The Reluctant Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

extravagant weddings.
    “Don’t you have any family you can leave it to?” Tanzy asked.
    “No. My mother lost touch with her family after she and her first husband came West. When he was killed in a freighting accident, she needed someone to support her, her young daughter, and the baby she was carrying. Her second husband didn’t like me. He resented that I ate so much food, was so big, so restless, and was always getting into trouble.”
    He hadn’t meant to tell Tanzy so much about himself, hadn’t even realized how much he still resented the way his mother sided with any man against him. Russ had always felt alone even when he hadn’t done anything wrong.
    “Why are you so set against children?” Russ asked.
    “I’m not set against children, just what they can do to a woman. Children may be important to men, but they’re an integral part of a woman’s life. We carry them, nurse them, take care of their hurts of body and soul. My mother had four sons and one daughter, and she loved us as much as any woman could. Yet she had to watch those four sons die because of a stupid feud that has been going on for more than a generation. I watched her die a little bit every time, until finally she just didn’t want to live anymore.”
    “So you aren’t the one who felt the loss.”
    She reacted almost as if he’d slapped her. They were my brothers. Of course I felt the loss. No families are closer than mountain families, and no women work harder to take care of their men than mountain women. Seeing my brothers die was practically like losing my own children. I couldn’t feel the loss as much as my mother, but I felt it. I feel it now.”
    When she paused he thought she might be about to cry. But though she seemed emotional, she remained dry-eyed.
    “I won’t bring children into the middle of a feud where I’ll have to watch them be killed or emotionally devastated. Understand that I do want a family, but I will agree to have one only when I’m convinced they can grow up in safety.”
    “Any woman who becomes a wife must expect to have children. It’s just the way things are.”
    “Not all women have children.”
    “Are you telling me that you don’t intend to have any physical relationship with your husband?”
    “I’d never do that.”
    “Then how do you expect to avoid having children?”
    “There are ways … there are times …” She flushed and looked uncomfortable. “I can’t explain it here. I feel like everybody’s listening.”
    Russ was sure people were straining to pick up any fragment of their conversation, but this was too important to put off. “Let’s say we try these ways, observe these times, and you still end up having children. What would you do?” He didn’t know anything about the ways and times she talked about. No woman had ever explained it to him. He just assumed that every woman who slept with a man would have babies. “Would you hate the baby, turn your back on it, or give it away?”
    “What kind of person do you think I am? No decent woman could hate her own child.”
    “I don’t yet know what kind of woman you are,” Russ said, “but I believe you’re honest and willing to keep your promises. But any woman who fulfills her wifely duties to her husband knows there’s the possibility of having children, no matter how careful they might be. Life never goes exactly as we plan. I wanted to know what you’d do if your plans got all messed up.”
    “The best I could,” Tanzy said. “That’s all I can promise.”
    That’s all anyone can expect.” Russ looked around, realized the staff was waiting to close up the restaurant. “Wed better go.”
    “Where are you staying?”
    “At the boardinghouse.”
    “Has Stocker forced the folks there to hate you, too?”
    “They don’t care who sleeps in their beds as long as they get paid ahead of time.” They had reached the lobby. “I have to go back to the ranch tomorrow, but I’ll be back. If something should