Texas Bride: A Bitter Creek Novel Read online

  Hannah and Hetty issued a collective sigh of awe.

  Miranda was afraid to reach for the tickets. She seldom took anything for herself before offering it first to one of her siblings. Her life the past three years had been full of sacrifices. But none of her siblings were old enough to marry. She would have to do this herself.

  It didn’t feel like a sacrifice. She’d be going on a grand adventure to a place she knew about only from stories in the Daily Herald. A place full of wild broncs and longhorn cattle. A place full of cowboys … and Indians. It all sounded so exotic. And exciting. She’d have a husband and maybe, one day soon, children of her own, two things she’d seen as very far in the future after she’d become a destitute orphan. And with a new life outside the orphanage, there was at least a chance she could rescue her siblings.

  Miranda didn’t let herself dwell on the possibility that her husband might turn out to be as cruel as Miss Birch. No one could be as cruel as Miss Birch.

  Speak of the devil and she appeared.

  “What is this?” a piercing voice demanded.

  Miranda quickly slid the vellum and tickets across the table to Josephine, who slipped them back into the pocket in her night shift. As the headmistress descended on them like a whirling dervish, Miranda whispered to her siblings, “I’ll take care of Miss Birch. Go!”

  Her younger brothers and sisters grabbed their blankets and scampered for the door in the dark shadows at the opposite end of the dining room, leaving Miranda behind to face their nemesis.

  Miss Birch was wearing a tufted robe over her nightgown, and her long black hair, of which she was so proud, was pinned up under a nightcap. The headmistress was short and stout, with large eyes so dark brown they were almost black and cheeks that became florid when she was angry, as she was now.

  “I presume that bunch who ran off was the passel of brats you brought with you to the Institute,” Miss Birch said. “I’ve warned you before about leaving the dormitory after lights out, Miss Wentworth.”

  Miranda lowered her eyes in submission, knowing that was the best way to conciliate the headmistress. “Yes, Miss Birch. I was saying good-bye to my brothers and sisters, since I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

  “You think the fact that you’re leaving tomorrow means you can flaunt my rules tonight?”

  “No, Miss Birch. I—”

  A slender wooden rod whipped through the air and hit Miranda’s right shoulder without warning. Whop. She gasped at the pain and bit her lip to keep from crying out. She didn’t want her siblings to hear her and try coming to her rescue. There was no defying Miss Birch.

  Miranda kept her hands at her sides, aware that if she tried to protect herself, Miss Birch would only hit harder.

  “I’ll be glad”—whop—“to see”—whop—“you go!”

  The pain was excruciating. Miranda felt tears of pain well in her eyes, but she didn’t make a sound, not even a whimper. She refused to give Miss Birch the satisfaction.

  She could hear the heavyset woman breathing hard from the effort of whipping her. Miranda raised her gaze, staring into the black eyes that stared hatefully back at her, and said with all the calm and dignity she could muster, “Are you done now? May I leave?”

  She watched as Miss Birch resisted the urge to hit her again. Three cracks of the rod. That was Miss Birch’s limit, no matter how bad the infraction. Miranda knew her punishment was over, which was why there had been a taunt in her calm, dignified voice.

  Then Miss Birch hit her again. WHOP! Hard enough to make Miranda moan with pain. Hard enough to make the tears in her eyes spill onto her cheeks.

  “Now I’m done,” the headmistress said with malicious satisfaction. “Go back to the dormitory, Miss Wentworth, and stay there until it’s time for you to leave.”

  Miranda had turned to go when Miss Birch said, “Too bad you won’t be here when those brats get their punishment.”

  “You’ve already punished me!” Miranda protested. “There’s no need to punish anyone else.”

  “They were here, weren’t they? Where they didn’t belong? Oh, they’ll be punished, all right. Each and every one of them.”

  “The baby—”

  “That brat is no baby! He’s four years old.”

  “Only four years old!” Miranda retorted, fear for her youngest brother, whom she would no longer be able to protect, making her bold. “How can you be so mean?”

  “Mean?” Miss Birch pressed her lips flat. “I enforce discipline, Miss Wentworth. Without discipline, where would we be? Those children must learn to obey the rules. They must learn there are consequences when they break them.”

  “If you must punish someone, beat me instead.”

  Miss Birch raised her eyebrows as she tapped the rod against her open palm. “Let me see. Three strokes times five offenses. How many is that, Miss Wentworth?”

  “Fifteen,” Miranda replied, her throat tight with fear.

  “I’m tempted, Miss Wentworth. Oh, how I am tempted.”

  “Who would know?” Miranda said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  Miss Birch laughed. “You’re a fool, Miss Wentworth. I could give you fifteen strokes of the rod tonight and punish the rest of them tomorrow after you’re gone.”

  Miranda knew very well that Miss Birch would find reasons to punish her siblings, even if there weren’t any. But the tickets secured in Josie’s pocket gave her courage. “Do it,” she urged. “I trust you will be too tired after the effort to bother my siblings, at least for tomorrow.”

  “Very well, Miss Wentworth. Turn around and bare your back.”

  Miranda’s eyes went wide. “You can’t mean—”

  “Bare your back,” Miss Birch demanded. “Or I’ll have every one of those brats back in here tonight to get three strokes of the rod.”

  “Yes, Miss Birch.” Miranda turned and slid her shift off already aching shoulders, securing the folds of cloth against her small breasts.

  She focused her terrified mind on the faceless man at the end of her upcoming journey. The man who would be her husband. The man who would be the salvation of her siblings. The man who would plant the seeds for a family of her own. The man she would somehow learn to love. The man who might someday learn to love her.

  Miranda braced herself and waited for the cane to strike.

  “How long till we get there?”

  Miranda felt her heart squeeze at the pitiful, plaintive tone in her brother’s voice. “The stagecoach can only go so fast, Nick,” she said, brushing at the wheat-colored cowlick shooting up like a rooster’s tail at the back of his head. She was wondering, yet again, whether she’d made the right decision sneaking away from the orphanage in the middle of the night with her two younger brothers in tow.

  “I’m hungry, Miranda,” Harry said, peering up at her with beseeching blue eyes.

  “Me, too,” Nick grumbled. He pulled away from her mothering touch to stare out the open coach window at the surprisingly green rolling hills.

  Miranda couldn’t help marveling at the leafy trees and lush green grass in Texas, when there had been bare branches and snow on the ground sixteen days ago when they’d left Chicago.

  “It feels like we’ve been traveling forever,” Nick said. “How much farther do we have to go?”

  “I don’t know!” Miranda snapped. She saw the hurt look on her brother’s face and said, with as much patience as she could muster, “Another hour. Maybe two. We’re almost there.”

  Nick slumped back on the lumpy coach seat with a mulish look on his face and stared out the window.

  It was too late for Miranda to regret her impulsive decision to bring her two brothers along. But after the horrific beating Miss Birch had given her, she’d been afraid to leave them behind.

  She hadn’t asked for permission, because Miss Birch would likely have kept her from taking the boys out of spite. She’d decided to make her escape in secret. She’d roused the girls in the middle o
f the night to tell them what she was doing, so they wouldn’t be frightened when they awoke to find their brothers missing along with her.

  The girls had wanted to come, too. It had been difficult, but she’d convinced them to stay behind. While she might pawn off two young boys on her unsuspecting husband, he could very well decide not to marry her if she showed up with five extra mouths to feed.

  “You’re right, Miranda,” Josie had said. “Our early departure from the Institute depends upon your marrying Mr. Creed. The three of us will wait here.”

  That had been that.

  Because she’d been in such a rush to escape undetected—and in such pain she could scarcely move without whimpering—the boys didn’t even have a change of clothes. Miranda wasn’t much better off. She was wearing a too-large, navy woolen dress with a starched white cotton collar that someone had donated to the orphanage. She had felt blood seeping through the fabric from the wounds on her back, but the dark stain wouldn’t show against the deep blue cloth.

  She’d packed a faded print cotton dress to change into once her back stopped bleeding. She would have changed into the cooler garment a couple of days ago, if only she’d had the privacy to do so. There had been none, because she hadn’t traveled first class. All her tickets had been traded for cheaper fares, to provide passage for the two boys.

  Besides, it didn’t seem fair for her to be dressed in cotton when the boys were stuck wearing their woolen winter clothing in the sweltering Texas heat.

  She used her hanky to pat at the perspiration dotting her forehead and the skin above her upper lip. Miranda worried about meeting her prospective husband looking—and smelling—like something the cat dragged in, but there was no help for it.

  She’d left the rest of her meager wardrobe behind in order to stuff her carpetbag with food she’d scrounged from the Institute’s kitchen. She was glad she’d packed food instead of extra clothes. The bread and cheese and dried apples had kept her and the two little boys fed during the first few days of travel.

  The journey by rail to St. Louis, by steamboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans, by packet across the Gulf of Mexico to Houston, and now by stagecoach to San Antonio had been arduous. They’d been sleeping upright and eating whatever they could beg, borrow, or steal, once the food from her carpetbag was gone.

  Yes, steal. It wasn’t that she didn’t know right from wrong. She did. But Miranda had learned a lot of hard truths over the past three years. Sometimes survival required behavior that would have appalled her parents. But Mama and Papa were long gone, and she’d had two—three, if she counted herself—empty stomachs to fill.

  She and Harry had provided the distraction while Nick slipped in to steal a piece of fruit or a chunk of cheese or bread or whatever else might be found. Or Harry might throw a tantrum, drawing an attentive crowd, allowing Nick to steal a purse filled with enough money to buy them sustenance.

  These last hours on the road were turning out to be the hardest—bumpy and hot and dusty. They’d had nothing to eat or drink since early morning. The boys were tired and hungry. So was she. However, her exhaustion was caused as much by fear as by fatigue.

  What if Mr. Creed refuses to allow Nick and Harry to come live with us?

  She and the boys could always throw themselves on the mercy of whatever church she might find in San Antonio, at least until she could find a job and a place for them to live. But that might take time. How were they going to eat and where were they going to sleep in the meantime?

  This country was so … barren of people. And so … full of wild animals. Cattle with long, sharp horns. Wolves with howls eerie enough to wake the dead. Lumbering black bears with big teeth and enormous claws. Gophers that popped up out of holes and hurriedly retreated in the face of shrieking, sharp-beaked hawks. Worst of all, ugly vultures, feasting on the dead … and dying.

  Miranda had run enough errands for Miss Birch to navigate the shadowy back alleys of Chicago with ease, but she felt totally out of her element facing this endless prairie wilderness. She had a vivid imagination, and her thoughts left her anxious and frightened.

  What if Mr. Creed takes one look at me standing there with two little boys and wants back the cost of the tickets he gave me? What if he has the sheriff arrest me when I can’t come up with the money to repay him? What will happen to Nick and Harry?

  The thought of her two younger brothers left alone on the streets of San Antonio, or in some strange orphanage or farmed out to some family as slave labor, made her sick to her stomach.

  Miranda felt like a cornered animal, ready to fight with fang and claw to defend her young. She clenched her hands into tight fists.

  If Jacob Creed ever threatens my brothers’ welfare, he’s going to be very, very sorry.

  The more Miranda thought of it, the more she realized she would have to get the Texan to marry her before he discovered the existence of her brothers. She had no idea how she was going to keep Nick and Harry out of sight until the wedding was over, but there had to be a way. Once she was married, she would be in a better position to argue to Mr. Creed that the boys came along with the wife he’d just acquired.

  What if Mr. Creed wants to get married near his friends and neighbors at his ranch?

  Miranda gnawed on an already tiny thumbnail as she considered her options. She would have to insist that they tie the knot before she went anywhere with her new husband. She remembered hearing Mama and Papa laughing and talking behind their bedroom door, so she knew a man and wife slept together in the same room. Actually, in the same bed. And from a girl at the orphanage who’d had a clandestine lover, she knew basically what a husband and wife did together in that bed.

  The thought of being a wife intrigued her. Her mother had read her fairy tales when she was young. Sleeping Beauty was her favorite. Miss Birch could have been the evil witch. She wondered if Mr. Creed would turn out to be her Prince Charming, and whether they would live happily ever after.

  In fairy tales, the princess was always beautiful. She wasn’t nearly as beautiful as the twins, but she did have pretty blue eyes and curly blond hair. Would that be enough to balance a limp and a grotesque lower left leg?

  When she’d expressed concern about her terrible burn scars, Josephine had pointed out that before they were married, Mr. Creed would only see her nice figure and pretty blond curls.

  But Miranda knew the horror that was hidden beneath her floor-length skirt. She didn’t limp badly, but that didn’t mean a great deal of damage hadn’t been done to her flesh when her skirt caught fire three years ago.

  She’d been lucky to live, considering the seriousness of her burns, but she’d come away with a terror of being burned again. Her parents had been caught upstairs and she’d heard her mother’s screams and her father’s shouts as the blazing fire forced her back down the stairs.

  Her parents hadn’t gotten out of their burning home. The six Wentworth children had fled down a street on fire. Miranda had become the guardian of her siblings that night. She’d made a promise to herself, as she pulled her soot-covered siblings close, to keep them safe forever after.

  Which was why she’d agreed, against her better judgment, to become a mail-order bride.

  She would do anything Mr. Creed asked if he would just agree to take the boys—work her fingers to the bone, bear his children—anything.

  Miranda felt a little breathless. She wished she knew more of what happened between a man and a woman behind that closed bedroom door. She’d had her first menses only a week before the fire. She’d been terrified, but her mother had explained what was happening in terms that made the bleeding sound like a blessing, instead of the curse she’d heard whispered about among her friends at school.

  She was now a woman, her mother had explained, and her body was preparing itself for the seed a man planted that would cause a baby to grow. Miranda knew the basics of how that seed got transferred from male to female from her friend at the orphanage, and she remembered her mother a
ssuring her, face blushing rosily, that her husband would tell her what was required of her when the time came.

  Miranda hoped Jacob Creed would be young and handsome. But even if he turned out to be an ancient troll, she was going to marry him to save her family.

  Despite her fears, Miranda still believed she’d made the right decision bringing the boys along. Knowing Miss Birch, Harry would have been left out in the cold to catch pneumonia and die before Miranda could get back to rescue him. Nick would have suffered a fall down the stairs or some other “accident” that ended his life. His forearm had already been “accidentally” broken once during one of Miss Birch’s private punishment sessions.

  Miranda brushed the white-blond hair back from Harry’s forehead. He felt feverish. She helped him rearrange himself so he was lying with his head in her lap. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and began to suck it. She didn’t try to remove it, even though he was too old for such behavior, because she thought it might keep him from remembering how hungry he was.

  Harry had been as pale as death for most of the journey. Now he was flushed with fever and had developed a wheezy cough to go along with his Chicago winter cold. If Harry could just survive until they got to San Antonio—where a home with a bed and good food would surely be waiting—she would nurse him back to health. As Harry swiped his runny nose across his dusty face, Miranda grabbed for her hanky. She dabbed at the cloth with her dry tongue, then spit on it and scrubbed at the muck on Harry’s face.

  “Stop, Miranda!” Harry protested. He wriggled away from her and slipped down onto the coach floor. He sat at her feet for a few moments before he reached out with a dirty finger to touch the fancy silk hem of the rotund woman passenger on the opposite seat.

  “What is that?” the woman said in a shrill voice so reminiscent of Miss Birch that Miranda winced.

  Harry froze in place. When the woman stomped her high button shoe, he launched himself off the floor and back onto the seat beside Miranda with a yelp of terror. He pressed himself against her like a frightened rabbit.