His Unexpected Mail-Order Bride (Historical Sapphire Springs Book 1) Read online

  His Unexpected

  Mail-Order Bride

  Historical Sapphire Springs

  Book 1

  Angie

  Campbell

  Copyright 2017 by Angela Campbell

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to

  persons, living or dead, or events is merely

  coincidence. Any unauthorized distribution of

  this work or its characters is not permitted.

  Cover by:

  Erin Dameron-Hill

  Award-Winning Cover Artist

  www.edhgraphics.blogspot.com

  Other Books:

  Summer Obsession

  Oh, Baby!

  The Rodeo Star’s Return

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Married in Vegas:

  Prologue

  Monday, February 27, 1871

  Tobias Townsend looked up and frowned at the clouds slowly making their way across the morning sky. Thankfully, the snow had held off long enough, the funeral was over. Now, as he stood there, watching the undertaker’s men start to fill the open grave, covering the coffin, the snow had finally started to fall. Not hard, yet. It was really no more than a little flurrying, but those clouds were threatening a whole lot more. He prayed for their sakes, they managed to get their job done before it really got started, and made it difficult for them to get home. Snow this late in the month wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t the norm, either.

  He crammed his hands in his pockets and turned away from the fresh grave of his new bride, wondering what had went so terribly wrong. He hadn’t been in love with her. It had been more of an arranged marriage, than anything else, but he sure hadn’t wanted her to die. She had suffered a broken neck when she had been thrown from a horse. A horse that was far too large for her to have been riding, in the first place.

  Thinking back, he guessed he should have let her have the annulment. He hadn’t realized at the time, just how badly she had wanted it. He had figured it was just nerves from being a new bride. He had told her they could take things slow, and get to know each other first. Obviously, that hadn’t been reassuring enough for her.

  Truthfully, he hadn’t been given the chance to rethink his decision on the matter. They hadn’t been married even twenty-four hours when she took his horse, and tried to run away. She hadn’t made it two miles from the house, when she was thrown. An unusual winter storm had blown up that night. The horse had most probably been startled by a crack of lightening, and she hadn’t known how to handle him, or been strong enough to control him. They had found a burnt tree, one of its larger branches lying on the ground, not fifty yards from where she had been found. After his horse came back to the house without her, they went looking for her. They found her lying in a puddle, where she had fallen. The dress she had worn for the wedding was now caked in red clay mud, her sightless eyes staring up at the darkening sky, and she was white as a ghost, like the blood had been entirely drained from her body.

  He had still been trying to saddle his brother’s mount, when his stallion came running back up to the barn. He knew immediately what he would find, but had found himself still praying she was okay. He had even made the decision to give her whatever she wanted, if he found her alive. There was no way, if she was that desperate to get away from him, he wasn’t going to let her go.

  He made his way slowly back to the buggy, where Cade sat, silently waiting on him. He had stayed behind with Tobias to wait for all the other mourners to leave, while the rest of their brothers had gone back to the house with Mrs. Harris. She had told him, she would take the others, and go on ahead and get everything ready for the guests that were bound to show up now that the funeral was over.

  All the neighbors in town had been bringing food by since early this morning. There were more casseroles and stews than he could count, along with a few pies and cakes. And that had been before he had left the house that morning. There was no telling how much food had been brought by since then.

  He couldn’t honestly tell you if he could eat right now, or not. His stomach was just t0o tied in knots. Probably more from his anger at her father, than from any grief over her death.

  Her father had known she wasn’t ready to get married. Instead of explaining that when he asked for her hand, the man agreed. Then apparently, forced her to go through with the marriage. If he had bothered to explain the situation, he and Rachel could have courted. Maybe she would have grown fond of him enough over time, she would have been willing to marry him after a few months. There had been no reason to rush to the altar if she wasn’t ready.

  Now, in less than three days after their wedding, she was dead and buried in the cold ground. It had been a tragic loss of a young life that could have been avoided if her father had only been willing to communicate. He shook his head in confusion, truly not understanding why her father hadn’t just asked him to take the time to get to know her first.

  He would have seriously consider beating some sense into the old man, if it wasn’t for the fact he hadn’t been seen since Cade had went to his house to tell him his daughter was dead. All Cade was able to tell him was, he hadn’t seemed all that surprised when he told him what happened. He said he mumbled something under his breath, he didn’t figure he was supposed to have heard, about her not being ready to marry, and now he had lost his only means. Whatever that had meant. He didn’t believe Cade had heard everything. He alluded to the idea he thought the old man had been after money, and that was why he had forced her to marry him. Now, his cash cow was gone. He didn’t figure they would ever see the old man again.

  He climbed up beside Cade in the buggy and sighed, wondering if it was really worth the trouble to try and get married. He had never been around many women. Just his mother when she was still living. Some of the ranch hands had wives, and of course, there was the married women in town who helped their husbands run the various businesses. His problem was more, he didn’t know how to interact with the younger, eligible women. He was always too busy running the ranch to even try to get to know anyone well enough to see if they would be a good fit for marriage. He just shook his head in frustration, just wanting to think about anything else, right at the moment.

  “Are you going to be alright?” his brother asked, sounding concerned, but not bothering to look over at him. Tobias just appreciated the fact he hadn’t gotten around to telling him, ‘I told you so’ yet. He figured he’d get around to it soon enough.

  Cade had warned him he shouldn’t marry Rachel, and he had stubbornly refused to listen. And no matter how much you wish things had been different, or that you had made different choices, you can’t change the past.

  “Yeah,” he sighed, letting out a slow breath. “Let’s just go home.”

  *******

  Tobias shook hands with the last of the mourners as they made their way out the door. It felt like it had been hours since he had started wondering when they were all going to start leaving. The entire town had been there, or at least it had felt like it. While he was grateful for their support, he was glad to see them go. He was exhausted, both physically and mentally. He hadn’t felt this level of e
xhaustion since his father and sister had died. All he wanted at the moment, was some time to himself. He turned from the front door, and slowly made his way toward the hallway.

  “Hey, Tobias, where are you going?” Cade asked, turning to follow him.

  “I just need to lay down for a while.”

  His younger brother frowned, trying to stop him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t you need to eat supper?”

  “Are you kidding? All we’ve done all afternoon is eat. I don’t think I’ll need to eat for a week.”

  Cade gave him a concerned frown as he watched him turn toward the hall once again. He knew Tobias hadn’t been in love with Rachel, but it seemed like he was taking her death extremely hard. He had barely said two words all day, and he wasn’t sure he needed to be left alone, right now. “Are you sure you don’t want to join the rest of us? I know you didn’t eat as much as you are alluding to. You did more picking at your food, than eating it. Mrs. Harris made one of her famous apple pies,” he said, hoping that would tempt him back the other way.

  He nodded his head, then shook it, making it appear like he wasn’t really sure what he needed right then. “Yeah, I’m sure. I just need to be by myself for a little while.”

  Cade sighed in defeat, and watched as his older brother made his way down the hall with his shoulders slumped, and disappeared into his room.

  Tobias sat down on the bed, staring at the patch work quilt his mother had made for her and his father while she was still pregnant with his baby sister. She had been having trouble with the pregnancy almost from the time she had realized she was pregnant, and his father wouldn’t let her do much more than sit and sew. He would only let her cook when she absolutely refused to be told no, and all the house cleaning had been left to his younger brothers.

  It took him several seconds to realize he was staring at a piece of folded paper lying in the middle of the bed. It had blended in with the patchwork, and if he hadn’t been staring at the quilt the way he was, he probably wouldn’t have seen it all. He reached over and pulled it towards him with two fingers, frowning in confusion. When he saw his named scrawled across it in a feminine handwriting, his frown deepened.

  “Who would have been in here to leave me a note?” he mumbled out loud.

  With a shake of his head, he picked it up to unfold. When he noticed the name at the bottom of the paper, his frown returned as he realized this was the first time he had been in here, for more than to change his clothes, since Rachel’s death.

  The note was short, and to the point. It simply said, ‘Tobias, I’m sorry. I never wanted to marry you. Rachel’.

  He jumped to his feet, and had made it across the room and punched the solid oak door, cracking at least two of his knuckles, before he even knew what he was about. It was only a few seconds later when the door was flung open and he found himself facing his younger brother.

  “What just happened? Are you alright?” Cade asked with concern.

  Rather than answer, he just shook his head, and crumpled up the note to cram in his pocket, and silently made his way back to the bed, where he dropped on his face in defeat. He swore to himself then, he would never marry again.

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday, March 16, 1875

  Tobias Townsend walked in through the backdoor of the two-story ranch house he occupied with his six brothers. Him being the oldest, he was more, or less the head of the household. The seven of them had inherited their father’s ranch after a freak carriage accident had claimed the lives of both their father and baby sister Jolie, short for Jolene. She was barely three at the time. Their mother had died from childbirth when Jolie was born. Her whole name was Sarah Jolene, after their mother.

  His parents had bought the land the ranch now sit on for little to nothing when they decided to move out west back in eighteen forty-seven. They had made it no farther than Missouri when their mother went into labor with him, and their father decided they had gone far enough. They were now hundreds of miles away from the painful memories and the homes they had grown up in, in Maine. At the time, his mother was barely seventeen, and his father only twenty-one.

  They would have never been able to make the trip, much less purchase the land, if not for the inheritance his father had received after his own parent’s death. All four of Tobias’s grandparents had been stricken ill with fever, along with his mother’s younger brother and sister, and passed away just weeks from each other. Thankfully his mother’s older brother had already been married, and lived two states over, and had been untouched by the fever. Abraham Townsend, their father, had been an only child after his younger brother had died only days after his birth.

  Tobias remembered his father saying once, he believed he and his mother had probably escaped just in time. He certainly believed, if they had stayed in Maine, they would have eventually died of the fever, as well. Instead, they had headed west, away from the pain and illness, and settled in what was now known as Sapphire Springs, Missouri. His father had been one of the four who had named the small town.

  At the time, when his father had bought the nearly seven-hundred-acre ranch from the government, there wasn’t but three other homes in the area, and they had to travel several miles to the nearest general store. His father, Abraham, along with David Harris, Joshua Miller and George Carter, was one of the original founders of the small town named for the incredibly clear, cold river that lay just to the east of where the Townsend ranch now sit.

  The town, though small, now boasted of a general store, owned and operated by David Harris, along with a butcher shop, owned and operated by Joshua Miller. For the last twenty years George Carter had been the sheriff. The Townsend ranch had been large enough by the time the little town had really taken off, Abraham Townsend hadn’t had the time to do anything but ranch. A lot of the town’s growth had been attributed to the Townsend ranch.

  Due to the size of the ranch, Tobias’s father had to hire several ranch hands. Those ranch hands had brought their families with them. Due to the influx of people, a large number of them young couples with small children, they had to come up with a better way to get daily supplies. The town also now had a post office with a telegraph, a hotel and restaurant, tailor and seamstress, and a barber shop that sat next to the Sapphire Springs Saloon. Of course, there was also the sheriff’s office with the livery stable next door, also ran by the Carter family. There was a stagecoach office, operated by Amos Ross. Then there was the school for the children, and a church with a small cemetery beside it that was maintained by the preacher, who’s little house sat behind the church. No town would be complete, of course, without an undertaker and a hospital, which ironically, or not, sat side by side, to the west and just a little-ways out of town.

  The Townsend ranch house was known for being the only one in the area to have indoor running water and a flushing toilet. Newly built. Cade had seen a washroom like it in a hotel, in New York the year before and decided they just had to have one put in their house. Tobias still hadn’t figured out Cade’s justification for the expense, but since he had footed the bill all on his own, he could find no real reason to argue with him.

  Tobias walked over to the kitchen counter and grabbed a glass and started pumping water from the pump. Once his glass was full, and the pump off, he turned to prop his tall, muscular body against the counter. He was just taking his first drink, when his younger brother Thaddeus walked in the kitchen.

  “Hey, Tobias, I need to talk to you about something,” he said, his voice shaking.

  He looked at his younger brother, noting how much he had grown in the last few months. He was thinking they were going to need to take him to the tailor for some new clothes. They probably could buy him a few ready-made things, as well. He probably need to check on Wally’s wardrobe, while he was at it.

  He raised an eyebrow at the dark-haired boy, the spitting image of their late father, except for his coloring. “Why do you sound nervous? What do you need to talk to me about?”

&
nbsp; The younger boy dipped his head, staring at the floor, and his shuffling feet. “You need to go into town and meet the stagecoach.”

  He laughed, shaking his own dark head. “Why would I need to meet the stagecoach?”

  “Well...,” the boy hesitated, gulping air. “You need to go get your mail-order bride,” Thaddeus said in a rush, trying to get it out fast, before he vomited in the floor because of his nerves.

  He stood up straighter, placing his water glass on the kitchen counter. “What do you mean, I need to go get my mail-order bride?” he asked on a laugh, thinking his brother was trying to make some really, bizarre joke. “I didn’t order a bride.”

  “I know. I ordered her for you,” he said, sweating, trying not to panic and run.

  “What?” Tobias asked, thinking he may have fallen down the rabbit hole and was just now realizing it. He felt for sure he hadn’t heard his younger brother right.

  “I ordered her for you.” He only managed to finish his answer because his brother was in such a state of shock, he had stood there in silence. “Her name is Sadie Johnson. She’s coming from New York. She’s supposed to arrive at one by...”

  “Why?” Tobias barked, taking a menacing step toward his little brother. If it had been one of the older ones, he would have already had them laid out cold on the floor.

  Thaddeus looked up with surprise in his eyes. “Why what?”

  “Why did you send for me a mail-order bride?” he roared loud enough to nearly rattle the rafters.

  Thaddeus stood up straighter, placing his hands on his hips. “You’ve scared off all the young women around your age in the area. Ever since...”

  “Why do you think I need a bride?” Tobias snarled, working really hard to resist the temptation to grab his brother around the throat, and shake him.