Mail Order Brides Collection Boxed Set: Felicity, Frank, Verity and Jessica, Books 3-6 (Montana Mail Order Brides Series)

by Rose Jenster

  Dear Mr. Lane,

  Do read this letter first as I’m writing them in order.

  I feel I must address the oddness of my request that we send one another multiple letters at once. The reasons are practical and simple. First, the mails are so slow that it may take between weeks for a single letter to reach you once mailed. So you will get more information about me, a clearer impression of my personality all at once with more than one letter being sent to you.

  Secondly, you will be able to know at once whether you like me well enough to go on or not, instead of having to spend four or five months politely exchanging letters with careful questions in them to get the idea of whether we may like each other or not.

  Thirdly, and most pressingly to me, my own situation is such that, unless I wish to find myself in England and engaged to someone chosen by my mother’s relations, I have to act quickly.

  Forgive my urgency and my lecturing you as I have, but I have got myself into a bit of a mishap. I won’t say ‘trouble’ exactly, because it is too minor to be called real trouble. I would rather tell you the details in person if we meet so you may judge my sincerity by my looks and voice as well as my words. If I were to tell you all in this first letter, you would have no way of knowing if I wrote the truth or if I were only trying to defend myself.

  Know that I did something rather foolish, which I should not have done, and that it was not in violation of any of our Lord’s commandments, unless it be the fourth about honoring one’s parents which I’m a failure at about half the time. I’m strong-willed, and I must cultivate humility. My worst fault is that I act as if I know best. Arrogance, I believe, is the name of my besetting sin. So if it does not scare you too terribly to think of it, there it is in truth.

  I’m sure I’ve distressed you with the way I began this letter. I ought to have started by saying something pretty like the fact that I have brown hair and I always received high marks in school, especially in literature. But, I'm not very good in dancing or anything requiring grace.

  I am twenty years old. I have one sister who is younger than me and she is engaged to be married. Do you have brothers and sisters? I hope you will let me know about your family when you write. I take for granted, you see, that you will write to me at all after you read this atrocity of a letter that was not designed to frighten you away but which may do just that.

  I hope as a lawman in the wild West, you are brave enough to write to me though I ramble on so and I keep a secret from you which I will not disclose in writing. You may add ‘secretive’ to ‘clumsy’ and ‘arrogant’ on my list of failings, if such a list you do keep. There may be other ladies who write to you, ladies who do not demand three letters at once and declare themselves in a hurry to find out if marriage lies ahead on our path. Calmer, more even-tempered ladies whose letters frighten you not at all may be preferred. I envy those ladies, for, if I were you, I would choose them over myself with all my complications and my reasons.

  I do hope you will try to read my other letters in spite of this one. I wish to know more about you and about life on the frontier. Is it really as rugged, as dangerous as the dime novels would have us believe? Laugh if you will, but my only information about the West comes from sensational stories I read.

  I wish you the best, whatever you decide,

  Jessica Donnelly

  * * *

  Dear Mr. Lane, (may I call you Timothy since this is our second letter)

  Only smile a little at that, for it is meant to be a joke. Obviously we do not know each other at all, as I only just replied to your telegram and wrote the first letter moments ago.

  Let me tell you a funny story about myself. I have told you I am strong-willed but I didn’t tell you (though you may have discerned it yourself from the fact I telegraphed you at all) that I am also impulsive which has got me into a deal of trouble all my life.

  When I was sixteen, I think, my family (parents, sister and myself) went to have dinner at our new neighbor's house. The first thing we were served—and I had not been in company much due to my age, of course—was a china dish of oysters.

  They were without a doubt the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen, all oily and liquid jiggling in their flat shells and I was so horrified that I looked around at everyone else at the table hoping this was a trick or that there was something else to eat. Alas, everyone else including my younger sister who had even less society training than I—had tipped an oyster into their mouths and was exclaiming about how delicate and fabulous they were.

  I just couldn’t imagine swallowing such a thing so I used my linen napkin to shield my hands and I hid three of my oysters in the new reticule I had just netted a week before. I thought if I concealed the nasty things, I could claim to have no more appetite without offending our hosts. I didn’t think the liquid would leak out of my reticule!

  After we dined, we listened to the neighbor’s daughter play at the pianoforte. I was admiring her skill and trying to look like I belonged there and wasn’t uncomfortable at all. My father from across the room said, “I say, Jessica, there’s something dripping a puddle round your purse! Get it off the rug!”

  Everyone, turned to look at me, my face flamed and I got tears in my eyes and my mother had to take me home early. I have never been so embarrassed! I had to throw out the ruined reticule, which I had been rather proud of making myself and I felt such a fool.

  Mother told me quite seriously that a proper lady does not hide her food, but eats it whether it is her favorite or not. She made me try oysters the next week so I could get down a few bites at the next dinner without humiliating my entire family again with my awkwardness. Those disgusting little shellfish still make me want to sick up anytime I see one!

  I shall give you a quick study, as my schoolmistress used to say, about myself. My favorite color is rose pink. I like to hear music and to take walks. I don’t care for the rain because it keeps me indoors when I’d rather tramp about. The art I studied at school was mostly bowls of fruit or else religious pictures that made me cry—poor Mary with the body of her dead Son our Lord or the many scenes of His torment upon the Holy Cross. So I do not care much for art, or for drawing myself as a hobby. I had rather read a book.

  I like to read the adventure stories of the English Mr. Kipling and my father introduced me to the Irish poet W. B. Yeats whose Lake Isle of Innisfree has—if one can make such a dramatic statement—changed my life. It expresses so wholly what I want, a small safe space in the country with trees and river and ‘hive for the honey-bee’ as well as a little garden to tend. It sounds so perfect, I committed it to memory the very day I read it!

  What is your favorite book? Your favorite poem? I feel I will burst with having all these questions and waiting ever so long for the answer. I have never had much patience in my character, and it is a trial for me to be unable to simply ask you what I want to know. I’m outspoken that way, although I do have some manners you may rest assured.

  Regards, Jessica Donnelly

  Jessica read over the two letters critically, not much satisfied with the first one but knowing she had to give him the true reason for her urgency. She could not be dishonest and let this man believe that she was a well-regarded and respectable girl in Rochester when she was a social pariah. Perhaps he would like her well enough to read on to that jovial second letter. If he did not, she had at least tried her best, she reasoned.

  Of course, she chose not to tell him the one thing that was sure to make any many want to marry her even if she wrote odd letters and went on about poetry too much. She had not told him she was very rich, nor did she intend to tell him in a letter. She wanted a husband who liked her well enough to ask for her hand without the incentive of her dowry. So she was keeping it a secret out of vanity, she supposed, out of stupid hope that any man would want her without the pot of gold, as her father called it.

  It weighed on her heart that she kept this from a man who might one day be her husband, but she promised herself she
would tell him all before they were married, should that day come. She knew only this way to protect herself from fortune hunters. If this was her last hazard before having to wed an impoverished baronet and live an ocean away from her family for the rest of her life, she found she could justify dissembling with Mr. Lane for a while. She penned the third letter.

  Now here you will find your third letter, Timothy, though you may have feared I would ramble on and on forever. I heard the proverb “Marry in haste, repent in leisure” many a time growing up. I do not heed it much, though, as you may easily see. If two people are like-minded and kind to one another, I see no reason for delay.

  I shall tell you how I was as a child and how I spent my days. That will bring us, rather humblingly, to the end of information there is about me.

  I wore my brown hair in plaits and often was chastised for bossing my sister Eloise and in general trying to tell everyone how to do everything. My knuckles were rapped with rulers enough at school that I had to learn to curb my tongue or else lose the use of my fingers permanently.

  I learned at least to mind my words when in company with those who would strike my hands. Among my own family and our little circle of friends, I said what I liked and was considered a character and something of a bluestocking, for I read a great deal and loved to show off what I had learned by reading, whether it proved to be accurate or not.

  When I was in the extreme of disgrace, my nurse would bundle my books from my room and lock them in a trunk where they would remain for a fortnight. I grieved for their absence as an injustice, not as any punishment I had earned by being saucy or proud.

  Now I knit socks and caps for the needy and I read books from the lending library and do some crewel embroidery which is nothing more than putting pretty colored thread in a pattern on some fabric for ornament. I have, as a result, more embroidered linens than anyone could ever use. One must pass one’s time respectably and there are few employments for a respectable young lady outside of needlework and music, the latter of which proved a sore trial for me in my childhood.

  The music master gave up my lessons after a few months as a total failure and concentrated on my more talented sister instead. She developed proper skills in that area, while I learned to sit still and listen and admire other people’s talents rather than tormenting an audience of friends and neighbors with my own poor efforts. I can dance tolerably well, though not with grace. I can arrange flowers and pour tea and keep up a half-hearted conversation about the state of the roads in winter or the shocking price of everything these days. That is about the extent of my talents.

  I do like to walk outdoors and I like animals though I never had one as a pet myself. My father had dogs at one time when I was a child and I often got their muddy paw prints on my pinafore from playing with them, throwing a stick or having a rough and tumble in the garden. I would not promise to behave much better than that, were I to have a dog of my own, despite my increased age.

  Hoping to hear from you,

  Jessica

  Chapter 4

  Timothy Lane had laughed out loud right at the post office when he read the telegram asking him for three letters. He was a man of few words. He had second thoughts about advertising for a bride, not because he doubted the outcome, but because he wasn’t sure he could fill up a single sheet of paper with his thoughts. He had plenty of thoughts, he just wasn’t much used to putting them down with ink. Certainly he was no poet. However, he was impressed with this girl’s eagerness so he gave it a try.

  Dear Miss Donnelly,

  I was surprised to get a reply to my ad so quickly. I didn’t expect a lot of interest in my ad, in myself. So to get a telegram from a young lady who urgently wished to write to me was—it was good but also different from what I thought would happen if that makes sense.

  I have a friend, Frank, who runs the newspaper in Billings. Truth is I went to him to place an ad for a lodger in his newspaper and he talked me around to trying out an ad for a bride instead. I don’t set much store by advice from anyone, but Frank is one of the grouchiest, set in his ways men I ever knew and he’s happy as the day is long since his ad worked out for him real well. He tries to hide it and act crusty as ever, but get the man talking about his family and his eyes light up and tell the story no matter how he hems and haws about his difficulties.

  But this letter isn’t about Frank. It’d be easier to write if it were because I know Frank pretty well, a sight better than I seem to know myself since I keep looking at this paper like it’s bigger than a mile. I’m not sure I’ll get it filled up with anything worth reading.

  Here’s what there is to know about me from the beginning. I had a wife, a good one, and she died in an accident and I never even considered finding another. I figured I’d had my chance at happiness and a family and things don’t always work out how we planned them to go. My father always says you have to take your knocks in life, and I reckon that’s what I was doing. I just stayed on the ground after I got knocked down, when I should have got back up.

  I’m a sheriff, the main lawman in Billings which is a nice town on the railroad in Montana Territory with big mountains all around and plenty of nature to look at if you like being outdoors. It’s real cold here about half the year, and the other half’s pretty as a picture.

  I’m no painter but I’ve thought more than once if I was one, this is where I’d want to live just to paint the skies the way they change out over the mountaintops, and the sharp way the snow stands out against the clouds. You wouldn’t believe the way it does—you’d think, if you haven’t seen it, that since snow is white and clouds are white that it wouldn’t show up one against the other, but they’re enough different that it does. I could look at it for hours and I have before, when it was a Sunday and I wasn’t working and had nobody to talk with so I watched the clouds over the mountain. If that sounds dull to you, well then you won’t like me very much and you might as well know that now.

  I’m not trying to run you off but you have a right to know I have some odd ways, as a man who’s lived as a bachelor for a lot of years on his own. I take in sick and hurt animals. The neighbors bring them to me and I fix them up when I can and keep them right inside the house. If I put them outside or even in a barn, why something, some predator would get to them while they were mending and I couldn’t live with that. So if you’re particular about having a house all so-so and tidy with no animals indoors or if you’re afraid of critters, you had better look elsewhere for a man.

  If you think you can bear with a man who stares at mountains, who brings wild animals into the house, then you have two more letters coming to decide if you might like me as well as tolerate me.

  Timothy Lane

  He looked critically at the letter, making sure there were no spelling mistakes and that he didn’t sound too off-putting. If his tone was too prickly, it was because he’d lost on4 wife and wasn’t completely sure he could stand to love and lose another. He’d have to explain that in the next letter and he wasn’t a man to talk about his feelings, or even to think much about them. Yet, had set himself the task of three letters at once for this impulsive girl who telegraphed him. He would see it through.

  Dear Miss Donnelly,

  This here is the second letter and I’m not sure I have much left to say after that first one. I should tell you I’m not trying to get you to give up reading my letters. It may seem like the other letter was warning you off and pushing you away. I don’t want you answering other ads and I don’t want you giving up on me. Truth is I want you to like me well enough to come on out to Montana Territory, and I only have three letters to prove it. That makes a man nervous about his letter writing because there’s a lot at stake.

  I set out to write to you about my house, but I doubt you would much care. The kind of woman who sends a telegram saying she wants three letters as fast as possible isn’t likely to fuss over what kind of house I have. It’s a good size one, in case you wondered, with a big front room and a kitc
hen and the bedrooms upstairs.

  It holds a deal of loneliness and some injured animals, so I guess it would have plenty of room for a wife and some children if you were of a mind to marry me. I figured on being a family man a few years back. I married my sister-in-law’s sister. She already knew my family and her sister was married to my older brother (I have six older brothers, only one of them married). It turns out she was a pretty thing, real quiet and seemed to like me well enough. I gave her a clock instead of a ring because it’s what she wanted.

  I built this house with her in mind, making the rooms big for the children to play in when the weather was cold. But there were no children, only a horse that threw her. I wasn’t home when she got hurt and it was too late to help her when I did return. I always blamed myself. I don’t think I ever told anybody that before now.

  If I’d been at home instead of breaking up a fight over a property line, she never would have got on that horse because I wouldn’t have let her. It was my job as her husband to protect her and I didn’t do it. So that’s the thing you need to know about me, the most important before deciding whether to even read a third letter from me. I’m a man who didn’t protect his wife. I was off keeping strangers safe instead of minding my home and family. So I will do my best, but my best hasn’t been good enough in the past. I’m not as good a man as I'd like to become.

  If that alone is not enough to frighten you away, I will tell you about my family. I have six brothers, as I’ve said, and Ernest is the only one who is married. So it’s in my head that if the advertisement turns out as well for me as it did for my friend Frank, that there will be five more Lane boys in a hurry to order a bride by mail for themselves.

  They don’t live in Billings, but over by Helena where I’m from, which is another town in Montana Territory. Some of them are farmers and some are shopkeepers and the youngest made a minister of the Lord. They’re all a good sort and—the truth is, it was in my mind to tell you that if you come out here to Montana and find you don’t like me very well, then I could introduce you to one of my brothers and see if they don’t suit you better. None of them keeps animals in the house and they all are Christian men.