Mail Order Bride Tess: A Sweet Western Historical Romance (Montana Mail Order Brides Series Book 2)

by Rose Jenster

  Dear Mail Order Husband,

  I am sixteen years old, just finished with school, but very mature and responsible. It is time I was out of my parents’ house as they watch my every move and are fond of asking if I’m behaving as a proper lady should. Their interminable reminders of good manners are so short-sighted and stifling.

  My true purpose is clear. I have read about ladies who travel with Wild West shows and shoot guns. I think I could learn from those women as I have had voice and dance training as well as comportment, and I would be an excellent showperson. If you could put me in contact with the manager of such a show, I would be most obliged,

  Yours truly,

  Polly Danvers

  Chuckling over the girl’s letter, he opened the fifth and final envelope. Oddly, the script seemed familiar. Snatching up the letter from Tess, he compared the two with disbelief. The seamstress from Albany had written to him twice. He felt his heart rate kick up in anticipation of another letter from her, and he read it almost hungrily.

  She was telling him that she had heard from Leah about his advertisement and wanted to be open with him about it, which was refreshing. She believed that fate and God, and possibly magic, was putting them on the right path. As whimsical, as childish, as it sounded, it also reminded him of his devout mother’s constant reminder that the Lord would provide. Providence was indeed what seemed to be at work.

  He sat down to write her a letter straight away.

  Dear Miss Sullivan,

  I am not one to carry on about sentiment. I am most comfortable working with my hands at some task, walking outdoors on long rambles. I may talk among other men but am not the sort who uses many words. In my awkward way, I am trying to tell you that I was quite taken with the innocent frankness of your letter, your evident kindness, and hopefulness.

  I want to win you over, to win you for my own. Since you are so far distant from me and from the land that makes up such a part of my life, I have only words to win you with, and they are but a frail tool in such hands as mine. I am better with a hammer, an ax, a gun than with a pen and ink.

  Because you showed such integrity in telling me that my friend’s wife sent you my advertisement, I will be equally candid. I did not want to read your letter. I had only just left Henry Rogers’ home where he and his wife attempted to persuade me to give serious consideration to a letter from her friend in Albany. I asked for their help in preparing the ad but assumed I would have free rein to canvass all my responses in private without anyone entering an opinion or knowing whether I had two responses or two hundred. I have, in actual fact, had five. So I will admit to this fault, this sin of pride, in wanting to have total sovereignty over my choices and my potential brides.

  If you can forgive me my fastidiousness on this point, I will forgive your excess of enthusiasm. I am afraid that hope would be disappointed if you knew me, as I am not being modest when I say that I am quite ordinary. I am not exceptional in any way that I can think of—I am neither overly tall nor short, neither excessively thin nor stout. I have my hair, which is an indifferent brown and a beard which I keep trimmed.

  I do read though not as widely as Mr. and Mrs. Rogers do. Every autumn I order a box of books to get me through the tedium of winter. I have not read Walden but I have read many of the philosophic and scientific writings of the late Mr. Emerson who was such a mentor to this Thoreau. I will read Walden at the first opportunity, which, in truth, will be after the snow falls. Are you familiar with Emerson’s works?

  I have put out a garden, even larger than before, with peas and carrots, potatoes, squash, turnip, rhubarb, onion, and some berries. The strawberries are a new addition this year, and I am unsure how they will fare. I spend time weeding and fetching water to the garden as well as feeding and caring for my livestock. My sheep are plentiful, and their wool is very profitable at market, so they are the source of most of my income. I also do repair jobs in Billings to occupy my time. There are always fences and roofs in need of repair, and men who do not like to do those tasks for themselves.

  The stars are very near and very bright in the mountains. Sometimes at twilight I take a lantern and a gun and go rambling for hours in the foothills, listening for bird calls and feeling the stillness that is both peaceful and strangely wide awake with the alertness of night animals. Would you have courage for such a walk in darkness where predators might lurk? I have a snug fireside if you are faint of heart, though from your letters I do not think that is the case.

  I want you to write to me. To tell me what you are reading and even what you are sewing at work. Do you find being indoors all day to be tedious? I would not like it above half, I think.

  I will confide this in you now: You are the only person I am asking to write to me. The others will receive a polite note thanking them but saying that we would not suit. As much as it pains me to be wrong, I suspect that your friend, who is my friend’s wife, is quite clever in this case.

  With interest,

  Lucas Edward Cameron

  Before he sealed the letter, he stepped out and pinched a leaf from a low branch outside his door. The broad raindrop shaped leaf, nearly a heart, spun by its stem between his thumb and forefinger. He slipped it in the letter and added a postscript.

  Here is a leaf from a quaking aspen on my homestead. I thought that you would like it. –Luke

  Chapter 7

  ALBANY, NEW YORK, 1885

  Tess sat with her hands folded, eyes obediently downcast, as Mrs. Winthrop scolded her.

  “You are to take on no more alterations! The few pennies I gain from such jobs are no compensation for the time and productivity it costs me through your dawdling. You coddle these old ladies who haven’t the money to darken the door of the premier modiste in Albany!” Mrs. Winthrop complained, “How could you spend two hours getting the hem on that old ratty dress just right for a woman who had to pay on credit?”

  “Mrs. Ellis was my mother’s teacher years ago. I’ve always had the greatest respect for her, Mrs. Winthrop, and she is a good Christian lady who has fallen on hard times. I wanted to do my best work for her!” Tess protested, speaking up for herself, perhaps for the first time in the six years she’d worked for Mrs. Winthrop.

  “Your handwork is adequate, but this impertinence is intolerable. You may follow my instructions and take in no more alterations, and give me your sincere apologies, or else you may vacate this shop without a character to recommend you,”

  Shocked, Tess felt tears well up in her eyes. After years of faithful service, Mrs. Winthrop would turn her out for speaking honestly in her own defense. She shook her head. She wished so hard that she could tell the woman that she’d no need of her employment, that she was to be a bride in Montana as soon as a train ticket might be procured. Still, she reminded herself that it was presumptuous to think at all of such an extremity, having not even had a reply from Luke Cameron.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Very well. Back to work with you. And you’d do well to remember in future whom is the modiste and who is merely the seamstress,”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tess said, mortified.

  Fortunately, a customer entered the shop, requiring Mrs. Winthrop to assume her stately lady of fashion persona to serve the client and allowing Tess to withdraw to the workroom. She busied herself with the assembly of a dress she’d already cut from the pattern. Her small, even stitches bound and strengthened the garment, and she pressed her lips together miserably. This skill she had honed and prized was now a tedium to her, another source of humiliation.

  It was not bad enough being the eldest, the only unmarried daughter, the plain bashful daughter, dutiful and bowing under the strain. Now, she had to tolerate oppression at work for having the audacity to speak her mind.

  She managed to avoid her employer for the rest of the day due to the frequent appearance of customers. She slipped out the back when her day was through and stopped at the post office through force of habit. There, awaiting
her, on the day she needed reassurance most, was a letter from Billings, Montana, bearing a strong masculine handwriting.

  Pressing the letter to her chest, she shut her eyes in bliss and gratitude. She would not admit the possibility that it could be a polite rejection. It was a thick envelope, containing several sheets of paper…far too lengthy a letter for a simple no-thank-you.

  She slipped into a tea shop and paid a few pence for a cup of tea she didn’t want just to have the relative privacy of reading her letter in a public place immediately instead of under the scrutiny of her mother. Tess unfolded the paper, and a leaf fell into her lap. She touched it reverently, tracing its delicate veining and holding it between her fingers as she read. Tears spilled over and trailed down her cheeks from an excess of joy as she read his letter. She was the only person he was corresponding with. He was choosing her, he was willing to get to know her.

  Tess rushed home and found her mother in the kitchen. Hesitating only a moment, she took her by the hands.

  “Mother, may I speak to you about something?” she ventured.

  Her mother settled herself at the table and Tess put the kettle on for tea.

  “I received a letter from Leah a few weeks ago,”

  “Leah Weaver? You know her mother was a schoolfellow of mine. Dear lady. It was such a shame that she died so young. How is Leah in her new home?”

  “She’s very happy. She answered an advertisement for a bride in Montana; that was how she met her husband. They have a little girl now, you know, Pearl. Leah’s husband has a friend who placed a similar ad, and she told me a bit about him, and asked me to consider writing him.”

  “Did you?” her mother said, a warning in her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am. I wrote to him and was unsure if he would reply because there would be, of course, many young ladies responding to his advertisement.” She paused and blushed at the letter in her hand, “I’ve just received this. I—I’d be glad if you’d read it, and give me your opinion. I know it’s unconventional, to meet someone through an advertisement like this, but he seems a good Christian man, and Leah knows him,”

  Tess handed her mother the letter and laid the leaf on the table. Her mother’s brow furrowed as she frowned at the letter and read it over. Shaking her head, Tess’s mother wiped a tear from her glistening eyes.

  “I was rather counting on you to bear me company, to stay with us,” she said a little mournfully. “It worries me for you to take up with a total stranger, but then, what was Becky’s husband but a stranger who got to know us…it will take time for me to get used to the idea, but you have my leave to write him if you must.”

  “Do you like him then?” Tess asked, eager for approval.

  “He seems a bit gruff in the way he talks about Leah after she helped him, but perhaps I’m too soft on her because she was my friend’s child. Anyhow, he seems sincere enough. Don’t make any hasty decisions and go haring off to Montana Territory though.”

  “Of course not. I want to write to him and get letters from him. My hope is that I’ll go out there in time, and that he’ll marry me. It wouldn’t be fair to you if I said that all I wanted was a pen friend. I’d like—well, I’d like a family of my own,” she said bashfully.

  Her mother patted her hand a little sadly and handed her the letter back. Tess bowed her head, accepting her silent blessing and ran upstairs to pen a letter to Luke.

  Dear Luke,

  If I am to write you, I find I must use your Christian name. I would not call you Mr. Cameron were we to meet in a shop or at church, and my family is not so near to gentility that we always call our close acquaintances by their surnames. I am not Miss Sullivan to you. I am Tess, as I am to my own family and friends and even my employer who is something of a tyrant, I admit. You said you would not like working indoors, and I can tell you from my own experience that it is not the walls that are oppressive and confining, but the woman wielding her authority over one. Only today I was reprimanded for putting up a hem for a woman who had not the funds to purchase a new dress at the shop. I felt very shamed to apologize falsely to my employer in order to keep my place when I am not sorry I helped the poor lady who came to me for sewing since her own eyes have failed.

  I was in a bit of a temper over that incident, but then I received the nicest letter with a brittle leaf inside, and it turned my day on its head. I had to stop and read it instantly, no delay would do, not even the short walk home. So I sat right down and read it, and oh, you cannot fathom how happy I am that we are to write one another, that you have accepted my letters and ask for more!

  Do be kind to Leah, though! She is a dear old thing, loyal and meaning the very best. Do not be cross with her, please. She has done me the greatest favor in bringing my letter to your notice. You might not have taken me so seriously had you not been in a pique with her about interfering! So only think how this might have turned out, with yourself exchanging letters with some pork heiress from Missouri while I slave away in a dress shop, dreaming that you would answer me.

  Tell me about your homestead, please. How many trees are there, and what sort? Does the air smell fresher and clearer with no factory smoke? I imagine that it does. I went to the seaside once as a little child, and I recall the smell and taste of a sort of chilly salt in the air. Is it like that at all? I suppose not as there is no sea nearby, if my geography serves me.

  I have told my mother that I am writing to you. She has reservations about my taking up with an utter stranger, but she is very compassionate about it. I think she knows it is a bit hard to be the only unmarried girl in a family of daughters, though it grieves her to think of my leaving her.

  I know that no mention is made of my coming to Montana, and that it is brash of me to suggest it, but I shall tell you what I said to my mother—it would be unfair for me to let you suppose I wanted only a pen friend. I want a husband and a family of my own. There, I have said it, though I will lie awake wishing it unsaid, wishing I had not been so bold, so tasteless as to state my intentions so baldly to you. But there’s nothing for it—in for a penny, in for a pound. I am quite shy in person, but on paper I am freer, more myself, perhaps, than you would find me if we met.

  I think of that now, if we met. Would we go for a proper walk, setting a slow stately pace through the park and murmuring pleasantries about the weather? Would I tease you until you agreed to try a peach ice as children do? Or would we sit in church, side by side but never making the slightest whisper or glance at one another, awkward and shy? I know myself enough to say with all dreadful honesty that I am likeliest to do the latter…to be quiet as a clam and blush in my painful silence. Would you, I wonder, put me at my ease with a patient smile? I think perhaps you would.

  Do write again.

  So Happily,

  Tess

  She wrote him again a few days later as a surprise.

  Dear Luke,

  You’ll think me silly, but with the mails being so slow, I want you to get a letter from me each week, so I’m writing to you again before I receive your reply. You may expect to receive letters more frequently than each six weeks…the way I’m given to understand, if you send me a letter, it takes about three weeks for me to receive it, and then, if I reply immediately, it is yet another three weeks before you can have a reply in your hand. So if I write more often, just pouring out the things I am thinking or that I wonder about, you’ll have a letter to look forward to each week, as though I am a visitor who turns up on your doorstep, uninvited, just at suppertime, perhaps!

  As I sew all day, it gives me something to occupy my mind, something I might write to you. If I keep a letter going at all times, perhaps a few lines each night, it gives a shape to my day. Today, for instance, I saw the daffodils blooming and thought that I would tell you of them, of their buttery yellow crowns, and ask if anything like them grows where you are.

  There was a chicken pie for dinner, and my sister Becky came with her new husband to dine with us. They were not here on the very
moment of six in the evening so my father, ever punctual, insisted on cutting and serving the pie without them. I had to go heat their slices in the oven and was a bit ashamed of his particularity in this way, but then, Becky did grow up here and she knows how much he stands on ceremony at mealtimes. He cannot bear for anyone to be tardy.

  I have taken a book out on cookery and another on illnesses and injuries, a sort of family health guide that talks of therapies and remedies and such things. I am reading now about snakebite. Are there many snakes where you live? Do not think I am alarmed by them, only curious because I wish to know all I can about your home.

  Did you know that it is suggested to suck the venom out of a snakebite right then with your mouth and spit it? It seems so strange and primitive to me, and rather sordid. I ought not to have mentioned it. I suppose it isn’t polite but only think of pioneers being bitten and having to draw that poison out of someone’s foot with their own mouths—how dreadful!

  Do your sheep stay in a fence all the time? I confess I know nothing of those animals that I didn’t hear in nursery rhymes or the Bible, but I thought they wandered about a great deal and had to be kept together by a boy with a crook. Laugh all you like at that idea, and do inform me about what sheep really do outside of storybooks.

  In addition to the cookery book and the health book, I’m reading a penny dreadful, a Wild West adventure about a band of cowboys. It’s quite sensational, and I feel foolish in asking, but is it really so lawless out there? People running about with guns and robbing banks and things? It’s the worst sort of novel, I know, but I borrowed it from a friend of mine from Bible study class after she finished it. Just now the hero is trying to stop the runaway train since the bandits robbed the cargo and killed the driver. I shall let you know how it ends!