Historical Cowboy Romance Two Book Box Set - Mail Order Brides (23 page)

“And that tale you told us up at the Fort
House about mending his clothes when he’s not looking,” Mick
recalled. “Now that was impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever met a
woman who would try that and get away with it. Your mending skills
must be as good as any professional tailor.”

Violet blushed. “I’m okay.”

“Okay?” Iris scoffed. “She can mend Cornell’s
suit jackets so well, a professional tailor would have trouble
finding the repair. She makes all our dresses so Cornell can’t tell
the difference between her work and dresses bought from shops in
Butte or even mail-ordered from Denver. He would pay for it, and
she’s good enough to make him think we did. That’s how good she
is.”

“And she made our wedding dresses, too. Do
you know what she did?” Rose laughed at the memory. “She got Wade’s
sister to drive out here from Butte with her sewing basket and
measuring tape. Then she went through a big charade, pretending to
measure us up for our wedding dresses.”

“Did Cornell watch?” Jake asked,

“You better believe he did!” Violet
exclaimed. “I almost fainted in fear that he would figure out what
we were doing. He sat through the whole measuring operation and
watched and asked questions about every detail. It was a very
thorough fitting session, I can tell you!”

“I don’t think Betty ever measured anyone for
anything before in her life,” Iris reported. “But she sure put on a
convincing show.”

“We told Cornell she worked for a high-end
dressmaker out of San Francisco,” Violet continued. “We said we
were ordering our wedding dresses from them, and they would ship
the dresses out on the stage. When Betty left, I walked her out to
her buggy and she gave me the paper with all the measurements. Two
weeks ago, we drove down to Butte and pretended to pick up the
dresses. We even got some big boxes to not carry them into the
house.”

“That’s a lot of trouble to go through to
make your own wedding dresses,” Jake pointed out.

“It was a lot of trouble,” Violet admitted.
“But can you imagine what it would have cost to get our dresses
made in San Francisco and sent up here? And when you think about
the ranch not doing so well, I just couldn’t live with it—not when
I can do just as good a job myself.”

“Cornell will never know the difference,”
Rose assured her.

“He probably won’t even attend the wedding,”
Violet replied. “From the way he’s been acting, I wouldn’t be
surprised if he boycotts it.”

“Do you really think he will?” Rose asked. “I
thought he considered it his duty as our guardian to attend, even
if he doesn’t approve.”

“Like I told you before,” Violet told her.
“He thinks he’ll convince us to call it off.”

Rose opened her mouth to ask her something,
but Mick interrupted. “I suppose you ladies have the festivities
for Friday all planned out. I suppose you have a big cake and
flowers and the whole nine yards. Do ya?”

“Nothing like that,” Violet told him. “Rita
will make a cake, but it won’t be big. After all, there’s just the
six of us and Cornell.”

“Pete and Wade might come up,” Iris put
in.”

“What?” Violet exclaimed. “Don’t they have
work to do?”

“There’s always work to do,” Iris replied.
“But I told them they could come up if they wanted to. I told them
they could take half the day off.”

“That’s a bit out of the ordinary, don’t you
think?” Violet asked. “After all, they’re our employees. They
aren’t exactly family, that they should attend our wedding.”

“They might not be family to you, Violet,”
Iris shot back. “But they are to me. They might be employees, but
they’ve been running this ranch almost alone ever since Daddy died.
And they ran it with him for fifteen years before that. We have
Pete and Wade to thank for this ranch as much as anyone else.”

“But still…”Violet began.

“I invited them, and they’re coming—if they
want to,” Iris declared. “They’re more family than Cornell, if you
ask me.”

The company shifted in their seats, and
Violet jumped in to change the subject.

“To answer your question, Mick,” she
continued. “We don’t have fancy decorations, either. The three of
us have our wedding dresses, but the service will take place in the
back parlor. We can all stand witness for one another. But we don’t
have anything very ostentatious planned. You’ll be relieved at
that, I suppose.”

“It just makes practical sense to me,” Mick
replied. “As you say, there’s just the six of us, and I guess your
man Cornell will be there, too, so there’s no point in going all
out with the decorations. The whole shootin’ match’ll be over in a
couple of hours. Then it’ll be back to business.”

“You’ll be happy when it is, won’t you?” Jake
asked him.

Mick shrugged one shoulder. “I never went in
for all that elaborate flowers and organ music and party favors and
whatnot. We’re getting married, not puttin’ on a carnival. What’s
the point of putting up all those decorations when you’re just
gonna take ‘em down in an hour or two. Makes no sense to me. Just
get up in front of the minister, say the mumbo-jumbo, and get on
with the rest of your life. The end.”

“That’s you,” Chuck chimed in. “Mr.
Romantic.”

Iris flushed and let out a shocked little
gasp.

Mick glanced to his right and to his left and
shifted in his chair again. “Nothin’ to do with romantic. Just
plain foolishness, if you ask me.”

“Your bride might think differently,” Violet
pointed out.

Mick shot Iris a sidelong look. “If she wants
to do it, I sure won’t stand in the way. But unless I miss my
guess, she doesn’t care much one way or the other.” He caught
Iris’s eye, and the two exchanged a smile. Then Iris reached over
and squeezed his hand.

So they were doing it, too. Violet breathed a
sigh of relief that she wasn’t getting ahead of her sisters.

“It would be nice,” Chuck remarked. “If no
one came, if it was just us. I think that would be the best way.
After all, we’re the new family. Everyone else is just extra. We
oughta stick to just the six of us. Make a statement to the rest of
‘em about the way things are going to be from now on. That’s what I
think.”

“You’re darn right there, Chuck,” Mick boomed
out. “I’m with ya.”

“Chuck is right,” Rose piped up. “After the
wedding, we aren’t going to want to share this place with anyone.
We should make that clear right from the start. Whatever anyone’s
done for us in the past, it’s in the past. We’re making a clean
break and starting fresh. What better way to let everyone know than
to have a private wedding just between us.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,”
Violet replied.

“I know you don’t think it’s such a good
idea,” Rose shot back. “But, if you think about it, we’re basically
doing the same thing right now, don’t you think? We’re discussing
and planning how we’re going to deal with the people outside this
room. We didn’t invite Cornell to this supper.”

“I did,” Violet replied. “I encouraged him to
come so he could meet these men and get to know them.”

“What did you do that for?” Iris asked.

“He made a terrible stink about our marriages
when I found him in the library,” Violet explained. “He said our
fortune would be squandered if we went through with these
marriages. He even called you men….” She stopped. Why had she gone
this far? She should have kept her confrontation with Cornell to
herself.

They waited. “Say it,” Mick commanded.

Violet glanced to her right and found Chuck
staring at her, waiting. She stared wildly around the room, but
they all fixed her with the same expectant stare. She had no choice
but to tell them. “He called you dirty. He threatened to disinherit
me if I went through with the marriage.”

“He wouldn’t!” Iris gasped.

“That’s what I thought,” Violet cried. “But
he said he held me personally responsible for this whole situation,
and he said he would disinherit the rest of you, too, if we didn’t
call off the wedding.”

“Can he really do that?” Chuck asked. “He
doesn’t have the authority to cut all three of you off. What would
he do with the estate, if he did? There would be no legal
heirs.”

“That’s what I said,” Violet told him. “I was
just joking when I said it, but I asked if he planned to take all
the money for himself.”

“What did he say to that?” Chuck asked.

“He said he could and he would,” Violet
replied. “He said we’d call off the wedding if we didn’t want to
wind up in the street.”

A hush fell over the table. Violet hated
herself for revealing Cornell’s threat. She should never have given
it a moment’s thought. She should have treated it as so much hot
air. Now, she couldn’t force herself to look at any of her sisters
or their prospective husbands.

“That low-down snake!” Mick growled under his
breath. “Just wait until I get my hands on him. I’ll teach him his
place!”

“What did you say to him, Violet?” Chuck
asked. “What did you say when he threatened to disinherit all of
you?”

“I told him about our conversation in the
buggy,” Violet replied. “I told him Rose and Iris and the rest of
you wanted to get rid of him, and that I was the only one still
defending him. I told him that, if he knew what was good for him,
he would treat you men and us as generously and kindly as he could,
or
he
could wind up in the street.”

Chuck stared at her. “You told him that?”

“Of course!” Violet cried. “He’s been such a
colossal boor these last few weeks. Rose and Iris don’t know the
half of it because I kept it to myself. But Cornell has done
nothing but badger me day and night about this mail-order marriage.
I’ve had enough of it! I’ve almost come around to your way of
seeing things. If he can’t at least be civil to us, then he doesn’t
belong here.”

“Good for you, Violet,” Iris exclaimed.

Chuck shook his head. “He’s a blasted fool
for driving you to it. Like you say, if he’d just mind his manners,
you would probably defend him until the cows come home. He could
have a pretty comfortable life here, if he would only be civil to
us.”

“He wouldn’t even come here tonight to meet
you,” Violet told him. “When he called you dirty—I can only assume
he meant because you’re cowboys—I told him to come along and meet
you for himself. I said he’d understand that these marriages will
be good for us and for the ranch, and he would see that the moment
he saw all of us together. I don’t see how anyone could look at the
six of us and not know that. But he wouldn’t come.”

“We don’t need him anyway,” Jake added.
Violet jumped nearly out of her seat when he finally spoke. His
voice sounded velvety and gentle, but it sent shivers up her spine.
“We shouldn’t give him another thought. He isn’t worth our
consideration.”

“But how should we deal with him?” Iris
asked. “We need a plan, in case he tries to disinherit us. You
don’t know him the way we do. He has every banker and lawyer in the
territory yapping at his heels.”

“We don’t need a plan,” Jake replied. “He
can’t do it. All we have to do is get married. Once that happens,
he’ll be completely helpless. There isn’t time for him to
disinherit any of you before the wedding and once you’re legally
married, all your money passes to your husbands. He can’t do
anything. He’s just trying to frighten you.”

“That’s what I told him,” Violet related.
“But I didn’t half believe it myself.”

“It’s true,” Jake maintained.

“How do you know?” Violet laughed. “What are
you, some kind of lawyer?”

Jake’s black eyes cut straight through her.
“Yes.”

Her mouth flew open in astonishment. “But you
said you were a cowboy!”

Jake crossed his legs at the knee and leaned
against the back of the chair. “I am.”

“But you can’t be both!” Violet
exclaimed.

Jake studied her across the table. Then he
took a deep breath. “I went to work as a horse wrangler when I was
fifteen. A draft horse stepped on my foot when I was hitching him
to a wagon and he broke my foot. I was sitting in a hospital bed
for six months while I waited for it to heal up. While I was there,
I began to read some books in the hospital library. I became
interested in the law, so I decided to study it.”

“Where was this?” Chuck asked.

“Down in Texas,” Jake replied. “I come from
San Antonio, but I broke my foot in Galveston. So there I was,
sitting around with not much to do for six months. So I read a
bunch of books and took a bunch of tests. Then I received the
results of the tests, and I got a job offer from a firm in
Houston.”

“What did you do?” Violet asked.

“I told ‘em I didn’t really want to work in
an office all the time,” Jake told her. “My foot healed up, and I
went back to breakin’ wild horses. So now you know.” He glanced
around the table at the five faces staring at him in amazement. At
last, his eye settled on Violet. “If Cornell threatens you again, I
suggest you send him packing then and there. The longer he hangs
around, the more dangerous he could become. Get rid of him now. He
won’t ever come around to being civil to us.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” Violet
replied.

Jake examined her. “You’re a decent person at
the bottom. I’m a pretty good judge of people, and I can tell you
have a tender heart, especially for anyone you’ve formed an
attachment with. Cornell has been a crucial part of your life for
years, and you’re naturally reluctant to see him booted out on his
ear.”

Violet blinked back tears. “It just doesn’t
seem right, that’s all.”

Jake’s eyes never left her face. “I know
people pretty well. You might not believe it, but I do. Good,
decent, kind people like you think everyone else in the world is
like you. You think even a person like Cornell is good and decent
and kind underneath it all. You think you can reason with him and
get him to understand. But you can’t. He doesn’t think the same way
you do. He doesn’t want to make things up with you, and he doesn’t
want to find a way to understand you. He won’t ever come around to
your way of thinking.”