Mail Order Bride: Winter Brides: A Pair Of Historical Romances: Redeemed Mail Order Brides Western Victorian Romance Pair, #10

By Kenneth Markson

**A Pair Of Clean Historical Mail Order Bride Western Victorian Romances (Redeemed Mail Order Brides Western Victorian Romance Pair)**

Mail Order Bride: Saving The Abandoned Bride

Forced to leave Chicago due to a horrendous calamity, feisty Megan heads to Abilene, Kansas as a mail order bride. She looks forward to a new life, but all is not what it seems. How will Megan be saved from a terrible predicament, and will she find the love that she searches for?

Mail Order Bride: Redeemed By Hope

When a terrifying natural disaster wreaks destruction upon rural Snyder, Oklahoma, a mournful Pam leaves her home and heads to San Francisco as a mail order bride. Hope for a new life is suddenly disrupted by an unexpected turn. Can Pam escape the evil which holds her in its clutches? Will she find the love that she deserves?

If you enjoyed these stories, you may also enjoy the other books in Kenneth's mail order brides Redeemed series, or Kenneth's mail order brides Rescued series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth Markson
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386340621

Kenneth Markson

While an English major at college, I wrote a column which was published weekly. I have been writing ever since. The old West and Los Angeles in the forties are eras which lend themselves to tales of romance, courage, and fast paced adventure. I particularly enjoy writing stories about the mail order brides who fearlessly took a chance and traveled West, hoping to find love and a better future. Many of the locales that I write about are places that I have either traveled through or actually lived in. I try to make my works richly accurate. My desire is to provide you with an entertaining and fun read. When I'm not writing, I enjoy spending time with my wife and two children.

Book preview

MAIL ORDER BRIDE:

SAVING THE ABANDONED BRIDE

BY

KENNETH MARKSON

Chapter 1

O ut of my way! Megan Doran snapped, as she shoved aside a ruffian who tried to block her path.  The ruffian muttered a vile curse, and then slunk back into the dark alleyway.  He wisely chose to wait for an easier prey.

Megan had learned to survive in a rough Chicago orphanage.  For the past year, she had been a resident of Conley's Patch, one of Chicago's many impoverished immigrant neighborhoods.  Like most of the city's poorer sections, the Patch consisted entirely of hastily thrown up wooden shanties.

In fact, lumber was the commodity which had been most frequently used to build the city of Chicago.  Little thought had been given to fire codes, while seeking to accommodate the rapidly growing population.  From the buildings in the numerous shanty towns to the businesses in the commercial centers, most of the city's structures were largely made of wood.  This was even true for the streets and sidewalks, and the mansions of Chicago's most prosperous citizens.

Megan was returning from one of those mansions, where she was employed as a maid for a wealthy family.  This was her night off, and she was scurrying through the poorly lit, narrow streets of the Patch, to get back to the wooden shanty where she lived.  Megan breathed heavily and coughed, as she headed home.

The air is foul and smoky, she thought to herself.  Just that day, the city had averted a major disaster.  Fire companies from all sections of Chicago, had converged to battle and ultimately put out a large blaze.  Their success left the firefighters completely exhausted, and the city's water supply dangerously depleted.  Megan could still smell the acrid after effects of the fire's flames in the air. 

The summer of 1871 had been brutally hot, and the severe drought had continued through the fall.  The city was a massive tinderbox made of wood, growing drier by the day.  A spark combined with the right set of circumstances was all that was required to set things off.

Megan had a sense of foreboding that Saturday, as she reached the narrow steps leading to her cramped abode.  She noticed the pair of idle looking men who were hanging about across the street.  Newly arriving immigrants were continually arriving in the neighborhood, and she didn't care for that pair's looks. 

Conley's Patch is a world away from the place where I work most of the week, Megan reflected.  She quickly unlocked the door, and closed it behind her. 

Chapter 2

Megan did not know at the time how fortunate she was to have been working at her employer's fashionable Michigan Avenue mansion the next day.  She was performing her customary cleaning in the front dining room, when shouting was heard from the street.  The head housekeeper, a stern, middle-aged woman, pointed towards Megan.

Go outside, she ordered, and see what is the cause of all the commotion.

Megan did as she was told, and was surprised to find a crowd of people milling about in the avenue. 

What is happening? Megan asked repeatedly.

Several men and women raced past her without responding.  Their faces held the look of abject terror.  It was as if they were trying to outrun something terrifying, and knew that there was little time left.

The city is on fire! a horrified man panted, and the flames are heading this way!

Megan could see them now in the distance, lighting up the darkness of that Sunday night. 

The rapidly moving fire had started in a barn behind the home of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary on De Koven Street.  Unfortunately, a fire watchman at the Courthouse tower who spotted the growing blaze, reported the fire to the fire department, but gave them the wrong location.  This caused a forty-five minute delay before the first fire company arrived at the original scene. 

That mistake proved to be fatal.  By the time the first help arrived, the growing fire had spread far beyond the O'Leary barn to many other wooden structures in the neighborhood.  Gusts of twenty-five mile per hour winds whipped the fast moving flames into a hellish fury.

A massive wall of fire, one hundred feet in height, advanced through the city blocks.  It soon became apparent to the exhausted firemen that nothing could be done to stop the raging inferno.  There was no shortage of fuel for the terrible fire