Darby: Bride of Oregon (American Mail-Order Bride 33) Read Free Page B

money
enough to stay at the Drake Hotel. “How did you know to look there?”
    Shadow laid a finger alongside his nose and tapped
it twice. It was a secret he was going to keep. But suspecting the man had his
own informants at the prestigious establishment was a good thing to know. There
was no telling when it might come in handy.
    Rand opened the letter and glanced through it,
then held it out while Shadow struck a match and lit the paper on fire.
    “She only hopes he will come home again,” Rand
said. “She won’t come looking. I listened to the man for a good ten minutes
before…” He waved his hand to indicate all they had done to get their victim
from the saloon, into a cage, and onto that dingy. “This gal, whoever she is,
would be a fool to come looking for him. I’m sure she’ll be relieved when she
never hears from him again.”
    Shadow frowned. “I hope you are right.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Yes. You had a telegram from that Miller woman.
She has found you a bride.”
    Rand grinned. The news would help him shrug off
his hangover. “She found a British woman, then?”
    Shadow nodded. “Poulson will not be happy I gave
you the news.”
    “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll pretend I’ve heard nothing.
Did she give the woman’s name? Her lineage? Anything?”
    “Just her name. A Miss Darby McClintock.”
    The fire ate up the last of the note and bit his
fingers. “Damn it all to hell.”
    “Are you hurt?”
    “No. But someone will be if Miss Miller has sent
me a Scot to marry.”
    “McClintock? Surely it does not mean she is family
to that crazed sea captain.”
    “I hope not.” Rand’s frown lightened with an
amusing thought. “And if she turns out to be a Scot, you know what I’m going to
do?”
    “Send her back?”
    “No.” He shook his head and grinned. “I’ll sell
her to Captain McClintock himself. And for ten times the usual price. By the
time she wakes, they’ll be out to sea. And when he realizes what I’ve given him,
he’ll finally understand what all his victims felt.”
    “Justice for them, yes?”
    “Justice for them, indeed.”

CHAPTER FIVE
                       
    In the two years since Darby entered the large
boarding house on Haverhill Street, she’d accumulated another few pounds of
clothing, a nice pair of shoes for church in the summertime, and two books with
which she would never part. This necessitated another satchel, which her
landlady provided from a large box full of things left behind by past
residents.
    Darby suspected the donation was motivated less by
generosity and more from the probability that the woman was happy to be quit
with her. It was a fact, she and Mrs. Fussbudget found it difficult to
appreciate one another. The woman had a hard time differentiating between a
Scottish accent and an Irish one, and since she had a firm bias against the
Irish, she always eyed Darby with suspicion. Thus, Darby thought it best to
never linger in a room occupied by the landlady.
    Unfortunately, this made mealtime a bit awkward.
If she arrived early, she had to eat quickly before Fussbudget arrived to ruin
the meal. And if she couldn’t arrive early, she was forced to wait in the
hallway for the other woman to finish eating, then rush to the table and hope
there was something left to eat.
    With Margaret on hand for the past four months,
Darby’d been guaranteed to have a nice portion set aside for her. With Margaret
gone, the last week had been lean indeed. However, since she was leaving for
Portland that morning, she saw no reason to worry over Fussbudget’s whereabouts
and sashayed into the dining room without peeking around the door first.
    “Good morning,” she said with a smile, greeting
the long table at large. She even held the smile a bit longer to be sure she
caught Fussbudget’s eye. The woman was seated at the head of the table and the
edges of her mouth turned up before she realized who she was greeting.
    “Good morning,” she