Rose's Mail Order Husband - A Historical Mail Order Bride Story (Montana Brides) Read Free Page A

wear her dress?”
    “Is that what this is all about?” Rose shot back. “Is that what you came in here to talk to me about?”
    “How could you be so heartless to suggest you’d wear anything else?” Iris cried. “You know the trouble she went through to make it for you.”
    Rose sighed. “Yes, I know.”
    “So why did you say you wouldn’t wear it?” Iris asked
    “You obviously haven’t talked to Violet,” Rose declared. “If you had, she would have told you that I’m going to wear her dress. I don’t know why you should care so much what I wear. I could understand why Violet wouldn’t want all her hard work to go to waste, but I don’t see why you should intrude on my solitude to make her case.”
    “Maybe I don’t like my sister being deliberately hurt for no reason,” Iris shot back.
    Rose compressed her lips and turned around. “You know, Iris, I’ve just told you I’m going to wear the dress. Are you happy now? Can you take that and leave? I only have a few hours left before the wedding, and I don’t really want to spend them going over what I’m going to wear. It doesn’t concern you, so mind your own business.”
    Iris gasped in exasperation at her and slammed the door on her way out.

Chapter 4
    Silence enveloped her at last. But the two confrontations disturbed her so much she couldn’t settle back into her usual reverie. She paced around the room for a while, and then snuck out of the house.
    She didn’t usually like to walk around the ranch. The animals and dust and bugs reminded her too much of the base parts of human nature. She much preferred the airy heights of dreams and fantasies. They could be pure and clean, unlike the sordid muddles of human interactions.
    The whole house resonated with the coming anticipation of the wedding. On her way downstairs and through the passage to the back door, she heard Violet and Rita in the kitchen. Rose couldn’t decipher whether their voices sounded happy and laughing or arguing bitterly. Rita got mad at Violet more and more frequently, with Violet butting in on everything she tried to do and eventually taking it over to do it herself.
    Rose didn’t see Iris anywhere.
    Outside the back door, her way opened up before her and she knew where she wanted to go. She strode up the path to the top of the hill to the Bird House.
    Her guardian and uncle, Cornell Pollard, lived here until just a few days ago. His possessions still littered the whole house. Rose couldn’t explain it to herself, but she didn’t feel his presence when she went into the house. She felt curiously at home here. When she went there, she saw her future life spread out in all its glorious color.
    She meandered through the garden. Nowhere else on the whole ranch attracted her like the Bird House garden. Nowhere else existed purely to please her senses. Watered by an underground spring, its flowers blossomed lush and vibrant in the late spring heat. They nodded to her as she passed, welcoming her.
    At the end of the brick walk, she pushed open the door. It squeaked on its hinges, but that, too, sang a friendly note to receive her into the home of her dreams. Her heel rang on the flagstone floor. The breeze rustled the curtains, and the birds sang in the trees overhead. Every sound heralded the coming of the Bird House’s new mistress.
    Rose ventured into the sitting room and sat down on the couch under the big front window. The leaves of the trees modulated the sunlight, so the light coming into the room blinked in dappled shade. Rose turned her face up into the light and closed her eyes.
    She could only escape the relentless examination of her reflection by getting out of her room. If she stayed in the Main House at all, she had no choice but to go back to her room and sit at her dressing table.
    What a relief to get away from it! She didn’t have to try to solve the mystery of who that strange girl in the mirror was, and she could finally think clearly. She was just getting