His Heartbroken Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch - Spicy Version Book 4) Read online

  HIS HEARTBROKEN BRIDE

  Copyright ©2016 by Merry Farmer

  Amazon Edition

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill (the miracle-worker)

  Embellishment by © Olgasha | Dreamstime.com

  ASIN: B01CVWSBK0

  Paperback:

  ISBN-13: 978-1530430789

  ISBN-10: 153043078X

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  His Heartbroken Bride

  By Merry Farmer

  For Robin,

  Who takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Haskell, Wyoming – 1875

  It was the lot of all young widows to be downtrodden with sorrow, heartbroken after the loss of a loved one so near and dear, but few young widows carried as heavy a burden of shame and terror in their hearts as Libby Chance Sims.

  “Mama, mama, look! Is that Grandpa Pete and Grandma Josephine’s house?” five-year-old Matthew asked, tugging on her sleeve. He poked his finger against the train’s window as Wyoming sped past.

  Libby fought back the pounding in her head and the roiling in her stomach to look out the window. The countryside zipped past the train window, blurring together in shades of November brown. The sky had been sapped of color and hung, gray and dull, over the land. It was a dreary reflection of her soul.

  “No, sweetheart,” she sighed. “That’s a farm. Grandpa Pete and Grandma Josephine live in town.”

  “Will we reach town soon?” eight-year-old Petey asked, scrambling to kneel in his seat and look out the window alongside his brother.

  Libby managed a weak smile. “Soon. Very soon.”

  As far as she was concerned, it couldn’t be soon enough. The journey to Haskell from the timber camp in Pine Arbor, Oregon felt as though it’d taken a lifetime. Libby and the boys had fled the camp in such a hurry that they’d been forced to make do with whatever train tickets she could get at a moment’s notice. Instead of waiting for a train that would go directly to Haskell, they’d traveled all the way south to Sacramento, then east through the Arizona and New Mexico Territories, then north to Denver. Only then had they been able to catch a train that would take them straight to Haskell.

  It had been an exhausting couple of weeks, but nothing was too extreme when it came to getting her boys out of harm’s way, not to mention herself. Every detour and aching muscle would be worth it once they were safe in the bosom of Libby’s family. Especially if their circuitous route threw Hector off their trail.

  Libby’s stomach rolled at the thought of Hector Sterling. She pressed a hand to her belly and swallowed, desperate to think of something else.

  “Boys, please sit still, and face forward.”

  “But we want to see the town,” Petey explained.

  Libby rubbed her son’s shoulder, resisting the urge to close him in her arms and never let go. “Then you’re looking in the wrong direction. Haskell will be on the other side of the train.”

  Rather than settling her boys, as she’d hoped, they took the news as a challenge. Pushing and scrambling, all elbows and knees, they rushed across the aisle and right into the opposite seat.

  “Oh my!” The attractive young woman in the seat gasped at the invasion. “Are we being attacked?”

  “I’m so sorry.” Libby swung her legs into the aisle, reaching for her boys. They were too fast for her, and in no time had their noses pressed against the other woman’s window. “I should be able to control them better, but we’re all sleepy and restless.”

  Rather than pitching a fit, the young woman laughed. “I know exactly what you mean.” She had a lovely, musical voice that matched her sparkling, blue-green eyes. “I’m beside myself with restlessness.”

  “How far have you come?” Libby asked, keeping one eye on her boys.

  “From Nashville.” The woman scooted closer to the aisle and held out her hand. “I’m Miriam Long.”

  “Libby Sims.” Libby took the offered hand. She let out a breath. “And those are my boys, Peter and Matthew.” The boys had no idea they were the topic of conversation as they continued to look out the window, pointing at what they saw, and leaving smudges on the glass. “It’s surprisingly comforting to shake hands with a woman,” Libby went on.

  “Oh?” Miriam tilted her head, brushing a strand of her golden-blonde hair back into place.

  Libby managed a shy smile. “The boys and I have been living in a logging camp with my husband, their father, for the past ten years. There are few enough women in the West to begin with, but in the logging camp, there were only a half dozen of us. I’ve been surrounded by men for years.” She glanced down to her black-gloved hands, now folded against the black of her skirt. Understanding showed clearly in Miriam’s eyes.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Miriam reached across the aisle again to pat Libby’s folded hands. She paused for a moment, then broke into an anxious smile. “Actually, that’s why I’m traveling west myself.”

  Libby furrowed her brow and glanced up at Miriam, puzzled.

  Miriam let out a nervous laugh. “I’m here as a mail-order bride.” Pink splashed her cheeks, and she darted a glance around as if someone might disapprove of her statement.

  “I hear there is quite a call for women to come west as brides,” Libby said to keep the conversation going. Petey and Matthew were distracted and calm, so it was a relief to be able to talk about something besides her own problems.

  “Yes, well.” Miriam bit her lip, drew her hand back to pick anxiously at an imaginary spot on her skirt. “That’s just the thing. The place where I have been living for the past few months has an arrangement with a town in Wyoming. I know several girls who have come out this way, married a man, and been perfectly happy. But…but I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?” This time, Libby reached for her hand in comfort.

  Miriam let out a breath and smiled, as if relieved to have someone to talk to. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be a wife. I mean, how can someone rush off and marry a man that they don’t even know? He could be a horse thief. He could be cruel. He could be anything.”

  In spite of herself, Libby grinned. “I had those exact same worries when I met Te
ddy.”

  “Teddy?”

  “My…late husband.” It was painful to think those words, let alone say them. She forced herself to take a breath, check on her boys to assure herself they were safe, and go on. “I had just traveled west along the Oregon Trail with my family. My brothers and sister and I were orphaned, you see, and were part of a group of children looking for homes. But along the way, we befriended an older couple, and at trail’s end, they adopted us.”

  She paused, sat straighter, and said, “Well, they adopted my brothers and sister. I was eighteen at the time, and when we reached Oregon City, I met Teddy.”

  “How romantic.” Miriam sighed, her sparkling eyes gazing off into the distance. “To find true love at the end of the trail.”

  “I didn’t know if it would be true love or not,” Libby explained. “Teddy and I got along well as soon as we met. He helped us out in a difficult situation. But within weeks, my family had made the decision to move, along with friends, to Wyoming. When he heard I would leave, Teddy proposed. We’d only known each other a little more than two weeks, but I had to make a decision—marry him or go with my family and leave him, possibly forever.”

  “And you chose to marry him. Now that is romantic.”

  Libby laughed, filled with warmth at the memory. “It was exciting, that much is true. We were married immediately, then traveled away from Oregon City and closer to the logging camp.”

  She paused, frowning over the part of the story that had troubled her for the past ten years.

  “Was the mining camp that bad?” Miriam asked, seeing her frown.

  “No.” Libby bit her lip. She’d hadn’t had a chance to talk to another woman like this in years and couldn’t stop the story from spilling. “Teddy and I hadn’t been married for more than a month when he had to leave me in a small town called Skinum for the summer.”

  “What a dreadful name.” Miriam made a face.

  “It wasn’t entirely bad.” Libby glanced down at her hands once more, face heating with almost-forgotten shame. “There was a lovely family there that I became friends with. They took care of me while Teddy was gone. The father owned a logging operation and was away a lot. They had a daughter, Annabelle, and three sons.” Her cheeks flared even hotter.

  Miriam studied her, then gasped. “And you fell in love with one of the sons, didn’t you.” Her expression was so dramatic and she clapped her hand to her chest with such energy that Libby wondered if she’d ever been on the stage.

  “No, no, not exactly.” She couldn’t meet Miriam’s eyes. Instead she checked to be sure her boys were still entranced by the view outside the train.

  “Of course you did. And right after marrying too.” Miriam let out a long sigh. “What a beautiful, tragic tale. Finding true love as soon as you marry someone else.”

  “It wasn’t like that at all,” Libby assured her, heart thumping faster. “I haven’t seen that other man or been in contact with him directly for years. I maintain a correspondence with his sister, Annabelle, but… It was just…” She frowned, twisting her fingers together. At last, she looked up and met Miriam’s eyes. “It’s just that for a few weeks that long-ago summer, I wondered what my life would have been like if I’d made a different choice.”

  “Ah. See.” Miriam nodded. “That’s exactly my problem now.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Do I go through with this marriage to a man I don’t know or do I wait until love finds me?”

  Libby was so grateful to talk about someone other than herself and her old regrets and new trials that she encouraged her new friend with an enthusiastic, “What does your heart tell you?”

  Miriam struck a long-suffering pose, pressing her hand to her forehead. Yes, Libby decided, Miriam had most definitely been on the stage at some point.

  “I wish to be happy, that is all,” Miriam declared. “I wish to live a humble, quiet life with a man that I can truly adore.”

  Somehow Libby doubted a woman of Miriam’s exuberance could ever live a quiet life.

  “Do you think that you could grow to love this man you’re supposed to marry?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Miriam’s dramatic act dropped, and she chewed her lip in indecision. “I want to grow to love him, but what if we marry and I find someone else who I could love even more the next day?”

  Libby winced at the question. Long-dormant voices in her heart whispered that she should have asked herself that same question long ago. But no, she and Teddy had been content with each other. Their life together had been good, solid, stable.

  And yet, if she hadn’t married Teddy so quickly, she never would have met…

  No, she couldn’t think that way. It was too dangerous. Because if she’d never met Teddy, she never would have had her boys. Peter and Matthew were her life now, the only life she had.

  Although that wasn’t entirely true. She clasped a hand to her belly, fear welling up in her like a geyser.

  “Libby, are you quite well? You’ve gone pale.” Miriam reached out to touch her knee.

  “I’m…I’m fine,” Libby lied. She hadn’t been fine since the day Teddy fell to his death.

  No, that was a lie too. She’d been on her way to being fine after that, until the terrible night a month later when Hector came to visit.

  “Mama, Mama! There’s a town!”

  Matthew’s excited announcement dragged Libby up from the downward spiral of shame that threatened to swallow her. “Is there?”

  Miriam scooted to the window end of her seat, and Libby hopped across the aisle to squeeze along the bench with her. The four of them looked out together. Sure enough, the town of Haskell stood against the backdrop of mountains and high prairie, all brown and grey and wind-whipped.

  “We’ll be there soon,” Libby breathed in relief.

  Miriam’s smile crumbled back to worry. “Have you been there before?”

  Libby nodded. “Twice. We came down for Christmas five years ago, before Matthew was born, and a year and a half ago in the summer. And my family has come up to visit Oregon once.”

  “What do you think? Do you like Haskell? Is it a nice town? Are the people nice? Are they friendly? Do you think they’d like me? Oh, dear.”

  The flurry of questions left Libby speechless. Miriam scrambled past her into the aisle, switching to Libby’s seat and wringing her hands.

  “I can’t do it,” she declared. “I can’t marry a man I’ve never met. I want to be in love when I marry.”

  Libby tore her eyes away from her boys and the window, attempting to settle her new friend with a comforting look when she herself was wrapped up in troubles of her own.

  “If you don’t think you can marry this man, then don’t do it,” she advised. “Or at least make it clear to him that you want to get to know him first.”

  “But I’m supposed to marry him today, as soon as I get off the train, to avoid any impropriety,” Miriam buzzed on. “He has a house waiting and everything.”

  Libby thought of her own decisions all those years ago. Everything had worked out for the best, and she had been happy. But that closed-off piece of her heart had always wondered what would have happened if she’d taken the other path.

  She sat straighter and said, “It’s better to give yourself the time to decide what you want than to tie yourself for the rest of your life to someone who isn’t right for you.”

  Even as she spoke, guilt twisted around Libby’s stomach. The problem was that Teddy had been right for her. She’d loved him in so many ways, in spite of the other love she could have had. That was why she was tormented with shame every time she thought of what she’d done, how weak she’d been, the night that Hector wouldn’t leave.

  “That’s it.” Miriam nodded at the same time as the train’s whistle blew.

  “Haskell. Haskell, Wyoming,” the conductor called from the front of the train car. A few people got up to fetch bags from the rack above the seats. The train’s brakes engaged. Behind Lib
by, her boys chattered and bounced on the seat.

  “I won’t marry him,” Miriam went on, theatrical determination making her back straight. She tilted her head up. “I don’t care what sort of promises I made, I refuse to marry Cody Montrose.”

  The bottom dropped out of Libby’s stomach. “Cody Montrose?” she asked, voice weak. She pressed a hand to her stomach.

  “Yes, that’s his name,” Miriam went on as though she were on stage. “I will not marry Cody Montrose, no matter who wants me to. He will simply have to find himself another bride.” She struck a dramatic pose, chin up.

  “Oh.” The sound came from Libby was more of a wail than an exclamation.

  Miriam blinked at Libby, dropping out of her stage persona. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think I know Cody Montrose,” Libby confessed. “Those three brothers I mentioned? In Oregon? With the sister Annabelle?”

  “Yes? And you fell in love with one of them.”

  “I didn’t…” Libby sighed. “The youngest was Cody. The older two are Mason and Travis.”

  Miriam gasped. “Yes. That’s them. My friend Wendy came out last month to marry…well, she was supposed to marry Cody, but she ended up with Travis instead. That’s why I’ve come out to be Cody’s bride.” She stopped, blinked, then said, “But I’m not going to do it. You’re right. I don’t want to regret anything. I owe my stalwart resolution to you, Libby.”

  What had she done? Guilt would eat Libby alive at this point. She was a horrible person. It wasn’t enough that she’d destroyed her own life and any chance for happiness with it, and put her boys in danger, but now she’d led another woman astray.

  The train whistle sounded again, and the train chugged to a stop. A few people from the seats nearby stood and made their way to the front of the car to disembark.

  “Oh, Miriam, I wish you’d reconsider,” Libby said. She had to lean out of the way of a man charging down the aisle between them.