Katy Madison - Bride by Mail

Every fiber in her went rigid.

“Now, didn’t Jack tell you he had an Indian wife? Shame on him,” said the slick man with a sigh, as if he expected no better of Jack.

Her future husband had a wife already? He hadn’t said anything about a wife. Her mind blanked as icy dread crept up her spine.

“You’d better come with me.” He patted her captured trembling hand as if to soothe her.

She snatched it back and gripped her reticule as if it might shield her.

The men watched her with an intensity that made her neck tighten.

She wanted to crawl under the boards of the sidewalk or run away, but her feet were stuck as if vines had twined around her ankles to hold her in this awful place.

Mr. Kincaid reached out and caught her arm. “You’re coming with me. You look like you need to sit down.”

The suspender man grabbed her other arm. “I saw her first.”

The idea that she could be fought over like a child’s plaything made noise rush in her ears. As if she was being swept into a roaring river, she sought the purchase of a rock or a muddy bank. She didn’t know what to do. If Jack had a wife, she couldn’t go with him, either. Trembles shuddered through her and she fought to breathe.

* * *

Jack Trudeau waited for the poky grocer to fill his order. He checked the sack of coffee for nuts and twigs that were often used to bulk up the precious beans. He inhaled deeply of the rich scent.

The mercantile owner painstakingly penciled a list on butcher paper.

A brightly colored array of tins resided on the shelf behind the counter. Olivia might want tea.

“I’ll take a tin of tea, too,” he said.

“Orange or black?” asked the grocer.

What was the difference? A red tin with a white flower stood out. If his bride didn’t like the tea, she might like the metal box to store whatever small things a woman liked to accumulate. “The red one.”

Her request for a photograph had struck him as bold, exactly the kind of woman needed on the frontier. Olivia probably wanted the photograph to make certain he wasn’t a grizzly, unshaved mountain man. He’d been fortunate to find a man taking photographs of the sprouting Denver City, who’d said he’d take Jack’s picture because he reckoned the portrait would help get a pretty wife.

But pretty didn’t matter. His first wife hadn’t been pretty. She’d been short and dark and built like a tree stump, but he’d loved the way Wetonga’s eyes would disappear into upside-down half-moons when she laughed. She had been the wife of his heart.

But Wetonga was gone. He could not raise a plot of vegetables or keep varmints out of his cabin while he had to go farther and farther north to find the lucrative beaver and red fox.

The worst vermin were the two-legged variety who thought an empty cabin was an invitation to track in mud, sleep on his bed and burn his food into his pots. The pots they left behind anyway. Upon returning from a trapping run and finding his home defiled, Jack had decided he needed a new wife.

He glanced toward the window, where he’d been looking out every now and then to see if the stage had arrived.

Jack shifted impatiently. He’d already waited half an hour to be helped. His bride was due to arrive. He’d promised to meet her, but he hesitated to leave for fear if he returned later he would have to wait another half hour before his shopping was seen to. He wanted to be ready to leave for home as soon as they were hitched.

A group of Arapaho entered the store. As they unwound lengths of cloths, the squaws giggled about a pale-eyed woman with a skirt as big as a tepee.

Jack turned and asked in an Algonquian dialect where they had seen the woman.

A brave stepped forward and said in perfect English, “Pale Eyes arrive on the stage. Many men wish to claim her.”

A miner standing near the door leaned out. “It’s a right fine-looking lady. Kincaid’s got her. She goes to work for him, I’ll be first in line.”

“Merde!” How had he not heard the stagecoach’s arrival?

The Indian switched to a French patois. “Pale Eyes afraid.”

Were they playing musical languages? Jack stared at the brave, who slowly smiled as if they were sharing a great joke.

“Merci.” Jack swiveled around to face the grocer as he backed toward the door. “I’ll be back before you finish.”

Imagining that a scared-horse look was the reason for the nickname Pale Eyes, he trotted out onto the street. A cluster of men blocked his view. He took a few steps closer. A willowy woman dressed in a bell-shaped dress the color of lilacs stood in the center of the throng. Bands of ruffles and bows flared out from her tiny waist.

Her back was to him. Her wide-brimmed straw hat with ribbons and bows covered her hair. One of the ne’er-do-wells who hung about Denver City saloons tugged on her arm. She pulled free and leaned against Kincaid. His bride, or a fancy whore brought in by Kincaid?

He hopped on the boarded sidewalk and headed toward the throng.

Kincaid covered the woman’s hand.

The woman who claimed to work hard in a cotton mill couldn’t be this waiflike thing clinging to the saloon owner. Kincaid was a worthless excuse for a man. Jack didn’t have any use for a man like him, nor would any woman worth her salt.

A reedy female voice said, “Your place is lovely, but is there a hotel or a boardinghouse where I could get a room?”

She wouldn’t convince anyone she meant what she said with that waver in her voice.

“Why, ma’am, just come across the street, and I’ll be sure that you’re taken care of,” said Kincaid in a snake-oil-salesman’s voice.

“Olivia?” Jack called sharply.

She spun around, and for a second it appeared she had no color in her eyes, except thin black dots at the center. “Mr. Trudeau?”

Crystal earbobs danced against her pale-as-milk slender neck. She looked extravagant and indulged. A woman who dressed as if she was due for a ball was all wrong for the frontier. Wrong for the hard life in a trapper’s cabin. Wrong for him.

He nodded.

“Where have you been?” she screeched.

Jack winced. He forced his feet to move forward. “Buying supplies.”

Jack focused on the woman as he walked closer. Her irises were of such a pale gray-blue that from a distance she appeared to have the eyes of a ghost. Eyes more gray than blue, she’d written.

“I’ll give you fifty dollars for her,” said Ben Kincaid.

Jack hesitated. Fifty dollars was a lot of money, not as much as it cost to get her here, but enough he could reconsider and send for another bride.

Olivia’s eyes widened.

“Unhand her,” Jack said softly.

Ben Kincaid loosened his grip on Olivia’s arm.

She exhaled and her shoulders dropped. Going limp, she put one hand on the trunk. He thought she might swoon. Could she be any more useless?

“She ain’t going to be here long nohow,” said a man in greasy suspenders.

His heart sinking, Jack silently agreed. No way would this woman last long in the newly christened Colorado Territory.

Her Cupid’s-bow mouth flattened. As if the boards of the sidewalk had burst into flames, she stared down. Her long lashes fluttered against the carved alabaster curve of her cheek.

Good Lord, his bride was beyond pretty. She was beautiful. Could anything be worse in the Colorado Territory, where women were scarce enough that men wanted to treat them as communal property? Rather than being able to defend his cabin while he was out hunting, her looks would just draw more squatters.

“Seventy-five dollars,” said Kincaid.

Jack rolled his eyes.

She stared at Kincaid.

“Do you want to go with him?” asked Jack. His jaw tightened until a twitch developed.