A Bargained-For Bride Page 4

  But Jilly’s heart felt as if it might shrivel up and turn to dust as her grandma looked up to her and with tear-filled eyes answered, “Unquestionably, Jilly. Unquestionably.”

  A sense of betrayal the like she had never known washed over Jilly Adams in that moment. How could they? How could her grandparents do such a thing to her? And why would they do it? Why?

  “Go on now, Jilly,” Doolin said again. “You go on over and talk to Jack. And then you come home, and we’ll talk about it some more. Go on now.”

  “Oh, I will go!” Jilly exclaimed as fury joined the hurt growing in her heart. “I will go, and we will talk about it when I come back. We’ll talk about my wedding to Jack Taylor.”

  In a whirl of tears and heartache, Jilly raced out through the front door and down the street toward the Taylor place. Jack would save her! She knew he would! He would never allow her to marry anyone else but him—especially not Boone Ramsey. Jack would save her. Jilly had no doubt of it—at least, not too much doubt.

  Chapter Four

  “Pardon me for the intrusion, Mrs. Taylor,” Jilly began, trying to appear as calm as possible. “But might Jack be at home? And if so, may I speak with him just for a moment?”

  “Why, of course, Jilly,” Mrs. Taylor answered. It was obvious Jack’s mother was unnerved a bit. After all, she’d answered the knock on the door to find Jilly still red-faced from crying—not to mention out of breath from having run all the way from her own home to Jack’s. “He’s just inside,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Won’t you come on in, Jilly?”

  But Jilly forced a smile, shook her head, and declined, “No, thank you, Mrs. Taylor. Grandma is expectin’ me home right quick to help start supper.”

  “All right,” Mrs. Taylor said, smiling with concerned compassion. Turning from Jilly, Mrs. Taylor called over her shoulder, “Jack? Jack! Jilly Adams is here. She needs to speak with you for a moment.”

  Quick as a rabbit, Jack appeared behind his mother at the front door.

  “Hey there, Jilly,” he greeted, smiling at her. “What’re you doin’ out this way?”

  “May I…may I speak with you a moment, Jack?” Jilly asked as tears began to well in her eyes once more.

  Jack’s smile instantly disappeared. “You all right, Jilly?” he asked.

  Jilly nodded, forcing a smile and willing her tears not to escape her eyes—at least not yet—not with Jack’s mother looking on. “Yes. I just need to speak with you. It will only take a moment.”

  “Well, sure, Jilly. Sure,” Jack said, stepping around his mother and closing the door behind him as he left his house.

  Taking Jilly by the shoulders then, he gazed at her, inquiring, “What’s wrong, Jilly? Somethin’s wrong. I can see it plain as day.”

  As tears spilled from her eyes, Jilly began, “I-I think my grandpa has lost his mind, Jack! Simply lost his mind!”

  “What? Why?” Jack exclaimed in a whisper. Taking Jilly’s hand, he led her from the front porch of his home and around to one side of the house. “What did he do to make you think such a thing?”

  “When I left you just a while ago…when I came home…” Jilly stammered. “Well, I was comin’ up to the house, and I saw Grandpa standin’ on the front porch talkin’ to Boone Ramsey.”

  “Uh huh,” Jack remarked, urging her to continue.

  “Well, I didn’t really think much of it. But when I reached the house and went in…” Jilly burst into sobs then, her voice cracking with emotion as the truth of it all spilled out. “My grandpa has told Boone Ramsey that he can marry me, Jack! Marry me! Boone Ramsey! I-I can’t fathom why, but he came to the house today and asked my grandpa for my hand. And Grandpa told him he could have me! Just as plain and simple as that, Jack!” She shook her head as she continued, still disbelieving that her grandpa had agreed to Boone Ramsey’s proposal. “I told Grandpa and Grandma that I love you, Jack, and that I plan on marryin’ you,” she babbled. “But he said…he said Boone Ramsey was the best of men and that—”

  “Hold on, Jilly,” Jack interrupted her. “Hold on.”

  Jilly paused in her emotional recounting of what had happened just minutes before at her home. Brushing the tears from her cheeks, she tried to settle the sobs that wracked her body as she looked to Jack expectantly.

  “You’re tellin’ me that your grandpa is marryin’ you off to Boone Ramsey?” Jack asked.

  Though Jilly thought she had made everything very clear, she could understand why Jack must be as astonished and horrified as she was at hearing the news. And so she answered, “Yes, Jack. My grandpa has promised Boone Ramsey my hand in marriage. And Grandpa said that if you don’t tell him different…that if you don’t tell him about us—about how in love we are and that I’m gonna to be marryin’ you instead—then he says he’ll keep his word to Boone Ramsey and make me marry him. So you’ve got to come with me, Jack! You’ve got to come and tell how things are with you and me. Please…you’ve got to come right now!”

  “Now hold on, Jilly,” Jack said. “I-I don’t want to be hurtin’ your feelin’s or anything…but where in the world did you ever get the notion that me and you would ever be gettin’ married?”

  Jilly frowned. She was certain she had misunderstood him. “What? What do you mean, Jack?”

  Jack’s frown deepened. “I never planned on marryin’ you, Jilly. I…I like you. I like you more than any other girl in town, right now…but I ain’t anywhere near ready to settle down with one woman. And I sure as hell ain’t thinkin’ on gettin’ married anytime soon.”

  An angry sort of panic began to swell inside Jilly. “What?” she asked in an awed whisper. “What do you mean you like me more than any other girl in town right now? What do you mean by tellin’ me you don’t plan on gettin’ married anytime soon? Are you sayin’ you don’t love me, Jack? Are you sayin’ that all the time we’ve spent together, all the times we’ve stood out by the creek sparkin’…are you sayin’ you were just playin’ at me, Jack?”

  Jack shrugged—and it was the shrug of a coward in Jilly’s eyes.

  “Well, I don’t know, Jilly,” he mumbled almost timidly. “I like you well enough, I suppose. But I don’t have it in mind to ever marry you.”

  “So you don’t have a care that my grandpa has promised me to another man?” Jilly choked. “You don’t have one worry in mind about seein’ me marry up with Boone Ramsey?”

  Again Jack shrugged his coward’s shrug. “I don’t know, Jilly,” he said. “I mean, it does seem awful harsh for your grandpa to promise you to man you don’t hardly know. But everyone has always said that Doolin Adams is the wisest man in town. So maybe he’s just doin’ what he thinks is best and—”

  Jack was silenced by the sharp, stinging slap Jilly administered to one side of his face.

  As he stared at her in astonished silence, Jilly cried, “You know what, Jack Taylor? I didn’t listen when everyone told me you were just a flirt…that you were just a fickle tomcat. I stood up for you! I let you have my heart! I let you kiss me! And here you stand, provin’ to me now that they were right. You are shallow! You are just a fickle tomcat!”

  When Jack merely shrugged yet again, mumbling sorry, Jilly added, “And there’s somethin’ else you should know, Jack Taylor…and that is that you do not deserve me! You are not good enough for me! My grandpa was right after all, wasn’t he? And at this very moment, I’d rather marry a complete stranger than to ever see your face again.”

  *

  “If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that you don’t need to watch over someone when they’re chokin’ down their humble pie,” Effie said to Doolin.

  “But she’s been in there cryin’ for near to two hours, Effie!” Doolin exclaimed in misery.

  Doolin had known darn well that Jack Taylor had no intention of ever marrying Jilly—and he thanked the Lord for it. Still, he didn’t like to hear his little girl in her room sobbing her heart and soul out the way she was. It broke his already weakening heart.

/>   “I know,” Effie sighed. “But she needs to cry it out. And besides, I think she’s more angry and embarrassed than heartbroken, Doolin.” She shook her head. “That Taylor boy makes me so mad! Somebody oughta beat the waddin’ out of him.”

  “Oh, I’m sure someone will someday,” Doolin grumbled. “I wish I had the strength to do it myself.”

  Effie started her rocker rocking in an attempt to appear calm. Yet Doolin knew by the way his beloved wife’s hands gripped the rocker’s armrests that Effie was hell and gone from being calm.

  “Poor Jilly,” Doolin sighed. “But I just keep tellin’ myself that there’s no better man anywhere to give her over to than Boone Ramsey. He’ll take care of her when we’re gone…in every way she needs takin’ care of.”

  “I know. I do know,” Effie agreed. “But I understand Jilly’s feelin’s as well. A young girl’s dreams of romance and love don’t usually include her grandpa and grandma forcin’ her to marry a man she hardly knows.”

  “I know it,” Doolin mumbled. He paused as he noticed Jilly’s sobbing had softened. It no longer echoed down the hall so mournfully miserable. “Seems she’s settlin’ a bit,” he whispered to Effie.

  Effie nodded. “Yes, indeed. And she’ll come out and talk to us when she’s ready. Our Jilly is a good girl…and in her heart she trusts us. I know she does.”

  “I do too,” Doolin said, nodding his head. “I just hope she can forgive us one day.”

  Jilly brushed the tears from her cheeks, dabbing at her red, swollen eyes with the damp handkerchief she held crumpled in one hand.

  She hated Jack Taylor—just hated him! How could he be so unfeeling and cruel? How could he reject her the way he’d done? Jilly could easily enough admit that her grandpa had been right about Jack and his shallow character. It wasn’t her grandpa’s being right that had made her so angry; it was her own stupidity! She’d been totally blinded by Jack’s good looks and charm, just the way Dina Havasham had been the year before. Of course, Jilly had spent the past couple of months convincing herself that Dina just hadn’t been the right girl for Jack Taylor—that Jilly Adams was the right girl for him. But now, after the way he’d rejected her feelings for him and need to be rescued from an arranged marriage, she could see what a tomcat Jack really was.

  Oh, she was mad—furious! Furious with Jack and furious with herself! In fact, once Jilly had returned home and raced to her room, slamming the door behind her and throwing herself on her bed to sob out her heartache, it really hadn’t taken her very long to realize that it wasn’t really heartache that was wracking her body with tears and trembling. It was anger and humiliation! Jack Taylor had used her, toyed with her feelings and heart, given her false impressions of what the future would be—and of what true love was.

  Jilly had half a mind to marry Boone Ramsey out of pure spite. So what if Jack Taylor, the tomcat of Mourning Dove Creek, didn’t want her? Boone Ramsey, the handsomest man in town and one of the most successful farmers and ranchers in the county, did—though, in truth, she couldn’t fathom why. But nevermind the reason for Boone Ramsey’s asking for Jilly’s hand. The fact remained that he had, and Jilly decided then and there that she would accept his proposal. Perhaps not as eagerly, or even as willingly, as her grandpa had for her, but she would accept it. She’d marry Boone Ramsey and show Jack Taylor that he hadn’t managed to break her heart the way he’d broken Dina Havasham’s.

  Jilly sniffled, dabbing at her eyes with the saturated hanky.

  “He’s a very handsome man, after all,” she said aloud to herself. “Far more handsome than you, Jack Taylor.” At last, Jilly had verbalized what she’d been thinking for months about Jack Taylor and Boone Ramsey. She could’ve paddled her own behind for championing Jack over Boone Ramsey—or any other good, honest man in town. Even Clarence Farley was true, honest, compassionate, and hard-working, even if he did own the nasty habit of picking his nose in public—for at least he did it with honesty and hard work.

  Inhaling a deep breath to try to calm the sputtering breaths that were the recovery of her sobbing, Jilly stood up from her bed and retrieved a fresh handkerchief from the nearby chest of drawers.

  The soft linen of the dry handkerchief felt soothing on her swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Striding to the open window, Jilly closed her eyes a moment, allowing the warm summer breeze to lend refreshment to her face as well—and to her spirit.

  She thought then of something she did not like to think of—something she avoided thinking of, in truth. Her grandpa and grandma were elderly. Death had fisted harsh blows to Jilly in her past, and the thought that her grandma and grandpa might someday pass away to live forever in heaven did little to comfort her. In the depths of her soul, she knew Doolin and Effie Adams would never be able to rest in peace, whether passed away or still living, if they were taxed with the worry of the well-being of their granddaughter. Jilly knew it was why her grandpa had promised her to Boone Ramsey—for she and her grandmother were always and ever first in his mind.

  She realized that, from her grandpa’s point of view, there could be no better man in Mourning Dove Creek for Jilly to marry. Boone Ramsey owned vast acres of land—pastures for cattle grazing, fields for farming corn and wheat. Though always brooding, Boone Ramsey was ever polite. Even that day when Jilly had come upon him leaving her home, even with all that must have been in his mind, he bid her a proper good afternoon.

  And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was dependable, capable, and ever willing to assist. Every posse that ever rode out of Mourning Dove Creek boasted Boone Ramsey as a member. Every barn raising was attended by Boone. Every fire brigade that had ever put out any fire for anyone included Boone Ramsey.

  Certainly Jack had jumped into the creek to try and save Georgie Lillingston, but Jilly frowned as she remembered the time, only weeks before, when the Ellisons’ barn had caught fire in the middle of the night. Jilly’s grandpa had been part of the bucket line, and so had Boone Ramsey. But Jack Taylor—Jack Taylor claimed to have slept soundly through all the ruckus, even for the truth that the Ellisons’ barn was less than a quarter mile from the Taylor place.

  Jilly opened her eyes, frowning. “Oh! What a fool I am!” Jilly growled to herself. “What an utter ignoramus!”

  In that moment, she had more than decided to willingly marry Boone Ramsey: she was determined to! She would no longer allow his handsome good looks and towering, muscular form to intimidate her into avoiding him. She would no longer remember him as the adolescent boy whose parents had been lost to influenza the year he had been fourteen and she only eight, and she could no longer ache with empathy for his pain each time she thought of it. She would no longer ignore the fact that she had always admired Boone Ramsey—since she was a child she’d admired him. Therefore, with the shedding of her fears and all the reasons she’d concocted and fiercely owned to keep herself from thinking of Boone Ramsey as anything other than just another man in Mourning Dove Creek, Jilly marched across the room, opened the door, and hurried down the hall toward the parlor.

  “Grandpa,” she said as she entered the parlor to see her very weary and wilted-looking grandparents sitting in waiting for her, “you’re right. Jack Taylor is not any sort of man that any woman should respect. I’m sorry I was so awful to you both before. I love you both more than anything in all the world, and I trust your judgment. So…so I’ll marry Boone Ramsey if you think it will be best for me. I only have one condition of my own.”

  “And that is?” Doolin Adams asked as the color visibly began returning to his beloved, weathered cheeks.

  “I want to marry him now,” Jilly answered. “As soon as possible. I don’t want a big, fancy weddin’ and all the expense, nonsense, and waitin’ that goes along with it. I want to do it while I’m still feelin’ brave enough.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Doolin sighed, smiling with relief.

  But Jilly’s grandma was not so easily convinced. “Oh, Jilly honey! Are you sure? A woman o
nly gets married once…at least when she’s a young, beautiful thing. Don’t you want a pretty dress and all?”

  Jilly shook her head. “No. It would seem silly to me. I hardly know Boone Ramsey. I think it would be ridiculous to put on a big weddin’ under the circumstances. No. I just want the preacher to come over here in our parlor…and m-marry me to him. That’s all. And I won’t marry him until you all agree to my one condition.”

  “Well…if that’s what you really want, honey,” Effie reluctantly agreed.

  “It is,” Jilly assured her—even though she wasn’t as certain as she was pretending to be.

  “Well, then…why don’t I ride on over to Boone’s place this afternoon and discuss the final arrangements with him?” Doolin said as he slowly stood from his seat in his chair. “I’m sure he won’t be the one to argue about keepin’ things simple.”

  Holding back a sudden wave of tears that rose to her eyes, and tying not to panic as the realization of what she’d just agreed to do washed over her, Jilly forced a smile. Looking to her grandma, she offered, “How about I take care of supper all on my own tonight, Grandma? After all, looks like I’ll be doin’ my cookin’ without your help from now on.”

  *

  “Somebody oughta beat the beans and other stuff out of Jack Taylor,” Boone grumbled.

  “I know it,” Doolin agreed. “But I figure someday all his hog slop will come back on him one way or the other.”

  Boone shook his head with amazement at how perfectly he’d read Jack Taylor’s character and lack of intentions toward Jilly Adams. “I’m sorry that he hurt her though, Doolin. She didn’t deserve it…not at all.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she’s so much hurt as angry and humiliated,” Doolin explained.

  Boone chuckled. “So she’s agreed to marry me out of spite, is that it?”

  Doolin smiled as well. “Probably. But you and I both know that won’t matter in the end.”