Outlaw’s Bride Read Free Page B

give my love to Nessie and my favorite little brother, Jeremy. Will you write Whit for me and explain everything. Tell him I’ll see the whaling ship bequeathed to him by Captain Sturgis some other time, and I’m sorry I’m going to miss all those Boston society parties he’s attending now that he’s a rich nabob.
P.P.S. I’ll write again soon!
Don’t worry about me!
P.P.P.S. I think Ethan was a little surprised to see me, but I know everything will work out just fine.
Love and brown sugar kisses,
Patch
     
    Patch folded the letter and addressed it to her father and stepmother. She put everything away and retrieved her purse as she stood and turned to the clerk. “Can you direct me to the post office?”
    “It’s at the end of Main Street,” Gilley said. “In the rear of the Oakville Mercantile.”
    “I’ll be back soon.”
    “I’ll have that bath ready,” Gilley promised.
    Patch stepped out into the sunlight once more and headed toward the mercantile. She walked as though she had an egg in each hand and a stack of books on her head—the way they had taught her at the fancy school she had attended in Boston. What she didn’t realize was that her natural physicalgrace made her body sway in a way that had every cowhand up and down the boardwalk gawking at her.
    Patch had learned a lot of rules in Boston, most of which began with
A Lady Never
 … Patch figured she had broken about ten of them in the past twenty minutes. She found it difficult to always act like a lady, but she was determined that for Ethan’s sake she would epitomize that feminine ideal. No matter how hard it was, she would follow the rules—except when it was absolutely necessary to break them.
    Patch politely nodded her head to the local ladies and kept her eyes straight ahead when she passed the cowboys on her way to the mercantile. She didn’t care to be accosted by any of them. It was a little harder to ignore the trickle of sweat that snaked down her back. But she was a lady now, and that meant enduring certain discomforts.
    Oakville’s main street wasn’t very long and consisted of two saloons, two hotels, the livery, a jail, a bank, several eateries, and the mercantile. Patch welcomed the cool difference in temperature when she stepped inside the oak-shaded one-story wood-frame building that Gilley had told her housed the Oakville Post Office. She introduced herself to Mr. Felber, the postmaster and owner of the store, and was assured that her letter would be on its way to Montana on the next stage.
    “I’d also like to buy a few things,” she said.
    “Help yourself, Miss Kendrick,” Mr. Felber said. “Help yourself.”
    Since Patch had supposedly been heading for Boston, she didn’t have the sort of clothes packed in her trunks that she needed for a jaunt on horseback. Fortunately, her parents had given her enough funds for the trip to Boston so that she could afford to buy what she needed.
    As Patch discovered, Mr. Felber never came out from behind the counter. When he’d said, “Help yourself,” it was because he couldn’t be bothered. While she searched out a pair of Levi’s, a chambray shirt, socks, and boots, she watched Mr. Felber sit on his stool and play solitaire. He stopped only long enough to take payment from a lady who bought pins and another who bought peaches.
    Patch’s attention was drawn to the door when the bell rang to announce another customer, mainly because Mr. Felber got up off his stool and walked all the way to the end of the counter. Apparently, whoever was entering the mercantile was a person of some importance.
    The tiny young woman who stepped inside had hair as black as coal, dark brown eyes, and the face of an angel. She was dressed every bit as modishly as Patch herself. Patch had never in her life seen such a beautiful woman. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t help herself.
    Patch was chagrined when the woman not only noticed her stare but smiled and walked right up to