Mail Order Annie - A Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Novel (Mail Order Romance - Book 1 - Benjamin and Annie) (2 page)

             
“Oh?” Forsythe raised an eyebrow. “Are you waiting for a man?”

             
“As a matter of fact, I am,” Anne snapped. “Not that that is any of your business, sir, but yes, the person picking me up is a man.”             

             
“And who might this man be, may I ask?” Forsythe persisted with a scowl.

             
“Since you refuse to be mollified without knowing, I will tell you,” Anne returned. “The man I am waiting for is named Benjamin Moran.”

The stranger raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you have a chaperone of some kind, if you’re going off with a man? An elderly aunt, or someone to look after you?”

              “I admit that would have been the ideal situation,” Anne answered, “but I have no one who could come with me. Besides, Mr. Moran gave me his solemn assurance that we would stay in separate accommodations while I visit his ranch.”

             
Forsythe’s nonchalant gaze suddenly turned icy cold. “I think you had better reconsider, Miss,” he intoned seriously. “I think you would do better to come with me to my house. My father owns one of the largest ranches in this area. Our house is two stories, with a separate guest wing. We have a cook and a maid. You would be able to take a hot bath and eat a hearty dinner, have a nice glass of imported claret, and then spend the night in a proper bed before you make up your mind what to do about your travel arrangements. You can stay there until the next train comes, if you still wish to depart. If you go with Benjamin Moran, you will have to travel by wagon for dozens of miles before you arrive at his homestead. Then you will have to slave over a hot woodstove to make yourself a poor supper before you go to sleep in a hay ruck. Why don’t you do yourself a favor and come with me?”

             
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Anne demurred. “I have given my word to meet him here. I couldn’t just walk away without at least giving him some explanation.”

             
“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,” Forsythe droned airily, “but Benjamin Moran is not the man that a lady like you would want to be going off alone with.”

             
“What do you mean?” Anne sat up as straight as she could.

             
“Benjamin Moran is…” Forsythe stopped himself in mid-sentence.

             
“Is what?” Anne persisted. “I would appreciate you telling me anything you know about him. I have only communicated him by mail. I know only what he himself has told me. I will be grateful for any information you can give me.”

             
“Well, since you insist, I’ll tell you,” Forsythe conceded, the faintest hint of a twinkle flashing through his eyes. “Benjamin Moran is dangerous, especially to women such as yourself. He somehow got another young lady to come out here and stay with him out at his homestead. I don’t know what he said to her to lure her out here. She stayed with him for two years. He never married her, and she must have lost patience with him because she finally ran away from him. She disappeared under mysterious circumstances. No one knows what happened to her. Most people around these parts think the worst of Moran ever since. I don’t think anyone else around here would want to see another young lady, especially one as fine as you, get mixed up with him.”

             
Anne tried to think of an appropriately self-assured response to this revelation, but before she could manage it, Forsythe leaned forward and lifted her hand from the top of the table. With delicate circular movements, he massaged her fingers with his silky soft skin. More than anything else, the further confirmation of his wealth and status in the smooth texture of his palm and fingers impressed Anne, and she softened to the idea of accepting his offer of a place to stay until she sorted out her own plans.

             
“A proper lady like you should be treated according to the style she deserves,” Forsythe purred. “I can tell that you are used to the higher things in life. You shouldn’t have to spend the rest of your life working your fingers to the bone in a drafty shack in a place like this. You shouldn’t have to break your back for a scoundrel like Benjamin Moran. You belong in a proper drawing room, sitting in front of a blazing fire on a brocade cushion, ordering your servants around and charming your dinner guests with your wit and intelligence. Forget about whatever Moran told you or any of the promises that he made you. Come with me now to my house. I’ll give you everything you need.” His melodious voice drifted into her ear with a smooth, creamy subtlety, mesmerizing her with the vision of everything for which she dreamed and yearned. His face drifted imperceptibly closer to hers, his pink lips tickling her imagination with pictures of luxury and comfort and haunting her with the horrors of a life with Benjamin Moran.

             
“I can see that you are a God-fearing woman,” Forsythe murmured on, tossing a passing glimpse at the crucifix at her neck. “My parents and I also fear the Lord and we would be honored to offer sanctuary to a wayfarer in need. My mother especially would welcome another daughter of Christ into our home, and you could dedicate your mind to prayer and meditation on the course before you. Benjamin Moran is a heathen and a brute. He cares nothing for our Savior, and his ways are crude and brutal. If you go with him, he will never rest until he drives the fear and love of the Lord from your heart and your life. For the love of God and Jesus, turn aside from the devil’s way and come with me instead.”

             
“Anne Benning?” a thunderous male voice roared across the room. Anne jumped with a start, spinning around toward the door of the saloon.

             
A towering hulk of a man blocked out the light from the door, holding the swinging doors aside with his knotty arms and staring at the two of them with a black scowl contorting his face. Anne stared at him in shock, recognizing him as the other gun fighter from behind the bushes. His checkered shirt showed hand stitching around its shoulder yoke, and his grey felt hat pressed down onto his bushy brows. She trembled again at the thought that the two men might start shooting at each other then and there, in the saloon, but then she remembered that Forsythe no longer possessed any weapon. All three of them seemed to think the same thought at the same moment because, although Moran menaced him with his imposing presence and his aggressive stance, Forsythe regained his air of blithe derision immediately, and the superior smirk returned to his countenance.

             
The heels of the big man’s boots knocked against the saloon’s wooden floor as he stalked toward their table. Both Anne and Forsythe automatically rose from their chairs to meet him. Once more, Anne’s heart sank in anguish when she saw him up close. Care and hard living creased his heavy forehead, and grey patches streaked his unkempt beard. Dust encrusted his clothes and hat, and mud caked the outer seams of his boots. The lower cuff of his canvas pants exhibited a faint fringe of worn, threadbare fabric coming apart from incessant wear. Black dirt stained his fingernails and highlighted the deep wrinkles of his calloused hands and scarred palms and knuckles. All the nightmares with which Forsythe troubled her mind appeared personified in this enormous beast of a man. He towered over them both, glaring down at them accusingly. “I am Benjamin Moran,” he boomed. “If you’re ready, we can leave now. I found your box around on the platform, and I have it loaded up in my wagon. Are you ready to go?”

             
Anne recovered herself hastily. “Yes, Mr. Moran,” she stammered guiltily. “Very good to meet you at last. I didn’t see you pull up!”

             
“I’m around the side of the building,” Moran growled. “I expected to collect you off the platform, but as it was, I couldn’t. You understand why, I’m sure.”

             
“Yes, of course, I understand perfectly,” she inclined her head. “And I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused. I thought at first I might have gotten off at the wrong station. I was just speaking to the barman there to make sure that this really was Eckville, when Mr. Forsythe very kindly offered to assist me. But now that you are here, I am ready to go whenever you are.” She turned to Webster Forsythe. “Thank you very much for your kindness and consideration, Mr. Forsythe. I hope I have a chance to repay your hospitality someday. Good day.”

             
Forsythe gave her a slight bow of his head, smiling disdainfully. “The pleasure was all mine, I assure you, madam,” he smirked, then added quickly, “and may God be with you.”

             
“Come along, then,” Moran ordered, and stalked out of the saloon through the front door without a backward glance. Anne hurried after him, practically running to keep up with his long strides. Around the side of the building, Moran stopped next to a wagon hitched to a single horse, which champed placidly at its nose bag and shifting patiently from one foot to the other. When Anne arrived beside the wagon box, Moran seized her around the waist with his wide paws of hands and hoisted her up into the seat without a word of permission. Anne yelped in surprise just as her feet landed on the foot rest, and the next moment, Moran unclipped the horse’s nose bag and jumped up into the seat beside her. With a slap of the reins on the horse’s back, the wagon lurched forward and rattled away up the nonexistent street and into the bare countryside.

             
Anne couldn’t figure out if the shaking of the wagon soothed her shaking limbs or made her trembling worse, as Moran drove away from Eckville down a dusty track that appeared to Anne little more than an opening in the sagebrush. The dust rose in a plume behind the wagon wheels, and the tiny shred of civilization that was the Eckville Hotel and its Post Office faded to a miniscule speck behind them, before dropping out of sight into the sea of wilderness. Anne held her handkerchief in a death grip, so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palm, but the pain only provided her with a point of focus to distract her from the horrible reality of driving off into oblivion with a strange man she had never met before, and about whom she had so recently received the most appalling report. Was going off with Moran really any more respectable than going off with Webster Forsythe? She wasn’t married to either man, and she had only Moran’s assurances that he would marry her if she came to him. At least she knew that the characterization of the life Moran offered her did not differ much from the one described by Forsythe. He himself told her that he didn’t hold much store by religion. Would going instead to a real house, with servants and food on the table and crystal glasses full of claret on the table really prove such a great scandal, after everything else she had been through in recent years? Did driving off into the trackless frontier really redeem any of the mistakes she sought to leave behind her? All the misgivings and uncertainty, all the dread and upset of leaving home forever with no way back, that she never permitted herself to entertain in the weeks of preparation and travel, and the horror of the gunfight she witnessed, now presented themselves before her with nothing else to prevent them from impinging on her thoughts. For the first time, she faced the inescapable fact of the decision that she had made, and the undeniable, irrevocable permanence of it. She felt herself traveling to her death, to a tomb where no one who loved her would know where she was buried, where the enshrouding wool of obscurity would mummify her in an eternal hell of stifled hopes and excruciating drudgery. And now, on top of everything else, she felt the impending danger of Benjamin Moran about which Webster Forsythe tried to warn her. Maybe he planned to drive her out into the wilderness, murder her, and dispose of her somewhere out there in the great nothing of the place.

             
In a ferment of anxiety, she started babbling ridiculously to Moran about the first thing that popped into her head. “I apologize again for not waiting for you on the platform. I was so surprised when I saw Eckville! It is not what I expected at all!”

             
“It’s not the biggest town in the territory, that’s for sure,” Moran admitted. “But it serves the purpose. It’s the only rail stop for a couple hundred miles, and having the only post office in the area makes it a pretty important place in this type of country. Just about every meeting or important event around here happens either at the post office or at the hotel. Weddings, funerals, elections—all that happens there. It’s the only place folks can meet. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that it was more than what it is. Anyhow, a hotel, a rail stop, and a post office are all you need to make a town, when you consider that there’s nothing else out here but cows and coyotes.”

             
“Oh, I didn’t mean to disparage your town,” Anne stuttered, quick to conceal any sign of disappointment. “It’s just not what I’m used to, coming from Back East, you know, where everything is so big and busy all the time. I was expecting a proper town, you know, I mean, like my home town in Massachusetts.”

             
“Well, it’s all we’ve got out here,” he repeated. “I reckon you’ll just have to get used to a different way of looking at things. That is, if you plan to stay on.”

             
“Oh, I’m sure I can manage it,” Anne assured him. “I’m a very adaptable person, and I pride myself of taking on a tough challenge and meeting it with all my resources. I’m sure I will stay on.”

             
“That’s good,” Moran barked, “because I haven’t got money to send you back if you change your mind. If you decide not to stay on, you’ll be on your own. You’ll have to work out for yourself how to get to wherever you want to go.”