Mail Order Bride Tess: A Sweet Western Historical Romance (Montana Mail Order Brides Series Book 2)

by Rose Jenster

  She picked through piles of feathers and beads, bypassed the paper flowers with a longing backward glance. At last she found it, the prettiest lone pewter button, a flat round one with a raised design of wheat on it. Surely it was tailored enough, simple enough. She fixed it to the ribbon band and held the hat out at arm’s length, satisfied with her work. She wrapped it carefully and boxed it so it could be delivered to that good lady.

  The tinkling of the bell strap on the shop door heralded the entrance of a new customer. Felicity patted her blond hair into place and rushed out to the showroom. Felicity herself was pretty as a picture, with flaxen hair and china blue eyes and dimples. Her smile was genuine as she welcomed Mrs. Sullivan to the shop. Mrs. Sullivan was notoriously miserly like her detailed husband and would go to shops and browse for hours, running salesgirls off their feet but seldom buying a thing. Most of the girls who worked in the high street hated to see her coming because it would mean ages of bowing and scraping with no sale to show for it. Felicity, however, looked upon her as a challenge.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Sullivan. May I help you with anything this fine day?” Felicity inquired good-naturedly.

  “I thought I’d have a bit of a browse,” the older woman said, stopping at the looking glass to unpin her own tired brown felt hat.

  Her hat had developed a shine from being brushed for so many years, and Felicity almost felt sorry for her. She knew they had money enough, but it was sad that the lady could not even enjoy the thrill of getting a new hat once in a while. Now, Felicity had a cunning little hat put back for herself which she would finish paying for when she got her wages on Friday. It was the prettiest bonnet, a creamy pink with little pale false cherries at the curving brim, a single curling feather dyed pink to match, and a bunch of peonies at the crown. It gave her a thrill just thinking of her bonnet, the one she’d made up specially to go with her last year’s spring walking dress of pink sprigged dimity. It was such a shame that Mrs. Sullivan didn’t find joy in such lovely small things.

  “Here, allow me to help you.” Felicity took the distasteful hat and held it as carefully as if it had been the most sophisticated silk hat in all of New York State.

  Felicity watched carefully to see which styles attracted Mrs. Sullivan, and her suspicions were correct. A woman with a serviceable ten-year-old brown hat was bound to yearn for something light and pretty and a bit fancy. Sure enough, she made straight for the straw bonnet edged in mint green satin ribbon and tied with a wide generous swath of the same color. Felicity longed to see the drab woman in such a feminine hat and urged her to try it.

  “Well, perhaps just for a moment,” Mrs. Sullivan said, her voice uncertain. “I was looking for a more practical hat.”

  “Sometimes the most practical hat is the one you’ll wear the most. How could you select anything else from your wardrobe when you had this to put on each morning?” She raised this question as she settled the bonnet on the lady’s faded brown hair and tied the ribbon for her in a perfectly symmetrical bow.

  Mrs. Sullivan turned to the looking glass to survey her reflection critically, but at the sight of herself, her cheeks bloomed pink, and she smiled. Looking at Felicity, she seemed a bit embarrassed.

  “I never had such a hat even when I was only a girl,” she admitted.

  “Then it’s about time you had one, isn’t it?” Felicity said sturdily. “Don’t pretty things just make you feel happier?”

  “Yes, I suppose they do,” the woman said hesitantly. “Did you trim this hat yourself?”

  “No, Mrs. Rochester did that, the shop owner. She’s miles ahead of me in design, but I’ve learned a great deal from her,” Felicity said graciously.

  “I will take this one I think,” she said decisively, giving Felicity the price of the hat from her reticule.

  “Would you like me to wrap it for you?”

  “No. I believe I shall wear it home,” she said, her cheeks pink with delight. Felicity smiled in harmony with the woman.

  As Mrs. Sullivan left, Letty Rochester, the shop owner came in, swiveling in surprise to admire the astonishing new hat on the lady’s head.

  “Why, Mrs. Sullivan, you look divine!” she exclaimed, eyes darting to Felicity incredulously.

  “Thank you kindly, Mrs. Rochester. I understand this is your handiwork. I couldn’t resist it. Your girl convinced me.” She smiled and sailed off down the walk.

  “You ‘convinced’ that skinflint to buy a new hat? I’ve had this shop twelve years, and I’ve never managed to get her to do more than try on seven or eight of them, sniff that the cost is too dear, and walk out in her rusty old brown one,” Mrs. Rochester marveled.

  “Well, Letty, it must have been my lucky day. She was wavering like she wasn’t even going to stay and look, but her eyes fixed on that gorgeous creation of yours, and I think she was in love at first sight.”

  “You must have some sort of magic, to stop her turning round and leaving rather than parting with the money. She did pay for it? We’re not to bill her are we?”

  “Here you are,” Felicity handed Letty the money.

  “Unbelievable. You’re a star.”

  “I’m learning from the best, Letty. You’ve been so good to me, really,” Felicity said warmly.

  Letty was a widow who had no children of her own, and Felicity suspected she looked on her as a sort of daughter. She smiled at Felicity fondly and would have spoken to her but two customers strolled into the shop and there was business to conduct. Felicity complimented one of the ladies on her lovely shawl and offered to show her a new bonnet that had forget-me-nots of just that same shade of blue. She made quick work of it, and the young lady carried her new bonnet proudly out of the store when they departed.

  After a long, productive day in the shop, Felicity took her leave and walked to her parents’ home a few blocks away. It was a modest house but very tidy, and still home to her three brothers and herself. Her elder brother, Tommy, was courting the pastor’s daughter, and they expected an announcement soon, and her two younger brothers were still in school. As she entered the house and set about unbuttoning her boots, she smelled the stew cooking in the kitchen. She washed her face and hands and tidied her hair before going in to the kitchen to see her mother. Lavinia Chapman had been something of a belle in her youth and had married Roger after the war when he was a handsome soldier with a wounded leg. Although Felicity had heard stories of her mother’s beauty and had once worn a lovely dress of yellow silk that her mother cut down from an old gown of her own, she knew her only as a faded, rushed, and generally cross mother.

  Felicity dropped a careless kiss on her mother’s cheek and said hello.

  “Could you mind the stew while I go collect the post?” her mother asked.

  “I will in a minute, Mother. I must change my gown first lest I get a splatter on it,” she said, stepping away from the stove, mindful of her finery. It was a particularly pretty dress of lavender with a bit of lace at the cuffs, and she was loath to get a spot on it.

  Felicity retreated up the stairs and changed into an older calico dress that was a trifle too short. It showed her ankles, but she was home for the night so it didn’t matter. She made her way to the kitchen, and her mother was waiting, with her hands on her hips.

  “Stir it, but don’t meddle with it.,” her mother cautioned, knowing her impetuous daughter too well. More than once she’d given in to an impulse to try adding more salt or pepper to a dish only to end up ruining the meal.

  “I will. If there’s anything in the post for me, hurry back!” Felicity urged.

  While her mother was gone and the house was quiet momentarily, Felicity looked around. The table was old and crooked, with one leg that wobbled. They had braced it with a book. The yellow tablecloth had been nice once but was nearly beyond mending now. Their dishes were what was left of the set that her mother and father received when they married—some of which had been broken and the rest were chipped from careless handling by a daughter w
ho didn’t like washing up plus tended toward daydreams.

  She set the table as carefully as if it were the finest china from England. As she did, she imagined what her own new dining table would look like with the pretty lavender cloth laid on it—the one she had folded neatly in her hope chest. Any day now, Daniel would send for her to join him in Wyoming where they would marry and start their new life together, braving the western frontier and facing all the trials of life in a new country side by side. It was so romantic, so courageous that it nearly brought tears to her eyes. Truly, when Daniel had told her he wanted to move out West, she had been dismayed. When he told her he would claim a homestead and get settled and then send for her, she enjoyed the idea of stepping off the train in an elegant traveling costume with a wide straw hat and perhaps a parasol. She would be a refined, sophisticated vision, the picture of fashion, to all those prosaic homesteaders and their sunburnt wives in homespun. Perhaps she could help out in a millinery shop there and bring some color and style to the village where Daniel had settled. She knew it could take the post up to six weeks to deliver a letter, but she’d written to him over three months ago now and hadn’t heard a line back.

  When she mentioned it casually to her mother, Felicity was annoyed to be told that the man was probably too busy tending a farm and building a cabin to spend time writing her sonnets. Her parents didn’t understand their amour, she thought, as she smoothed a wrinkle from the tablecloth and noticed it really did need a good starch and press.

  She smelled something burning and wheeled around with a cry to stir the stew and hope there wasn’t too much stuck to the pot. She was annoyed that she’d forgotten about it, but she wasn’t really surprised. When her mother came in, she set the post on the table and took the stew off the stove with a pointed glance. Felicity riffled through the mail and found a letter addressed to her. With a squeal, she darted off to her bedroom to read it. Daniel’s careless scrawl was unmistakable on the envelope. She slit the envelope with a hairpin and unfolded the page. Where she had hoped to have a long letter detailing their new home and his readiness for her arrival, there were only two scant paragraphs, reaching barely halfway down the page. Bewildered, she read.

  Felicity,

  By the time you get this letter, I will be a married man. I will wed Margaret Williams, the pastor’s daughter here in Cheyenne. She is accustomed to the hard life out West and is a patient, practical woman. She’ll make me a fine wife and fit in to this kind of life better than you could. For you I think it was all a fairy tale. I hope it won’t discomfit you very much to find that the daydream did not turn out as planned.

  You’re a pretty girl and my bride and I wish you the best. I hope you can find it in your heart to be happy for us…I love my Margaret dearly, and we want the same kind of life.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. & Mrs. Daniel Have

  Felicity’s hands trembled and a harsh sound escaped from her throat. At first she thought it was a sob, that her heart must be broken, but it was recognizably a scoff, a sort of incredulous shout. She sank down and sat on the wooden trunk that she used for a hope chest, as though her legs were unequal to supporting her. Impossible, she thought. It was impossible that he had written such a thing to her, had delivered such a piece of news in so few words, in so callous a manner. The Daniel she knew and loved had taken her to the ice cream shop on Saturdays and talked with her about her customers at the shop and his frustration with his father’s expectations. They were going to run away together, start a new life out West. Now she thought of it, it seemed so foolish that she had believed it would really happen. When she thought of how she had planned and prepared for that life, the things she had collected to use in her household and the reading she had done to learn about the frontier, she flushed with shame and anger.

  Felicity folded the letter neatly and placed it on her small writing desk. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat but a sob broke from her. She clapped her hand over her mouth, thinking it was overindulgent to have a crying jag. However, upon further consideration, she was alone in the privacy of her room, and she had just, in point of fact, been jilted by the love of her life. If there were ever a time to throw oneself weeping upon the bed, surely this was that time. She sniffed experimentally, finding her eyes already filled with tears of disbelief. Instead of flinging herself melodramatically on the coverlet, however, she thought with an uncharacteristic touch of practicality that such an act would only cause the boning of her corset to jab her painfully in the ribs. So she sat down on the bed and wept into her open hands.

  Felicity had always known that she felt things deeply. She had been known to fly into a passion when her brother threw a rock that injured a bird. She had demanded that he gently retrieve the bird and help her to nurse it back to health. Admittedly, their mother had refused to let them bring it in the house, but she was still a person who felt any grief or injustice keenly. So it was that this intensely personal disappointment, this heartbreak, was devastating to her.

  It was a catastrophe like nothing she had ever known. Her family was not wealthy—in fact they did not have a cook or a housekeeper as many of her schoolmates’ families had—her father worked in a factory, after all. Still, Felicity was accustomed to a comfortable home, enough to eat, and pocket money of her own doled out by her father. He had given her a clothes allowance since she was sixteen. Her cunning with trimming and re-trimming bonnets and the occasional reticule had come in handy with economizing in that arena, but her dresses were always well cut and of good fabric, even if she did have them made up simply for lack of funds to fritter away on braid and lace embellishments. She had not suffered privation, had not lost a close family member to disease or misadventure. She had never been much thwarted at having her own way. As a result, this sadness held the freshness of unaccustomed misery.

  Felicity suffered, but she knew that she suffered and that it was a novelty to her. She had read sensational stories when she was younger, in which young girls pined away and died for loss of a lover—in battle or because that lover was faithless like hers. Felicity was a romantic, but she was not so romantic that she intended to waste away from the fact that Daniel preferred someone else over her. It was shabby of him, to be sure, but she still loved him. Not that she’d have him back on a silver platter if he crawled on his knees from Wyoming to be forgiven! But she had warm, sad, bittersweet feelings for him that she suspected were of the durable sort. She cared for him deeply, and the future they had planned together was sharp in her memory. She did not have the heart to call him names or think too ill of him. She only wished he hadn’t done it, hadn’t handed over her every expectation of future happiness to some other girl.

  After she had done with crying, she made an effort to straighten her hair and bathed her face with cold water from her pitcher. Though her pier glass told her that her eyes were swollen and her face red, she went downstairs to join her family for dinner. There was nothing for it but to brazen it out and tell the truth. She slipped into her seat as her father finished saying grace. Her head bowed, Felicity avoided the scolding expression on her mother’s face or the open interest in her father’s. He liked to hear about her days at the shop, the people she saw, the hats she sold, and any gossip she picked up. He had a harmless love of news but worked in a factory with machinery so loud he was unable to talk with the other workers. Usually, she endeavored to satisfy his curiosity with cheerful and amusing stories that put her day in the best possible light. Tonight, however, she hadn’t the heart to be entertaining.

  When her mother passed her a dish of stew, she thanked her softly but made no move to lift her spoon.

  “You’re awful quiet today, Fliss.” Her father remarked genially.

  “Yes, Papa. I—I received a letter and it was not good news. From Daniel.”

  “Is he all right?” her younger brother, Christopher, ventured. “Did he get bit by a snake or a scorpion or something?” he asked, his lurid fascination with tragedy and eagerness
for news far exceeding their father’s.

  “He’s well enough.” She hesitated, “I may as well say it. Daniel’s jilted me and married another girl out in Wyoming.” She sighed heavily in the silence that followed.

  “He finally got wise to you and your taste in expensive hats,” Christopher chuckled. His mother’s reproving look hushed him up, and he started shoveling in stew without further comment.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” her father said.

  “Really, Papa? You didn’t want me to go,” she said plainly.

  “I would miss you sorely, Fliss, but your heart was set on moving out to Wyoming Territory, and I’d not have tried to stop you.”

  “No, you’ve not checked her will at anything since the day she was born,” her mother snapped.

  “I’ll own it. She’s my eye apple and has been these twenty years and more,” he said with a rueful smile.

  “If I got the pocket money she has—“ Christopher piped up.

  “Aw, shut your hole, boy. It’s different with girls. You’re not needing the fripperies and the like.”

  “It’s heartless of you to think of something as inconsequential as pocket money at a time like this,” she burst out, and fled from the table in tears.

  Felicity heard her father scold Christopher and her mother huff with annoyance before she shut herself in her bedroom for another long cry. The next morning, she had a sore head and her eyes were red and puffy from a night of crying. She took a cup of tea but left the rest of the breakfast her mother had kept warm for her and set off to work.