A Highwayman's Mail Order Bride Read online

  “I imagine we’ll have to head to town soon,” he observed, watching Zeke from the corner of his eye. “But no funny stuff.”

  His friend’s face fell. “Why not?” he asked, reminding Jed of how his brother used to sound when he found out he couldn’t have his way—back when his brother was maybe five or six years of age, not twenty years older.

  Jasper would never be Zeke’s age or anything older than ten. He’d been ten for a dozen years or more.

  Travis spoke up, so Jed didn’t have to. “You know the rules, same as the rest of us. We don’t show our faces around so close to a job, so no one there will remember us passing through.”

  “Right,” Tom added. “Going to the mercantile for food supplies or a new pair of boot is one thing, but whoopin’ it up with a house full of gals the way you like to do, well…”

  “I could behave myself,” Zeke argued, which earned him a round of hearty laughter.

  “Might be you could,” Jed nodded once he could speak again, “but you won’t. Not once those beauties come at you with their smiles and their sweet talk.”

  “It ain’t the smiles nor the sweet talk that interests me,” he grumbled, folding his thick arms over an equally thick stomach.

  “No, and it ain’t your charm or your skill in bed that gets them interested in you,” Travis replied with a wry grin, which got them laughing again.

  “Oh, because they’re fallin’ all over themselves to rub up on you,” Zeke snorted.

  Travis cocked an eyebrow.

  Everyone knew how sensitive he was about only one thing—Jed supposed he’d been a looker in his younger days, before pieces of a wagon full of dynamite had torn into his face back in ‘63. He liked to keep his hat low when they rode and rarely allowed himself to be seen near areas where they’d be pulling a job. He was too easy to identify.

  “It ain’t my face they’re interested in, and I know it,” he murmured. “But once I drop my drawers, they find out I didn’t hurt nothin’ below the waist.”

  “I thought you said they find out you didn’t have nothin’ below the waist,” Tom laughed.

  Travis punched his shoulder.

  Jed chuckled along with the rest of them, including Travis—he could laugh at himself, something the rest of them had difficulty with.

  Even so, his heart wasn’t in his laughter. It was someplace else. He was getting fidgety, wanting to move on. He got this way whenever he started feeling low about things. Impatient, unsatisfied.

  They went silent when the cry of a coyote sounded in the distance, then another. The horses went still, their ears trained in the direction of the call.

  “S’all right,” Jed said, going to them. “Ain’t no coyote comin’ near our camp.”

  He’d always felt a coyote’s call was a rather mournful sound. There were times when it made him feel awful lonesome. Like just then, even surrounded by friends and partners. He could still feel alone when surrounded by people.

  Not that he could ever tell them about it. They’d look at him like he’d smoked some of that funny plant that made men go off their rockers.

  Maybe he had gone off his rocker some. Maybe that was his problem in a nutshell. He was twenty-eight years old, and he had nothing to show for all those years. Other men had businesses of their own, farms or ranches, wives, and babies. Something real.

  He didn’t even have a home. Home was the outdoors, or the tent if he was feeling poorly or the weather was too rough. Sometimes they would stay atop a saloon if they weren’t pulling a job too close to town, just passing through. If they had the money for it.

  There were times when he felt his mother’s eyes peering down at him from Heaven, and when he had that feeling he’d want to die of shame over what she had to be thinking of him.

  The firelight dimmed behind him, telling him Zeke was putting it out. It was time to pack up and get ready for work.

  They fell into their normal routine without saying much. They didn’t have to speak, each of them having gone through it enough times that they might have been able to do it in their sleep.

  Travis stripped the horses of everything but their bridles and saddles, loading all of the packs into the wagon which they’d already half-hidden in a cluster of tall rocks while Zeke and Tom cleared the supper mess and Jed made sure there was nothing left behind to prove they’d been camping there.

  By the time they mounted up and walked the horses for a bit to warm them up, the light had gone completely out of the sky, and a big, bright moon lit the dry plains of North Texas. There was nothing but hard-packed clay, spotty bits of grass and brush as far as the eye could see until one reached the hills to the west, where elms and oaks grew thick.

  They started off north, riding at an easy pace but hardly dawdling. Those Butterfield coaches rode all through the day and almost all the night, and they were known to move faster than any other stagecoach line in the west, perhaps in the country.

  And they were looking to stop one, which meant they had to be ready and waiting for it to approach.

  They waited two-by-two on opposite sides of the dusty road, waiting for the first sign of it in the distance. The moonlight worked in their favor, though it would mean making themselves visible to the driver and the man riding shotgun.

  All of them reached for the kerchiefs, tied them, so nothing but their eyes were visible—and even then, Jed liked to go about business with his head low, the brim of his black hat covering the rest of his face in case anybody got too curious about his looks.

  Though the presence of a pistol generally wiped out all such curiosity. He’d found that through many such hold-ups all along the Butterfield route, the Wells Fargo and others. Anything they could stop, they did stop, and they took the occupants for everything they had.

  It was almost too easy sometimes, and too easy to ride off while those he’d stolen from wondered what to do next.

  It was easy to forget they were people like him. Except for the money. They could do without their money, their watches and rings and purses. He, on the other hand, needed the money to live.

  Though the question of what type of life he was living never strayed far from his mind, try though he might to get it out of there.

  A low whistle from the other side of the road told him Tom had spotted something in the distance. Jed checked his pistol once more to ensure it was ready to go, then began walking the horse at a brisk trot to warm it before coaxing it into a run as the coach drew closer.

  This was it. Time to earn his living.

  3

  “Are you feeling quite well?”

  Melissa opened her eyes, groggy, searching for the source of the voice which had woken her. The inside of the coach was black as pitch, telling her at least the general time of day, if not the particular hour.

  It was the kindly man to her right whose name she still did not know. He kept to himself during their brief rest stops, just as she had, his head down while the rest of the men spoke of things which Melissa had little care for and therefore paid little attention to.

  Mealtime was time to eat, and memories of gnawing, ever-present hunger were like a ghost which shadowed her no matter where she went. Each meal placed a bit more space between the ghost and herself, so she busied her mouth with the act of chewing and swallowing.

  She wondered if this man was the same, or if he merely wished to keep to himself. There were times when she wished all of her traveling companions were the same. What she would not have given for pure, unbroken silence.

  She blinked hard, striving to clear the heaviness in her head and answer the man who sounded so concerned. “I believe so. Did I give you reason to believe otherwise?”

  He chuckled. “Why, yes, ma’am. You were groanin’ like.”

  Groaning. Why had she groaned?

  Oh. Yes.

  The dream came rushing back. So similar to so many others.

  “I did not know I made noise in my sleep. I am quite embarrassed,” she admitted. “And I d
o humbly apologize if I disturbed you.”

  He merely smiled, the thin beams of moonlight which shone in through the square window revealing his shining teeth. “A man can’t get a decent stretch of sleep while being tossed back and forth, now can he?”

  She looked around the coach, where it appeared the other passengers were sleeping, chins touching chests.

  Her companion chuckled. “All right, then. I can’t sleep while gettin’ tossed around.”

  She smiled. He was a nice man, and she’d known so few of them. It got to the point where she’d doubted their existence.

  “Just the same,” she murmured, “I am sorry for being a bother.”

  “Bad dreams?” He fixed a shrewd eye upon her.

  She nodded. No sense in lying to the man who’d heard her in the throes of brutal memory. “Sometimes, yes.”

  “Wouldn’t wonder. Most folks have nightmares since the war. You’re from up north, aren’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “I suppose your memories of the war are a bit different from those in the Confederacy,” he mused, nodding slowly. “But war is war and privation is privation no matter which side of the fightin’ you happen to be on.”

  “I suppose.” Though her privation had little to do with the war between the states. As far as she’d been concerned, there might as well have been no war, for it had not made much difference to her family. Her father long dead, her brothers too young to fight.

  No, life had been much the same horror during those bloody years as it had been before.

  “What takes you out west, then?” he asked. “Your husband waitin’ for you?”

  “Yes.” She turned the familiar gold band around and around, accustomed to its pressure. “On our ranch. I was back east to visit family.”

  “I see. He must be anxiously awaitin’ a pretty thing like yourself.”

  For perhaps the first time in her life, Melissa felt flattered at a man’s compliment. For once, she did not consider her sky-blue eyes or creamy skin a liability. He did not cause her skin to crawl as so many had over the years, ever since she had developed into a woman.

  And even before then.

  For, while a beautiful lady was a joy to all those who gazed upon her, she was a joy to be treasured from afar. Something untouchable.

  While a poor girl whose clothes were little more than rags and whose mother was known to entertain men for money was something for everyone to enjoy—or so they’d clearly believed. She’d been something to look at with a lustful eye, to sneer at and treat as though she ought to be grateful for any little bit of attention.

  “I believe my husband has been far too concerned with the affairs of the ranch to worry himself with thoughts of me,” she demurred.

  “Then you don’t know much about men, pardon my sayin’.”

  “Perhaps I don’t.”

  They shared a secret smile, the sort shared by two people who hadn’t much experience sharing their thoughts with another and who delighted in the presence of another gentle soul.

  “You go to sleep now, ma’am,” he said. “You look as though you need it. Won’t no harm come to you here, with all these men about you and that burly mountain of a fella ridin’ shotgun. Just rest your head.”

  She thanked him with a smile and allowed her head to rest against the coach wall once again. Sleep would not come, and she knew it. Not for quite a while, at least. When the sky began to lighten, and the memories faded back as they always did in the morning, sleep might overtake her again.

  It had been two weeks since she’d left Boston on just such a night, warm and clear, with nothing but the clothes she’d brought with her on the day of her wedding, and the letters and tickets for the stagecoach.

  She had no wish for John Carter to accuse her of taking anything from him. Nothing he had purchased for her during their year-long marriage made it to the trip. It all sat in the hope chest he’d presented to her after the wedding.

  Hope chest. What a strange name. She might have held hope in those early days. Hope she would no longer starve. Hope she would manage a decent household, not the sort she’d grown up in—scrimping for every last bit of food or money, struggling to keep her three brothers from getting themselves killed while they stole and begged on the streets.

  Hope for peace at last. A warm bed, a full night’s sleep, to wake up without dread in her heart over what the day may bring.

  Those hopes lasted all of three days.

  Until John Carter showed her the type of man he truly was. When his kind, dark eyes had gone hard, never to soften again.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the memory of the blows, the shouts, the accusations of laziness and infidelity while she knew very well where he spent his evenings. The fact that he’d managed the stamina to get her with child was almost impressive.

  Her hands crossed over her belly. Oh, the baby. How she had warred with herself over the happiness and horror.

  For she’d always wanted a baby of her own. Someone to love her, someone to belong to her. Nobody had ever done either—her mama might have in the early days, when life was easier, and she had a husband to rely on, but it was difficult to love somebody who meant nothing more than another mouth to feed.

  Love was a luxury. There had been no luxury in their lives.

  And so, when she’d understood the truth of her situation, the day she’d recognized her missed courses and the fatigue which suddenly plagued her, the aversion to coffee and foods which she had once enjoyed, she’d first experienced a flash of wonder.

  She’d never had a wish come true before.

  In that instant, she’d imagined everything her child might become.

  Before John Carter’s face had filled her mind and put all of her dreams to rest.

  A cold chill had filled her then, leaving her shaking, holding onto the bedpost for support. What if he killed the child before it was born? What if the child’s crying infuriated him and he beat it as he so regularly beat her? His cruelty would surely not stop at his wife, for he was a cruel man by nature.

  One single, clear thought had occurred to her then.

  She would have to marry the man with whom she’d corresponded, rather than simply using the ticket he sent her to get away from Boston.

  Even with a husband who was only a husband in name, one who beat and belittled and treated her as little more than a slave without allowing her so much as a cent to her name, Melissa battled bitter guilt at her deception.

  She remembered finding the ad in the newspaper, one for a bride willing to set up house with a rancher in Nevada. It had been the morning after a particularly difficult night, John had come home from the sporting house in a fouler temper than usual.

  How her mind had whirled at the possibilities the ad presented. A new life, all the way on the other side of the country. Somewhere John could never find her.

  No one need know of her past. Her shame, the sort of shame that could not be erased by a gold wedding band and a man’s name attached to her own. Shame such as hers could not be washed away with the strongest soap.

  She would change her name, find a job—Carson City was a booming town, full of possibility, there were bound to be positions available in the mercantile or the post office or some such place. She could support herself for the first time, just herself, without younger half-siblings hanging on, without a mother now too sickly much of the time to do more than lie in bed.

  Freedom.

  She could taste it before she’d even laid pen to paper.

  His first letter had been a source of greater guilt, for Mark Furnish seemed like a good man. Hard-working, determined, full of vitality and big dreams. He might easily have painted a rosy image of ranch life in hopes of luring her, but he had not.

  He had not been aware of her desperation, either, or how promptly she would accept.

  The morning she’d found out about the child, she had already sent a letter in reply, telling him she would be pleased to move t
o Carson City and become his bride. She’d waited with bated breath every time the post arrived, waiting for the envelope containing the tickets for the train to St. Louis and the stagecoach which would carry her the remainder of the way.

  She had even requested he purchase them in the name of Mrs. Mark Furnish—for she could not travel under her married name, as John might be clever enough to find her if she did. She’d reasoned with her would-be husband that a married woman would be less likely to suffer the attentions of men along the journey than an unmarried girl.

  And she had hoped he’d believed her.

  By the time the tickets had arrived—under the name she’d requested—she’d known about the child for four days. Four days she’d spent avoiding her husband at all costs, so as to lessen the chance of him beating her.

  The following night, she’d made her escape while he was asleep, intoxicated enough to never notice the opening of the downstairs door.

  She had never intended to marry Mark until the presence of the baby had become clear. That one tiny wrinkle in her plans had changed everything. For the shame she’d borne as a poor girl with a soiled dove for a mother had been nothing compared to what her bastard brothers had endured and likely still endured after her marriage. Poor pups, without a father’s name behind their own.

  Even if they labored to pull themselves from poverty, what could they ever become? Society spat upon the fatherless, as though the circumstances behind a child’s existence were any fault of theirs.

  Melissa vowed then and there, that first morning, that she would never allow her child to be called a bastard.

  It meant marrying Mark, then. There was no other way. She could never allow John Carter to stake a claim on the child, for she could never escape him if that were the case. He would not let a child of his get away from him, and she would have eaten broken glass before she’d leave her child alone with him for a father. She would—