Mail Order Rose (Mail Order Brides #1) (2 page)

Aunt Mary started giving motherly advice about baby-raising to no one in particular and the Butlers were talking to her mother about the nice weather we'd been having. Polite, mundane conversations going on all around Rose while her head was spinning. Keep focused, she told herself, and soon, this will all be just a memory that you'll no longer have to endure. She thought of the letter tucked in her drawer upstairs and that gave her courage to carry on.

Her Great-Aunt Gertie sat with furrowed brow and frown, her eyes fixed upon Isabel. She'd forgotten about Aunt Gertie- the one person who had actually seemed to be in her corner since this whole ordeal had started. She'd been the only one to speak out on the tactlessness of hosting party for a girl who went and got herself in the family way by stealing her sister's soon to be fiance. Gertie looked from Isabel to Rose and her face changed from one of disgust to one of sympathy. Her gray hair was pulled back into a smooth bun and she wore her spectacles on the end of her nose. She was the epitome of propriety with high lace collar, shawl and laced boots shining from a polish. She stood up and made her way to the sofa where Rose and Louisa sat.

“Louisa, child, be a dear and fill your Auntie's punch glass,” she asked Louisa as she held out her glass. Louisa, with her long brown braid and pink taffeta dress, stood up and obediently took Gertie's cup and nodded. “Yes, Auntie.”

Gertie sat down in the open spot next to Rose. “You hold your head high, child,” she said as she patted Rose's hand. “Hold my head high. That's what my mother told me, too. I'm trying, I really am.”

“You are a good, Christian girl and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Those two good-for-nothing, low-life nitwits should be the ones ashamed but they don't have the sense God gave a goat or they wouldn't even want to show their faces around here.”

Rose smiled. Aunt Gertie had voiced her comment just loud enough that Isabel may have heard. Gertie was one of those people in their old age who felt they'd earned the freedom to speak the honest truth and that truth was usually as blunt as the truth that came from a child's mouth. Leave it to children and the elderly to have the freedom to speak their minds.

Isabel turned and narrowed her eyes in their direction. She'd heard. Gertie continued on.

“In my day, there was a name for girls like her...”

“Aunt Gertie!” Isabel interjected. She said it loudly enough to draw the attention of everyone else in the room.

“It's true! There's a name for girls like you but it's not fit for use in decent company. I'm sure you know exactly what you are. You should be ashamed of yourself!” Gertie was in full form now, once she started, she couldn't be stopped. She turned towards Rose's parents. “To throw a party for her is the same as saying you're proud of what she's done, Ellen, and what she is done is dispicable! She should have been taken out to the woodshed and whipped!”

Everyone was kind of frozen in place, staring in disbelief at the scene that was unfolding. A couple of  Rose's cousins were giggling until Aunt Mary shot them a stern look.

“That's enough, Aunt Gertie,” Ellen admonished, “I think we all know that the situation is a complicated one, but the arrival of a new baby is always a joyous occasion.”

Gertie shook her head. “This occasion is anything but joyous and I pity the child who will have to grow up with that snake of a mother. Now if you all will excuse me, I think I've had more than enough festivities. I feel a headache coming on and need to retire to my room. Rose, can you be a dear and help me to my room?”

The guests were still in shock at the outburst they'd been exposed to, looking from Gertie to Isabel then to Rose's parents and around at each other. Rose stood up and gently grabbed hold of Gertie's arm to help her steady herself as they left the parlor.

“Are you going to let her talk to me like that at my party?” Isabel asked her father angrily. Her eyes were narrow slits full of fire.

“She's old, she doesn't know what she's saying. Just let her go rest, Isabel, let it go.” He spoke slowly,  knowing that Isabel most likely wouldn't be able to just 'let it go'. And of course she didn't.

She glared at Rose and Gertie  as they walked from the sofa to the door where the parlor opened to the foyer.

“Yes, she is old. An old, dried up bitty who is just jealous because no man ever loved her and she has no husband or children to show for her life. Grant and I are in love, and I will not have you speak to me that way, I don't care how old you are!” Her angry venom spilled out and the part about her and Grant being in love was like an arrow piercing Rose's heart. She winced at Isabel's cruel words and looked at Grant, his face red with embarrassment.

“Enough Isabel!” Henry scolded.

Gertie stopped in her tracks and started cackling and slapping her hand on her knee. “Well, you are more of a fool than I thought you were if you think that Grant loves you. He doesn't love you, he loves Rose, any person with half a brain can see that.”

Rose felt her own face flush red and Grant looked at her quickly before looking down at the floor. She wished that for one moment she could speak with him, just him alone. She knew she couldn't forgive him, but she wanted to hear his side, hear from him exactly how this could have happened.

When she'd first heard the news, he did try to talk to her but she'd been so hurt, so furious that she refused him until he gave up. Now, she wished she would have let him speak so she could understand better why things happened the way they did.

Her mother gave Rose a look that meant
please take Gertie out quickly to end this standoff before it escalated into something worse
. Gertie and Isabel were the two most stubborn people in the Greenlee family and who knew how far it could escalate with both of their tempers flaring. Rose nodded slightly to her mother, and then to Gertie she said, “Come on, Auntie, let's go.”

It was silent as they walked out and they didn't hear any voices until they were halfway upstairs. If the guests were uncomfortable when the party started, Rose could only imagine how awkward they must be feeling now. Though she knew that what Gertie said was not kind, she felt a slight tinge of happiness that Gertie put Isabel in her place and voiced the thoughts that were in her head.

When they reached Gertie's room, she patted Rose's hand lovingly.“Don't worry child, you will get through this and be stronger because of it. Best to find out that you can't trust that cad before the wedding than afterwards. Something much better awaits your future, I just know it. Someone who will love you so much that they would never want to hurt you.”

She moved her hand to cup Rose's smooth face and smiled kindly at her. For being an outspoken spitfire, she did have a softer side, too. “Thank you,” Rose told her. Rose knew she was being sympathetic and trying to make her feel better, but it didn't make her feel better at all. She didn't think there was anything that someone could have said to make her feel any better at all. Her heart was broken and it would take more than words to heal it.

After Gertie was settled in her room, Rose stood at the top of the stairs, contemplating whether or not she should go back down to the party or just call it a night and go to bed herself. Though she didn't say goodnight to anyone, she thought they would understand if she was not to be seen for the remainder of the night.

Walking back to her own room, Rose wondered what Gertie would think of what she had planned. Would she understand  the reasoning behind it or would she think that Rose was making a foolish mistake, running away from her problems? She didn't know and, unfortunately, she wouldn't be around to find out.

Once safe inside her own room, Rose took a deep breath. She could hear laughter and piano music coming from the parlor, apparently the outbursts of Gertie and Isabel didn't deter the celebration for long.  Though they weren't doing it directly, they were celebrating her loss. Celebrating the new family that was just beginning: Grant, Isabel and their child. She shook her head, trying to shake that image out.

She opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out the letter. She'd read it probably a hundred times but she read it again:

Dear Miss Greenlee,

Thank you for your response to my ad seeking a mail order bride. I am happy to tell you that after looking over the letters from women who have responded, I have chosen you to be my bride.

I have purchased a train ticket that is enclosed with this letter. I have taken care of arrangements and have planned a small church wedding the day after you arrive; if your parents wish to attend, I would love to meet them, please have them purchase tickets and I will reimburse them for their travel.

I look forward to meeting you in person and starting our new life together,

Yours,

David Thompson

David Thompson
. Her husband. He had signed it 'Yours'.  He was hers. A man that she had never met, yet someone she would soon be spending the rest of her life with. She could feel her heart beating faster as she ran her fingers over the train ticket that was inside of the folded letter. Was she acting irrationally? Possibly, but to Rose this seemed like the best option she had.

She remembered back to the day she first saw the ad. It was just by chance, she hadn't gone looking for opportunities to be a mail order bride. She had grabbed her father's paper one afternoon to read it as a distraction from Isabel's talk of wedding plans and noticed a list of ads from men out west, places where the men outnumbered the women, seeking brides. Rose couldn't imagine marrying a stranger, yet she was intrigued enough to read through them. There were miners from Colorado, ranchers from Montana and farmers from Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska. One of the ads, placed by a farmer from Iowa, caught her eye. The man seeking a wife seemed to be in a hurry as he wanted to be married before the fall harvest. He said he was a twenty-five year old farmer originally from Michigan. He was a Christian and an upstanding citizen of Middleton, Iowa, looking for a bride who would be willing put in the work needed for the farm to prosper and build a home and family together.

As she read on, she noticed there was something about this ad that seemed different from the others, she could feel it in her gut that he was a good man.

She finished the paper and put it back in her father's study, but the bachelor farmer in Iowa occupied her thoughts for the rest of the day. After all of the pain and heartbreak she'd been through, she was convinced she never wanted to go through that again. Love wasn't worth the pain. She would protect her heart and NEVER let herself fall in love again. But that made her sad, too, because she wanted more than anything to be a mother with a family of her own. She wanted a houseful of sweet children who would love her unconditionally and wouldn't betray her or leave her for another woman as a man would. The bond between a child and mother could not ever be broken.

It was quite the conundrum, though. How could she possibly have a houseful of children without falling in love and getting married first?

The idea of being a mail-order bride, though frightening, was intriguing to her because it provided a way for her to become a mother without falling in love. The package came with a husband and a home. She would be a good wife of course, respecting and honoring the man who would be the father of her children, but she would not be
in
love with him. At least not the way she had fallen for Grant. She would not open herself up to hurt like that again; she was done being vulnerable.

The more she thought about it, the more the idea appealed to her. Not only would it fit the bill for providing her with a husband without first falling in love, it also provided her with a means of escape. Escaping the sight of Isabel's growing pregnancy and her cruel remarks, escaping having her heart broken over and over at the sight of Grant and Isabel together, escaping the embarrassment that she faced by living in this town among friends and neighbors who knew how she'd been jilted.

Later that night, she'd snuck into her father's office to find the newspaper again. Her heart sunk when she could not find it at first but then she located it under a pile of work on his desk. She tore out the back page that contained the ad and went back to her own room to write a letter to the farmer, Mr. David Thompson, telling him about herself as the ad had requested and that she wished to be his wife. She left early the next morning to bring it to the post office before she changed her mind about it.

After that, she waited. Waited while she spent long days crying and sleeping. Waited while she worried that maybe she'd be rejected by someone who'd never even seen her. Worried that he would
not
reject her, in which case she would have to go through with it and would be taking a train to Iowa, leaving Grant and Isabel behind.

The reply came much quicker than she'd expected. She was stunned and happily surprised that he had chosen her to be his bride. She felt flattered and wondered how many letters of inquiry he'd received. She didn't know what he looked like because he hadn't sent a picture, she only knew from his description that he had blond hair and blue eyes. Perfect-her eyes were blue, too and she'd love to have a house full of  sweet little blue-eyed babies. And even if he wasn't handsome, she really didn't care that much about it. That would make it easier not to fall for him. It wasn't his looks that she was after. The reason she had chosen David to reply to instead of the other numerous bachelors was because he mentioned that though he wanted someone hard-working and could handle life on a farm and he said that he would be kind and respectful to his wife. Kindness and respect. That's more than Grant gave her and at this point in her life, that was all she wanted from a husband.