Territorial Bride. Linda Castle

sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historical® novel.

      

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      Tracy Farrell

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      Territorial Bride

      Linda Castle

      

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

       LINDA CASTLE

      Linda Castle is the pseudonym of Linda L. Crockett. Although she is a native New Mexican, Linda can trace her heritage to Comanche on one branch and all the way to Scotland at the time of the Spanish Armada on another. Perhaps this blending of blood and culture is what enables her to step back in time and capture tales from bygone eras. She is fascinated with both the American West and the British Isles. A recent trip to Scotland, England and Wales produced amazing links, such as finding an out-of-the-way kilt maker in Edinburgh who had plaids for the Crocketts and the Caudills.

      

      Linda currently makes her home in New Mexico with her husband, Bill, two youngest children, Brandon and Logan, and their beloved Great Danes, Rebel and Destiny. You can reach Linda at the following address: Linda Castle, #18 County Road 5795, Farmington, NM 87401.

      This book is lovingly and respectfully dedicated to Chris Reeves, Karin David and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, who valiantly face each day and teach us the meaning of courage. May God bless you all.

       Chapter One

       New Mexico Territory, 1889

      Missy sighed and watched Clell run his fingers around the inside of his high, stiffly starched white collar. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed hard, and he gave her a why-am-I-being-tortured-like-this? grimace. It was plain as the nose on his face that he was as uncomfortable in his fancy duds as Missy was in her maid of honor dress. Still, they had all agreed to get gussied up for this occasion. And when she thought about it, she had to smile. All the fuss and wearing of stiff lace, starched petticoats and pinching corsets was worth it, because Trace and Bellami were getting married.

      The surgeon had cautioned them to wait until Trace was fully recovered from his surgery. Then Donovan and Patricia James, Bellami’s parents, had insisted the wedding wait until the winter weather cleared. They had arrived only a week past, with Bellami’s eldest brother, Rod, her cousin Ellen and an assortment of distant relatives in tow. After so many obstacles, Bell and Trace were finally going to be wed.

      The spinster who had played the organ for every wedding in the Territory for the last twenty years suddenly changed tempo. The ancient instrument droned and wheezed, announcing that the time was growing short and all should find a seat.

      “Are you ready?” A resonant voice rippled over Missy like a warm summer breeze.

      When she turned and looked up at the hardened visage of Brooks James, her middle tightened even more. Ranch life and the thick mustache he now sported had transformed his easy-on-the-eyes appearance into the lean, uncompromising visage of a true cowboy. His pale blue eyes gazed out at her from skin bronzed by more than a year in the Territorial sun and wind. Now he had the determined never-give-an-inch look of a work-hardened Western man and the elegant manners of an Eastern dude.

      A deadly combination, Missy thought to herself.

      She would be hard-pressed to pick him out of a crowd of Circle B ranch hands without taking a second look. He had learned to rope and ride with the best of them. When he walked, his body spoke of strength and economy of motion. He had succeeded in doing what she’d been sure he could not. But a funny thing had happened to her along the way: instead of becoming accustomed to Brooks over the long months, she had found herself growing awkward around him. At one time she had needled and picked at him, but as he settled in and learned to handle himself on the ranch, the situation between them had flip-flopped like a fish stranded out of water.

      Brooks had slowly begun to get the upper hand at every confrontation. Now he openly teased her with a wicked twinkle in his eye. And every time it happened, she got all tongued-tied and fluttery. Her only defense was her sharp O’Bannion tongue, but even that weapon had failed her under the heat of that cool blue gaze.

      “Missy?” he asked again. “Are you ready?”

      “Yes—I am ready.”

      “You seem a little jumpy.”

      “Only like a torn turkey before Thanksgivin’,” Missy admitted in a whisper. She tugged at the snug waist of her dress, trying to give herself enough room to take a deep breath. Bellami and Trace both had said she looked fine in the form-fitting, peacock blue sateen, but with Brooks’s critical gaze skimming over her, Missy now doubted the truth of their words.

      Damnation. She wished she could’ve worn chaps and boots. At least then she could be herself and would be able to inhale normally instead of taking panting little breaths.

      This had been a dunderheaded notion. She wasn’t a lady. Putting fancy duds on her skinny form wasn’t going to change her. It was like putting a candelabra in an outhouse: it didn’t change what was on the inside one little bit.

      A deep, throaty chuckle drew her attention back to Brooks. He was staring at her, grinning like a fox who had found a way into the henhouse.

      “It is customary for the bride to be nervous, not the maid of honor,” he advised her in an easy tone. It could have been friendly teasing, or it could be that he was mocking her. “I didn’t think the princess of the O’Bannion clan ever had a moment of fear about anything. Could it be you are only human like the rest of us, Missy?” His eyes glittered with the challenge of his words, while a devilish half smile peeked from under his cookie-duster mustache.

      Now there was no doubt. He was poking fun at her—again. Sure as God made little green apples, he’d keep on doing it until she flew off the handle and said or did something she’d regret, and she couldn’t allow herself the luxury smack-dab in the middle of Trace’s wedding.

      Consarn him, she thought sourly.

      What was it about this Easterner that got under her skin? She knew enough to walk away from a coiled rattler or a porcupine, so why couldn’t she just turn her back on him? He was as prickly as a porky, and the way her belly knotted and her pulse was racing, he must be as deadly as any sidewinder—deadly to her, anyway.

      She wondered for the twentieth time how he could just open his mouth and rile her up like an old range bull with a thorn in his rump. It didn’t make a lick of sense. All she had to do was use the brains God gave her and ignore the grinning varmint, but somehow it never worked out that way.

      “Well, Missy?” Brooks leaned a little nearer.

      One thick brow rose over his crystalline eyes. She caught a whiff of bay rum clinging to hard-cut jaws that had been scraped bare less than an hour ago.

      “Are you—afraid?” Brooks gazed at her with his seductive eyes. “Are you?”

      “No, I am not afraid,” she snapped. Several heads turned to stare in