Montana Mail Order Bride: Montana Mail Order Brides, #6

By Lily Wilspur

Lucy Palmer doesn’t like Montana, and Montana doesn’t like Lucy Palmer. The mountains outside her train car window seem to have a mind of their own, and they seem to watch her and read her innermost thoughts. They seem to understand that she doesn’t really fit in here, that she belongs in the sheltered society of Muncie, Indiana. Somewhere out there, her groom waits to take her to her new home in those inscrutable mountains. But when she meets Adam Foley, a young cowboy turned businessman, on the train in Billings, her world flies into a tailspin. She never realized that someone could buck the stolid, heavy life of Frontier Montana to travel the world and seize his destiny for himself.
But Adam gets off the train in Great Falls, leaving Lucy to travel the rest of the way to Kalispell alone. When she arrives and meets her groom, Lucy finds herself confronting a future for which she never prepared herself. She must adapt in the face of overwhelming obstacles, and overcome the devastation of betrayal to free herself from the confines of her past. In her final revelation, she discards the shackles of her preconceptions and spreads her wings to soar to the skies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilspur Publishing
• Release date: Nov 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386588856

Book preview

LILY WILSPUR

Montana Mail Order Bride

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Copyright

Chapter 1

Lucy Palmer stepped off the train and tossed her long red hair behind her. She sniffed the hard clear air and grimaced. Excuse me, she said to a gentleman next to her. Could you tell me if this is Great Falls?

This? The man smiled under his waxed moustache. This is Billings. You still have a long way to go before you reach Great Falls. He cocked his head and examined Lucy. The conductor should have announced which station you were coming to.

Lucy tossed her head again. She’s acquired the habit from her friend, Priscilla, back home in Muncie. She used it to express her annoyance when circumstances made any other expression of it socially unadvisable.

Oh, I’m sure he announced it, she shot back. But I didn’t hear him. I was asleep. I didn’t know we were coming into a station until people started getting out of their seats and slamming their luggage around. That’s what woke me up.

Lucy shot the man a glance, just long enough to see him watching and listening to her. He looked too young to be wearing a suit like that, with the waist coat buttoned up underneath the jacket. His hat looked like something he’d stolen from his father’s closet. He kept shifting his arms inside the suit as though he wasn’t used to wearing fine clothes.

She smoothed down her dress and wrinkled her nose at the surrounding train station. And these stations all look the same to me, she continued. They all have the same dirty, lifeless appearance, the same layer of dust covering everything.

She didn’t see the man’s lips twitching with a secret smile under his moustache. Are you heading to Great Falls?

No, she replied. I’m going on to Kalispell.

The man’s eyes flew open. "Well, then, you have a very long way to go, haven’t you?"

I’m sure I don’t know, Lucy muttered.

We’re a couple hundred miles from Great Falls now, the man told her. Beyond that, Kalispell is another—-oh, I don’t know. Three or four hundred more miles, I’d say.

What? Lucy gasped.

And the trip from Great Falls to Kalispell is getting up into the mountains, so it takes much longer. The man nodded toward the mountains rising dark and distant to the West. I guess you came up from Denver. Did you?

Of course, Lucy replied.

Well, the man continued. That trip is pretty flat, all in all. Great Falls to Kalispell is steep and curvy. The train goes much slower.

Lucy groaned. And Kalispell isn’t even the end of my journey! I have to travel by coach to my final destination from there.

Really? the man asked. And where is your final destination?

Lucy waved her hand toward the same mountains. I don’t really know. I only know I’m getting off the train in Kalispell. Then I’m going by coach from there. The arrangements are all made.

The man narrowed his eyes. I don’t understand you, Miss.

Lucy didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. She didn’t like telling strangers her circumstances. But the tedious train journey left her starved for someone to talk to. She would never see this man again. She might as well talk to him. He could take her secret with him when he got off the train.

I’m a mail-order bride, she told him. I’m meeting my groom in Kalispell, and he’s taking me the rest of the way to his home up in the mountains.

Oh, I’ve heard of that. The man tipped his hat. Well, you’re the first mail-order bride I’ve met. Congratulations—or, pleased to meet you—or whatever a person is supposed to say to someone like you.

Lucy stiffened. Someone like me?

A mail-order bride, the man explained.

His manner irritated her. She turned away. Well, thank you anyway. The blood rushed to her cheeks. She wasn’t ending this impromptu interview very gracefully, but she had to get out of it.

Luckily, the train whistle sounded at that moment, and she strode back over to the car. She stepped across the threshold of the door into the car. Someone stepped into the car behind her. She glanced back and saw the same man following her.

He smirked at her and tipped his hat. Howdy, Miss.

Lucy scowled at him. What are you doing here?

"I’m getting on the