Bronwyn Williams - The Mail-Order Brides

She damned well had to go before his whole plan came unraveled.

Seated at his desk the following day, Grey tried to concentrate on rewording his advertisement. What with all the distractions, concentration was becoming more and more difficult. “Young women with farm experience.”

To do what? Milk the cows? St. Brides boasted one poor old bull, whose duty it was to service the dozen or so cows descended from those that had been brought out generations ago by some misguided stock-man, or had since escaped from a cattle barge and swum ashore. There hadn’t been a calf produced in the past four years—which meant no fresh cows. Which meant no fresh milk. It was all the stockmen could do to keep the poor creatures supplied with hay. There were no pastures to graze on, only the wild sedge; not even Grey St. Bride could command grass to grow in windswept, tide-prone sand.

He had a choice of having the cows butchered and salted down, the meat to be distributed among the men, or he could have a young bull shipped out. Making a note on the order he was working up for Captain Dozier, Grey went back to his advertisement.

“Wives needed. Must be young, strong, healthy.”

Not for the first time, he asked himself why any young woman in her right mind would agree to move to a place that lacked even the most basic amenities, to marry a man who worked from sunup to sundown and bathed only on rare occasions. The younger men might even take a notion to ship out whenever a ship came in that was shorthanded, and be gone for months, if not years. For the most part they were decent, hardworking men. Still, what did they have to offer a woman?

More to the point, why had he ever thought he could turn this place into a settled, civilized community, one where children could grow up and learn a trade, or be taught their letters until they were old enough to go off to school? Once grown, some would move on—a few always did. But of those few, some would eventually marry and return to the island with their families.

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