A Bargained-For Bride Page 6

But Boone Ramsey—ever the hero—did not press her to finish what she was going to say. Simply he said, “Well, I’m hopin’ that Reverend Dryer seein’ us together, and that you weren’t chained up and bein’ whipped into marryin’ me, will balance out any gossip ol’ Jack the Jackass Taylor may have started up. After all, who are people gonna believe? The man of God in town or the ignoramus with a firm reputation as a tomcat, hmmm?”

  Jilly nodded, hopeful that Boone was right in his estimations of whom folks would believe.

  “It helps to have the reverend as a witness too…bein’ that we don’t want folks thinkin’ I had to marry you and such,” he added.

  Jilly frowned, puzzled. “Well, why would folks think you had to marry me? You’re the one who asked my grandpa for me in the first place. Wouldn’t folks be more likely to think I had to marry you?”

  Boone chuckled, as if he knew something she didn’t. “Oh, it’s no nevermind,” he answered.

  He looked at her—straight at her a moment—and Jilly was uncomfortable as he studied her.

  “I’m right proud of you, Jilly Adams,” he said then. “I thought you’d be sobbin’ your eyes out by now. But you made it through the weddin’ with the Reverend Dryer and leavin’ your granny and everything, and you’re still holdin’ onto your tears. You’re a strong young woman…a real strong young woman.”

  “Oh, I’m not so strong,” she sighed. “In truth, I think I’m just sort of, you know, astonished or shocked or somethin’.” She inhaled a breath of courage and then, before she could exhale her bravery away, asked, “Why did you ask my grandpa if you could marry me, Boone Ramsey? I know it has nothin’ to do with fondness or anything. Why, you haven’t spoken to me more than three or four times this summer. So why did you ask Grandpa for my hand?”

  And there it was—the question Boone had been dreading since the moment Doolin Adams agreed to let him marry Jilly. Over the past two days, Boone had spent hours contemplating just how he should respond when Jilly asked him the question he wasn’t ready to answer. He sure didn’t want to fib to her, but he also knew that, just as he wasn’t ready to tell her everything, she wasn’t ready to hear it.

  So he answered short and simple—truthfully too—without revealing the whole truth.

  “I wanted a wife,” he answered.

  “You wanted a wife,” Jilly repeated, her pretty eyebrows arching with suspicion. “That’s it? You wanted a wife?”

  Boone nodded but didn’t offer anything more.

  “Well, if you simply wanted a wife, then why me?” she asked next. “Why not one of the Havasham girls…or Ethel Farley, for that matter? Why me? And why so all of a sudden?”

  Boone shrugged. “I wanted a wife…and I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

  Jilly grinned at him. “But you still haven’t told me why you chose me.”

  “I have my reasons,” he answered, trying to skirt the details.

  Jilly sighed with frustration. “Okay, I’m feelin’ that you don’t want to be very forthcomin’ right now, and I’ll respect that…for the time bein’. But do you suppose you could find it in your heart to tell me just one of those secret reasons you have? Please?”

  Boone did have the heart, and he would share one reason with her—and it was a true and heartfelt reason.

  “Because of the orange,” he said.

  Again she frowned, and he chuckled, for he’d figured she would’ve forgotten the incident long ago, and it seemed she had.

  “The orange?” she asked. “You…you don’t mean the orange I gave you that one Christmas when I was eight, do you?”

  Boone smiled, pleased beyond words that she indeed did remember that orange.

  “That is the very one I mean,” he confessed.

  At the perplexed and disbelieving expression on Jilly’s face, Boone smiled—for he’d managed to distract her from pressing him further for more reasons as to why he’d chosen to ask Doolin Adams for his granddaughter’s hand.

  Jilly shook her head with skepticism. Was he serious? Did Boone just tell her that one of the reasons he chose to marry her was because of the silly little orange she’d given him years and years before?

  Oh, the memory was still as fresh in Jilly’s mind as if it had happened only a day before, even though it had been over ten years, in truth. But she couldn’t believe Boone Ramsey still remembered it—thought kindly of her for it after all these years.

  It was the Christmas the year Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey had died of the influenza, leaving their home and properties to their only son, Boone. Boone Ramsey had astonished everyone when, at the tender age of fourteen, he’d managed to run the farm and ranch, to harvest his father’s crops and everything else required to keep the properties productive, all by himself. Of course, he hadn’t physically done all the work himself; he’d been wise enough and well trained enough by his father to keep on the hired hands and cowboys. Thus, the Ramsey properties were saved—even productive financially.

  Still, for all the obvious successes the people of Mourning Dove Creek saw when young Boone Ramsey stepped into his father’s boots, Jilly felt differently toward Boone. In truth, she’d always, always been sweet on Boone, thinking him the handsomest boy in town. But it wasn’t just his good looks that touched Jilly that year but also the fact that she felt akin to him in having been orphaned at such a young age. She’d been even younger when she’d lost her parents. But then she’d had a loving home to go to—a grandma and grandpa that loved her and raised her as their own. Boone Ramsey had nothing—nothing but his properties and his work.

  And so on Christmas morning of that year when Jilly awoke to find that St. Nicholas had indeed left gifts beneath the Christmas tree for her—and her stocking full of nuts and hard candies and the miracle of an orange—her thoughts leapt to poor lonesome Boone Ramsey. Jilly knew that oftentimes St. Nicholas didn’t visit older children, and she was sure that, since Boone was now considered a young man, there had been no miracle of an orange left in one of his stockings.

  Therefore, once her grandma and grandpa had fallen asleep in their parlor chairs, Jilly had tugged on her boots and coat, wrapped her warmest scarf about her neck and head, pulled on her mittens, and, with the miracle of an orange in her coat pocket, walked all the way to Boone Ramsey’s house.

  In those days, the Ramsey house was nearer to town. Boone had since built a new house some ways further out. But on that cold, crisp winter’s morning, it wasn’t such a long walk for a little girl with a purpose.

  Jilly remembered that day so clearly—the bright, bright sunshine and cloudless sky. The Christmas Eve snow and frost that had fallen the night before sparkled clean and white beneath the canvas of light blue overhead. All the scents of Christmas were in the air as well—the comforting aroma of cedar fires, of turkeys and hams baking in ovens. Icicles hung from pine branches, tinkling like tiny crystal bells and adding the only sound to accompany the crunch, crunch, crunch of Jilly’s own footsteps as she made her way to the Ramsey house.

  Boone had answered her knock on the door, and Jilly smiled in that moment, remembering his tousled hair, his wary eyes, and the worn long underwear he’d been wearing when he opened it.

  “Merry Christmas, Boone Ramsey,” Jilly had greeted with a smile.

  “Merry Christmas, Jilly,” he said, his eyes brightening and a handsome smile spreading across his face.

  “I’ve brought you this for Christmas,” she told him. Taking the orange from her pocket, she held it in the cup of her tiny hands and offered it to him.

  Even now, in her reverie, she could see the bright orange sitting in her little brown mittens, looking just as if she’d captured the sun somehow.

  “Well, thank you, Jilly,” Boone said, studying the orange with widened eyes full of wanting. “But I’m sure this is your Christmas orange. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of it.”

  Jilly smiled. “St. Nicholas left it in my stocking,” she explained. “He left it for you, Boone.” Then reaching out to take
one of his hands, Jilly deposited the rare and precious piece of sweet citrus into Boone’s warm hand. Smiling at him again, she said, “Merry Christmas, Boone Ramsey. Good-bye,” and turned to start home.

  “Thank you, Jilly Adams,” Boone had called after her. “But don’t you want me to drive you on home?”

  “No, thank you,” Jilly called over her shoulder. “I like the sound the snow makes when I walk.”

  It had been that simple—that uncomplicated—just a gift of an orange to a boy Jilly thought might be lonely on Christmas.

  Speaking her thoughts aloud, Jilly said, “But it was just an orange.”

  Boone looked at her, however, the brightness of his eyes somehow dimmed with a long-ago but unforgotten pain of loss.

  “It was much more than an orange, Jill,” he said. Then turning his attention back to the team, he added, “At least to me.”

  Goosebumps raced over Jilly’s arms at Boone’s shortening her name to just Jill. Somehow the intonation of his voice—the more grown-up sounding version of her name—affected her not just emotionally but physically. She liked that he’d shortened her name for her—liked that no one else ever had.

  Chapter Six

  As Boone drove the team toward what would now be Jilly’s home, she was surprised at the feeling of calm that began to develop inside her the closer they got to their destination. Gradually, the powerful sensations of trepidation, worry, and doubt started to subside. In their place, Jilly experienced an unexpected excitement.

  She was married, and the fact of it was nearly unimaginable. But the fact that she was married to Boone Ramsey was even more inconceivable! Boone Ramsey—the handsomest man in town—Mourning Dove Creek’s unspoken hero—the man she’d secretly harbored a powerful infatuation with for as long as she could remember knowing him. Silently allowing herself to admit that Boone had always intrigued her, attracted her, Jilly steadily began to confess to herself that Jack Taylor had been an error of judgment on her part—that having married Jack would have been a monumental mistake. Maybe she’d married a man she knew little about in Boone Ramsey—and married him for all the wrong reasons, including spite because of Jack’s rejection. But in those moments, Jilly knew that marrying Boone Ramsey was a far better choice for any woman than ending up with a tomcat like Jack Taylor.

  And so Jilly found that her heart was softening toward her situation—beginning to accept it—and, furthermore, look forward to it. Her grandpa had been right. Boone Ramsey was the best man in Mourning Dove Creek, so why shouldn’t Jilly be glad, not to mention very flattered, that Boone had chosen her to marry? Even if his reason was the simple fact that he merely wanted a wife?

  Jilly’s nerves settled all the more when Boone pulled the team to a halt before his house—their house. Jilly grinned as she studied it, a slight feeling of lightheartedness catching in her bosom.

  The house was obviously well built, with a sturdy front porch and plenty of windows to allow lots of sunshine inside. It was fresh and radiant in what looked to be a newer coat of whitewash and shutters that had been painted a dark red. Oh, it needed a woman’s touch, perhaps—some curtains at the windows, some flowerpots on the porch—but the house that Boone Ramsey had built looked as if he’d built it with a wife in mind. In truth, Jilly was surprised by the welcoming nature of the home. Somehow she’d expected a shabby log cabin. After all, Boone had lived alone for more than ten years. It seemed he would’ve gotten comfortable with bachelorhood and built something simple and entirely masculine instead.

  “Well, here we are,” Boone said as he climbed down from the wagon.

  “It’s lovely!” Jilly exclaimed.

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said. As she stood to climb down from the wagon seat, Jilly felt Boone’s hands encircle her waist. A quiet gasp escaped her as he effortlessly lifted her down.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He nodded. “I’ll bring your trunk in here in a minute, but I best show you the house first.”

  Jilly gasped more audibly this time when Boone swept her up in the cradle of his powerful arms and started toward the house.

  “Over the threshold. Ain’t that the way they do it?” he asked as he managed to work the front door latch and send it swinging open, even with Jilly still in his arms.

  As Boone stepped into the house with Jilly, her smile broadened. It was perfect! Simply perfect! The house was bright and cheerful—perhaps a little lacking in homey details such as doilies, curtains, and a jar of fresh flowers on the table, but Jilly wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. A great unforeseen sense of having arrived home washed over Jilly as Boone allowed her feet to settle on the floor, and she felt like an artist viewing a fresh canvas as her imagination began to race with things to be done.

  “Well, here you are,” Boone sighed. “I cleaned it up for you…didn’t want you thinkin’ I live like a pig.” He glanced around a bit. “This here’s the entry, and you’ve got the parlor to the right…though I don’t linger in it much.” He nodded, indicating she look ahead. “The kitchen is right there, and the hallway to the left here leads to the bedrooms. There’s three.” Glancing at her, he grinned a little and said, “Come on, I’ll show ’em to you.”

  At the mention of bedrooms, Jilly’s grandma’s oration on “a little added insight to the details of the goin’s-on where the birds and the bees are concerned” began running through Jilly’s mind, and a measure of her anxieties began to return.

  When Boone gestured to the first bedroom on the hallway’s right, however, her anxieties unpredictably transformed to a strange sort of disenchantment as he said, “This is the largest bedroom, and you can have this one. There’s plenty of room at the foot of the bed for your trunk, and it’s got the biggest wardrobe and chest of drawers. I’ll use the room across the hallway here. I don’t need much…just a place to drop after a long day.”

  “W-we have separate beds?” Jilly asked. “I-I mean, separate rooms?”

  Boone’s handsome brows puckered into a bewildered frown. “Well…I figured that’s the way you’d want it. I’m not a fool, Jill. I know you married me because your grandpa worked it out…not because you wanted to.” His frown softened, but he didn’t smile. “I’m not gonna haul you to my bed and have my way with you tonight, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “You’re not?” Jilly asked, so thoroughly relieved that she smiled.

  Boone chuckled, “Well, you don’t have to sound as thankful as all that. I’m not that ugly, am I?”

  Jilly felt foolish and could think of nothing to say to reassure him that he wasn’t ugly—that she was just innocent and frightened. So she just shook her head.

  “Now the back room,” Boone continued, striding toward the back of the house, “I kinda just put things in here that I don’t know what else to do with. So you can just leave this mess alone. But the rest of the house…you do whatever you want with it, all right?”

  Jilly frowned. “What do you mean? What would I do with it?”

  Again Boone chuckled. “I don’t know…women stuff. Tablecloths and doilies or whatever strikes your fancy to make it feel like your own home. I just need a place to hang my hat and lay me down to sleep.”

  “All right,” Jilly said, suddenly feeling the emotion of happy anticipation come over her once more. “And…what about cookin’? I know you have hired hands out here somewhere. Do I cook for them too…or just you?”

  “Just me,” Boone answered. “I mean, if you don’t mind—just me…and yourself, of course. The hands take care of themselves. You probably won’t even see them much except here and there. Nope, just you and me. That’s the only folks you’ll be cookin’ for.”

  Jilly sighed with relief. She’d been worried about having to cook for hired hands as well as a husband. She’d heard from other farmers’ wives that it was twenty times the work, at least.

  After looking into the back bedroom to see that it was indeed filled with piles of trunks, harnesses, old quilts, an
d other miscellany, Jilly turned to see Boone studying her. She blushed under the intensity of his enthralling gaze.

  “I gotta admit…I thought you’d be bawlin’ like a lost calf by now,” he said, “bein’ that you just married up with a complete stranger.”

  Jilly shrugged. “Oh, you’re not a complete stranger,” she told him. “After all, we shared an orange once, now didn’t we?”

  Boone was confused—entirely stupefied. He had expected Jilly Adams to be distraught, brought to the very depths of despair at having to marry him. Yet she hadn’t cried a tear—not one. He wondered how it was possible that she hadn’t expressed any of her fear and anxiety through tears. Then again, maybe she’d cried her eyes dry that first day—the day her grandpa told her Boone had asked for her hand.

  Then again, he knew spite could carry a person a long way, and he knew she’d married him out of spite. He wasn’t an idiot, after all. When he’d made the decision to ask for Jilly’s hand, Boone had reconciled himself in understanding that she wouldn’t adore him. Doolin Adams had assured Boone that Jilly would love him—if not instantly, then in the years to come. Oh, he didn’t believe it, of course, so he had indeed reconciled himself to expecting nothing from Jilly—though he hoped for a pleasant camaraderie.

  What he had expected though was a distraught young woman, sobbing over the hardship that had been thrust upon her. He knew the reality of it all would wash over Jilly at some point—probably that night when she was alone with a strange man in a strange house.

  Shrugging a bit, Boone figured he’d just enjoy the fact that Jilly seemed to be putting off her despair for the time being.

  “I’ll go bring that trunk in for you now…so you can settle in a bit,” Boone said. “Meanwhile, you just have a look around and figure out the kitchen or whatever you feel like doin’.”

  “I should help you with that trunk though,” Jilly offered. “It’s heavy.”

  “I’m sure I can handle it,” Boone said, grinning at her. “You just wander a bit. I’ve got a few chores that need doin’, and then I can take you out to the barn if you like…or to see the cattle or to choose your horse.”