Mail Order Bride: Captured Hearts: a Clean Western Historical Romance (Mail Order Brides of Gold Creek Book 6) Read Free

paced her room for what seemed like hours, the frustration of everything mounting in her heart. The tears fell down her face in hot streams as if they would never end. It was as if there was nowhere to turn, no possible action she could take to make things better. She had never disobeyed her mother before and so it was a given that her romantic plan would never come to fruition, even though it was the only way she could think of that could save her mother.
    She finally collapsed on her bed in despair, exhausted from crying. Tossing and turning, she didn’t even bother to shut the curtains as the room grew dark. She stared at the ceiling feeling numb and trapped and helpless. Her stepfather, Silas, poked his head around the door when he came back from work.
    “Goodnight, Mollie,” he said.
    “Night,” she said, surprised that there was enough strength left within her to speak.
    Soon she could hear the gentle snores of her mother and stepfather from the room next door, and a revolutionary idea sprang to life within her.
    She could disobey her mother.
    The thought felt scandalous at first, sending her conscience racing overdrive as guilt pulled at her heart, but the strength of her desire to see her mother well again overpowered it without much of a fight. She made up her mind that if she had to disobey her mother, this was the only situation that made it plausible.
    Getting up from the bed and avoiding the squeaky floorboard, she creeped around to pack a small case of dresses and undergarments, then headed into her mother and stepfather’s room. The moonlight streamed through the window and onto the envelope on her mother’s nightstand.
    “Sorry, Ma,” Mollie whispered as she took the letter. “I love you.”
    She snuck out of the room and down the stairs. Closing the front door behind her, she stepped out into the cool night air and took a deep breath. Her adventure had begun.

Chapter 4
     
    Throughout her long journey from Virginia to Gold Creek, which was made by an assortment of trains and wagons, Mollie watched the scenery change and felt her emotions change right along with it. The further west they traveled, the more rugged and wild the scenery became, as if it was urging her right out of her cautious old life and into an adventurous new one.
    She had started the journey consumed with the guilt of disobeying her mother and realized with horror that she had not even left her a note, though she supposed it was obvious enough where she went. Yet as the landscape transformed into a rough, untamed beauty, she gained a new strength of conviction that propelled her out of her fear and headlong into confidence.
    She felt almost certain that everything would go as planned as she played it out in her mind’s eye. She would take a stagecoach from the Ruby Ridge train station to his house in Gold Creek, just as he had instructed. Once they met each other, it would be love at first sight and they would rush into each other’s arms and declare their undying love for one another. They would have such a powerful instant rapport that she could tell him all about her mother’s need within minutes and, of course, he would agree to pay for the surgery. They would hop right back on the stagecoach to Ruby Ridge and make the long journey back to Virginia victorious and deeply in love.
    So it came as rather a shock when, having ridden the rough terrain from Ruby Ridge to Gold Creek and paid the stagecoach driver, she came to Ira’s home to find it empty. She approached the front door and knocked and knocked and knocked again, calling out his name and wondering if the stagecoach driver had brought her to the wrong house. She walked around to the back but there was no sign of life whatsoever.
    Making up her mind that she must have come to the wrong house, she decided to head into the town to get directions to where Ira actually lived, lugging her case along behind her. If any of the rumors of the West were true, she knew that the