A Mail-Order Bride’s Love Gambit (Preview)

Chapter One

August 1889

On the Train Heading West

For the life of her, Helena Mason couldn’t imagine what madness had brought her here to New Orleans. For one thing, the entire place was crazy. It was full of voodoo people, and she couldn’t tell who was the law and who wasn’t in this mad place. Everyone drank and gambled, and there were so many pickpockets, she had twice found herself with her hand in a fellow pickpocket’s pocket.

That wasn’t a wise thing to do and had added to why she was in the trouble she was currently in.

“He’s looking for you,” Chaz said. The child had a permanently runny nose. He wiped it on his sleeve, and Helena made a mental note not to touch him.

“I know,” she said as she grabbed her things, few as they were, and stuffed them into a leather bag. “Go tell him I’ll be there now.”

“But you’re packing,” Chaz said.

“How observant of you,” Helena said sarcastically. “I’m just putting my things away so that little sticky fingers don’t go lifting them.” She had seen the movement of his hand as he wiped that disgusting nose of his. Her hand closed over his other arm, and she squeezed. The boy dropped the two pearl earrings he had picked up from her vanity.

Chaz grinned, showing several missing teeth.

“Sorry, Jenny,” he said. “I have to practice.”

“It wasn’t bad,” she said with a sigh. “You were a little too slow.” She showed him how it was done. The child, his curly blonde hair standing up in coarse ringlets, bobbed on his toes in excitement.

“How did you get so good?” he asked. “I was watching, and I didn’t see you move them.”

Helena grinned. “Practice, practice, and then some more practice.”

Chaz nodded. “So, what do you want me to tell him?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? What to tell Jed Baker that wouldn’t get her killed. She sighed and fixed Chaz with a look.

“Tell him I’ll be right there,” she said with a sweet smile. “You know a lady needs some time to look her best.”

Chaz’s grin was innocent, open, and trusting. Helena didn’t think he would last long. That level of trust would get him killed before long, which was sad because he was really a sweet child. She could see him going far if he would just wise up a little.

He turned to go, heading to the rickety door that separated her room from the rest of the house they all lived in under Jed’s watchful eye.

“Chaz!” she called.

He stopped and turned back to her. “Yeah?’

“Where are your folks? Where’s your ma?” she asked. She had never asked him this.

The child grinned. “I don’t know. Ain’t got none.” He paused. “Why you asking?”

“Just watch yourself, okay?” she said, trying not to let the worry show in her voice and failing.

Chaz nodded. “Sure thing.” And he left making sure to close the door behind him as he went. She had chewed him out about that before.

When he was gone, she finished shoving the last of her things, and the things that weren’t technically hers, into the bag. It wouldn’t be long before Jed realized the truth of the matter and came charging in to shoot her in the head.

After all, he was Jed Baker, and no one stole from him. Well, almost no one.

Helena picked up her leather bag and walked to the window. A moment later, the bag was out the window and Helena followed swiftly after.

Her bag was a sturdy thing with a long strap which she slung across her body. It took a moment to adjust it so that could still move with relative ease, despite the extra weight. Then she walked around the side of the building, ducking low to avoid being seen through the windows.

“…what do you mean Jenny’s still in her room?” Jed yelled.

Poor Chaz, he was going to be in a lot of trouble.

But she couldn’t stay. Jed was one of the craziest criminals that Helena had ever met. He had such a temper and the kind of crimes he insisted they pull off were so much more violent than Helena was happy with.

She was a pickpocket, a small-time thief picking up trinkets and money here and there. She made enough to live on and to travel with, and she never stayed in one town too long. With a name change and different attitude, she could be anyone. Helena liked that about the world. It was her oyster, and she was determined to find a pearl.

Once she was away from the house, she stood up straight and headed out onto the street. New Orleans was always busy. There were people on the streets at all hours of the day and night, and she loved that about this place. But she had been there too long, and since she had emptied out Jed’s money box that afternoon while he was out, she was certain he would be gunning for her now.

Or maybe not. He didn’t check the box all the time. Maybe she could have stayed another day or two, but why run the risk? She was a free agent. She could come and go as she pleased. And it pleased her greatly now to leave.

Walking down the street, Helena allowed herself a little smile. She had used some terrible hair dye when she had left New York and traveled south, which had made her honey-blonde hair a dull brown. Now, she could let it grow out to its natural color again, and Jed would never find her.

She picked a couple of reveler’s pockets as she went. It was always good to keep the fingers agile and in form. One never knew when picking a pocket could save one’s life. At least, that was what she told herself.

There were no sounds of pursuit which was both good and scary. She had to hurry though, or she would miss her train. It was one that would take her to Nevada. Helena had never been there. Maybe she could find somewhere to settle down and have a home, one she could live in for longer than a month or two.

With the mind full of dreams Helena walked on, striding as though she owned the world, which at that point she felt she did.

“There she is!”

The shout jarred her out of her reverie, and Helena started running instantly. Her feet took off and began pelting the ground. Her bag was heavy. She couldn’t get enough speed. As it was, she was cutting it close to catching the train. If she missed it, then Jed would most certainly kill her.

She ran to the station, pushing people out of the way. Behind her, the sounds of Jed and his men chasing her became louder and louder.

There was no way, as weighed down as she was, that she would be able to outrun them. So, she would have to outsmart them. Turning down a street that led away from the station, Helena ran into the market square.

This part of the town was always packed with people. Colorful stalls sold everything from good luck charms to spices and herbs, to trinkets and magical amulets. They were all there for the taking. The whole place was an assault on the senses with the smells of the spices hanging in the air, the incense from the voodoo sellers, and the loud shouts of vendors. They were distracting and could disorient a person who wasn’t prepared. But Helena was. She came here often, never stealing from any of the merchants, but it was a good place to practice some sleight of hand with the patrons. And right now she was using them as a distraction. Jed and his men never came here. They didn’t know about the secret ways through the market. They didn’t have friends.

But she did.

As she moved from one stall to the next, people crowded into the aisles and covered her escape. Ducking behind one stall the owner lifted a curtained section of the wall allowing her to step into another stall and then another, out of sight.

She could hear Jed swearing and yelling, annoyed at not being able to find her. A soft chuckle escaped her. For all his bluster and insistence that he was the king of the hill, he couldn’t find one woman in a city full of them.

And then she was out and running again, the market and its heavy cloying smells and loud shouts left far behind.

“See you never,” she said to the image of Jed in her mind as she successfully left him behind.

Back on the right road to the station, Helena noticed that she had only two minutes until the train left the station. She began to hurry her pace.

She turned a corner and ran into Chaz.

The child must have been sent to check if she would come out the other side of the market, which she had. His eyes were round, and his mouth hung open. There was a red welt on his cheek.

That was because of her. Helena felt terribly guilty. She should do something, take the boy with her maybe? She had one ticket, and she didn’t know what she was going to do. What would she do with the child?

“Chaz,” she said.

That seemed to help him shake off his shock at seeing her. He filled his lungs and began to yell. “She’s here! She’s out here!”

“Chaz, please!”

“Jenny’s here!” he cried.

With a last glance at him, she ran on. The sounds of men’s boots slapping on the street came behind her, but Helena had spent her life running from one danger or another. Whether it was her violent father who thought that his children were evil and should be punished with his fists, or if it was the schoolmaster who thought that every lesson needed to be beaten into them, or the sheriff, it made no difference. She ran, and they followed until they realized that they would never catch her.

Still, this time, it was close. Helena could almost feel their hot, stinking breath on her neck as she dashed into the train station.

Running as fast as she could, she raced to the platform. The steam engine belched smoke and let out a loud whistle.

“Get her! If she gets on that train, I will skin each of you alive!” Jed bellowed behind her.

Helena ran on, pushing people out of the way. The train was chuffing; it was starting to move. Oh gosh, she was going to miss it.

It was heading out of the station without her.

With a last, desperate burst of speed, Helena rushed forward and jumped. She flew in through the door that a conductor was about to close, and she fell into the man’s arms.

“Good heavens, ma’am, are you all right?” the conductor in his smart blue uniform asked.

Helena looked up at him and nodded, smiling. “I am now.”

***

The train rattled on and on over the landscape. After the first week, Helena had finally calmed down. She was going by the name of Milly Watson now, having left the poor, ill-fated Jenny behind, and she had taken on a slightly different personality.

Milly was a ladies’ companion, traveling out West to meet her new mistress, an heiress who had to brave that lawless land because of her husband’s mining interests. It was as good a story as any, and since she was sharing the ladies’ sleeping car with another five women who did nothing but talk all day, it was good to have a story to tell.

The only one of them who didn’t rub her up the wrong way was a timid, quiet girl named Helen Alstrom. She had the bunk next to Helena’s, and she spent hours and hours poring over a bunch of letters.

Helena had taken one when Helen and the others were in the dining car, and she had read it. It was a sweet letter from a man named Alexander Mayhew. He wrote a lot about leatherwork and the mountains where he lived in the Washington Territory. He also wrote a lot about people in the town he lived in. It was probably interesting to Helen, although Helena couldn’t for the life of her work out why that would be the case.

She had lost interest after that thinking how lovely it would be to find herself a little house in California and maybe grow a garden. She had never ever grown anything in her life, and it sounded like fun to try. Maybe she could raise sheep. They seemed like little effort.

“Milly?”

Maybe she could grow oranges? She liked oranges, and being able to pick them right from the tree would be grand.

“Milly! Are you daydreaming again?”

Milly? Oh, right! That was her name. 

“Helen, I’m sorry. I was thinking of growing oranges,” Helena said. She was sitting beside the window and not really watching the scenery go by. It was whizzing past far too fast and yet not fast enough.

“Oranges?” Helen asked. She took the seat beside Helena and began to fidget.

Helena knew that something was bothering Helen. It wasn’t hard to tell. The girl was picking at her cuticles and chewing her bottom lip as though she might bite it right off. She seemed in a terrible state. Helena didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t good at comforting people. So, she stayed silent and went back to look out of the window. Maybe Helen would leave on her own.

“Milly?”

“Yes, Helen,” Helena said, managing to keep the impatience out of her voice. Why had this woman latched onto her? Making friends was one way to have people like Jed find a way to follow her. She didn’t want that, for Helen’s sake and her own.

“Milly, I have a problem,” Helen said.

“You don’t say?” Helena asked, looking pointedly at Helen’s leg which was bouncing up and down.

Helen placed both hands on her leg as though the only way to keep it from moving was to press it into the floor.

“What’s the problem?” Helena asked, as kindly as she could. The poor dear was clearly distraught about something.

“You know I’m going to the Washington Territory, right?” Helen asked shyly. “I answered this very nice man named Alex’s advertisement for a bride, and he sent me money to come to him.”

“Okay, that sounds…interesting,” Helena said. She couldn’t think of a worse fate than having to marry a man she had never met in the flesh before they had to say, “I do”.

“Yes, well, the problem is, see…” Helen sighed. “The problem is…it’s…”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Helen!” Helena snapped. She looked around the sleeping car. They were alone. She sighed. “Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m making a mess of this,” Helen said. “As I always do.”

There was a moment of tense silence between them and then Helena smiled. It wasn’t Helen’s fault that she was such a timid soul, so unsure of herself.

“It’s all right, take a breath and just tell me what happened,” Helena said.

Helen did as instructed and she began to speak. It was a story that Helena would have expected to read in any woman’s magazine. The girl plans her life one way and then fate steps in and takes her in a whole new direction.

In this case, the new direction answered to the name of Nicholas Prince. He and Helen had met on the train. Actually, they had known each other since childhood, but then he’d gone off to school in New York, and now he was heading out to California to the mines. As an engineer, he was needed in the mines, and one of the firms had offered him a very good salary. He and Helen had always gotten on, and she had always been just a little in love with him. It seemed like fate had smiled on them.

“He has asked me to go with him,” Helen said.

“Ah,” Helena said. “I see the problem. You don’t want to let this Alex down, right?”

“Precisely,” Helen said. “He’s very sweet…at least his letters are. He seems to have the warmest, biggest heart there is. I just…”

“You know and love Nicholas,” Helena finished for her.

She nodded.

“Well, then you should go with Nicholas,” Helena said. “If your heart is set on it. I always follow my heart.”

“Do you really?” Helen asked.

“Oh, yes,” Helena said with a nod.

“Well, then how does your heart feel about the Washington Territory?” Helen asked with a mischievous smile.

Chapter Two

September 1889

Potluck, Washington Territory

Alexander Mayhew stood in the woods surrounded by the majestic pine trees that were such a feature in his home and ground his teeth. The clearing was, for lack of a better word, clear. It was so clear that it looked as though there had never been barrels of gypsum illegally mined and smuggled there. Perhaps that was the case.

“You know,” Sheriff Charles Harlan said, “since the Pinkertons took all that trouble to train you, I would have thought that you would be better at this.” He looked around the empty clearing. “How many times have you had solid information about the smugglers moving gypsum, only for us to come up empty-handed anyway?”

Alex nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. “I hear you,” he said. “But one of these days, we’ll catch them unawares, and then they’ll be singing another tune. You’ll see.”

The sheriff hitched his trousers up by the belt and raised his brows at Alex. “Well, you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath for that.” He sniffed. “There’s a storm rolling in. We should get our backsides back to town before it starts pouring here. I don’t fancy getting all wet today, not with the dance on Saturday night. A cold would completely throw off my dancing. Are you coming?” He did a little sashay around in a circle with an imaginary partner.

“I guess so,” Alex said with a shrug. He couldn’t help but feel that something wasn’t right here. How did the smugglers always seem to know when he was onto them? The Fox, their leader, was good, but this was bordering on a supernatural ability to know when Alex and the sheriff were closing in.

“You guess so?” Sheriff Harlan asked. “Don’t you have a lady friend arriving tomorrow?”

“Yes, it’s Wednesday, tomorrow. I suspect she’ll be here in the afternoon,” Alex said.

“You don’t seem excited,” the sheriff noted.

Alex walked around the clearing. There were footprints in the soft soil but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. With loggers and trappers and a whole host of other folks in the woods all the time, they could belong to anyone.

“Alex!” Sheriff Harlan insisted. “Tell me you’re at least a little interested in this young lady coming all this way to meet you.”

“I am very interested in meeting her,” Alex said. He went down on his haunches at a dip in the ground. It looked as though the bottom of a barrel could have made the indentation in the ground. It wasn’t much, but perhaps it indicated that a gypsum barrel had been there.

Sheriff Harlan sighed and leaned against a tree. Clearly, he considered this all a colossal waste of time.

“So, you say you’re very interested in meeting her, but I’m not seeing it,” the sheriff said, folding his arms across his chest.

Alex stopped his search for clues to say that he was right and that the Fox had somehow managed to evade him. “The truth is that I won’t know how I feel about her until she arrives. I know very little about her, Charles. It’s just that simple. When you and Anette got married, you’d known each other all your lives. You grew up here and so it was different for you. I don’t think I can be overly excited about someone I still have to meet in person for the first time.”

“That’s just ridiculous,” Sheriff Harlan said and shook his head. “You should at least be curious or something. You seem…indifferent.”

Alex sighed and went back to looking for clues. “I’m not getting my hopes up to high. That’s all.” And that was it in a nutshell. He didn’t want to hang his hopes on this woman being his perfect match because, if there was one thing that Alex had found time and time again in his life, it was that he should never take anything for granted.

“At least set my mind at ease, Alex,” the sheriff said, leaving his spot and following Alex.

There were more marks in the soft earth that looked like the kind of half-moon swirls that came from moving a barrel by turning it this way and that. “There was definitely something here.”

“Yes, I’ll bet the whole shipment was there,” Sheriff Harlan said. “But that darn Fox moved it, and we won’t find anything to tell us where it went. He’s also not going to use this clearing again for a long, long time. So, talk to me. Tell me that you’ve made some kind of arrangements for when this fine, trusting young lady comes to our little town. Tell me you’ll be there waiting for her.”

“Of course, I will be there when the stagecoach arrives,” Alex said. He wasn’t so sure there was nothing to see here. Even hardened, seasoned criminals made mistakes. It was a given. They were human, and eventually, they would drop something, or accidentally leave a clue, and then Alex would have them.

“And you’re going to bring her flowers or something, some sort of welcome gift, right?” the sheriff asked. “Women like that. They like it when a man isn’t so distracted he could walk off a cliff and not notice.” He flung out an arm and caught Alex in the chest.

Blinking, Alex looked first at the sheriff and then out into the nothing that marked the end of the ground he’d been walking on. Beyond that, there was a three-hundred-foot drop to the valley down below.

“Thanks,” Alex said, his heart pounding. He’d been so focused on the barrel markings that he hadn’t noticed where he was.

“I did it for…what’s her name again?”

“Who?” Alex asked as he held onto a tree trunk, feeling a little shaky, and peered down into the trees below. It would only require some rope and they could lower the barrels to the ground and be away over the border in no time flat.

The sheriff grabbed him by the lapels and swung him around. He was a big man, burly and strong, and Alex, lithe and nimble, found himself being moved whether he wanted to or not.

“You really need to pay attention!” the sheriff snapped. “Alex, you’re going to get yourself into a lot of trouble. Yes, there are smugglers around these parts. Is it a problem? Of course, it is. But the question you have to ask yourself is, if you’re so wrapped up in trying to catch them in the act that you’re not seeing the cliffs right in front of you, then what good are you to anyone? Especially…what’s her name again?”

“Um, oh…Helen, it’s Helen,” Alex said, forcing himself to stop thinking about the Fox and how he had once again outsmarted Alex. It was a sticking point. Alex was really not happy being outsmarted again and again.

“Good, now think about Helen,” Sheriff Harlan said with a grin, steering them from the edge and back across the clearing. “You know you should listen to me. I’ve been happily married for over fifteen years now. And the secret to any woman’s heart is to pay attention.” He put an arm around Alex’s shoulders as they walked to where they had left their horses. “That’s it. Now a lot of other men who think they know everything would disagree with me and say it’s romance or its gifts, which never hurt, by the way. But really, it all comes down to paying attention. Let her know how special she is to you, and she will shower you in—”

“Thanks, I think I’ll be fine,” Alex said, not wanting to carry on this conversation any longer than he had to. The sheriff was a romantic at heart, always finding new ways to let his darling wife, Anette, know how much he loved her.

The sheriff shook his head and let Alex go. “Sure, you’ll be fine.” He said it with a hint of sarcasm in his voice that made Alex think he didn’t really believe that Alex would manage to woo Helen.

Reaching their horses, they untied them and mounted up. They began the ride back to the town in silence, both lost in their own thoughts.

Alex knew how to hunt down a man over thousands of miles. He could track a fugitive through the snow and ice. He had done just that at the tender age of twenty-three. That had been five years earlier when he had caught a notorious smuggler, bank robber, and hardened criminal named Jed Baker and sent him away to jail. It was a feather in his cap and proved that he was a formidable bounty hunter. Yet, faced with having to meet and perhaps marry a woman, Alex was hesitant, unsure, and frankly worried enough to push the idea of it all out of his mind as fervently as he could. He didn’t want to face the fact that hunting criminals was easier for him than courting.

When Alex had written to Helen, he hadn’t told her all about what he did in the little border town of Potluck. He had only told her about the leatherwork he did when not hunting criminals. It was a big part of his life, but so was searching for and apprehending those who broke the law.

He hadn’t meant to lie by omission. He really hadn’t. But in her letters Helen had come across as being so timid and worried about everything that he hadn’t wanted to scare her away. After all, she was the only person who had answered his advertisement, which had been running in the Matrimonial News for around eight months.

Eight months!

Alex suspected that the lack of female enthusiasm for his advertisements, and he had tried many different versions, had more to do with where he lived than with him. He had tried versions where he didn’t mention where he lived, and those had received some interest. However, the moment the fine young ladies found out where he stayed, they stopped writing to him as though he had polio or smallpox or something. It seemed that the idea of marrying a man who stayed days away from civilization was less appealing to the fairer sex than it might once have been.

So, either Helen had no idea where Potluck, Washington Territory, was, or she didn’t mind the idea of living in a little border town that backed onto Canada so closely that if one stood in the town square and threw a rock, it would land across the border.

“Tell me, do you have some feelings for Helen, at least?” Sheriff Harlan asked, breaking the long silence. “Tell me your interest in her is more than she was the only one to answer your advertisement who didn’t run away at the idea of living in our little mountain town.”

Alex smiled. “I am interested in her. I just don’t think that letters are enough of a window into the soul to know if we could be compatible,” he said.

“So, what happens if this isn’t love and she doesn’t want to stay after all?” Sheriff Harlan asked.

Alex swallowed. He had been thinking about that, too. “If she wants to leave, I’ll buy her a ticket to any place she wants to go to.”

Sheriff Harlan smiled. It was the first one that Alex had earned that day. “Good. I’m glad to hear it because I was worried there that you might feel forced into marrying her when she stepped off the coach.”

Alex almost swallowed his tongue. “No! Gosh! Marriage is far too important to dive into with someone I’ve only exchanged letters with. I was thinking Helen could stay at Teresa’s inn for a while until we get to know each other. Then she can move into the cabin with me if she wants to.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Sheriff Harlan said. “Now that’s settled. Tell me what you were looking at in the clearing. Did the Fox leave something for you to find?”

Alex chuckled. “Now you want to talk business.”

“Of course,” the sheriff said. “We still have a good ten to fifteen minutes before we reach Potluck. We should fill the time with something constructive.”

“Right,” Alex said. The irony was thick, but he told the sheriff everything he’d seen in the clearing.

Potluck was a tiny town that nevertheless stretched over quite a bit of land. Nestled in the mountains, it perched on rocky outcrops and clung to the sides of hills before sliding down into a narrow valley.

Alex always thought of the inhabitants as extensions of the most farmed animals in the region which were goats. The creatures and their minders were always balanced on the sides of cliffs, and walking up almost sheer rises that made Alex, who had been raised in Seattle, swallow several times before he could get the fear that they would fall to their deaths down.

Riding into Potluck, most of the inhabitants who were out and about on this relatively fine fall day, raised a hand in greeting. They were simple folk who enjoyed making things look pretty. Most of the buildings were made from the pine trees that surrounded the town, but they weren’t simple log cabins. They were fine houses and buildings with lattice work on the porch eaves and beautifully carved banisters and railings. The pitch-roofed houses looked like gingerbread houses that had escaped from some European wonderland, especially in winter when the snow lay heavy like icing on the roofs.

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