The Agent's Mail-Order Bride Read online

  The Agent's Mail-Order Bride

  Heidi Vanlandingham

  HL Vanlandingham Books

  Copyright © 2018 by Heidi Vanlandingham

  Cover Art © 2018 by EDH Graphics

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Book Description

  Reader List Signup

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Newsletter

  Next Book in New Series

  Also by Heidi Vanlandingham

  About the Author

  He has a crime to solve. She needs a new groom. Can she convince him he’s the right man for the job?

  * * *

  Reformed outlaw turned Pinkerton Agent, Matthew Tate is tasked to bring to justice the one man controlling a small Utah mining town. But when the female agent posing as his wife doesn’t arrive, he must scramble to find a woman to take her place while keeping his own life, both past and present, a secret.

  * * *

  Having lost everything after the War Between the States, Catriona Stewart travels west as a mail-order bride only to discover her groom has been murdered. She agrees to pose as a stranger’s bride but, when they end up legally married, she vows to discover who her new husband really is.

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  * * *

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  Prologue

  Wyoming Territory, Fall 1865

  Tate glanced over at his men, watching as Roberts and Dillon continued to chip away at the thick block barrier between the restaurant and the bank. With only a few more inches until they breached the wall and broke into the bank’s vault, his nerves tightened. He trusted his men to complete the job, but something seemed off, and he couldn’t put his finger on whatever it was. That bothered him. Being hanged wasn’t on his list of things to do any time soon.

  “Thad, you checked the bank. Everyone went home for the day, right?”

  His best friend chuckled beside him. The small lantern only illuminated the area around the two men chipping away at the wall, leaving Thad Carlile’s face in the shadows, but he didn’t have to. The amused sneer curling one side of the man’s mouth was as permanent as the hat on his friend’s head. Tate couldn’t remember if he had ever seen him without either.

  “Have I ever failed you, mi amigo?” The quick scrape and flare of a match sounded as Thad lit a pre-rolled cigarette. The orange-red tip glowed then faded a few times as he drew long puffs. “Yes, I checked. The place was empty. I can’t vouch for the hotel on the other side of the bank though. That was Welder’s job.”

  “Shut the hell up, Carlile,” Welder grumbled from where he crouched between Thad and the men. “I know how—”

  A loud grunt sounded as the pickaxe broke through the cement vault. Everyone waited with baited breath as the thick blocks crumbled and the hole widened. One final swing of the axe and a large chunk of the wall fell, almost crushing Dillon, who, at the last moment, managed to scramble out of the way.

  Skirting around the concrete boulder, Roberts, followed by Dillon, crawled into the vault, the small space no bigger than a deep closet. Shelves lined the back, each holding many different-sized boxes. One by one, Roberts broke open each box and dumped the contents into bags. As the bags filled, Dillon handed them to Welder, who dropped them on the wood-plank floor of the restaurant’s supply room.

  “Hurry up, boys,” Tate hissed.

  He stood by the plate-glass window at the front of the eatery, constantly moving his gaze up and down the street, but it was the sheriff’s office across from where they were that kept drawing his eye. Right on schedule, the sheriff went inside, closing the heavy wooden door behind him. A minute later, he lit a lantern and now the faint yellow glow seeped through the slatted walls and small front window. There had been no movement in the two-cell jail since.

  Loud cheers filled the night and several guns went off, telling Tate one of the girls had begun to dance. It would also be the only alarm they would get.

  “Less than five minutes, boys, and we’re out of here.”

  “Almost finished, boss. Workin’ on the last one now.” Roberts said in a harsh whisper and handed the bag to Dillon, who expertly tied the rope around the top, then crawled back through the hole and picked up two more bags, leaving the last for Roberts who would take Tate’s place as watch until the horses were loaded up.

  “Sheriff hasn’t moved.” Tate hesitated, adjusting the heavy bags in his arms. “The first dancer should be finishing her routine any time. Halfway through the second girl’s dance, the sheriff will do his first turn around the town. Be out back before then, you hear?”

  “Don’ worry, boss man.” Roberts grinned, his chewed-on cigar moved from one side of his mouth to the other. “I know the drill. Haven’t let you down yet, now, have I?”

  “There’s always a first time.”

  Tate met the young man’s shining gaze and gave him a quick nod and hurried around the side of the building to where they’d tied the horses. He laid his two bags behind the cantle of his saddle and tied them down. Welder rode out first, followed by Dillon then Thad. Just as Tate mounted his horse, he heard a muffled curse from inside the bank.

  Jumping back down, he took off and rounded the building’s corner. The sight of Roberts’ crumpled body in the doorway stopped him cold. A dark shadow loomed from inside and before he could move, rammed into him, almost knocking him to the ground as the shadowy figure of a man holding the last bag of stolen money scurried up the sidewalk and disappeared between the bank and the saloon.

  Tate crawled forward and checked Roberts, but from the bloody knife wound across his neck, his friend was dead. He closed his eyes for a second and let the anger pour through him. Jerking to a stand, he took a step to go after the unknown man when a hand wrapped around his arm and pulled him to a stop.

  “Not worth it,” Welder said beside him.

  Tate tried to jerk away from the man’s surprisingly tight grip but couldn’t. He let out a frustrated breath, his gaze automatically moving to Roberts’ still form.

  “He’ll pay for killing Roberts, Welder. Whoever that man was, he’ll pay.”

  Chapter 1

  Fall 1872

  Catriona Stewart perched on the simple wooden bench in the third-class train car and wished for the hundredth time for a cushion. She’d been sitting so long, she could no longer feel her rear end. It was preferable, however, to the painful tingles plaguing her earlier. She couldn’t wait for this journey to end. What started so hopeful for her and her father now seemed to be ending in despair.

  An older gentleman sitting at the other end of the train car caught her eye as he read to a young child, perhaps his grandson. The child, like the older man, wore brown woolen pants and a worn gray jacket. They each sported dark flat caps on their heads, reminding her of her own grandfather. The elderly man turned the page of the book and made a funny face. The little boy, four or five from the looks
of him, giggled and squirmed in his grandfather’s lap.

  Cat continued to stare but no longer watched a little boy. Instead, she saw herself about the same age, sitting in her own father’s lap as he read to her. Her eyes filled with tears, but she refused to let them fall. Making her way across the country, mourning his death had been brief. The last thing she needed right now was to go all weak and simpery.

  It was hard to believe only one month ago, she and her father set out from Virginia. The war hadn’t been kind to her family. Located in a strategic location, their two-story Georgian home had been sought after by both the Union and the Confederate armies. No sooner had the Northern army retreated than the Southern troops showed up and took over their yard and home. To keep the farm from being taken over again by a Union regiment, the Reb captain decided to torch it. Her family lost everything that day, including her mother.

  Her father, of course, never recovered. Even after seven years. Her fingernails flicked over the edges of the envelope, the paper so worn in places, she was surprised it hadn’t fallen apart. “Hope,” her father said every time he read the letter, his aged fingers carefully folding the fragile paper and sliding it back inside the tattered envelope. “We have hope.”

  She never told him her true feelings. She didn’t want to get married to a stranger. She wanted to meet a handsome man, upstanding in the community, and fall in love. She wanted to have babies and live happily ever after. She wanted to grow old and rock side by side on the front porch, holding hands and watching the sun drop to the horizon. The night her home burned and her mother died, Cat’s dreams died too.

  A soft sigh slipped through her chapped lips, and her gaze returned to the small boy, now curled in his grandfather’s arms. With his eyes closed, the hint of a smile on his lips and his cheeks rosy, the child looked like a cherub. At least someone was happy on this train.

  Her gaze moved around the train car, touching on the other passengers. Most were dressed in worn clothing and a few of the ladies held baskets close to their bodies. Two well-dressed women sat together across from her. She couldn’t help but notice the fine lace trim and rich material and compare her own dated outfit to theirs. Cat’s morning dress was made of a sturdy cotton that had turned a faded blue. Once upon a time, it matched her eyes.

  The women’s dresses were bright colors of pink and yellow silk taffeta with just the appropriate amount of lace and ruffles adorning them. They each wore matching straw hats adorned with tall ostrich feathers and wrapped in pretty matching ribbons. Simple.

  She refused, however, to be embarrassed about not wearing the latest fashion. Before leaving Virginia, her father pleaded with her to use the last of their money to purchase a new gown. He wanted her to arrive in her new home for her new husband looking like the lady she was. A tiny smile twitched across her lips as she stared down at her dirty hem. Had been, she amended. But no longer.

  Her gaze lifted to the window where she caught her reflection as the mountains passed by in a blur. Her green eyes stood out larger than normal. The light sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks stood out worse than usual on her pale face. She raised a hand and pinched her cheeks to give them a bit of color, noticing for the first time how thin and wan her face was. The long journey from Virginia had taken its toll, and she’d lost weight. She tried to tuck a stray strand of red-gold hair back up inside her hat but gave up as it slid out again.

  The train slowed, and she could now make out the individual trees instead of a sea of dark green. Another couple of minutes went by, and the mountain peaks came into focus as the train slowed even more then jerked several times until it glided to a stop. If she hadn’t already been holding the edge of her bench, she would have been thrown forward onto the elderly woman in front of her. Not that it would have done much harm—the woman’s size was impressive and would have stopped her well enough without much harm to either one of them. Unless, of course, the woman fell on her. Then, Cat wouldn’t have faired too well at all.

  Smoothing her rumpled skirt, she waited as everyone left the car. When she was the last person, she let out a loud sigh, the forced air doing nothing more than emptying her lungs. For some reason, she didn’t want to leave the train. She forced her feet forward and stepped down onto the second metal stair. She stood on the bottom tread and stared across the busy platform.

  Men, women, and children bustled along the wide, wooden sidewalk between the train and the two-story, vertical clapboard building that was the Sandy Depot. Painted a deep red, the upper story supported five small windows. There were four larger windows on the ground level, their wood frames painted a pretty green. On either end of the building were two green doors leading inside the station.

  She stepped onto the wooden platform and followed a large number of people inside the depot. The nice ticket agent back in Salt Lake City told her to ask his counterpart here about finding passage to Alta. Luckily, she learned there was a small wagon leaving within the hour, but due to the mountainous trip, they wouldn’t arrive until after nightfall.

  The agent assured everyone the trip would be uneventful and that she and the others were traveling at the best time of the year. He called them ‘lucky’, telling them the road would be nice and hard because of the warm fall weather and lack of rain in more than a month. For some reason, Cat didn’t feel lucky at all.

  Everything the agent told her proved true, and the trek through the mountains, other than a couple of grumpy children and their chatty mothers, was definitely long but bearable. At least that’s what she thought until she climbed down from the wagon and tried to stretch out the kinks in her back and legs. Painful tingles swamped her lower body. Her feet, which had gone numb hours ago, hurt the worst. The stiffness in her back moved up into her neck and a sharp pain made her flinch.

  She glanced around the small town. On the trip, one of the passengers told her the prospectors at the nearby Emma Mine struck a rich load of silver and the tiny mining community had grown into a fair city over the last year and a half. Hundreds of mines now littered the surrounding mountains as more and more people arrived each day to test their own luck. Her gaze narrowed as she studied the few buildings lining the main street, uncertain if she would label them a city.

  So this was a mining town... She would never understand why grown men would want to tunnel under the earth like rodents instead of working a normal job and earning an honest living. That very topic had been a lively discussion between her and her father before his death a few weeks before. After writing the letter to the mine owner to accept his offer of marriage, her father had been delighted, saying it was the very thing he’d prayed for.

  The War Between the States had not been kind, leaving most people virtually penniless and homeless. The retreating Confederate army wanted to keep the Union from getting its hands on Southern lands, supplies, and even houses, so they torched everything in their path, turning their good-sized farm into nothing more than a smoldering black spot next to the Rappahannock River.

  She fingered the fringed shawl tightly wrapped around her shoulders in the chilly night air. Other than a jeweled hair comb, the shawl had been the only thing of her mother’s she’d salvaged, along with a single trunk of family heirlooms her father found stored in the stables, which the fire, thankfully, never reached. During the years since, they’d sold the items one by one to buy food and shelter while her father worked odd jobs around town. Anti-Union resentment remained alive and well. With the North passing laws for reconstructing the South, and the South refusing to obey them, everyday life was almost as difficult as it had been while the war raged around them.

  The promise she made to her father as he lay dying in her arms came back to her, and she straightened her shoulders. She vowed to continue the journey and marry Mr. Monty Adams—a promise she aimed to keep even if it killed her. Her focus had never been on living in a large house or wearing fancy silk dresses. All she ever dreamed of was having a marriage like her parent’s.
Strong and loving. Losing her mother and watching her father die a little more every day without her had been heartbreaking.

  She stood out in the cold night air waiting for her bridegroom for as long as she could stand it. Giving up, she forced her feet to move toward the hotel. Bright, cheerful yellow light poured through the large window. She opened the front door and walked inside. To her immediate left was the check-in counter, a thick book with lined, cream-colored pages lay open on top of the shiny wooden countertop.

  The rest of the room was cheerful and clean. Across the room, a fire crackled and popped in the stone fireplace, and several empty padded chairs placed in front of it beckoned to her tired body. A worn, red-patterned rug covered a large portion of the wood-planked floor. The room held an expectant air, as if waiting for people to fill it with conversation and laughter.

  Cat walked up to the counter and quietly waited for someone to show up. After several minutes, she was just about ready to go look for someone who could help her when a thin, mousy-looking man stepped through a door at the far end of the hall.

  “May I help you, Miss...?”

  His dark brown eyes looked her over, moving from her dirty hem to her now-warm face.

  “I find that I’m in need of a room for the night.” She ignored the man’s terrible manners and forced her lips into a smile.