Mail Order Bride: JUMBO Mail Order Bride 20 Book Box Set

by Hope Sinclair

  A few passengers away, a woman sat, holding her child. The young girl looked to be around 7 or 8 years old—the same age as Edgar—and she clung to her woman desperately, making tiny animal-like noises.

  “Ah,” Mary Ann said, still smiling, “your daughter doesn’t take to travel well, does she?” She meant her question to be comforting and kind.

  “It’s not that,” the mother replied, rocking the little girl. She looked down at the small child, then looked to Mary Ann.

  “She’s haunted,” the mother added.

  Mary Ann recoiled a bit. As a Christian woman, she did not believe in ghosts of spirits other than the Holy Spirit, and she was immediately skeptical of the woman before her.

  “No, no,” the mother replied, shaking her head and leaning forward. “I do not mean to say that she is haunted by specters. She is haunted by memories. She was in a house that was set on fire and pillaged during the war. Her aunt, uncle, and three cousins died in the fire, as did her father, my late husband.”

  The mother ran her hands through her daughter’s hair and nestled closer to her. “She was the only survivor,” she said, sniffling back a tear.

  “Oh, how tragic,” Mary Ann muttered, fighting her own impulse to cry. “I am sorry for your loss, and for all that your daughter was forced to witness.”

  Mary Ann felt great empathy for the child and could completely understand how what she had experienced had gone on to haunt her. After all, she too was haunted by what she’d experienced during the war.

  “She hasn’t said a word since that night,” the mother went on, glossing over Mary Ann’s sentiment. “And she keeps having nightmares about what happened—both while she is asleep and during waking hours.”

  The mother rocked her child again, then continued. “I’ve learned how to ease her through her fits over these past several months,” she said. “But, I’ve been able to do little else, all things considered… which is how, and why, we ended up on this covered wagon.”

  Over the next few hours, the two women talked at great length and shared their personal stories. The mother explained that she and her daughter had become impoverished after the fire that killed her spouse, and that she was unable to maintain any type of domestic employment, or find a suitable husband in her Midwest hometown, because she served as caregiver to her troubled child. She explained that she turned to matrimonial advertisements to find a man who needed her as much as she needed him. She’d found one, who, at that very moment, was waiting for her, and her daughter, Isabella, in Bright Valley.

  Mary Ann had only heard about mail-order bride arrangements in passing and rumor, but had never known anyone who participated in it. She was fascinated by all she learned from the mother, whose name was Gretchen. In fact, what Gretchen told her sounded rather promising, and it left Mary Ann wishing she hadn’t been so hasty and accepted a job offer before exploring the other offers out there, such as offers for marriage.

  But, as it turns out, whatever regret or jealousy Mary Ann felt was instantly dispelled when the covered wagon reached the outskirts of Bright Valley. The man who was there to meet Gretchen looked nothing like the man Gretchen had expected to meet; he was nothing like he’d described in his letters. He was short, bald, and rotund, and had yellow, blood-shot eyes and several carbuncles on his face.

  As Gretchen and Isabella collected their belongings and prepared to leave with the man, Mary Ann wished them the best of luck, health, and happiness in all of their future endeavors. Gretchen smiled and wished the same to her new friend, though Isabella remained indifferent and uninterested.

  It was then that Mary Ann remembered something. She set her belongings down on the ground, bent over, and rifled through her satchel. She pulled something out, and, as she did, Isabella’s eyes widened and a smile flashed across her face.

  “I have no need for this,” Mary Ann said, holding out the ragdoll Edgar had given her. “Perhaps you would like it, Isabella?”

  The young girl looked up at her mother, who nodded affirmatively. Then, she reached out and took the doll from Mary Ann, cradling it as her mother had cradled her.

  “Thank you,” Gretchen whispered before heading off to her husband-to-be’s carriage. Mary Ann watched as mother and child walked toward their future, and, then, she turned to confront her own.

  FOUR

  “You really thought I was going to fall, for such foolishness?! A mail order nanny for Simon! Please do not insult my intelligence!”

  “Fine, I should have consulted you, but I know this woman, she will be perfect for you. She is very experienced.”

  “I don’t care who she is or what type of experience she has,” Jack Montgomery called out from behind the locked door of his bedroom. “I don’t need a nurse—especially not one that you picked out for me. I don’t have a stomach for sour pudding, and I surely don’t have the money to buy new clothing.”

  “You mind your manners, you bitter old goat,” Julia shouted back at her brother through the wood that, among other things, separated them. “Stop bringing up the past, and accept the truth about yourself and your current circumstances. You are in need of a nurse if you are to recover. I have found you one—and, she’s expected to arrive here any moment. So, I’ll tell you again, brother—mind your manners.”

  “I don’t want to mind my manners!” Jack retorted, pounding his fist against the door.

  “And I don’t care to recover,” he added under his breath as he walked out of his sister’s earshot.

  Jack lay himself down on his bed and buried his head in his pillow, trying to drown out the noise. The sack of down feathers muted the sound of his sister’s voice, but it did little to quiet the other voice he heard—the one that was screaming and crying in his head, the voice of a dying woman begging for help, release, and mercy.

  Jack closed his eyes and squeezed them tight, hoping to silence the voice that way. But, his efforts only made this worse. With his eyes closed, he not only heard the woman’s cries, but saw her face as well. He saw her dark blue eyes and soft, pink lips; her rosy cheeks, silky brown hair. He saw red, orange, and—

  “I won’t have any nurse in this house,” Jack shouted, jumping up from his bed and running to the door again. “I won’t allow her to treat me. I’ll stay locked up in this room and won’t even let her see me.” He’d decided to ignore the nurse’s impending arrival the same way he’d decided to ignore his memories, but ignorance, alone, wasn’t enough to stop either.

  “Like it or not, Mary Ann Grace will serve as your nurse,” Julie said sternly, speaking in a voice that sounded like she was scolding her older brother. “She has traveled all the way from Pennsylvania to tend to you, and the Clarks have already gone to the outpost to fetch her. It’s too late to turn back now, now that all the arrangements have been made—and paid for.

  The Clarks—Mr. and Mrs. Clark—were Jack’s nearest neighbors. Julia had arranged, and paid for, Mary Ann to stay with them, since staying with Jack, as an unmarried woman with an unmarried man, was unthinkable and unheard of. By way of the arrangement, she would stay in the Clarks’ spare room and would come and go to Jack’s homestead daily.

  Since the Clarks were to serve as Mary Ann’s host family, they agreed to fetch her from the outpost where the covered wagon dropped its passengers. And, indeed, as Julia butted heads with her pigheaded brother, the Clarks did precisely as they’d agreed to do. Based on Julia’s description of Mary Ann, they located her at the outpost within seconds of her parting with Gretchen and Isabella, and the swiftly introduced themselves to her and welcomed her to Bright Valley.

  “You’ll find our settlement to be a lovely, welcoming place,” Mrs. Clark remarked, eying Mary Ann’s limited luggage. Mr. Clark laughed and said something under his breath, which caused Mary Ann to look at him inquisitively.

  “Pay him no mind,” Mrs. Clark instructed. “He has only ill things to say about your patient at this time. They recently exchanged harsh words over an incident involving Jack�
��s dog and our chickens.”

  “An incident?” Mr. Clark interrupted, raising his bushy eyebrows. “I sure don’t call it an ‘incident.’ That mangy mutt scared two of our hens senseless. Neither one of ‘em has laid a single egg since that mutt came ‘round barking his head off.”

  “The hens were old,” Mrs. Clark replied with a chuckle. “And what they lacked in egg-bearing, they more than made up for when we boiled them for five days of supper.”

  “Still,” the old man said, setting Mary Ann’s suitcase into the carriage, “Jack should’ve kept better watch on his mutt. He don’t care about nobody but himself, I tell ya.’”

  Mrs. Clark rolled her eyes at her husband and stepped aboard the carriage, then gestured for Mary Ann to sit beside her. “Your patient is a little self-centered and self-serving,” she told Mary Ann. “But, then again, the same can be said of many man—including my husband.”

  Mr. Clark took his turn to roll his eyes at his wife before boarding the carriage as well. Once aboard, he took hold of the reins and set the horses to motion, and Mrs. Clark turned to Mary Ann and began chattering incessantly about Bright Valley, its history, and its people.

  Mary Ann tried to pay attention to her host matron as best she could, but, again, she was captivated by her surroundings—only this time, she got to see them full-on and in the daylight, not through a thin slit in thick fabric. There was no way she could absorb everything Mrs. Clark was saying as she watched Bright Valley’s landscape unfold around her. The sights were too novel and beautiful, and, as much as she was entranced by them, she revered them.

  Mary Ann did hear bits and pieces of Mrs. Clark’s soliloquy, however. She gleaned information on where the church, the sheriff’s station, the bank and other settlement staples were located as she passed them. She also took note of a few of her warnings, such as those to stay clear of the tavern, for obvious reasons, and to always be mindful of her possessions when out in public, as a string of thieveries had recently plagued the area.

  “The baker lives over there,” Mrs. Clark pointed out as the carriage progressed further away from the heart of Bright Valley and began passing the homesteads of its inhabitants.

  “He was there at the outpost, earlier, when our covered wagon arrived. He was meeting his bride-to-be and her young, feeble daughter.”

  Mary Ann frowned at the words Mrs. Clark used. Having interacted with Isabella, herself, Mary Ann certainly didn’t consider the child “feeble,” and was greatly saddened that others could, and would, see her that way, when, at the bottom line, she suffered from something no different than that from which Mary Ann suffered.

  “And, up that way, over there—that’s where the preacher and his wife live,” Mrs. Clark noted as the carriage approached another homestead. “They’re real kindhearted, helpful people, and Bright Valley sure is blessed to have them here to guide us.”

  Mary Ann smiled and nodded and examined the details of the scenery before her. The dirt road on which they were traveling was flat and wide, and it yielded to expansive properties, set miles apart from each other. Those properties were mostly toiled down to dirt, but strips of grass and vegetation occasionally cut through them, as did clusters of farm and field animals.

  “Our homestead is just down this way,” Mrs. Clark said when the carriage came to a fork in the road. Mr. Clark didn’t even need to steer the horses. They automatically veered to the left, obviously out of habit.

  “There it is,” the older woman indicated a few minutes later. She pointed to her left, and Mary Ann looked in that direction, expecting the horses to start moving toward the Clarks’ homestead. But, instead, they kept moving straight, straight past it.

  “We’re not going back to our home yet,” Mrs. Clark explained, sensing Mary Ann’s confusion. “We’re taking you to meet your patient first. Jack Montgomery’s homestead is just a short while from ours, and Julia told me he’d be expecting us.”

  Mary Ann smiled and nodded again, but this time she did so purely out of politeness. Though she was eager to meet her new charge and reunite with her old friend, in her heart of hearts, above all else, all she really wanted to do was rest, freshen up, and eat something. She’d been traveling for weeks, after all, and she desperately craved some time to herself, to care for her own needs, before she began her post caring for another. Especially as she was arriving under false pretense.

  “Very well,” Mary Ann said graciously, leaning forward to scope out Jack Montgomery’s homestead as it came into view in the distance. She bit her tongue, and then her lip, and silently prepared herself for what was to come next—though what came next was nothing at all like she expected.

  FIVE

  “He’s sleeping,” Julia yelled out from the porch as Mary Ann stepped down off of the carriage. Mr. and Mrs. Clark began to their descent as well, just as Julia rose from the wooden bench on which she’d been sitting.

  Mary Ann didn’t own a timepiece. But, judging from the clock she’d seen at the outpost, the length of time she’d spent on the Clarks’ carriage, and the position of the sun in the sky, she figured it had to be around midafternoon—perhaps 2:00, 2:30, or thereabouts. She was surprised that a 31-year-old man, even a sick one, would be sleeping at such an hour.

  But as surprised as Mary Ann was by her patient’s sleep schedule, she was even more surprised by her friend’s lackluster greeting. The two women hadn’t been in each other’s presence since Mary Ann left her wartime post nearly a year ago, and Mary Ann had traveled all the way across the country, at Julia’s request, to provided much-needed care for Julia’s brother. Yet, Julia seemed unsentimental, unappreciative, and somewhat cold now that they were together, and the “greeting” she offered was a simple statement that pertained only to the patient.

  “Did the two of you have at it again?” Mr. Clark asked, tipping his hat to Julia.

  “Please, Mr. Clark,” Julia replied, smiling sweetly at the older man, “don’t scare off my brother’s new nurse by reminding us all what a goat my brother can be.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ then,” Mr. Clark chimed back with a grin. “What was it this time? Did ya’ leave the kettle on the fire too long and scorch his tea leaves?”

  Mrs. Clark threw her husband a disparaging look, then Julia intervened with her answer.

  “It was nothing like that,” she said, shaking her head. “And, it was nothing of any importance. But, no doubt, it was enough to rile Jack, and it gave way to one of his headaches. I fixed him a tonic and covered the windows in his room. He laid down to recover and ended up falling asleep—and, I decided it was best not to rouse him.”

  “A wise decision if ever there was one,” Mr. Clark chuckled, taking a seat on the bench Julia had occupied a moment earlier.

  “Carl Clark!” Mrs. Clark hollered, walking over to join him. She gave him a solemn look that was more considerate than judgmental. It was a look that communicated more than words could say, and it spoke volumes about the relationship between them.

  “My apologies, Mary Ann,” Julia said as the older couple walked past her. “My mind is still scattered from arguing with my brother earlier. So, please forgive me—for how flustered I am, and for having been so quick with you.”

  Julia leaned forward and hugged Mary Ann. “I’m very happy to see you again, my friend,” Julia said, patting Mary Ann on the shoulder. “I pray your travels went well and have not worn you too thin.”

  “I’m fine,” Mary Ann replied as she eased back from Julia’s embrace. “A bit tired, hungry, and in need of a basin, but, nonetheless, fine.”

  Julia laughed at Mary Ann’s pleasantly sarcastic comment. “Come then,” she said, smiling as she turned toward the door and gestured for Mary Ann to follow. “Let’s go inside. You can sit back and rest, and I’ll muster us up something to eat.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Mary Ann answered as she trailed behind Julia.

  Once the young women were inside, Julia showed Mary Ann to the table, and Mary A
nn sat down at it while Julia retrieved two bowls and spoons from the cupboard. She went over to the stove, on top of which a pot was already sitting, and ladled what appeared to be a stew of some sort into each of the two bowls.

  “It’s parsnip stew,” she said, placing one of the bowls in front of Mary Ann and one in front of her chair. “Parsnips, potatoes, and meat—it should definitely calm your hunger.”

  Mary Ann looked down at the bowl of hearty food, and, instantly, her mouth watered. It was a fuller meal than she’d seen in a long time. Yet, something was missing, and she eyed the table and open cupboard to try and find it.

  Julia smiled and shook her head drily. “If you’re looking for bread, you won’t find it here,” she said with a sneer. “My brother refuses to eat what the town baker bakes. He said his breads are too dense, dry, and heavy, and they remind him too much of his wartime rations.

  “If you ask me though, I’d say he’s just spoiled. We grew up on our grandmother’s biscuits. She was an Irish immigrant, and, when it came to baking, no American could match her.”

  Mary Ann minded her manners and waited until Julia lifted her spoon to lift hers. As soon as Julia had her spoon in hand, Mary Ann dipped hers into her bowl and began eating. The stew was warm and flavorful, and it comforted Mary Ann in many ways.

  “So your brother is a picky eater then?” Mary Ann asked between mouthfuls.

  “He can be,” Julia replied, fidgeting with her spoon in her bowl. “As I’ve told you, he’s stubborn. He likes things his way.

  Though Mary Ann was still very hungry, she set her spoon down inside her bowl, and a look of genuine concern filled her face. “But, I am unfamiliar with ‘his way,’” she said sadly. “How can I—”