Trying not to tremble, but not succeeding, Carrie dabbed at the blood on Josh’s hand. “I…I don’t think the wound is too deep.”
Josh was looking at Carrie’s hair. “He doesn’t have enough teeth to go very deep.”
She looked up at him and smiled, and for a moment she was sure that he was going to kiss her. With every morsel of her being, she tried to send thoughts to him that would make him take her into his arms and kiss her until she couldn’t think any more.
Abruptly, Josh stepped away. “I have to go. I have to see what’s happened to my…to my…”
“Wife,” Carrie supplied.
He nodded in agreement, but he didn’t say the word. “I have to go.” At that he turned on his heel and started back toward the stage depot.
“I’m Carrie Montgomery,” she said.
Josh stopped in his tracks, his back to her.
“I’m Carrie Montgomery,” she repeated a bit louder.
When Josh started to turn, she smiled in anticipation of his happy surprise.
When he looked at her, his face was an unreadable mask. “What do you mean?” he asked softly.
“I am Carrie Montgomery. I am the woman you’re waiting for. I am—” Her voice and eyes lowered. “I am your wife,” she whispered. She felt rather than heard him take a few steps toward her, and when he was so close that she could almost feel his breath on her face, she looked up at him. He was not smiling. In fact, had he been one of her brothers, she would have thought that the expression he wore was rage.
“You’ve never pulled a plow in your life,” he said.
Carrie smiled at that. “True.”
With shaking hands, Josh pulled the letter from inside his coat. “She wrote to me about what she could do. She said that she’d run a farm since she was little more than a child.”
“Perhaps I embellished the truth a bit,” Carrie answered modestly.
Josh took a step closer to her. “You lied. You bloody well lied to me!”
“I think that’s a curse word. I’d rather you didn’t—”
He took another step toward her, but Carrie was already in that space so she had to back up. “I wrote that I wanted a woman who knew about farming, not some…some socialite carrying a long-haired rat she calls a dog.”
As though he heard himself mentioned, Choo-choo began to bark at Josh. “Now see here,” Carrie began.
But Josh didn’t allow her to speak. “Was this your idea of a joke?” Putting his hand to his forehead as though he were in great agony, Josh stepped away from her. “What in the world am I going to do now? I was suspicious when I received that proxy marriage paper, but I thought it was because the woman was mud-ugly. I was prepared for that.” Turning back to Carrie, he looked her up and down with great contempt. “But you! I wasn’t prepared for you.”
Shushing Choo-choo, Carrie looked down at herself, wondering if she’d suddenly turned into a frog, for she’d certainly never before had a complaint about how she looked. “What’s wrong with me?”
“What isn’t wrong with you?” he said. “Have you ever milked a cow? Do you know how to chop the head off a chicken and pluck it? Can you cook? Who made your dress? A French modiste?”
Carrie’s dressmaker at home was French, but that was of no consequence. “I can’t see that any of those things matter. If you’d just let me explain, I can clear up everything.”
At that Josh went to the tree, leaned back against it, and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m listening.”
After taking a deep, calming breath, she told her story. She started by telling him how she and her friends had organized the mail-order bride office, hoping that it would show him that she was good at a great many things. He didn’t speak, nor could she read his thoughts, but she continued by telling him how she had seen the photo he’d sent and known from the first moment that she loved him. “I felt that you and your children needed me. I could see it in your eyes.”
He didn’t so much as move a muscle.
She told him in great detail of her indecision, of how she had given the matter great consideration. (She didn’t want him thinking that she was a featherbrain who did things without thinking them through first.) Then she told about all the complicated arrangements she’d made in order to marry him, and when she told of leaving her family and friends and home to come to him, there were tears in her eyes.
“Is that all?” Josh asked, his jaw rigid.
“I guess so,” Carrie answered. “You can see that I didn’t do this to be mean. I felt that you needed me. I felt that—”