Mary Mcbride - Bandera's Bride

“They’re all pale and creamy and petal-soft. Dewy and cool to the touch. Only you can’t. Touch them, I mean. Southern ladies are just for the looking. Touch them, and they bruise. Just like a gardenia. You remember that, John, if you ever have the supreme misfortune to meet up with one of them.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” His chances of meeting up with a lady, Southern or otherwise, were slim, slimmer, and none, John thought. The notion that he’d ever have the opportunity to touch one struck him as ludicrous. He’d learned early and at the painful end of a switch not to want what he couldn’t have. Ladies were high on that particular list.

He made a last notation now on his own list, then parked the pencil stub behind his ear. “If you’re all done ranting, Price, maybe we could go over a few things.”

The Mississippian smiled sloppily as he lifted the folded letter, held it shoulder-high a second, then launched it across the room. The pale paper flew like a snub-nosed, stubby-winged owl before it plummeted to the floor beside John’s moccasined foot.

He ignored it a moment, then picked it up and smoothed it out across his knee, instantly intrigued by the daintiness of the penmanship, trying to imagine the pale, fine-boned fingers that had drafted each delicate word.

He read not the whole, but separate, beautifully crafted words and phrases here and there. How delighted we all were. Sympathetic to your dire circumstances as a prisoner of war. Russell County. Do remember. Forever your home.

His amber eyes flicked up to meet his partner’s. “You going back?”

Price chuckled softly as he filled his empty glass from the bottle near his elbow, then raised the glass in a wavering salute.

“Here’s to Russell County, Mississippi, where a Russell is always a Russell and everybody else is…everybody else.”

He downed half the whiskey, then continued. “And here’s to Miss Emily Russell. May she bloom and prosper in Russell County soil. Here’s to gardenias in all their pale and untouchable glory.”

Price drained his glass and thumped it down on the desktop. “Here’s to us, partner. And to the frigid day in hell that finds me back in Mississippi.”

“You’re staying.” It wasn’t a question so much as an acknowledgment. A disappointed one. John had hoped for a moment that Price would go home. It was where the man belonged, after all. So what if he had turned his back on the Confederacy in order to get out of a Yankee prison? He hadn’t been the only Rebel prisoner who’d put on a blue uniform and headed west as a Galvanized Yankee.

But he didn’t belong out West anymore. He belonged back home with well-bred gentlemen like himself and with ladies like gardenias. And he was damned lucky, in John’s estimation, to have a place where he belonged.

“I’m staying.” Price’s clenched fists banged hard on the desktop. “Russell County be damned, along with all the Russells in it.” He picked up the little carte de visite and, without even glancing at it, flicked it across the desk toward John. “Good riddance to them all.”

John’s dark hand shot out to catch the photograph before it fluttered to the floor. It felt warm in his palm, almost alive. He stared at its blank side a moment, as if hesitant to look at the face of the woman…no, the lady…whose delicate hand had composed the letter still lying on his leg. What face could be flawless enough? What pose perfect enough? What tilt of chin or hint of smile could be worthy of the lady in his head?

This one! His heart bunched up in his throat when he gazed at Emily Russell, and as his sun-bronzed thumb smoothed over the photograph, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see her lovely image begin to wither and fade. What was it Price had said? Touch them, and they bruise.

John had to clear his throat before he spoke, but there was still an unfamiliar, nearly ragged catch.

“She’s a lady, Price. You ought to write her back.”

“Like hell,” his partner snorted, replenishing his glass, sloshing whiskey over the rim. “Since when are you so concerned with proprieties?”

Since a minute ago, John wanted to say, but he merely shook his head and muttered, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Price rolled his eyes. “Well, you go on and write her, then, if you feel so strongly about it. Go on, John. Be my guest. Write the lady back.”

He did. Then, although he’d meant to leave when that first year was up, John Bandera hung around waiting for a reply.

When it came—addressed to Price—he wrote her back.

And waited again. And again.

Six years later, long after his drunken partner had pulled up stakes and disappeared, John Bandera was still there, still writing letters signed “Price,” still loving the lady so like a gardenia.

Mississippi, 1872

“Emily Russell, you are not leaving. I forbid it. Now, you put that suitcase down. Do you hear me? Put it down.”

“I do hear you, Dodie. You’re screeching like an owl, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if everybody in Russell County hears you.”

“You wouldn’t be doing this if your brother were here. After all Elliot’s done for you, too. How can you be such an ungrateful wretch?”

Emily shoved past her wailing sister-in-law, charged through the front door, and dropped her final piece of luggage on the verandah.

“There.” She shaded her eyes against the bright morning sun, searching past the long sweep of driveway toward the street beyond. “Now, where in blazes is Haley Gates? He promised me he’d be here by ten o’clock.”

“If I know Haley Gates,” Dodie muttered, “he’s probably facedown in the hay in somebody’s barn.” Then she reached for the leather handle of a carpetbag. “I’m taking this back inside.”

Emily jerked the bag away. “You’ll do no such thing. I’m going, Dodie. And that’s that.”

“To Texas!” The young woman threw up her hands. “Texas! Where you’ll be set upon by wild Indians. Maybe even scalped. Lord knows any savage would love to whack off those blond curls of yours.”

“I’ll be sure and keep my bonnet tied tight, then.” Emily peered down the street in the opposite direction. “I’ll scalp that Haley if he’s not here in two more minutes.”

Dodie sighed mightily, then sank into a high-backed wicker chair. “Elliot’s going to be beside himself when he gets back from New Orleans to find you’ve taken off like some thief in the night. You know that, don’t you? He’ll be furious. He feels so responsible for you.”

“It’s ten o’clock in the morning, Dodie, and I’m not a thief. I’m not a prisoner, either. At least not anymore.”

“A prisoner! What a spiteful thing to say, Emily, when all we’ve done is look out for your best interests since Mother and Father Russell passed away. Why, I’m sure those two must be fairly twirling in their graves right now, seeing what their foolish, dreamy daughter is up to.”

Emily almost laughed at that image of her prim and proper parents. But Dodie was probably right. If they knew what she was doing, her parents would most definitely spin in their shady little graves. As for being dreamy…Well, Dodie was probably right about that, too. But Emily wasn’t foolish. Not now, at least.

Dodie sighed again, louder and longer. “Oh, how I wish that nice Mr. Gibbons hadn’t gotten the croup and died. He was going to propose marriage, Emily. After all those years of being so shy and tongue-tied whenever he was around you, I simply know he’d worked up the courage to pop the question. I could see it in his eyes.”

“Perhaps,” Emily said. And she would have married Alvin Gibbons, too, she thought. She would have had to marry him, and then they would have lived unhappily ever after. Only now her longtime, flesh-and-blood suitor was dead and Emily was on her way to Texas to find a man she didn’t know in the flesh, but in letters. All those lovely letters.