Mail Order Prairie Bride: (A Western Historical Romance) (Dodge City Brides Book 1)
Read Mail Order Prairie Bride: (A Western Historical Romance) (Dodge City Brides Book 1) Online
Authors: Julianne MacLean
Mail Order Prairie Bride
Dodge City Brides Series
by
Julianne MacLean
Mail Order Prairie Bride
Copyright © 2016 by Julianne MacLean
Digital Edition ISBN: 978-1-927675-40-3
Originally published by Harlequin as
Prairie Bride
Copyright © 2000 by Julianne MacLean
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or a portion thereof, in any form. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Other Books in the Dodge City Brides Series
Excerpt from TEMPTING THE MARSHAL
Other Books by Julianne MacLean
Chapter One
Kansas, 1875
Exhausted, knowing she would not sleep for many hours, Sarah MacFarland leaned forward to peer from the train window. The shrill steam whistle blew. Heavy iron wheels chugged and squealed beneath the soles of her feet, faster and faster, mimicking the rhythm of her heart.
Tonight she would lose her virginity. For the second time.
Sarah sank back in her seat and massaged her pounding temples. She prayed silently that it would all go well, that she had done the right thing, coming out west. Searching for reassurance, she pulled open her draw string purse and withdrew the newspaper advertisement.
Farmer, Arthur Brigman, seeks gentle and peaceful wife for simple life on Kansas prairie. Must agree to daily toil and plain home.
Marriage and a simple life was what she’d always wanted, she reminded herself, as she watched two children chase each other up the aisle, screeching with laughter. A troublesome guilt slithered up Sarah’s spine. Never in all her dreams, had she believed she would reach her goal of marriage through deceit. But she had no choice, really.
She folded the wrinkled piece of paper and slid her fingers along the crease. If only she knew what to expect from her future husband. If only she knew what he looked like.
Stuffing the ad back into her purse, accidentally elbowing the sleeping woman beside her, Sarah decided with conviction that a man’s looks were of little importance to her now. She had learned her lesson in Boston. This time she would act with common sense. She gazed out the window at the ocean of golden prairie grass. The rippling land seemed to stretch on and on forever, colliding violently with the cloudless sky.
A person could easily disappear in it.
She tilted her head back, closed her weary eyes, and imagined her new husband. Perhaps Arthur would be waiting for her with a black buggy and a handsome black horse. He would touch the brim of his hat when their eyes first met. Surely he would know her the moment he saw her. She envisioned him wearing a new wedding suit—a gray one with a matching fedora—something similar to the one her father used to wear to church on Sundays. She wondered if Arthur was clean shaven. Papa had always worn a wide, bristly mustache with the ends waxed into a curl. And gold spectacles. She smiled as she remembered how he used to smoke a pipe on Saturdays after supper. Perhaps Arthur would do the same.
All of a sudden, that tenacious guilt returned and stabbed at her dreamy thoughts. She had not been completely honest with her future husband. She had kept many things from him. Sarah had come here in search of more than a simple home. She had come in search of safety. Sanctuary.
A baby at the back of the train began to cry. Sarah opened her eyes. She hoped Arthur would never know how far she had plunged from her father’s virtuous pedestal. And she hoped her husband would forgive her for deceiving him on their wedding day.
* * *
“I still think you’re making a big mistake,” George Brigman said, his eyes perusing the dark, damp interior of the sod house.
Arthur “Briggs” Brigman glared with irritation at his brother, who brushed at the top of a wooden box before sitting down. Heaven forbid he should soil his new suit while he handed out his opinions.
Trying to ignore George’s advice, Briggs looked around his one room dwelling. Rain from the day before had soaked through the walls to the inside. Mud dripped from the ceiling with a tedious
tat-tat-tat
. The smell of wet earth yawned from every crevice after the rainstorm the night before, the dampness seeping under his clothing.
What a fine mess for his new wife to come home to.
George stomped his foot on a grasshopper, kneading it into the dirt floor. “You’re not over Isabelle yet.”
Shrugging into his fringed buckskin coat, Briggs winced at the sound of Isabelle’s name. He hoped after today, he wouldn’t hear it again.
His gaze searched the dugout for his worn leather gloves. Taking three easy strides, he swept them up from the nail keg by the door and tapped them against his thigh. He wondered if he should have shaved. Too late now, he decided. He’d been working since dawn in the corn field and hadn’t realized the time.
“You’re not listening to me,” George went on. “It’s only been three months, and you’re hardly set up for marriage.”
“I’m set up fine. I have land and I have a house.” He spread his arms wide so the fringe on his sleeves dangled. “What more could I need?”
“You call this a house?” George walked to the sod wall and plucked out a long blade of limp, brown grass. “You advertise in a city paper for a wife, and you expect her to live here?”
Briggs clamped his jaw at the insult. He was proud of what he’d accomplished over the past year. He owned this land and all the corn and wheat planted on it. As soon as the harvest machine came, he’d make a handsome profit off his wheat and rye.
“I said I was looking for someone who could handle the prairie. That someone answered, so there’s nothing else to talk about. I need help around here. I need a wife. And I’m done sitting alone on my land like the hermit everyone thinks I am, pining away over….” Still uncomfortable speaking her name, he reached up to rub the back of his neck, warm under the blanket of his thick, unruly hair.
“You were never one to care what other people thought,” George pointed out, a little too perceptively for Briggs’s present mood.
He took a deep breath, searching for patience. He succeeded only in reminding himself of the ever-present smell of dirt and grass. Everything was so darn wet.
“I am over Isabelle,” he said. “I was over her the moment she took me for a fool and broke our engagement.” He turned his back on his brother. He didn’t need this. Not today. They had a long drive ahead of them and he had vows to think about.
“Look at you,” George snorted. “You’re covered with dust. You look like you just walked off the field. Why don’t you at least borrow one of my suits.”
Briggs looked down at his faded denims and shabby leather boots. “I
did
just walk off the field. This is the way I dress, and your suits would never fit me. You know that.”
“We could stop off at the clothier—”
Briggs raised an eyebrow, wishing George would stop making suggestions about his wedding attire. Briggs had never intended the ceremony to be anything more than what it was. A legality.
A moment of silence passed while Briggs threw an old gray blanket over the narrow bed and fluffed up the single pillow. Suddenly, his gut wrenched. He was in the habit of living alone. Soon he’d be sleeping here—sharing his bed—with a complete stranger.
“You don’t have to marry this girl today,” George continued. “You don’t even know what she looks like.”
“It’s not about looks, George. In fact, a pretty face clouds a man’s judgement. What I need is a capable woman who’s not so concerned with fancy clothes and hats and all that other stuff women like.” Briggs flipped his hair out of his face. “She’s going to live out here, miles from town, lighting fires with dry cow dung.”
George’s disapproving gaze swept the room, then he pushed his gold spectacles further up the bridge of his nose. “It’s not too late to change your mind. You could get to know her first, maybe court her a little.”
“I don’t have time to court. I’m thirty years old. Besides, if I felt like courting, I’d court someone here in Kansas, instead of bringing her all the way from….uh…” Briggs drew his eyebrows together, struggling to remember which newspaper advertisement she’d answered.
“Boston!” George finished for him. “You brought her from Boston!”
“Right. Boston.” He took one last look around to make sure everything was in order. It was as good as it was going to get. He reached for his well-worn ivory Stetson and placed it on his head. “Now let’s get on the road or we’ll be late and she’ll be standing around at the station wondering if she got off in the wrong town.”
Briggs followed George through the narrow door, watching his brother duck so his gray fedora wouldn’t graze the low frame. “I’m sure she’ll be wondering that, regardless, when she sees this place,” George commented.
The two walked into the wind toward the unpainted wagon, aged the color of a thunder cloud. Hoisting himself into the hard seat, Briggs flicked the reins and they lurched ominously into motion. He turned the wagon through the yard toward town with George’s horse in tow.
Briggs sighed. Maybe George was right. Maybe he should have waited—at least until the harvest was in. But what was done was done. He’d made an agreement and he wouldn’t go back on his word. The girl had insisted on coming right away. She’d traveled across the country and he had promised her a marriage certificate the day she arrived.
Briggs squinted up at the blue sky, removed his hat and swabbed his forehead with a sleeve.
Marriage.
He’d never imagined it would come about like this. But recalling his
first
proposal, he decided it was better this way. He’d made a mistake in choosing Isabelle. She was completely wrong for the kind of life he’d always wanted, but he’d been struck blind by her beauty and charm. Isabelle could never have been a farmer’s wife. He should have known that from the start.
Perhaps things turned out for the best with Isabelle, he thought, absent-mindedly steering the wagon through a deep rut. There was no denying he’d suffered when she left him. Anger had beaten the drive out of him for days, but it was anger directed at himself for being so foolish. His brain had been in his trousers when he’d proposed.
Not this time, he thought proudly, watching one of the horses swat his long tail at a bee. This time, Briggs had a clear set of newspaper-print requirements, and a pretty face was not among them. This time, the marriage would be built on respect and a mutual desire for companionship—things that would last through the years.
George’s voice penetrated Briggs’s thoughts. “Did you get her a wedding gift?”