Mandy walked as sedately as she could to her room and shut the door behind her with a decided click. She resisted the urge to lock it just in case Mama had stepped back into the hall. She paused as long as she could bear, listening. There was no sound outside her room, no hushed breathing of someone who’d stopped and had their ear pressed to her door.
When she couldn’t wait any longer, she padded over her thick Oriental rug to her bed, listened once more, her heart pounding, then dumped her precious letters over her quilt. She spread them out into one layer, hunting for a distinctive shade of cream paper and equally distinctive handwriting.
There it was!
She snatched it up.
Banks had a tightly cramped but legible scrawl. His was the handwriting of someone who rushed to get his thoughts down before he forgot them. At least that’s how it seemed to Mandy. She always pictured him bent over a big walnut desk in a man’s study, the type of room with dark paneled walls, heavy manly furniture, and a neat work surface, with ledgers stacked beside him, awaiting his attention.
She pictured his longish dark hair falling forward over his creased brow.
Today’s letter seemed rather worn—crumpled and with the ink smudged and generally not as tidy as usual, as if he were particularly bothered. But nothing in the contents of his short letter revealed any unusual distress. It was simply a rather mundane question about ranch management—in particular a question asking if Mack had ever had trouble managing his own ranch hands. He seemed in need of a personal anecdote, a friendly sort of reply intended to keep him company.
Mandy pursed her lips. How to share something personal but not too revealing... That could be tricky.
Though not more troublesome than any of her replies.
More troublesome was the smudgy ink of Adam’s letter.
It wasn’t unusual for him to press his pen nib firmly into the surface of the paper, making lines on the other side. The impressions gave the paper a rich texture, and she often stroked her fingertips over those embossed lines, imagining him holding that same paper, perhaps blowing lightly over the surface to dry the ink before he folded it.
It was somehow an intimate, very personal act—a communion between them—this passing of letters. Of course, he had no idea who she was. He never held her letters and imagined her perched on a chair over her smaller, more feminine writing desk. He never imagined her skirts falling to either side, or her feet perched on a pillow.
Not that Mandy needed a pillow with her long legs, not like her more petite sisters and her mama.
In fact, she often wrote in bed in her nightgown, with several pillows stacked behind her back and a portable writing desk made of cherry wood and slate resting on her knees. How many times had she dripped ink on her sheets? She’d lost count.
Adam certainly didn’t know that. He couldn’t even begin to imagine who Mack truly was.
Mandy sighed and flipped his letter over. She blinked, startled to find there wasn’t just his letter to Ask Mack, but on the other side, more bold streaks of indigo ink. Was that writing underneath? She moved over to her desk and smoothed the paper out under her lamp.
There was indeed writing on the back. It was written in the same cramped script as his letters, but this writing was crossed out so many times she had to squint to read it. And when she finally made out what he’d written, she simply couldn’t breathe.
Adam—her Adam, her Banks—had drafted an ad for a mail-order bride.
He wanted to marry.
He wanted to marry a stranger. Evidently anyone.
Just not her.
What else could it mean?
She’d long known Adam was Banks, nearly from the first. But now she knew more than she was supposed to know. He was advertising for a mail-order bride. Or thinking about it at least, for his ad had been struck out several times. So this page in her hands was either an early draft, and the final version had gone to Gus for The Marriage Papers. Or Adam had simply drafted it and then changed his mind.
Had he sent an ad to Gus?
Was it only a matter of time before some East Coast beauty arrived on the train to become his bride? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Why hadn’t Adam tried to court one of the women in Cross Creek? Like her. Surely he knew by now that she watched him every Sunday. She often had to fix her gaze on the stained glass windows behind him when he caught her looking. Or he could have courted one of her younger sisters. Although it would have killed her to have Emma or Juliana married to the man she secretly thought was the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on.
Why wouldn’t he have thought to court her? They’d danced several dances together at the last church social alone: the Reel, for one, and three square dances. That made four altogether. She’d practically held her breath for the duration of each one. Four dances. It was more than she’d ever danced with any other man in town.
They’d won the three-legged race together. Didn’t that count for something? Maybe it didn’t. Especially not after the Blind Man’s Bluff, when she’d roped him. She couldn’t blame him for being put off by that.
But there were still a few eligible young women in Cross Creek... Miss Judith, for one, although it appeared she had her eye on Russell Girard, of all people. And Lacy Holland, though admittedly she was still a bit too young. For a spell of about three years, a slew of the local men—mostly men who’d gotten desperate—had sent off for brides. It made Mandy wonder if there was something wrong with her and the others that they all weren’t married up by the age of eighteen. Had they offended in some way? Were they too high-minded or...or something?
She didn’t like to think she impressed them as being “too good” for the likes of Cross Creek, but her father and mother had come from money back east...
Besides her great height, was there something else?
Was it—as Mama had said—that she’d shamed the men when she was young?
Had she shamed Adam in some way?
Prayerfully not.
Why then hadn’t he sought out Emma or Juliana?
Why then had he danced four dances with her, Mandy?
Not once had he invited her to ride in that fancy black-and-gold buggy he’d brought here from Denver. From the first, it had been obvious that he’d grown up in the city before he moved to Cross Creek. That’s what had tipped her off as to his identity early on when she first started getting his letters for Ask Mack.
Mandy heard a tap on her door and froze, Adam’s ad clutched in her hand.
“Mandy?” It was Mama.