Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1)

By Kate Whitsby

A historical western cowboy romance story about a mail order husband.
Book 1 of The Texas Brides Series unravels the mystery of Jude McCann. Jude travels to the desolate desert flats along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, to marry Alma Goodkind. The Goodkind Ranch runs just fine since Clarence Goodkind broke his back falling off his horse. His three daughters, Alma, Amelia, and Allegra, manage the herds, guard them in their pastures, brand the young calves, and drive the cattle to the sale yards. They do all the jobs of cattle punching on the ranch without any help from anyone. All of that changes when eldest sister, Alma, decides she wants to get married and orders herself a mail-order husband.
Alma and Jude McCann get married in the little adobe church in Eagle Pass. But the minute they come home to the ranch, their plans for happily ever after run off the rails. Jude joins the sisters on the range, and conflicts develop in their approaches to managing the ranch. Alma’s new marriage puts her loyalty to her sisters to the test. At the same time, her bond with her sisters strains her budding romance with Jude. Can their marriage survive, and can the ranch survive so many competing interests and personalities? Worst of all, the sisters’ father, Clarence, instantly detects that Jude is hiding something, a secret that threatens to push this family to its limits and shatter the peace they’ve worked so hard to build.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gold Crown
• Release date: Jul 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310827266

Kate Whitsby

Kate Whitsby is a historical romance author who has found a love for writing western mail order bride romance. Kate writes from her home in Virginia and loves spending time with her two children when she's not busy writing.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I’ve gotta tell you something.

Alma Goodkind poked the fire with a stick. Her sister, Amelia, leaned against the mesquite tree shading them from the ferocious Texas sun. Amelia gazed toward the south Texas horizon, where dust devils spun over the hard-baked earth and occasionally whizzed up into the sky.

Her sister, Allegra, squatted on the other side of the fire. What is it?

Alma took a deep breath. I’ve made a decision. I’m getting married.

Amelia’s head jerked around and her eyebrows flew up, but she fell back into her remote brooding and stared off into the distance again.

Allegra, on the other hand, laughed in Alma’s face. How do you plan to do that? She pretended to look around her. Where are you going to get the man from, I’d like to know. You don’t have one hiding under your bed, do you? She laughed again.

Alma waited until she stopped laughing. No, I don’t have one hiding, and I don’t even have one around here. But I’m getting one. I’m getting a mail-order husband.

That really brought Amelia’s head around fast. She actually gasped in shock. What? What on earth possessed you to do a thing like that?

I told you, Alma replied. I’ve decided to get married. I had to get a man from somewhere, and they have this mail-order matrimony service going on, matching people up all over the country. So I wrote in, and I’m having a husband sent out.

Allegra laughed again. You’re having a husband sent out? You make it sound like you ordered a hot water bottle out of a catalog. You sound like you’re getting in a new breeding mare or something.

Alma smiled. It’s something like that.

Allegra couldn’t stop laughing at the idea. Amelia took her eyes and her mind back off to the far distant reaches of the desert. Her eyes roamed the shimmering mirages where the red desert soil met the sky.

Allegra chuckled. So when are you getting in your new hot water bottle?

We’ve agreed to meet at the church in Eagle Pass at the end of the month, Alma told her. He’s going to make his own way down, and we’ll meet there on the thirtieth of July and get married. Then we’ll come back home as man and wife.

Just like that, huh? Allegra asked. And how have you managed to arrange all this, right under our noses?

I told you, Alma repeated. It’s all done by mail. Haven’t you noticed that I’ve been receiving letters from him recently? We’ve arranged everything in our letters back and forth. It’s all set up, and we agree on how we’re going to do everything.

You mean, Allegra asked. You agree on how you’re going to run the ranch and where you’re going to sleep? Don’t you think some of that concerns us?

I know what you’re thinking, Alma returned. You’re thinking that, because the three of us have run the ranch by ourselves for the last five years, how is it going to work with a man around who will want to have a say in it, too. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?

You’re right, Allegra admitted. He’s a man. He’ll want to be involved in running the ranch. He might even want to take over from a bunch of women. I’ll tell you right now, I don’t plan to give up without a peep. As long as I’m here, I’m going to work the ranch and I’m going to have a say about how it runs. As long as you and your man understand that, I don’t mind.

No one’s asking you to give up without a peep, Allegra, Alma murmured. No one could expect you to do that.

Allegra smiled. And how is it going to work with you sleeping with a man in a one-room shack in the middle of nowhere with your sisters and your father in the beds just next to yours? Did you think of that?

I thought of it, Alma told her. But I think we can work all that out without too much trouble. After all, we aren’t going to be raising the rafters with you and Amelia and Papa watching. We’ll keep all that private, of course.

And does this mystery man have a name? Allegra asked.

Of course he does, Alma replied. His name is Jude McCann, and he’s a cowboy from Amarillo. His parents still live up there. He has a brother in the rodeo circuit and a married sister in Silver City. Does that satisfy you?

Before Allegra could answer, Amelia turned her penetrating eyes around. Both Alma and Allegra fell silent when she spoke. And have you talked to Papa about this? What does he think of your plans?

Alma blushed. I haven’t told him yet. I wanted to tell you two first.

Amelia shook her head. You should have told him first. Better yet, you should have asked his permission before you went ahead and made your plans. That wasn’t right of you.

Alma waved her objections away. That’s exactly why I didn’t tell him, because I didn’t want to ask his permission. That might be the traditional Mexican way of doing things, but none of us is our dead mother. None of us is the dutiful Mexican housewife who bows to the wishes of her husband and her father. We’ve been running this ranch on our own ever since Papa broke his back falling off that horse. He can hardly walk anymore. We make our own decisions, and this is no different.

We might not be Mama, Amelia agreed, but Papa is used to a certain kind of behavior from women. You know how he is. He doesn’t even like us wearing pants to ride horses. The only reason he puts up with it is because he has no choice. He has to let us do things our way or the ranch would fail.

And this is no different, Alma shot back. He married Mama because he knew a part Mexican, part Apache woman would never stand up to him or raise her voice to him. He wanted a woman he could order around, and that’s what he got. But none of us signed up for that. He knows he has a different kind of woman to deal with in the three of us, and he accepts that.

You should have taken his feelings into account, Amelia insisted. You’re gonna break his heart when he finds out.

I don’t think so, Amelia maintained. I think he’ll accept it, just like he had to accept everything else we’ve done. He knows better than to fight us anymore. He knows we’re going to do whatever we want, no matter what he does. It’s better that way.

Chapter 2

The three sisters finished their midday meal and Allegra kicked the embers of the fire apart and used the edge of her boot to scrape dirt over them. Then they untied their horses from the bushes and swung up into their saddles.

All three sisters wore the same dusty outfit of canvas pants, rawhide chaps, long sleeved cotton shirts buttoned up the front, Stetson hats, and riding boots. They all wore gun belts around their hips with rows of bullets lined up between their holsters. Alma and Amelia wore leather gloves. Allegra didn’t bother to protect her hands from the wear of her work.

Many people thought the Goodkind sisters were triplets. They all carried the same curious combination of features from their Irish father and their Apache-Mexican mother. Their black hair shone in the sun, and their sharp, fierce eyes burned in their faces. Their skin stayed clear and white, no matter how much time they spent out in the sun, but their chiseled cheekbones and strong jaw lines reflected their mother’s Native heritage.

Alma wore her hair in a single long whip of a braid hanging down her back. It hung down so long, she sometimes tucked the end of it into her belt to stop it swinging. Amelia kept her hair tied in several braids looped up around the back of her neck in the style of the local Mexican women. Allegra kept her hair cropped short, up off her shoulders, like a boy. When scolded about her appearance, she claimed she didn’t care what she looked like and this was the easiest way for her to manage. No one, she reminded everyone, would see her on the range anyway, so what difference did it make?

The sisters followed their normal daily routine and filed, in descending order of age, onto the trail to their grazing cattle herd. Alma couldn’t see her sisters’ faces behind her, but she envisioned them in her mind’s eye. She knew well enough what they looked like when they received important news.

Amelia would cover up her uncertainty with quiet contemplation, but she couldn’t hide the concern in her eyes or the repeated pressing together of her lips. Allegra didn’t have to pretend to be totally disinterested because she was. If anything, the coming of a new person into their isolated lives represented an interesting change for her.

They didn’t speak about Alma’s decision again that day. In fact, they hardly spoke at all out on the range. They went through their daily routine with an unspoken understanding of their shared goals and responsibilities.

Only after they got back to their house of adobe brick did they speak again. Tucked into a cluster of thorn trees near a spring on the upper flats of the river, the tiny house offered a welcome relief from the aggressive sun. The sisters didn’t return until dusk and the air began to cool, so the house also provided shelter from the cold of the desert night.

Alma sighed as she dropped down from her saddle. Her boots made two craters in the dust at her feet. Home, at last. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

Allegra swung one leg up over her saddle horn in front of her before hopping down. She laughed at Alma. What do you mean, there’s no place like it? There’s only about a million mud huts across the frontier exactly like it. It’s a dump.

Clarence Goodkind stooped under the lintel of the door and leaned against the door post. I built this house with my own two hands, young lady. You’d do well to remember that.

So you’ve told me every day of my life, Allegra shot back. How could I forget? And if I ever was inclined to forget it, all I have to do is look at it to remember. It has ‘hand made’ written all over it.

That house has kept the sun and rain and wind off of your ungrateful head since the day you were born, Amelia put in. It’s done the job of providing us with a house all these years, and it will continue to provide us with a home for many years to come. So you should keep your remarks to yourself.

I never said it wasn’t a perfectly functional house, Allegra maintained. I just said there were a million others just like it, and it’s a dump. I challenge even one of you to disprove what I just said.

No one took up her challenge.

Allegra squared her shoulders and led her horse off to the barn, which was another slouching lump of adobe next