Looking for a fun historical romance? Morgan McBride is tough as nails – but a surprise mail-order bride is enough to have him quaking in his cowboy boots.
Read on for an extract from Marrying Off Morgan McBride …
Joshua, Nebraska
Epiphany Hopgood was resolved. This time she was going to get married, come hell or high water. She’d packed her things, organised train tickets for herself and Granny Colefax and rehearsed her speech to her parents in her head. She’d set her mind on marriage, and marriage was what she was going to get.
She was twenty- two (nearly 23) years of age and fast running out of time. All of her sisters bar one had been safely, if not always happily, married off, and Pip was at risk of being stuck home forever, caring for her parents in their old age, like poor Esther Greenleaf. Holy crow, the last thing she wanted was to end up like Esther. The woman was like a mote of dust in her parents’ house, floating about without weight or substance. Sometimes, when Pip went into town, she saw Esther sitting out on the Greenleafs’ front porch, shucking corn or shelling peas, and she could just see the desperation in her, like river water roiling below the March ice. Pip felt the chill of it down her spine. It was like seeing a specter of your future self.
Pip imagined being left in the house alone with her parents, and it wasn’t a happy imagining. Her brooding, melancholy, silent father, who sat in the parlor every evening, resembling nothing so much as the grandfather clock, and her mother . . . ugh, her mother. The very thought of living with them for the rest of her life made Pip feel like she was suffocating.
She was nearly out of time, but also, unfortunately, nearly out of prospects. Pip’s hometown had stamped her with the stain of spinsterhood long ago. It was her own fault. She was too loud, too opinionated, too strong-willed, too tall, too active, too strong, too everything. Her first potential fiancé, Samuel Arcross, hadn’t been shy in saying so either. The Arcrosses owned the farm next door to the Hop-goods, and Pip’s and Samuel’s parents had thought it was a good match. Samuel thought otherwise. The day Pip and her parents had expected him to propose, he’d gone to ground, leaving his parents to have an awkward conversation with Pip’s father, wriggling out of all their promises. That had been one of the most humiliating days of Pip’s life. She’d been sixteen and stupidly excited about the thought of marriage. Everything had seemed spring-fresh and sparkling, and the future was something to run toward, with her arms wide open, ready to hug the darn life out of it.
She’d learned a lot since then.
When Pip looked in the mirror, she was clearly missing what everyone else saw. She didn’t think she was as bad as all that. Sure, she was tall, but she was well-formed. And sure, she was strong, but it meant she was firm in all the right places. Sure, she might not have silky neat hair, but her dark auburn waves were striking, especially against her skin, which didn’t have a single freckle. Even Naomi had freckles. And sure, Pip didn’t have delicate features, but she liked her features. She liked her wide mouth better than Naomi’s pursed little rosebud mouth, and she liked her hazel eyes, which were the greenish gold of leaves on the turn at the end of summer, and she liked her strong arched brows.
Lately she’d been thinking that maybe the problem wasn’t with her. Maybe the problem was with all these men. Maybe she needed to find a different kind of man?
‘There’s not a single man in the county we haven’t considered,’ Pip’s father said, bending over his Sunday dinner. ‘There’s no point in barking at a knot, so let’s dismiss the matter.’ He wasn’t dismissing the matter, Pip thought sullenly; he was dismissing her.
‘We can all be grateful Epiphany has a home with us,’ Pip’s mother said. ‘A home where she will always be welcome.’ She sounded almost as grim as Pip felt.
‘Excuse me, I’m not feeling well.’ Pip almost knocked her chair over in her haste to get up from the table. If she stayed here another moment, she was liable to faint dead away from the lack of air in this room. Or throw peas at everyone. She was aware of the syrupy weight of pity in their gazes as they watched her go.
She plunged outside onto the front porch and gulped at the afternoon air, like a fish out of water. The cornfields stretched, green in every direction, the leaves making dry scratching sounds as the stalks clicked together in the breeze. The blue May sky was streaked with pale clouds. Pip grabbed hold of the porch rail and tried to calm herself.
Why did she feel like she was being buried alive?
‘You all right, girlie?’ The screen door creaked as Granny Colefax emerged from the cool of the house to check on her. Granny held a hand up to shield her eyes from the brightness of the day. ‘Here.’ Granny Colefax thrust a newspaper at her. ‘This is the answer to your problems.’ Pip took it from her. The Matrimonial News.
’You’re not serious.’
‘I am.’ Granny Colefax was obdurate. ‘If Walter Millard can order himself up a wife, I figure a smart girl like you can easily find a husband.’
Dear Lord, she was serious.
Lately she’d been thinking that maybe the problem wasn’t with her. Maybe the problem was with all these men.
‘Just don’t let your mother see it. Not yet.’ Granny Colefax glanced over her shoulder at the open door. ‘You know what Verity’s like. She can suck the life from an egg.’
‘I don’t think that’s a saying, Granny.’ Pip stared down at the newspaper. A weekly journal devoted to the interests of Love, Courtship and Marriage.
‘If it’s not, it should be, especially when it comes to your mother. That girl was born with a lemon in her mouth.’ Pip squinted at the ads. They were in very small print, and there were many of them crammed on the page.
Bachelor (42) seeks spinster (under 40); German merchant looking for a respectable woman for the purpose of matrimony; Widower still in his prime hopes to find a female who doesn’t mind children (7 of them). There were miners and ranchers, cowboys and trappers, farmers and saloonkeepers; old men, young men; men of means and men looking to make their fortunes; men with land and men with nothing but hopes and dreams. Men from Idaho, Kansas, Texas, Minnesota, Montana. All of them looking for wives.
Pip felt her heart skip a beat. Her whole life she’d dreamed of being a wife. She wanted to be useful. To be needed. Was that too much to ask?
‘Don’t go writing to anyone without checking with me first,’ Granny Colefax ordered her. ‘You might be tall as a tree, but you’re green as a sapling. I don’t want you picking any malingerers or villains, you hear?’
Pip circled the ads that she liked, and Granny Colefax crossed them out. She said they were too glib, or too wordy, or that she didn’t like butchers, or miners, or saloonkeepers. After a lot of arguing, they settled on one they agreed on. Mr. McBride from Montana.
‘He’s an odd duck,’ Granny Colefax admitted, ‘but an honest one. The last thing you want to do is fetch up in the wilderness to find you’ve been peddled lies. It’s much better to know what you’re getting into. Trust me. I had no idea what I was getting into when I said yes to your grandfather.’
Mrs. Morgan McBride had a good ring to it. Epiphany McBride, of Buck’s Creek, Montana. Oh yes, it sounded fine.
‘They have mountains in Montana,’ Granny Colefax said with no small measure of satisfaction. ‘There’s bound to be surprises in the mountains.’ Granny had no idea how right she was. The mountains of Montana proved to be nothing but surprises.
*****
WANTED
Wife for a bullheaded backwoodsman with a surfeit of family. A secretly gumptious woman with a mind of her own and a bit of backbone is required for wifely duties.
Must be able to soothe a fractious temper and not expect cosseting. But he will mend your boots and give you unwanted advice. And he has it in him to make you laugh – mostly not on purpose. Bad cooks need not apply.
*****
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORAmy Barry writes sweeping historical stories about love. She’s fascinated with the landscapes of the American West and their complex long history, and she’s even more fascinated with people in all their weird tangled glory. Amy is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Flinders University in Adelaide, where she lives with her family.
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