Free Runaway by Bobbi Smith Page B

stash of money. He didn’t know where the cash had come from, but he knew it would help him with what he had to do next. The folks on the Circle D were expecting their new owner to show up, so he was going to take Seth’s place and be ready and waiting for Cooper and his gang of killers when they rode in.
    As dawn brightened the eastern sky, Lane took off his Ranger badge and hid it safely in his saddlebags. He was thankful now that no one on the ranch had met Seth before, and he hoped he would be able to make this work.
    Lane put out the fire and then turned Seth’s horse loose. He mounted up and rode out, hoping to make it to the ranch some time late that afternoon.
    Lane’s mood was tense as he faced the challenge that awaited him. It wasn’t going to be easy, pretending to be the other man while he waited for the day when the rest of the gunmen showed up, but, then, there wasn’t much about being a Ranger that was easy.
    At that thought, Lane managed a half-smile.
    These next few weeks were going to be interesting.
    That was for sure.
    “Well, Rebecca, aren’t you excited that we’re finally on our way to Texas?” middle-aged spinster Gertrude McAllister asked Rebecca Lawrence, the young mailorder bride sitting beside her on the train during this first leg of their journey to Texas. She was Rebecca’s official chaperone and escort to the town of Bluff Springs, Texas, where Rebecca’s future husband, Seth Rawlins, was waiting.
    “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’m very excited.” Destiny smiled at the older woman.
    Destiny hoped she sounded convincing, for ‘excited’ was hardly the word she would have used to describe the truth of her emotions at that moment. Fear filled her, but she couldn’t let it show.
    No one could know that she wasn’t the mail-order bride Rebecca Lawrence.
    No one could know that she had taken the place of the real Rebecca, an acquaintance of Sylvia’s who had gotten cold feet the day before she was scheduled to travel to Texas to marry a complete stranger.
    No one could know that she was running away from the terror that her real life had become.
    So far, she’d managed to be convincing in her new role. She just hoped she could keep it up. She’d never thought of herself as an actress, but she knew her very survival depended upon it now.
    “I’m sure this future husband of yours, this—” Gertrude quickly pulled the paperwork out of her small traveling bag and checked the man’s name again. “This Seth Rawlins is going to be thrilled to see you. It’s just a shame that it’s going to take us so long to get to Bluff Springs. The next two weeks of travel are going to be hard, but I’m sure it will all be worth it once we get there. Why, you’re going to be a rancher’s wife when all is said and done.”
    “I know, and I’m going to have a lot to learn,” Destiny said.
    “You seem like a very smart young woman. You’ll do just fine.”
    “I hope so.”
    “If you’re brave enough to travel all this way to marry a man you’ve never met, I think learning how to live on a ranch will prove very simple for you.” Gertrude understood why so many young women were going West to find husbands these days. She’d heard not too long ago that the men outnumbered the women twelve to one in a lot of the towns. It was no wonder some of the men sent back East for wives. A number of companies matching prospective grooms with mail-order brides had sprung up. The one Gertrude worked for even provided chaperones for the women traveling west.
    “It will be different, that’s for sure.” Destiny looked out the window at the passing lush, green countryside and found herself wondering what the Texas landscape would look like.
    “You’ll be happy. Judging from the telegram your Seth sent, he seems like a hardworking man who’s looking forward to marrying you and settling down. You’ll have a good life together.”
    Destiny fell silent, wondering about her future. She had lost her mother