Laurie Kingery - The Rancher's Courtship

Small-town Texas spinsters find love with mail-order grooms!

Though Caroline Wallace can’t have a family, she can still have a purpose. Becoming Simpson Creek’s new schoolmarm helps heal the heartache of losing Pete, her fiancé, to influenza. Then Pete’s brother arrives, trailing a herd of cattle and twin six-year-old girls.

Jack Collier expected Pete and his bride to care for his daughters until he was settled in Montana. But bad weather and worse news strand Jack in Texas until spring. It’s little wonder Caroline grows fond of Abby and Amelia. But could such a refined, warmhearted woman fall for a gruff rancher…before the time comes for him to leave again?

“Where’s my brother?” Jack Collier demanded again. “Why are you wearing black?”

Lord, help me to tell him with compassion, Caroline prayed.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Collier, but your brother Peter passed away this last winter—” she paused when she heard his sharp intake of breath “—during an influenza epidemic.”

“Pete’s…dead?” he murmured. “Why didn’t you let me know?”

The last question was flung at her like a fist, but she heard the piercing loss contained in it.

“I did try. But I wasn’t able to get your address from Pete before…before he d-died.”

She grabbed her black-edged handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

“What am I going to do now?” Jack Collier wondered aloud.

“I’m sorry you’ve come all this way, only to hear such awful news…. I’m sure Mama and Papa would be glad to put you up until you feel able to return home.”

“You don’t understand,” Jack Collier told her. “I can’t go back.”

Laurie Kingery

makes her home in central Ohio, where she is a “Texan-in-exile.” Formerly writing as Laurie Grant for the Harlequin Historical line and other publishers, she is the author of eighteen previous books and the 1994 winner of a Readers’ Choice Award in the Short Historical category. She has also been nominated for Best First Medieval and Career Achievement in Western Historical Romance by RT Book Reviews. When not writing her historicals, she loves to travel, read, participate on Facebook and Shoutlife and write her blog on www.lauriekingery.com.

The Rancher’s Courtship

Laurie Kingery

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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And they said, let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work.

—Nehemiah 2:18

To Stephanie, the teacher in our family, in honor of the teachers who only had one-room schoolhouses to teach in.

To Susan Alverson, who helped me through the rough patches and was always there to listen.

And always, to Tom.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Simpson Creek, Texas

October 1868

Jack Collier looked up and down the main street of the little town of Simpson Creek, but try as he might, he didn’t see a druggist’s store. A hotel, a mercantile, a post office, a combined barbershop-bathhouse, a jail, a bank, a doctor’s office and a church, yes, but no druggist’s shop. A search of the side streets and Travis Street, which ran parallel to Main Street, netted the same lack of results.

He’d been the recipient of several second looks by the townspeople, as he rode down the streets, his own horse flanked by the dependable old cow pony that didn’t mind his twin daughters riding double on it. People tended to stare at twins, and yet it seemed to be his own face they focused on, not Abigail’s and Amelia’s.

Well, he’d always been told he looked a lot like Pete, so that must be the reason for the stares. He started to ask one or two of them if they knew where to find his brother, but he had wanted his arrival to be a surprise for Pete. He didn’t want anyone running ahead of him with the news.

But where was Pete? Had he gone into some other line of work since he’d last written Jack? It was possible, Jack supposed, but it wasn’t like Pete to change his mind on such a matter. Pete had always set a course, then held to it. He’d traveled up to the Hill Country town in San Saba County last year with the announced goals of meeting the lady he’d been corresponding with and opening up his own druggist’s shop. Around Christmas, Pete had written that he and Miss Caroline Wallace were in love and would be married in early spring. He wanted Jack to be there.

That was the last time he’d heard from Pete—no letter, no wedding invite had followed.

Mail went astray all the time, though. He and his daughters had probably missed the wedding, but Jack had assumed he’d find Collier’s Drugs and Patent Medicines prospering, with his happily married brother as the proprietor. Pete and his bride would have a little house on one of these side streets, no doubt with a picket fence around it and the smell of freshly baked bread wafting from the kitchen.

“When are we gonna find Uncle Pete, Papa?” queried his daughter Amelia, clutching a china-headed doll to her chest.

“Yeah, and Aunt Caroline?” her twin sister, Abigail, piped up from behind her. “Did they go someplace else?”

Jack rubbed his chin and considered the matter. “I don’t know, girls, but I’m sure enough going to find out.”

After riding up Travis Street, they’d passed the churchyard and headed back onto Main Street, but now he paused by the jail to look around him, wondering where the best place to make inquiries would be.

“Can I help you, mister?”

Jack looked down to see a lanky Mexican youth with black hair and dark eyes looking up at him from beside the open door of the jail. He wore a five-pointed star that had “Deputy” inscribed across its middle.

The sheriff ought to know where to find any of the small town’s inhabitants, Jack reckoned. “Is the sheriff in, Deputy?”

“Sheriff Bishop is away for a few days, sir. I’m Deputy Luis Menendez—perhaps I may help you?” The last part was said with courteous pride.

“I hope so. We’re looking for Peter Collier and his wife, Caroline. He’s my brother. He was supposed to have started a druggist’s shop here in Simpson Creek, but I don’t see one, so maybe his plans changed. Would you know where they live?”

The young man’s brow furrowed, and something troubled shone in the obsidian depths of his eyes. “Miss Caroline is the schoolteacher. Perhaps it is best you speak to her.”

“Miss Caroline?” What in thunder? Had Caroline and Pete had a falling-out and never married? Had Pete left Simpson Creek? Why hadn’t he written Jack about it? Jack had made plans based on what Pete had told him, and if the marriage was off and Pete had gone elsewhere, Jack was going to find himself in a right pickle.