Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1) (12 page)

“I can’t whip him,” Alma replied. “He’s my
father.”

“Why don’t you indulge me by telling him you
won’t put up with this ridiculous behavior?” Jude continued. “Why
do you support him and not me?”

“I am supporting you,” Alma insisted. “I’m
telling you that if we ignore it, if we act as if it doesn’t exist,
it won’t exist.”

Jude scowled toward the house. “He’s an old
fool if he thinks I did anything in the war. All these old
veterans—all they ever think about is the blasted war.”

“You have to admit,” Alma remarked. “He must
have some reason to feel as strongly as he does. Something must
have set him off to make him think you were there.”

Jude started back. “Don’t tell me you believe
him! Don’t tell me you think there’s any truth to his story. That
would be the icing on the cake, if you turned against me and
started thinking I was holding anything back.”

“I’m just saying,” Alma explained. “You’re
acting like you do have something to hide. You’re acting as
irrationally as he is, and you won’t even talk to him to clear the
matter up. It doesn’t do anything for your claims of innocence.
That’s all I’m saying.”

Jude waved his arms around in a wild gesture
of desperation. “I wasn’t even born when the war was going on!” he
shouted. “How could I do the things he says I did? My parents
hadn’t even met back then.”

“Then why don’t you just tell him that?” Alma
pointed toward the house. “Just tell him exactly what you just told
me. We can clear all this up in a couple of minutes, and then we
can all go on with our happy lives.”

“No, I won’t,” Jude grumbled. “I won’t waste
two minutes of my precious time explaining myself to such a fool as
him.”

Alma crossed her arms over her chest. “Then
you can’t expect him or me or anyone else to take your word for
your innocence, can you?”

“You’re my wife,” Jude shot back. “You’re
supposed to support me, no matter what. You’re supposed to defend
me against everyone else.”

“I told you before,” Alma snapped. “I am
supporting you. I’m telling you how to clear this up so he’ll never
be able to say anything against you again. But you won’t do it. And
you stand there and call him a fool!”

“If you believe him,” Jude declared. “If you
honestly think there’s any chance I could have done the things he
thinks I did, then I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Go
back to your family and leave me alone. I’ll go home to the people
who want to believe in me.”

Alma narrowed her eyes. “Just like that, huh?
Well, goodbye, and good riddance to bad rubbish!” She spun away and
stomped toward the door of the barn.

Jude jumped away from his horse and caught
Alma by the arm. “Alma, wait!”

Alma whirled on him with her black eyes
flashing. “If you haven’t heard a word I’ve said, that I believe
you’re innocent and we can make everyone else believe it, too, with
just a few words from you to explain your situation, then you’re
too stupid to be married. If you would throw me away just like
that, without even trying to explain your position to him and my
sisters, then I don’t want anything to do with you, either. You can
go back to Austin or Amarillo, or wherever you want to go. I don’t
care. Let me go and get out of here!”

She yanked her arm back, but he held her
fast. “Alma, wait!”

Alma got another volley of acid words ready
to launch at him, but the look in his eye stopped her.

“I’m sorry I said that,” he growled. “I
didn’t mean I didn’t want to have anything to do with you. I’m just
worked up about the things he said about me. That’s all.”

“You made your own bed,” Alma grumbled. “You
could stop his mouth with a single word explaining that you’re too
young to be in the war, but you won’t. I don’t understand it. I
told you a dozen times I know you’re innocent. I just can’t figure
out why you don’t clear your name with him the same way.”

“He won’t listen to me,” Jude muttered. “He
has his mind made up about me, and nothing will change it.”

“You haven’t tried,” Alma repeated.

“I haven’t tried,” he agreed. “And I’m not
going to try. I wouldn’t stoop so low.”

“Then just wait a little while,” Alma told
him. “Just wait until he goes back to his chair and Amelia and
Allegra go to bed. Then we’ll go back up to the house and slip into
bed. We’ll wake up tomorrow morning and ride out to work like
nothing ever happened.”

“Do you really think that’s the best way to
handle this situation?” he asked. “There has to be a better
way.”

“Well,” she returned. “Running away sure
isn’t it.”

“I guess you’re right,” Jude replied. “I
guess I let my head get away from me.”

Alma smiled at him. “Does that happen to you
a lot?”

Jude stared down at the toe of his boot. “I
guess it does. I guess I don’t really think things through all that
much. Maybe I should.”

“Maybe you should,” Alma agreed. “But you’re
married now, and two heads are better than one. I know how to
handle my father and my sisters. If you just listen to me, I can
smooth things over for you.”

“All right,” he replied.

“Take my word for it,” Alma continued. “If
you don’t pay Papa’s accusations the slightest attention, you can
live peacefully enough with me and Amelia and Allegra. Don’t talk
to him until he gets over it on his own. Pretty soon, he’ll run out
of steam and he won’t accuse you anymore. He’ll sort the whole
thing out in his own mind, and that will be the end of it.”

Jude averted his face toward the barn wall.
“I don’t like it. I don’t like giving ground when I know the other
man is in the wrong.”

“In his mind,” Alma told him. “He’s in the
right. If you won’t explain to him about being too young to be in
that battle, then just ignore him.”

“And what if he starts ranting and raving
like he did tonight?” Jude asked. “What if he starts foaming at the
mouth and saying he won’t eat at the same table with me or have me
staying in his house and sleeping with his daughter? What
then?”

“If he says that,” Alma replied. “Just keep
eating and sleeping with his daughter. What can he do to stop you?
We’re married, and it’s as much my house as his. Where does he
think you’re going to sleep, if not with me?”

Jude fidgeted. Then he stole a peek at Alma.
“That part’s alright, don’t you think?”

“The part about you sleeping with his
daughter?” Alma grinned. “It’s all right with me. It’s worth
putting up with the ranting of an addled old man. That’s the only
reason I put up with it.”

“All right,” Jude replied. “In that case,
I’ll put up with it, too.”

Alma beamed at him. “Thank you. I don’t think
we’ll have to put up with it for long. Then it will be in the
distant past and we won’t even remember that he said anything.”

Jude sighed. “How long do you think we have
to wait out here before we can go back inside?”

“We don’t have to wait long,” Alma told him.
“We can go in any time now, if you want to. I just thought….”

“What?” he asked.

“I thought,” she continued. “This might be a
good chance to spend some time alone together. No one will come out
looking for us in the dark. They’ll think we’re having a quarrel or
something.”

Jude cracked a mischievous grin. “Leave it to
you to think of that. Aren’t you tired from last night?”

“Not too much,” Alma replied. “Are you?”

“I’m wiped out,” he told her. “I wouldn’t be
much good to you.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” Alma replied.
She took him by the hand and led him to the far back corner of the
barn, where a place to stable a horse stood empty with fresh clean
dry grass spread out on the ground.

Alma kicked the grass into a pile in the
corner and drew Jude down onto it. She leaned her back against the
hardened clay wall of the building. Jude slouched down and
stretched out next to her.

He looped his arm under the small of her back
and pillowed his head on the soft flesh of her shoulder where it
met her chest.

“So we’re alone together,” he murmured. “I
don’t suppose you want to spend the night out here. I don’t think I
can stay awake another night, no matter how interesting things
get.”

“I wasn’t thinking of staying out here all
night,” Alma replied. “I wasn’t even thinking about making things
interesting. If you’re tired, we can just sit together and talk
until we go back inside. Like you said, we probably won’t get much
chance. We should take the opportunity when and where we find
it.”

“It sure is nice to lie here with you without
a bunch of other people around,” Jude remarked. “This is the first
time we’ve been alone together, apart from this morning when your
sisters went out shooting.”

“We weren’t really alone then,” Alma pointed
out. “Amelia and Allegra were just over the hill and they could
have come back at any moment. They won’t come now. They’re probably
all sound asleep now.”

“You people sure go to bed early,” Jude
replied. “You don’t even sit up working in the evenings the way
most people do.”

“The longer you stay up,” Alma told him. “The
more money it costs in candles and lamp oil. We get up at sunrise,
anyway, so it’s best to go to bed as soon as supper’s over. That’s
the way we’ve always done it. And then….” She stopped.

“What is it?” he asked.

“If you do anything else,” she stammered.
“You wind up staying up for a while, so it makes up for it.”

“Oh, I understand,” Jude replied. “Kind of
like we did last night?”

“Something like that,” Alma replied.

He chuckled into her shirt. She slid her hand
up his back where the pointy bones of his spine broke the smooth
surface of his skin. She felt the hardened bands of muscle
underneath the velvety cover of skin. When her hand reached the
cleft of his neck, she squeezed and rubbed the tight bands of sinew
between his shoulders and the bony base of his head. He hummed and
sighed.

“I was thinking about what you said about us
having our own house,” Alma murmured. “There are lots of nice spots
down along the river where we could build something. If we start
having children, this house is going to get pretty tight once they
start growing up. We could build a house down by the river in the
shade of the willows. That would be nice.”

Jude didn’t answer.

“I know what I said about people around here
living with four generations under one roof,” she continued. “But
now that we’ve spent one night in the house with my father and my
sisters, and now that we’ve had a couple of times alone together, I
think it would be nice to have our own house. And I know what I
said about getting the money to build it. But if you want to, we
could sell some my share of the stock now to get the money to start
the house. Then we could use our share of the auction sales in the
fall to pay for the rest.”

She caught her breath to stop herself from
babbling excitedly and to give Jude a chance to answer. She held
her breath, waiting for him to respond. But he still didn’t
answer.

A queer heaviness in his limbs made her pull
her hand away from his neck, but he still didn’t move a muscle.
Then a long snore reverberated through the quietness of the barn.
He had fallen asleep.

Light penetrated the thatch of the barn roof
long before it eked under the door of the house, so Alma woke up
first again. She managed to work herself out from under Jude
without waking him up, and she hurried to the house.

When she opened the door, she found her
father and sisters all still asleep. She halted on the threshold.
Then she picked up the wooden bucket from just inside the doorway
and went out again to the well.

She filled the bucket up, combed a handful of
the cool water through her hair, and rearranged her hair. She could
show up at the house pretending she’d just gotten out of bed. Jude
could pretend he’d gotten up with her and gone out to the barn
before the others woke up.

She hauled the bucket back to the house and
stirred up the fire. As she mixed the dough for the tortillas,
Jude’s silhouette darkened the door. He stopped on the threshold
the same way she did. Then he tiptoed into the room and sat down in
the chair by the fire.

“They’re sure sleeping soundly,” he
whispered.

“They’ll never know we didn’t come in last
night,” she whispered back.

“What about your bed?” he asked. “It hasn’t
been slept in.”

“How can you tell?” she returned. “How can
you tell I didn’t make it up this morning?”

Jude chuckled. “Good one.”

“Beside,” she continued. “We’re married. We
can stay out all night if we want to. It’s none of their
business.”

“But won’t they think….?” Jude swallowed the
last words.

“Let them think whatever they want to think,”
Alma declared. “Whatever they think, it’s probably the truth.”

“You mean,” he asked. “They’ll think I fell
asleep before we had a chance to do anything?”

“I mean,” Alma shot back. “They’ll think we
spent the night alone together because we wanted to be alone. We
didn’t want to spend the night in the same room with three other
people. Let them think. You can’t stop a person from thinking.”

A stir from the other side of the room put an
end to their conversation. Allegra stretched on her bed and swung
her legs over the side. Her boot heels hit the floor with a clunk.
She scratched her head, furrowed her brow at Jude and Alma, and
then at Amelia and her father still in their beds.

Alma smiled at her. Allegra scowled into
every part of the room trying to fit the puzzle pieces together.
But, in the end, she shrugged, walked out the door, and came back
with her hair and face wet and her expression clear. She came over
to the fire place and squatted down between Jude and Alma.