Short Straw Bride

“Get to marry first?” Luke raised one dark eyebrow, questioning the privilege his brother had just offered him. “I’m not a consumptive old maid and you’re not a snake oil salesman, so there’s no sense in you trying to weasel me into getting hitched. Seems to me that you should be the one to find a wife. You’re younger, less set in your ways.”

“I’m only three years younger,” Daniel protested. “Besides, I don’t want to get married.” The thought was enough to make him reach for his glass and down a healthy shot of whiskey.

“I don’t want to get married, either,” Luke noted.

There was a lengthy silence while they considered the problem. Outside, a cricket scratched plaintively, the sound swallowed by the vast emptiness of the land.

“We could draw straws,” Daniel said. “Whoever gets the short straw has to find a wife.”

“Might work.” Luke rolled the idea around. It wasn’t ideal. Of course, the only thing that would be ideal was to forget the whole thing. But Daniel was right, they did need a wife. And since neither of them wanted a wife, it was only fair to let chance decide which of them had to be sacrificed on the matrimonial altar.

He got up and crossed to where the broom leaned in the corner. A thick lacing of cobwebs tied it to the wall and the handle stuck to his fingers. Frowning, he lifted it and broke two dusty straws off the bottom. He brought them back to the table and sat down again. Daniel watched as he measured the two straws and then carefully broke one off halfway down. There’d be no mistaking which of them had drawn the short straw.

“You sure about this?” Luke asked.

Daniel dragged his eyes upward to meet his brother’s. “I’m sure.”

Without looking at what he was doing, Luke rolled the straws between his fingers, then closed his fist around them. “You first.”

Both men looked down. The tops of both straws were visible above the tanned skin of his hand. One straw was higher than the other but there was no telling which was longer overall. Daniel studied the two straws as intently as if his life depended on it, which, Luke guessed, it more or less did. He reached out, his fingers hovering above Luke’s hand, and then quickly drew a straw, choosing the one that showed the least.

There was a moment’s silence and then Daniel drew a deep, relieved breath. His face expressionless, Luke slowly opened his hand and stared at the short piece of straw lying on his palm.

Damned if he wasn’t going to have to find himself a wife.

Eleanor Williams leaned her elbows on the windowsill and looked up at the fat yellow moon. It sat in the middle of the sky, surrounded by twinkling stars like a plump matron with dozens of servants dancing attendance. But Eleanor barely noticed the beauty of the view.

Today had been her birthday. She was now twenty years old and, according to her cousin, Anabel, could consider herself practically an old maid. The catty remark was the only acknowledgment there’d been of Eleanor’s birthday and Anabel had only mentioned it because it gave her an opportunity to say something unpleasant. Unfortunately, in this case, Anabel’s nastiness was nothing more than the truth. She was practically an old maid, Eleanor admitted with a sigh. And likely to remain that way as long as she was so completely overshadowed by her younger cousin.

Anabel had just turned sixteen and had every expectation of being a wife before her next birthday. How could she not be, pretty as she was? Her hair was the color of just-ripened wheat, all soft and golden, and when it was tied up in rags, it turned into perfect ringlets that set off Anabel’s pink-and-white complexion like a gilded frame.

Unlike Anabel’s obedient golden locks, Eleanor’s waist-length hair was a mass of thick, soft curls that refused to be completely tamed. Even now, when she’d just braided it for bed, tiny curls had already sprung loose to lie against her forehead. And instead of being rich gold, it was a plain brown—dirt brown Anabel had told her when Eleanor first came to live with her aunt and uncle six years ago.

With a sigh, Eleanor released the heavy braid, letting it fall back over her shoulder. It wasn’t just Anabel’s golden hair that made her so lovely, Her eyes were a beautiful clear blue, the color of a summer sky, as one smitten swain had told her. No one was going to wax poetic about plain brown eyes. And Anabel was tall. Not too tall, Aunt Dorinda would have quickly pointed out. Just tall enough to display the elegant slenderness of her figure.

Thank heavens her Anabel wasn’t a little dab of a thing, Eleanor had once heard Aunt Dorinda say, with a pointed glance in her niece’s direction. At barely five feet tall and with a figure that was neither elegant nor slender, Eleanor couldn’t even attribute the remark to Dorinda Williams’s acid tongue. She was a little dab of a thing, and there was just no getting around it.

His little chicken, her father had called her. Always fussing over him like a mother hen with only one chick, he’d tease. Every night he’d come to her room wherever they were staying and she’d solemnly inspect his person. Always, there’d been some small flaw for her childish fingers to adjust—a tie not quite properly tied, a lock of hair slightly out of place, a loose button to be quickly stitched onto the crisp white linen of his shirt.

The memory made Eleanor smile. It was only after he was gone that it had occurred to her that those little flaws had been deliberate. Nathan Williams had understood his daughter’s need to be needed. If they’d had a settled home, she could have fussed with the cooking and cleaning. But he was a gambler and they rarely stayed in one place more than a few weeks at a time. Since he couldn’t give her a house to fuss over, he’d given her himself.

Eleanor’s mother had died when Eleanor was six, and for the next eight years she’d traveled with her father. Nathan Williams had been a gambler by profession. He’d started out gambling on the Mississippi riverboats before the war. When he married Emmeline St. Jacques, he’d purchased a store in St. Louis and settled down to try his hand at being a tradesman. Eleanor had vague memories of a high-ceilinged room, with sawdust on the floor and goods piled high on every side.

But after Emmeline’s death Nathan hadn’t been able to stay in one place, and he’d gone back to his old profession. He’d brought his young daughter west and they’d traveled from town to town, staying in each only a short while, until he judged it time to take his skill with the cards and move on. It hadn’t been a conventional upbringing and Eleanor knew there were those who’d say that he’d had no business dragging a child all over the country the way he had. But she’d never minded the travel as long as she could stay with her father.

It had been six years since he was killed by a stray bullet in a barroom quarrel between two cowpunchers, and she still missed him. Eleanor’s eyes grew wistful, remembering her father’s quiet smile and the gentle warmth of his laugh. There was rarely any laughter in her Uncle Zebediah’s house. When she’d first come here, newly orphaned and almost paralyzed with grief, one of the first things she’d noticed was how seldom her aunt and uncle smiled.

At first she’d thought it was because they were sorry about her father’s death, but it hadn’t taken long for her to realize that Zebediah had sternly disapproved of his older brother’s profession. Gambling was an activity steeped in sin and, as far as they were concerned, Nathan’s death in a common barroom brawl was confirmation that God punished all sinners, even if it did occasionally take Him a little longer than Zeb would have liked.

Eleanor might have been offended on her father’s behalf if she hadn’t already begun to realize that there wasn’t much that Zeb and Dorinda Williams didn’t disapprove of. Where her father had always made it a point to find pleasure, even in small things, his younger brother and his wife seemed to try to do just the opposite. They could find fault with anyone and anything, no matter how small. Over the past six years Eleanor could almost count the number of times she’d seen a real smile from either of them, and she couldn’t ever remember hearing them laugh.

Anabel smiled and laughed, but her smiles were well practiced in front of her mirror and her laughter was generally at someone else’s expense. Her parents doted on her, and they’d spoiled her terribly. Anabel had only to express an interest in something for them to leap to get it for her, whether it was a new pink ribbon for her golden curls or watercolor lessons to show off her refined sensitivity to the finer things in life.

It was no wonder she was so bone-deep selfish.

Anabel had been only ten when Eleanor came to stay, but she’d already been well versed in getting her own way. At the suggestion that she might share her big, sunny bedroom with her cousin, Anabel’s pretty pink complexion had flushed an ugly shade of red and she’d begun screaming. Eleanor could still remember her cousin standing in the middle of the parlor, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her body rigid with anger as shriek after shriek issued from her perfect Cupid’s-bow mouth.

Eleanor, dazed by the abrupt changes in her life, had waited in vain to see one of Anabel’s parents slap her to stop her hysteria. Dorinda’s pale blue eyes had filled with tears and she’d quickly promised her daughter that “Mommy’s precious” wouldn’t have to share her room with her cousin. After all, Dorinda had told her husband, without regard for Eleanor’s presence, there was no telling what kind of manners they could expect from a child raised in saloons. Best not to risk Anabel’s delicate sensibilities by subjecting her to bad influences.

Eleanor could have told them that she’d never been in a saloon in her life and that she certainly had better manners than her young cousin, but it hadn’t seemed worth the effort. She’d been grateful for the privacy afforded by the boxy little room at the rear of the house—the maid’s room, Anabel had pointed out with a smug smile the first time they were alone together—and the more she got to know her cousin, the stronger her gratitude had become.

When she’d first come here her aunt had explained that she undoubtedly had a great deal to learn about proper living. Raised as she had been, she’d no doubt picked up many improper notions, and such notions wouldn’t be tolerated in the Williams household. Six years later, Eleanor still didn’t know what ‘improper notions’ she might have had, but she did know that if this was “proper living,” she was not impressed. Zebediah and Dorinda Williams might be proper but they were also smallminded, parsimonious people who took no pleasure in life.

She sighed again and rested her chin on the hands she’d propped on the windowsill. She could leave, of course, but she had no money and no way to earn a living. Though her father had done his best to shield her from the more sordid realities of life, she’d seen enough to know just how difficult the world could be for a woman on her own.

She might be able to wangle a job as a schoolteacher in some remote area. There was always a crying need for such. Or she could marry Andrew Webb and become a mother to his four small children. She could do worse. Andrew was pleasant enough and, as owner of the general store, considered a good catch, particularly for a young woman of no real beauty or expectations, as her aunt Dorinda had pointed out when Mr. Webb began making his interest in her niece obvious. It isn’t as if Eleanor can simply have her pick of beaux, after all. Not like dear Anabel. This last had been said with a fond look at her daughter, who’d managed to blush and look modest, no mean feat for a girl who spent nearly every waking moment in front of a mirror.

Aunt Dorinda was right, of course. She could do worse than to encourage Mr. Webb. It was just that…The thought trailed off as a cloud drifted across the face of the moon. A light breeze blew through the open window, its chill cutting through the light cotton of her nightgown. Shivering, Eleanor rose from the trunk where she’d been sitting and lowered the window.

It was just that she was a silly, romantic fool, she told herself as she climbed into her narrow bed and pulled the covers up around her shoulders. She was still clinging to the childish idea of a handsome knight who’d ride into her life and fall instantly under the spell of her negligible charms.

It was past time to put away such foolish notions, she told herself briskly. She was twenty now, no longer a girl. Unless she wanted to prove that little cat Anabel right and end up an old maid, it was time to stop looking for a handsome knight and start thinking of marrying a good man with whom to build a solid, dependable foundation for the future.

An image of Andrew Webb’s thin face and watery blue eyes rose in her mind’s eye and she felt her determination falter. She wasn’t clear on just what intimacies being married entailed, but whatever they were, it was difficult to imagine sharing them with Mr. Webb. Still, his first wife had clearly had no difficulty doing so, as witness the four children she’d given him before falling victim to consumption.

Eleanor set her chin with determination. Tomorrow was Sunday and she was sure to see Mr. Webb at church, since he attended the services as regularly as the Williams family. When she saw him, she’d do her best to discreetly indicate that his attentions were not unwelcome. If she was not mistaken in the strength of his feelings, she could find herself Mrs. Andrew Webb before the summer was out.

She used the edge of the sheet to dry a tear from her cheek. It was the sensible, mature thing to do. If it wasn’t the love match of her childish dreams, it would certainly be better than spending the rest of her life as Aunt Dorinda’s unpaid housekeeper.

Closing her eyes, Eleanor forced back tears that threatened to spill over. Despite the turmoil of her thoughts, she was soon asleep. Through her dreams drifted images of a dark-haired man with a dazzling smile who swept her up onto the back of his horse and carried her off to a castle that sat incongruously in the middle of the prairie.

Chapter Two (#ulink_05508464-d0da-5e93-a910-1c49857ca409)

The last time anyone could remember the McLain brothers setting foot inside a church was three years past when their mother had been laid to rest beside her husband. So their arrival on this fine spring morning created a buzz of talk as people wondered what had caused their sudden attack of piety.

The speculation was already well advanced by the time Eleanor’s family arrived. Zeb Williams had a firm, if unspoken, belief that God rewarded not merely godliness but punctuality. But this morning Anabel had been unable to find a particular hair ribbon and their departure had been delayed while the house was searched for the missing item. Though the pink ribbon was found in Anabel’s reticule, exactly where she’d apparently put it, the blame for their lateness had somehow fallen on Eleanor and she’d been treated to a telling silence on the carriage ride.

She was actually grateful for the opportunity to review the decision she’d made the night before. Though she tried desperately to find some flaw in the plan, none presented itself. No matter how she looked at it, marrying Andrew Webb seemed the best option available to her. He was a respectable man, a kind man, even. She’d be a very foolish girl indeed to turn him away.

So, when Mr. Webb greeted the Williams family today, she’d put on her very best smile for him and try to look as if the prospect of wedding a man with cold, damp hands and four small children filled her with something other than dread.

But the whispered buzz that hummed through the small church pushed all thoughts of Andrew Webb momentarily aside. Of course, even without the whispers running through the pews, Eleanor would have noticed the McLains. They sat in the front pew, next to the aisle. Broad shoulders beneath neat black coats, dark hair worn just a little too long for complete respectability—even from the back, they drew a woman’s eyes.

Though she’d attended church there every Sunday for six years, it seemed to Eleanor as if the building was suddenly much smaller than it had been, as if the McLains’ presence filled up the available space in some way that mere mortal men had no business doing.

It was doubtful that anyone paid much attention to the Reverend Sean Mulligan’s sermon that day. Eleanor certainly couldn’t have repeated a word of it. When the sermon ended, the murmured amens were perfunctory, everyone’s mind occupied with things of more immediate interest than the hereafter.

It was the normal practice for people to linger in front of the church, exchanging greetings with each other, complimenting the minister on his sermon. On this particular Sunday there was only one topic of conversation among the womenfolk—what had brought the McLains to church after all this time. And though the men pretended to be above such common speculation, it didn’t stop their eyes from sliding to where the McLains stood talking with Reverend Mulligan.