Mail-Order Christmas Brides Boxed Set. Jillian Hart

he’d gotten some work at the waterfront—and Maeve had been putting in extra hours as a scrubwoman.

      She almost had enough saved up for a doll when everything turned upside down. She’d been fired from her job because the lady of the house didn’t want “that man’s widow” working for her any longer, even though all Maeve ever did was scrub the floors and do the heavy washing. She was given no references when she was told to leave. She’d finally bought a newspaper and read the awful things people were saying about her late husband. And about her.

      People said that she had known about her husband’s scheme to seduce rich young women and then threaten to expose them unless their families offered up a fair amount of money. The reporters even speculated that she had some of that money left and creditors came to her door demanding payment on her late husband’s debts. They showed her papers he had signed for gambling debts and she’d been unable to pay them. She didn’t know what her husband had done with the money he’d forced from the families. Likely, he had gambled it away. The only thing he had ever given her was the odd coin here and there that he added to their savings for the doll.

      They’d been destitute when Noah’s letter had come with the train tickets.

      “Pretty,” Violet whispered and pointed. The doll had auburn hair and blue eyes like hers. “What’s her name, Mommy?”

      The blanket no longer kept the cold away. Maeve shivered, but she noticed Violet didn’t hesitate in her speech at all, not when talking about the doll.

      “Hush now,” Maeve said quietly. “The doll doesn’t have a name.”

      “Oh.” Violet breathed in dismay. “Doesn’t she have a daddy to love her?”

      Maeve almost broke down. As unfaithful as her husband had been, he’d always charmed their daughter. He told her he’d named her for his favorite flower, the most delicate, beautiful blooming plant in the whole world. The truth was, Maeve had discovered at his graveside, Violet had been the name of one of his several lovers. He must have thought it was quite the joke to name their daughter after a woman he had been free with since before he married Maeve.

      “The doll doesn’t care about love,” Maeve told the girl, her words more harsh than she intended. Her heart had been broken all over again when her husband’s lover had confronted her that day, demanding to have a token of him for a remembrance, preferably something with a precious stone that she could pawn.

      Maeve forced her face to relax and smiled reassuringly at her daughter.

      Violet didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t say anything more.

      Maeve looked over at Noah, hoping he hadn’t been listening. He was reaching for the doorknob and didn’t seem to have been paying any attention to them. She was relieved.

      “Maybe they’ll still have a doll like that next Christmas,” Maeve whispered finally, softening her voice and offering her daughter what hope she could. The girl nodded solemnly and Maeve resolved to put together a sock doll for Violet for Christmas. It wouldn’t be the beauty in the window, but her daughter would have something to hug as she went to sleep at night.

      * * *

      Noah stomped the snow off his boots as he opened the wide door leading into the mercantile. It was darker than usual inside because of the coming storm, but it was warm. The place smelled of coffee, and he saw a new barrel of pickles sitting on the floor by the counter. Bright bolts of cloth were on a shelf to his right. Cans of peaches and bags of dried beans were to his left.

      Noah watched to be sure the woman and girl made it through the door. He had yet to even see the Flanagan woman’s face since she kept the blanket hooded over it. His impression of her on the railroad platform was of a tall drab woman with an awful hat pulled down to cover her ears. From what he could tell, she was thin. He hoped she was up to cooking for his crew. His men knew how to drive cattle and they were loyal, but there had been grumbling in the bunkhouse about the burnt biscuits and tough meat the ranch had served up for the past two years. Last fall, he’d ordered one of the cowboys, Dakota, to take over feeding the men. The cowboy hadn’t been much of a cook and he was anxious to have the duty taken away from him.

      The men would give anyone who didn’t feed them better than Dakota a hard time. It was worse in the winter when they spent half of their time in the bunkhouse dreaming of donuts and pies—the kind of delicacies, they said, that required a woman’s hand to make properly.

      He suspected it was all the idle time that had caused his men to come to him with the idea of placing an ad for a female cook. He told them there was no point. Women were so scarce in the Montana Territory that no woman would stay longer than a couple of weeks before she got married and left. They knew that as well as he did, but Dakota refused to accept it. He said he was going to find a way to get a cook who would stay.

      The next thing Noah knew, he’d received a letter from a woman who had answered the ad Dakota and the men had put in a newspaper asking for a mail-order bride—for him. He’d demanded to see the ad and the ranch hands had given him a copy. He had been glad to see Dakota had some sense and had indicated the marriage would be in name only. Then he’d wondered if an older widow might just be interested in the kind of an arrangement his men had proposed. He checked the dates and saw that the ad had run for a full month and a half before he received even that one reply. He figured that meant there had been no confusion about the offer being made. Most women had discarded it.

      Noah had intended to throw the letter he received away, but it had sat on his bedside table for two weeks. Every night he’d read it and tried to write some words to tell the woman there had been a misunderstanding. He’d had one wife and had no intentions of ever seeking another.

      But the sparse words on the plain piece of paper had haunted him. He could almost feel the woman’s desperation as she penned the few words telling him that she was an immigrant from Northern Ireland, a mature widow who had worked as a scrubwoman until her husband had been killed and she’d lost her job. She had no other family and was looking for a home for herself and her child. She had taken lessons to improve her speech, she said, and she knew also how to sew. Maybe it was the lack of polish and detail that had spoken to him. He’d known discouragement so deep it threatened the soul. He’d sensed this woman had nothing but a fragile pride stopping her from begging for help.

      Finally, one night he’d written to her, telling her to come if she hadn’t already found another position. And he’d prayed that she had. He had repeated that he had separate quarters for her, hoping to assure her that he didn’t mean to take advantage of her plight. Once she had saved some money, he would offer to have the marriage annulled if she wanted. He knew how easily women, especially immigrants, starved to death in cities like Boston after they lost their husbands and their jobs.

      “I mean to pay you,” Noah said as he turned around to speak to the woman. “They didn’t mention that in the ad, but—”

      She wasn’t there. She hadn’t followed him over to the counter like he had assumed. Instead, she was bent over the little girl, speaking in a low voice. All he saw was the top of her blanketed head, but something about her and the child made him uneasy. She hadn’t mentioned her age in the brief letter she’d written, but mature surely meant someone old enough to be a grandmother. He was thirty-three and he figured someone of that description had to be in her fifties. But not many women that age would have a young child.

      The girl was probably her granddaughter, he told himself in relief. Maybe she thought he would frown upon her bringing a child who wasn’t hers.

      Just then Jimmy, the boy who ran errands in the store, came out from the back room.

      “Help you?” He nodded in greeting. “I got some of your order in the wagon. I left room for a couple of trunks. But I got in the ham you wanted and a side of bacon. I’ll bring the rest out later.”

      “My wife is going to put in a full order for that later delivery, but you’ll need to pick up her trunk from the railroad station now,” Noah said loudly enough for the woman to hear. “Flanagan is the name.”

      His