Mail Order Bride Leah: A Sweet Western Historical Romance (Montana Mail Order Brides Series Book 1)
Authors: Rose Jenster
Mail Order Bride Leah
Montana Mail Order Brides Series
Book 1
Rose Jenster
Mail Order Bride Leah
Montana Mail Order Brides Series, Book 1
Copyright © 2015 Rose Jenster
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.
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. I love to connect to my readers and dedicate this book to you. Thank you for the support, loyalty, reviews and rooting for Leah to find joy! You can read an excerpt from book 2 in the series,
Mail Order Bride Tess
below and it is available at Amazon. In addition,
Mail Order Bride Felicity
is the 3
rd
book in the series and is available at Amazon. All the books are stand alone novellas and can be read independently.
Table of Contents
Mail Order Bride Tess: Book 2 Excerpt
Chapter 1
ALBANY, NEW YORK, 1884
What am I going to do?
Leah Weaver wondered, not for the first time. She knew she had to finish her work so she could finish clearing out their meager remaining possessions. Her father’s business had been sold to pay his debts and their living quarters above the shop went with it. With her mother dead these twelve years and Walter with a family of his own to care for, it fell on Leah’s shoulders to finish the sad business of dismantling the home of her childhood.
She made herself concentrate on marking the compositions her class had completed on the Shakespearean sonnets. Abigail received full marks again...it was such a shame that the girl would have to return to the textile factory next week along with all of the older students. Leah knew that their families needed the money they earned in manufacturing, but some of the students held such promise, such natural talent that it grieved her to see them squander their ability in back-breaking work at the ages of twelve or thirteen.
This too shall pass,
she reminded herself, setting the papers aside. Leah tidied the classroom, wiping up drips around the inkwells and sweeping the floor. Then she took her light shawl from the nail and her serviceable straw bonnet and set forth. Leah walked the five blocks from the school to her family’s former home behind the shop. Dodging in and out of traffic, she avoided trampling by horses and made her way safely through the bustle of shoppers on the sidewalks. She squared her thin shoulders and unlocked the door to her father’s stationery shop, for the very last time. For all the months she had been living with her brother and his family, she had pushed aside her feelings and how much she missed this place.
Squeezing the familiar key like an old friend, she referred to the list on the empty counter. The remaining inventory had already been sold and the ledgers—her father’s once-meticulous bookkeeping that had deteriorated along with his mind in recent months—had been relinquished to the bank when the payments were more than Leah could manage on her own.
She was thankful that her father was beyond knowing what had happened. He had married late, but he had delighted in being a husband and father—his eldest child had been born on John’s own forty-fifth birthday. Once so strong and capable, John Russell Weaver spent his days now sitting on his son’s front porch, mumbling to himself and wandering in ways that weren't logical in his mind. He did not recognize her most days, looking for his daughter to be a small child still, not a shy, serious schoolteacher of nearly twenty-five years.
Leah sighed and fastened a lid on the crate of her own books and the few that had been her mother’s. She lifted the lid off the cedar chest, taking her mother’s wedding gown out of its wrapping and holding it against herself wistfully. When her mother was dying, she had given the dress to Leah requesting her to wear it on her own wedding day. The idea of marriage had seemed so far off in the future to a sad twelve- year old girl, but half her life had passed since her mother’s death and she was no nearer to finding a husband. Tears stung her eyes as she repacked the gown lovingly and replaced the lid on her hope chest. The time for hope, she thought, was long past.
Leah made the long, dusty walk across the city to her brother’s house where she placed her key to the shop on a table near the door so he could retrieve the last of the crates in the morning before the new owners arrived to take possession of the shop and dwelling.
Leah’s sister-in-law, Jane, called to her from the kitchen. Leah rushed in to help with setting the table and mixing up some frosting for her brother’s birthday cake. She wasn’t much of a cook, but Leah could make a light and delicious buttercream. It was the least she could do for her uncomplaining older brother.
As she stirred the cream, she thought of the burdens Walter had borne in the past year. He had taken their ailing father to a physician and learned that the senility was irreversible. He had struggled with his pride upon learning that Leah had been trying to cover the mortgage payments with only her meager teacher’s pay. The business had been sold and Walter assumed the care of his ailing father and now the burden of his sister as well. Leah had no other place to go and Walter and Jane wouldn’t hear of letting her live in a boarding house like a factory girl or housemaid.
“I was fixing to read a letter from my sister May. Will you read it to me while I finish up this stew?” Jane asked.
Leah took up the letter and slit the envelope with a hairpin. She fingered the paper, identifying it by touch as a slick, cheap mercantile paper that wouldn’t hold the ink fast and unsmudged, probably three sheets for a penny, not the lovely smoothness of the vellum finish her father had stocked for personal correspondence. Wistfully, she began to read aloud.
“Dear Sister, The rains have been bad on our crop this year but my James is so patient, he never complains. When he cannot work in the field for the rains, he stays in the house and tries to teach little James his letters. Our boy already knows the letters of his own name, bless him!
I do wish you would come visit us so you could see what a happy establishment we have here. I never believed I would have a family of my own and if you had not answered that ad for me, I would be lonesome and living in our father’s house to this day. Every night I say my prayers and I thank the Lord you were looking out for me that day. A husband, a home, two sons, and another on the way. If this one be a girl I shall call her Jane after you, dearest sister. All my love, Mrs. James Rollings.”
Leah felt a pang at the letter’s contents. She was happy for Jane’s sister, May, but her situation was so different...May was a lonesome girl who worked in a shop, whose sister had answered an ad for a mail order bride in her name. Leah was the shy daughter of a disgraced businessman, backward and bookish, with no claims on attractiveness to gentlemen. Jane heard her sigh and looked up from stirring the stew.
“It does my heart good to hear how my sister is settled happily, Leah. She sounds content, doesn’t she?” Jane said.
“Yes, indeed she does,” Leah replied and folded the letter carefully.
All through supper, she thought of nothing but Mrs. James Rollings and the happiness she’d found. Her sister-in-law related the contents of the letter to Walter and retold the story of May’s marriage.
“She was wasting away in that shop, trimming bonnets with ribbon and seeing nothing but women customers day in and day out. I knew she was pining for a family of her own so I got one of those newspapers and picked out an ad for a mail order bride from a man who sounded like he would suit. He said he played the fiddle and my sister May was always one for music.
I wrote to him like I was herself and she was so surprised when I showed her a letter from him asking to start a correspondence with a view to matrimony! She blushed and squealed and chased me around our room with her hairbrush saying
How dare I do such a thing
! but she wrote him back and two months later she was on the train to Wyoming!”
Jane chuckled as she finished up her plate of stew. Walter gave Little Walter a cup of milk and made sure his father John had plenty of bread to mop up his stew the way he had when Walter and Leah were growing up. Leah cleared the plates away and wiped Walter Jr.’s face and hands with a dishrag because he was only two and ate his stew with his fingers.
Leah brought out the cake and they sang to Walter. Even her father joined in the singing and Leah felt tears sting her eyes again. These good kind people were her family. How could she bring herself to be a burden to them all her life because she had been too shy, too quiet to earn the interest of a man of her own?
As Leah washed the dishes and Jane put them away, her sister-in-law spoke to her hesitantly, leaning in close to whisper.
“Leah, you know I think of you as my very own sister, right?”
“Yes, of course, dear. I feel very lucky to have such a sister as you,” Leah said earnestly.
“Then you know it’s in my heart to do you good and help you find happiness. I knew you was pining away when you read that letter from May earlier. So don’t let it discomfit you when I ask if you had thought about reading any of those ads for yourself? My Walter would skin me alive if he knew I was speaking to you so, but I’m a woman and I know what it is to long for your own hearth and home,” Jane whispered.
Leah embraced her and the tears finally came.
“Oh, yes, Jane, please! I didn’t—I didn’t even know how to ask you! Let’s look at advertisements, help guide me to a good choice. I do not know if it will be right for me but I mean to try! Oh, Jane, you’re so good to me!” She hugged her sister-in-law and wept.
“There, there, now. Settle yourself down. I’ll get us some papers tomorrow and we can look at them while Walter is picking up those crates from the store,” Jane said, hushing her with a smile.
The next day, Jane bustled into the kitchen with copies of the
Matrimonial News
and they divided the issues between them. Leah was too shy to speak of her hopes but she scanned the pages avidly, making notes with a short pencil in a penny composition book she normally used to plan lessons.
