The Wrong Bride_A Christmas Mail Order Bride Romance Read online

  “Not for you,” Z replied. “I don’t know that I want to be in love. I don’t want the fuss of being so caught up in one woman that I can’t see straight. There are lots of pretty gals out there. Why should I just want to look at one of ‘em?”

  Will Henry didn’t answer. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed if other girls were pretty or not. But none of them was Mary Ellen, so it didn’t matter if a girl had pretty blue eyes or curly golden hair. She wasn’t Mary Ellen. It had been that way when Mary Ellen was at his side and on his arm, partnering him in a square dance in the Turner barn or sitting across from him at the church picnic. There just wasn’t anyone else but Mary Ellen.

  Different as the brothers were, they were each tolerant of the other’s moods. Z stayed silent, understanding that his brother was deep in thought. Z didn’t fuss over Will Henry’s mourning like Grandmother did. However, Grandmother thought that no one had a right to grieve unless they had gone through the War that had taken her husband and the twins’ father. Their mother too, really, since she had died so soon after Pa fell in battle.

  It didn’t seem like such sacrifice to give his grandmother what she wanted, which was assurance that there would be Kennesaws at the ranch when she was gone. She wanted him to marry, and from Z’s perspective, it was easier to marry someone he didn’t know than to fall in love and bear the pain that Will Henry lived with because the girl he loved had died. Why, he’d have to be plumb crazy to get into any kind of a fix like that. No, as far as Z was concerned, he would marry to please Grandmother and live his life the way he wanted to, to please himself.

  Will Henry, feeling that spreading cloud of despair start to rise within him, abruptly got up, tossed the rest of his coffee onto the ground, and brought his cup back to the chuck wagon.

  “Done for the night, Will Henry?” asked Clark, who manned the chuck wagon.

  Done for the night. If only he were. However, he knew that sleep would not come tonight. He’d lay upon his bedroll and stare up at the stars overhead, surrounded by the black night that traveled with him no matter if he were at home in Texas or hundreds of miles away.

  He envied his brother. So confident in staying true to himself in spite of taking a wife who might want to change him. He hoped that Miss Bonnie Yankovich, when she arrived, wouldn’t mind terribly much if her husband had different ideas of what marriage required than she did. She’d probably end up with a broken heart.

  Chapter 2

  July 1885, Two Years Later

  Zachary Taylor Kennesaw scanned the faces in the parlor, all of them showing curiosity at being gathered without an explanation. Except for Will Henry; either nothing surprised his twin brother or else he just didn’t show it. Or maybe, being twins, Will Henry had just known. Z wouldn’t have discounted that. When he’d told the family, and Elsie and Clem too, who were like family, that he wanted everyone to gather in the parlor in fifteen minutes, they’d all been curious except for Will Henry, who just nodded. And smiled.

  “Folks,” Z began, his face already alight with a grin that would only get wider as he continued because lately, he had felt like there wasn’t enough room on his face to hold the smiles ever since Bonnie had confirmed the news. “Bonnie and I have some news for y’all.”

  His grandmother’s pinioning brown eyes stared at him, unblinking, her hope so openly expressed that he felt as if he ought not to be looking at her, witnessing how much this mattered to her. There was one thing that Grandmother wanted, and that was children in the house. Children to continue the Kennesaw line; children to inherit the ranch; children to grow up to be Texas men and women who would carry on the Kennesaw legacy.

  He grinned just for her and he saw something enter her expression. He hadn’t said a word, but her features seemed to strengthen, becoming even fiercer than normal as she waited for the words that would confirm her hopes.

  “Bonnie and I are expecting that Santa Claus will bring us something special this Christmas,” he said.

  “Mr. Zachary, ain’t you gonna just say it outright?” Elsie asked.

  Before the war Elsie had been a family slave. She was a free woman now who worked for wages, but she hadn’t needed emancipation to speak her mind. She had always been able to stand up to Eldora, even before she earned wages for her work. Eldora held her in close confidences and Elsie understood Eldora’s dominating ways better than anyone. Elsie knew how deeply Eldora’s desires were to see her grandsons married with children. Passing the Kennesaw ranch down to the next generation was not an option to leave to chance, it was going to be planned out. And who better to do it than the matriarch herself.

  Eldora was a tower of strength to her family, but Elsie had seen her when she was nearly broken by what life had dealt her. After the riding accident that had seen Eldora Kennesaw lose the use of her legs, Elsie had become even more forthright. She’d nursed the matriarch of the family and cared for her through that tragedy just as she’d been at her side through all the previous ones. What Eldora could not show to her kinfolks, she could reveal to the woman who had been at her side since youth. And Elsie knew, better than anyone, how much Eldora feared that the Kennesaw line would end.

  “We’re going to have a baby,” Bonnie said. “Around Christmas time. We’ve known for a little while, but we were waiting to say anything.”

  “Bonnie was waiting,” Z countered his wife’s statement. “I wanted to shout the news from the hills, but she wouldn’t let me.”

  “Bonnie was right to wait,” Eldora said. “It’s dangerous to announce a birth too soon. But this one is going to be strong, I can tell. Christmas.” She nodded as if the date met with her approval. Z expected that if it hadn’t, she’d have been trying to find a way to get around it. Of course, if Bonnie’s time had been due during the cattle drive, he might have been the one figuring his options.

  Bonnie nodded, knowing that Grandmother was adding up the months. “Five more months,” she said. “Then there will be a baby under the roof.”

  “About time,” Grandmother said.

  Her impudent grandson gave her a look that warned her that, unless she wanted the conversation to head in a direction that would surely have Bonnie Kennesaw blushing, she’d better leave things as they were. But he smiled. “Babies come when they’re ready,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that we’ve only tried a time or two.”

  His wife gave him what he called her blue bullet glare, a warning glance that told him he was heading for marital quicksand right quick. But Z just grinned. He was going to be a father and Bonnie’s sense of propriety was not going to have the slightest influence upon his zeal. A baby boy to grow up, teach to ride, instruct in the ways of running a ranch, that was what was in store for him. He’d have to give him the man-to-man advice that a mother couldn’t give, of course, when the kid was old enough and ready to hear it. Bonnie would be a good mother, that much he knew. She was practical. She’d keep the boy on the straight and narrow every day of his life. Bonnie came from hard-working stock; she was the daughter of a Polish immigrant who had lost his life in a Pittsburgh mine. She came from a family of thirteen, counting her. He knew that Grandmother was hoping that Bonnie would have the same fertility that her mother had had. He wasn’t so sure; thirteen seemed like a passel of kids.

  A woman who had that many kids might lose her looks and her figure. Childbearing was hard on a woman. He cast appreciative eyes over Bonnie’s still-trim figure and pert carriage. She was sure enough a lovely little gal. He hadn’t known what to expect when he’d agreed to advertise for a mail-order bride at Grandmother’s insistance. He’d hoped she would be pretty, and Bonnie was more than pretty, she was a beauty with waves of brown hair that he loved to brush, and expressive blue eyes that were either burning with love for him or snapping with notice that he was in trouble. Bonnie held back nothing, and he admitted to himself that she was just what he had needed. Sweet and sassy, just the wife for him. Before he met Bonnie, he’d reckoned that it didn’t much matter what sort o
f woman he hitched up to, as long as she didn’t expect him to change his ways. But Bonnie was worth changing for.

  As Elsie and Grandmother peppered Bonnie with questions, and Clem decided that he’d had enough lady’s business for the day and went back to work, Will Henry went to his brother.

  “I’m going to be an uncle,” he said, giving his brother a pat on the back. “Sounds good to me.”

  “And a father yourself, in time, now that you’ve decided to marry.”

  Will Henry looked alarmed. “One thing at a time. Marrying Bonnie’s sister is the first step. I think I’d like to enjoy being an uncle before I tackle fatherhood.”

  “As if you’ll have anything to say about it, once you’re married. Bonnie and I wanted a family right away and we were thinking it wasn’t going to happen. You wait and see. You’re glad Bonnie’s sister is going to come West, aren’t you?’

  “Of course I am. I’m the one who wrote to her, and I didn’t need Grandmother prodding me to do it, unlike someone else,” he said, smiling at his brother. “But it’s a big change.”

  Z grinned. “Some parts of that change are mighty pleasant,” he said jocularly. “There’s nothing like curling up at night with the woman who’s sitting across the dinner table from you during the daytime. No one told me about that. No one told me, so I’m telling you, that there’s a lot to be said for marriage. Of course, I wouldn’t have gotten into that bed any other way,” he acknowledged. “Women like Bonnie and her sisters, they’ll have vows before you see so much as a bare-naked toe.”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to be,” Will Henry said. “Marriage to one woman, not trotting after a different girl in a different saloon every Saturday night. But listen to you, the man who wasn’t going to fall in love with his wife.”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t fall in love with her,” Z corrected. “I said I didn’t have to be in love with her to marry her. I just figured that me being a man and her being a woman was all it took. What I knew of women didn’t get learned from ladies like Bonnie. Maybe all of that comes after marriage.”

  “Maybe so,” Will Henry agreed. Seeing for himself how easily Bonnie had fit into the Kennesaw family and how she’d been able to tame his wild brother without fettering him had been something to watch. Bonnie was pretty, for a start, and no man minded looking at a pretty face. But she was smart, too, smart enough to know how to handle Z with just a light touch on the reins and a firm seat in the saddle. But Will Henry wasn’t a rowdy sort and he didn’t fear a wife’s domestic influence. He wanted what Bonnie had provided for Z; a loyal, passionate heart and a firm regard for family. Like Grandmother, he had a deeply rooted sense of placement and eventually children would nurture that.

  That was why, when he’d hesitantly approached his sister-in-law to ask if she thought any of her sisters might think of coming to Texas as a mail-order bride, he’d been confident that she would know the sort of woman he’d be looking for. And immediately, she’d suggested her older sister Elzbieta. Like Will Henry, the girl had known the loss of a loved fiancé. Elzbieta was quiet and thoughtful, Bonnie told him. She was intelligent, liked to read the newspapers in English and in Polish, and had opinions on subjects that mattered to her. Like all the Yankovich girls, she had brown hair and blue eyes, high cheekbones and a strong, straight back, the latter because Mama wouldn’t tolerate poor posture. She made her offspring sit up straight and stand tall because she wouldn’t see them beaten down, no matter how hard life was. Elzbieta was slender but not frail, Bonnie assured Will. “The mines kill our men,” Bonnie had told Will Henry with a touch of bitterness as she thought of the manner in which the specter of death roamed underground at will, “but life can’t break our women.”

  Bonnie wrote to her sister first, to find out what she thought about coming to Texas to marry. Even allowing for the slow transport of mail across country, Elzbieta’s response had come quickly. Yes, she’d written, she would like that very much. She had even included a note in her letter, addressed to Will Henry, in which she had introduced herself to him. She told him that she was a hard worker and that she could cook, clean and sew, and she was used to making do with what she had. Will had smiled at that; he knew from what Bonnie had told him that the Yankoviches were poor. The Kennesaws weren’t, and they didn’t do without. Bonnie remained frugal, much more so than her husband, and even though Grandmother didn’t pinch pennies, she appreciated Bonnie’s sense of economy in household expenses. Grandmother never really forgot that Bonnie came from immigrants, so she ignored it. Will Henry was hopeful that she would practice the same forbearance with his wife.

  Will Henry’s spirits had lightened as he began the waiting process. Come late autumn he’d be marrying, and in time, he’d be looking forward, as Z and Bonnie were, to the birth of a child as well. But not right away; he wanted time to fall in love with his bride. He wasn’t the way Z had been before Bonnie’s arrival. Will Henry wanted a wife to love.

  Chapter 3

  Late Autumn, 1885

  “You sure do look like you could use some help there, sweetie.”

  Amused at the image of his wife sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to bend so that she could put on her shoes, Zachary Taylor Kennesaw sauntered into the bedroom with the deceptively indolent, panther-like gait that made him appear to forever be at leisure.

  Bonnie Yankovich Kennesaw looked up at him, an expression of mingled exasperation and amusement on her face. She was in her eighth month of pregnancy and, as Eldora Kennesaw, the matriarch of the family was fond of saying, she was all baby. Her face was still dainty and trim, framed by the lustrous brown locks that her husband was so fond of, and except for her midsection, she was just about as trim as the day she’d come to Texas to marry Zachary Taylor Kennesaw two years ago. Elsie told her that from the back, she looked just as she had when she was a bride. However, being “all baby” meant that something as mundane as putting on her shoes was an ordeal.

  Standing in front of her, Z Taylor leaned his leg toward her and slapped his thigh. “Put your foot up here, and I’ll be your maid.”

  “A fine maid you’d make,” she chuckled, but she did as he suggested, leaning back on the bed, supporting herself on her elbows.

  “I’d be a fine maid for you,” he said, “helping you put on those frilly underthings.”

  “Shame,” she said indulgently. Pregnancy had awakened in her a comfortable sensuality that made her appreciate her husband’s good looks, his charm, and his frank enjoyment of her body in late pregnancy. He thought, and frequently told her, that she was beautiful, and seen through his eyes, she now regarded herself in a new light. Vanity had been frowned upon in the Yankovich household, but Bonnie knew that she was beautiful when she looked into her husband’s eyes.

  Z gave her a sweeping glance from underneath his captivating blue-green gaze. “Maybe I’d take a little longer to put ‘em on you than a maid would,” he acknowledged with a grin. “But think of the time I’d save taking them off.”

  The first time she had seen her husband-to-be, he’d been wearing nothing but trousers and a smile after being on the losing end of a game of poker the night before. That poker game and the one that followed it shortly before their wedding, with Bonnie holding winning cards, had become legendary in the Kennesaw family and in Mesquite, Texas. The townspeople had been doubtful that any woman could tame the wayward Zachary Taylor Kennesaw, but somehow, the mail-order bride who was the daughter of Polish immigrants had transformed him. Two years into their marriage, that image remained in her memory. He was just as charming when clothed, but the intimacy that they enjoyed, a passion that would be bringing a baby into the family around Christmas time, had deepened into much more than Bonnie dared to hope for when she had answered his advertisement for a mail-order bride. She had traveled all the way from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, leaving behind seven sisters and five brothers, a mother, and a grandmother, to marry him. Texas was as foreign to her as Poland would have been had she returned
to the land of her family’s origins. However, she’d quickly adapted to life on the ranch, the absence of cold, bitter winters, the endless landscape, and a sky so encompassing that she could not fathom how it was so shrunken back East.

  “You’d best get a move on, sweetie,” he said after both shoes were on her feet and buttoned. “Your sister is going to arrive, and you’ll still be here in your gutchies.”

  Bonnie laughed, amused by the Texas drawl that accompanied his pronunciation of gadzki, the Polish word for underwear. In their two years of marriage, her husband had picked up a few words of Polish. Elzbieta would be surprised, when she arrived, to find out that the brother-in-law she hadn’t met knew any words at all in their native tongue. The family had spoken Polish at home and English at school, and Elzbieta had been the scholar of them all. She was serious and thoughtful, and she’d be the perfect wife for Z’s twin brother, Will Henry. Bonnie was just as excited at the prospect of seeing her sister again as she was at the thought that her brother-in-law would have a wife.

  When she’d first come to Texas, Will Henry’s kindness had made the difference in her adjustment to her new home, and she was pleased that her sister would be the means by which the solitary and sensitive older twin could find solace and contentment. His love for the girl, Mary Ellen, who had died before they were wed, had been a source of frustration for his grandmother, who, having lost loved ones in her own life, could not understand why Will Henry could not rise above his grief. Z was more tolerant of his brother’s melancholy; it wasn’t his way to handle things, but Will Henry was his brother, and the bond between the two united them.

  “Where’s Will Henry?” Bonnie asked as she put the finishing touches to her hair. She had a new bonnet; Z liked his wife to dress well. It was probably seasons out of date compared to what they were wearing back East, but that wouldn’t matter to Elzbieta, who paid no attention to fashion. Kasia, their younger sister, would have known what was in vogue. She was a maid in the home of one of the numerous Pittsburgh millionaires and as such was the family’s source of information on what the rich were doing, wearing, and profiting from. Mama, who had lost her husband and her father in the mines owned by those Pittsburgh millionaires, was contemptuous of how they spent their money, but the irrepressible Kasia told her stories anyway. Elzbieta, serious and intelligent, would be the right one for Will Henry, who would probably not notice whether or not what his wife was wearing was years out of date or the very latest in fashion. However, in Texas, no one fussed much over such things as fashion. Land and cattle were the manner in which wealth was tallied, and the Kennesaws were amply provided with both.