, Paul Stockton’s death hardly fits the same category. We know what happened to him, and we know that his parents made every effort to contact us and inform us before we travelled all the way out here. I stand corrected, my dear, and I apologize to you and to all and sundry. I will do my best to be more forgiving in the future.”

“Thank you,” Josephine grinned. “That is all anyone can ask of you.”

They finished their meal and continued their day most amicably, though now Josephine looked forward to the dinner appointment with the Stockton’s with the same anticipation she once reserved for her journey. She told herself she only wanted to inform herself about Andrew Stockton’s recovery from his injury, but when she thought about him and remembered the fiery vitality of his presence near her and the warm heat of his body radiating like a scorching summer sun against her skin, she flushed bright red and longed to see him and to speak to him again. Aunt Agatha witnessed this flush and the fidgety awkwardness that tortured the delay until the following day. She affected a scowl of disapproval, but in her heart she recognized the inevitable signs of Josephine’s affection and made no comment. She also refrained from divulging her own ideas about the nature of the invitation and busied herself with her own travel arrangements. Regardless of the outcome of the dinner, she, Agatha Parker, would be travelling back to New York on Monday. Of that she could be quite certain.

The next day found Josephine in a flustered ferment of excitement, whizzing around the hotel room deciding what to wear and how to arrange her hair. The more she tried to hide her emotion, the more inept she became. Aunt Agatha tactfully held her tongue, but her diplomacy only discomfited Josephine still more and convinced her that her aunt must know the reason for her anxiety. As it happened, Timothy Stockton arrived some ten minutes late to pick them up in the gig, and Josephine almost tripped and fell headlong down the stairs in her frenzy to get down them. She knotted her fingers together and clenched her teeth to stop them chattering on the drive out to the Stockton ranch house in her desperation to get there.

Only Mr. Stockton greeted them at the door step and escorted them into the house and to the dining room, where the promised dinner already sat laid out on the table. Mrs. Stockton occupied her usual chair at the foot of the table, while Andrew and Timothy took their places on the side opposite Agatha and Josephine. Josephine noted that both sons wore clean, pressed clothing with not a speck of dirt or a gun in sight. Only Andrew’s right arm, tied up in a bandage and hanging limp across his chest, gave any indication of their outing together. Occasionally while they sat across the table from one another, he cast a curious look at her, but when he spotted her returning his gaze, he looked away quickly.

“Are you recovering from your injury well enough?” she inquired at one point during a lull in the conversation.

“Well enough,” he responded. “It went through the very top corner of my lung just underneath my shoulder, so it wasn’t a bad injury. But, yes, thank you for asking. I am recovering well enough.”

“How did you injure yourself?” Aunt Agatha asked.

“I was shot by cattle rustlers,” he informed her. “We have a problem with them, and they shoot back when we try to stop them from taking our stock.”

“That sounds rather dangerous,” Aunt Agatha declared. “I certainly would think twice about letting my son throw himself into the path of a rustler’s bullet, especially after losing your brother so recently.”

“It’s part of the job,” Andrew stated. “If we didn’t drive them off as often as humanly possible, we’d be overrun with them, and pretty soon, we would have no stock at all. They’re like the coyotes. The only thing that keeps them in check is shooting at them every time they come onto our property. They would raid us with impunity if we didn’t.”

“You take the management of your parents’ business very seriously, don’t you?” Aunt Agatha observed.

“Of course, I do,” he returned. “It’s our whole livelihood.”

“Which brings us to the subject we invited you ladies out here to discuss,” Mr. Stockton announced. “My son Andrew would like to propose marriage to young Miss Parker here. If you agree, we would simply apply all the terms of our contract between you and Paul to Andrew. He stands to inherit our property and our money, so he represents just as good a marriage prospect for you as Paul did. And you have the advantage of having met him and gaining a fair idea of his personality and his reliability. You’ve seen quite a bit of the ranch. You have a much better idea of what this match entails than you did when you left New York intending to marry Paul. Well, there it is. That’s our proposal. Of course, we don’t expect you to return an answer here today, right at this minute. You may take all the time you like to consider it, and we would expect you to negotiate any terms you wish.”

Agatha stared at Josephine, then at Andrew, but she compressed her lips and said nothing. Josephine stared at Mr. Stockton, stunned, and then turned and stared at Andrew, who raised his eyes from his plate and gazed back at her with the forthright directness she prized so highly in him. A light appeared before her eyes, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, illuminating a long dark pathway stretching out in front of her to the farthest reaches of a darkened horizon. The third alternative answering the needs and hopes of everyone concerned lay exposed to the light of day. In his eyes, she saw written all the words of tenderness and affection they exchanged beside the river. And underneath those words, more expressions of devoted passion lurked unspoken and unspeakable beneath the surface. A primal communication passed between them across the table, a knowledge and an intimacy beyond their brief association. His deep dark eyes glittered at her, but not with the comic twinkling of amusement. Instead, he peered directly into her innermost heart, where he read her hopes and fears, her dreams and visions, as plainly as if she spoke them aloud.

Without removing her eyes from his face, she murmured, “I appreciate your generosity, Mr. Stockton, but I don’t think I will need any time to consider your offer or to renegotiate it. I accept your proposal of marriage to Andrew.”

“Are you certain?” Mr. Stockton started in surprise. “Please don’t feel any pressure to answer.”

“I do not feel any pressure to answer,” Josephine replied evenly. “As to the business side of the proposition, I agree to all the terms under which my father accepted a contract for me to marry Paul. And I think I have a pretty good idea what marrying Andrew entails.”

Andrew exploded into gales of laughter, which infected Josephine, though she made the statement in all seriousness. The elder Stockton’s stared at the two of them as if they’d both gone simultaneously insane, but a faint hint of a snicker twitched at the corner of Aunt Agatha’s mouth. Still, she did not speak.

“Miss Parker,” Mr. Stockton addressed Aunt Agatha, “as Mr. Parker’s agent and Miss Parker’s chaperone, I must ask for your approval. Do you give your consent for Miss Parker to marry my son Andrew?”

Aunt Agatha spoke for the first time, the brittle civility of her voice masking her hidden feelings. “Josephine knows her own mind on this subject. As she just said, the terms of the arrangement are just as favorable now as when your son Paul was alive, and I don’t think she would consent to this match so readily if she didn’t have good reason to be willing to do so.”

“I am quite certain of my decision, Mr. Stockton,” Josephine asserted. “And I am quite willing to marry Andrew.”

“Well,” stammered Mr. Stockton, staring first at Josephine, then at Andrew, then at his wife, and back at Josephine again, “this is most unexpected. I told Andrew we should be prepared to wait at least a few days for your answer. I wasn’t expecting you to answer so quickly and so decisively.”

“My aunt’s train leaves tomorrow,” Josephine replied. “I would have to answer you today, one way or the other. Now, tell me. How would you like to proceed? Do you have a plan for the wedding itself? As you know, I have all my things stored in the barn at the hotel, so I am at your disposal.”

“If you agree,” Mr. Stockton replied, “we can send for the parson and you can marry here, at the house, tomorrow morning. How does ten o’clock sound? Tim can pick you up at the hotel at nine, and bring you here. That will give you time to get a good breakfast beforehand, and afterwards, we can send Tim and Ben down to the hotel to collect the rest of your luggage. We’ll do everything the same way we planned to do it for Paul. I hope Miss Parker, your aunt, won’t mind waiting a little longer to leave town?”

“That sounds excellent!” she exclaimed. “How does that sound to you, Aunt Agatha? Are you willing to postpone your departure a little longer to attend my wedding? You will probably have to wait another week in the town before another train departs for the East Coast.”

Aunt Agatha nodded. “Very well, my dear. Whatever makes you happy works just fine for me, too. Although I will be happy to get back on the train for home, I wouldn’t miss attending your wedding for the world. I can easily wait another week. Knowing you are happy with the situation is all I can ask for.” She rose from the table, Josephine followed her, and the whole party drifted toward the door.

“Well, then,” Mr. Stockton clapped his hands together and rubbed them excitedly. “We’ll see you
both tomorrow morning. Tim here can stop by Blessed Redeemer Church and let the parson know our intentions.”

“Very well,” Aunt
Agatha  agreed. “Until tomorrow, then.” She exited the room first, leading the way to the front door, along with Tim. The elder Stockton’s came after them.

Josephine met Andrew at the doorway, where they exchanged a significant glance. Josephine reached out and gave his free hand a quick squeeze. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she murmured.

He responded with a brief nod, but his eyes spoke volumes of the anticipation he felt for the morrow. She dared not remain in his presence any longer, and she dashed out of the room to the front veranda, where she jumped into the gig next to Aunt Agatha. Tim lashed the horse and they shot away down the driveway.