When a Bride Defies the Odds (Preview)

Chapter One

Dallas, Spring 1885

Sarah stared as the nicely dressed—if slightly portly—Martin Bascom repeated himself.

“You didn’t reply to my proposal letter, Miss Radcliffe, so how was I to know you were on your way here? You should have waited for another letter from me following your acceptance. If you had done so, you would’ve known that I had already married another.”

Her eyes widened, hands fisted on her hips as she resisted the urge to stomp the heel of her right shoe against the stagecoach station platform. She heard the throaty snorts of the six-team of horses behind her, the clatter of trace chains and creaking leather. 

“But you proposed to me, Mister Bascom! You proposed!” 

Though deeply mortified at the scene playing out, she could do nothing to prevent it. Her stomach roiled. 

“Please, Miss Radcliffe, let’s not make a scene—”

“A scene?” she gasped. “Do you know how much money my ticket cost? Do you not understand what a proposal means?” She shook her head. “How could you marry someone else when you sent a proposal to me?” 

All at once, she understood. 

Eyes narrowed, she hissed, “You wrote to more women.” It wasn’t a question. “You cad! How many mail-order brides did you propose to in your letters, Mister Bascom?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Three.” He raised his chin and lifted his hands to grasp the wide lapels of his suit coat. “And again, if you had waited for my letter, you would’ve learned before you left that my proposal had been accepted by someone else and I’d already married.” He bent down so that he was at eye level with her. “You didn’t reply to my last letter, so how was I supposed to know you were heading to Texas?”

She knew she should’ve replied to his proposal before packing her valise and leaving the only home she had ever known, but he’d proposed!  

“You have no shame, do you?” Her heart pounded. Her face felt hot. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw, or rather felt, people glancing their way, some of them pausing their own conversations to perhaps learn what the two of them were arguing about. A tall man in worn canvas pants, a faded shirt, and a beat-up and stained old cavalry hat brazenly stepped closer. 

Of all the nerve! She glanced at him and glared. He grinned back. Idiot.

She turned her back to Bascom. Humiliated, she took a step closer to the man, thinking to kick him in the shins for being such a low-down, sneaky, conniving… Well, she tried to be a good Christian girl, so she kept the next few words to herself. She took another step toward him and he backed up, sensing her intentions. Trying to prevent herself from screaming at him, she narrowed her eyes even more and advanced one more step. The coward backed up again.

“The least you could do is repay me for the cost of my ticket.”

He straightened, eyes rounding. “I will do no such thing, young lady!” he scoffed. “You came here of your own free will. The fact that you’re here is your own fault. If you hadn’t been so impatient or impetuous and… and desperate, you’d still be back home in eastern Kentucky.”

Her chest heaved. Every muscle in her body quivered. Her fists clenched so tightly at her sides that her fingernails dug into her palms. She blinked back hot tears of emotion as she leaned toward him, practically baring her teeth.

“You’re nothing but a low-down—”

“Martin!” A voice interrupted, breathy with excitement. “Marty!”

Sarah turned toward the high, shrill voice of a buxom woman rushing toward them, the long peacock feather tucked into her wide-brimmed and ridiculous hat bouncing in the air behind her. She practically flung herself into Martin’s arms, forcing him to take a half-step back to prevent both of them from tumbling onto the platform. 

She stared, jaw dropped. Was this his bride? Why, she looked to be middle-aged! Struck speechless, she glanced between Bascom and the older woman, who was now showering him with loud kisses and giggling at the same time. She winced and turned away.

She found herself looking once more at the tall man in the battered hat, still grinning. He gestured with his chin toward the happy couple.

“She’s got money,” he murmured.

She frowned. Money? What difference did that make? Then she understood. Bascom hadn’t just been looking for a wife. He’d been looking for someone with money. And she didn’t have any. Well, at least not enough to buy a train ticket back home, which would not only be even more degrading, but would likely come with a forced marriage along with it once she returned.

The group of onlookers began to disperse. Martin and his bride were helped onto the stage that Sarah had recently stepped down from, headed back to Houston. It was in Houston where Sarah had disembarked the train and endured the rest of her journey by stage. 

Onlookers lost interest and moved off with friends or family. What was she going to do now? As quickly as the anger had come, it dissipated, replaced by a sickening panic. Where could she go? She looked around wildly, seeking some answer.

“Looks like you’re gonna be needin’ a job.”

She glanced at the tall man once more. He took a couple of cautious steps closer, his eyes glancing briefly at her feet. He needn’t have bothered. She wasn’t going to kick him in the shins even if he was nosy. 

“I suppose so,” she murmured, inwardly cringing at the tremble she heard in her own voice, her mouth so dry she could barely work up enough spit to swallow. Oh good heavens, what was she going to do? Her parents had always warned her about her impulsivity, but honestly, how was she supposed to know that Bascom would betray her?

The tall man took a step closer and pulled the hat off his head, revealing sweat-slickened brown hair standing up every which way. High forehead, dark eyebrows, sharp nose, and that infernal grin. She glowered at him.

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?” 

“Wantin’ a job?” he asked.

She took a wary step back, cautious. She had heard a number of tales about men out here on the plains. That they would just as soon shoot you as talk to you. That they lived like animals, sleeping on the hard ground under the stars with their massive herds of cattle, shooting their guns at anything that moved in the darkness. That they started their fires with buffalo dung and didn’t bathe for months at a time. That they drank themselves into stupors every night and chased after… well, after women of ill repute.

He smiled, and her scowl disappeared. His teeth were white. She felt foolish. Like others back home, she had believed that people who lived in the West were uncouth, unwashed, and backwards. Yet he had some manners, having doffed his hat in her presence. Still, she didn’t trust him further than she could spit.

“Yes,” she said past the lump of humility in her throat. “I suppose I need a job.” 

She looked past him and toward the town that sprouted out in the middle of nowhere on the plains of Texas. What kind of job could she hope to get out here? Kirby didn’t look all that large, the buildings constructed mostly of wooden board slats or logs. She eyed the row of structures a short distance away, facing each other across a broad dirt street. 

False fronts and overhangs provided shade on a few sections of boardwalks. Behind the structures on the main street, she spied small houses, the short, square steeple of a church, and what looked to be a rectangular, red-painted schoolhouse. A number of horses were tied to hitching posts. A wagon carrying wooden barrels rumbled down Main Street, stopping about halfway down at one of the businesses. She was too far away to read any signs.

The man cleared his throat. “My name’s Ike Matthews.”

She turned back to him. His eyebrows lifted expectantly as he waited for her reply. “Sarah Radcliffe.”

He briefly dipped his head. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Radcliffe. I think I might know of someone needin’ some help.”

She barely held back a glare at his emphasis of the “miss,” as if reminding her of her foolishness. How was she supposed to know what Martin Bascom was doing? The first two letters she’d received from him had been well-written and polite, the second one offering a marriage proposal. He had written that he lived in Dallas but had another home in Shreveport, just across the border into Louisiana. But was any of that true?

“I’m the foreman of the Circle O ranch, about ten miles west of here,” he said. “I know someone lookin’ to hire a cook and some help in keepin’ house and some other odd jobs around the place.”

Lord, why? Why are You doing this to me?

The reason she wanted to get away from her home in Kentucky was because she was so very tired of feeling like nothing more than a servant to her family, which consisted of her parents and an aunt and uncle and cousin. She was tired of being responsible for most of the cooking and cleaning in both their homes. 

Most of all, though, she was tired of her father trying to marry her off, often to middle-aged men who needed mothers for their children or, again, basically a servant. Marrying a stranger wouldn’t have been much better, but at least she’d had a hand in making that decision for herself.

She sighed. “Housekeeping and cooking?”

Ike nodded. 

She looked up at him, an eyebrow cocked. She’d already been betrayed by one man. Was she about to be betrayed by another? What if—

“Ike! There you are!”

Sarah turned to find a pretty young woman hurrying toward them from the edge of town. She wore a soft rose calico dress with white collar and cuffs. Golden blonde hair was piled in a mass of curls on top of her head, a few tendrils draping the side of her face. Sarah’s first thought was how in the world a woman living out here in the wilderness could be so lovely and have such alabaster skin?

She glanced from the woman back to Ike just in time to see that grin of his broadening into a genuine smile, twinkling eyes, and what she surmised as admiration. He extended his hand and the woman took it before turning to eye her curiously.

“Beth, I’d like to introduce you to Sarah Radcliffe,” he said politely. He turned to Sarah. “Miss Radcliffe, this is Beth Norman. She’s the town’s seamstress.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Sarah said politely. 

“Same here,” Beth replied. “What brings you to our humble little town?”

Heat blazed in Sarah’s cheeks. “A mistake, I can tell you that.”

“She just came off the stage and is lookin’ for a job,” Ike explained. “I told her she could likely find one on Kelly’s ranch.”

Sarah didn’t miss the slightly alarmed look that Beth gave Ike. “Kelly?”

With a quick glance down at Beth, who had now hooked her arm around his, Ike turned back to Sarah and explained. “He’s my boss. At the Circle O ranch. His name’s Kelly O’Rourke. He’s got a large spread and spends a lot of time out on the range. Needless to say, his house and yard, well, he could use a little help.”

“A little!” Beth murmured under her breath before turning to Sarah. “I don’t think the man has eaten a decent, sit-down meal at his ranch for a year.” She looked up at Ike and then back to Sarah. “I try to bring food over there when I can, but—”

Ike interrupted. “Can you cook, Miss Radcliff?”

Was this her punishment for running away from home to escape a life of what she deemed drudgery and servitude? To find herself in the same position a thousand miles away? 

“Yes,” she sighed, “I can cook, and I can scrub floors and windows like you wouldn’t believe.” She bit back her stubborn pride, pride that her mother told her was big enough for two grown men. “And I can wield a hoe, keep a garden, can vegetables and fruits, bake a pie, and…” 

She paused when she realized Ike and Beth were staring at her with raised eyebrows. She inhaled slowly and then let it out, striving for patience. 

“Yes. I can cook.”

Ike nodded, glanced down at Beth, who gave a small shrug and a smile, and then turned back to Sarah. “You’ll have to negotiate your pay with him.”

“That’s fine.” 

She decided then and there she would only stay long enough to save up enough money to buy a train ticket. Somewhere. Anywhere. Though it was late spring, the air felt hot and so very dry. She was used to the tree-studded, rolling hills of Kentucky, the balmy, misty mornings and the cool nights alive with the throaty sounds of bullfrogs and crickets rising from the banks of the stream behind their house.

Ike turned to Beth. “Well, I’d better be gettin’ on. I’ll be back in town in the mornin’. You’ll have time for a cup of tea?”

Tea? This rough-edged cowboy drank tea?

Beth smiled up at him. “That’s fine.” She turned Sarah. “It was very nice meeting you, Sarah. I hope to see you again soon. The next time you come into town, come visit me at the shop.” She turned and pointed. “My place is at the edge of town, north side. I live upstairs. We can share a pot of tea.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said. “I will.”

It’d been a long while since she’d had a friend. Most of the women her age in her hometown of Beaver Gap weren’t too fond of her for some reason. Besides, most of them were already married, some with children. At twenty-four years of age, her father was beginning to believe that she’d never marry. Or give him grandchildren. 

She snorted. As if that was all she should look forward to. 

As for the men in her hometown, well, they gave her a wide berth. Apparently, no eligible man wanted anything to do with her. Her father insisted it was her refusal to simply act like a lady, her impatience, and her sometimes outlandish behavior. She didn’t believe it.

What was so wrong about a woman speaking her mind? Or one who didn’t want to be pigeonholed into doing only women’s chores? Why, she could ride a horse better than most, saddled or bareback. She had been riding since she was three years old on their horse farm. She could shoe them, tame them, and race them as good as any man. The last straw, the one that had driven her to the desperation of answering that ad for a mail-order bride, was her father telling her she had to stay away from the barn from now on and act like a lady.

Pshaw. She was who God had made her. Then again, come to think of it, she also sometimes thought that God had given her a raw deal. Why make her the way she was and then make it impossible for her to find a husband who loved her that way?

“Come along, Miss Radcliffe. Let’s see if we can find you a nice gentle mare and we’ll ride back to the ranch, and I can introduce you to my boss.”

Less than ten minutes later they stood at the edge of the corral of the town livery and stables. She had been introduced to the livery owner, Ambrose Cox. The man looked older than Methuselah, with only one or two teeth left in his mouth. His face was lined with wrinkles, tanned a dark brown from decades under the Texas sun. Every few moments, he spat a long stream of tobacco juice into the dirt.

“How about that one?” Ike pointed.

Sarah frowned. He wanted her to ride that sway-backed old mare? “No,” she said. Her gaze skimmed over the half a dozen horses in the corral and pointed to a black gelding that didn’t appear to be more than three or four years old. “That one.”

Both men turned to her, eyebrows raised.

“The black?” Ambrose Cox frowned. “Oh, I don’t know about that, miss. He’s quite temperamental, just like a summer thunderstorm rollin’ across the plains. Calm one minute, ornery the next.”

“I’ll ride him.” She saw the look Ike gave her and scowled. “I told you I grew up on a horse farm, didn’t I? I know how to ride.” She turned to the livery owner. “You can saddle that one for me.”

Ambrose Cox shrugged, spat another stream of tobacco juice, and then did as she bade. Moments later, they were both mounted, Sarah’s skirts bunched indecently up nearly to her knees, exposing black stockings and sturdy leather shoes with hard soles. She ignored the looks she received as she rode through town, her temper slowly rising, along with a growing sense of agitation.

“Miss Radcliffe… Sarah… I think I should tell you about—”

She glanced over her shoulder at Ike, riding slightly behind her and to the side. “Which way is it to the ranch?” 

He pointed. “Due west,” he replied. “But I think I should—”

She needed to feel the wind in her face. She needed to feel something other than her own fear and uncertainty. She hunched low over the saddle horn, the smell of horse and leather calming her distress. She tapped her heels into the haunches of the young gelding and he took off like a rifle shot, leaving Ike in a cloud of rising dust. 

The power of the animal was exhilarating, the wind in her face refreshing as she urged the horse into a run. The ground raced by at a dizzying pace that nearly ripped a whoop of joy from her throat.

 

Chapter Two

Kirby, Texas Panhandle 

Kelly handed the branding iron to one of his cowhands as the young bull calf was released, the last one of the bunch. The animal trotted over to the rest of the cattle, bulls and cows milling inside the makeshift corral, the chute at the other end ready to be raised. He lifted a hand and the gate was raised, the herd passing through it and back out into the pasture where they gathered with the larger group. 

This task had taken most of the day and they had only branded a quarter of the new calves that had been born earlier in the spring. He tried not to think about all the work that still needed to be done. The house was still missing a number of shingles since the latest storm to pass through, and the northwest side of the barn needed a new section of siding. The wells throughout his property also needed a good inspection.

His house could use a good cleaning as well, but that task was on the bottom of the list. This morning he had looked through his bedroom window but could hardly see a thing from the grime and dust that had caked the glass since the first snowfall. His larder was practically bare, the root cellar an embarrassment, and he had yet to turn the soil in the garden beside the house.

“You want to continue branding tomorrow or checking on the wells?”

He turned to Rafe, one of his best cowhands, and sighed. “The wells.” He glanced around. “Where’s Ike?” He hadn’t seen his foreman all day.

“He went into town to check on the orders.”

Kelly frowned. “What orders?”

Rafe eyed him for a moment. “The lumber and shingles for the repairs to your house and barn, the sacks of that special mixture of grains that you ordered two months ago from Houston, and the saddles that you had to order from the mercantile, and—”

“All right, all right,” Kelly said, waving a hand. He often lost track of time, not just the past few days, but the past six months—all of it a blur after he’d lost his twin sister late last fall. “Thanks.”

He walked away, knowing that Rafe was staring at him, probably with a raised eyebrow, wondering if his boss was losing his mind. That was likely. He headed for the buckskin mare that had belonged to his sister, and the horse snorted as he approached. 

He rubbed his hand down the bridge of her nose and the soft hairs of her muzzle. The mare’s lips tried to nip at his shirt cuff and a chuckle escaped his throat. “None of that today, Missy,” he murmured. 

While most of the time he rode his blue roan, he’d felt like taking her out for the day. The poor girl didn’t get out as much as she used to. He mounted and turned the mare toward the ranch house nearly a mile away, tired and disgruntled. He grimaced at the thought of another cold supper of cold biscuits and buffalo jerky. He wished Beth Norman had brought another one of her roasted chickens over—the last one had been over a week ago and that poor bird was long gone.

As he topped the small knoll just to the west of his ranch house and outbuildings, he frowned. Two horses had just ridden into the yard and stopped next to the corral. He recognized Ike as he dismounted, but the other rider… a woman? He frowned, narrowed his eyes, and wondered why Ike had brought Beth to the ranch, and on horseback, too. She usually arrived in her buggy. He’d never seen her ride a horse. Ever. 

He watched as the woman dismounted and handed her reins to Ike, who tied both sets of reins to the top railing of the corral. A valise was tied behind Ike’s saddle. His eyes widened in surprise when he recognized the black horse. It was that cantankerous gelding that Ambrose Cox had just acquired for his stable. The animal was barely saddle broken, ornery, and wanted only one thing: to run. And Beth had ridden him here all the way from town? 

She took a few steps away from the gelding and stood, hands on her hips, surveying his yard. It was only then that he realized the woman was a bit smaller than Beth. 

With a frown, he rode into the yard, wondering what Ike was up to now. It wouldn’t be the first time he had brought a stray back to the ranch. Only last fall he’d brought a kid to the ranch, no older than sixteen, who had run away from his parents in the neighboring county. Kelly had sent him right back.

As he rode into the yard, the woman turned to look at him over her shoulder. Up close, her hair was light brown, not the goldish blond of Beth’s. She wore her hair in a thick braid that trailed down her back, almost reaching her waist. Her body was angled slightly away from his, her hand lifted to shade her eyes from the setting sun, squinting at him. 

He hid a frown as he glanced at Ike, who purposely refused to meet his eye. He didn’t recognize the woman, had never seen her before. Then again, more people were coming West and moving into towns across Texas, or traveling beyond to California.  

He guided the mare so close to Ike that Missy’s muzzle nearly touched his foreman’s shoulder. Finally, Ike looked up at him. He grinned and then quickly looked away, gesturing toward the woman.

“Hey Kelly, this is Sarah Radcliffe. She—”

Kelly lifted a hand, frowned at Ike, and then turned to the woman. “What do you want?” 

Her jaw dropped and she cast a quick glance toward Ike and then back at him. Before she could say a word, Ike spoke.

“She just got into town. There was a bit of a mix-up after she got off the stage and she’s looking for a job.” He shrugged. “I told her you were lookin’ for someone to do some cookin’ and some housekeepin’—”

Kelly’s eyebrows rose. “I am?” Doggone it all if Ike wasn’t determined to make his life even more miserable than it already was. He turned to the woman, who eyed him coolly. Her blue eyes bored into his. Despite his glower, she didn’t look the least intimidated. 

He dismounted, taking his time, the saddle leather creaking and Missy snorting as he draped the reins over the top rail of the corral. He moved away from the horses, eyeing the young woman while she eyed him back, her lovely lips set firmly.

“You need help around here or not, mister?” she said. “Because if you don’t, I’ll be heading on back to town and looking for a job there.”

He recognized a slight accent in her voice. It took everything he had not to scowl at her nearly growled comment. He glanced at Ike, who simply shrugged. The plain truth of the matter was, the place could use a woman’s hand. Could she do the job? He glanced down at her hands. They were small, her fingernails short. The knuckles of her right hand were a bit roughened, and he saw a small scar just above the webbing of her thumb and index finger on the left. Strong hands. She was no stranger to hard work.

“Well?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest and glancing at the sun. “If you don’t want the help, let me know. I’d rather get back into town before it gets dark, if you don’t mind.”

Ike muffled a laugh and quickly looked away when Kelly turned to him. “You found her in town?”

Ike nodded. “She came in on the stage and—”

“Mister, do you need help or not?”

“The name’s Kelly,” he replied. “Kelly O’Rourke. I own this ranch.” He paused, thinking that he didn’t need any more trouble, and not especially from the  defensive and angry-looking sprig of a woman standing in front of him, hands once again on her hips. 

Ike spoke quickly in an effort to head off a confrontation. “Beth seemed to think she’d be a good solution to some of your problems out here, Kelly.”

So Beth was in on this, too? He shook his head. He couldn’t deny he was annoyed though, not only because it wasn’t Ike or Beth’s place to offer the job to a perfect stranger, but because he couldn’t very well say no when the woman stood right here in front of him, looking all blustery and… and worried at the same time.

He turned toward her. “Where are you from, Miss Radcliffe?”

“Kentucky.”

He lifted an eyebrow. Interesting. “And what brought you from Kentucky out here to the Texas Panhandle?” 

To his surprise, her cheeks flushed with color and her shoulders slumped for a moment before they stiffened again, her chin lifting as her eyes locked on his once more.

“There was… there was a bit of a mistake,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word.

He glanced at Ike, who suddenly seemed more interested in eyeballing his house than he did in explaining the situation. He turned back to the young woman. “What kind of a mistake?” The last thing he needed was trouble.

“Well, I… I received a marriage proposal from a man, but when I arrived, I learned that he… he had already married someone else.”

Kelly couldn’t have been more surprised. That certainly wasn’t the kind of trouble he had been expecting. He still didn’t understand. “Wait a minute. You two met in Kentucky and then—”

“No,” she said. She pressed her lips together, crossed her arms under her bosom, and nearly snapped at him. “I responded to an ad for mail-order bride, all right? And when I got here just a little while ago, he informed me that he had married someone else.”

Ike couldn’t hold back a snort. “It was Marty Bascom, Kelly—you know, the teller who used to work at the bank in town last year?”

Kelly turned to Ike, confused. “Marty?” 

“Yep.” Ike nodded. “Apparently, he wrote letters to three different women, including Miss Radcliffe here. He got himself hitched to Millicent Carruthers.”

Kelly gaped. Millicent Carruthers was a woman in her fifties, a widow for as long as Kelly could remember. She’d lived in town for years and then up and moved to Dallas. “Why?”

Ike shrugged. “She’s rich.”

Kelly held his tongue for the moment, glancing from Ike to the young woman standing in front of them, her cheeks a deep red now, but whether from embarrassment or fury he wasn’t sure. A brief wave of pity swept through him. He couldn’t imagine why women answered such ads, but desperation was certainly a motivating factor. He glanced beyond her to the old sod house in the near distance, nestled against a small hillock maybe fifty yards east of the main house.

“Just think, Kelly, a warm meal at the end of the day, clean clothes…” Ike glanced meaningfully at the house and turned back with a lifted eyebrow. “Windows you can see through…”

Kelly gave his foreman and best friend a glare and then turned back to the young woman eyeing him with apprehension. “Fine. I can give you a try.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he lifted a hand. “But I’m warning you that if you can’t cook or do the job, you’re out.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then snapped it shut and gave him a single, firm nod. He glanced once more at Ike and shook his head. “It’ll be up to you to get that soddy fixed up for her.”

Ike brightened. “Sure thing, Kelly.” He didn’t move.

Kelly stood, arms crossed over his own chest now, staring down at Sarah Radcliffe. The top of her head came to the bottom of his chin. She lifted her head, meeting his gaze, almost as if daring him to change his mind. He glanced once more at Ike.

“Come along, Miss Radcliffe.” Ike sighed. “I’ll show you to your room.”