Untamed Journey
Authors: Eden Carson
Tags: #historical romance, #western romance, #civil war romance, #western historical romance, #romance adventure, #sexy romance, #action adventure romance, #romance action, #romance adventure cowboy romance
Text Copyright © 2012 Eden Carson
All Rights Reserved
Cover Art by Michelle Alfieri
Smashwords Edition
To mom
You’ve given me joy, love, and inspiration
every single day. You’re my rock.
And many thanks to my editors for all their
dedication and long hours:
Ann, Aré, Carole, Erin, Heather, and
Linda.
R
uth stood motionless
while her Aunt Kate did her best to pinch some life back into her
pale cheeks. Ruth hadn’t been able to sleep or eat for three days.
Not since her aunt had gleefully announced Ruth’s engagement, over
afternoon tea, to a stranger twice her age. No wonder her aunt had
splurged on sugar for their tea, Ruth thought, looking back to that
dreary afternoon.
Kate had apparently fetched a good price for
her niece’s virginity.
“You‘re too thin by half, Ruthie, girl. And I
look ten years older than my years, damn that fool’s War.” Kate
frowned at her own reflection in the hotel’s looking glass.
Ruth brushed her aunt’s manicured hands away,
as mention of the war that took her family from her brought the
color into her cheeks that her aunt’s rough fingers had failed to
pull up. “My father, your brother, fought for a just cause – to
protect our way of life. How can you talk like that?” Ruth snatched
the blue bonnet out of her aunt’s hands and pretended interest in
her reflection in the mirror. Ruth saw her Aunt Kate’s eyes narrow
in warning.
“That War was started to make a profit on
bullets and guns and human misery,” Kate retorted. “Every cotton
mill owner from here to New York now owns the land and cotton with
no middle man to reduce their profits. You need to grow up, Ruthie,
and face reality. The War was about money and power and nothing
else. Just like every war before it was and just like every war
after will be. You should be exceedingly grateful to me for landing
you a wealthy husband. Living through
this
War in poverty
should have given you a better appreciation for living the next one
in money.”
Ruth turned her emerald green eyes on her
only living relative and tried to curb her temper. She had no one
left, after all, but she‘d never believe her father and brother had
died for nothing. “How can you say that? Papa believed in saving
our way of life, our honor, our freedom. He didn’t fight for money,
and neither did my brother. That was your way of life, too, before
you moved up here.”
Her aunt scoffed as she pulled a cracked
horsehair brush roughly through Ruth’s rich brown hair. “Being from
the South never brought me anything but pain and hardship. Your
father, God rest his soul, was a fool and an idealist when the men
folk stirred themselves up over pride and anger. He chose to be
blind to the truth because he didn’t have the strength to go
against the town. He should have stayed behind and protected his
women and our family farm. Instead that fool got himself killed
before firing a shot. And then took your brother with him.”
Ruth’s head whipped around at her aunt’s
words. “That’s a lie.” Ruth pulled away from her aunt’s none too
gentle ministrations and started braiding her own hair. “My father
fought bravely and died in battle.”
Aunt Kate busied herself fussing with her own
henna-dyed curls. “No, you silly girl. Your father died of
dysentery two days before a shot was fired, believing in his own
foolishness as he lay dying in his own filth. Your mother coddled
you and told you a sweet lie to spare you.”
Ruth paled in the mirror, shutting out the
sound of her aunt’s voice. She didn’t know if what her aunt said
was truth or lie. Kate always told enough of both that Ruth was
never sure of anything, except her aunt’s unswerving ambition and
greed. The truth was, Ruth’s father and mother were too
kind-hearted to cut off Papa’s only sister from family gatherings,
but both struggled to muster any true affection for this woman.
Having lived under her roof, under her control, Ruth now fully
understood why.
Ruth was startled out of her reverie when a
knock sounded on the door of the grand hotel room she and her aunt
had shared for the last two nights. Aunt Kate had the door open and
a smile on her face – probably the first genuine smile she‘d seen
on her aunt’s too thin face since Kate reluctantly took her in two
years ago.
“Why, Mr. Smith. How nice to see you again.
Please, come in. Or would it be bad luck for the proxy groom to see
the bride before the wedding?” Aunt Kate’s smile turned into a
full-fledged laugh at her own cleverness. Jasper Smith joined her,
two like-minded souls sharing a laugh at Ruth’s expense.
Ruth had managed to survive the death of her
family, near starvation, and more nights hiding in the woods from
marauding soldiers and thieves than she cared to remember – all
before her sixteenth birthday, when she appeared on her aunt’s
doorstep, skinny as a rail. She had endured all this with strength
and fortitude and a spark of hope that life would turn around,
someday, somehow. But being sold by her own flesh and blood to a
perfect stranger smothered that bit of joy like the War between the
States never had.
Ruth pretended indifference to the leers
Jasper Smith was giving her, as if he‘d be sharing her body this
night, instead of her unknown husband. Thank God they had a ten-day
journey before that day came, she thought in near panic.
Jasper Smith finally had the decency to look
at her face once he‘d stopped laughing. “Well, Miss, are you ready
yet?” He scratched at his scraggly excuse for a beard. “You’re not
getting any younger or any prettier fussin’ in that there mirror.”
He grinned slyly. The only thing he loved more than getting under a
young miss’s skirt was getting under her skin. And this proper
little southern lady was just his type, in both departments. Too
bad the boss man would have her first, he thought. He’d like to see
that look of shock the first time a man rammed between her
legs.
Smith knew Frank Masterson would hurt him bad
if he laid a hand on her before getting permission. And although
the boss had never before minded sharing women, he’d never had a
wife before, either. Men could be funny about wives and Smith might
not get to touch her after all, now that he put some thought to the
matter.
“We‘ll be down in a few minutes, Mr. Smith,”
Kate reassured him. “A girl only gets married once, after all. Only
once for the first time, that is,” Kate smiled as she met Jasper’s
gaze in the mirror. “Now leave us be, so I can finish my niece’s
hair.”
Smith cracked a smile again, as his eyes
slowly took in Ruth’s hair, lying half-braided down her back. “Your
hair looks just fine like that, to my way of thinking.” When Ruth
glared at him in the bedroom mirror, he pretended chagrin at his
rudeness. “No disrespect intended, Miss. I just meant that your
husband would appreciate such a pretty sight. He’s a lucky
man.”
“If my soon-to-be husband is so appreciative,
why didn’t he come himself, instead of sending his hired hand? He’s
never even met my aunt, much less me.”
“Don’t be impertinent, child,” Kate
interrupted, seeing Smith’s eyes narrow. “Frank Masterson is an
important and busy man. You can’t expect him to stop everything in
hard times like these just to sit on a train for two weeks, making
chit chat with you.”
“He’s too busy to protect me, even?” Ruth
retorted. “You saw the headlines this morning. There’ve been three
train robberies in as many weeks since they finished the
transcontinental line. One of the passengers was killed!”
“Don’t you worry, none, little lady,” Smith
said, patting his holstered revolver. “I’m all the protection you
need.”
But who would protect her from Jasper Smith,
Ruth wondered, shivering before she could hide the weakness from
his watchful gaze. She bit her tongue and lowered her green eyes as
her aunt tugged forcefully on her half-formed braid.
“You see?” Kate said. “You’ll be just fine
with a strong man like Mr. Smith to guard you.”
Smith tipped his hat at the compliment,
wondering if he could scare the girl into silence if he took her
before the wedding. But then the thought of Masterson’s reaction at
the last man to cross him put enough fear into Smith’s tiny heart
to make him content to find a whore tonight after he stood proxy.
No skirt was worth a slow, painful death.
“I’ll see you ladies downstairs at the altar,
then.” Smith tipped his hat to Ruth’s hostile stare before turning
and leaving, pulling the hotel door shut firmly behind him and
dangerous temptation.
Ruth started breathing again at the click of
the door closing. She did not like or trust the man her future
husband sent to protect her on the trip through the Colorado
Territory. She didn’t like the excuse her aunt had made any better,
claiming Masterson’s work was more important than picking the
future mother of his children. If her fiancé were so concerned with
Ruth’s well-being, why hadn’t he come himself? Ruth asked herself
once again. Granted, he was nearing fifty, but no one had said
anything about the man being in poor health. Ruth was sure her aunt
would have pounced on that tidbit and offered to deliver Ruth to
the man herself, Indians and outlaws be-damned, if a will reading
were forthcoming. The opportunity to have a rich, widowed niece
under her control would have Kate herself nailing the coffin lid
shut just to hurry things along.
Ruth forced her gaze back to the cloudy
mirror to finish her hair. Useless imaginings would get her
nowhere.
She had one choice, and one choice only - to
face her future and take things as they came, one day at a time. He
might not be so bad after all. She had to hold onto that thought or
lose what sanity she had left. There were no alternatives. She was
educated, but not impressively so. There were hundreds of
impoverished girls out there better suited to be someone’s
governess. Her father had taught her practical things in the years
before the War. She could splint a broken leg or stitch a man’s arm
together, but couldn’t speak more than a handful of French. And she
didn’t know the right families if she did. She was a Southerner,
and no one would let her teach their Northern-born children.