Wyoming Bride

by Joan Johnston

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what, exactly?” Hannah asked, unable to keep the exasperation from her voice.

  “We know she was held captive in an Oglala Sioux village in the Dakota Territory. We also know she was ‘bought’ by an Englishman.”

  “Did you say my sixteen-year-old sister was bought?”

  “I am afraid so, madam. But that was a good thing, we believe. A young Englishman was traveling the American West looking for adventure. He discovered your sister among the Indians and traded a gold watch for her person. That is how we know his name. It was inscribed in the watch, which we recovered.”

  “You know his name? Who is he?” Hannah asked.

  “Marcus St. John Wharton. It seems he’s a British lord. The Duke of Blackthorne, to be precise.”

  Hannah felt as though she might faint. Blackthorne. Oh, God. Could this Duke of Blackthorne possibly be related to the English Blackthorne who’d married Flint’s mother? “Where is Josie now?”

  “The duke took her with him. He’s still traveling as far as we know. But we’ve located his country home in England, Blackthorne Abbey, south of London in the county of Kent. When he returns, presumably with your sister in tow, a Pinkerton will be waiting.”

  The kitchen door opened, letting in a whirlwind of dust and two tired, sweaty cowmen.

  Flint drew up short and demanded, “Who are you?”

  The Pinkerton detective rose and extended his hand. Instead of giving his name he said, “I’m a Pinkerton.”

  “He brought news about Hetty and Josie,” Hannah said. “They’re both still alive. But both still lost.”

  “Da da da da da,” Lauren called as she crawled rapidly in Flint’s direction.

  Flint took two steps, swept the little girl up into his arms, and gave her a smacking kiss. “How is daddy’s little girl?”

  Lauren put her arms around his neck, laid her head on his shoulder, and held on tight. Flint reached an arm out to circle Hannah and pulled her close, kissed her lips, and said, “It’s good to be home.”

  “Where are my two girls?” Ransom asked.

  Emaline arrived at the kitchen door in time to hear his question and said, “I just put Jesse down for a nap.”

  Ransom gave Emaline a gentle hug and a kiss. “How are you feeling?”

  “Ransom, I’m fine,” she said. “You worry too much.”

  Hannah saw the flash of concern come and go from Ransom’s eyes. Emaline had safely delivered their daughter, but it had been a long and difficult delivery, and Emaline hadn’t bounced back from it as quickly as Hannah had from the birth of Lauren.

  Hannah was amused to see that Emaline was now the one soothing Ransom’s anxiety as she put her hands to his cheeks, looked into his eyes, and said, “I swear to you I’m completely recovered. Jesse is growing like a weed, and I’m already looking forward to having the next one.”

  Ransom groaned. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

  Emaline laughed and hugged him and said, “We have to keep up with your brother. Hannah is pregn—” She cut herself off and stared at Hannah in dismay. “Oh, my goodness, Hannah. I didn’t mean to spoil your surprise!”

  “Hannah is pregnant?” Ransom said.

  Flint looked at her and asked, “Hannah, is it true?”

  She smiled, setting free the dimples that confirmed her happiness. “Yes, I am.”

  “Are you sure?” Flint said.

  She could understand his doubt. She’d gotten pregnant on the first try with Mr. McMurtry. But she and Flint had made love for months without starting a babe in her womb. Every time her courses had come, she’d despaired of ever giving Flint a child of his own blood. He’d told her it didn’t matter, that he loved Lauren, and if she was all they ever had, he would still be the happiest man on earth.

  But Hannah could see the hope and joy in his eyes as she confirmed, “Yes, Flint, I’m pregnant. With your son.”

  She saw the sudden sheen of tears in his eyes as he said, “You can’t know it’s a son.”

  “I was right about Lauren, wasn’t I? I’m right about this, too. I’m carrying your son, Flint. He’ll be born in the spring.”

  She saw Flint’s smile broaden as he leaned down and whispered, “I love you, Hannah.”

  Lauren said, “Da da da da da.”

  Flint laughed and kissed his daughter and said, “I love you, too, little bit.”

  Hannah glanced at Ransom holding Emaline in his arms, then looked at Lauren and Flint and thought how lucky they all were.

  Then she glanced at the Pinkerton, who she’d completely forgotten was still in the room. And felt her elation dim.

  She fought against the feeling of sadness, reaching for the utter joy that had been hers only moments ago. She turned in Flint’s arms to face the Pinkerton and said, “Find them. Please. Find them.”

  The Pinkerton rose, rebuckled his briefcase, and said, “We will, madam.” He winked and added, “Pinkertons never sleep. I can let myself out. I see you are otherwise occupied.”

  Hannah turned back to the comfort of her husband’s embrace.

  “It’ll be all right, Hannah,” he said in her ear.

  “I love you, Flint,” she replied.

  She felt his smile against her cheek. Life was good. And it was only going to get better. “Oh, no,” she said.

  “What?” Flint asked anxiously.

  “We were supposed to go visit Miranda at Christmas. Do you think it will still be all right for me to travel?”

  Flint laughed. “No problem,” he said. “Miranda and Jake and the kids can come see us.”

  Hannah made a face. “Didn’t I mention it? Miranda’s pregnant, too.” She hadn’t mentioned it because she hadn’t wanted Flint to feel bad that both his brothers had sired children when he hadn’t.

  Flint chuckled and shook his head. “Maybe this is a sign, Hannah.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe we’re not supposed to get together until we can all get together.”

  Hannah’s eyes went wide. “Do you really think so?”

  Flint kissed her instead of answering with words. He allowed her to hope. He allowed her to dream. Hannah chose to hope and dream that one day soon the Wentworths would all be together again.

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed Hannah’s story. It was great fun to write. If you’re wondering what happened to Hetty, watch for Montana Bride, coming soon! I haven’t forgotten Josie. She’ll have her own story in Blackthorne’s Bride, which will take us all from England back to Texas, where the Mail-Order Bride series began.

  If you’re looking for something to read in the meanwhile, check out my Bitter Creek books connected to the Mail-Order Bride series: The Cowboy, The Texan, and The Loner. If you want to read about Kinyan Holloway, her husband, John, and her sons, Josh and Jeremy, they’re featured in Colter’s Wife. The historical Grayhawks are also featured in my modern-day Bitter Creek series, including A Stranger’s Game and Shattered.

  The Blackthornes were introduced in my Regency-era Captive Hearts series, Captive, After the Kiss, The Bodyguard, and The Bridegroom. So you see, there’s plenty to read while you’re waiting for the next book.

  If you’d like to contact me directly, you can do so through my website, www.joanjohnston.com. I always enjoy hearing from you!

  Take care and happy reading,

  Joan Johnston

  This book is dedicated to

  LAUREN LINGUANTI

  and her family

  DELL BOOKS BY JOAN JOHNSTON

  Mail-Order Brides Series

  Texas Bride

  Wyoming Bride

  Bitter Creek Series

  The Cowboy

  The Texan

  The Loner

  Captive Hearts Series

  Captive

  After the Kiss

  The Bodyguard

  The Bridegroom

  Sisters of the Lone St
ar Series

  Frontier Woman

  Comanche Woman

  Texas Woman

  Connected Books

  The Barefoot Bride

  Outlaw’s Bride

  The Inheritance

  Maverick Heart

  and don’t miss …

  Sweetwater Seduction

  Kid Calhoun

  Did Wyoming Bride

  steal your heart?

  You won’t want to miss

  the adventures

  of the other Wentworth sisters

  as they seek love in the Wild West!

  Read on for a sneak peek at

  Montana Bride,

  the story of Hannah’s twin sister,

  Hetty Wentworth.

  “Don’t you dare strike that child!” Henrietta Wentworth set her plate of hardtack and beans aside and rose from her seat on a fallen log beside the campfire.

  “He’s my son. I’ll hit him if I want.” Mrs. Lucille Templeton had grabbed her seven-year-old son, Griffin, by the arm as he tried to escape after “accidentally” dropping the plate of beans he was bringing her into her lap.

  “Look at my dress!” Mrs. Templeton wailed, staring down at a green-velvet-trimmed traveling dress that was clearly ruined. She tightened her grip until the boy grimaced and said, “This fiendish brat spilled that plate on purpose. He deserves the whipping he’s going to get.”

  Hetty balled her fists and took three steps to put herself toe-to-toe with Mrs. Templeton. “You will beat that child over my dead body. Let him go.”

  “Hah!” Mrs. Templeton snorted. Nevertheless, she loosened her grip, and Griffin jerked free and fled. He disappeared behind the Conestoga wagon in which they’d all been traveling from Cheyenne, in the Wyoming Territory, to Butte, in the Montana Territory, where Mrs. Templeton was destined to become a mail-order bride.

  The hodgepodge Templeton family included the widow Templeton, her nine-year-old daughter Grace, and her seven-year-old son Griffin. Hetty had trouble imagining how Mrs. Templeton had produced a daughter as kind as Grace, although she had no doubt how she’d spawned a hellion like Griffin.

  Nevertheless, not one of the three Templetons looked like any of the others or seemed anywhere near their professed ages. Mrs. Templeton, with her dyed blond hair, mud-brown eyes, and substantial figure, looked considerably older than twenty-five.

  Grace was plump, had flyaway red hair and green eyes, and was already sprouting small buds on her chest, which told Hetty she was more likely twelve or thirteen than the nine she professed to be.

  Her brother, Griffin, was a skinny sprout with bright blue eyes and tangled black hair that made Hetty itch to take a brush to it. She figured he’d last seen the age of seven three or four years ago, which would make him ten or eleven.

  No less odd was the short, slender, but very strong young Chinese man who was their guide, protector, and driver, Mr. Lin Bao, who said he’d come to America ten years ago to work on the transcontinental railroad. Hetty had learned that the Chinese put their family name first, so Mr. Lin’s first name was Bao, which he’d told her rhymed with cow. Bao now worked for the man who would become Mrs. Templeton’s husband, Mr. Karl Norwood.

  “If I’d had my way, Miss High-and-Mighty,” Mrs. Templeton muttered as she lifted her skirts to dump beans from its folds, “we would have left you to rot in that wagon where we found you.”

  Hetty had no doubt of that. She’d never met a lazier, meaner, or more selfish person in her life than Lucille Templeton. It was appalling to think that she owed this woman her life.

  Mrs. Templeton had forced Mr. Lin to stop near the apparently abandoned Conestoga wagon because she’d wanted to scavenge whatever remained inside. Instead, she’d discovered Hetty, dehydrated, weak from loss of blood, and with an infected wound from an arrow in her shoulder. If not for Mrs. Templeton’s avarice, Hetty would be dead.

  Although, honestly, it was Mr. Lin’s doctoring that had kept her alive. He’d used mysterious medicines from the Orient to bring her back to life over the past seven weeks as they’d traveled north. Mrs. Templeton claimed to be a nurse, but she didn’t seem to know much about caring for anyone. Hetty shot a quick look at the young Chinaman, who was still sitting quietly beside the fire smoking a long, curved white clay pipe.

  “If it had been up to you, Lucy,” a young female voice accused, “you would have left Hetty in that wagon to die.”

  Hetty hadn’t seen Grace approaching from the opposite side of the campfire, but she’d seen the girl defend her brother from their mother’s slaps often enough to know that where Griffin was, Grace was never far behind.

  “I’ll take care of this, Grace,” Hetty said, knowing that Mrs. Templeton was still angry enough to lash out at her daughter.

  Her warning came too late. Mrs. Templeton reached out her arm like a lizard’s tongue, grabbed a handful of Grace’s tumbled red curls, and yanked hard. “You’re the one to blame for this. I should never have brought the two of you along.”

  Grace shot a fearful look in Hetty’s direction.

  Hetty couldn’t imagine having a mother who wished she’d left her children behind. A mother who felt free to slap faces and yank hair. A mother who considered her children a nuisance. No wonder Grace looked so scared.

  Hetty’s heart went out to the girl. Hetty’s own wonderful, loving parents had been lost three years ago, in the Great Chicago Fire, when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern and burned down most of the city, including the Wentworth family mansion and her father’s bank.

  Overnight, Hetty had gone from being the pampered daughter of wealthy parents to being an orphan stuck living in the Chicago Institute for Orphaned Children. Her uncle Stephen had left Hetty and her three sisters and two brothers at the orphanage even after they’d begged him to rescue them from the cruelty of the headmistress, Miss Iris Birch.

  Miss Birch, like Mrs. Templeton, seemed to find joy in brutality against those weaker than herself. Every infraction at the Institute had been punished with three—“You’re lucky it’s only three!” Miss Birch was fond of saying—vicious strokes of a birch rod.

  Hetty forced her thoughts away from her five siblings, who were all lost … or dead … but certainly gone. She couldn’t do anything to help them. But she could help Grace.

  “What I said about Griffin goes for Grace, too,” Hetty said. “Let go of her.”

  Mrs. Templeton twisted Grace’s hair until the girl whimpered and stood on tiptoes to avoid the pain. “This is my kid. I’ll do with her as I like.”

  “Not while I’m here, you won’t.” Hetty obeyed a sudden impulse, and her balled fist struck Mrs. Templeton in the nose.

  “Ow!” Mrs. Templeton released Grace and grabbed her bloodied nose. “You’ll pay for that.”

  Instead of running like Griffin had, Grace stood and watched with anxious eyes. “Please, Lucy,” the girl pleaded. “I’m sorry. Griffin’s sorry.”

  “Shut up, you ungrateful whelp!” Mrs. Templeton said.

  That was another strange thing about the Templeton family. Hetty couldn’t imagine calling her own mother by her first name, yet both children called their mother Lucy. Nor could she imagine any mother calling her daughter an “ungrateful whelp.”

  Hetty should have known better than to think Mrs. Templeton wouldn’t strike back. A moment later she felt nails claw their way across her face, narrowly missing her left eye. One of the scratches across her brow bled into her eye, blurring Hetty’s vision on that side. She almost missed seeing Mrs. Templeton bend to pick up a long, heavy dead branch.

  “Lucy, don’t!” Grace cried. And then, to Hetty, “Look out!”

  Hetty ducked as Mrs. Templeton swung the unwieldy weapon, but she lost her balance and fell backward onto the ground. Hetty made the mistake of trying to push herself upright with her injured shoulder and yelped in pain. Even after seven weeks, it wasn’t healed enough to support her. She was stuck on the ground like a sitting duck.

  Mrs. T
empleton must have realized Hetty’s predicament, because she uttered a shout of triumph. However, the weight of the swinging branch as it continued in its arc pulled her sideways. Instead of letting go of the branch to regain her balance, she held on, and her momentum forced her several steps backward.

  Hetty heard Mr. Lin yelling something behind her, but she was too busy trying to avoid being brained by the tree branch to pay attention. She heard Mrs. Templeton cry out and wondered if Grace had somehow intervened to save her.

  Hetty looked up in time to see Mrs. Templeton’s arms flailing as she tripped backward over a large stone. She finally let go of the branch, which flew several feet upward before it began falling, falling, disappearing from sight before ever hitting the ground.

  Hetty struggled to her feet, recognizing at last what Mr. Lin had been shouting. “Be careful!” she cried. “The cliff!”

  She got one last look at Mrs. Templeton’s face in the firelight—a ghoulish mask of fury—before the woman fell backward out of sight.

  Her shrill scream seemed to go on endlessly. Then it stopped.

  Hetty dashed with Grace toward the edge of the hundred-foot rock cliff that had been visible in the daylight when they’d camped, but which had disappeared beyond the light of the campfire after dark. She felt sick with grief and regret. She’d only wanted to protect Grace and Griffin. Instead she’d made them orphans. She couldn’t do anything right. Mr. Lin should have let her die.

  “Careful,” Hetty gasped as she put a hand across Grace’s waist to keep the girl away from the edge.

  Grace kept repeating, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  “What happened?” Griffin called out. “Did the witch hurt herself?”

  Grace turned on her brother as he appeared in the light of the campfire and said, “The witch is dead.”