Benjamin's Bride (Hero Hearts; Lawmen's Brides Book 2) Page 16

  Mary-Lee glowered, but she let him kiss her good-bye. When Piper shut the door behind Benjamin’s exit, Mary-Lee said, “I think I’d like to have a try at being a man. They always get their own way.”

  Piper laughed. “No, you wouldn’t.” She put her hands on her round belly. “They think they’re the ones who are strong and who do the protecting, but it’s the women. God entrusted us with the most precious protecting there is. We’re the ones who have the babies.”

  “But they’re the ones who make the decisions about what we do!” Mary-Lee railed.

  “Do you really believe that? When you’ve been married a little longer, you’ll see things differently. Every wife I know handles her husband. Oh, she does it carefully, cleverly, so that he doesn’t realize what she’s doing. But if you use your wits, you’ll come to see what I mean. The home is a woman’s kingdom, and she stands guard over it day and night. The men, yes, they make the decisions about elections and courts and judges. But everything starts in the home. Good and bad, it starts here, and here is where we rule.”

  Epilogue

  October 1852, Knox Mills, Texas, the Graves’ house

  Mary-Lee was humming as she brought her basket into the kitchen. Spending time in the garden was one of her favorite activities. There, her restless nature found peace. She could wage warfare against the weeds that sought to dominate the soil, and she could marshal her resources against the critters that thought they could ravage the work of her hands. Her enemies were no longer her uncle or Lance Townsend. It was a much more satisfying battle. Benjamin teased her, saying that tomatoes and snap peas were an antidote to her temper, and maybe that was true. She no longer felt as if she were possessed by a nameless fear that threatened her serenity.

  As she began to prepare a platter of vegetables for the evening meal, she reflected on her change in temperament. It had begun to alter after Judge Drury had issued his sentence. The Townsends had been alarmed at how much he seemed to know about their dealings. Lance Townsend, realizing that his hopes of beginning a political career were doomed in Knox Mills, had not argued when the judge told him that he would go lighter on a sentence if Lance left Texas.

  The men who had been involved in the brawling were fined and sentenced to two weeks in jail. Jack Walker said that he didn’t have space for all of them, but he’d let them work off their sentence, with the judge’s permission, by repairing the schoolhouse. The judge seemed to think this was fair, and the men, relieved that they wouldn’t have to spend time in jail, were grateful for the moderate sentence.

  He hadn’t been so lenient toward the members of the gang that had fired on the Graves’ house. They were sentenced and sent to Fort Worth. The fort, the judge explained, had more than enough room in the stockade to house criminal miscreants.

  Abel Townsend wasn’t on trial. Nor were the other citizens of Knox Mills who had been tangled in the web of the Townsend corruption. But the judge, after he had finished sentencing, delivered a blistering rebuke of all those men who had allowed freedom to be tainted and the law to be twisted for their own personal gains. “Liberty,” he had thundered, “can only be preserved if honest men stand vigilant, day and night, ceaselessly, to maintain its purity.”

  The judge had prolonged his stay in Knox Mills in order to appoint a group of men who would oversee the election for mayor. There would be no malfeasance, the judge warned, in an election. Their votes, he had told them, were a covenant with the nation. “Break the covenant at your peril,” he warned. He didn’t care, he declared, if the cure that had begun in Knox Mills reached as far as Austin, nay, as far as the federal government; contagion must be cured, else, he said, it would spread over the land, contaminating all that was good and strong in their country.

  The oratory, although the judge mentioned no one by name, was a warning to the Townsends that their days as powerbrokers in Texas and in Washington were numbered.

  It had been a stirring occasion. Justice had been done. Injustice would return, Mary-Lee knew that. There was no cure for the fallibility of human nature. But with the Townsends out of power, she felt less threatened by the presence of Lance Townsend.

  Not long after that, they learned that Augustus Jameson had been arrested by a man named Allan Pinkerton, a diligent Scotsman who had been hired by an Abilene businessman to investigate Jameson’s dealings. Augustus was being tried back East because the Scot had discovered that his dishonest practices had extended far beyond the boundaries of the West. Jack Walker reckoned that this Pinkerton fellow knew his business and had said that he expected that they’d hear more of him in the future.

  But those matters, important though they were, seemed far beyond Mary-Lee’s concern. Her uncle could no longer dominate her life, and Lance Townsend was not a cause for alarm. She had her husband and her home. Her father had settled in Knox Mills, and they were a family again. The harvest was a good one.

  She looked up, as the front door opened to admit Benjamin.

  “I can smell supper clear out to the stable,” he said as he hung up his holster.

  “I hope it smells a lot better than the stable,” she said.

  Benjamin stood behind her and nuzzled her neck. “Sure does,” he said. His arms reached around her, as they so often did now, to place his hands over her belly, where the baby that would be born in the springtime was growing inside her. “Do you think he’s partial to sausage?” he asked.

  “She might be,” Mary-Lee said. It was a running joke between the two of them, an ongoing war over the gender of the child they had created.

  “I guess he’d better like his greens,” Benjamin said, eyeing the generous platter of vegetables that Mary-Lee was slicing.

  “And her reds and her yellows. The garden has been good; with canning, we’ll have food all through the winter,” Mary-Lee said happily.

  Benjamin snatched up a green bean before Mary-Lee could slap his hands away. The kitchen was a banquet of aromas that testified to her cooking. He smelled apples and cinnamon, sausage and onions and roasted potatoes, bread, and even the tart scent of lemons from fresh lemonade.

  “Papa is coming to supper tonight,” she said.

  “And here, I thought that pie was all for me,” Benjamin joked.

  “There’s plenty for both of you.”

  “You always cook enough to feed the U.S. Army,” Benjamin commented.

  “You eat enough for the U.S. Army,” she retorted.

  “It’s a husband’s duty to show his wife that he appreciates her cooking.”

  The banter between them was something else that had developed after the trial. Freed of the deeply rooted fear that had governed her life from the days when she had been under her uncle’s guardianship, Mary-Lee had found it much easier to express her love in humor. Benjamin enjoyed the fact that his wife had a tender side, which she wasn’t afraid to reveal, and now that they were going to have a baby, he had noticed that, although she was just as determined and strong-willed as ever, she was much less likely to fly off the handle. He hadn’t married a woman who was as soft as custard, and he was glad.

  Mary-Lee was sweet and tart, and that was just right for his tastes.

  Aurelius Jameson praised his daughter’s cooking as he accepted second helpings of the pie she had made.

  “How’s it going with the mining?” Benjamin asked, digging into his own second piece of pie.

  Aurelius nodded encouragingly as he chewed. “Even better than I’d hoped. Mary-Lee, there’s going to be more than enough for you to outfit that schoolhouse with new desks and slates and books for students.”

  Although Mary-Lee would not be ready to take up the position as teacher until the following autumn, Mrs. Greenwell had agreed to stay on in the meantime. Some members of the council had protested that it wasn’t proper for a married woman to take a job as a teacher, but Abe Winslow had spoken up. Knox Mills needed a teacher who was qualified for the position, he said, and if the woman who was suited for the job was a married woman, well
, they’d just have to accept it. Mary-Lee Graves, he said, had training and grit, and those were the qualities that would benefit the young people of Knox Mills.

  Benjamin did not object. They’d need to hire a girl to watch the baby while Mary-Lee taught, but school ended early in the afternoon and that would work out well. Lizzie Masters had an older sister, recently widowed when her husband died in the town’s smallpox epidemic, who was expecting a baby in the winter. She would able to take care of their baby along with her own when they were born and would be glad to earn a bit of money to add to the family income.

  “Come spring,” Benjamin said, “I want to start adding onto this house. Now that we have a family starting, we’ll need more room.”

  Aurelius nodded. “There’s plenty of money for that.”

  Benjamin laughed. “That’s Mary-Lee’s money,” he said. “It’s her gold mine. Hers and yours. I’ve got enough money for the house and everything we need.”

  It was still a surprise to Mary-Lee to realize that not only was she wealthy in her own right, thanks to the gold mines, but she was the wife of a wealthy man. But her true wealth, she realized, was right here in this room, where everything that she needed and everything she wanted was within reach: her husband, her father, the child within her; the bounty of her garden, the security of her home, and the proof of the providence of God.

  This was, as Piper Walker had wisely said, her kingdom.

  * * *

  THE END

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  LAWMEN’S BRIDES SERIES

  The Ranger’s Wife

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  BRIDES AND TWINS SERIES

  A Soldier’s Love

  Taming the Rancher

  The Wrong Bride

  A Surprise Love

  The Last Sister’s Love

  BRIDES & TWINS Box Set / Mail-Order Bride Compilation (My best-seller!)

  LOVE ON THE TRAILS SERIES

  A Love Beyond Suspicion

  Picture Perfect Love

  Love of a Wild Rose

  A Dangerous Time to Love

  A Cold Winter’s Love

  BOULDER BRIDES SERIES

  The Teacher’s Bride

  The Independent Bride

  The Perfect Bride

  The Indian’s Bride

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  BOULDER BRIDES BOX SET

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  Lottie

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  Book Description

  A SOLDIER’S LOVE

  Brides and Twins Book 1

  A Western Romance Short Story

  "I am not a man given to foolish superstitions, Miss O’Hara, but I daresay that John Turner’s soul will not rest until the mystery of his son has been resolved, and he was counting upon you to do so. Will you accept?"

  Molly O’Hara was just a little girl when she lost her heart to James Turner, the handsome, high-spirited young man who, along with his twin brother, was the heir to the Turner Plantation. But the Civil War tore families apart; it split the Turner brothers as one fought for the Union and the other fought for the Confederacy. The war took Molly’s father’s life and left her mother a distraught widow.

  Now the brothers are gone; one died in battle and James suffered the fate of Andersonville Prison, where most men are never heard from again. But when Molly, who grew up faster than her years, decides to become a mail-order bride at age eighteen, she answers an advertisement from a man named James Turner who runs a ranch in Texas. When she arrives, the man who introduces himself as Jim Turner is reserved and distant, nothing like the James Turner she remembers. But as their love grows, she learns more about the dark places in his soul and she realizes that part of him never left Andersonville.

  Can Molly's love heal James' deep scars of war? Can she get him to overcome his past and live life again?

  Beginnings

  September 15, 1869

  James Turner.

  That’s what the advertisement read. She peered twice to make sure that her eyesight wasn’t failing her, but at eighteen-years-old, Molly O’Hara’s eyesight was flawless.

  James Turner.

  But it couldn’t be. Of course, it couldn’t be Mr. James. He had been captured at Cold Harbor and sent to Andersonville Prison in Georgia. That was five years ago, and he had surely died; that’s what happened to most of the Union prisoners who were sent there.

  Her heart was beating faster at the shock of seeing, in print, the name of a man she believed to be dead.

  I run a ranch in Mesquite, Texas. It’s not an easy life. I am looking for a wife who can manage a household; must be willing and able to cook, clean, and sew. I’m 6’1” tall, 175 pounds; black hair, blue eyes. No visible scars. If interested, please reply:

  Jas. Turner

  Triple T Ranch

  Mesquite Texas

  Very truly yours,

  James Turner

  It simply wasn’t possible. Why, there had to be thousands of James Turners in the United States, and a significant number of them probably were tall and muscular, with black hair and blue eyes. But even if it wasn’t the James Turner she had known since she was a child, it was an omen. She was leaving anyway, and all she had needed was a sign from God, telling her which one to choose. There were so many men in the West seeking wives; every single one of them was a gamble. But God knew how she’d felt, even when she was young, about handsome, high-spirited Mr. James and God knew how she’d respond at the sight of that name when, for so long, she’d only been able to imagine it inscribed on a tombstone. God wouldn’t steer her wrong. Hadn’t he shown Abraham’s servant which wife to choose for Isaac?

  Father had wanted her to better herself. That wouldn’t happen if she stayed in Reddington, West Virginia, where she’d spent the last five years wearing mourning clothing because there was more death than life left at the Turner Plantation. She’d already made her decision to travel west as a mail-order bride. The name of the man whose advertisement she was reading confirmed that this was her destiny.

  Dear Mr. Turner, she wrote,

  I would be honored to become your wife. I am eighteen-years-old, and I have managed a household for my employer since I was thirteen. Please send me more details about Mesquite, Texas, so that I may arrange my itinerary.

  Respectfully,

  Mary O’Hara

  She would mail the letter first thing tomorrow morning. As Molly doused the candle and got into her bed, the darkness of the late hour released the memories that she had stored in her mind since she was just a girl. She remembered the night when she heard her
parents arguing, and her mother crying, because Da was going away to war. None of them had known then that the war everyone spoke of as if it were nothing more than a brief adventure would turn out to be a death sentence for the people she loved and the life she knew.

  Chapter 1

  April 1861

  “But Liam, you could be killed! Soldiers die!”

  “Listen, Maggie, rich men in the North are offering $500 for substitutes to go fight for them. We can’t pass up an opportunity like that. We didn’t come all the way from Ballymore just to be poor in another country.”

  “We’re not poor! We’re eating three meals a day. Have you forgotten what it was like? Waiting to see if the potato crop would thrive, and then knowing when it didn’t that we’d have another year of starving?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. But I want more out of life for Molly than three meals a day. You’re a servant on a rich man’s plantation. I’m working in a rich man’s stables. Maggie, $500! It’s a fortune!”

  “Rich men who start wars should fight their own battles!”

  Maggie O’Hara’s tears were flowing freely now, but her sniffling and sobs didn’t interfere with her words. They’d been in America for over ten years, taking the ship across the ocean in 1850 as so many others had, because to stay in Ireland was to die. She and Liam had been newlyweds, but they were braver then. Liam had been braver, and Maggie was willing to go wherever he did. That meant getting on board a crowded ship and sailing until they arrived in Virginia. They’d found work with one of the few plantation owners in the state who didn’t own slaves and paid wages to immigrants to work his fields, manage his home, and tend to his stables. Mr. John Turner was something of an anomaly in Reddington, Virginia; he didn’t own slaves, but he wasn’t an abolitionist. He was, however, a fair man and a just employer.