Mail Order Annie - A Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Novel (Mail Order Romance - Book 1 - Benjamin and Annie) (10 page)

             
She listened, fascinated, to this heart-felt confession. This was her first real insight into the soul of Benjamin Moran, and more than anything else, it confirmed her resolution to marry him. She wondered if the idea of trying to convert him, or to bring him to a life of greater faith, might be wrong somehow, but this discourse on his own beliefs indicated a tendency and a desire for intimacy with God that made her heart soar.

             
“But don’t you see that all those doubts are the beginning of faith?” she pointed out. “If you can feel the glory of God in creation, then it doesn’t matter what other people do or say, because you have the truth in your heart. Let them all go to the Devil, if that’s what they want to do. You can be assured that you carry God’s blessing with you, knowing that you’re living the life He wants you to live.”

             
“You might be right,” Moran admitted.

             
“Do you know the parable of the prodigal son?” she asked.

             
“Yes, I know it,” he replied quietly.

             
“Do you remember,” she continued, “when the prodigal son returns to his father, after squandering his inheritance and scorning his father’s affections, how the father fell on his neck weeping with gladness that his son had returned? That is how God feels when one of us turns back to Him. No matter what we may have done, or how wayward we have been, He always rejoices to have us back, and provides a huge feast and lavish gifts to reward us. Imagine how happy we could be if we only accepted that love and enjoyed the gifts that are available to us.”

             
“Alright,” he nodded. “I admit you may be right. But just don’t push me too hard right at first. That will only make me buck against it all the harder. Let me go to the Devil, if I have to, at least for a little while. Let me go and come back again.”

             
Anne blushed and looked away, mortified. “I’m sorry. I won’t bring it up again, if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s just that I feel like this place, and this life, and being with you, are all ordained for me by God, and that He has created this whole situation specifically for me, to bless me and to wash away my sins and to bring me to a place of peace.”

             
“If that is how you feel about being married to me,” Moran exclaimed, “then I’m happy to be a part of it, and I can put my shoulder to the wheel to be a part of God’s plan. I only worried that you might regret your decision later, if you jumped into it too quickly.”

             
“I won’t regret it,” she affirmed. “I’m certain now.” She let her eyes range around the room, over the hand-hewn beams and stones that made up the cabin. “This house is so blessed,” she pondered. “It is blessed by the work of your hands, and the dedication that you put into everything here. The table and chairs, the plates, even the spoons bear the touch of your hand, and that makes them blessed.”

             
“This house is blessed because you are in it,” Moran contradicted. “It was never like this before you came. Sometimes I wouldn’t bother to light the stove or the lantern. I would just topple into bed. For many years, I never even slept in this house during the summer, because I couldn’t stand to be alone here. I slept out in the canyon with the cattle. You are the blessing in this house now. When you’re happy and smiling, this house is like a beacon of light that I can see from the farthest corner of the valley, calling me home. When you’re unhappy, I wouldn’t want to be within a hundred miles of this house.”

             
“I want to be a blessing to you,” Anne resolved. “I want to be your help and your support. I want to yoke myself to you, and cultivate your work with the sweat of my brow.”

             
“Well, then, we should both get some sleep,” he suggested. “We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. This will be the last time we sleep apart. I mean, until I go to sell the stock. But from now on, we won’t be separated again.”

             
“Alright,” she withdrew her hand from his as he stood up and migrated toward the door. “I can live with that.”

             
At the door, he took her in both arms and kissed her passionately. When his lips trailed away from her mouth, he regarded her seriously for a moment. Then he remarked, “A man could believe in any God that would send a woman like you into his life, to bring a ray of hope and truth to the long dark night of his lonely years. He could praise God for that!” Then he let her go. “Until tomorrow,” he pronounced, and turned his face away. She smiled contentedly, ushered him to the door, and closed it after him. She slept blanketed in the peace and tranquility of her decision, unruffled by doubt or fear.

             
Both of them roused themselves before dawn the next morning, full of vigor and anxious to get on their journey. After preparing and eating breakfast and finishing the necessary cleaning, Anne selected her best dress and bonnet from her trove of possessions, along with an antique broach inherited from her grandmother. She laid the dress, along with a new pair of stockings, clean linens, and her fancy gloves, on the bed, ready to change into at the last moment before departing. Moran also pulled out a woolen suit and a clean shirt from a case under the bed, and laid it out likewise. Then he went off to the barn to hitch up the wagon. Anne finished tidying the cabin and sweeping the floor, letting the fire burn itself out. She took the crate from its place by the stove and carried it out to the woodpile to bring in a supply of wood for their return.

             
She had just rounded the corner of the barn, lugging the loaded crate, when she saw the silhouette of a man on horseback riding toward the cabin through the meadow. With a pang of dread, she recognized the square-cut hat and tailored coat of Webster Forsythe. Instantly, she knew that this visit, with Moran so close to the cabin, could only end in a disastrous confrontation between the two men. Forsythe’s timing could not have been worse. Frantically, she thought of anything she might say to convince him to leave at once, before Benjamin came out of the barn.

             
Forsythe reined in his horse at the cabin door and dismounted. He examined her as she approached him from the corner of the barn and she dropped her box sticks by the bench. “You goin’ somewhere?” he drawled nonchalantly.

             
“As a matter of fact, I am,” she announced coldly. “Benjamin and I are just about to leave. We’re driving down to Patterson to visit the judge and get married. Thank you for asking. We will be leaving shortly, so I hope you plan to cut this visit short.”

             
Forsythe returned her icy pronouncement with his most disdainful sneer. “Married, huh?” he humpfed.

             
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she continued, “but you must understand that I have made my decision, and I know my own mind on this subject. I will thank you to drop it altogether and not persist in trying to convince me to change my mind.”

             
“Well, wonders never cease,” Forsythe chewed the words over between his teeth. “I thought you were better than that, but I see that you’re not. I thought you were smart enough to understand what was best for you, but I realize now that you’re just as low and ignorant as he is.”

             
“Come now, Mr. Forsythe,” Anne chided him. “There is no call for you to get nasty. Since Mr. Moran and I are going to be married, we will be neighbors for a long time into the future, so we should both make an effort to be pleasant to each other and get along as best we can. I would think you would at least have the decency to wish me well in the course I have chosen.”

             
“Oh, I wish you very well in the course you have chosen,” Forsythe snapped. “You may put your mind at rest on that score. I hope you will be very happy together. You are obviously not the lady that I first thought you were. You’re nothing but a dirty whore, if this is the life you want to lead, and you deserve everything that happens to you. You both deserve each other. May you choke on the dirt of your own disgusting hovel. You’re as much of a pig as he is. You enjoy living and rooting in your own muck.”

             
“Really, Mr. Forsythe!” Anne gasped at his audacity. “That sort of talk is completely unnecessary. If that is the way you’re going to talk, I’ll thank you to leave now. In any case, Benjamin is just there in the barn getting the wagon hitched up, and if he sees or hears you here, things could turn very unpleasant, so perhaps you should leave anyway before he comes out. Besides, I have work to do before we leave, so kindly excuse me.”

             
“You’d like me to just ride out of here and leave you to your fate, wouldn’t you?” Forsythe continued viciously. “That would be just like you to revel in your own depravity. Just like a pig in its own muck. That’s you, all over. Well, I won’t be ordered around by anyone, certainly not by a piece of trash like you or Benjamin Moran. I come and go as I please around these parts. If you’re going to stay on here for any length of time, that’s the first thing you’ll have to learn. I give the orders around here. I don’t take them. And you can get used to keeping your place where I’m concerned. My family is the wealthiest and most influential in this area, and I stand to inherit a big enough fortune to buy you out and drive you and Moran and everyone else into the gutter where you belong. So mind you don’t cross me, Miss, or you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of the law, the banks, and anyone else I can send after you. I own you, and I own Moran, and I own this valley, and I own all the territory around here. Have you got all that through your thick skull?”

             
“Mr. Forsythe!” Anne gasped. “That is not the way for a Christian man to speak to any woman! I may not be the lady you thought I was, but I deserve better than that! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

             
“Ashamed of myself?” he retorted hotly. “I wouldn’t be ashamed of myself in the presence of a troll like you! What would I have to be ashamed of, when I have you to compare myself to? When you told me that you were thinking of coming out here to meet Moran, I knew that you had some sin in your past that you were running away from. You can only have committed some indiscretion of carnal passion. You would not have fallen for any offer from a brute like Moran if you hadn’t. I know all about women like you. You’re nothing but a body with no brain, and you can’t control yourself when it comes to temptations of the flesh. You just can’t wait for some man to come along who will fill your head with fluff and get inside your skirts.”

             
Anne gasped again. “You led me to understand that you and your parents were praying for my best interests,” Anne countered. “What would your dear sainted mother think, if she heard you speak like that?”

             
“My mother keeps her silly comments and her stupid Christianity to herself, when I’m around,” Forsythe snapped back. “She knows better than to trot that hogwash out to me. I knew when I saw that cheap crucifix hanging around your neck that you were one of those gullible idiots that buys all that claptrap about God and Jesus and everlasting life. You’re just dumb enough to buy into a first-class con job like that—you and my sainted mother. Most of the dames that are dim enough to fall for it will do just about anything for a man who pretends to feel the same way. I had you eating out of my hand, when I played along and told you what you wanted to hear. Maybe you’ll think twice now when somebody feeds you a hook loaded with your favorite bait. I suppose Moran is doing the same thing, trying to win your two-bit heart. Once he’s got you into bed, he’ll be singing a different tune, I’ll wager. Unless he’s already sealed the deal. That wouldn’t surprise me, either. Bible beaters are such colossal hypocrites. I’ll bet you already spilt the milk for him, didn’t you, and all this talk about marriage is just a ruse that he’s playing to string you along.”

             
This tirade, which revealed the truly poison core of Forsythe’s being hidden under his carefully crafted façade of polished manners, shocked Anne severely. Although she always secretly suspected that his slick veneer concealed something sinister and unpleasant, she never expected such an explosive reaction when his mask finally fell away. Nonetheless, her heart fluttered in anxiety when his outburst brought, as she knew it inevitably would, the dreadful scraping of the barn door opening, followed by the resolute footsteps of Moran coming across the yard toward them. She noticed in dismay that Forsythe wore a gun belt, while Moran did not. Anne feared for Moran’s safety as he approached, and Forsythe flexed his arm, ready to seize his pistols and fire.

             
“What are you doing here?” Moran bellowed.

             
Forsythe sneered wickedly. “I have the right to go wherever I like,” he pronounced.

             
“Not on my land, you don’t!” Moran bristled. “You’re trespassing on private property, and you can either leave now or face the consequences.”

             
“You haven’t got the guts to face me in a fight,” Forsythe shot back. “You always slink away from a confrontation, and you’ll do the same now. You’re playing big in front of the female, that’s all.”

             
“I’ll thank you to stay away from her,” Moran yelled, his face as black as thunder. “You don’t speak to her, if you know what’s good for ya. Don’t even look at her!”

             
“Her!” Forsythe spat. “You don’t own her! You’ve got nothing to say about her at all!”

             
“She’s mine!” Moran hissed through clenched teeth. “You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as a woman like her!”

             
“You don’t deserve the company of
any
woman!” Forsythe shrieked. “You deserve to be isolated on a desert island where no woman will ever see your face again. This’ll be the second time you’ve seduced some innocent woman to live out here. God only knows what lies you tell them to convince them to throw their lives away, to travel all the way out here to rot in your forgotten corner of nowhere. This business of taking her down to Patterson to marry her is probably some sick ruse to keep her quiet while you get your way with her. I suppose you haven’t told her all about that other woman, the one you never married. It’s lucky for her that I told her about it when I did, or she would never have known.”

             
Moran drew himself up to his tallest height, and his towering bulk loomed over Forsythe like some terrifying avenging angel. The thunder clouds blackened his face as he gathered all his rage and pain to respond to these accusations. “Of course I didn’t marry her!” he boomed. “She was my sister, you viper! And you ruined her, the same way you ruined so many others. You filled her head with all kinds of wild promises about going to live in your house with your cook and your maid and your goblets of wine on the table. You said you would make her into a lady. You told her she deserved better than I could offer her here. You told her that this place was second only to hell in driving her away from God. You wouldn’t leave her alone until she finally gave in and went with you. But when you got her back to your house, you locked her in your bedroom and did whatever you pleased with her, the way you always do whatever you please, no matter what the consequences for other people. You kept her there, locked up, for six months! When she finally managed to escape, she was with child and out of her mind with terror that you would find her and take her back. She did not disappear without a trace, as you would like everyone to believe. Oh, no, that would suit you just fine if she had! But you don’t have to worry. The sheriff knows the truth, as I do. After she broke out of your house in the middle of the night, she came back here through a driving storm, and she fell on her knees in front of me, with tears running down her face, and begged my forgiveness for running away. Can you believe that? She wanted
me
to forgive
her
for what
you
did to her! I wanted to ride out and hunt you down then and there, but she begged me not to. What a fool I was! I told her to stay here and have her child and have a quiet life, that we would be a family to each other and forget all about the past. But she was too overwrought by her experience. She lasted three days. Then she took her own life. She’s buried in the cedar grove down by the creek, where she used to like to go and sit and listen to the lapping of the water over the stones and daydream in the late afternoon. So that’s the real story behind
him
,” Moran addressed Anne. “Now you know what he’s really made of, and what all his fancy talk is really worth. He’s done the same thing to a dozen others, and the only reason he hasn’t been jailed or lynched before now is because his parents are rich and influential with the law, and can afford to buy off the families that he has wronged. Go on, you little worm!” Moran shouted at Forsythe. “Tell her it’s a lie! Tell her it’s not true! I challenge you to contradict one word that I’ve said. Go on! Let’s hear what you have to say for yourself now.”

             
The two men stared at each other with venomous hatred. Forsythe seethed with rage, but no words came to him to counter Moran’s story. Anne feared Forsythe might draw his gun, but his blazing animosity obliterated all rational thought, and instead he hurtled himself at Moran with his hands outstretched toward the bigger man’s throat. Moran hardly had time to lift his arms to protect himself.

             
Any physical struggle between them would naturally favor Moran, with his superior size and strength, but the suddenness of Forsythe’s attack and the overwhelming malice behind it initially placed him in command of the fight. He knocked Moran off his feet with his first tackle, but Moran seized his grasping hands by the wrists and held him back ineffectually as they rolled together through the dust. Soon enough, Moran recovered himself sufficiently to swing his leg over Forsythe’s back and flip him over onto the ground. Then he sat on him and forced his arms down onto the ground. Anne thought this might prove the end of the fight, but with a hideous screech like the growl of an animal, Forsythe reared up and threw Moran off, at the same time that he wrestled his hands free from Moran’s hold. Immediately, he leapt on top of his opponent again, and the flurry of flying dust and limbs boggled Anne’s mind as she tried to discern one from another in the fray. They rolled in the dirt, clutching one another in their arms, a cloud of dust obscuring them from view. When they tumbled to a stop with Moran quashing Forsythe with his greater weight, their grimaced faces snarled just inches away from each other, as if pure, unadulterated loathing could inflict the harm they wished they could do to each other. Anne’s initial annoyance at the men’s foolish antics quickly dissipated when she realized that they really did mean to kill each other. She screamed at them to stop immediately, but they ignored her and neither altered his position a jot or slackened his efforts to attack the other.