Benjamin's Bride (Hero Hearts; Lawmen's Brides Book 2) Read online

  It wasn’t that the people of Knox Mills didn’t value education, but most of them didn’t have much book learning to speak of and were content if their children just learned to read and write. Benjamin thought of the books that had meant so much to him throughout his growing-up years. Education was much more than reading, writing, and ciphering. It was an opening of the mind and the imagination, and it didn’t matter if the door came through Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, or the tales of James Fenimore Cooper, as far as Benjamin was concerned.

  Wouldn’t it be fine to have a wife who could speak of these books and discuss weighty matters with knowledge? As the nation wrestled with the issues of slavery and abolition, the rise of industry and the agricultural tradition, the political parties and the arrival of immigrants from abroad, it would be pleasant to sit at the dining table and have discourse.

  On impulse, Benjamin turned and walked to the general store. On a slate at the front of the store, Mr. Wiessen, the storekeeper, had written the prices of some of his items for sale.

  Bacon, 15 cents pound

  Salt Beef, 9 cents pound

  Fresh Beef, 5 cents pound

  Extra Fine Flour, 5 cents pound

  Beans, 10 cents quart

  Coffee, Java, 18 cents pound

  “You wouldn’t happen to be offering a sale on wives now, would you?” Benjamin asked jocularly.

  Mr. Wiessen gave the deputy an insulted stare. “We do not sell people in my store,” he said in an outraged Prussian accent. “Do I look like a slave trader?”

  “No, of course not,” Benjamin hurried to rectify his words. “I only meant, well, you see, I’m new in town, as you know, and well, I’ve been thinking that it’s time—I’m twenty-four years old, and well . . .”

  The older gentleman’s eyes were wise. “I see,” he said. “You want a wife.”

  “Well—yes, I do. But I don’t have time for courting.”

  “You think you will not have to court your wife? Every day, I still court Frau Wiessen. I still, thirty years after we say our vows, I still court her.”

  “That’s very good advice, and I’ll certainly follow it. I wonder if you could help me?”

  “Find a wife? How should I do such a thing? My daughters are all married.”

  “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. I mean to write an advertisement for a mail-order bride, and I reckon you’ve seen dozens of them. In your capacity as a storekeeper, I mean.”

  “Ahh. Yes, many such advertisements come through here. The women seeking the men, the men seeking the women. Everyone wants to be in love. How can I help you?”

  Benjamin was very glad that there was no one else in the store. Mr. Wiessen’s voice carried and what Benjamin wanted to be a private conversation would have been audible to anyone else in the building.

  “I’m not sure what I should write.”

  “How should I know what you should write? I am married, and Frau Wiessen would not take it kindly if I were writing to advertise for a wife, now would she?” The storekeeper gave him an owlish glance over the rims of his spectacles.

  “I’m sure she would not,” Benjamin said, wondering if Frau Wiessen found her husband’s obtuseness as irritating as it was to Benjamin. “But I thought that perhaps, because you have seen other advertisements for mail-order brides, you might be able to help me write one?”

  “Ahhh, I see. You want me to be your scribe, to write the pretty words that you cannot think of, so that the young lady will fall in love with you through the advertisement. But then, what if she falls in love with me when she accepts your proposal, because she prefers my pretty words? Frau Wiessen would not like that at all.”

  “No,” Benjamin said, holding on to his temper. Was the old man secretly laughing at him? Very well for Wiessen, he had had his wife for thirty years, but it wasn’t that easy nowadays in a state where an unmarried woman had her pick of the bachelors. She didn’t have to be pretty or witty or well-dressed or educated; she just had to be female and she had more suitors than a cactus had spikes. “I merely meant that I sought your advice regarding the writing of the advertisement. What should I tell her?’

  “Hmmm, let me see. Frau Wiessen was very partial to compliments on her eyes. They are neither blue nor green, but a most intriguing combination of the two. When she wears a green frock, they look greener. When she wears a blue frock—“

  “Yes, I understand, but as I have not seen the eyes of the person who will be reading the advertisement, I cannot offer sonnets to her eyes.”

  “That is unfortunate. Ladies like to be praised for their beauty. Even if they are not particularly beautiful, they wish to be thought so. You must remember this. I was fortunate to marry a great beauty; before she was Frau Wiessen, she was Klara Deutchendorf, the prettiest fraulein in Bischofsburg.”

  “I think,” Benjamin said with painstaking patience, “that I shall need to describe myself so that the young lady reading the advertisement will think it worthwhile to marry me.”

  “Hmmph!” Mr. Wiessen frowned as he scrutinized the deputy standing in front of him. “What is there to say? You are tall, yes, I get the crick in my neck from looking up at you. You want me to write this, that you need a tall woman who will not get the crick in her neck when she looks at you? I will write it if you wish,” he shrugged, “but to my mind, this is not what a woman will want to hear.”

  “No! I mean, yes, you may write that I’m tall. That’s all. Just tall. Nothing about a crick in the neck.”

  Mr. Wiessen took down the word. “Tall. There, I have written it. What else? You have brown hair. Your skin is brown from the sun. Should I write that you have the coloring of a piece of leather?”

  “No,” Benjamin said curtly. “I don’t believe that my complexion is of significance.”

  “Neither is the color of your hair, young ladies do not marry a man because his hair is yellow or black or red or brown. They prefer him to have hair and you do, so there, you may expect a favorable answer. Tall and has hair. Now, what color are your eyes? Ladies do not marry because of the color of the eyes either, but the eyes matter more than the hair, as long as you have the hair. Which you do.”

  “My eyes are green,” Benjamin said tightly.

  “Green,” Mr. Wiessen frowned. “That is unusual, is it not?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what they are.”

  “As long as you are not blind, yes, I do not think it will disturb her, the green eyes. Better not to mention the color in this case. You are tall, you have hair and eyes. Better to keep it simple.”

  “I don’t think it will be to my benefit to describe me as if I were no different from every other man.”

  Mr. Wiessen threw up his hands. “You tell me nothing but your eyes and hair and height. How can I compose a love letter based on that alone?”

  “It’s not a love letter, it’s an advertisement!” Benjamin shouted.

  “You are bad-tempered, young deputy. Shall I write that?”

  “I am not bad-tempered!”

  “Then why are you shouting?”

  The curtain separating the store from the back area fluttered open and a round little woman with rosy cheeks and a benign expression entered. “Frans, why are you tormenting the deputy?” she scolded him. She handed over a sheet of paper.

  “We receive these advertisements every day. All you need to do is read them. I have ranked them in order; the best ones are at the top. You see this name here? Miss Mary-Lee Jameson? She is a schoolteacher, twenty years old, in Abilene, Kansas. Here is another one, the second name on the list, she is a—“

  A schoolteacher. “Might I read that one?” Benjamin asked. “Miss Jameson, the schoolteacher?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Wiessen said, taking the advertisements from her pocket. “I remember that one well. She is a young lady who knows her mind. Read and see.”

  Benjamin took the advertisement.

  I am Mary-Lee Jameson, age 20. I have been educated in an excellent acad
emy and, as I am not a fool, I do not propose to marry one. I am seeking a husband who knows his Dickens from his Diogenes and will not embarrass his unborn children with ignorance. I am currently a schoolteacher, and I see no reason why being married should bring a halt to a vocation that I love. I am skilled in the domestic arts, able to cook, sew, clean, and see to the Christian souls of my household. I am small in build but not in character. I am not shallow in character and looks are not chief among my requisites for a husband. I do, however, require cleanliness and manners, so do not respond if you are not attentive to your hygiene or if you spit indoors; I will not tolerate such failings under any roof or in any household of which I am mistress.

  Benjamin found himself smiling halfway through the advertisement. By the time he finished he was grinning widely. “She does indeed know her own mind,” he agreed. “I think I’ll write to Miss Mary-Lee Jameson and see if she’s ever thought of coming to Texas to find a husband.”

  Chapter 4

  Late June 1852, Fort Worth, Texas

  Mary-Lee clutched her hatbox close to her chest. The stagecoach would be arriving in Knox Mills, Texas within the hour, the driver told her. Not a moment too soon, Mary-Lee thought. It was to no purpose to even try to re-braid her hair; the inside of the stagecoach was so hot and crowded that she could feel the perspiration trickling from her scalp. Her face was wet as well from the sweat. She had been wise to choose a lightweight cotton dress in pale blue print to travel in, but even that concession to the heat was not enough for her to be confident of her appearance when meeting Mr. Graves, her husband-to-be.

  It was of no significance! She wasn’t getting married to fall in love. She was marrying for a purpose, to marry a man who would be able to provide the help she needed in order to get her revenge against her uncle and free herself of his influence.

  When she had received the letter from Deputy Marshal Benjamin Graves in response to her original advertisement, her first thought had been a grudging respect for a man who had not been deterred by the forthright approach she had used. Her second response had been a reaction to his title. He was a lawman, a member of the U.S. Marshal Service, no less. He, like her father, had a commitment to enforce and uphold the law.

  She could not prove that her uncle had had anything to do with her father’s disappearance, but by now, she strongly suspected that he had been involved and that her father was dead. She had faced this as she had faced the other distressing episodes of her life: her grief had been, by the alchemy of her temperament, transformed into rage. The papers, she knew now, were deeds to gold mines that her father had bought. No wonder Uncle Gus and Lance Townsend wanted them. Her father was a shrewd businessman, not one to be fooled by a false claim. He had given her the papers to keep so that, if anything happened to him, she would have the financial means she needed to make her own way in the world. But that was not how Uncle Gus intended for his niece to proceed.

  The hatbox on her lap did hold a hat; Mary-Lee was very fond of fashionable hats. But inside the box, tucked into the bright blue sash around the crown of the hat were the papers, neatly folded so that there was no trace of their presence. The doll box had done its duty well, and Uncle Gus had never found the papers there. When she had gone away to the academy, the papers had gone with her, concealed in the prayer book that she used every Sunday in church.

  After she began boarding with the Kelceys upon being hired as a teacher, the papers had been given residence inside a small cotton bag that was concealed in a pair of walking shoes that she wore frequently. Her hiding places had been locations that Uncle Gus, if he were paying attention, would have viewed as too obvious and out in the open to be hiding places at all. Now the papers were in her hatbox. But they were her papers, and the mines were hers. She did not know the character of Deputy Marshal Benjamin Graves, and she had no intentions of entrusting him with her father’s last request.

  “I had no idea that Texas would be this hot,” said the passenger to her right, a pale, slender woman who had dressed for fashion in a gorgeous silk dress with ruched satin at the waist and along the sleeves. It was pretty, to be sure, but not the fabric for a journey in a stagecoach in the Texas summer heat. “Did you know?”

  “I come here by way of Kansas,” Mary-Lee answered. “It is always hot in the summer.”

  “Oh . . . I’m coming from back East. Maine. It’s been a very long journey.”

  “Yes. Maine is very far away from Texas.”

  What a foolish woman not to realize that just as Maine was unlike Texas, so too, the weather was different. Mary-Lee’s journey was not yet done. After disembarking from the stagecoach at Fort Worth, she had another day’s journey ahead of her to reach Knox Mills. But Deputy Marshal Graves would be waiting for her at Fort Worth, where the army chaplain would be able to marry them. They would leave the fort as a married couple. From there, her plans to bring her uncle to judgment could begin.

  * * *

  Benjamin Graves waited nervously for the stagecoach. As far as he could tell, he was the only one waiting for a bride; the other people milling about seemed to be waiting for family. Judging from the number of men in uniform, he guessed that a fair number of the passengers would be wives or family members. He envied the men who were waiting for their wives; at least they knew what to expect. All he knew for certain was that Mary-Lee Jameson was an educated lady who spoke her mind. The letters they had exchanged revealed her to be the kind of woman who wouldn’t buckle at the first sign of trouble.

  She had explained briefly that she had been orphaned when young and was raised by her uncle. She hadn’t gone into detail, but Benjamin had surmised that she was not fond of the uncle. Well, he had relatives back in Ireland that he didn’t miss, so there wasn’t anything strange about that. Orphans had to develop a thicker skin if they were going to make their way in the world, and it sounded as though Miss Jameson had done so.

  She had written that she was a Methodist and sang in the church choir. Benjamin wanted to have a proper church wedding, but the army chaplain would have to do. The stagecoach only made it to Knox Mills every other week, and he didn’t want his bride-to-be waiting alone at Fort Worth. Nor would he ask a well-brought up lady to take a journey with him by wagon without being married. So, they would be married at the fort, then head for home.

  They’d get there before nightfall, and there would be a party waiting for the newlyweds. Carson Harlow had said he’d attend to that, and he’d grinned when he said it. Benjamin had a moment’s alarm at that grin; a wedding celebration for the deputy now and the Knox Mills Fourth of July coming up soon might mean that the ne’er-do-wells of the town and surrounding communities could be figuring that there’d be so much drinking and roistering that the law would be too busy to notice anything else. They were wrong if they thought that, but Benjamin didn’t want to see their speculation put to the test. He was hoping for a chance for Mary-Lee to feel welcomed by her new home and to feel hopeful about her husband. He didn’t expect to fall in love immediately, but he surely did hope that love would start to blossom fast.

  A couple of boys who had been outside the fort playing, likely sons of military men, began yelling, “Stage is comin’ in!”

  Benjamin followed the rest of the waiting assembly out of the fort. Sure enough, there she was, riding at a steady clip. His heart began to pound at a faster rate, as if it might have more room to beat if it could hammer outside his chest, as the anticipation of Mary-Lee’s arrival mounted.

  The stage stopped, and the driver jumped down. Benjamin inhaled and then let his breath out slowly as the door opened and passengers began to get out. Mostly women, he noticed, and all around him, jubilant soldiers were moving closer to the stagecoach to greet their wives or sisters or mothers; wives, he guessed, judging by the embraces and kisses. Should he kiss her when she got out or would she think him presumptuous, they hadn’t even properly met, she might think…

  She was here, making every inch of her five feet stand up and co
unt for something as she stepped down from the stagecoach, a pretty hat with a jaunty feather in the crown on top of her head, her eyes scanning the crowd, looking . . .

  Looking for him, he realized and stepped forward. What kind of fool was he, not to be right at the door as it opened, and standing back like he wasn’t sure . . .

  He wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter now, because there she was, a hatbox in her hand, a determined little chin up in the air as her eyes fell upon him.

  “Are you Deputy Marshal Benjamin Graves?” she asked.

  Lordy, she had a pretty voice. He had wondered if she would talk like she wrote and he’d have to dodge her words like bullets, but her voice was low and almost musical, not what he’d expected. She wasn’t very big, that was for sure, and he was a foot taller than she was, but when she tilted her head up to look at him, a faint smile flitted across her face with the swiftness of a butterfly, there, then gone, but with the image left to linger.

  “You’re a might tall man, Deputy Marshal,” she said.

  “You’re a mighty pretty lady, Miss Jameson.”

  She smiled again. “Thank you, sir. I should commend you for replying to my first and not my second advertisement.”

  “You sent a second one? Where are your trunks?”

  She pointed. The stagecoach driver was riding the vehicle into the fort to unload the baggage, which made sense, since most of the passengers were going to be living in the fort.

  “I’ll take that hatbox,” he offered.

  “I can manage, thank you.”

  She spoke politely, but he felt rebuffed by her words. He’d only meant to be a gentleman. Did she think a Texas lawman was so uncouth that he wouldn’t know how to hold a woman’s hatbox without ruining the contents?

  He offered her his arm. That, she was willing to take.

  “You mentioned you sent a second ad?”