“And?”
“And…well…I was thinking about starting up my own correspondence marriage service.”
He didn’t say anything.
Madeline tilted her head up, studying the way Clay’s jaw clenched. “You’re upset at the idea?”
“I don’t like it. We have the shop. I could use your help with it. Plus, you could be expecting already, or if not, then very soon.”
“I’m not talking about a full-time business. It would just be a little thing on the side. And I wouldn’t do it alone. I know someone out in Boston who could interview the girls from that area, and I could interview the bachelors from around here. She’s a widow, and our church was giving her some assistance—she has two children to care for, and no family to help. She could earn money and still care for her children—it’s perfect!
“As for finding bachelors on my end, there are plenty of men—businessmen, the miners who have been successful, and others up in Great Falls and down in Butte—who would love to have help finding a wife, and would gladly pay for the assistance. Having someone here to ‘weed out the bad seeds’, as you put it, and someone back east to rule out any potential brides who might not make the best wives—why, that would make it very appealing to use our service, I would imagine! And we would be helping people, too.”
Clay’s expression was grim. “I’m not crazy about my wife having a job. People will talk.”
“Really?” She sat up. “Now who’s the prideful one, worried about what people will say? And yet, you’re not afraid to have people see me helping out in the butcher shop, are you? Where I’m sure I won’t get paid.” Madeline arched an eyebrow at Clay.
He cast a sideways glance at her. “Hm. Your mother was right, you do have a way with words. And a talent for debating.”
“Is that a yes?”
He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “That’s a ‘let’s try it, and see how it goes.’ Is that good enough?”
“Sounds good to me.” She grinned and snuggled closer to him, pulling the furs up to her chin.
Epilogue
Helena, Montana. June, 1890.
Two and a half years later.
“Hurry, Clay, the train arrives in twenty minutes!” Madeline removed her apron and waddled out from behind the counter.
“I don’t like this,” he called from the back room of the butcher shop. “You’re six months along. You should be upstairs resting. Not here in the shop, and certainly not riding to the train station in a bumpy wagon.”
“Oh, don’t be a grouch. I rode in a wagon until I was almost eight months along with Grace. And nothing will happen with you driving. You drive like an old man when I’m expecting. I’d be better off with Herman driving me.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult,” Herman muttered from his seat by the coal stove, where he and Buck Ferguson were going at it in a mean game of checkers.
“It’s an insult,” Clay cut in, coming out of the back room with little Grace. “To both of us.”
“Well, at least if Herman drove me, I’d get there in time.” Madeline smoothed her hair, then took eighteen-month-old Grace from her father’s arms.
Clay grabbed his hat and put it on. “Hey, Herman, thanks for watching the shop for us. Jack will be here in twenty minutes, and then you can take off and see that lady-friend of yours.”
Herman’s face lit up. “Agnes is making me lemonade and gingersnaps and fried chicken. We wanted to have a picnic on the ground, just like we would have as young folks, but my back isn’t what it used to be, and neither are her hips. So we’ll have to settle for a bench.”
Herman had been seeing the widow Johnson for the last few months, and it looked like things were getting serious. Two years after her husband had passed, it looked like Agnes Johnson might be ready to move on. And she had a very lovely house, a small home on a street of much larger, more ornate homes. She was quite the catch, by any widower’s standards. But it was the widow’s sweet demeanor and excellent cooking that had Herman so enamored.
Once Herman had someone to fuss over him and make him take better care of himself, his health had improved. He still had a tendency to get sick frequently in the wintertime, but in good weather, he was almost his old self again.
“Well, you enjoy yourself. You deserve it.” Madeline waved to Herman as she and Clay left out the back way. Little Grace mimicked her mother’s gesture with one pudgy hand.
“Let me hold her,” Clay insisted as they walked to the wagon. “You just concentrate on not falling over.”
Madeline shot him an irritated look as she handed Grace to him. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just imply that I’m fat.”
“Not fat! Just…unbalanced.” He held out a hand so she could climb into their wagon. Once she had herself situated, Clay handed Grace up to her, then climbed in beside them. Releasing the wagon’s brake, he signaled Sunny and Tansy to head out. “I still don’t see why I can’t just pick the girl up by myself, and let you welcome her at the butcher shop.”
“Oh, Clay, really. The last thing a woman wants to see when she sets foot in a new territory is a strange man—one who isn’t even her intended husband.” She waved away his ridiculous suggestion.
“You didn’t seem to mind.” He grinned, thinking of the day he’d first seen her alight from the train—the most beautiful and elegant woman he’d ever seen.
“Yes I did!”
“I seem to remember that you told me—after we had married—that the first time you laid eyes on me, you thought I was handsome, and was disappointed to realize I wasn’t your husband.”
Madeline rolled her eyes, and tried not to smile, remembering how his chestnut hair curled up from under his hat that day. “Regardless, I do things this way for a reason. It puts the girl at ease. Then I get her settled in the boardinghouse, show her around town a bit the next day, and introduce her to her new husband that afternoon, in the parlor, in a safe and comfortable setting. It’s far less traumatic this way, and—”
“I know, I know—it makes for a smoother transition. I just think this one time, since you’re expecting…”
Madeline leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You worry about me too much. And I love you for it. But ‘this one time’ is this girl’s only time, and I want it to be a pleasant experience for her, from the moment she sets foot on the platform.”
“Alright. But I don’t have to like it,” he grumbled.
“No, you don’t.” She smiled sweetly, knowing he’d be back to his usual self once she was safely back on firm ground. If he could swaddle her in cotton for the duration of her pregnancy, she suspected he would. She knew it stemmed from his fear that something would happen to her, the way it happened to his first wife when she was expecting. Madeline had learned to tolerate it, and humored him when she could.
They arrived a few minutes before the train whooshed into the station, and Grace gurgled and called “tain, tain!” as the train squealed to a stop in front of them. Clay wouldn’t let her or Grace up off the bench until the train was standing still and the passengers began to alight from the locomotive.
“You have her photograph with you?” he asked as they approached the train, looking down the line to see which car the girl would alight from.
“I don’t need it. There she is.”
A petite girl with brown hair and green eyes stepped down from a passenger car to their left. In her hands she clutched a small carpet bag as she glanced around nervously.
“Lilly!” Madeline called.
Relief flooded the girl’s face as Madeline made her way forward, wending through the debarking passengers and those who waited to greet them.
“Welcome to Montana!” Madeline said, with a smile.
###
If you enjoyed Mail Order Regrets, read on for an excerpt of Mail Order Promises, Julianna Blake’s second book in the Montana Mail Order Brides series, coming in late November 2013…
P
arker Hill area, Boston, Massachusetts
March, 1890
Pain seared her skin as the picket tops raked Lilly’s legs. She struggled to gather her ripped skirt and petticoat as she straddled the white picket fence, trying to get her left foot on the ground on the far side of the fence. Her torn pantaloons offered little protection against the rough picket fence, leaving her calves unprotected. Even her wool stockings sagged to her ankles.
At last, she teetered over the fence, scraping her legs even more as she fell. She held back a groan of pain. Her body ached in so many places—not only from the fall, but from the blows rained down upon her only minutes before.
Has it only been minutes? It had felt like hours as she ran for her life. Time had slowed for her, and her every sense was on full alert for his footsteps behind, closing in. But she had outrun him at last…or he had given up.
At least, she thought he had. She hoped he had.
Lilly looked up at the house, cringing as she waited to see if anyone in the house had heard. I should have just used the gate. What was I thinking?
She wasn’t thinking. Not clearly, anyway. She’d worried that the unbearably loud squeak of the gate—which her mother constantly nagged her father to remedy—would alert her parents to her arrival, so she’d chosen to climb over instead. She hadn’t hopped the garden fence since she was a child—before she had to wear a corset—and apparently it wasn’t a skill that could go unpracticed.
The noise she’d made as she fell to the soggy ground seemed deafening in her ears, but she stilled—for the briefest of moments—and listened, and heard only the noise of a carriage on some street in the distance, and the infrequent yap of a neighbor’s dog a few houses down.
Picking up her skirts, she rushed across the lawn, her boots swishing across the new grass that poked through the melting slush. She avoided the flagstone path, and tip-toed up the steps to the back door. Fortunately, her father maintained the house doors better, and she opened the door silently, slipping into the house.
She heard her mother and father speaking quietly in the parlor. In her mind’s eye she could see her father sitting in his wing chair, trying to read in the dim light provided by the lamps and crackling fire. Her mother would be sitting beside him, knitting. They had no idea what had happened to their oldest daughter as they chatted amiably in the cozy parlor and waited.
They were waiting for her, as they always did.
She turned and carefully locked the back door behind her, the snick of the lock sounding loud in the dark, silent kitchen. She heaved a sigh of relief that threatened to turn into a hysterical sob, until she managed to choke it back.
The tears drying on her cheeks were joined by a fresh stream as her vision blurred. She blinked the tears back and prayed her brother and sister had already gone to their rooms for the night. Making her way through the kitchen to the back steps, she crept upstairs slowly, avoiding the places where she knew the wood might creak.
She was home. She was safe.
She had no idea her ordeal was not yet over.
-An excerpt from Mail Order Promises, by Julianna Blake. All rights reserved. Available now. Also, watch for Book 3, coming in December 2013!
About the Author:
Julianna Blake is a historical romance author who was born in the wrong century, and enjoys creating worlds where she (and her readers) can walk around in a lovely silk day dress and feel right at home!
To see all the Julianna Blake books available on Amazon.com, see Amazon’s Julianna Blake page.
For a complete list of Julianna Blake’s stories and notices of upcoming releases, check out her blog at:
www.JuliannaBlakeAuthor.blogspot.com
email: [email protected]
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