Talia should swagger into the Batcave without warning and slam down a jar on the table in front of Tim. The jar, of course, contains his spleen. Tim is relieved to see Talia went on the mission he sent her on and thus was not blown to pieces. The spleen jar is both a sort of truce offering and a ‘you are a large threat and I want to stay in your good graces’ gift. Everyone else is confused but Tim refuses to elaborate or even tell them what’s in the jar.
Cowboy Gaz x mail order bride—only, not his. After exchanging letters for half a year with ranching man Hans König, you finally travel out west to marry him.
.
You stand alone on a train platform, whole life in your hands, ready to promise yourself to a man you’ve yet to meet.
.
ao3
You step off the train carrying every one of your earthly possessions clutched in both hands. In one a carpetbag, only half-full, and in the other, a stack of letters tied together with string. A paltry summary of a very small life, you thought months ago, but today you only see how much room is left over where happiness might take root.
It began with an ad in the paper—Widowed Ranch Owner Seeking Tender Companionship—and a mailing address to a livestock town out in the west. Hans König described himself as Austrian, unusually tall, and fair lonesome in a big ranch house with no woman to make it a home. He’d immigrated to the United States as a child, married very young, had no children, and was forced to watch his first wife perish to consumption.
After two years of mourning, he said in the paper, he finally accepted that she would not want him to live and die alone. And thus, if there were any kind-hearted lady willing to give an old widower a chance, he would promise to take very good care of her.
You’d replied as fast as you could get your hands on paper and pen. The fourth child and only daughter of a tobacco farmer, you hadn’t much else to occupy yourself with. And truly, you hadn’t expected anything to come of it. Proficient in the written word though you were, there was not much else to recommend you. You brought a tiny dowry, skill with a sewing needle, a general knowledge of plants, and mediocre cooking to the bargaining table; he was horse man tried and tested by the challenges of the frontier.
You were under no illusions that you were the most attractive candidate.
Still, you wrote your letter. Described yourself to him as honestly as you could—neither especially pretty nor particularly accomplished, but told by friends and family to be of gentle demeanor and useful intelligence. Forgave him preemptively if he never responded, and wished him the best of luck in his search for a wife.
You’d nearly fainted dead away when his response had arrived as immediately as the next mail wagon. Hans König had addressed you by name, as intimately as if he’d known you for years, and said,
I was very pleased to receive your letter, Miss, and am terribly excited to correspond with you in the future. Although you write that you cannot imagine yourself an appropriate wife for a man of my experience, I myself cannot imagine what more you must need to be such. While I will not do you the discourtesy of making any promises with only my first letter to you, I will tell you truly that I was glad of your introduction, and hope you will grant me the pleasure of knowing you further.
Your whole family had been so excited for his response that Pa had broken out his fiddle after dinner that night, rejoicing already that his little girl’s future was secure.
What followed was a whirlwind half year of romance over letters sent back and forth so fast that you kept running out of ink for your pen. When you’d related this problem to Hans, he’d sent not only an entire box of lampblack ink, but a new steel pen, blotter, and lap desk on which to write.
There is no greater misfortune I can imagine now than to lose the pleasure of your correspondence, he’d written.
Pa had cried that day. Your mother had drawn you close and kissed your hair, whispering a thankful prayer that her baby was going to be alright.
In every letter, Hans demonstrated himself to be a kind man, thoughtful and patient, and as the relationship between the two of you blossomed, you started to believe it yourself. You had long given up on the possibility of marriage, thinking yourself too old and plain by now to offer much to any man worth marrying.
Now you stand alone on a train platform, whole life in your hands, ready to promise yourself to a man you’ve yet to meet.
There are only a few people milling about the station for you to survey. The surest way to pick Hans out from a crowd, he’d written, was by height. He towered over most people, and expressed hope in an early letter that he would not dwarf you too much.
But as you look around, no one stands out above the rest. In fact, the people here aren’t much different than what you’re used to; their simple dress and slight grubbiness prove them to be working folk, the kind you’d expect in a town like this, stockyards visible from the station. Your kind of people—at least normally.
Anticipating this meeting, you’d put on the best dress you own, a light frock with little printed flowers all over it. Your hair is braided and pinned up as fashionably as you could manage early this morning, and you’d even dabbed a little rouge on your lips for the occasion. As far as you can tell you are the cleanest, best-dressed person in the vicinity, and you notice not a few people openly staring.
The thought would usually make you blanch, but right now you hope it will only help your would-be husband to catch sight of you. You still can’t find him—
“Mrs. König!”
You whip your head in the direction of the call. Relief trickles through you, soothing an anxiety you hadn’t wanted to acknowledge yet, and then you see that stepping onto the platform is the handsomest man you’ve ever laid eyes on.
Dark skin, warm as a summer’s day. Lips soft and full like a peach fresh-picked from the tree. A serious brow over serious eyes.
Strong and lean in build, with a loose, confident swagger in his step. He approaches, his large, long-fingered hands coming to rest on the buckle of his belt as comes to stand before you.
Tall, to be sure.
But not unusually tall.
This cowboy—profession evidenced by the worn state of his attire—is not your intended husband.
Something in you falls at that.
Swiftly you berate yourself for the betrayal. Your Hans is gentle, generous, kind. So what if this man before you is attractive? Marriages must be built on more, and Hans has already given you more. His looks shouldn’t—don’t—matter to you at all.
“Not as of yet,”you reply to the cowboy, “but soon. May I help you, sir?”
He fixes you with an intense gaze. Up close, you see thick, dark lashes framing even darker eyes—the color of which, you realize, is as black as fresh-turned soil.
The smell of humus fills your memory, powerfully earthy and fresh, such that you could be on your hands and knees with your face to the ground right now. You feel the phantom of it between your fingers; rich and cool, like at the start of the planting season before the rains. So dark and fine as to live between the grooves of your fingertips for days.
“I’m Kyle Garrick,” he says, pressing a hand to his chest. “I’m a wrangler for Hans König, miss. He sent me to meet you.”
You blink. The fantasy you’d dreamed up on the train ride—of seeing Hans across the platform, recognizing him instantly, and running into his arms—finally crumbles into dust.
“Oh,” you say.
Kyle Garrick frowns. “You’re disappointed.”
“No!” you exclaim immediately. “No, he must be such a busy man, I couldn’t expect him to drop everything for me.”
The cowboy sucks his lips between his teeth, studying you for a heartbeat, then—“He is busy. Mr. König is finishing preparations for your wedding this evening. That’s why he couldn’t come.”
What disappointment had begun to sprout in your stomach immediately strangles down to the root. Joy surges in your chest like birds taking flight.
“A wedding!”
You didn’t need a wedding, you’d written to him—you were so happy merely to marry him, you couldn’t possibly ask for more. All you needed, you told him, were his hands in yours, promising before God to be your husband for the rest of your lives. You’d meant it, too.
But an actual wedding!
“Biggest the town’s seen in years,” says Kyle Garrick. “Folks haven’t talked about anything else for weeks.”
“Oh!” Then suddenly you despair. “Oh, I’m not dressed at all for a wedding. If I’d known, I would’ve worked on this dress more, I would’ve put my hair up better!”
Kyle surprises you with sudden passion. “You look perfect. You’re the prettiest thing that’s ever come into this train station, miss. This town, even.”
“Oh,” you say again. You flush hot up into the roots of your hair. Embarrassed, you avert your gaze, looking down at his worn roper boots. “I’m not, really. But it’s kind of you to say.”
His hand touches yours, the one holding onto your carpetbag. When you look back up at him, his expression is gentler.
“Mr. König will agree with me,” he says, “I promise.” He eases the handle from your grasp. Up close, he has a comforting smell. Leather, and sweet hay, and campfire smoke.
“You think so?” you ask, tightening your grasp on the letters in your other hand.
He nods. “I do. Now come on—I brought a cart. Let me take you home.”
I just wanted to give my readers a bit of a heads up as I near the end of the book.
The next chapter is finished; I am giving it a proofread, and then I'll post. It was originally way too long (have I mentioned I tend to overwrite?), so I chopped it in two, and now chapter 37 and 38 are basically done. I'll be releasing both within about a week of each other.
Then I'll draft the epilogue, which I expect to be fairly short. No really.
Then, as has been my habit, I shall write an appendix, and The Fallen trilogy will at last be complete.
