Bronwyn Williams - The Mail-Order Brides

He’d been seventeen, Jocephus nineteen, when their father’s health had begun to fail. Calling his two sons to his bedside, the old man had given them their choice of his various and scattered properties. Jocephus, then a student at Chapel Hill, had chosen the family’s two small schooners and the warehouse in Edenton; Grey had chosen the island that had been granted by the state of North Carolina to his great-grandfather more than a hundred years earlier.

By the time Grey had actually inherited the island that bore his name, there’d been little left but a single storm-ravaged house and a few dilapidated wharves and warehouses. More valuable was the dependable deepwater inlet on the north side, between St. Brides and Ocracoke Island, as well as a less dependable one to the south between St. Brides and Portsmouth.

He remembered standing on this very spot—gazing out over the free-ranging livestock that had eaten down the vegetation to the point where blowing sand had covered half the maritime forest—and thinking something had to be done if the island was to survive, much less thrive.

Left to the meager population of transient seamen, inlet pilots and seasonal fishermen who came late in the summer for the mullet, residing in bulrush-thatched huts bordering the North End, the entire island might have washed away before anyone could take measures to secure it. As it was there were tree stumps visible at low tide in both the sound and the ocean, a mark of the constant erosion.

The first thing he’d done was to bring in a few stockmen to pen up the livestock so the scrubby vegetation could recover. Next, he’d brought in carpenters to rebuild the docks and warehouses and provide sturdier housing for the permanent men. Three years ago, it had occurred to him that something was still missing.

Women.

Actually, he hadn’t thought of it until Emmet Meeks had led a delegation up the ridge to ask what he could do about bringing out a few women.

“Thing is, Cap’n—” the men gave him the courtesy title, saying damned if they were going to call him Saint. “—see, the thing is, it takes so long to go over to the mainland and meet up with a woman and court her, and then, when she finds out where we hail from, they don’t want nothing to do with us.”

Not to mention the fact, Grey had told himself, that most of the men, as decent and hardworking as they were, lacked certain social graces, shyness being the least of their problems.

It was Almy Dole, boatbuilder and general carpenter, who had expressed it best. “Maybe once we get ’em stranded out here for a spell, it won’t be long before we start looking right good to ’em.”

That had planted the seed—because the men were right. In order to thrive, a community needed stability, and that meant creating families. To that end he had tracked down the circuit preacher who served the nearby islands of Portsmouth and Ocracoke, and convinced him to add St. Brides to his charge. Then he’d set about building a church and a parsonage. Next, he’d composed a carefully worded advertisement and sent it off to the newspapers in three different coastal towns on a rotating basis, as he lacked the amenities to deal with more than one or two women at a time.

Some called him hard as pig iron. Grey preferred to think of himself as a visionary. Generous but firm. According to the terms of the old land grant, no St. Bride could sell so much as a grain of sand, but there was nothing to say he couldn’t give it away. So as an added inducement, part of the marriage bargain was to deed each married man an acre of land and the material to build a house.

His plan included an initial exchange of letters with any applicant before he arranged for her outward passage. Those who didn’t pass muster would be sent back with enough funds to support them until they could make other arrangements. He hated to send any woman back, knowing she had to be desperate to even answer such an advertisement, but if his plan was to work at all, he had to maintain standards. It took a special kind of woman to survive on a barrier island like St. Brides. Rejecting those he deemed unsuitable was actually a kindness.

But it also meant that his plan was progressing far slower than he had hoped.

As a shaft of sun glinted on the head of golden hair a few hundred yards down the road, Grey eased his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms over his broad chest. He could easily have met the woman at the landing and interviewed her there, as he’d be leaving within the hour. It would have saved time. But experience had taught him that distance lent him the perspective he needed to make a judgment. Gave him time to watch a prospective bride and size her up. By the time she reached him, he would likely have made up his mind whether or not she would do.

From what he’d seen so far, this one looked none too promising. A man needed good stock if he hoped to breed up a passel of strong St. Bridians. The woman coming up the road looked as if a stiff breeze would send her tumbling tip over toenails.

Eyes narrowed against the sudden glare of the sun, Grey studied the yellow-haired woman who was trying to hold down her skirts with one hand, hang on to her valise with the other, and still keep her hair out of her face as she staggered up the road toward him.

Staggered?

A fair man, he gave her the benefit of doubt. Walking in sand and shell took some getting used to when a woman was accustomed to sidewalks or hard clay roads. Then, too, she’d just crossed the Pamlico Sound. With a thirty-knot breeze out of the northeast, the waters might be a bit choppy. The effects took a while to wear off.

On the other hand, he needed women who were sound of wind and limb. Even with his inspection hampered by layers of billowing skirts, it was plain to see there wasn’t much in the way of flesh on this one. Maybe he should have specified a minimum weight. No runts need apply.

Grey made every effort to evaluate the woman objectively, but something in the way she moved distracted him. Such as the way her arms would fly out for balance when her foot caught the edge of a deep rut or a clump of uncrushed shell. When a gust of wind caught her skirt and she swatted it down again, offering him a clear view of the shape underneath, he barely managed to hang on to his objectivity. Shifting uncomfortably, he found himself reacting in a way that was not only inappropriate but damned embarrassing.

Waiting until she was close enough to see the set of her features—he firmly believed that given the right circumstances, a woman’s disposition could be read in her face—he descended the worn wooden steps. Obviously, she was tired and irritated. Only to be expected. Other than that, he couldn’t quite decide. She was a real beauty, though, and beauty was definitely not an asset on an island where men were men and women were rare.

He’d intended her for James Calvin, his chief carpenter. Thank God he hadn’t told him she was due in today, because he was going to have to send this one back and try again. Whatever else she might be, a woman with her looks was trouble just waiting to happen. The last thing he needed was to set the men fighting over her like a pack of mangy hounds.

At the foot of the dune, Dora stopped and watched the man striding toward her. This was Grey St. Bride? This was the man who had advertised for a wife?

There must be something terribly wrong with him—something that didn’t show from the outside. Either that or the brandy had affected her eyesight, because even from this distance he appeared to be strikingly handsome. Tall, with a rangy sort of leanness that reminded her of the live oak stumps she’d noticed along the shore, worn down to heartwood by centuries of wind and water.

“Mrs. Sutton?”