An Uninvited Bride on his Doorstep by Ava Winters

Chapter Three

“Miss Rose?”

 

Rose looked up. Billy, the top hand on the farm, was standing in the open doorway. Billy was a tall, skinny drink of water with an unruly shock of brown hair and a face full of freckles. A rooster was crowing in the yard outside, and it was foggy and felt early. She rubbed her face and sat up. She had fallen asleep in her chair in front of the fire.

 

“I’m sorry to wake you, Miss Rose, but I thought you oughta know.”

 

“Know what, Billy?” she mumbled. “Come in and sit down.”

 

Billy stepped inside, hat in hand. “Thank you, Miss Rose, but I’d just as soon stand,” he mumbled, and she frowned at him.

 

“Is something wrong?” Rose asked.

 

“Oh no, miss, I wouldn’t say wrong. No, not that.” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “It’s just that…well, you know that your aunt, God rest her, hasn’t had a lot of money since your uncle died. The hands have been getting paid late for over a month now, and…”

 

“Oh, of course,” Rose mumbled. “It is time to give you your pay.”

 

“I hate to ask at a time like this, Miss Rose,” he replied apologetically, “but some of the men got families, and they need the money.”

 

“How much do we—do I—owe you?”

 

“It comes to about thirty dollars for all of us, Miss Rose. That’s this month’s pay, and last months.”

 

Rose stood up and pressed her hands together. “Just wait here, Billy. I’ll go get the money.”

 

“I sure do appreciate it, Miss Rose.”

 

Rose left the parlor and hurried to her aunt’s little study. There was a little metal box on the desk where Aunt Audrey always kept her money, and Rose opened it up. There was a sheaf of bills still inside, and when Rose counted it, the sheaf came to exactly thirty-five dollars.

 

Rose counted it again, but it still came to thirty-five dollars.

 

Her heart began to pound in her chest, because to her knowledge, that little metal box held all the money her aunt had in the world.

 

Tears of panic jumped to Rose’s eyes, and she scrabbled around her aunt’s desk, opening drawers and boxes, looking for any other hidden cache of money, but there was none.

 

Thirty-five dollars was all that stood between her and the world.

 

Rose put her hands to her hair in distraction. She’d known that they were poor all right, but until that moment she didn’t understand just how much trouble and worry her aunt had kept to herself. They had barely been making it.

 

Rose clutched the paper money in her hand and stared down at it. She was sorely tempted to stuff the money back into the metal box and go tell Billy that she hadn’t been able to find it; but it was a sin to tell a lie.

 

What was more, both her parents and her aunt had taught her that a debt was a sacred obligation. And so with that, she dried her eyes, stood there a minute to beat back her panic, and then slowly returned to the parlor to pay a just debt.

 

She walked up to Billy and counted the money out into his open hand. “Here you are, Billy. Ten…twenty…thirty,” she quavered, and bit her lip.

 

Billy gave her a grateful glance. “Thank you, Miss Rose,” he murmured. “I’m sorry I had to bother you. We were all fond of your aunt. She was a good woman and a good boss lady. We’re going to miss her.”

 

“Thank you, Billy,” Rose replied in a small voice; and their top hand tipped his hat and took his leave, closing the door softly behind him.

 

Rose stared at the door after he left, then drifted back to the chair and slumped down into it in shock.

 

She had five dollars left.

 

Rose stared down at her hands. Her fingertips felt numb, and the feeling of unreality, of disaster, was slowly moving up her arms and into her chest, where it settled into her heart like four feet of flood water.

 

Her eyes circled the room. They paused on the picture of her aunt, then moved to the other picture on the mantle, the picture of her parents. They had both died of pneumonia when she was five years old.

 

Rose was hungry for comfort, and she scanned their smiling faces wistfully; but her parents were long gone. Her memory of her mother and father had always been blurry, and now they seemed so dim and distant, it was almost like she had dreamed them. The man in the daguerreotype was a tall, square-shouldered blond, with pince-nez glasses, smiling eyes and a big moustache. The woman had a luxuriant head of curling blonde hair and clear blue eyes, both of which she had inherited.

 

Her aunt had told her that her father had been a teacher, and that her mother had cleaned houses.

 

They’d worked hard but had been as poor as church mice for all that, Audrey had always said; then always added with a sigh, that nobody in their family had a speck of luck when it came to money. And it was true, because they had been poor themselves, even when Uncle Brent was still alive.

 

It is almost like my family is cursed, Rose thought forlornly. Doomed to be poor forever.

 

And if my folks and Uncle Brent and Aunt Audrey couldn’t make it when they were all working as hard as plow mules every day, what hope do I have all alone, with just a tumbledown farm and five dollars to my name?

 

The gloomy thought shook Rose with a deep wave of fear; and so she curled up in the big chair, reached for the romance book, and escaped into it.

 

“Get your dirty hands off that girl,” Tremaine snarled, then sent a smashing left into Reginald Humphries’ pointed jaw. The dastardly banker spun and dropped to the floor like a rock, and Tremaine knelt down instantly to cut Daphne free.

 

“Are you all right, miss?” Tremaine murmured, and helped pull her up.

 

Daphne raised swimming eyes to his face and whispered, “I am now, handsome stranger.”

 

Rose closed her eyes and mouthed the words devoutly, then read on.

 

Tremaine took her hand and helped her step over Humphries’ inert body. “Let me take you back to town, miss.”

 

I’m going to marry that man someday, Daphne thought to herself; but she only nodded, and let him lead her out.