Mock Wedding (Grass Valley Mail Order Brides Book 1) Read online

  At last she saw him, and dashed across the road, not caring whether the other carts knocked her down. She shouted his name once, and saw him turn slightly towards her, and then sharply move away from her. He didn’t look up again to see if she was following, he was simply walking towards the post office as though no woman were running after him, becoming increasingly breathless. She managed to catch up with him, coming to a knee-aching halt before standing by his side in the line.

  “Silas,” she said, gasping his name as she gathered her breath.

  “Mary.” He said nothing else, and stared straight out in front of him, as though the post office store had suddenly become incredibly fascinating.

  “Silas, please let me explain.” She was trying to will him to look at her, and eventually she touched his arm with her fingertips, feeling the warm skin through his shirt.

  He turned to her then, looking at her through hard eyes. “You don’t need to offer me any explanation, Mary. I am not one of your men, desperately seeking a woman. You needn’t look at me as though I’ve given you the mitten, either. I wanted you in my house, and now I don’t, that is all that interests me, and the rest of it is not my funeral. You can call yourself what you like,” he paused. “But not in my house, and not in my company.”

  “Silas.” She had repeated his name again, but couldn’t find the words to offer an excuse.

  “You see you have nothing to say to me, you can’t even acknowledge the corn and admit you aren’t what you claimed.” He put his hand upon the store’s door. “So I have less to say to you. Goodbye.”

  He stepped inside the post office, and was gone.

  Mary waited outside for a little while, and then walked slowly down the street. She counted the money in her pocket, running each coin over in her hands until she knew each penny. It would not be enough to keep her for long, if she couldn’t find work here. She should have tried to get reasonable, town-based work when she arrived. Now everyone knew that she had been employed by Silas, and soon all creation would know that she was suddenly out of her place. That wouldn’t encourage anyone to give her work. As she pushed the money around in her coat pocket, her ring worked itself loose from her wedding finger. She took it off completely, dropping it down into the deep pocket of the coat.

  As afternoon arrived, she went back to the post office and drew the money that Silas had left for her. Mrs. Scott was there, apparently choosing different tins, but really watching her through the shelves. Mary turned round often to stare at her, offering a challenge, but the woman would drop her eyes, and then return to watching her as soon as Mary looked away.

  Finally, she approached Mary, going arm in arm with her and walking her out of the shop with no purchases, but with the money Silas had promised.

  “The whole town says that Silas has given you the sack,” Mrs. Scott said, coming straight to the point.

  “The whole town is correct,” Mary said, adding nothing.

  “My girl, you can’t leave it at that. Silas is well-known here, and liked in the town if not at the mine. You have to explain yourself.”

  “Explain myself?” Mary echoed. “What’s to say? Silas doesn’t want me to work for him anymore, and he won’t even speak to me in the street.”

  “Well, if that is the whole of it, you might find it uncomfortable to live here. Can’t you patch it up with him? He’s always been as gentle as a kitten to the women.”

  Mary didn’t say anything for a moment, and then sighed. “He’s always been gentle to me, too. But something’s come between us. Don’t ask me what it was,” she said as Mrs. Scott started to speak. “I can’t tell you. But I can say that it’s serious and permanent.”

  The older lady gave her a long, hard look, and then unhooked her arm from Mary. “If that is the truth, then I’m sorry for it. Silas is a good man, but needed a good woman to iron his creases. I’d hoped that you would be the right gal for him.” She paused. “You seemed like a good girl when I first spoke to you, and I’ve recommended your fashion advice to all the women around here. I was hoping that you would stay in Grass Valley and become one of my little talking-bee friends.”

  “I can’t possibly live here by myself,” Mary said, “Although I love the town and I would have settled here happily if…” She let the sentence trail away. Mrs. Scott gave her a formal farewell, but remained standing where she was.

  Mary walked slowly away from Mrs. Scott, shaking her head. The Main Street seemed longer than ever, and it took her a long time to get back to where she was now living.

  She went back to her rooms with the money from Silas, paying the lodging-house woman, and asking if there was any work nearby. The woman shrugged, saying that she worked here, and didn’t need any other income.

  The lodging house was dark and poorly aired, at least when compared to Silas’s house after it had been cleaned. Mary climbed the stairs, thinking about offering to clean the house, then dismissing the idea. She doubted that the lodging-house woman would accept.

  The fire had hardly been burning long enough to keep the room warm; the lady must have lit it only a short time before Mary returned. There wasn’t enough wood to keep it burning, either, she noted. As soon as the night fell, it would be dark and cold in here, and there would be little that she could do about it.

  While there was light, she might as well look at the letters sent by her suitors. There had been another batch yesterday, old ones from suitors with her new location, new ones sent from New York by her friends. She read through each one carefully. This man was old, perhaps sixty, this one seemed too young to be able to marry anyone.

  She put them aside, laying back on the bed. She had come here with the intention of selecting a husband from her correspondents, and yet they had all been failures. What did she want in a husband, exactly, that she had not found in any of the men who had written to her?

  She read through the letters again, looking for some spark that would give her inspiration and hope. When she was sitting in New York, hopefully reading the messages from the West, she had not been so selective. That had been part of the problem: she had trusted too much in the men who wrote to her, just as she had trusted William.

  She wanted an honest man, at least. The letters written from here had not been honest, that was clear. But she wanted someone to hold her to a high standard, so that she could work harder and feel content at the end of the day.

  Chapter 9

  The moon had come through its phases without any change in Grass Valley. Silas was still keeping away from her, in fact they had hardly met at all since she had confronted him at the post office. Mary did not know what her feelings were. Every time she saw Silas, she felt a moment of happiness, of wanting to rush forward and tell him everything that had happened during the day, but almost at the same second, she felt crushed, as though the earth was spinning away from her. She stood too long while watching him, and found him staring at her, or turning away as though he had seen her looking. This made every meeting more awkward, and eventually she tried to flee every time she saw him coming close.

  The townspeople kept pressing her to talk to him again, to the point where some of the men would stop him in the street, while their wives would take her along the same part of the road. It might have seemed like a good idea, but as soon as he saw her, Silas would turn around and walk away, even in the middle of conversation. She expected that the men would tire of this game soon, and then she would not come across Silas except by accident.

  She sat at the end of the bed, trying to put the right words together to ensure that she had the right amount of emotion and practical sense. In the past, she thought, she had offered up a lot more emotion, given herself freely to everyone. That had not been the sensible option. It was as if not being honest about her name was preventing her from being her real, true self. She didn’t know how to rebuild herself so that she could write the words necessary.

  This quarrel with Silas had taken something out of her, she thought. He has robbed
me of my joy in life, sucked it out of me with his righteous self. He can’t be as honest and Christian if he believes, if he could throw me out onto the street with hardly any money, after taking me in. She felt the same pang in her heart that she had been feeling for the last fortnight, since Silas had left her to fend for herself. Silas really was not the man for her, despite the helpfulness of the townspeople. If he did not care for her, then perhaps she should consider that he had never done so, and leave it at that. He clearly was not going to make any effort to see her of his own will, and in fact was quite happy to ignore her even if others made the effort on her behalf.

  She sat down on the bed, and opened some of the matrimonial letters. There were one or two men that seemed promising, she thought, although her standards of promising were more compromised now by her desire to flee Grass Valley. She had invested in some paper and envelopes, although it had cut her finances right back. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, almost penniless, and not in any position to travel to anyone or even write to them. If she couldn’t find money from somewhere soon, she could even lose this shabby little hotel. She found herself thinking about the small hut at the back of Silas’s house, where she had had something like a home. She had not even lived there long, she thought, but the house, the hut and Silas had made her feel like she was welcome. Now Silas had turned away from her without even giving her a chance.

  Thinking about Silas was not helping to write this letter, she told herself. In fact, the more she thought about Silas, the less she wanted to put pen to paper for these silly men - and most of the letters were extremely foolish and commonplace - particularly so as it might encourage them to marry her. She didn’t want to marry a fool, either. An honest man and not a fool: it could have been Silas if had not been so hard on her. If he had just let her explain, then she could have made him see why she had done this. She threw her letter onto the dressing table by the door. She could not do anything, make any step or movement, without Silas coming to her memory and disturbing her thoughts. She thought that, perhaps, she could have loved him as a wife, but he had clearly had no intentions of asking that question. To him, she had been a housekeeper and nothing more.

  She threw down the pen, and sat at the end of the bed, her head in her hands. It had all gone wrong, again, and William had been the cause of her pain again. Since she had come to Grass Valley, she had hardly thought about him, but now he flooded back into her mind. Tears were falling freely down her face, and it seemed like her sobs were echoing around the room. Loud, racking sobs coupled by sniffles that sounded like hushed voices.

  She drew a breath, but some of the noises continued, and were clearly outside the room. As she listened carefully, she could hear the sounds of a fight, and then Silas’s voice rang out, telling the men to stand back.

  “We’ve had enough of your orders, Silas,” a voice said.

  “You’re either with us, or you’re with the bosses. There won’t be any middle-way here.”

  “I’m doing the job I’m paid to do. If you did the same you wouldn’t be struggling.” Silas’s voice was quiet, but the men began to talk over him, shouting at once so that Mary could hardly hear what they were saying.

  “You cur, you’ve kept us out of the mine for weeks, do you think our wives and kids can live on air? We’ll fix your flint alright.”

  “The bosses have brought in unskilled men, they could blow up the mine and ruin all of us, did you think about that?”

  “You’d put us out on the street and let the whole town die to keep in with bosses that don’t even live here.”

  “We won’t put up with your backing and filling any more, and we’re set for a frolic with you tonight, if nothing else.”

  “Just go back to bed, lads. Your wives won’t thank you for going to fit me.”

  There were more shouts and arguments, and then the sound of the first punch.

  Mary rushed to the window, seeing Silas surrounded by the strikers from the mine. Their fists were clenched, and one or two of them had sticks or clubs. She cried out, and then ran down the stairs, two or three at a time. As she passed down the hall, she heard a footstep on the floor above, and looked up, but there were only shadows there, and she flung open the front door. She paused at the door, heart beating heavily in her chest, and then dived forwards. She dashed down the street, heading for the sounds of fighting, until she stood below her own window.

  Silas had been hit now, and there was the regular fall of raised fists, and the throwing of feet, along with shouts and cries. There were two or three men stood around, but others were actually fighting him, holding him down on the floor while others kicked and hit him as best they could, sometimes hitting their own fellows as they rained blows down on Silas. She threw herself into the action with a cry.

  The first man she tried to stop grabbed her arm, and flung her from him, tipping her onto the wooden boards of the road and making dust fly up around her. She got up immediately, but now there was a circle of men from the saloon surrounding the fighters. She could see Jack Bice there, his face red with drink. While he stood at the side, one hand on a wall, other men went right to the middle of the circle, and threw the men back as she had been discarded, and soon there were punches being thrown up and down the street.

  She was watching the middle of the circle intently, and she saw Silas laying alone, one arm thrown over his face, the other wrapped around his stomach. She plunged through the middle of the fight, her speed keeping her mostly safe from thrown punches and attempts to stop her. She ran to Silas’s side, and pulled him into a sitting position.

  He cried out in pain, but she held him tightly.

  “Can you stand?” she said, and he nodded.

  “I think so.” He struggled to put his weight onto his feet, twisting and turning to get up with the least pain.

  “I’ve got you.” She gripped him tightly, and then managed to get him to his feet. Some of the miners saw him stand, and turned back towards him.

  Chapter 10

  The miners were coming towards them both, and Mary braced herself, throwing herself around Silas to protect him as much as possible. She gripped him tightly, but he was struggling to get away, and to face his enemies. He took her arms and held her back, staring proudly at the men who had been beating him.

  “Go on, then lads, one more strike for old time’s sake. I have your names.”

  One of the men came up, raising his stick in his hand as if to hit either of them. Some of the townsmen grabbed the miners, pulling them away from Mary and Silas, holding them back as she grabbed his waist and started to pull him towards her lodging house. He started by protesting, but his legs failed him. He stumbled and almost fell, and she had to support him to her street, his feet wobbling across the road. By the time they came to her boarding house, he was leaning heavily on her and his arm was gripping her shoulder like a drowning man.

  “You crazy woman,” he said, as they reached the front door. “You could have been hurt.”

  “You are hurt,” she said, crossly. “And would have been more hurt but for me and the men from the saloon. The miners did not know when to stop. They could have killed you.”

  “Nah,” he replied, and reached for the door frame to hold himself up. “They would have gone away when they got tired, like they always do.”

  “Like they always do!” She echoed. “Do they fight you regularly?”

  “They want to scare away anyone who might stop them from stealing gold out of the mine. Of course they’ve fought me before, all the time. Each time they get any money it is straight down the saloon, and then a fight to end the evening. But I wasn’t brought up in a bear pit be to scared of hens. They get tired, like I say. Then I get up and go home.”

  “And you say I’m crazy.” She flung open the door, letting it hit the side of the wall. There was an angry voice from inside, but then silence. She helped him over the doorstep and into the hall.

  She supported him up the steps towards her room,
letting him take most of his weight on the banisters, but still holding his waist to ensure that he didn’t fall backwards if his legs were to suddenly fail.

  “Do you think that I should let them steal then, although it is exactly what the bosses want stopped, and it’s something that I would stop, even if I wasn’t employed to do so?”

  “But they struggle to live on the wage.”

  He laughed. “Do they, blazes. No, the trouble with them is that they spend all their money in the grog shops, on a single spree, then come back to their wives with nothing but a few pence to feed and clothe the babies. I feel sorry for the women, but the men are to blame, and they try to hornswaggle the very mine that pays them.”

  “And is that the reason that they hate you so much?”

  “I told you, I’m working with devils.” He put his hand on her door, and it swung open. The room was in turmoil, as though a whirlwind had caught up everything in the place, and then thrown it down again, violently.

  She let go of him and rushed into the room, grabbing bits and pieces, realizing that a lot of her objects were gone. They had taken her quilted blanket, and her dark Sunday best dress. She remembered that step on the hall, and quickly sat down on the bed. They had heard her rush out to Silas’s aid, and had taken all her goods in that short time. Someone in this boarding house had robbed her. Suddenly, she thought of her wedding ring, left in the bottom of her overcoat pocket. She brushed against Silas as she passed, but did not even look at him as she scrambled to the coat. He was holding himself up by leaning against the frame of the door. He watched her closely as he ran around the room, but now seemed determined to avoid her glance. He said nothing as she caught the overcoat in her arms and pulled it towards her.