Haskell, Wyoming – 1877

Sam Standish stood on the platform of Haskell’s train station enjoying his last cigar, his friends Trey Knighton and Travis Montrose on either side. The high-pitched squeal of the train sounded in the distance, bringing with it a deep gloom that left his shoulders and his spirits sagging.

“Well,” he drawled, taking one final puff before throwing his cigar butt onto the tracks, “that’s the end of me.”

Trey laughed and shook his head. “Are you going to throw yourself in front of the train or something?”

Travis thumped Sam on the back. “Judging by the look on his face, he just might.”

“Nonsense.” Josephine Evans stepped up from behind Sam, fixing him with a scowl. “You’re not here for an execution, you’re here to meet your bride.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?” Sam crossed his arms and scowled right back at Josephine, ignoring the excited thrum deep in his gut. The truth was, he’d asked Josephine, Virginia Piedmont, and Charlie Garrett to send away to Hurst Home, in Nashville, for a bride. All of his friends were married now, and he’d been feeling more than a little left out for the past few months. And there was that nagging part of him that insisted he was a grown man now, and a grown man should have a wife.

He wasn’t about to let on to having those thoughts, though.

Josephine huffed out an impatient breath. “Marriage is not the end of the world, even though too many of you men think it is.”

“She’s right.” Travis nodded, his mouth twitching as though he were fighting hard not to grin. “Why, my life’s been nothing but wonderful since Wendy and I married. And with little Emanuel crawling around our ankles these days, getting into every little thing, it’s as if I’m a new man.”

Sam narrowed his eyes at Travis. “What kind of new man?”

Trey snorted a laugh on Sam’s other side. “A new man engaged in a whole new kind of bliss,” he said. “Just like my life is a completely different world since I married Talia a few months back.”

“I don’t doubt for a moment that marriage is a new world,” Sam said, his frown darkening deeper as the train’s whistle sounded again. It was closer this time. “It’s the kind of new world that worries me.”

“What do you mean?” Travis asked.

Sam sighed, letting his arms and his scowl go. “It’s all this domesticity,” he complained. “Everyone with their babies and their houses.”

He gestured across the tracks to where a whole new section of Haskell was under construction. Rupert Cole and his partner, Skipper King, from nearby Everland, had built at least a dozen new homes in the past several months, not to mention new businesses. But the businesses were things like a dry goods store, a newspaper office, and, Lord help them all, a library. The houses were large, meant for families. Well, except the one house that Rupert built for Bonnie’s girls. But even the girls seemed to dress more conservatively these days and get more excited about spending their time at the new library than at his saloon. There was something going on under Bonnie’s roof that had nothing to do with “entertaining gentlemen” the way all her girls used to. Everything was just so…different these days.

“I came out here when I was barely fifteen,” he said, suddenly in the mood for pontificating. He turned to face not only his friends, but the other townsfolk who had gathered to meet the train. Athos Strong and his grown son, Hubert, stopped what they were doing in preparation for the train’s arrival and listened, knowing grins on both of their faces.

“I came out here with dreams of glory,” Sam went on. “There weren’t towns in those days, only mining camps and waystations. We fought off Indians and claim-jumpers. And sometimes mountain lions. You never knew when someone would start a gunfight or cause a ruckus. Why, when I got my first job in a saloon in Cheyenne, when I was still under twenty and Cheyenne was brand new, I had to break up a fight every night.”

“Uh, we could arrange for some fights to break out at The Silver Dollar, if you want,” Trey teased him.

“Sheriff Knighton,” Josephine scolded him. “You’re supposed to keep law and order in this town, not encourage lawlessness.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” Trey tipped his hat to the older woman.

“See?” Sam gestured to Josephine to prove his point. “What ever happened to the days of the West being wild? What happened to tough men of grit living by the skin of their teeth?”

“Well, we figured out that we eat better when a pretty wife cooks for us,” Travis said, still struggling to keep a straight face.

“And living in a cozy house is a lot nicer than sleeping rough,” Athos added, walking from the station house to the side of the tracks. The train was in its final approach and could be seen chugging along, only a couple hundred yards down the line.

Sam snorted and shook his head. “Is this what’s become of all those footloose and fancy-free days when the frontier was new?” he lamented. The only answers he got were teasing looks and his friends trying to hide their grins behind their hands. Trey wasn’t even trying to hide his.

And yet, he had to admit that the few telegrams he’d shared with his prospective bride, Miss Julia Frost, had been intriguing. Even in a few sentences, she’d managed to convey that she had an upbeat and sunny disposition. Mrs. Breashears at Hurst Home had insisted she was unique and that she would make a good saloonkeeper’s wife. But Sam still wasn’t quite ready to admit that the reason his heart beat faster as the train crawled into the station was because he was about to meet his bride. More likely he was panicked about his life as he knew it coming to an end.

“All I’m saying,” he finished, speaking up over the screech and hiss of the train braking and the whistle blowing, “is that I used to be as rough and rugged as any outlaw. Life was exciting. You never knew what was going to happen next. Now all I’ve got to look forward to is day after day of domestic boredom, even if it does mean good food and a soft place to lay my head at night.”

Trey and Travis exchanged looks and burst into laughter. “Is that what you think marriage is?” Travis asked.

Sam didn’t have time to answer. The train came to a complete stop, and passengers began to disembark. In spite of himself, Sam stood straighter, tugging at the bottom of his vest. He’d had all of his clothes laundered especially so that he could make a good impression on Miss Frost. He’d bathed and washed his hair the night before too. And shaved. Something must have been seriously wrong with him, or else the very thought of sending for a wife had already tamed him.

That was it. The wild mustang in him had been caught, broken, and saddled. He craned his neck to see if he could pick out which of the ladies stepping down from the train was his new bride, and he felt the same sort of excitement that he’d once had in making a trade out in the wild with a band of Cheyenne braves.

He thought he’d picked out the right woman—tall, blond, and looking to be in her early thirties—but that one veered off to the side and greeted another man with a quick embrace. Another woman—a brunette who might have been about twenty-five—stepped down and looked around. Sam tugged at his vest again, but that one spotted someone farther down on the platform, broke into a smile, and headed that way. Sam looked back at the train door, but the next woman to step down had a little too much grey hair to be his bride.

“Where is she?” he muttered.

Athos and Hubert were stacking baggage from the car directly behind the passenger car on the platform, but Athos glanced up, looked from the passenger car to Sam, and shrugged.

“You’re not anxious, are you?” Travis ribbed Sam, grinning from ear-to-ear.

“Not afraid she’s changed her mind?” Trey joined in.

“No,” Sam growled at them. “It’s just that I have a responsibility to the woman.”

“Ah, responsibility.” Travis nodded sagely to Trey. “That’s a little like domesticity, isn’t it?”

The two of them laughed as Josephine rolled her eyes and clucked.

Sam wasn’t able to tell them off, though. As he opened his mouth to say something, a loud crash came from the direction of the train. He twisted to look just in time to see a very young woman stumble off the last step down from the train and crash into the pile of baggage Athos and Hubert had made.

“Oh!” she squeaked. “I’m so sorry.”

She reached to set the smallest trunk on the top of the pile to rights, but ended up knocking over the hat box stacked next to it. The hat box bumped into a carpetbag on the way down, spilling that as well.

“Oh, dear.” The young woman lunged forward, bending to grab at either the hat box or the carpetbag. Instead, she stepped on Hubert’s hand as he did the same.

“Ow!” Hubert yelped and jerked back. When he did, he slammed into Athos, who dropped the trunk he was carrying. That fell to the ground with a sickening crunch.

At the same time, the young woman leapt backwards. Without looking where she was going. She bashed into the middle-aged man who had just stepped off the train, sending him careening toward the tall, blonde woman, who was still talking to the man who’d met her on the platform. The blonde shrieked in surprise as the middle-aged man grabbed her sleeve to stop himself from falling.

“Here, let me help you,” the young woman said. She reached for the falling man, but in the process, the large reticule she carried slipped off her arm, plopping to the platform. The falling man chose just that spot to place his foot in an attempt to get his balance. He tumbled hopelessly forward, grabbing and ripping the blonde’s skirt as he did. She went down with him, knocking into her gentleman friend and sending him sprawling too.

“Oh, no.” The young woman took half a step back from the scene before changing her mind and reaching for her purse on the platform. She picked it up, putting a little too much swing into the movement. As she stood, her purse flew back and hit the porter—who was helping an older woman down from the train—in the side of the head. He flinched, the older woman started and dropped the reticule she was carrying, and the faint tinkle of glass shattering was heard as her bag hit the platform.

As fast as the storm started, it was over. Hubert cradled his hand, the porter clutched his face, the older woman wailed, and the three people on the ground gasped and muttered. The young woman stood above them all, completely unharmed. She blinked around her with wide, brown eyes, her apple-round cheeks pink.

“Excuse me,” she said, then smiled.

Something funny bubbled up in Sam’s chest. He gaped at the woman. No. It couldn’t be. Absolutely not. Warmth began to spread from his neck up to his face. She was young. Very young. Much too young. And pretty as a button in her lavender traveling dress.

“Are you Mr. Sam Standish?” she asked, confirming his worst fears. Her voice was a fraction louder than it would have been in polite society.

“Uh, yeah?” Sam took a half-step forward, doing his best to avoid the groaning people who were struggling to their feet.

The young woman put on a beaming smile and extended her hand to him. “I’m Julia Frost. I’m going to marry you.” Her voice pitched high with excitement, and her eyes glittered.

And as she stepped forward to greet him, she somehow managed to hook the toe of her boot through the handle of the carpetbag she’d knocked off the pile of luggage. It threw her off-balance, and with an almighty shriek, she plunged forward into Sam’s arms.

Somehow, he caught her. She was a tiny thing, slender to the point of being bony under her traveling clothes. He instantly wondered if she got enough to eat. That thought was quickly replaced by a deep, buzzing feeling in his soul as he lifted her to stand. He didn’t move his hands away from her waist, partly because he was afraid she’d cause another disaster if he let her go.

“How old are you?” he asked instead, eyes narrowing.

“Nineteen. I’m nineteen,” she answered, a little breathless. “Wait, no.” Her eyes darted to the side in a shifty look. “I’m twenty-three. That’s right.”

Sam narrowed his eyes even further. “Really?”

“Mmm hmm.” Her humming was so high-pitched it would make a dog bark. Her cheeks flooded with color, then her expression turned guilty and she lowered her head. “All right, no, I’m nineteen.” She jerked her head back up to meet his eyes. “But my cousin Myrtle said that you should always tell people that you’re older than you are, lest they treat you like a child. And frankly, Mr. Standish, I didn’t want Mrs. Breashears to think I was too young to come out West as a mail-order bride. My second-cousin Elizabeth came out West to be a mail-order bride five years ago. Of course, she married a miner who was drunk most of the time and threw her down a well where she broke her neck, but you don’t look like the kind of man who would do that. Throw someone down a well. And break their neck. Or drink too much. You don’t drink too much, do you?” She finished her avalanche of words by gazing up at him and blinking rapidly.

“I—” Sam couldn’t think of a word to say. He still wasn’t sure what was happening.

“Of course, Mrs. Breashears did mention that you own the saloon in town,” she went on, hardly taking a breath, when Sam didn’t answer. “That doesn’t mean you’re a drunk, though. In fact, I’ve heard that saloonkeepers drink less than anyone else because they have to keep their wits about them as they serve their customers. I imagine that you have lots of wits. Although Mrs. Breashears said that I was likely to drive you to your wits’ end.” She gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

“You—”

“What I meant to say was that Mrs. Breashears thought that of any of the women at Hurst Home, I would be the most suited to being the wife of a saloonkeeper,” she flew on. “Which I think is funny, since I don’t think I was there long enough for her to get a true impression of my character. You’d think she was trying to get rid of me or something.” She punctuated her comment with an airy laugh.

Sam stared at her. And stared. What in the name of all that was good and holy had he gotten himself into?

He was jolted out of his thoughts by Trey thumping him on the back. “And here you were worried about your life getting boring,” Trey laughed.

“We’d, uh, better get over to the church,” Josephine added, a wary look in her eyes. “As soon as possible. Before anyone can change their minds,” she ended in a mutter.

“Hold on one second,” Sam said, letting Julia go at last. He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’d like to have a private word with Miss Frost here before we go anywhere.”

“You can use my off—” Athos stopped halfway through making his offer. He glanced around at the carnage on the platform, the baggage and the people who had only just righted themselves. “Uh, there’s a nice, quiet spot right over there, next to the street, far away from any people or property.” He ended with a wry chuckle.

Sam frowned at the man, but nodded. He took Julia’s hand and led her away from the others.

* * *

Julia’s heart beat a million miles per minute as Sam Standish led her across the platform and down to the empty spot beside the street. “I’ve messed things up, haven’t I?” she said, panic welling within her.

“No, you haven’t,” Sam said, though she wasn’t sure she could believe him with the dark tone of voice he used.

She bit her lip as he helped her down the platform stairs. This was what came of rushing into things without looking. Cousin Elizabeth’s story should have been a warning to her. But Hurst Home had such a good reputation for helping young ladies in trouble, and she’d been longing for a solid, steady home and a man she could give her heart to for so long that it didn’t matter to her that she was rushing into the unknown.

She caught the hem of her skirt on a loose nail at the bottom of the stairs. The short, ripping sound only made her cheeks burn brighter with embarrassment. “I truly am sorry about the mess I caused up there,” she burst out before Sam could say what she was certain he was going to say. “I don’t know what it is, but disaster seems to follow me wherever I go. I come by it honestly, though. It seems like disaster has followed my entire family for as long as anyone can remember. Why, the story goes that my grandfather fell overboard and drowned in the Hudson River as he and my grandmother were disembarking from their journey across the sea. It’s a good thing my grandmother was already carrying my poor papa, or I wouldn’t be here.”

Sam stopped when they reached the spot and turned to face her. “Let’s just deal with why you are here first,” he said.

“I’m here to marry you, of course.” She turned her best smile up to him, batting her eyelashes the way her Cousin Myrtle had shown her.

Sam turned a strange, mottled color. He rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re nineteen?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?” Her heart pounded harder.

“Not if you don’t mind being married to a man past thirty,” Sam said.

Julia loosened her shoulders, feeling a touch of relief. “I don’t mind at all. Younger women have been marrying older men for as long as marriage has been around. I think it’s because you’re so good at protecting us.” She paused. “And because you men need a little time to make your fortunes before you can support a wife and children.” She paused again, and when he didn’t reply, she rushed on with. “I’m sorry I told Mrs. Breashears I was older than I was, but I honestly don’t think it would have mattered. She seemed very eager to find a husband for me and send me on my way.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Sam muttered. Julia had heard the same thing too many times to let it bother her. Sam took a breath, stood a little straighter, and went on. “I don’t have a problem with the age difference if you don’t, but it makes me think. If you’d like to take some time before we’re married to just live here, get your bearings, get to know people, that’s fine by me. We don’t have to rush into anything.”

Disappointment and a good measure of fear seized up in Julia’s chest. “Are you…are you saying you’ve changed your mind? Because I had a cousin, Melba, who was supposed to marry a man once, and he changed his mind. Of course, that was probably because Melba ran off with the butcher’s son. But she did come back. Only, the man wouldn’t marry her then, and she ended up in the streets up in New York. At least, until she died in childbirth with the butcher’s son’s baby.”

“Wha—” Sam continued to stare at her in disbelief for a few more seconds before shaking his head and drawing in a steadying breath. “I’m not changing my mind, I’m just giving you a chance to settle in slowly. I don’t know how you ladies come out here and marry someone you don’t know so fast.”

“It’s because we don’t have much choice,” she explained, wondering how he could possibly not understand the position most mail-order brides were in. “A woman isn’t given many choices in this world, Mr. Standish. Marrying is just about the only way we can be certain to have a roof over our heads. Even then, there’s no guarantee that the man we marry will treat us kindly. Remember the story I just told about my Cousin Elizabeth? And while I don’t think I’ll end up at the bottom of a well with a broken neck by marrying you, I’d rather risk that than continue living a shiftless existence, wondering if I’ll go the way Cousin Melba went. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d feel much better if I stood up in front of a preacher with you right away. That way I’ll know that my journey is finally over and that I can breathe easy at last.”

She finished by drawing in a quick breath and fighting the sudden urge to cry. But she’d never seen any point in tears. They’d never solved anything, and she was much more inclined to laugh than cry anyhow.

She wasn’t so sure about Sam, though. He just stood there, staring and staring. Although the look in his eyes had changed from the bare tolerance she was used to into a tenderness that she hadn’t expected. Perhaps she shouldn’t have blurted out her sad tale quite so fast.

“All right,” he said at length, voice hoarse. He cleared his throat, then offered her his arm. “If you say so, then let’s go get hitched.”