Montana Mail Order Bride Read online

  Every effort she made to turn away from them, to look at something other than those mountains outside her window, brought her once again to Adam Foley. She couldn’t explain it to herself, but she felt the same insufferable examination from him that she felt from the mountains. He looked right through her and saw things she couldn’t see herself. Why?

  Why couldn’t she hate him? Why couldn’t she just let him get off the train in Great Falls without a word of farewell? That would teach him.

  But she couldn’t. She kept her silence all night, alternately dozing and starting awake in a ferment of emotion. Adam wasn’t bothered at all by any of the things she found so intolerable. He fit right into this bizarre world. He didn’t recognize its alien quality. Even though the landscape contained trees and cows and birds and rabbits just like Indiana, the two places couldn’t have been less similar if they’d been two different planets.

  If only she could find someone like Adam to help her, to mediate between her and that hostile force. If only Joel Bloom understood the Western mountains as well as Adam did. Maybe he could protect her—from what? From the disembodied presence of the land? Ha! He’d probably laugh in her face when she tried to explain it to him.

  Somewhere in the night, the idea came to her that with the slightest movement, she could lean over and bury her face in Adam’s chest and her body in his arms. She could rest in the shelter of his protection, and she could finally get some sleep.

  Her eyes snapped awake. What was she thinking? She must have been dreaming. She would have to stay awake to guard herself from thoughts like that. Adam Foley was the last person on God’s green earth she should turn to for shelter from anything.

  She didn’t manage to stay awake all night, but she kept her head against the window so she wouldn’t fall over against him in her sleep. She could barely stand to be one inch closer to the mountains, but it was better than completely losing control of herself.

  She never celebrated the coming of dawn more than the next morning. The ghostly moon faded before the glory of the sun. The blazing light across the landscape hadn’t changed, but they’d soon roll into Great Falls. Adam Foley would be out of her life and she could ride in peace and quiet the rest of the way to Kalispell.

  The conductor passed through the car. “Great Falls, folks!” he called. Passengers retrieved their baggage from the overhead racks and from under their seats. Adam got his jacket out and put it on. Then he sat back down next to Lucy to wait for their arrival in the station.

  He’d be gone soon. It would be rude to part with him with their argument still hanging over them. A few words, and they could part amicably.

  Adam saw Lucy looking at him, and he smiled. So he felt the same way. He wanted to let bygones be bygones.

  “You’ll be getting off soon,” she observed.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Are you excited to see your family again?” she asked.

  Adam nodded. “It will be good to get back home. I’ve been away a long time.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be glad to see you,” Lucy remarked.

  “I’m sure they will,” he agreed. “They’ll want me to stay. They won’t like the idea of me leaving again.”

  “Maybe they’ll worry that you’re never coming back,” Lucy suggested.

  “Almost certainly, they will,” Adam replied. “You never know but something can happen to someone any time.”

  “I mean,” Lucy explained. “I mean you might not bother to come home to visit anymore. You might decide you like it too much away, and you don’t want to come home to Montana anymore.”

  Adam thought it over. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that happening. I’m always going to have to come back here. It’s part of me. It’s in my blood.”

  Lucy looked out the window. “I wish I felt that way about a place.”

  “What about Indiana?” Adam asked. “That’s your home. Don’t you feel that way about it?”

  “No,” she replied. “I wasn’t born there. I was born in Michigan. I only came to live in Muncie when my parents died. My grandfather lived there, and I came to live with him. But I’ve never felt Indiana in my blood the way you’re describing Montana. I don’t think it could be.”

  “What do you mean?” Adam asked.

  Lucy closed her eyes. “I don’t know what I mean. It just seems like Montana has an effect on you that Indiana doesn’t have. Indiana doesn’t care if you come or go. Montana owns you, body and soul.” She shuddered to think about it.

  She opened her eyes and found Adam staring at her, but he didn’t smile with that amused sneer she expected. “It does that. No doubt about that.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m surprised you realize that.”

  “Why?” Lucy asked. “Isn’t it obvious to everyone?”

  Adam shook his head. “Hardly anyone realizes it, even people who’ve lived here all their lives. I’m surprised a low-lander like you picks up on it.”

  “Low-lander?” she repeated. “That sounds like a bad word.”

  Adam shrugged. “It’s not bad. It’s just what you are. But it shows you’re more aware of what’s going around you than most people. It means you can see things other people can’t see. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.”

  Lucy bristled. “I’m sure there are a lot of things about me that would surprise you.”

  He smiled then. “I’m sure there are.”

  How had she let this conversation get away from her? “It doesn’t matter now. You’re getting off at the next station, and we won’t see each other again. I’ll just have to remain a mystery to you. A mystery from your past.”

  “I suppose so,” Adam replied.

  Chapter 7

  The conductor came back through the car. “Great Falls, folks!” he called again, and passengers started climbing out of their seats. They gathered their bags and moved toward the door.

  Adam turned to Lucy. “I guess this is good-bye.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Good-bye, then.”

  “Don’t be mad at me, Lucy,” Adam told her. “I wouldn’t want to say good-bye when we’re angry at each other.”

  “I don’t, either,” she admitted.

  “Why do we always end up arguing?” he asked. “Every time we try to talk to each other, we make each other mad.”

  “I guess it means we shouldn’t talk to each other,” Lucy replied. “Maybe it means we should just stay away from each other.”

  “There,” Adam exclaimed. “You see what I mean? Why does it have to be like this?”

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” she replied. “You’re leaving now. You’ll go back to Europe, and I’ll go to Kalispell, and we won’t argue anymore.”

  Adam shook his head. “Never mind.” He reached out and took her hand. “Good-bye, Lucy Palmer. It’s been very nice traveling with you. I hope you have a nice life with Joel Bloom up there in Kalispell. I hope you find a place in the world where you can be happy. You’ll be in my thoughts.”

  She should have come up with some cutting remark to answer him, but she couldn’t tear her attention away from the hand touching her. “I’m sure I will.”

  “I hope so,” he continued. “You deserve to be happy as much as anyone. I hate to think of you going somewhere you won’t be happy.”

  “I’ll be fine.” What else could she say?

  “Will you bid me good-bye, too?” he asked. “Has my company been so obnoxious to you that you won’t even wish me well?”

  Lucy dropped his hand and shook her head to clear her thoughts. “I’m sorry. Your company hasn’t been obnoxious at all. I just don’t know what’s come over me. I haven’t been myself since I left Muncie.”

  “I understand,” Adam told her.

  “I do wish you well,” Lucy continued. “You’re a remarkable man, Adam Foley. Not many young men from Montana would get the idea to go to Europe and have the determination to follow through with their plan. You could be one in a thousand, maybe ev
en one in a million.”

  Adam blushed. “I’m nothing special. I’m just a kid from the sticks.”

  “Oh, yes, you are something special. I don’t think you belong in Montana at all. If you had the drive to leave and see the world, maybe you belong out there, where things are happening and people are doing big things. Maybe you will do big things, too.”

  “I do belong here,” Adam argued. “You said it yourself. Montana owns me, body and soul.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lucy maintained.

  “Well, maybe you don’t belong here, either,” Adam pointed out.

  The first houses and buildings on the outskirts of Great Falls came into view outside the windows of the passenger car. How had Lucy failed to notice them? They sprang up out of the bare ground. “Let’s not get into all that again. Here.” She extended her hand. “Let’s shake hands and part as friends.”

  Adam stole a glance out the window. “All right.” He took her hand, but instead of the polite shake she hoped for, the same powerful sensation possessed her. She wouldn’t let go of that hand for the world.

  But before she could react, he let her go and stepped back. “Good-bye, then.” And he disappeared toward the door. Her heart screamed for her to run after him, to beg for any chance to make it up to him, but the door only slammed behind him.

  New passengers hunted for available seats, and a couple of men eyed her in the hope of sitting next to her. She turned her face to the window, but she clamped her eyes shut. She didn’t want to think about those mountains anymore, or about Adam Foley, or her upcoming marriage, or anything else. And she didn’t want to feel the sting of tears in her eyes, either.

  Lucy didn’t hear the screech of the engine’s whistle. She didn’t feel someone sit down in the seat next to her. Only after she knew she wouldn’t break down entirely did she open her eyes and see the country rolling by again.

  The next days passed in the same fever of uncertain upset as the rest of her journey from Indiana. She couldn’t reconcile herself to the phantom of the mountains, looming closer with every passing hour. Nor could she block them from her mind. No matter what crossed her windowpane, she saw only the mountains with their nightmares about the life she would find there.

  As Adam told her it would, the train slowed as it began climbing into the mountains near Kalispell. The air changed, even in the stuffy passenger car, and Lucy now had no choice but to inhale the very essence of the mountains if she wanted to stay alive.

  Would they infect her with their insidious spirit? Would they transform her, from the center of her being outward to her skin, into something like themselves, impenetrable and unknowable? Would she even know she had changed?

  After what seemed like eons, the conductor finally came through the car, calling, “Kalispell, folks!”

  Lucy struggled to drag herself out of her trance. Was this it? Was she really getting out of this train car? Wasn’t she going to stay in it for the rest of her life, traveling endlessly through a landscape of mirage?

  Somehow, she got out of her seat and gathered her things together. She straightened her hat as best she could without a looking glass and smoothed the creases out of her dress. She made her way to the door and waited for the train to enter the town. She would have to use her legs for the first time in a long time to get out onto the platform.

  She watched the town rise up outside the car windows. It looked exactly the same as Billings and Great Falls. The mud-brown timbers of the buildings, the brown of the horses and the brown of their saddles, and the brown leather of the cowboys’ chaps—it would have sickened Lucy if she could have reacted to it at all.

  But she didn’t. Maybe it was the air working its infection on her. She took the flat brown palette of the town as a matter of course. Maybe she’d seen too much of Frontier Montana already to be surprised by this. And she mustn’t forget that she wasn’t going to be living in Kalispell. She would live somewhere…out there, in those mountains. Maybe it would be different out there. Maybe hidden in the back reaches of the mountains, something existed in color.

  Chapter 8

  She got off the train onto a mud-brown platform surrounded by people in mud-brown clothing. None of them took the slightest notice of her or her dress. They probably thought her foolish for wearing it. They didn’t see her as an example of refinement or a graceful artifact of the culture of the East.

  She should have made her way to the baggage car with the rest of the disembarking passengers to get her luggage seen to. She should have found the stationmaster or someone else to ask if Joel Bloom happened to be in the area. She should have made some move to take care of herself.

  She was just chiding herself on her foolishness when a voice addressed her from the surge of bodies swirling around her. “Lucy Palmer?”

  She dragged her eyes into focus and found herself facing a clean-cut man in a clean white shirt and canvas pants. His brown eyes matched his brown hair. He didn’t look old and he didn’t look young. He looked middle. That was the only word she could come up with to describe him. Middle. There was nothing striking about him at all. “Yes?”

  “I’m Joel Bloom,” he told her. “I’m here to pick you up.”

  The name shattered her last illusions of holding herself apart. She would become a part of this nondescript scenery. Soon, no one would know she was any different from these people. No one would know she was a lady from Muncie, Indiana, with a progressive education and a sizeable trust. She would look and act and think like the rest of these Frontier people. The mountains of Montana would own her, body and soul, and she would belong here.

  Lucy sighed. “Very nice to meet you at last, Mr. Bloom.” She shook hands with him. Nothing stirred in her. Was it only the knowledge that Adam Foley had been to Europe and back on his own fortune that made him so fascinating to her? Why couldn’t she feel the same stirring of admiration for the man she was about to marry?

  “If you don’t mind,” he replied. “I’ll take you to the hotel. I’m staying there myself. You can rest yourself until tomorrow. Then we’ll go to the church and get married, and then day after tomorrow, I’ll take you home. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds fine. Thank you, Mr. Bloom.” Lucy adjusted her hand bag on her arm.

  “Call me Joel,” he told her. “We might as well be on a first-name basis from the beginning. I don’t want you calling me Mr. Bloom for the rest of our lives.”

  “Of course not…., Joel,” she stammered. “How very sensible of you.”

  “Come on this way.” He waved to the other end of the platform. “The hotel’s just over here. I’ll tell ‘em to bring your luggage over.”

  “Thank you.” She followed him to the end of the platform.

  The sun-bleached boards of the platform ended some distance from the ground. Joel jumped down, the heels of his boots sending up little plumes of dust. Lucy stopped and looked down.

  “Oh, sorry about that,” he exclaimed. “I wasn’t thinkin’. Here.” He held up his hands to her.

  Lucy foundered in confusion, unsure what he intended to do. He saw her hesitate, and without waiting for permission, he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her down to the ground. The hem of her dress swept through the dust, and she felt her shoes wading through it underfoot.

  She would have sighed again, but she was already too far gone. She couldn’t fight the inevitable anymore. This was her life. She might as well resign herself to it. She followed—who was he?—Joel—to the hotel. She didn’t even feel relief at stepping up out of the dust again onto the porch. She didn’t notice her own dusty footprints on the carpet in the entrance hall.

  Joel stood back and watched her check in. Just as the clerk led her toward the stairs to show her to her room, she turned to him. “Thank you for meeting me and bringing me here. I guess I’ll see you at the church.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Joel told her. “I was going to suggest we meet tomorrow. We’re staying at the same hotel. It will b
e easy, and it will give us a chance to spend some time together.”

  Lucy stopped and regarded him. “What would we do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “We could just walk around town.”

  “Walk around?” she repeated. “Walk around…Kalispell?”

  “We could do some shopping,” he suggested. “There might be something you want out at the homestead. I don’t know.”

  “The homestead?” Lucy pricked up her ears and the befuddlement blew away from her mind. Is that where he was taking her? “I’m sorry, Mr. Bloom—I’m sorry, Joel. I’m afraid I don’t know very much about your circumstances.”

  Now he perked up his ears. “I only ever communicated with…I guess it was your grandfather. Didn’t he tell you I was homesteading?”

  Lucy flushed and stared at the floor. What an idiot she’d been not to find out where she was going and what kind of life she was marrying into before she left Muncie! “I’m sorry.” She just couldn’t bring herself to call him by his first name. “My grandfather didn’t tell me anything about you or your circumstances.”

  “What?” he bellowed.

  Lucy cringed in front of him. “It isn’t his fault. I didn’t want to know anything. I trusted him, and I put myself entirely in his hands. He’s my guardian and the executor of my trust, you understand.” She stole a peek at his face and almost burst into tears. He glared at her with a look as black as thunder.

  “Your grandfather,” he growled. “This so-called guardian of yours, gave me to understand that you were ready, willing, and able to take on all the responsibilities of a homesteader’s wife. He made out that you knew all the details and were in full agreement. If that’s not the case, then maybe we shouldn’t go through with this.”

  “Oh, I’m fully ready to go through with it,” Lucy replied. “I’m willing to do whatever is required of me. I’ve traveled all this way to marry you, and I’m willing to adapt to whatever is required.”