Mail Order Josephine - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides) (4 page)

Sure enough, this small expression of sympathy induced Mrs. Stockton to shed the tears she struggled to restrain. She sobbed softly while her husband spread his empty palms up in front of him in a gesture of helplessness. “We only wish we could have prevented any trouble to you. Of course, we expect the marriage arrangements to be utterly voided with no obligation on either side. We only feel so terrible that you should have to turn around and go home after travelling all this way for nothing. We wish we could compensate you for it somehow.”

“I should jolly well expect you to compensate us for it!” declared Aunt Agatha. “We have legal rights, you know. You can’t arrange a marriage like this and then expect to just drop it without some sort of remuneration to the other party. We have a legally binding agreement!”

“Nonsense!” Josephine asserted. “Aunt Agatha, if you can’t be reasonable, then stay out of this. Mr. Stockton, you could not have prevented this tragic situation, and you shall not incur any liability. Surely you could never have anticipated Paul’s death, and you and your family have suffered enough as a result. Please, think no further of our comfort or convenience. We will continue to stay at the hotel in town until we can book our return trip by train back to New York. Please consider all obligations related to the marriage arrangements discharged.”

“Thank you, Miss Parker,” Paul Stockton bowed his head to her, his sad old eyes moist with unshed tears.

“You won’t get away with this!” Aunt Agatha hissed. “When her father finds out about this, I’m sure he’ll be contacting his attorney. Then we’ll see whose obligations are discharged.”

“Aunt Agatha!” Josephine barked. “Hold your tongue! You’re making an embarrassment of yourself and our family. Please, Mr. Stockton, pay no attention to my aunt. I will speak to my father myself, and I will ensure that nothing further comes of this unfortunate circumstance.”

“Thank you, Miss Parker,” he repeated.

“Now, Aunt Agatha,” Josephine said, “
we should return to town and not impose ourselves on these kind people any more than we already have. Please excuse us, Mr. and Mrs. Stockton. Let us leave you in peace. I’m sure our presence here only serves as a painful reminder of your tragic loss.”

“Not at all,” Mrs. Stockton rose from her seat. “Please, we insist that you stay and eat lunch with us. It is the least that we can do to make it up to you.”

“It’s very kind of you to offer,” Josephine returned, “but we really should be going.”

“Oh, look!” Mrs. Stockton started at the sound of a door opening in the other room of the house. “The boys are here!”

A young man appeared in the doorway of the dining room, still dusty and disheveled from the outdoors. He held a pair of worn leather gloves in one hand, and his fingers curled in calloused hooks from the gun belt at his waist. As he surveyed the strange women in the dining room, he propped a long rifle against the corner inside the doorway.

“This is our youngest son, Timothy,” Mrs. Stockton introduced him to the two visitors. Then she addressed the youth. “Where’s your brother?”

“I’m right here,” boomed a deep male voice from outside the room. Then another man entered the dining room, and Josephine recognized him as the same individual who spoke to her outside the blacksmith’s forge. She caught her breath, but gave no outward indication of recognition.

“This is our middle son, Andrew,” Betsy Stockton informed them. “Since Paul died, he’s taken on all the management of our herds. He and Tim and Ben Hancock—that’s our hired man—have been repairing all the fences around the ranch. It’s a big job.”

Andrew Stockton tipped his hat to the ladies at the table. “Howdy, Miss,” he grinned at Josephine.

“Good morning,” Josephine returned icily.

“So you’re the lady who was coming out to marry Paul,” he asserted. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

“Thank you very much,” she mumbled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

“Andrew is the best thing to come out of this whole horrible mess,” Mrs. Stockton babbled. “If Paul hadn’t died, we probably would never have known what a gem we have in Andrew. He’s taken on all of Paul’s work, plus his own, and taken on a lot more besides. He’s worth his weight in gold, that boy!”

“So says his mother!” Andrew scoffed, but he took his mother’s hand and squeezed it affectionately. Mother and son laughed together while she brushed her tears away. Andrew turned back to Josephine. “So, will you be
stayin’ on in town, or will you be goin’ home straight away?”

Josephine lowered her eyes, unwilling to meet his piercing gaze. “I suppose we’ll stay until we can arrange train travel back home.”

“That will be another week, I reckon,” he informed her. “There’s not another train goin’ east until then. I reckon you’ll be stayin’ at the hotel until then.”

“A week!”
Aunt Agatha wailed. “Oh, this is absolutely insufferable! I won’t last a week! I’m warning you, Josephine, my life is hanging in the balance, and my fate is in your hands!”

“Aunt Agatha, will you please keep still?” Josephine groaned. “Please, Mr. and Mrs.
Stockton, please don’t listen to her. A week is nothing. We can wait a week in town with no trouble. I only regret that our most cherished plans have fallen through, especially yours with the loss of your son. I hope your business hasn’t suffered too much, as I understood from my father’s correspondence with you that Paul ran your entire cattle operation.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Mr. Stockton confirmed. “But thanks to Andrew here, our business hasn’t suffered in the least, and is in fact thriving more than ever under his astute management.”

“But enough about business!” Mrs. Stockton maintained. “We were just going to sit down to lunch. Please, Josephine and Agatha, sit down and join us for a meal, just this once. Tim and Andrew, you must join us. We might never see these ladies again after today. Sit down, everyone. There’s enough food here to feed an army, and we need every available mouth to eat it.” She directed each of the occupants of the room to a chair, and Josephine and Aunt Agatha eat the food along with the Stockton family.

Mr. and Mrs. Stockton engaged their sons, especially Andrew, in conversation about their life and work on the ranch, but the two men returned meager answers and fidgeted awkwardly at their parents’ misguided efforts to entertain these two ladies. Repeatedly during the meal, Josephine glanced up to find Andrew, seated directly across the table from her, studying her with the same twinkling examination he gave her outside the blacksmith’s forge. He gave no other indication of interest in her, but this penetrating inspection discomfited her immensely, and each time she broke off her own gaze to stare blankly into her plate instead. The more ill-at-ease she became, the more amused he appeared, and each time she looked back at him, his eyes sparkled more merrily than ever.

At last, Andrew and Timothy excused themselves to return to their work. Their parents watched them out of the room with obvious admiration beaming on both their faces. “They’re a bit rough around the edges,” their father exclaimed, “but you won’t find better men anywhere, even if I do say it myself. Losing Paul has made me value them so much more than I ever did before. I only regret I didn’t realize how fine they were before.”

“Especially Andrew,” their mother rejoined. “He’s got a heart of gold and a brain to match, though he doesn’t like anyone to know it. He hides his goodness under a rough exterior, and he absolutely worshipped Paul. He was more devastated than any of us when Paul died, and he dealt with his grief by doing Paul’s work. He does the work of three or four men around here.”

“You must be very proud of him,” Josephine smiled at their parental affection.

“I couldn’t be more proud of him,” Mr. Stockton affirmed.
“Him and Tim both. But you’re probably tired of hearing all about that. Now that Paul is dead, you’ll want to think about your future and your other prospects. I’ll get Phillip to drive you back to town.” He rose from the table and left the room.

“Who’s this Phillip?” Josephine asked, suddenly curious about the residents of this home she would never inhabit.

“Oh, he’s the son of one of our neighbors,” Mrs. Stockton replied. “He comes over every now and then to do odd jobs and earn some pocket money.”

Mrs. Stockton regaled them with further chatter while they waited, and pretty soon Mr. Stockton came back to inform them that the gig waited for them at the front step.

The late afternoon sun sloped toward the horizon as they trotted along the road back to town. Phillip, their speckled driver, never spoke a word or even turned around during the trip back, leaving Aunt Agatha as Josephine’s only company. Still, Josephine immersed herself in silence on the way, gazing around at the landscape and reviewing all the events of the preceding days in her mind.

“A penny for your thoughts?”
Aunt Agatha eventually offered.

“Hmm?”
Josephine mused. “I was just thinking about the Stocktons. They seem a nice family.”

“Yes,” Aunt Agatha agreed. “It’s too bad their son died before you could marry him.”

“It’s sad for them,” Josephine pointed out. “It isn’t sad for me. I haven’t lost anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Aunt Agatha shot back. “You’ve lost a very lucrative marriage contract. You should never have let them off so easily. Your father would be incensed, if he found out you walked away from that marriage arrangement without taking anything in compensation. You should at least have made them pay for your train fare and mine. You really should learn to be more astute when it comes to business, my dear. You let people take too much advantage of you.”

“Stop right there, Aunt Agatha,” Josephine held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about getting compensation from the Stocktons. I can’t believe you would be so cruel as to extract money from them after their terrible loss. Why, if it hadn’t been for Andrew stepping in to take over the management duties left behind by Paul, their entire business operation could have been ruined. They really are lucky to have a son like Andrew to fill the gap. He must be a very remarkable man.” Josephine gazed out at the passing countryside, but the vision of Andrew’s glittering eyes boring into her floated before her. She saw nothing of the trees and valleys and streams passing her at the side of the road.

“I never approved of you marrying into such a provincial family,” Aunt Agatha grumbled. “I always told your father he should match you with the son of a wealthy family Back East. No matter how good these country ranchers are, they’ll always be something akin to peasants compared to the industrialists and capitalists we know back home. Look at those two sons of theirs. They both work their fingers to the bone, mending fences and herding cattle. Did you look at their hands? That Andrew you admire so much had a hard ridge of
callouses along the inner edge of his fingers. Did you notice that? And they didn’t even bother to change their clothes before they came in to lunch. The younger one even brought a gun into the dining room!”

“Actually, they were both wearing guns,” Josephine observed distantly without taking her eyes away from the horizon. She didn’t comment on Aunt Agatha’s remark about her admiring Andrew.

“Well, can you imagine that!” Aunt Agatha exclaimed. “Of all the vulgarity!”

“As a matter of fact, Aunt Agatha,” Josephine mused, “those men need guns for the work they do. They need them for chasing off wolves and coyotes and cattle rustlers. And as for them changing their clothes before lunch, that would hardly be practical when they’re going straight back out to work afterwards.”

“It’s so uncouth!” Aunt Agatha complained. “You deserve better, and you shouldn’t be so quick to settle for such a marriage.”

“Can we stop talking about it now?” Josephine sighed. “Besides, there is no more marriage. Paul Stockton is dead. I won’t be marrying into that family after all, so the whole subject is moot. When we get back home, you can tell Papa all about how uncouth and vulgar the whole situation was, and how inappropriate it is for a lady like me to marry into a frontier family, and the two of you can start scheming about finding a rich New York dandy for me to marry. Now, I’m tired, so can we please stop talking about it? I’d like to spend the rest of the trip back to the hotel in peace and quiet.”

Aunt Agatha humphed the way she did when frustrated and withdrew into silence. As it happened, Josephine only just secured this victory when the gig rolled into the streets of the town and parked in front of the hotel, where it deposited the two women on the veranda and disappeared without ceremony into the obscurity of the evening. Josephine regretted her harsh treatment of her aunt and conciliated her by conversing with her through supper. They discussed their return trip to New York, and Aunt Agatha received Josephine’s overtures of peace by suggesting, almost cheerfully, a side excursion to Chicago for shopping and entertainment. Josephine accepted this suggestion happily and engaged Aunt Agatha in a conversation about the possibilities for the trip.

Underneath her sociable exterior, Josephine retreated into a remote sorrow for the thwarted vision of her future. She dreaded returning to New York, and the idea of marrying one of the sons of the wealthy families in the city of her own social set filled her with horror. She marveled at the disparity between her own reaction and Aunt Agatha’s when the clerk at the desk responded to their query about the train schedule that, according to Andrew Stockton’s information, the next eastbound train didn’t depart for another six days. This development revived Josephine’s secret hopes of exploring the town and finding something—she knew not what—to overthrow her whole tiresome existence. Her heart pattered in her chest and she repeated the intelligence to herself like a talisman. Six days! Why, the world could change dramatically in that time. Until they actually boarded the train and left the town, hope remained alive.