The Convenient Bride Collection: 9 Romances Grow from Marriage Partnerships Formed Out of Necessity
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“Again?”
“You just went, not even half an hour ago.” Number Two’s eyes rolled, and her trembling lip firmed up into a sneer. “You’re leakier than an old bucket.”
The little one tugged on the big one’s sleeve again. “I gotta go potty.”
His palms began to sweat.
Number One handed the bag to Number Two. “Here. Don’t lose this. We’ll be back.” She held her hand out for Number Three, and they disappeared through the side door. Bear breathed a sigh. Talk about sidestepping a cannonball.
Number Two gave him a hard look. “Are you my uncle?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and pulled his hat down. “No. Your ma was my cousin.”
“So what’s that make us?”
Pure trouble. Times three. “Blamed if I know.”
She flipped her braids over her shoulders and hiked the bag higher. “You’re kinda big, aren’t ya?”
He grunted, his mind still reeling.
“You always this grouchy? ’Cuz if you are …” She didn’t finish the sentence, but her freckled face said volumes. “Is your wife grouchy like you?”
He scowled and jerked like she’d kicked him in the shin. “Don’t have a wife.” Thank the Lord.
“Just as well, if you’re always this cranky.”
“You’re kinda mouthy, aren’t ya? I thought kids were supposed to be seen and not heard.”
“Yeah, I get told that a lot.”
A smile quirked his lips at her long-suffering expression.
Number One and Number Three returned. Number One squared her shoulders, checked that Number Two still had hold of the bag, and said, “We’re ready.”
Well, he sure wasn’t. There was no way. He was not being saddled with three little girls.
“What about your pa? Where’s he?”
Number One shrugged. “He’s been gone a long time. Ran off. Ma didn’t know where he was, and she didn’t want him back, nohow.”
Bear felt as if he were grasping for any handhold or tree root to keep himself from falling off this particular cliff. He thrust his hands into his pockets. How had he gotten into this mess? He had a claim to run. The nip in the air said he should be greasing and preparing his traps for the winter, not nursemaiding a gaggle of girls he’d never seen before.
They looked up at him with expectant eyes, and his gut twisted.
There was no help for it. He couldn’t just leave them here, and sending them back where they came from didn’t seem to be an option, either. He’d have to find somewhere else to park them. They certainly weren’t coming up to the cabin with him. He had a strict policy when it came to females invading his home: they weren’t welcome. Period.
Stalking over to the ticket window, he banged on the counter. “Hey, I want some service!”
The fussy clerk stuck his head out of the back room, a sandwich in his hand. He finished chewing and swallowed. “I’m on my break.”
“You’re going to know the meaning of the word ‘break’ if you don’t get out here.” Bear grabbed the grillwork window and shook it.
The man flinched and edged to the counter, his thin eyebrows bunching under his green visor. “What do you need?”
“Four tickets to Denver. When’s the next eastbound?”
The clerk fumbled with some papers. This guy must be new. Bear had never seen him before. Not that Bear came into town that often. Twice a year was enough.
“Half an hour.”
“How much?” Bear reached into his coat. Blamed nuisance, having to go to Denver. Good thing he’d secured everything at the cabin before he came down. This little errand shouldn’t take more than a day or two, and Charlie would probably check on the place anyway, nosy as he was.
The clerk told him the price, and Bear forked it over.
He shoved the tickets and the envelope Number One had given him into his coat pocket and turned back to the girls.
All three girls sat side by side on the bench once more, and all three of them stared at him, Number Three with fascination, Number Two with accusation, and Number One with resignation.
Emmylou Paxton had never been so humiliated in all her life, and that was saying something, considering where she’d come from.
Every ounce of hope drained out as she stood in the Denver depot.
“So that’s how it is. Bertha showed up first.” Cletus Bloggett shrugged. “I went ahead and married her yesterday. We’re leaving for my claim on the next train.”
His new bride, a buxom blond with pink cheeks, blinked wide blue eyes and took his arm as if staking a claim.
Emmylou gulped. “But you’re betrothed to me. I have your letter.” She dug in her reticule.
“Well, I figured I’d better my chances by answering mor’n one ad in the Matrimonial News. Thataway I could have my pick of brides.” Cletus tucked his thumbs under his suspenders and nodded as if his words and his plans made perfect sense. “You and Bertha both answered the ad, and when she stepped off the train, I knew she was the one I wanted. I mean, look at her, with all that blond hair and all those curves. I had both your pictures, but I wanted to look you over myself. Now that I see that you’re kinda skinny, and redheaded to boot, I’m thinking I made the right choice. But you’d already set off from Harrisburg, and I didn’t have no way of calling you off.”
Hot tears burned the backs of Emmylou’s eyes and tingled down the inside of her nose, but she blinked hard to fight them off. All the accusations Aunt Ida had hurled at her about being skinny, redheaded, and a flaming nuisance to have to care for came back like an avalanche.
They were drawing a crowd of onlookers, and shame swirled into her cheeks. Why didn’t they mind their own business? Didn’t they have something better to do?
She straightened. “I’ve spent the last of my money just getting here. I have none for a return trip.” Not that she wanted to go back to Pennsylvania, ever. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“I dunno.” Cletus dug in his back pocket and pulled out a much-folded newspaper. “You could always take out another ad or two.”
“I could always sue you for breach of contract. You promised me marriage, and you’ve reneged on that promise.”
Bertha squeezed his upper arm, her doe-eyes widening.
Cletus—the rat—grinned and shook his head. “If you don’t got money for a train ride, then you don’t got money for no lawyer. Anyway, even if you did sue me, what’d you get? I ain’t rich. I got enough for me and Bertha, but if you’re hoping to squeeze me for cash, you’re gonna be disappointed.”
A train whistle sounded, and Cletus tipped his hat brim. “Gotta go. Sorry it didn’t work out.” He hefted a couple of suitcases, and with Bertha scurrying in his wake, left Emmylou standing in the middle of the depot with her bag at her feet and her dreams in shards on the floor.
The ring of onlookers glanced at one another. Some looked on her with pity, others with wry amusement, as they dispersed.
With no idea where she was going, Emmylou hefted her bag and headed for the stairs leading up to street level. She didn’t have to look in her reticule to know that she had exactly five dollars to her name. No going back, but no clear way forward, either.
Lord, now what am I supposed to do? I thought Cletus was an answer to prayer, a way out of a bad situation, but this is much worse.
The street was a morass of muddy ruts. Wagons trundled by, and pedestrians, heads down against the brisk wind, passed without looking up. Smoke blew on the air, and as she took a firm grip on the handle of her valise, she looked up at the mountains.
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” The verse came unbidden from her memory, and she swallowed. All right, Lord. Where do I go now?
“Hey, lady, somebody meeting you, or are you looking for a place to stay?”
A man in a bowler hat and checked suit leaned against the depot wall. He had a drooping moustache and eyes so dark they looked black … like a rat’s. He sho
ved away from the bricks and came toward her. Something about him repelled her, but she couldn’t say what. She was probably just jumpy because of Cletus leaving her stranded.
“Could you direct me to a boardinghouse or hotel?” Someplace where she could examine her situation and her options and decide what to do.
“I know a place. It’s not too far from here. I’ll walk you over.”
He didn’t offer to carry her bag, but he set off at a pace that made it easy to keep up, even in the thin air. After a quarter of an hour though, she began to wonder what his definition of not too far meant.
Finally, he turned up a short walkway. “This is the place. The landlady is a friend of mine. Her name’s Pauletta. I imagine she can find a place for you. She’s been looking for a few more boarders.”
The three-story brick house looked tidy enough. In fact, it was nice enough she wondered if she could afford a room. The man rang the bell, and a girl of about twelve opened it.
“Is Pauletta awake yet?”
Awake? It was almost midday. What kind of woman slept till noon?
The girl’s head bobbed, and she stepped back, inviting them in. She wore a ragged dress and a mob cap from which dirty-blond hair escaped. Emmylou followed the girl into a parlor that was positively opulent. A chandelier, fancy red wallpaper, a piano, and lots of tables and settees and ferns.
The man went to the bottom of the stairs and hollered up. “Paulie, c’mon down. I got a live one for you.” He grinned and reached into his coat pocket, withdrawing a cigar. He bit the end off, showing a lot of fierce white teeth, and spit the tobacco into a nearby fern.
Something was wrong here. The way he looked at her, sizing her up like an item in a store window, sent a chill through her. Footsteps on the stairs drew her eyes away from his, and the moment Pauletta came into view, Emmylou realized the nature of the house.
The woman was scantily clad, with a pale blue silk robe, open down the front, trailing behind her. Her black hair hung to her waist, and her cloying scent hit Emmylou even before she reached the bottom of the staircase.
“Morning, Hank.”
“Afternoon, you mean. I found this one at the station. A mail-order bride that got left high and dry. Heard it all myself. She ain’t much to look at now, but with some makeup and a different dress, she might be something. You don’t have a redhead.”
“Excuse me, but there’s been some kind of mistake. I am looking for a boardinghouse not a … a …” Emmylou couldn’t even get the word out.
Pauletta looked her over, tapping her front teeth with her long fingernail. “Spruced up, she could be something. Bit on the skinny side, but with some good food, we could fill her out. Got nice eyes and cheekbones. Right now, she’d make a nun look flamboyant, but in the right clothes …”
Emmylou, not wanting to hear another word, headed for the door where the girl waited.
As she passed, the girl touched her wrist and whispered, “Try a place called the Front Range Hotel back near the depot. It’s clean and cheap, and you should be safe enough there.”
Making her escape, shaking, Emmylou hurried up the street. They must be laughing at her now, saying she was as raw as unshucked corn. She should’ve trusted her instincts. Something about the man had been wrong. What if they’d tried to keep her there by force?
When she was out of sight of the house, she stopped and leaned on an iron-rail fence. The desire to weep made her stomach quiver and her throat ache.
The Front Range Hotel. Near the depot.
Chapter 2
The orphanage wasn’t much to look at, but he’d rather stare at the ugly building than look into the eyes of those three little girls any longer. When he’d delivered the news about their destination, none of them had said a word. Not even Number Two, though she set her mouth in a hard line and crossed her arms, staring at him like she wanted to bore him through with a rock drill.
Number One had nodded, bitten her lip, and turned to stare out the train window as if she expected nothing more of life than to be knocked down and kicked a few more times.
And Number Three had slipped her hand into her eldest sister’s and stared at him with those enormous eyes until he felt lower than a worm in a mineshaft and meaner than a wounded wolverine.
But he was doing the right thing.
No way should they live with him, a bachelor alone on a mountain. They should have a family. They were cute enough, surely someone in town would adopt them.
Bear told himself this as he mounted the stairs and opened the door. Inside, the foyer smelled of wool and cabbage and kids.
“Wait here.” He pointed to a bench. As he put his hand on the knob to the door marked OFFICE, a row of silent little girls marched down the staircase like soldiers and headed down the hall. Not one of them smiled.
A boulder took up residence low in his innards.
The orphanage matron sat behind her desk, a frowsy gray-haired woman. Papers littered the desktop and poked out of filing cabinets. A nameplate in danger of being pushed off the edge of the desk read MRS. ALBERTSON.
He told her why he was there, and she began shaking her head even before he was finished.
“Mr. McCall, let me ask you a few questions. You said you are the girls’ only living relative?” She folded her hands and leaned her elbows on the desk. All around her mouth, soft whiskers stuck out like a colt’s, and her faded blue eyes regarded him.
“They’ve got a pa somewhere, but he ran off awhile back. At least that’s what the girls told me.”
“Do you have a home?”
“Sure, a cabin. Built it myself. But it’s no place for little girls. I live there alone.”
“How do you support yourself, sir?”
“I’m a miner and trapper. Look, what has this got to do with these girls?”
“And it was the mother’s wish for you to take the children? How old are they, and what are their names?”
Bear smoothed his beard and looked out the window. He didn’t even know their names. Hadn’t bothered to ask. He couldn’t look the woman in the eye.
“She sent the girls on to me, yes, but I’m not keeping them. I told you, I live alone. On a mountain. I don’t know anything about little girls, and I don’t want to learn.”
She was shaking her head again. “I’m sorry, Mr. McCall, but we have no room for more children, especially not ones with relatives who can support them. This orphanage is for the truly destitute, not those considered merely the inconveniences of life. I would suggest, if you have the means, that you place the girls at the boarding school across town. Miss Miniver’s Academy might solve your problems. I warn you, the tuition is steep, but the girls would be cared for and well educated.”
He grasped at her suggestion like a rope thrown down a deep shaft. Boarding school. That would work. And it would ease his conscience about dumping them in an orphanage.
The girls sat in a row, just as he’d left them.
“Come on. We’re going somewhere else.”
“They don’t want us, neither, do they?” Number Two—he really was going to have to find out their names—jumped off the bench and dragged their valise out from under it. She turned to Number One. “I told you.”
Bear led the way outside, and they followed, for all the world like ducklings after a mama duck. God was playing some kind of awful joke on him. He’d sworn off women for life, and here he was saddled with a trio of them. Very funny.
Hiring a cab solved the problem of getting them across town. It rolled through the gates of Miss Miniver’s Academy for Young Ladies and up the curving drive. Someone had planted dozens of saplings, tying and staking them. In about ten or twelve years, this place would be beautiful. For now, it had a raw look about it, all sharp edges and new paint.
When he laid eyes on Miss Miniver, he could see why she was a spinster. With a mouth tighter than a miser’s purse, and eyes like knitting needle points, she’d give any man the shivers.
“My name’s McCall,
ma’am.” He swept his battered wide-brimmed hat off his head and shoved his hair back and out of his eyes before extending his hand to her.
Her brows arched, and she barely let her fingertips graze his, as if she thought he might have something catching. She sized him up, from his calf-high laced boots to his flannel jacket and shaggy beard.
“What can I do for you, Mr … McCall?” Her very British voice sounded like she had dumplings stuffed in her cheeks … razorblade-filled dumplings.
“I’ve got three girls I’d like to enroll in your school.” He motioned them forward. Number Two stared at the crown molding and plaster medallion above the chandelier, her mouth hanging open and the valise dangling from her fingertips. Number Three hid behind her sisters, peeking out, her finger stuck in the corner of her mouth, and Number One studied Miss Miniver, as if envisioning the future under her tutelage and not finding it to her liking.
A small facial jerk that he supposed passed as a Miniver smile contorted the woman’s face for an instant. “There appears to be some mistake. Your daughters are hardly our desired demographic.”
Desired demographic? What was that supposed to mean?
She rounded her desk and sat, nodding for him have a seat. His chair was harder than permafrost, her look was twice as cold, and Bear got the feeling she was using the desk as some sort of barricade.
“Mr. McCall, we have a screening process for all new applicants. Do you perhaps have references? We accept students by recommendation only.”
“References? From who? I just got saddled with them this morning. The orphanage wouldn’t take ’em and said I should try this place. And I’m not their daddy. Just a sort of cousin, I guess.”
She winced. “This academy is for the education and edification of young ladies of the highest caliber. We don’t allow just any urchin off the street to enroll. We are exclusive.” She said it with her chin in the air, staring down her narrow nose as if she’d just smelled something bad. Bear took a tight grip on his temper, aware that she had him betwixt the tail and the snoot. If she turned him down, he was fresh out of ideas.
“They’re bright girls, smart, and obedient.” He didn’t know if this was true, but it sounded good, and he was desperate. “They came all the way from Chicago on the train by themselves. They’ve got grit.”