Mail-Order Bride Switch

by Dorothy Clark

  Virginia looked at him, worry in her eyes. “Can Liu Yang take care of so many guests?”

  “I’m not sure about her, or Pastor Karl.” They hurried up onto the porch and opened the door.

  “I want a meal for me and my family.”

  “Me, too. And we only have twenty minutes.”

  “Do I pay for the room before I go to the dining room to eat?”

  Virginia looked at him and laughed. “Welcome home!” She wiggled her fingers in farewell and hurried into the dining room.

  He turned his mind to work. “Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention please.” He caught a glimpse of Pastor Karl’s relieved expression and nodded reassuringly. “Those of you who wish to register for an overnight stay, please form a line at the service desk. And those of you who only wish a meal—”

  A hand touched his arm. He glanced sideways. Virginia was standing beside him, wearing a snowy-white apron. He fought down a rush of love that threatened to overwhelm him, and squeezed her hand.

  “—please follow my wife.”

  * * *

  “Glad you be here, mee-sus.”

  “Work very much easy.”

  “Thank you, Liu Yang, Li Min. It’s nice to be home.”

  Virginia closed the door behind the two chattering women and looked around the kitchen. The rush of work had ended, and emotion gripped her. Tears stung her eyes. “It is home.” She blinked and cleared the lump from her throat. “And more so because you are here, Mrs. Fuller. I have missed you a great deal.”

  “Thank you, Virginia. I’ve missed you, too.” The older woman set a bowl of bread dough to proof in the warming oven, put in a second bowl and closed the oven door. “I was so pleased to get your letter.”

  “I had to explain why I had rushed off without saying farewell. I—I didn’t want you to think I didn’t care about you.” She removed her apron and hung it on its hook. “I had no choice at the time. I did it—”

  “To protect your husband from your father.”

  “You know?”

  Mrs. Fuller nodded, scraped the flour and clinging bits of dough off the table and into the waste bucket. “I don’t know for certain, of course. What I do know is that sometimes women are forced to do things they don’t want to do to protect people they love. And I know you love m—Garret.”

  “You can say son, Mother.” Garret strode into the kitchen, walked to the stove and poured a cup of coffee. “I’ve told Virginia that you are my mother. And about discovering the truth because of your birthmark. I also told her she should call you Mother.”

  “I—I don’t want to presume, Mrs. Fuller. Everything is so new, and—”

  “I would like it very much if you called me Mother, dear.” The older woman put her hand on her arm and smiled. “You are already a daughter to me in my heart.”

  “I would like that—Mother.” She swallowed back tears, squeezed Mrs. Fuller’s hand, then hurried to Garret. She pulled the telegram from his pocket. “I know Garret has not had time to talk with you since our return this afternoon. But this telegram from my father concerns you. He is coming for a visit in two weeks.” She smiled and handed her the telegram. “He says he is coming because he wants a piece of your apple pie!”

  “That is nonsense. Your father is only teasing you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Mother.” Garret took a swallow of his coffee and grinned. “There’s something powerful about a really good apple pie.”

  “Well, you may test that theory if you so choose. I made an apple pie to welcome you home. It’s in the pie safe. Now, if you two will excuse me, I’m going to take myself off to bed. I have to be up early tomorrow to make cinnamon rolls. Good night, son.” She touched Garret’s arm, gave him a kiss on the cheek, then came to her and did the same. “Good night, daughter.”

  Tears stung her eyes. “Good night, Mother.” She gave Garret’s mother a kiss and a hug, listened to the rustle of her gown and soft tap of her shoes as she left the room.

  Silence fell.

  Her heart thudded.

  Garret put down his cup, reached up and trimmed the oil lamps.

  Shyness washed over her. “I—I forgot to give your mother her present. I’ll just—”

  His hand caught her arm. He pulled her close against him and his lips touched hers. “Tomorrow.”

  His lips claimed hers, and the word was a promise forever etched into her heart.

  Tomorrow...and tomorrow...and tomorrow...

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss the other books in the

  STAND-IN BRIDES series by Dorothy Clark:

  HIS SUBSTITUTE WIFE

  WEDDED FOR THE BABY

  And enjoy these other historical romances

  from Dorothy Clark:

  HIS PRECIOUS INHERITANCE

  AN UNLIKELY LOVE

  Available now from Love Inspired!

  Find more great reads at www.LoveInspired.com

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE UNCONVENTIONAL GOVERNESS by Jessica Nelson.

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  Dear Reader,

  I have enjoyed returning to Whisper Creek while writing Garret and Virginia’s story. I will miss the growing town and the people who have settled there, but as you may already know, the Love Inspired Historical line is closing. This is, therefore, my last Love Inspired Historical book. I am both sad and excited. I don’t know what the future holds for my writing—that is in the Lord’s hands. I will follow where He leads.

  It has been my great pleasure to write the LIH stories for you. Thank you for your faithfulness in buying and reading them. And I thank you also for the multitude of letters and emails you have sent me over the years. I will miss hearing from you.

  I hope you enjoyed Garret and Virginia’s story, and I thank you, dear reader, for choosing to read Mail-Order Bride Switch. If you care to share your thoughts about this story, I may be reached at dorothyjclark@hotmail.com or www.dorothyclarkbooks.com.

  With deepest appreciation,

  Dorothy Clark

  We hope you enjoyed this story from

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  The Unconventional Governess

  by Jessica Nelson

  Chapter One

  England

  Spring 1814

  No conventional daughter of an earl desired to become a physician.

  Henrietta Gordon did not fool herself into thinking she was conve
ntional. As a woman of limited funds and genteel birth, there were very few socially acceptable dreams to dream. And while dreams were all well and good, accomplishment came by setting goals and pursuing them.

  Which was why, despite the increasing suspicion that in order to avoid matrimony she might have to take on a governess post, she was determined to prepare for the life she wanted, rather than the life being foisted upon her.

  If there was one thing she had learned in her twenty-four years that served her well, it was to persist in what she wanted.

  On this brooding English afternoon, Henrietta had taken refuge in Lady Brandewyne’s expansive library. To her great delight, she found a copy of A Practical Synopsis of the Materia Alimentaria and Materia Medica. No sooner had she curled up in a plush wingback chair than Lady Brandewyne swept into the room.

  The dowager countess, an old friend of Uncle William’s, had kindly allowed Henrietta to stay with her while she recovered from a bout of rheumatic fever. Uncle William had gone to London to teach a medical seminar. He’d promised to return to collect Henrietta, but it had been a month since he left, and she began to doubt his intentions.

  Especially with Lady Brandewyne’s daily insinuations.

  The fearsome lady now paused when she saw Henrietta reading rather than practicing the pianoforte, or performing some other expected feat of ladyhood. She sniffed, her regal, powdered chin tilted to display her disapproval more effectively.

  “I have received a report that a man was found wounded nearby. His servants are bringing him here. Since the apothecary is on another call at the moment, it seems as though I may have need of your expertise.” She delivered the words stiffly, and Henrietta hid a smile behind the professionalism her uncle had taught her to display.

  “Do we know the nature of his wounds? Will he require sutures?” She placed the book on a side table and stood.

  “No, and I do not want you overly involved with his care. As soon as the apothecary arrives, you will remove yourself.”

  Henrietta felt her eyebrows fly upward at Lady Brandewyne’s dogmatic tone. She hadn’t practiced medicine in England thus far. She’d been too focused on recovering from illness and Lady Brandewyne disapproved of her chosen vocation, at any rate. While here, she must observe propriety much more strictly than she had in the Americas.

  Not for long, she comforted herself. Soon she’d be assisting Uncle William again, propriety be hanged. There were lives to be saved. Soldiers’ hands to be held while they verbalized their final goodbyes. Mothers to comfort as they birthed their children.

  Her throat tightened.

  As though noticing her discomfort, Lady Brandewyne drew near. “Calm yourself, my dear. I’m sure the apothecary will care for him completely. Let us speak of a happier subject. I’ve arranged a house party in two weeks’ time to relieve the tedium of your convalescence. You may want to consider encouraging a suitor.”

  “A suitor?”

  “It is past time for you to marry.”

  Before Henrietta could remark on that most outrageous statement, the butler appeared in the doorway. “They have arrived, my lady.”

  “Bring them to the front door. The servants’ hall is too narrow.”

  Henrietta rose quickly, following Lady Brandewyne out of the room and through a hall lined with antique oil paintings of ancestors, down the ornate, curving stairwell to the entrance of her Elizabethan-shaped home.

  As soon as she saw the large man being carried in, mental images assaulted her. The battery was unexpected. She had no time to arm herself against memories of assisting Uncle William during the War of 1812. She willed the pictures of war and death away.

  This is not Newark, she assured herself firmly. Memories from that deadly skirmish rushed her. Fire, screams, black smoke blanketing the sky...and then the deaths. So many deaths...

  She squared her shoulders. She was a person of great practicality and self-control. Thus equipped with logic, she took a calming breath. Thankfully, no one noticed her angst. Everyone followed the orders Lady Brandewyne snipped out.

  Henrietta pressed herself against the wall as the entourage shuffled past.

  She noticed a girl in the group, her eyes wide and frightened. She was ushered away by a female servant. Perhaps her nurse?

  Henrietta followed everyone up the stairs again, all the way to a room in the east wing facing the gardens. Two footmen laid the prone figure on the bed. Lady Brandewyne glanced over at Henrietta.

  “It is Lord St. Raven,” she said quietly. “A neighbor. What do you suggest our first steps to be?”

  Henrietta stepped closer. His wavy black hair was in disarray. Twigs and debris were tangled in the strands that curled over what looked like a fashionable collar. In fact, the closer she came, the more she realized this man might qualify as a dandy. Had she ever seen such a perfect knot on a cravat?

  Truthfully, she couldn’t claim any knowledge of what was considered fashionable these days. Nor had she ever cared. But his longish hair and tanned skin were at odds with the lifestyle suggested by his clothing.

  A lifestyle of vanity, certainly.

  His lips, unfortunately, were the color of ash. Blood smeared his jaw. His whole body was so completely still that she felt certain he must have passed on. She touched his neck. His pulse limped quietly beneath his skin.

  He lived, but for how long?

  “We will need to remove the soiled clothing and clean his wounds. That should allow us more information.”

  The dowager sent for hot water while Henrietta continued her cursory examination.

  Rumpled clothing. Dark smears that constituted a combination of dirt and blood. She saw no fresh oozing. A blessing. Perhaps the dirt had acted as a bandage, stemming the flow.

  His eyes fluttered. A moan crumpled between his lips.

  “Shh.” She placed her palm upon his brow. “You are safe now, sir.”

  At her touch, his eyes opened, revealing jade irises. She inhaled quickly, struck by the intensity of the coloration.

  “Beautiful...” The word came haltingly, his voice unsteady, but the way he looked at her sent her nerves on a tumbling spiral.

  She and Lady Brandewyne exchanged a glance.

  “Nonsense,” she said briskly. “I’ve been plain since childhood, and plain I shall be long into spinsterhood.” A term she loathed, but nevertheless, she lingered on the cusp of being labeled a spinster by society. “Now save your breath, for you are wounded and I know not the gravity of your injuries.”

  “Bandits.”

  “They say you led them a merry chase, my lord.” Lady Brandewyne came to his side. Recognition, and perhaps relief, flared in his eyes.

  “Is my...attire irreparably beyond repair?”

  “If that is your main concern, then your problems are far greater than I feared.” Henrietta pressed her lips together, refusing to let his cavalier comment perturb her. “I shall need to fetch supplies. Perhaps comfrey as an astringent for his wounds.”

  “A fresh cravat,” Lord St. Raven groaned, and then the poor man fainted.

  * * *

  Dominic Stanford, reluctant earl of St. Raven, woke from pleasant dreams to even more pleasant humming. He stretched before a spasm of pain in his ribs reminded him of his unfortunate altercation with a group of vagabonds. He’d almost had them beat, too, he remembered with a half-edged smile.

  With that comforting thought in mind, he opened his eyes a crack, just enough to find the source of the humming. The woman’s voice was melodic. Husky and flavored with a depth rarely heard in young ladies. She came into view, her unassuming clothes attesting to her station.

  An ordinary housemaid.

  A seemingly productive one, though. She wore a serviceable cap in which strands of hair escaped in tendrils about an ordinary face. In fact, there was nothing about her to draw his attention, an
d yet he could not look away.

  Perhaps it was the sound of her low humming that welcomed him. Or the purposeful way in which she moved. It was not that she bustled, as he’d often observed the servantry doing, but she glided with a purpose. A singularly minded woman.

  “You’re awake,” she said, without even turning to look at him. She stood at a small table at the side of the room, clinking metal against cup, as though mixing something. He could not see what. Her voice was as soothing as her unworded song. “How do you feel?”

  A good question. How did he feel? He tested various parts of his body, flexing his fingers, drawing a deep breath that ended shortly with a stab of pain in his side. “I believe I’ve a broken rib or two.”

  Full consciousness returned. He jerked upward, then fell back as daggers sliced across his torso. “My niece,” he rasped. Had he protected her? Had he saved her from those men?

  “She is fine, my lord. Safely here at Lady Brandewyne’s.”

  He struggled to breathe past the pain still lacing his chest. “She is safe. And we are at the dowager countess’s home?”

  “Correct.”

  “Where is the doctor?”

  “The village apothecary is on his way.” If his question surprised her, she showed no sign of it. “I am your nurse, for the present moment. You have been unconscious since yesterday, when you were brought here. You’ve a few contusions and most likely some bruising to your internal organs, though no hemorrhaging that I can tell.”

  “So, for now, I shall live,” he said drily, his body relaxing as he was convinced that Louise had not been harmed. He suspected the convulsions that had plagued him these last months would be the death of him, anyhow.

  “Indeed, you shall certainly live.” She chuckled, and once again, he was struck by the cadence of her voice. Her pronunciation was rounded with a foreign flare. American? She did not speak like a servant, but neither did she sound wholly English. For the first time in what had been months of a terrible lethargy of the spirits, the tiniest flicker of intrigue stirred within.