Mail Order Bride: Westward Winds by - (book club books TXT) 📕

His laugh held no warmth. “So you didn’t even think it was worth your time to find out what lie they told to your blue blooded friends? You know, Tessa, your family has enough money and clout that if you wanted a divorce, you could get one and no one would know. Do you want a divorce?”

If Dean had stabbed her with a knife through the heart, it wouldn’t have been nearly as painful as his last remarks. She didn’t want to show any signs of weakness in front of him, so Tessa tossed her head and turned away from him so he couldn’t see the tears welling in her eyes.

She fought to make her voice strong as she said, “No, Dean, I do not want a divorce. I would never do that to the children.”

“But if it were just me?”

“I’m not going to deal with fiction—”

“That’s rich, coming from a writer,” Dean said. “I thought that’s what writers did? Make up stories? That’s it, isn’t it? You wanted something new to write about and having an adventure like this would definitely be something to write about,” Dean said.

Tessa turned back to him as fury built inside. “Yes! At first!” she cried. “You don’t know what it’s like to be trapped in a life you deplore, Dean. You have no idea how miserable I was!”

Dean didn’t smile as he said, “I think I know something about misery, Tessa.”

Tessa had to concede that point. “Yes. You do. I know that my misery was greatly different than yours, but it was misery just the same. You don’t understand what it’s like for women, at least in the East. In many ways, women are considered property and although my parents are wonderful, they saw it as my duty to do what was expected of me for someone of my station, as you put it.”

“Explain it to me more, Tessa,” Dean said.

“Every day, I was told how to feel, what to think, how to dress, where I could and could not go. What to eat, how much to eat, who my friends should or shouldn’t be. Can you imagine such a life? And the damn parties! Endless parades of men who had no substance, who were out for a dalliance, or to marry someone with whom to breed just to create an heir. No one wanted me for me, Dean. No one even knew the real me.”

Dean replied, “Why didn’t you just tell them you didn’t want to do that anymore?”

“You’re not listening again and neither did they! They didn’t listen when I did tell them over and over. They believed I was just being silly and thought I would see the error of my ways at some point. Just like you have believed about me of late. My feelings don’t seem to matter to people.

“I love my family very, very much, but I know they were hoping that I would suddenly become the dutiful daughter and be what society said I should be,” she said. “I had to get out of there or go mad, Dean. I was in danger of suffocating and dying inside.”

“So you thought up this crazy plan when you saw an ad in the paper for mail-order brides? So, I was just a way of escape?” Dean couldn’t believe how much that stung. “Me and my family were a means to an end?”

Tessa saw her own fury matched as Dean’s protective nature regarding their children came to the fore. His eyes took on a fierce light. Tessa put a hand on his arm without thinking.

“No! I swear! All right, maybe it sort of started out that way, but once we began writing back and forth, getting to know each other, I began to care about you and I wanted to come meet you because I felt you were a wonderful man. Not as an escape. I still had to sneak away because they would have never let me come here to meet you. And after we met, I knew I’d made the right decision, or at least I thought I had.”

Dean sighed and closed his eyes for a moment as understanding dawned on him. “So that’s why you were so mad about the letters. I guess I didn’t look at it from your point of view, but I see it now. You left everything you knew behind; your family, friends, and your way of life because of our letters to each other. You felt safe enough to do that because of the things you thought that I had said to you. And finding out that Marcus wrote them instead of me scared you. Like the stuff in them wasn’t true and here you were married to some guy you didn’t really know.”

“Yes! Yes!” Tessa could have wept with joy. He was finally listening to her. “It was as if everything I had come to know about you was false. What would I find out about you that contradicted the things in those letters? Were they just said to lure me here to be domestic help or were you really looking for someone to love you? And were you looking for someone to love again? I knew no one here, Dean and yet I came because I felt that I’d come to know you. Those letters made me trust you and made me feel safe in coming here.”

Dean nodded. “I get it, Tessa, but why not write home about us? Was it because I’m not rich or come from some fancy bloodline?”

Tessa saw how vulnerable he felt and wanted to reassure him. “I don’t care from what class you come. I’ve never cared about class, Dean, and I never thought of you as being inferior in any way. I had planned to send a letter once we were married because then there would be nothing anyone could do to prevent it. Dean, I wanted very badly to marry you and I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me from becoming your wife.”

“That makes sense,” Dean said with a smile. “I’m glad in a way, for that reason, you didn’t send a letter beforehand, too. I wouldn’t have wanted anything to mess up us getting married. But you didn’t send a letter after we were married, either. That makes me feel like you were ashamed that you’d married someone like me. Someone who doesn’t have the kind of education you do or fancy clothes or knows which fork you’re supposed to use at an expensive restaurant.”

A smile curved her mouth over his “fork” remark. “Dean, I don’t care about any of those things. What I was looking for in a man, I found in you. Someone brave, honest, caring, and strong. A man who wouldn’t be afraid to make a commitment or honor that commitment.”

“Yeah? What else?” Dean said.

“A man who knew how to be loyal, who would be a wonderful father, and who found it important to take care of his family. Someone smart.”

Dean pursed his lips at that.

“Dean Samuels, do not do that! Do not think less of yourself because you didn’t have the opportunity to go to school or because you were too busy making a living for your family to have the proper time to study! There is certainly no shame in that and you are much more educated about what’s really important in life than a fraction of the people I used to associate with back in Pittsburgh,” Tessa said.

Dean was startled by her stern demeanor. It reminded him of the way she talked to Jack when he was misbehaving. “You really feel that way about me?”

“Yes, I do!”

Dean grinned. “I still don’t know how smart I am when it comes to women. Not very, I don’t think. Tessa, I really didn’t think it was a big deal about the letters. I would never lure you here under…no, don’t tell me…false pretenses. I need to tell you something else about those letters. Please don’t get mad again. We’re makin’ progress here. Aren’t we?”

His unsure expression amused her but Tessa kept from smiling. “Yes, we are.”

“Good. You see, Marcus was the one who put that ad in the paper. He knew that I had a lot on my hands with the ranch and the kids and all and he kept teasing me that I should put an ad in the paper for a mail-order bride and finally, one day, I said go ahead. I was only joking, but he did it anyway, the jerk,” Dean told her.

Tessa laughed. After coming to know Marcus and his mischievous ways, she could well imagine him doing it.

“But, Tessa, once I read that letter, I wanted to know more about you. The main reason I asked Marcus to help me was because I was afraid if I sounded stupid, you’d stop writing and I wanted to keep hearing from you. I couldn’t admit it to anyone, including myself, at first.

“You’ve never lost a spouse, Tessa. You’ve never lost the person you thought you were going to grow old with and raise a family with. After Sarah died, I was scared to death to love anyone again. I was afraid of losing someone again. I also somehow felt that if I did get married again, I’d be cheating on Sarah. Can you understand that, Tessa?”

“Yes,” she said and hated herself for the first prick of jealousy she’d felt toward Sarah.

“So I locked up all those kinds of feelings and I never intended on letting them out again. But every time I got a letter from you, a little bit of my grief went away. And then you said you wanted to come here and that really made me panic because it was becoming real. But something made me have Marcus send that last letter to you, the one tellin’ you to come out here.