Brides Of Hope & Destiny: Mail Order Brides Head West Bundle Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  BRIDES OF HOPE & DESTINY

  UNEXPECTED BRIDE for TWO BROTHERS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  RESERVED BRIDE for her BROKEN HEIR

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  LONELY BRIDE promised to her BOUNTY HUNTER

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  THREE BRIDES FOR THREE WAR COMRADES

  LOST, ABANDONED & SECURED BY HER ONE-ARM HERO

  Isabella

  Kit

  The Three Brides Arrive

  Isabella’s Announcement

  Kit’s Change of Heart

  A Step Backwards

  A Late Night Emergency

  Disaster Strikes

  The Seasons Change

  Epilogue

  ASHAMED, BEATEN & SAVED BY HER BURNED HERO

  Susan

  Jedediah

  The Wedding

  Jedediah’s Secret

  Susan’s Plan

  A Close Call

  Secrets Revealed

  Good News, Bad News

  Jedediah’s Realization

  Epilogue

  PREGNANT, WIDOWED & PROTECTED BY HER FLAWED HERO

  Mollie

  Thomas

  The Wedding Day Arrives

  A Promise Is Made

  A Promise Is Broken

  A Decision Made In Haste

  A Bundle Of Joy Arrives

  An Accident Discovery

  Danger Presents Itself

  A Reunion

  Epilogue

  MAIL ORDER BRIDES OF WESTERN ROMANCE

  CRIPPLED BRIDE and her AMBITIOUS MINER

  The Beginning

  Jackson

  The Meeting

  The Trouble Starts

  The Fight

  An Accident

  Jackson Takes Ill

  A Disaster

  A New Day Dawns

  A Fresh Beginning

  SILENT BRIDE and her HESITANT WIDOWER

  Rosella

  Benjamin

  The Wedding

  A Misunderstanding

  A Robbery

  Trouble Brews

  A Disaster

  A Miracle

  Starting Over

  Trust

  DEAF BRIDE and her SENSIBLE TEACHER

  Luanna

  Nicolas

  The Wedding

  A Series of Mishaps

  An Accident

  A Discovery

  A Confrontation

  A Revelation

  A Reunion

  Publishers Notes

  Copyright © 2015 by Faye Sonja

  All Rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  *** Amazon US ***

  BRIDES OF HOPE & DESTINY

  1

  UNEXPECTED BRIDE FOR TWO BROTHERS

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  1877, Georgia.

  Dear Jenny,

  I look forward to meeting you in four weeks. However, I regret to inform you that due to issues with the estate, my attention is needed here and I cannot leave to meet you at the Fort Worth train station. Instead, my brother who has recently returned from the war will be there in my place instead. I trust him with my life and so I must ask that you do the same. He will travel the three weeks it will take you to get to me, and will ensure you are comfortable.

  I again apologize, but I cannot leave the place that is to be our home together in the wake of the passing war. I trust and hope you understand this and I look forward to starting a life with you.

  Your love to be,

  Adam

  Jenny read the letter again and again, as she listened to the torrential rainfall outside her window. It had been raining for days in the Georgian plains, as if the heavens were trying to wash away all the blood that had been shed throughout the war; the war that cost her both her father and her brother. Now, she only dreams of moving far away and starting over.

  "Are you okay Mrs. Martin?" Sammy, her house help asked.

  She nodded, smiling sadly up in his chocolate face. She was going to miss him when she left. He had not just been someone who had worked for her father's estate, he had been one of her best friends, possibly the truest of them all. She would have carried him with her to Texas, but he had just started his own family and he just couldn’t leave them behind. It was an accomplishment that he was proud of and she truly understood.

  "My husband to be cannot meet me at the train station, so he will be sending his brother along to meet me instead."

  Sammy looked at her concerned. "And you will still go?"

  "I will. I know I don't want to be here anymore."

  Sammy's sad sigh was enough to tell her he did not approve of her choice to travel such long distances with a man she was being given of no choice to meet, and she had in fact considered the possibility that such a risk could indeed put her in danger, but she was still set on making the trip. She wanted out of this state, bloodied with the lives of the innocents lost, and she wanted to finally have the chance at a family of her own. For this she would travel the distance, by whatever means necessary.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  Jenny took a long walk through the downtown market place. It had always been one of her most favorite things to do. The smell of the spices that offered their aromatic therapy of an extremely soothing kind and the sound of the children who ran about, escaping from one act of mischief to the next with childish enthusiasm and squeals. The train whistled along the tracks somewhere off in the distance and a carriage that seemed to need a bit of oil on its hinges squeaked by.

  Today was a good day. It was a day that made it seem as if the war had not ravished the once prosperous state, though the smiles that hid the pain of all that was lost wouldn’t be convincing enough to fool her. She could turn her head to the heavens and try to enjoy the warmth of the sunshine, pretending that nothing was wrong and trying not to look as though she was falling apart inside, but for how long could sh
e expect herself to live like this?

  Not very long.

  “Come to bid me adieu?” asked Simms, the old black woman who had been like a mother to her.

  She had no words, only tears and the feeling that she was leaving behind one of the closest people she’d ever known. “Come with me, please,” she begged the old woman.

  “Listen here young lady. You don’t need an old woman like me following you halfway across this bloody country when you are looking for love. You go on now, and you make yourself happy!” Simms said, pulling her in closely for a hug. She had asked her a million times before, but on the day she was finally leaving, Jenny didn’t think one more time could possibly hurt.

  She had loved this fragile old woman, who despite being close to seventy years old had very little gray hair on her head. “What if he isn’t the kind of man I like?”

  “Then you will always have a home here. You come right back here land and leave him to himself. Or you can take yourself on a little adventure someplace else. But if that man is not what you bargained for, do not waste a moment of your time with him.”

  Jenny sat beside the woman in her wooden stall in silence for a few minutes. It was like her safe haven. Simms had always been able to sooth her spirits that way and right now her troubled mind needed some soothing. She wasn’t going to tell the woman about the fact that it was her husband’s brother who was coming in his place instead. No, that would just make her worry and so she kept that largely to herself. When she got up to leave an hour later, the rain had started to fall and the tiny drops that coated her felt jacket were like the teardrops of her soul. This was where she had been born, this Georgian town had been her home. Now, she was leaving it to head off to some place far less familiar and she had no idea what she would do if it didn’t work out. She wasn’t a negative person. She was just unsure... Her entire life she had lived with the safety of having her father around and under the protectiveness of her older brother. They had taught her how to defend herself, but she wasn’t in fear of having to. She feared she would not be good enough for the man she was betrothed to. She could protect herself just fine, she was only in fear of going to a place where everything would be new to her.

  * * *

  Adam was a tall striking man with midnight blue eyes that seemed to captivate women who dared to stare into them. It was as if they just couldn’t draw their attention away from him. Was that an issue? No, it was just a fact, and he couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for him to speak to some women. It was as if they were entranced by his eyes and heard nothing he said when he spoke. All they seemed to be able to do was stare into the blue of his eyes.

  “Did you hear what I said, Miss Jane?” he asked her with a raised eyebrow. If she said ‘no’ one more time he was going to burst a blood vessel and wind up being housed here along with the wounded veterans.

  “Ah… yes, I think so Sir,” the woman responded, now turning red in the face with the embarrassing fact that she had been caught yet again mesmerized by his presence. Adam could not get too upset with her. As a matter of fact, he simply refused to. He had grown up with this sort of attention. His own mother had been so mesmerized by him that she sometimes forgot what she was saying when she stared into the eyes of her son. My how she loved him so.

  And he was beautiful. Most other men got called handsome, but with his blue eyes, skin made bronze from hours in the sun on his Texas ranch, and hair as black as the darkest hour just before dawn, he was referred to as beautiful quite often. His lean body from hours of raking hay and tending horses didn’t make it any easier for him. And he was sure that if Miss Jane wasn’t already married she would have been throwing herself at his feet.

  He stood there in the crowded hallway of one of the second largest buildings on his property as orderlies and nurses scurried around trying to give patients their medication, and tend to the new wounded soldiers who had been transferred in. The smell of blood in the air was as potent as the antiseptic they used to clean the place, and just as impossible to ignore as the faint moaning and occasional screams of the injured men wounded by the war.

  “Miss Jane,” he began in an exasperated tone. “If I have to constantly tell you to do this one thing, I might have to find myself a replacement for your services.”

  That snapped the woman right of her reverie as it likely would anyone. Jobs were hard to get and no one wanted to be out of work. It was a matter of survival these days, literally, and jobs were scarce as it was.

  “No Sir, I got it,” the tiny woman with frizzy blonde hair said and excused herself to go about her duties. The source of his discontentment was the foul smell of blood that hung on the air.

  “Giving the women hell again brother,” Lenard asked from behind him and he turned with a smile to look at his brother, for whom he had almost lost to the war. The one other man on the face of the earth he loved more than he loved himself, and the man he would give an arm or a leg for without hesitation. Miss Jane stood down the aisle looking at him but quickly averted her gaze from his brother. On any normal day that aversion would have seemed like coy flirting, but that was not the case today.

  He hugged his baby brother who was just two years younger than he was and kissed his forehead. “Miss Jane is giving me hell not the other way around,” he lamented.

  Lenard laughed as they walked into the warm Texas sunlight and towards the apple tree laden with fruit that stood just outside the makeshift medical center. Around them was a vast area of nothing but green, with penned up areas where the cattle and horses grazed, a barn for food storage and his big ranch house posted on a slope with a full view of every inch of his property.

  “I am off to get your girl,” Lenard said and Adam smiled. He was so happy he had finally found a wife. She was thousands of miles away at the moment but he was happy that they would soon be formally introduced. All the Texan women he knew were too caught up with his physical attributes and he didn’t want to waste his time in courting a woman so frivolous, so he had taken almost six months getting to know his bride to be through letters, and he had fallen in love with the words she spun on paper for him.

  “Take care of her for me,” he said to his brother concerning the long journey they were about to take. It would not be an easy pass and he didn’t want any harm to come to them.

  “I will,” Lenard promised.

  He looked at the scared face of his brother. Half burned and marred for life, while the other half of his face, clean and as smooth as a baby’s bottom. He had gotten caught up in a burning barracks and there was nothing the doctors could do about it. For Lenard it was simply a battle scar, and things like this taught Adam just how superficial the local women could be when it came to calling on a prospective bachelor. Where his eyes were blue, his brother’s had been a calming hazel, where his hair was jet black, his brother’s was a warming brown. Their stature commanded the attentions of many women over the years, but when Lenard came back from the war, they began avoiding him. It was a thought that made Adam angry, but what was he to do? He could only hope his brother would find himself a wife soon.

  A large carriage made its way from the main house to the road that ran alongside the apple tree under which they stood talking. After a long pause Lenard smiled and took a few steps away before turning around to look at his brother.

  “Do you have anything else you would like me to give her when I meet her?”

  Adam suddenly remembered the necklace her had bought. “Yes, this necklace.” He pulled it from his pocket and he knew he didn’t need to tell Lenard what it was for. He bid his brother farewell and watched him go. It would take him three weeks to get to Fort Worth and another three weeks back with the woman who was to be the Lady of the Ranch. He wished them God’s speed and said a prayer as his brother pulled away. In the back of the carriage was one of his maids, Emily. Sent to keep the woman who was to be her mistress some company. Three weeks on the road was not an easy thing and he wanted his wife to be to be ve
ry comfortable on her way here to her new home.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 2

  * * *

  Jenny had just endured the bumpiest coach ride she had ever had in the history of all coach rides. She was all but sure she would have bumps and bruises in places no womanly woman would care to explain, but the man who manned her coach was such a gentleman that she didn’t want to worry him with her own personal problems.

  “All the best Miss Jenny,” he said to her, his skin as pasty as if he had not showered in ages, and his broken and rotten teeth she swore must be giving him grief. Yet he was the most pleasant man she had met in quite some time. Many people in the town turned their noses up at him, and she was beginning to think maybe it wasn’t so much his appearance, but the fact that he needed a long shower, something she was inclined to tell him.

  “Thank you Bob,” she said to him. Another one of those she would miss while she sojourned through foreign lands.

  She sat with her ankles crossed like the aristocratic woman she had been raised to be, and took a book from her satchel and delved into it to stop her mind from wandering all over the place. She couldn’t help thinking about what life was going to be like and she was about to drive herself crazy thinking about it, so she read. She read about the romance of women less fortunate than her who had found love. She read about a woman named Caitlin and her far away lover who had gone into battle and had thankfully come back to her. She read the book about the life she wanted and prayed that her own kind of happiness would reveal itself to her on the other end of her trip. When her thoughts could still no longer, she took her small bible from her suitcase and read a few passages from the book of Psalms.

  It was nearly two hours later, while silently praying, that she heard a deep and soothing voice calling to her.

  “Miss Martin?” the southern drawl was unmistakable even in the enunciation of her name and she was immediately taken by it. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, knowing that the moment she did that her new life would start.

  “Yes, that is me,” she responded as she gazed up at the tall, lean man who stood looking down at her with a smile. Her breathing stopped for a moment.