His Unexpected Mail-Order Bride (Historical Sapphire Springs Book 1)

by Angie Campbell

  “Oh, sorry,” she said with a shake of her head. “He is here, or will be momentarily. He just went to the post office to send off a letter. We have a young niece coming in to visit with our Dawn. Well, I say young. She’s seventeen. Anyway, he should be getting back any second, now.”

  Just then, the man in question came around the end of the counter. “Hello, boys. In town for your brother’s wedding? I don’t think of ever seen a wedding on Saint Patrick’s Day before. The church is already filling up. I’m betting most of the town will be there,” Mr. Slatter chuckled. “I’m planning on being there myself. My guess is, most of the town want to see if he’ll really go through with it. I know for one, Jeremiah Miller said he’d be willing to marry her if your brother backs out.”

  “Better him than that no account, Michael Bayheart,” Mrs. Slatter said with a sniff. “He was sniffing around her skirts when she first got off the stage. Your brother got to her just in time, before any tongues could start to wagging.”

  “Now, Annie, don’t get started talking about that man,” Mr. Slatter huffed. “I’ve never seen him take advantage of the uninformed.”

  “He’s ruined more than one reputation,” she said, giving her husband a dirty look.

  “Well, the young ladies in question knew beforehand he wasn’t likely to marry them when they threw themselves at him. Apparently, he had already turned them both down, more than once. They also should have known their fathers weren’t likely to confront him. The only ones around these parts faster with a gun, is Tobias, and the sheriff’s son, Johnathan.”

  “Well, he should have been the one to leave town, not those girls and their families.”

  “Alright, Woman, that’s enough,” Mr. Slatter snapped. “This is to be a happy day. No more ranting. Now, what can I do for you boys?” Mr. Slatter asked, effectively dismissing his wife by turning his back on her, and missing the dirty look on her face. Cade figured the older man would get an ear full later, even though he agreed with him where Michael Bayheart was concerned. The man never went after innocent women. Unless they did the chasing, he didn’t interact with them at all. At least, not anymore. Before, he would only talk to them with a chaperon present. How anyone had ever believed that mess over those two girls, he would never understand.

  Cade grimaced with a shake of his head. “We need you to introduce these three to Tobias’s bride. They’re going to escort her to the church. Zach and I are going to wait down here to make sure Tobias makes it to the church on time.”

  “Does Tobias know you planned all this?” Mr. Slatter asked, giving Cade a huge grin.

  “Well, no, as a matter-of-fact, he doesn’t,” Cade grinned back. “We want to make sure he doesn’t chicken out. After his past experience, he’s still a little nervous.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Mr. Slatter said with a nod of his head, walking back around the counter. “Come on then. Follow me. I’ll introduce you to the young lady.”

  Ezekiel, Josiah and Thaddeus followed after the older man, while Cade and Zach turned back toward the doors, to stand guard. The four came to an immediate halt when Mr. Slatter reached the first door on the left, and stopped to knock.

  The door opened just a crack, and all they could see at first was one bright blue eye and a delicate, pale cheek.

  “Yes?” a soft, feminine voice asked.

  “Miss Johnson, do you remember meeting me yesterday? I’m Mr. Slatter. I own the hotel.”

  They heard her breathe a sigh of relief as the door came the rest of the way open to reveal a tiny woman, dressed in a white dress, trimmed with green ribbon. Well, she was tiny compared to the men standing before her. “Yes, of course. Sorry about that. I was expecting Mr. Townsend. When it was someone else, it made me nervous. I really hate traveling alone.” She glanced past his shoulder with a curious look.

  “Well, that’s understandable for a young lady, like yourself,” he said, giving her a reassuring smile. “These young men here are some of your intended’s younger brothers.”

  “Some of his younger brothers?” she asked, her eyebrows shooting up into her hairline.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Thaddeus whispered, staring at the floor, a blush staining his cheeks. “We have three other brothers. Cade and Zach are down there, waiting for Tobias. Wally’s already at the church with some of the ladies from town, getting it ready. We’re here to escort you to the wedding.”

  She gave him a soft smile, reaching over to lay her hand on his shoulder. “I think that sounds like a wonderful idea. I really appreciate that. What’s all your names?” she asked, looking over to the one who had to be the oldest of the three.

  Ezekiel grinned at her and laid his own hand on Thaddeus’s other shoulder. “The shy one here is Thad, short for Thaddeus. The big, quiet brute behind me is Josiah, but be warned, both Cade and Zach are bigger than he is. We sent them with Tobias in hopes of making you less nervous.”

  “You can call me Joe if you like, Ma’am. My brothers do,” the young man in the back said, stepping forward to take her small hand in both of his larger ones. “Wow, you really are small.”

  Sadie gave a soft laugh. “Well, I never really thought so, myself. Please, call me Sadie. We’ll all be family before the day is out.”

  “Yes, Ma’am... I mean, Sadie,” he said, taking a step back.

  She grinned, then looked back at the one she had yet learned the name of. “So, that leaves just you.”

  “What? I’m sorry,” Ezekiel said, looking confused.

  She gave another soft laugh. “Your name?”

  “Oh, sorry. I’m Ezekiel,” he answered, grinning at her.

  “So, why are you all escorting me?” she asked, starting to sound a little nervous. “I thought Tobias planned to come and get me himself.”

  “Well, he did plan to, but we stepped in,” Ezekiel answered, giving her a concerned look.

  “Oh. Why, do you not like me?” she asked, blushing crimson.

  “We like you, just fine, Sadie,” he said, trying to use a reassuring tone.

  Giving him a confused look, she asked, “Then why did you want to step in?”

  “Well,” Ezekiel said, giving her a big grin, “while this is not the typical set of circumstances for a wedding to take place, we wanted it to be as traditional as possible.”

  “Traditional?” she asked, still sounding confused.

  “Yes, Ma’am. The groom must not see the bride before the wedding,” Thad said, still staring at the floor.

  “Oh,” she smiled shyly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Noting how uncertain of herself she still sounded, Ezekiel gave her a reassuring smile. “We’re all really happy our brother is marrying you.”

  “Oh,” she said on a breath. “I was afraid maybe you were here to stop the wedding.”

  “No, Ma’am,” Thaddeus said, finally looking up at her. “It’s the best idea he’s ever had, and you sure are pretty,” he said, causing himself to blush. In spite of his obvious embarrassment, he managed to finish with, “We definitely want him to marry you.”

  “Thank you, so much. I’m really happy to hear that,” she said, barely holding back the tears. She hadn’t known what to expect when she got to Sapphire Springs. Seeing that her future husband’s family was more than ready to accept her into the fold, filled her with a very strong emotion she couldn’t quite name right then.

  “You look really pretty in your wedding dress,” Josiah added with a huge grin. “Did you use green ribbon because you hoped to get married on Saint Patty’s Day?”

  “Well, I thought I was going to be married as soon as I got here,” she answered shyly. “I knew it would be somewhere around the holiday. I’m hoping, getting married today is a sign of good things to come.”

  He nodded his head in response. “I’m sure it will be.”

  Ezekiel cleared his throat to bring her attention back to him. “Speaking of making your wedding more traditional, Thad had something he wanted to ask you.” He ga
ve his little brother a gentle push forward, looking down to nod his head at the teenage boy.

  Thaddeus gulped, turning red once again. “Miss Johnson, will you allow me to walk you down the aisle? With the absence of your father, you would be walking on your own, and that doesn’t seem right to me. We all decided that I get to walk you down the aisle, if you’ll let me.”

  “I think that would be a wonderful idea,” she answered, nearly crying again. She had never gotten around to explaining to Tobias in her letters why she was willing to travel so far and be a mail-order bride. Even if he had told them what he did know of her, they would have no way of knowing her father had died two years ago. Her mother had urged her to find a suitable husband because they were quickly running out of funds to support themselves with. She wasn’t sure how much longer her mother would be able to live on what she had left, but she knew it wasn’t nearly long enough.

  *******

  By the time Tobias reached the hotel that morning, it was already close to noon. He was worried he might miss the stagecoach that would take Sadie back to Saint Louis, where she could take a train back east. The stagecoach came into town once a week, and left out the next day. Sapphire Springs was far enough off the beaten path, they were lucky they had a stagecoach come through even that often. If he missed today’s coach, it would be another week before he had a chance to send her back home. That was something he couldn’t allow to happen if he wanted to protect Sadie from the likes of Michael Bayheart.

  He had arrived in town to the reminder that today was Saint Patrick’s Day. Between the headache he had and all the green, he felt like he was seeing giant, floating shamrocks in the air. Any other time, he would be enjoying the holiday with everyone else, but right now, he was just sick of all the green. He shook his head, wondering why he felt a need to vomit. Maybe it wasn’t the green at all and he was just sick.

  Due to his over sleeping, and the headache he woke up with, he was already in a foul mood by the time he reached the hotel lobby. Finding both Cade and Zach there, waiting on him, didn’t help his disposition one bit.

  “What are you two doing here?” he growled, giving them both a dirty look before trying to push past them.

  “Saving you from yourself,” Cade said, grabbing him under one arm as Zach did the same on the other side. Tobias wasn’t a small man by anyone’s standards. Still, at six feet three inches, he was a few inches shorter than both of his younger brothers. While Cade, at six and a half feet tall was probably done growing at twenty-five, Zach wouldn’t even be twenty until October of this year. At six five already, there was no telling how tall he would get before he was done growing.

  Needless to say, they had his feet dangling inches from the ground. Even if he thought he could get the better of them both at the same time, which he knew better than to even contemplate the idea, he had no way of breaking free in this position to even try.

  They immediately turned back toward the door, Tobias hanging between them. They both nodded their heads at the Slatters, who stood behind the check-in counter. Mr. Slatter just chuckled and shook his head at them. Mrs. Slatter smiled and waved, wishing him good luck. They both seemed to be acting like this was a perfectly normal occurrence, and it was obvious he wasn’t going to get any help from either one of them.

  “You two idiots,” he growled. “Put me down. I’m supposed to meet Miss Johnson.”

  “We know, but we’re not letting you send her back east,” Zach said, opening the door with his free hand so they could step outside.

  “Why else do you think I spent an entire dinner, spiking your sweet tea with just a little bit of whiskey?” Cade chuckled.

  “Yeah. Lucky for us, it doesn’t take much whiskey to put you out all night, and make you sleep like the dead.”

  “I wondered why the tea was so sweet last night,” he grumbled. “It tasted like you had used a whole year’s worth of sugar in that stuff, and I felt like I was waking up from a yearlong nap.”

  “Yeah, I might have got a little enthusiastic toward the end of the night. Sorry about that,” Cade said, not sounding at all contrite.

  “That certainly would explain my headache and the floating shamrocks,” he grumbled under his breath, but apparently not under enough.

  “Floating shamrocks?” Cade chuckled, nearly losing his grip for a second. A second, Tobias failed to take advantage of, making his mood even more sour.

  He snarled at his brother, choosing to ignore his comment on the floating shamrocks. “I don’t see how this is going to work if I don’t show up to escort her from the hotel,” Tobias reasoned, grasping at straws. He knew his brothers well enough to know they had prepared ahead of time.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” his aggravating brother grinned. “We have that covered. Ezekiel, Josiah and Thaddeus are here to escort her to the church.”

  “I had wondered why there wasn’t anyone at the house when I woke up. I just figured as late in the day as it already was, you were all out working on the ranch. I foolishly thought there was no way you could attempt to force me to marry her. I should have known none of you would let this drop without more of a fight,” he grumbled to himself, wondering how he let himself be fooled so easily.

  “We have to hurry and get you to the church,” Zach urged. “The others will be right behind us. Thaddeus was watching from upstairs to see when you showed up.”

  “That might not work. She’s never met them,” he tried again, mentally crossing his fingers. He struggled between them, trying to see if he could get at least one of them to lose their grip, but without any luck. They didn’t even seem to notice as they made their way down the dusty boardwalk, toward the church. Not really surprising, since both of them had spent most of their lives wrestling with cattle and horses in one way or another. The type of work they all did for a living tended to make the body strong.

  They got a few strange looks, and more than one person stopped to stare. He was even sure he heard more than one burst of laughter, but no one bothered to ask what was going on. He was starting to think the whole town had gone daft.

  “Already taken care of,” the two said together. “We all came in early to town, so they could meet her,” Cade continued. “Old Man Slatter introduced them to her. We remembered you saying she met him yesterday while you were checking her in at the hotel.”

  “The pastor might not have time for a wedding today. I noticed there was a big crowd at the church,” he added, praying that crowd wasn’t there for his wedding.

  “Pastor Winters is waiting at the church for you,” Cade said with a grin. “That crowd is there to see you and Miss Sadie get married. So, stop trying to wiggle your way out of this. Your goose is cooked.”

  “It’s already Miss Sadie, to you?” he snarled, glaring at Cade.

  “I’m practicing. I don’t want to call her Mrs. Townsend after you two are married,” he chuckled. “She’ll be my sister-in-law after all.”

  He shook his head, feeling the panic rise up his throat. “Are you sure the preacher is at the church?” he asked out of desperation.

  “Yeah, he’s waiting with Wally, along with half the town,” Zach said, barely stifling a laugh.

  He gave them both a belligerent glare, and huffed. “Don’t think having half the town there will stop me from putting her back on that stagecoach.”

  “That’s exactly what we think. No matter what, you would never embarrass an innocent young woman like that,” Cade answered back.

  “Besides, the stagecoach is already gone today,” Ezekiel added. “It left early, because everyone who was schedule to leave out on it had already made it to the stagecoach office and were waiting to leave by eleven o’clock.”

  Tobias huffed, ignoring Ezekiel to address Cade. “I’m not the one to blame for her eventual embarrassment.”

  “Do you really think that’s going to matter? The damage will still have been done.”

  “I’m going to strangle both of you for this.”

  “I
f you fight one of us, you’re going to have to fight all of us. Even Wally,” Cade stated with very forceful certainty.

  In no time at all, they had made it all the way down Main Street to where the church sat. He could tell by all the noise coming out of the open doors, the church was already full to bursting. Unfortunately for him, his brothers were right. He would never embarrass Sadie by rejecting her in front of all these people. He had been through something of the sort himself a couple years earlier. Unless he found a way out of this situation soon, which didn’t seem likely, he would be getting married within the hour.

  When Tobias walked in through the doors at the back of the church, what he saw almost stopped him dead in his tracks. Between all the people and the green from the decorations that had obviously been moved to the church for his wedding, he was feeling even more like vomiting than before. “I didn’t realize we knew this many people,” he whispered to Cade.

  “Well, apparently we do,” Cade whispered back.

  “Even if that’s true,” he grumbled, “I would think a wedding in the middle of the day would be a big inconvenience for over half of these people.”

  “It probably is. I think most of them are betting you won’t go through with it. They don’t realize their being here is what will ensure you do go through with it.”

  “I didn’t ask for a mail-order bride,” he snarled. “You all know why I don’t want to get married.”

  “Tobias, you have to let go of the past, at some point,” Cade said with a shake of his head.

  “No, I don’t,” he snarled back.

  “Well, the rest of us are praying Miss Sadie can change your heart on the matter. This is probably your last chance at happiness.”

  “I am happy. With the way things are.”

  “No, you’re not, and the rest of us aren’t going to be able to move on with our own lives until we feel like you are more settled. I’d like to get married soon, myself. Heather will be twenty in another year and a half. Her father has already given me permission to marry her.”

  “I didn’t realize you were planning on marrying so soon.”