Free Christmas Mail Order Bride - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides: Book 1) by Kate Whitsby Page B

own civilized refinement, horrified Penelope. If her own shoes crippled her for life, she would cling to them all the more desperately as a symbol of her lost civility. At such times, when the people treated her the most solicitously and tended her the most gently, Penelope remembered the West ranch with regret.
    Her reaction confused her, because she could remember nothing about the West family or its environment that inspired as much feeling of acceptance or freedom as this destitute Indian camp. The smoke-smudged faces, the dirt-blackened fingernails of the children when they handed her a bowl of food, and the chuckling laughter of the women as they pursued their daily work—every face bestowed on Penelope a kindness and recognition she never experienced anywhere in the white world before, especially not from any member of the West family. On consideration of this question, two exceptions contradicted her judgment, and the faces of Janet, the cook, and Caleb, the stable hand, floated before her mind’s eye. Why them? she wondered What set them apart? Somewhere in her subconscious, she associated these two people with one another, though she couldn’t figure out what connected them to each other. The faces of the West family drifted further back into the recesses of her awareness, almost as though they lacked enough reality to exist at all. Matilda’s resigned sadness and George’s aloof passivity rendered them as transparent as ghosts. Anders rumbled around the periphery of her awareness like a distant roll of thunder, far away and receding further all the time. The faces of Janet and Caleb remained prominent in her recollection of the ranch, especially Caleb. Penelope marveled over this, because he behaved so submissively when confronted by anyone, nodding his head and parroting his formula of “Yes, sir” to every communication. Only the brief interlude when she met him in the barn offered any deviation from this formula, but those fragile moments impressed still further on Penelope the truth of Anders’ claim that Caleb thought a lot more about everything around him than he ever expressed. Penelope lamented Anders’ intrusion into her conversation with Caleb. She wished she could engage in an uninhibited interaction with him, talking to him and getting to know him, until she understood enough about him to answer all her questions and satisfy her fascination for him.
    On the fifth day after her arrival in the Indian camp, her custodian brought Penelope out of the house after breakfast in the morning. She pointed to the horizon, speaking intently and gesticulating toward the east. She then waved the old boots at her several more times, insisting that Penelope take them. Penelope shook her head most emphatically. The woman pointed again, and this time, when Penelope followed the direction of her finger, she noticed a group of men assembling at the door of another building. Again, the custodian tried to convince Penelope to take the boots, and again, Penelope declined them. The woman scowled. Just at that moment, one of the men jogged over and exchanged words with the woman. The woman held up the boots and then pointed down at Penelope’s shoes. The man scowled in exactly the same way. Reluctantly, he took the boots himself. Through sign language and repeated pointings, the two people communicated to Penelope that she must go with these men wherever they intended to take her. Penelope walked away from her custodian and once she had joined the cluster of men, the group moved out of the encampment toward the east.
    Very shortly, Penelope understood the nature of her custodian’s communication about the boots because her feet tortured her terribly, and the group traveled on and on, into the day, over fields and heath, fording streams and traversing patches of dense forest. Although she noted that the man still dangled the boots in his hand and she longed to accept them in place of her own tormenting shoes, Penelope