Bride by Mail. Katy Madison

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Her head jerked back, and she stared at him as if he’d turned into a rattler. She swallowed hard, but then her chin slid up a notch. “No. I’m not a possession to be sold.”

      Her voice had moderated from the thin, raspy screech she had greeted him with. She still sounded too breathy and young, but he reckoned he could live with the sweeter sound. Maybe, just maybe, she had a bit of grit. “Then tell him to leave you alone.”

      She gave him an angry glare, then marched toward the mercantile. The way she floated over the ground in her swaying skirt mesmerized СКАЧАТЬ