Read Mail Order Bride Leah: A Sweet Western Historical Romance (Montana Mail Order Brides Series Book 1) for Free Online Page B

wilds of Montana Territory.
    He smelled lightly of bay rum from shaving and she blushed to think of it…it was a pleasant smell, clean and spicy, but she had imagined him at a washstand, shirt undone, shaving in the early light of morning, and was nearly overcome by thinking such an immodest thing. It flustered her and she had no notion of how to speak afterward.
    “Mrs. Hostleman making you feel at home?” he inquired.
    “Yes, thank you. She’s very kind.”
    “Food still greasy there?” he asked. “I stayed there a few weeks till my inn was built. Never had such a case of dyspepsia before or since.”
    She knew he was trying to be friendly but—stomach problems? That was about as romantic as the man whose ad boasted that he owned trees, perhaps even less so! Leah decided that he was probably just bashful and unsure what to say, so she tried to help him out.
    “The fare is not what I’m used to, to be sure, but her boarders seem happy enough with it and I never learnt to cook well myself. My mother liked to teach me pretty things—embroidery and piecrust and the piano. She always thought there would be time for practicality later and then—there wasn’t any ‘later’ for her,” Leah admitted, unable to keep the sadness from her voice. He looked down at her fingers on his sleeve and covered them with his own, pressing her hand comfortingly.
    “I’m sorry for your loss. I am, however, happy that you’ve come here,” he managed.
    “Are you really?” she asked. “I thought perhaps, after I saw you last night, that you might be disappointed in me.”
    “Disappointed? Certainly not. Why would you think that?”
    “Well, you’re so beautiful—“ She blurted out, blushing and breaking off. “So handsome, I mean. And I’m, well, plain .” Her voice dropped to a miserable whisper.
    “Miss Weaver, do you think I placed an advertisement because I was looking for a pretty face to make my bride?”
    Astonished, she gaped up at him, forgetting to blush in shock. The gentlemanly thing would have been to assure her (falsely, of course) that she was quite beautiful. He had just admitted that she was plain and that—that he didn’t even care!
    “If I wanted ringlets and a cupid’s-bow mouth, I could have my pick of saloon girls any day. That isn’t what interests me. I was looking for a woman with finer tastes, an interest in literature, a fine mind—someone who could understand me and talk with me. Now, I don’t find you plain at all. But if I did, if I thought you homely as my Aunt Mildred—who had a face like President Garfield’s, whiskers and all—there is more to you than your looks anyhow.”
    “So you don’t mind?”
    “Mind? I had just about given up hope. I had forty letters before you wrote to me. Forty letters I replied to with a polite rejection because no one sparked the slightest interest. They wrote about their curls or their skill at arranging flowers or how they’d been jilted by some faithless sailor.
    You were the only one who asked about me, wondered who I was at all. You offered to pray for me, that I would find a wife, so selflessly, with such generosity. I could not write to you fast enough—I broke the nib on my pen and had to get another because I pressed to hard in my haste. Leah—if I may call you that—I never considered anyone else.”
    “I thought you might not like me, Henry. I was so frightened,” she confessed.
    “Not like you?”
    He shook his head, his face breaking into a smile that showed two dimples and was like a flash of sunshine on the cloudy day. Her heart thrilled to see his smile and know it was for her. Henry took her hand and kissed it. Her eyes grew round with disbelief. That was the sort of thing knights did in poems, or courtly gentlemen in novels. Never had she expected a man to kiss her hand. It gave her the shivers and she wished—feeling her face flush at the thought—that he would kiss her mouth, right there in the middle of town. Her