“Ugh!” Mrs. Porter shook her head, disgusted. “That Margaret Riddle. I’ve about had it with her. I promise my clients privacy and anonymity, and then she goes and tells everyone and their brother about the letters sent and received by the bachelors. I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He smiled, to show there was no hard feelings. “I guess it’s not too hard to figure out when a man sends out letters to a few dozen women, all with the title of ‘Miss’. I don’t know what else they would think, especially knowing there’s a marriage broker in town.”
“Marriage facilitator,” she corrected with a smile. “And I do wish you hadn’t needed to send out so many letters. You’re a good man, you didn’t deserve for it to be so difficult.”
“That’s to be expected, I guess,” he frowned. “Not many young girls want to marry a divorced man. Even the younger widows turned me down. I think they feared that I don’t take marriage seriously—and how can they be assured that I’m not lying about my situation? I honestly don’t know why Miss Watkins consented to marry me, especially so quickly, and considering how stunning she is.” He shook his head. “I know she said her parents were trying to force an unsuitable man on her, but surely she must have had a dozen other more suitable men to choose from.”
“Oh, stop. You’re a fine-looking man with your own blacksmith business. And you’re a kind, generous man, as well. What’s not to like?”
“You’re very kind, yourself, Mrs. Porter.”
“She is, isn’t she?” Clay grinned with pride, laying a hand on her shoulder and squeezing it. “That’s why she started her marriage correspondence business—she didn’t want any other girls to go through what she did, coming all that way, only to find that they’d been deceived.”
The little girl in the high chair whined, and her mother turned to soothe her.
“Here Grace, would you like a cracker?” Mrs. Porter took one from a tin and handed it to the chubby-cheeked girl.
“Cack-uh! Cack-uh!” The cracker was promptly mashed into the child’s mouth.
“Well, let me get you that roast, Morgan.” Porter turned to go into the back room of the butcher shop, but Kirschner emerged with a cut of meat and handed it to him. “I swear, you’re faster than me, old man.”
“Of course I am,” Kirschner’s gravelly voice chided. “Should be, been in the business longer than you’ve been alive, boy.” He winked at Jake. “And you, young man, you’d better make sure you treat that young Lilly Watkins right, or Madeline here will tan your hide!”
Jake smiled. “I believe it.”
“Oh, stop, Herman,” Mrs. Porter giggled.
In a flash, Porter had the meat wrapped in brown paper and tied with string and handed it over the counter. Jake accepted it and paid Kirschner at the till.
Mr. Kirschner leaned across the counter and whispered. “Jake, just relax and enjoy the experience. It’s never too late for a second chance at love. Look at me and my Agnes! Finding someone new at our age? Who knew?”
“How is that going for you?” He asked, matching the “retired” butcher’s low voice.
“Pretty good. Still in the early stages, but she’s something else, I tell ya. Just open yourself up and give it a chance. You might be surprised how well it turns out.”
“I hope so,” he muttered. “See you all soon.” He nodded his goodbyes and left the shop.
He mulled things over while he walked—as he’d been doing all day, every day, for weeks. All he could focus on was his impending nuptials with a woman who was a stranger to him. She was captivating, and she seemed sweet in her letters. But didn’t all women seem sweet when you first courted? Sadie had. They’d known each other for a year before they’d married. She had acted like she loved him. But all that time, she had been lying to him. Or at least, most of the time, toward the end.
Maybe this is just what I need, he thought, as he made his way down Main Street. Not a long, thought-out courtship, but a whirlwind courtship arranged by someone who has better discernment in women than I seem to have. A fancy, educated woman like Mrs. Porter could probably make a more sensible choice for him than he’d made for himself, the first time around. That choice had been made under the influence of a rush of emotions and—he had to admit—more than a little bit of lust.
He probably wasn’t the first man to find himself in a bad marriage after a pretty girl batted her eyelashes at him, with the man knowing he wouldn’t get more than a kiss until after they wed. Mrs. Porter was an impartial judge, of a sort, and had helped him make the decision based on sensible things like personality and mutual needs—and not of the bedroom kind. Surely her assistance would yield better results than his first choice—made with the headstrong, lust-driven impulse of his youth.
At least, that’s what he’d been telling himself all these months, while searching for a new bride. Surely the girl she’d helped him choose would be an improvement. At least he wouldn’t be alone anymore.
It couldn’t turn out worse than the last time, he thought. Could it?
Chapter 2
Just west of the Prickly Pear Junction stop
East Helena, Montana
June 16, 1890
Lilly’s stomach churned as the train grew closer to Helena. Ever since the locomotive had wended its way over the Montana border, through Billings, and on past Bozeman, the anxiety had risen within her, until she nearly choked with it. There she sat, fidgeting in her seat as the train approached Helena, her head buzzing with anxiety.
It wasn’t just cold feet over meeting the man she was to marry for the very first time. No, what occupied her thoughts the most was the horrifying idea that he might spurn her if he learned the truth.
Calm yourself, Lilly. There’s no way he’ll know. Not if you don’t tell him. And there’s no reason to tell him. So just keep your mouth shut, marry him, and make him the happiest man that ever lived.
Then her mother’s voice floated up in her mind, from one of the many lectures Lilly had received as a child.
Never tell a lie, Lilly. It only causes more problems than it solves. Liars never prosper.
But it wasn’t a lie, really. It was just leaving something out. That was completely different, wasn’t it?
Her hands clenched the armrest so tight that her knuckles turned white.
“Next stop, Helena, Montana!” the conductor called out as he passed through her compartment and on to the next. The train lurched out of the last station, and onward toward her future.
***
Helena, Montana
Jake was pacing the floor, just as Porter had joked about the day before. Today was the day Lilly Watkins, his future wife, would arrive in her new hometown. He wouldn’t get to meet her at the train station—which was just killing him—but he knew Mrs. Porter’s rules.
Still, he paced off his nervous energy, unable to focus on anything else. He wished he could be at the smithy, but he’d already told his apprentice, Edgar, that he wouldn’t be in, so he could get his apartment ready for his new bride. Besides, he’d just make a mess of things, as uptight as he was, and he had that complicated iron fence order that he was working on. He couldn’t afford to risk botching that job. So he was stuck at home.
Waiting.
He looked around, checking to see if there was anything out of place, any speck of dust anywhere. The dirt and grime could sometimes build up, since he came home covered in soot from the furnace at the smithy, not to mention grease from repairing hinges and wagon hubs, and caked dirt and excrement from shoeing horses—though thankfully, he could pawn the shoeing off on Edgar most of the time.
He’d spent all his dinner hours for the last week scrubbing as fast as he could, then going back to work and shoveling in bites of food as he worked. Then he’d spent most of the night before and early that morning on laundry, small home repairs, and dusting. He didn’t know what Miss Watkins would expect of him, but he didn’t want her to think he was lazy or dirty.
During his marriage,
he hadn’t had to worry about picking up after himself—Sadie had kept a spotless home for much of their marriage—but after she left, and he’d had time to grieve over the loss of his marriage, he decided he didn’t want to live in a pig sty. So he kept things relatively picked up, and tried to clean the house as often as his work schedule allowed.
But the soot had a way of shaking itself off all over the house, no matter how careful he was to change and wash up as soon as he got home, so scrubbing every corner had taken some time. Some men might give him a good ribbing if they saw him doing women’s work, but he didn’t care. It seemed wrong to welcome a new bride into a dirty house, and he wanted to start things off on the right foot.
Is that why Sadie left? he wondered, not for the first time. Was it too much work to clean up behind him every day? Or was it that he came home smelling of sweat and smoke and other unpleasant things? Is that what sent her into the arms of another man?
The shroud of pain and self-doubt settled over him again. He’d spent the last four years going from anger to shame to blame to self-recrimination to confusion. She never even gave him a straight answer as to why she left. Even when he tracked her down in Billings, at the new home she’d made with her lover, she looked at him with fury and disgust, angry that he’d followed her trail and discovered her new love nest. Then she looked away, mumbling that she “just couldn’t take it anymore”, that she needed to get away. Needed a new life, a happier life.
He knew her, could see in her eyes that she felt shame for what she’d done, but he could also tell that she was resolved to stay where she was. Jake remembered that day with humiliation—how he’d begged Sadie to come back, promising to make whatever changes she needed. He would even close down his shop and move wherever she wanted. He’d known she was bored at home, that the housework and garden weren’t enough to fill her days, and that she was depressed that after five years of marriage, they still had no children.
For a while, she’d stopped cleaning the house, stopped tending the garden, and taken to her bed. The only thing she did was make meals for him—the rest of the time was spent crying or reading books or staring out the window. And when he sought to comfort her or share intimate time together, she turned him down so often that he’d stopped bothering to try anymore.
But then she seemed to perk up. There was a spark in her eyes, she started taking better care of the house—though not as well as she had before—and she seemed a bit happy. She even started visiting her friends again, and had taken a couple of trips by train to visit her mother in Billings. She still neglected the flower garden she’d been so devoted to, and still avoided him physically, but he had assumed that her mood and behavior would keep improving with time.
Instead, he’d come home to a note on their bed from Sadie, telling him it was over. That she was in love with someone else.
He’d been in shock, and it had taken weeks to track her down in Billings. Apparently she’d met a salesman who had traveled to Helena on business, while she was out getting groceries one day. One thing led to another, and he’d come to visit her a few times, and she’d visited him at his home in Billings when she was supposedly staying with her mother.
When he confronted her, he wanted to wring the neck of the charlatan who’d stolen his wife away, but luckily the man was away at work, saving Jake the trouble of getting arrested for a violent outburst. It also gave him the chance to try to win his wife back.
But despite his pleas, Sadie was resolute. She refused to let him inside, and when he refused to leave, she finally told him that she was with child. It was like a punch to the gut. Jake knew they hadn’t been together in several months, and looking at her belly—which only then did he notice was showing the slightest sign of swelling with child—he realized there was no way the child could be his.
Not only did the scalawag steal his wife, but he gave her the one thing she always wanted, and somehow Jake could never give her. A child.
He turned away, burning with humiliation, clutching his roiling gut and staggering into the street like a drunk. Reaching the horse he’d rented from the livery when he arrived, he’d clung to the stirrups as he wretched over the dirt, but nothing came out. When the dry-heaves were over and the clammy, shaking had passed, he mounted the horse and rode away without looking back once at the wife that he’d loved for so long.
Jake shivered at the memory, then finally decided he needed to get out of the house. He walked out the door and down the flagstone path, past the overgrown bushes and through the arbor gate laden with overgrown roses—a constant reminder of his former wife.
Once out on the street, he breathed a little easier. Am I making a mistake, bringing a new wife to a home and bed that is filled with so many memories? He’d thought long ago that maybe he should abandon his little apartment home that was built onto the backside of a Main Street brick building, but he never could make himself do it. He’d told himself it was a nice home with reasonable rent, but deep down he knew that wasn’t the reason he stayed.
At the time, he could have moved to the little room over the smithy, where his apprentice Edgar now lived. But he’d decided back then that it would be like admitting defeat. Admitting that Sadie would never come back. Admitting that he’d failed somehow as a husband, and as a man. Admitting that he was doomed to the life of a divorced “bachelor”. He just couldn’t do that.
Although he had been the one to court for a divorce after Sadie had been gone a year, on the grounds of infidelity and abandonment, he knew some part of him still hoped she’d come back, even though he wasn’t sure if he’d take her back. The divorce was really just his way of showing the gossiping busybodies in town that he was the victim—he hadn’t driven his wife out, as he knew some of the ladies in town had whispered. Though he never shamed Sadie by revealing her pregnancy, he did feel it was his right to be recognized as the innocent party.
Yet in spite of all that, he still wondered if he was innocent. Had he done something to drive her off? Had he worked too many hours? Been too unsympathetic about Sadie’s inability to have children? Then again, she had a child—just not with him. So maybe that was the problem. Maybe Sadie suspected that the failure was his and not hers, and she sought out a man who could get the job done. But how could she have known she’d be able to conceive with someone else? And wasn’t it the woman’s fault if she didn’t have a child—or if she could only produce boys, or only produce girls? That’s what he’d always heard.
But maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe men could be the ones unable to produce children. If that was the case, would he be unable to give Miss Watkins a baby after they married? Would she become bitter and unhappy, unfulfilled with her life as only a wife? Would she, too, seek the arms of another man for solace, and to fill her womb with a baby?
Jake passed the saloon nearest his house just as he had that thought—for the hundredth time—and found himself tempted to go in and drown his sorrows. But he shook his head and sped up, walking briskly past the saloon. Alcohol never solved anything, and the last thing he needed was to run into Mrs. Porter and his bride-to-be as he stumbled out of a saloon. Besides, he found saloons to be depressing, especially during the day—the shadowy room would reek of tobacco and alcohol and body odor, with an oppressive cloud of hopelessness hanging in the air as some patrons stared into their shot glasses as if they could somehow find the solution to their problems in the bottom of it, while others gambled and laughed raucously over crude jokes. No, the saloon never brought him much comfort, so he’d avoided them since the first week following his breakup with Sadie.
He walked on for a long time, until he heard the distant train whistle. He looked up at the sun, gauging that it was well after noon.
She’s here, he thought. His stomach lurched. His bride had arrived.
What if she didn’t? he thought. What if she had second thoughts? What if she’s some charlatan, and she cashed in the train ticket and kept the money, plus the traveling money I sent her? It wouldn�
��t surprise him. After Sadie, nothing surprised him.
His heart squeezed painfully in his chest at the thought of being betrayed yet again by a woman. He knew he wouldn’t be able to eat or sleep until he saw for himself that she had, indeed, arrived. Spinning on his heels, Jake turned in the opposite direction and walked toward the butcher shop.
Chapter 3
Lilly’s heart raced as the train chugged through the Helena Valley. She was almost there. She was about to meet the man she would spend the rest of her life with.
If he would have her.
Of course he’ll have you! He has no reason not to want you, she told herself. And you’re not going to give him one.
But what if he knew? What if he looked into her eyes, and knew something was wrong? What if, when he took her to bed on their wedding night, he could somehow detect that she was no longer “pure”? She shuddered, imagining herself thrown out on the street in the middle of the night in a strange place.
No. Stop it. Jake Morgan is a good man. Even if he found out, he wouldn’t throw me out on the street. She barely noticed the ethereal mountains that she could see surrounding the valley, or appreciate the flat prairie and meadows that stretched out from the base of those mountains.
Wouldn’t he? A cynical voice whispered in her head. Isn’t that what he did to his wife? He divorced one wife—what’s to stop him from divorcing another? That brought her up short. She turned away from the window and stared at her lap. She hadn’t thought of that possibility before. True, she knew he’d divorced his first wife, and perhaps that should have given her some pause—had she not been so eager to leave Massachusetts, she might have had second thoughts. She might have waited for a more suitable match. But she needed to leave as soon as possible, and there was something about Mr. Morgan’s letters…something that touched her.
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