She came up from behind, taking the door and flinging it wide. “I’m not fractious—I’m enraged. Now get out.” She slammed the door after him.
After her breathing returned to normal, Prudie strode to the parlor. Without conscious thought, she repositioned a porcelain figure on an elegant Queen Ann table, rearranged an already perfect bouquet of roses, fingered the gold tassels of green brocade drapes.
In little more than a month, she’d have to move out of this comfortable house. She’d be homeless. Samuel wasn’t the only one who had to find a job. She did too. Upstairs, in her luxurious bedroom, hidden in her trunk, was about two hundred dollars in cash. All she had left in the world, other than her clothes.
She chided herself for allowing this to happen. How could she have trusted Samuel so completely?
Papa had warned her. Prudie sank into the nearest chair as his words came back to her.
“My days are numbered, my dear. The doctors have just admitted my heart won’t hold out much longer.”
Prudie had taken Papa’s blue veined hands. “No, I won’t hear of it. You’ll be on your feet again. All you need do is take your ease for a while.”
“Dearest daughter, I don’t regret joining your mother soon, though I’ll miss you and Sammy.” His smile came too quickly. “I’m putting my affairs in order, so you must listen to me carefully, Prudence. Your brother doesn’t possess the acumen you do. You must keep careful watch over him and the business. Since you’ve rejected all your suitors, I’ve arranged for you to be educated and take your place as a partner in the business alongside Samuel. Until then, you must call on him regularly. Don’t let him hoodwink you. He can be a scamp, as you know.”
Prudie ought to have questioned Papa further about how she could keep Samuel in check, but something else had commanded all her attention. “Where am I to be educated? At college, you mean?”
“You recall Elizabeth Barlow, the wealthy widow from Boston?”
“Yes, vaguely. She married some nobleman from England and moved there, did she not?”
“Indeed, but she’s widowed again and has taken a keen interest in the education of young women in her native land. She’s offering to sponsor her granddaughter and three other young ladies to attend Harvard.”
“What? Does Harvard now admit women?”
“No, but they’ve agreed to an experiment to see if women might attend with the men. The women are to receive classes in an annex building, the purpose of which is to see if they can rise up to the academic standards.” Papa’s soft chuckle seemed to rob him of all strength for a few moments. “Funny that. Samuel was rejected by Harvard, but I have no doubt you will exceed all expectations.”
“Oh, Papa, that will be a wonderful opportunity.”
“I can afford to pay your way myself, but why should I, if Lady Galenshire is willing? Never spend money you don’t have to, Prudence.”
“Of course not, and you know I’m not the risk-taker Samuel is.”
“So true, and frankly, living with Lady Galenshire’s granddaughter will afford you with luxuries I couldn’t afford.” He patted Prudie’s hand. “More importantly, with a Harvard degree you will be a force to be reckoned with. It will be hard to be taken seriously in the business world—but if any woman can, you can, and I know you won’t fail me.”
“No, I won’t, and you will live to see me graduate Harvard.”
But he hadn’t lived, and the administration now refused to grant the women of the Annex full degrees. They had determined to establish a woman’s college. A sister college—just another status symbol for society women.
Not that any of that mattered now. There was no business for her to manage, nor any jobs except those open to women. Teaching in a woman’s college. Clerking in someone else’s merchandising establishment. Neither option appealed to her.
And she had failed Papa.
A sharp knock at the front door startled her out of her musings. If Samuel had returned—
She bolted across the room and jerked the door open.
Her scowl must have been fierce since Gus, the stable man, jumped back a step. He shoved a fist full of correspondence toward her. “I brought the mail, Miss Prudie.”
She forced her lips into a smile. “Thank you, Gus.” She took the bundle and riffled through it. Letters from Carianne and Adela and Ramee, their former house-mates. That turned Prudie’s smile genuine. The rest was business correspondence for Carianne and her magazines.
Gus cleared his throat. “Have you heard when Miss Carianne is coming back?”
“No, but she may tell me in this letter.” She waved the missive in front of him, as if he didn’t already know who sent it. “She’ll have to return before the end of August, to close up the house. Don’t you worry—she’ll settle with you and Hetty and Mrs. McGee, and a nice settlement it’ll be.”
Gus shook his shaggy gray head. “Oh, I’m not worried.” But the tension went out of his shoulders, giving him away. “Miss Carianne has always been generous. I guess I have been concerned. When one gets to be my age, it’s scary not knowing where your next meal is coming from.”
Did everyone go around worrying about money? Even if there was no solution for Prudie, she could at least put Gus’s mind at ease. “Carianne told me before she left she’d provide you and Mrs. McGee a handsome pension and give Hetty a glowing reference along with a sizeable bonus. So there.”
“Thank you, Miss Prudie. Guess I’ll go finish that wheel I’ve been repairing. You might need the buggy.”
Prudie closed the door with a sigh. Yes, she’d need the buggy to go out and find a job. If she couldn’t, she might well be wondering where her next meal came from.
She ambled to the sofa where she could spread the letters out beside her and ripped into Adela’s first. The news brought a smile to her face. After nearly two years of marriage, Adela was carrying her first child. Recalling how much Adela had wanted to be a mother, Prudie couldn’t help being glad for her. She went on to read about how well the farm out in Kansas was doing.
That was grand for Adela, but it wasn’t the type of life Prudie wanted. She shuddered at the thought of bearing a child. No, a spinster’s life suited her better.
She opened Ramee’s letter next and pulled out three sheets of paper, filled front and back with Ramee’s flowery writing. One whole page was devoted to a new calf born out of season, the other two went on and on about Ramee’s husband, Josh. Prudie couldn’t picture the always elegantly dressed Ramee helping birth a calf.
Not a word about Ramee’s dress designs. Did that mean she’d given up her dreams? Surely not. Ramee was too talented and driven. She was just a new bride gushing over her husband. No mention of a baby yet, but from the tone of the letter, Prudie suspected Ramee and Josh were doing all they could to hasten that event. And to think Ramee had found her husband in answer to a mail-order bride ad, as had Adela.
Both Ramee and Adela had been lucky—but neither was as lucky as Carianne.
Prudie hated the envy that gripped her every time she thought of Carianne’s circumstances. Life could turn out so strange. Prudie had been born into relative wealth and now was as good as penniless, whereas Carianne was born into poverty and now was one of the wealthiest women in the country—certainly the youngest of the independently wealthy.
She had no right to feel anything but gratitude toward Carianne. Her friend had shown her nothing but kindness. Prudie swallowed her envy as she read Carianne’s letter, and was soon put in better humor.
Carianne had arranged to have her Philadelphia townhouse wired for electric lighting, but her aunt was in a tizzy, fearing the house would burn down. That was one problem Prudie would never have to worry about. She didn’t have an aunt, not a relative in the world, except for her derelict brother.
She folded the pages of Carianne’s letter and slipped them back into the envelope, then thumbed through the rest of the mail to see if anything should be forwarded immediately.
Nothi
ng that couldn’t wait, she decided. At the bottom of the stack was a large, flat parcel. It contained the New England Prattler. Carianne subscribed to the magazine because she liked to read about the goings-on of the region’s socialites and the handsome men they squired.
Prudie ripped into the magazine. This was how Adela and Ramee had found their husbands, in the personal ads in the back. She flipped to the back pages—not that she was interested, of course. What she needed was a business opportunity, not a husband.
There were the usual farmers’ sons and widowers. She was about to toss the magazine aside, when one of the ads pulled her attention.
Wife wanted to help me start a new life. Twenty-six year old Christian mountain man recently inherited a dry goods store in one of Wyoming’s fastest growing towns. Desires a bride between twenty and twenty-six years old of good Christian character. Reply to Erich Stafford, Bent Fork Mercantile, Bent Fork, Wyoming.
A dry goods store. Fastest growing town. Wyoming. That was the one of the two states in the country allowing women the vote. She’d never been a suffragist, but still harbored a keen desire to cast a vote someday.
With the magazine still in hand, Prudie scurried through the house to the library. She pulled out the large atlas of the United States and went straight to the back of the book. Was Bent Fork even on the map? Like a lot of western states, Wyoming was sparsely populated. She slid her finger over the towns’ names.
There it was. Right on the transcontinental railroad. All sorts of opportunities crowded her brain.
Erich Stafford—a good, strong name. Mountain man? The topography of the map didn’t indicate the town rested on a mountain, though the continental divide wasn’t far off—or it didn’t looked to be far on the map.
She went straight to the secretary and opened the inkwell. From the middle drawer, she drew out a sheet of rose scented stationery. With the open magazine lying to her left, she took up the pen and dipped it into the ink.
Chapter 2
Bent Fork, Wyoming
Erich Stafford tied the reins of his roan gelding to the hitching post of the mercantile and scratched his neck under his beard. He still couldn’t believe this was his. His grandpa on his ma’s side had died six months ago and left him the store. He have left it to Erich’s ma, but since she’d died several years ago, it went to Erich as her only survivor.
He couldn’t remember anything about Grandpa Kendall, though his ma had told him Grandpa used to bounce him on his knee. Erich was only twelve when his ma died, and his pa went crazy. Pa never liked being around people, and when Ma died, he’d taken Erich and headed for the mountains. Built a shack up there and lived off the land.
When Pa passed on about two years ago, Erich never thought about leaving the mountains. It was the only life he knew. He didn’t dislike people like Pa, though.
Erich was the one who went into the little town in the valley for supplies twice a year, and he always got along with the towns people. Except for a renegade Indian who wandered onto the land from time to time, he’d had little contact with other people for the last eleven years.
Pa was a master carpenter, a furniture maker. He scoured the hardwood forests and made beautiful pieces from the wood. Erich worked alongside him and became almost as good as Pa had been. Erich would take the furniture down to the villages and sell the sturdy pieces.
Trouble was, folks couldn’t afford to pay much, and neither Erich nor Pa cared much that they sold their work for far less than it was worth. They hunted for meat, and their needs weren’t great. Pa certainly didn’t care about anything, but he did advise Erich to save what he could, and after he’d saved up enough, go off and make a life for himself.
That included finding a good woman. “Just make sure she has a strong constitution,” Pa said.
The land would kill a delicate woman. Pa knew better than anyone. Ma was a delicate woman from back east, and had been sick off and on for as long as Erich could remember. That’s why he didn’t have any siblings.
“Yoo hoo, Erich.”
Erich swung around. Sibbie Whitley came in a trot from across the dusty street, one hand holding her skirt and the other waving some envelopes. Sibbie was the wife of the town’s boardinghouse owner, and part-time blacksmith, Ben Whitley. She managed to run the boardinghouse café, the town council, and was the town’s gossip. Erich thought she did all three jobs well. He lifted his hat. “Sibbie.”
Sibbie had given him the idea to send off an advertisement for a wife. She drew in a deep breath. “I was at the post office and look what came for you.”
He took the three envelopes. Each one bore a feminine name in the return address.
“They’re answers to your ad for a mail-order bride, I do declare.”
“Well, let’s go in and take a look.” He held the store’s plank door open for Sibbie.
Entering the mercantile was like going into a cave. The inside was in stark contrast to the bright sunlight, and it took a few seconds for one’s eyes to adjust to the dim interior. He followed Sibbie down the center aisle with two long rows of tables on either side.
Shelves, drawers, and bins lined the walls. Buggy whips, harnesses, lanterns, pails, ropes, and other equipment hung from the ceiling. Bins and barrels containing produce, nuts, beans, and nails took up every available space in the corners and crevices. The tables groaned with household items, fabric and sewing notions, crockery and dishes, clothing, and hunting and farm implements.
A pot-bellied stove in the back of the store gave off a warm glow. Over to the side, Ben Whitley and Jack Daws sat in a couple of straight-backed chairs at an upside down barrel, playing checkers.
Erich acknowledged their nods and breathed in the heady scent of ripe cheese, pickles, kerosene, chicken feed, cured meats, leather, and tobacco. Hard to believe all this was his. He was a mighty blessed man.
Sibbie pulled up a couple of chairs by the stove. “Sit down, Mountain Man. You ain’t going to get any taller, we hope.” She chuckled and shot him a shrewd glance from under gray lashes. “You going to share your letters?”
Two women and one male customer turned their heads. Ben and Jack interrupted their game, and Eustace Granger, Erich’s store clerk, looked up from his place behind the counter.
Their curiosity didn’t surprise Erich. His search for a mail-order bride was the talk of the town, thanks to Sibbie. He smiled before sinking onto the chair and held out the envelopes. “Since you wrote my ad and sent it off, why don’t you read them?”
She snatched the envelopes. “You told me I could send in the ad, Mountain Man, and you were the one who told me to be on the lookout for someone you might court.” She ripped into one of the letters. “Since all the gals around here are already married or not the right age, what else could I do?”
“Stop gabbing, Sibbie, and start reading, so I can take Jack’s king.” Ben’s tone indicated he was used to his wife’s prattle and didn’t mind prodding her if need be.
Her mouth twisted into a playful scowl as she held the letter up to the light.
Dear Mr. Stafford, I am a thirty-two year old widow with four children. I’m used to hard work and am a good cook. I’ve been living with my mother-in-law, but she died recently, and I must find a home for my children. I attend church regularly and am of good character.
Erich felt sorry for the woman, but he couldn’t see himself the father of four children. Being a father was a powerful responsibility. He’d always wanted to become a father someday, but expected children to come one at the time the natural way. “I have no objection to a widow, but I’d hoped my wife would be my age or a little younger.”
“Think you’re right about that,” Jack said. “You might want some young’uns of your own, but with four already, your house would be bustin’.”
“Clara and Jim Tinsdale have fourteen, and they live in that little dug-out.” Sibbie was already perusing the next letter. “This one’s a widow too.” She read off the long account of a twenty-one year ol
d widow with one child whose desperation glared from the words.
“She’s the right age.” Maybe this was the one. He’d have to at least send a reply.
“Wait, we have one more.” Sibbie opened the last envelope and raised her brows. “Get a whiff of this.” She waved the paper under Erich’s nose. It smelled of roses.
“Now that one ought to be interesting.” Ben laughed and bobbed his head, the light shining off his bald pate.
Sibbie read.
Dear Mr. Stafford, I’ve lived my entire life in Massachusetts, but have always dreamed of going west. After reading your ad, I’ve studied everything I could find about Wyoming. I’m twenty-three years old and never married. My parents are now deceased, and I look forward to marrying a good Christian man. It so pleased me that you have a mercantile. My father owned a merchandising establishment, and I helped in the business since a child. I eagerly await your reply and the opportunity to get to know you better. I hope to become your helpmate in your business as well as in your home. Sincerely, Prudence Walsh, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Not sure about that one,” Jack said. “Sounds too eager, even more than the other two.”
“I agree,” Eustace said. “A twenty-three year old woman who’s never been married is probably—” He let the thought hang.
“Probably what?” Prudence Walsh sounded charming to Erich.
“She’s probably not…well, comely.”
“I’m not very comely either,” Erich said. “I like that she knows merchandising. I can use all the help I can get.”
“You don’t want your wife to help in the business. That could cause problems.”
Ben’s chair scraped the floor as he swiveled around. “How would you know, Eustace? You’re not married, are you?”
Eustace’s thin moustache twitched. “I worked in a dry goods store over in Cheyenne. Mr. Gladney’s wife was forever ordering fancy do-dads nobody would buy. They argued about it every day of the week. Women don’t have any business sense.”
The Annex Mail-Order Brides: Preque (Intrigue Under Western Skies Book 0) Page 23