The Mistaken Mail Order Bride (6 page)

***

Eric knew bringing Caroline and Caleb to the
restaurant was going to mean people would be staring at them, but
he had expected them to be subtle about it. But since they did
stare, Caleb looked as if he was ready to sink into the floor.

Caroline, however, managed to act as if they
weren’t being studied. She rambled on about the towns she’d seen on
her way to this one. Whether she managed to maintain the carefree
façade because of her upbringing or because she didn’t mind a bunch
of onlookers taking in everything she was saying, Eric could only
guess. All he knew was that, like Caleb, the stares were getting on
his nerves.

Finally, he stopped her while she was
talking about the Mississippi River and whispered, “Excuse me, but
I don’t think everyone will stop watching us until I introduce you
and Caleb.” He glanced at the child who almost seemed to be in a
panic. “You don’t have to say anything,” he assured Caleb. “It’s
just we don’t get many new people, and they’re all curious about
you.”

“Oh!” Caroline picked up the cloth napkin
from her lap and dabbed her mouth with it. “I’d be delighted to
meet your friends.”

“They’re not friends,” Eric clarified. “I
know them, and I like them. I’m the sheriff, so we all know each
other. But that’s different from being friends with them.”

“Say no more,” she replied. “My father and
mother used to host social engagements. What would you like me to
do?”

“Do?”

“In some cases, it was best if I was seen
but not heard. I would smile and nod a lot. At other times, I was
expected to engage in pleasantries.”

He hadn’t expected such a response. He had
so much to learn about her and her past. Though he knew it wasn’t
fair to her, he kept assuming her life had been a lot like Allie’s,
but as it was turning out, they were a lot different.

“Oh, well,” Eric began, “I think the best
thing you can do is be yourself. Do what comes naturally to
you.”

“Alright.”

Seeing that as permission for him to
introduce them, he rose to his feet and faced the dozen people
who’d gathered into the small restaurant, some of which he now
noticed had been bugging him when he’d gotten clothes from Ida.

“I assume you all heard I got married
today,” Eric said.

Surprisingly, the people’s faces turned
bright red from being caught, though there wasn’t much to catch. It
was ironic to think they believed they weren’t so noticeable.

Eric cleared his throat to get their
attention. When they looked back at him, he shook his head. “If
you’re going to take the time to follow us here and eavesdrop on
our conversation, you might as well come out and ask whatever
questions you have about Caroline.” He gestured to her. “The boy is
shy, so I ask that you stick to my wife.”

When no one spoke up, Caroline stood up,
clasped her hands in front of her, and smiled. “It’s my pleasure to
meet you. My name was Caroline Benton, but after marrying this fine
gentleman, I’m Mrs. Eric Johnson.”

Her use of his name in conjunction with the
“Mrs.” brought a surge of pleasure through him. The sensation was
so foreign that he wasn’t sure what to think of it.

Again, no one said anything. This time, Eric
let out a frustrated sigh. “Look, you’re either going to come out
and ask, or you can go on home. Don’t expect me to answer your
questions later if you don’t ask anything right now.”

After a long moment, Jerry raised his
hand.

Surprised by the formality, Eric nodded for
him to speak.

Jerry rose to his feet and glanced at his
wife and two daughters. After he said his name, he said, “We were
wondering what happened to Allison Jones.”

Since Caroline’s face turned pink from
embarrassment, Eric decided to answer for her. “I don’t know what
happened to Allison Jones. She was supposed to come here today, but
she never did. Caroline came instead.” Before anyone could ask why
she got off the stagecoach when no one had been expecting her
arrival, he added, “Remember when Phoebe Durbin came here and
married Abe? Abe wasn’t expecting her, but he married her. I did
the same with Caroline.”

Thankfully, the group seemed to accept this,
for Jerry sat down and no one else asked further into this
particular inquiry.

This time, Jerry’s wife stood up. “I’m Dora,
and my daughters are Constance and Stella. Can we ask where you’re
from and what brought you here?” she asked Caroline.

“Nice to meet you,” Caroline replied. “And
yes, you may ask those questions. I’m from South Carolina. How many
of you are well versed on the war between the Union and the
Confederacy?”

The group glanced at one another and shook
their heads, so Eric said, “They weren’t affected by it all the way
out here.” With a shrug, he added, “People concern themselves with
things that directly affect them.”

“In the short time I’ve been here, I can see
this is nothing like where I came from,” Caroline replied, a
thoughtful tone in her voice. “I won’t go into the details. Doing
so would only bring up more questions, and we’d be here all night.
Suffice it to say the war claimed a lot of lives. The ladies
outnumbered the gentlemen, and conditions were so bad for us that
we started seeking husbands out West so they could have a
home.”

“You didn’t have a home?” Hank asked.

“No, I didn’t. I was dependent on the
kindness of others to provide for me, but you can only impose on
someone’s kindness for so long.” She paused and glanced at Eric.
Giving him a smile that warmed him, she said, “I’m very fortunate
someone as kind as your sheriff agreed to take me and Caleb in. I
found Caleb in Kansas. He was all by himself and crying. I couldn’t
find his parents or anyone else who was willing to take care of
him. Fortunately, Eric agreed to help me raise him. Everyone needs
a home.”

Noting Caleb’s yawn, Eric said, “I think
that’s enough for now. Both Caroline and Caleb have had a long trip
up here. Next time you want to ask questions, you need to tell
Caroline and Caleb something about you, too. I’m sure she’s just as
curious about all of you as you are about her.”

Since no one protested, Eric felt it safe to
end things. The poor woman and boy had been through enough already.
Right now, the best thing he could do was take them home and let
them rest.

After he paid the bill, he guided them out
of the restaurant, mindful to open the door for her. He hadn’t
realized how genteel she was until she’d stood up and spoke so
properly to the group. She was so different from the way Allie
sounded in her missives. Allie hadn’t grown up on a plantation
surrounded by people to do her bidding, so he supposed he should
expect things to be different.

He had thought Allie’s down-to-earth nature
would fit in well with the people in this town. With Caroline,
however, things might not be so easy. And he couldn’t help but
wonder if she was going to be happy here or not.

Chapter Five

O
nce Caleb was settled in bed, Eric said he’d make Caroline
some apple cider to drink. That left her alone for the moment. And
she decided she might as well get into her nightclothes.

The task of unfastening the buttons on her
boots took a good ten minutes. The buttons were so small she had a
difficult time getting the hook in the right slots to undo them.
She hadn’t worn such fine boots since the war, but she’d wanted to
have something from her past life. There was so little of it left.
Everything that came from the world she used to know was in her
trunk.

Thanks to Bee, she had clothes better suited
for being here, but she had slipped in her favorite gown. Her gaze
went across the small bedroom she and Eric would share. Not that
she could ever see wearing that beautiful gown in a place like
this.

She slipped the boots off and wiggled her
toes. Bee was right. The boots were as impractical as the gown. It
was hard to walk on the dirt road from Eric’s cabin to the
restaurant with them on. The other pair had wider heels and would
be much better.

With a sigh, she set them back into the
bottom of the trunk next to the gown. She proceeded to remove her
stockings and, because Bee had been wise enough to put the buttons
on the front of her dress, she took it off without any assistance.
Bee would think her foolish to wear a corset, especially on a long
trip, but Caroline didn’t know if she could bring herself to not
wear it. She didn’t know if she ever would. As it was, she had felt
underdressed in only three petticoats.

By the time she was done putting on the
cotton nightgown she’d brought with her, Eric knocked on the closed
bedroom door. “The cider’s ready whenever you are,” he called
out.

It was then she realized what tonight meant,
and she froze. With all the excitement over getting a full meal and
making sure Caleb was taken care of, she hadn’t given this aspect
of the marriage any thought.

“Caroline?” Eric asked.

She snapped out of her shock and cleared her
throat. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll be in the kitchen.
When you leave this room, take a left down a few paces. The table’s
on the right. You can’t miss it. It’s the one with the chairs
around it.”

Despite her sudden bout of nervousness, she
found herself laughing at his joke. There wasn’t much to the small
cabin. It wasn’t anything like the place she’s grown up in. Now,
that was a home one could get lost in.

“I’ll be right there,” she said once she
stopped laughing.

Though she was as ready as she could get,
she couldn’t bring herself to leave the safety of the room. Not
yet. She needed another few minutes to gather her composure. It was
the same thing she had to do before the balls where her parents
would introduce her to prospective suitors.

Most of the gentlemen found other—prettier
or curvier—ladies to entertain, though she had a couple who’d paid
her interest. She often suspected it was her father’s wealth that
had attracted them. Out here, though, she had no money. She had to
stand on her own merits. She just wasn’t sure she had any. At least
not yet. She’d have to learn to cook and sew and do other things
wives out here did. Maybe then she’d have something to offer that
was worth Eric’s interest.

She released her breath and arranged her
dark hair around her shoulders then pinched her cheeks so they’d
get the rosy color her mother said gentlemen liked so much. But
when she looked at herself, she couldn’t help but think there was
nothing she could do to make things any better.

Whether she was dressed in an exquisite ball
gown or whether she wore a simple cotton nightgown, the effect was
essentially the same. She couldn’t help but wonder if the woman
Eric was supposed to marry—the one named Allison Jones—was
beautiful like so many of the other ladies back in South
Carolina.

What could have come up that stopped Allison
from making the trip out here? Did she come across a gentleman
along the way who was so captivated by her beauty he had to propose
marriage? It had happened to one of Caroline’s childhood friends a
year after the war ended. Evelyn had been determined to head out to
Texas to marry a widower with young children, and Caroline and her
other friends had waited anxiously back in South Carolina to find
out if the man Evelyn went to marry was as promising as he sounded
in the missives.

But then, when they finally received
correspondence from Evelyn, they learned Evelyn met a young
gentleman on the train, and the two started talking and the next
thing she knew, she’d fallen in love with him. The two got off at
his hometown and married. Evelyn had assured her friends she let
the man in Texas know what happened. Since they had all read the
missives the widower had written to Evelyn, Georgette, who said he
sounded like a good person, went out to marry him instead.

Georgette reported wonderful things from her
marriage, and it was then the others, Caroline included, sought out
gentlemen out West to marry. There were so many to choose from.
They had their pick. Caroline had been the last of them to make the
journey. It took Bee’s prompting to finally do it.

Caroline wiped a tear from her eye. She
missed Bee. After her mother’s death, Bee had stepped in and
assumed the role, even though growing up, Bee had been one of the
slaves Caroline’s father had owned. The war, naturally, had changed
all of that. The war had changed so many things.

A soft knock jerked Caroline out of her
memories. Pulling her shoulders back, Caroline went to the door and
opened it, wondering if Caleb had woken up and was scared or if the
blankets on the floor he’d been sleeping on were uncomfortable.

But as it turned out, it was Eric. “I’m
sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to take so long. My mind wandered,
and I lost track of time.”