An Angel in the Mail Read Free Page B

she do if one of Mr. Hale’s children behaved that way? Her first instinct would be to hang the child out the window, but it didn’t seem likely Mr. Hale would approve.
    She sighed and looked out the hazy window as the train jerked in its attempt to gain momentum. After several miles of smooth riding, Angel opened her reticule and withdrew the packet of letters from Mr. Hale to Sylvia. She untied the pink ribbon, and began reading.
    Appalled at the lies her stepmother had told, she had a hard time fighting down panic as she read how Mr. Hale wanted a wife who knew her way around the kitchen, could take care of the garden, and put up the produce for the winter. Put it up? Where?
    He was happy to know she adored children, and could help the little ones with homework. The last statement was the only truth in the entire exchange. She’d excelled in school.
    How Sylvia could deceive this man was indefensible. Mr. Hale would get a wife whose only knowledge of the kitchen consisted of meeting with Cook to plan the menus. The woman would then turn these ideas into meals prepared by a kitchen staff, ruled by her iron hand. Angel’s idea of a garden was the lovely flowers the gardener took care of for the family’s pleasure that she cut and arranged in vases throughout the house. My loving stepmother led Nathan Hale to believe I’d be a competent wife.
    She shivered.
    This man expected a real wife, and instead, he was getting her. He sounded like a good person, very fond of his children. She had no idea what he looked like because he hadn’t sent a picture, but described himself as ‘not hard to look at.’ Whatever that meant. She sighed, then leaned against the seat, and looked out the window. Watching the scenery pass by, she wished, as in the fairy tale, she could sleep forever until Prince Charming—with no children—found her.
    The train trip had been tedious enough, but at least the woman with the child got off after only a few stops. But now, traveling for the seventh day on the stagecoach, Angel was sure she had perished in a train crash and had ended up in hell.
    Never in her life had she suffered such heat and blinding sun. Sweat poured off her in rivulets. She waved her lemon-scented handkerchief under her nose to avoid the nasty smell emanating from the man next to her. The odorous man—she refused to call him a gentleman—had joined the stagecoach at the last stop.
    Besides smelling bad, he took up a lot of room, and kept a large cigar clamped between his yellowed teeth, moving the offensive stump back and forth as he spoke. Even though unlit, the constant shifting of the thing caused dribble to run down his massive chin.
    “So, missy, where are you headed?” He turned in her direction, his foul cigar breath wafting over her.
    “Oregon City.”
    “You don’t say? Got a sweetheart there?” He stared at her breasts and leered. Her stomach churned.
    “No.” The last thing she wanted to do was encourage this man. And she truly wasn’t lying. Nathan Hale might be her future husband, but he was not her sweetheart.
    He then turned to the older woman on his other side who sat knitting. “What about you? Where you headed?”
    Luckily, the woman was more than happy to regale him with tales of her daughter who just produced her third baby that she was going to visit.
    Across from the three of them were a traveling salesman, a man who claimed to be a doctor, who kept taking sips from a bottle he kept tucked into his jacket pocket, and a young, very pregnant woman. Angel’s heart sped up every time the stagecoach hit a rut and the woman winced.
    The stench was bad enough, but the added heat and red dirt that blew in through the window when she attempted to clear her head made for a miserable ride. She fought off nausea, and wished for the relief of a fainting spell to escape her misery for a while.
    Angel leaned her head in the corner of the coach and closed her eyes. Not being at all familiar with stagecoach