Montana Bride

by Joan Johnston

  Dennis snorted.

  “They won’t!” Karl insisted. “I’m hoping we’ll have a few more. Mrs. Templeton is an educated woman, so she’ll be able to teach our kids. Her letters have been intelligent and—”

  “You don’t even know the lady’s first name,” Dennis pointed out. “You haven’t seen a picture of her. In my experience, people—especially women—lie. What if you’re disappointed when you see her?”

  “I’m thirty years old.”

  Dennis rolled his eyes, but Karl kept speaking.

  “I may be stuck in the back of beyond for a couple of years. I want a family, the sooner, the better.”

  “It’s sooner, all right,” Dennis said. “I’m not so sure about the better. You might end up with the ugliest woman in the Montana Territory. Last chance to change your mind.”

  “It doesn’t matter what Mrs. Templeton looks like, Dennis. I’m going to marry her,” Karl said, tugging at his silk tie, which seemed to have gotten tighter around his throat. “I promised my brother I’d get to the Bitterroot Valley before winter sets in to start logging. It’s already mid-November. If I don’t leave now, I might have trouble getting there at all.”

  “You could wait and marry when the job is done,” Dennis suggested.

  “It could take a couple of years to prove this logging operation can produce the kind of lumber quotas Jonas expects,” Karl replied.

  “You should have married that debutante back in Connecticut,” Dennis said. “She liked you.”

  “And I liked her. But how do you think she would have fared here in Butte?” Karl gestured at the muddy, wheel-rutted street, at the land surrounding the mining town that had been stripped of all vegetation in order to dig for copper and silver and gold, at the filthy, unshaven miners, and the rowdy saloons. “I need a woman who’s proven she can survive a life as bleak as this.”

  That was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Karl would have snapped up the Connecticut debutante in an instant, if she’d shown even a flicker of attraction to him. Her eyes had glazed over when Karl mentioned his work. They’d brightened only when she’d spied a better-looking swain, at which point she’d excused herself and left him standing alone. Karl had never shared with his handsome friend how often that sort of thing happened to him.

  Karl wanted a beautiful bride as much as the next man. But he’d long ago realized that he had no right to hope for beauty when he didn’t have good looks to offer in return. For a while he’d hoped that some more-than-handsome woman might be captivated by his intelligence. But that had never happened.

  Karl sometimes wondered if he’d studied so long and hard to improve his knowledge because he’d known his looks were so unimpressive. “I don’t think a debutante could deal with the isolation and primitive conditions of a place like the Bitterroot Valley,” Karl continued, giving a good reason, other than his plain features, why he hadn’t chosen a debutante for his bride. “I have to bite the bullet. I need to go in there and meet my mail-order bride, walk her to the church, and marry her.”

  “I think you’re crazy,” Dennis said.

  “Mrs. Templeton has proven she can give birth to healthy children. And you’ve got to admit, it’ll be helpful to have a nurse on hand. When men are working with axes, there are bound to be accidents.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Dennis said. “That’s why I’m here, Karl. To help you complete this job with the fewest complications. That includes injuries.”

  Karl had mixed feelings about his childhood friend’s assignment as his second-in-command. Dennis’s father was the head gardener on the Norwood estate in Connecticut, where the two boys had grown up together. Dennis had gone right to work for Karl’s elder brother at seventeen. There was no question his friend had far more experience being a boss than Karl.

  But Karl had pleaded for the chance to show Jonas he could do the job. He’d wanted to prove to his brother that the years he’d spent studying, and then traveling the American West doing research, hadn’t been a total waste, as Jonas so often muttered they were. His brother had eventually given Karl the job, but he’d sent Dennis along to “help.”

  Karl had never been in charge of anything like this proposed logging operation, and frankly, the project was daunting. They would be working in the middle of nowhere, and it was his job to supervise a team of a dozen loggers while they cut as many ponderosa pines as they could over the winter. In the spring, he had to find a site for a millpond and build a mill.

  Meanwhile, Jonas hoped to convince his partners of the benefits of building a rail line to the valley, so the lumber Karl produced could be shipped east.

  Karl was most worried about his ability to manage the lumberjacks, unruly ruffians who judged a man entirely on his physical strength and stamina, two things Karl lacked. Two things Dennis had. So maybe his brother had known best after all.

  “I’ll tell you what, Karl,” Dennis said, setting a friendly hand on Karl’s shoulder. “I’ll go in first. If she’s a hag, I’ll wave you off.”

  Before Karl could stop him, Dennis opened one of the double doors leading into the Copper Mine Hotel and stepped inside. Karl quickly followed after him. He was dwarfed by his friend, who was six foot four to Karl’s five foot ten, so his view of the red-silk-covered Victorian sofa in the center of the lobby was blocked.

  He presumed his bride was sitting there alone, since he’d sent a note to her room at the hotel asking her to meet him first without her two children present. He ran into Dennis when his friend stopped in his tracks. Karl took a step back as he heard Dennis whistle appreciatively and whisper over his shoulder, “You are one lucky son of a bitch.”

  Karl peered around Dennis’s shoulder and felt his heart jump. She’s breathtaking.

  His mail-order bride was perched on the edge of the sofa. A riot of blond curls surrounded a perfect, heart-shaped face. Her perfect, bashful smile had produced, heaven help him, perfect dimples. Her perfect, sky-blue eyes were focused unerringly on Dennis.

  She wasn’t alone on the sofa. To her left sat two children he presumed were hers.

  His next thought came unwilling. Those two children had different fathers.

  Karl was familiar with both Mr. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Gregor Johann Mendel’s study of genetics with pea plants. Karl doubted that a blue-eyed, blond mother and one individual father could have produced both a green-eyed redhead and a dark-brown-eyed child with black hair.

  His mail-order bride had been pregnant before she’d married Mr. Templeton. Or she’d been unfaithful to him.

  Maybe he was wrong. Maybe there was some combination of genes in Mrs. Templeton and her late husband that could have produced two such dissimilar children. Karl didn’t want to believe such a beautiful face concealed such a deceitful heart.

  Mrs. Templeton’s letters, which had been both witty and smart, and the fact that she was the mother of seven- and nine-year-old children, had led Karl to think of his mail-order bride as a mature woman. But the waif with lost-looking eyes and tumbled blond curls who sat before him, fidgeting nervously with a torn string on her ill-fitting dress, didn’t look even close to the twenty-eight years she’d claimed. Which was a problem, because the two children looked considerably older than their stated ages.

  Karl smelled a rat.

  “Are you Mr. Norwood?” Mrs. Templeton asked Dennis.

  He heard Dennis laugh. Then his friend stepped aside and gestured at Karl. “Here’s your groom.”

  Karl watched the hopeful smile on his bride’s face ebb as she surveyed him from flat-brimmed black hat to muddy black boots. He felt his heart squeeze as he realized he’d been compared to his tall, good-looking, broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, black-haired friend and found wanting.

  “I’m—” Karl cleared his throat of the frog that had caught there and said, “I’m Karl Norwood. You must be Mrs. Templeton.”

  His bride rose, but the two children stayed seated next to each other on the s
ofa. She extended her hand with a hesitant smile and said, “My name is Henrietta, but I’ve never liked it. My sis—” She cut herself off and lowered her eyes timidly, so her lashes sat on cheeks the color of peaches and cream.

  Karl was enchanted. He felt his insides twist with sudden desire, felt his heart pound so hard he feared she might hear it. How had he chosen a bride so beautiful sight unseen? Her face was flawless except for several small scabs near one eye. It looked like a cat had swiped her with its paw.

  In a low, tremulous voice that shivered along his spine, she said, “Please, call me Hetty.”

  Karl had to swallow again before he could speak. “All right. Hetty.”

  At the sound of her name, she blushed, painting her cheeks a rosy pink.

  All the suspicious inconsistencies should have put him on guard, but Karl was too captivated to complain. He still had concerns about Mrs. Templeton’s basic honesty, but he could forgive what had happened before they’d met. Lots of people came West hoping to put a shadowed past behind them. What mattered was Mrs. Templeton’s—Hetty’s—behavior from now on. Karl was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Assuming she still wanted to marry him, now that she’d seen what she was getting.

  “This is my friend, Dennis Campbell.” Karl gestured to Dennis.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Campbell,” Hetty said.

  Dennis touched a hand to his hat brim, smiled so that an entire mouthful of perfectly straight white teeth became visible, and said, “The pleasure is entirely mine.”

  Karl noticed that Hetty’s blush deepened under Dennis’s intense perusal. Karl felt a flare of jealousy and tamped it down. It wasn’t Dennis’s fault he was so good-looking. But the girl seemed entranced. His voice was sharper than he’d intended as he asked, “Would you introduce me to your children?”

  “Oh, of course.” Hetty appeared flustered as she tore her gaze from Dennis’s face and focused it on her children. The girl jumped up immediately, then reached down and tugged on the boy’s elbow until he got to his feet. “Mr. Norwood, these are my children, Grace and Griffin.”

  “Please, call me Karl,” he said to Hetty.

  She dipped her chin to her chest, then glanced up at him from beneath lowered lashes. “Very well. Karl.”

  He felt himself flushing. It was disconcerting to be so attracted to a woman he suspected had told a few whoppers in order to become his bride. He gritted his teeth in an effort to slow the thundering beat of his heart and turned to observe the children more closely.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Grace said, dipping a small curtsy. Her pale eyelashes fluttered nervously, and he could see she was trembling. She bumped her shoulder hard against the surly boy standing next to her, who kept his gaze on his feet as he muttered, “Yeah. Nice to meet you.”

  It was not an auspicious beginning, but they had the rest of their lives to become a family. Assuming Mrs. Templeton agreed to marry him.

  “Do you need some time to acquaint yourself with me before we’re wed?” Karl wasn’t sure why he’d asked the question, especially since, given time, she might change her mind about the whole thing.

  She shook her head so vigorously her curls bounced. “I don’t want to wait. I want to be married today. I’m ready right now. I mean, if you are,” she added lamely. “All I have to do is change into my wedding dress.”

  Karl smelled a rat and the cheese. What was her hurry? What else was she hiding?

  “You can always call it off,” Dennis said in his ear.

  He’d forgotten his friend was standing there. “It’s too late,” he whispered back.

  “It’s never too late until you say ‘I do,’ ” Dennis countered.

  But it was too late to go hunting for another bride before he left for the Bitterroot Valley. Hetty was young and beautiful. And the children looked healthy, if a bit anxious and surly, respectively.

  Karl knew himself to be an intelligent and patient man. If there were problems, he was smart enough to work them out. How hard could it be? Especially with such a stunning wife.

  “All right,” he said, crossing to his mail-order bride and holding out his arm for her to take. “I’ll escort you to your room. Once you’ve changed, we can be married.”

  As they headed toward the hotel stairs, Karl thought he heard a deep, exhaled sigh of relief from the little girl trailing behind them.

  Karl smelled a rat and the cheese and heard the trap snapping shut. Somehow he’d been had. But he glanced at the beautiful woman who held his arm and shoved all reservations aside. Today was his wedding day. Tomorrow would be soon enough to worry about the passel of lies Henrietta Templeton had told to become his mail-order bride.

  Hetty was certain she would have been content with Karl Norwood as a husband, if only she’d seen him first. But her heart had leapt at the sight of his friend, Dennis Campbell, and then crashed to the ground when Dennis stepped aside to reveal the very ordinary man standing behind him. If it hadn’t been for Grace perched beside her, gazing up at Hetty with fearful eyes and chewing on a fingernail that had already been bitten to the quick, she might have backed out of the wedding.

  Hetty had tried not to let her disappointment show. But she’d seen the light die in Karl’s brown eyes as the light had died in her own blue ones. She’d wanted to smile at him, but the muscles in her mouth wouldn’t obey. She thought maybe such a plain-looking groom was fate paying her back for the way she’d squandered her first chance at love.

  To make matters worse, it appeared that the very handsome Dennis Campbell would be going with them to the Bitterroot Valley. Hetty would have to face her attraction to the other man—and deny it—every day from now on. Fortunately, she’d grown up a great deal over the past few months. She knew the consequences of duplicity and jealousy. Men fought. And men died.

  Once they were married, Karl had a right to expect her fidelity. Hetty knew better than to tempt fate by even glancing in Dennis Campbell’s direction. Flirting with two men at the same time on the wagon train had resulted in the deaths of both men, including the one she loved.

  Hetty fully intended to be faithful to her husband, but she wondered why God had played such an awful trick on her. If only she hadn’t seen Dennis first!

  The two men were as different as roses and crabgrass. Hetty felt a spurt of guilt at comparing her future husband to something so universally undesired. Karl seemed like a very nice man, but his looks paled in comparison to his friend. Hetty was tall, and while she might have looked up at Dennis, she looked directly into Karl’s very plain brown eyes.

  And that was another thing. From the first day she’d started playing bride with Hannah, Hetty had been determined to marry a man with blue eyes. Blue eyes were striking and compelling. Brown eyes were common and uninteresting.

  Hetty realized now, standing at the altar in a small church with whitewashed wooden walls and a small stained-glass window, that Grace must have suspected she might balk. That was why the girl had insisted on coming downstairs with her when she met the groom for the first time. One glance at the worried look on Grace’s face and the sulking glare on Griffin’s, as they’d sat on the sofa beside her at the hotel, had been enough for Hetty to realize she couldn’t back out.

  “Hetty?” Karl said.

  Hetty realized she’d been daydreaming while the ceremony had been going on. “I do?”

  “Do you?” Karl said.

  His gaze was so solemn Hetty felt the knot in her stomach tighten. She realized she’d made her response a question, rather than a statement. Her nose burned and her throat ached. She blinked to keep the threatening tears from falling. One slid down her cheek anyway.

  Karl gently brushed it away with the rough pad of his thumb. His eyes asked for her answer, but he said nothing.

  Hetty lowered her lashes, unable to meet his gaze as she agreed to become the wife of a man she didn’t want to marry.

  “I do,” she croaked.

  The preacher moved
on as though she’d said the words with delight. A short while later she heard the cleric say, “You may kiss your bride, Mr. Norwood.”

  Hetty held herself steady, afraid she’d bolt if Karl Norwood came anywhere near her face with his lips. He must have sensed her reluctance, because he merely lifted her left hand, which he’d been holding, and gently kissed the simple gold ring he’d put there, as though he were some knight suing for the love of his lady fair.

  Hetty did look at him then, surprised that she’d thought of Karl Norwood and a knight in shining armor in the same moment. Karl was no Lord Lochinvar, like the one in Sir Walter Scott’s poem. That daring knight had stolen the bride he wanted from a Scottish castle—on the day of her wedding to another man—and escaped with her on his charger.

  Karl hadn’t even taken the trouble to come to Cheyenne to collect his bride. He’d sent Mr. Lin in his stead. Karl hadn’t asked for a father’s blessing and been denied, like Lochinvar. There had been no obstacle at all to wedding his mail-order bride, nothing at all to fight against. Not even a bride who had the guts and gumption to say, “I don’t.”

  “My turn to kiss the bride,” Dennis said.

  Before Hetty could say a word in protest, Dennis Campbell had taken her by the shoulders, turned her to face him, and planted his lips right on hers. Hetty was too surprised to do anything but stand there. Dennis pulled her body close for an instant, so she felt every hard muscle in his chest against her breasts, which peaked against her will.

  When he let her go, Hetty drew back in shock and put a hand to her mouth, not quite sure what had just happened. She stared up, wide-eyed, at Dennis.

  He winked at her with one of those unbelievably blue eyes and said, “My very best wishes for a long and happy life, Mrs. Norwood,” seeming blissfully unaware that he’d turned her world upside down, leaving her feeling upset and confused.