Prologue

Greybull, Wyoming

1880

“You looked so beautiful on stage tonight, Ma,” twelve-year-old Margaret Elway said.

“Thank you, darling.” Her mother, Celia Elway, smiled as she placed their dinner on the table. On nights when her ma worked at the theater, dinner was a modest affair of buttered biscuits, salted pork, and beans. Pa had not yet joined them. Margaret was unsure if he would come home that night at all. There had been a time, at the very edge of her memory, when Pa had been around for every meal.

But that had been a long time ago.

“I hope I’m as pretty as you are when I’m older,” Margaret said.

Her mother was a great beauty with wide blue eyes and thick, black hair that had only recently become threaded with white. On stage, she seemed to brighten the whole theater.

“You will be, Maggie,” said her mother. “Even more beautiful than I.”

Margaret ate her meal and tried to imagine that. It seemed impossible that she would ever be as lovely as her mother.

Boom!

Margaret jumped, twisting around in her chair as the door burst open behind her.

Pa was home. He staggered in, struggling to find footing even with his cane. Once, Pa had been a strapping man and full of strength, but since losing his left foot, he had grown wan and wiry. His once bright green eyes had lost their shine, and his auburn hair had gone quickly gray.

Margaret scarcely dared to breathe, for she knew the significance of her father’s halting, uneven steps and what often followed.

It was best to be quiet and still.

“What are you doing?” Pa asked, his words slurring together. “Having dinner without even waiting for me?”

Her mother squared her shoulders. “I didn’t realize you would be home tonight.”

“You shouldn’t have assumed!” he snapped, pitching alarmingly to the side. “When I come home, I expect there to be food waiting for me! Instead, I find you and my daughter eating alone without the head of the household even there! You’re a miserable wife.”

Margaret’s heart hammered against her ribs as Pa approached the scarred, wooden table where she and her mother sat.

“I can prepare food for you,” her mother said. “Or you can take my plate, and I will prepare something for myself.”

“That ain’t the point!” Pa shouted, slamming his cane against the ground. “You should’ve been waiting for me!”

He lurched across the floor toward her mother, and dread coiled in Margaret’s stomach. She knew what came next. Margaret’s mother braced herself for the inevitable blow, as she so often did. With scarcely a thought about what she might be doing, Margaret leaped from her chair.

“Pa!” she exclaimed.

A sharp crack split the air, and Margaret fell hard onto the ground, as a stinging pain spread through her cheek. It took a heartbeat for her to realize that Pa had struck her. Margaret’s eyes burned, and she sobbed in pain.

“Look what you did now!” Pa shouted, his furious gaze still fixed on Margaret’s mother. “Why can’t you just do what I ask? It isn’t that much!”

Without a single word to Margaret, he stormed out the door, lurching and staggering with every step. Margaret cried and put a hand to her cheek. Her skin felt hot and stung a little like a bee sting.

“He’s probably going to the barn,” her mother said bitterly. “He has a stash of alcohol hidden there.”

Margaret blinked at her mother, who appeared blurry through her tear-filled eyes. “Oh, my poor darling!” her mother exclaimed, lowering herself to the floor.

Her mother wrapped her arms around Margaret, who sniffled and tried to stifle her sobs. For a long moment, her mother simply held her. Margaret found herself slowly calming in her mom’s warm embrace.

“I’m sorry,” Margaret said, her lip quivering.

“Don’t be,” Margaret’s mother said, kissing her temple. “You did nothing wrong. No, I am the one who ought to apologize. I should have—I never…this is enough. Now that he has struck you, I cannot endure this any longer.”

Margaret rubbed her eyes roughly, her mind awhirl with such powerful emotions that she did not think she could name them all. Pa had struck her, had knocked her to the ground, and it hurt so badly that she couldn’t even find the words to describe it.

“We must hurry,” her mother said. “I will pack provisions and my clothes. Pack your things. We are leaving tonight, while he is in the barn.”

“Leaving? Where are we going?”

“It doesn’t matter,” her mother said. “As long as you are safe.”

Chapter One

Joliet, Montana

1895

John Swiss wiped his sweat-damp brow with the back of his hand and leaned against the newly repaired fence, which had been the sad casualty of a particularly aggressive stampede of wild horses. While many of his fellow ranchers had chosen to switch to the barbed wire, which allegedly took less effort to maintain, John insisted on having his wooden fence around the ranch. After all, few of his fellow ranchers had wild children running about their properties, and although Owen and Emma were both smart as whips, John preferred to keep the ranch as safe as possible for both of them.

John exhaled sharply and ran a hand through his thick, brown hair before returning his hat to its proper place. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, his skin tanned from hours of working in the sun. His eyes were blue like the sky and had once shone with all the brightness of a clear, summer day. That had been so long ago. In more recent years, a melancholy had settled about the man. He tried to hide it, ensuring that he always appeared well-groomed and healthy. John forced himself to cheerfully greet every man, woman, and child when he went into town.

He told his children that he was happy. He told his friends that he was happy. But John had a sneaking suspicion that no one was really fooled by him all that much.

Beside John, his foreman Ace draped his forearms over the fence and gazed into the distance, where the cattle grazed peacefully. While Ace was thirty-two, only a year older than John, he looked significantly younger because of his clean-shaven face and defiant blond hair, which constantly fell into his brown eyes. Ace’s face was red from the heat and the exertion of repairing the fence, but more alarming was the mischievous expression flitting about the man’s face.

“Did you see Elias’s new bride?” Ace asked. “She’s a beauty. Almost makes me want to find a mail-order bride myself.”

John arched an eyebrow. “From out East, ain’t she?”

“New York,” Ace replied. “A city woman. She was very elegant.”

John hummed. He liked to think that he was a fair man, who did not judge people before meeting them, but he also could not imagine some city woman from New York being content in the frontier and away from all the luxuries afforded by the city.

“Well, then,” John said.

“Is that it?” Ace asked.

John sighed and shifted a bit, leaning more comfortably against the fence. “What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing, I suppose. But you don’t sound even the least bit intrigued by the lady. Aren’t you interested?”

“Why should I be? It’s not like I’m going to marry her.”

Ace clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and cast John an amused look. “You don’t look at any of the beauties in town either, and plenty of them are unmarried. I hear there’s a new schoolmarm.”

“I heard about that,” John replied. “Mark mentioned it when I took Emma and Owen to the schoolhouse this morning.”

“And you didn’t even meet the lady?” Ace asked, laughing. “Come on, now! Are you so afraid of women that you won’t even meet the one educatin’ your children?”

“Got no need to meet her. If she needs to speak to me, I’m sure she will,” John replied. “Until then, I see no reason to interact with her more than necessary. Besides, running the ranch takes all my time. Why waste the morning with pleasantries?”

Ace sighed and shook his head. “My friend, I do not understand you.”

“You refuse to understand me,” John countered. “Besides, I know what you’re proposing. I have enough to worry about without adding a woman to it all.”

“If you say so.”

“The ranch,” John said. “And two young’uns. That is plenty for any man.”

Ace whistled between his teeth. “Speaking of young’uns, look at what they brought with them! Are you sure about not wanting to bother with any pleasantries?”

John followed his friend’s stare and drew in a sharp breath. Owen and Emma were approaching, both with his brown hair and their mother’s doe-like brown eyes. That was not alarming, but the woman walking with them was another matter entirely. She was a sturdy woman dressed in a severe black gown. A matching bonnet covered her hair, but a few red curls had escaped its confines and bounced beside her temples. She looked respectable. Pretty, John would admit, although he seldom looked at women since Elaine.

“Pa! Pa!” Owen exclaimed, rushing forward. “Look who we brought to meet you!”

“Who is that?” he asked.

And how could he escape what was surely about to be an uncomfortable situation?

“This is Miss Reece!” Emma exclaimed. “She teaches us!”

It seemed grossly unfair that he’d tried to avoid meeting this woman at all, only for his own children to conspire against him. Worse, he had a feeling that they had an ulterior motive for forcing this introduction.

John withheld a sigh.

He loved Owen and Emma more than life itself, but sometimes, they made him feel very old and tired. His face heated with embarrassment, and he hoped that the schoolmarm didn’t notice.

The woman smiled. “Rachel Reece,” she said.

John tipped his hat to her and forced what he hoped was an acceptable smile. “Ma’am. A pleasure.”

“She’s really nice!” Emma exclaimed.

“And very smart!” Owen added.

“She is really good at teaching,” Emma said.

Owen nodded eagerly.

“That is…good,” John said. “We’ve been needing a schoolmarm in town.”

Rachel laughed lightly. “I already feel so very welcome here. Everyone has been so kind.”

“You should invite her to stay for dinner!” Emma exclaimed, her eyes shining eagerly.

“That’s a great idea!” Owen agreed.

That was an absurdly improper suggestion, and John felt a flush of embarrassment at it.

“Now, hold your horses!” Ace exclaimed. “Ace Presley—a pleasure to meet you, Miss Reece.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Rachel replied.

Ace wagged his finger at Owen and Emma, giving them a look of mock severity. “You rascals! Miss Reece has just come to our town. I’m sure she has a whole heap of things that she needs to do in order to properly settle in. It’s a little early for dinner invitations!”

“It ain’t that early,” Emma pouted, crossing her arms.

“Do you have heaps of things?” Owen asked, looking at Rachel with his big, brown eyes.

The young woman’s face softened. “Well, I must admit that Mr. Presley makes an excellent point. Besides, I only came to introduce myself to your pa. A lady shouldn’t overstay her welcome.”

Waves of relief crashed over him. There was a reason Ace was the best friend that any man could possibly have, and this was it. Rachel seemed like a sensible woman who would doubtlessly refuse any improper invitation, but Ace seemed determined to make the woman leave all the more quickly. That suited John all the better.

“I think that would be wise, ma’am,” Ace said, grinning. “Why don’t I walk you home?”

“That would be kind of you.”

Ace offered his arm, as though he were some English aristocrat trying to escort a noble lady. Pink bloomed over Rachel’s cheeks as she shyly curled her hand at the crook of Ace’s elbow.

“I’ll be back in a while,” Ace said.

“Of course,” John said.

“It was nice to meet you,” Rachel said.

“And you,” John replied.

“Aw!” Owen exclaimed.

Emma stomped her foot on the ground and scrunched up her face, like she always did when she was angry.

“I’ll see you in the morning for school,” Rachel said, smiling. “It won’t be very long.”

She and Ace turned to leave, and John watched them until he was sure that the pair was out of earshot. Then, he sighed and looked at Owen and Emma. Both his children shot him angry looks. Neither of them was especially good at looking angry, however. Emma was eight, and Owen was just barely twelve. Small children just did not look especially imposing or fierce, no matter how hard they tried.

“Now,” John said, a note of warning in his voice, “I have told you this before. You cannot keep bringing women to me and trying to make me marry them. I can’t remarry.”

Not so soon after Elaine’s death, maybe not ever.

Emma put her hands on her hips. “But why not?”

A lump rose in his throat, his grief threatening to overtake him. How could he explain something like lost love to such young children? Sometimes, John didn’t think he even knew how. “Because it would be betraying your ma’s memory,” he said at last. “I know you don’t understand that right now, but someday, you will.”

“But that isn’t fair!” Owen exclaimed.

“I know,” John said. “Yer ma was taken from us far too soon. I wish every day that she was here, but—”

“But all the other boys and girls have a ma!” Emma exclaimed, her blue eyes watering. “Why can’t we have a ma? You just get married again, and she can be our ma!”

“It ain’t that easy.”

“Why not?” Owen demanded.

John shook his head. “It just isn’t. I can’t love another woman like I did your mother.”

“But Miss Reece is so nice!” Owen protested.

“And pretty!” Emma added. “And she smells nice!”

A knot tightened in John’s chest. He would give his kids anything in the world except for this, but they just didn’t understand. And why should they? Elaine had died while bringing Emma into the world. His daughter had never known what it felt like to have and lose a ma, only what the absence of one felt like. And Owen had been four, old enough to remember but not with the clarity to understand how heavily grief might weigh on a man’s soul.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “Truly. But I ain’t gonna marry again.”

“But it’s not good!” Owen argued. “The house is empty! You work all the time.”

Emma sniffled, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

John winced. “Emma, don’t cry,” he said gently.

“But it’s lonely! You don’t even eat breakfast or dinner with us! You just leave food and go to work!” Emma argued.

John sighed and gazed at his children as a flood of helplessness rose within him. He couldn’t deny their complaints. He did work nearly every hour that wasn’t spent sleeping. If he rested for too long, Elaine’s face would emerge from the fog of his memory. He had to work.

But he also had to make sure that his children knew they were loved.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I promise that I’ll do better at coming inside for dinner.”

“And breakfast?” Owen asked.

“And breakfast.”

Emma sniffed. Her tears had ceased, but her eyes were red and looked raw. “Fine,” she mumbled. “If we can’t have a ma.”

John jerked his head toward the house. “You ought to go inside. I have some work to finish up here, but I’ll be in for dinner.”

He could have gone with them, but he needed to be alone for just a few moments. He needed to think.

“Come on, Em,” Owen muttered.

The pair petulantly trudged back to the house.

John frowned, considering them.

Miss Rachel Reece was the fourth woman that they had done this with. Maybe….

Maybe Owen and Emma would benefit from a feminine presence in their lives.

John scratched his beard, thinking. How could he make that happen? He didn’t want a wife, but he needed a lady in the house. Someone that the kids could grow attached to.

He recalled Ace’s joke about a mail-order bride, and John’s thoughts began to take some shape. There would be no bride. That was a certainty. However, would it be possible to procure some manner of woman that way and just not marry her? Maybe he could just place an ad looking for a good woman to help with his young’uns. He could give her board and wages, like the nursemaid the mayor employed to look after his young son. Surely, some young woman would find value in such an opportunity, wouldn’t she?

Chapter Two

Steilacoom, Washington

1895

“And you still made breakfast?” Sarah cried, her hazel eyes alight with disbelief.

“I could not leave you to cook all Mr. Hollingsworth’s meals and clean the kitchen on your own,” Margaret Elway said. “I would have felt terribly guilty.”

“Oh, honey! My poor Maggie!”

Margaret had not wept since her mother’s death the morning before, but when Sarah embraced her, her eyes watered. A lump rose in her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut, whether to stop the tears or somehow make her poor mother’s passing just a nightmare.

Like her ma had always said, Open your eyes; it’s only a nightmare.

Margaret’s breath shuddered through her slender form. She was seven-and-twenty years of age, and her mother had been her sole protector for fifteen of those years. Margaret still vividly remembered the night they escaped her father. She remembered that her mother had returned jubilant from a successful vaudeville performance, wherein she had played a hapless suitor’s beautiful and unreachable love interest. Margaret remembered saying that she wanted to be as pretty as Ma when she was older.

That had happened. She had her Ma’s thick, dark hair and blue eyes. Once, a lovestruck actor—who fancied himself a poet—had called Ma’s face the very visage of Aphrodite. The only difference between Ma and herself was that Margaret had a beauty mark at the corner of her eye. But while Margaret’s beauty had grown, her mother’s had wilted like a flower.

And wilted far earlier than any woman ought to. While Margaret had worked in the kitchens with Sarah, Ma had, in her last days, confined herself mostly to their rooms and done odd work as a seamstress.

Sarah ended their embrace, but she kept her hands curled around Margaret’s forearms. Margaret’s eyes snapped open.

“I would have made breakfast,” Sarah said gently. “You didn’t need to work today. I am certain that Mr. Hollingsworth would understand your absence, as would I.”

“I wanted a distraction,” Margaret said, blinking quickly to force back the tears.

It nearly worked; only two escaped and rolled down her cheeks.

“My poor Maggie,” Sarah murmured, her face soft and understanding. “I am so sorry.”

“So am I, but—maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“What do you mean?”

Margaret sighed. She reached reflexively to her collarbone where the necklace hung. It was a worthless thing, an old artifact made of bronze and colored glass that Ma had probably once worn on stage when pretending to be a foolish English lady or some such. It was the only jewelry Ma had taken with her when they fled, and although she abandoned acting entirely, sometimes, she would still take the necklace from its hiding place, nestled between her clothing, and hold it. Now, Margaret wore it to honor her mother.

“Ma’s health was failing her. She—I saw her grow old well before her time. Ma wasn’t an old woman, but her hair was already mostly white. She had more wrinkles than most women twice her age. I really think it was the anxiety from always having to leave and run. Always looking over her shoulder. That killed her.”

“Maggie—”

“And I worry,” Margaret continued in a rush, “that I might meet a similar fate. I’ve been running for so long, and I’m so tired. Far too tired for a woman who is seven-and-twenty.”

“Maybe you need a fresh start,” Sarah said softly. “Go somewhere where you won’t have to run.”

Margaret sighed. “How can I? It’s hopeless, especially without my mother. She was my rock all these years. How can I survive without her?”

“You’re strong,” Sarah insisted. “You’re skilled. I’ve never met a woman as talented in the kitchen as you! And you know about acting because of your mother. I’m sure that she taught you what you needed to survive, and if you have even a fragment of her independent spirit, which I know you do, I have no doubt that you will find happiness in a new life!”

Margaret shook her head. A warm, fond feeling crept over her in response to her friend’s praise. Sarah truly believed in her, perhaps even more than Margaret believed in herself. Still, Sarah’s words were a romantic fantasy. She envisioned a world that was kinder to women and thought Margaret to be a much stronger woman than she was.

“You know as well as I do how difficult it is for a woman to survive on her own,” Margaret said. “Even if I am skilled, it will be hard to leave for some far-flung place and survive.”

“Unless you have a husband there,” Sarah said, her face brightening.

“Who would want to marry me? I’m a spinster already!”

Her pulse jumped when she thought of marriage. While Margaret had told Sarah about her past, she had never revealed that the very thought of marriage filled her with cold, aching dread. When Ma married him, Pa had been a good man. It only took one accident for Pa to become the man who struck Margaret and her mother. How could she ever marry when doing so meant risking a fate like her mother’s, where her husband might be kind and doting, only to become a monster years later?

As an adult, Margaret understood that her father was not an evil man. He was a broken man, one in pain following an accident in which a horse fell on his foot, crushing the limb beyond repair and requiring amputation. Pa had turned to alcohol in an attempt to numb that pain. Her father had been a sick man, a man to be pitied, rather than detested.

But she still never wanted that fate to be hers.

“I’m sure that someone would!” Sarah argued, oblivious to Margaret’s inner turmoil.

Margaret shook her head helplessly.

“Actually,” Sarah said, grinning, “I just happen to have this with me!”

Sarah reached into her pocket and withdrew a thin, folded sheet of a newspaper.

Margaret arched an eyebrow. “A newspaper?”

“Ads!” Sarah exclaimed, spreading the paper over the table before them. “You could become a mail-order bride!”

“A mail-order bride,” Margaret deadpanned. “If I can’t find a husband here, I don’t imagine I’ll have more luck with one elsewhere. Besides, dozens of women apply to those ads! I would never be noticed, given my age.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Sarah said, pointing to an ad. “What about this one?”

Margaret reluctantly read the ad, which was from a young man seeking a suitable bride.

“I don’t know why you find that one so appealing,” Margaret admitted. “I never gave these ads any serious thought.”

She still was not giving them serious thought.

“He’s young,” Sarah explained. “Only twenty-one. He has thirteen acres, which means that he can afford a wife. And his only requirements for one are that she be kind-hearted, beautiful, and can cook. He sounds decent.”

Margaret bit the inside of her cheek.

“What if he proves not to be decent?” Margaret asked. “People print lies as easy as truth. I would be stranded in California with no friends, family, or money. How would I manage to return to Steilacoom?”

“Well,” Sarah said, chewing her lower lip. “That is simply the risk you take with becoming a mail-order bride. Would you have money to pay for a ticket to come back? If not, I would help you.”

Margaret might have the money for a return ticket, but she didn’t want to waste the little she had on an opportunity that did not promise a positive outcome. She certainly couldn’t justify taking Sarah’s money for such a thing.

“It’s a good idea, Sarah, but I don’t think I can do it. How can I decide to marry a stranger based on nothing but an ad? Suppose I answer and go all the way out there to be with him, and he doesn’t fall in love with me. Suppose he doesn’t even like me!”

I’m not brave enough to do it.