Page 10 of Seven Brides for Beau McBride (The McBrides of Montana #3)
Three
Buck’s Creek, Montana
Beau McBride had never been so nervous in his life.
He was queasy, like he’d woken up from a night of moonshine and whiskey.
His stomach was churning, his hands were sweating, and his heart was skittering about like a rabbit on the run.
He’d shut himself in his bedroom in the old cabin, which had been Morgan and Kit’s room before they’d up and married, and fussed with his new shirt, trying to get the collar straight.
He’d shaved and given his hair a trim, and he’d scrubbed his teeth and shined his boots.
But he still felt rumpled and in disarray—mostly because his emotions were rumpled and in disarray.
Was he really about to collect a bride from the railway station down in Bitterroot?
A woman who was for all intents and purposes a complete stranger to him—a woman who might be any kind of person at all?
Beau met his own dark gaze in the shaving mirror and winced at the nerves he saw reflected there.
He knocked the mirror flat. Goddamn. It wouldn’t do to look like a lamb going to slaughter when he met his bride.
His prospective bride.
Because now he was having doubts.
It was Junebug’s fault—she’d gone and wormed into his head. What if she gets off that train and she’s mean as a sack of snakes? What if she has breath like raw onions? What if she’s about as much fun as Morgan when the root cellar runs dry? What if that ain’t a rightful photograph of her?
His annoying little sister had a point, much as he hated to admit it.
Beau had no idea if Miss Diana Newchurch was truthful or not.
It could very well be a misleading picture of her.
His gaze flicked to where it was tacked onto the wall next to his bed.
She did look too good to be true. What if she was the deceptive sort?
She could be itinerant, immoral, debauched; this whole thing could be a con.
How was he to know? Hell. And he’d as good as hitched himself to her. Maybe he’d been too hasty…
Beau’s hands were shaking as he shrugged into his new coat.
It was midnight blue broadcloth and hugged his shoulders like it had been painted on.
He’d ordered it up from a catalog and it had come all the way from New York.
He fumbled the buttons, his hands too unsteady to do his bidding.
Sweet damn, he was a wreck. He glanced back over at Miss Diana Newchurch’s photograph.
She was more than he could have dreamed of…
His stomach turned over as a new thought occurred to him.
What if she was exactly what she said she was?
What if she was as smart as she seemed in her letters?
As sensitive, as soulful, as amusing? Why would a woman like that want a man like him?
A woman that beautiful, with that much character, could have any man on earth.
And Beau was the runt of the litter. He knew it.
He wasn’t as strong as Kit, or as powerful as Morgan, he wasn’t even as independent as Jonah, or as crafty as Junebug.
He had a nice face, and that was about it.
His brothers teased him mercilessly about his looks and Junebug had the nerve to call him pulchritudinous, in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t using it as a compliment.
The butcher Hicks called him “Princess” behind his back and the miners over at the Ella Jean called him “Pretty Boy” to his face.
People laughed at him. They called him vain and mocked him when he used big words.
Which was annoying in the extreme, since all McBrides used big words, but no one laughed when Kit or Morgan did it.
Beau tried to take it on the chin and laugh along but it still itched at him. He hadn’t chosen this face. And his face didn’t say anything about the man behind it. He had depths , damn it. And so what if he liked nice clothes?
Beau had spent most of his life feeling plain wrong.
Like he was a pony in a field of cows. Now he was worried that Miss Diana Newchurch might prefer a nice solid cow.
He fussed with his collar to ensure it was sitting right.
Morgan and Beau would never be able to carry off a coat like this.
But then, they didn’t seem to need one. When Beau’s older brothers rode down the street, people’s heads turned.
Womenfolk might be drawn to Beau’s pretty face, but they didn’t go silently breathless, the way they did around Kit and Morgan.
They giggled and flirted and teased Beau, but they weren’t awed.
Beau didn’t intimidate anyone.
In his mind, Beau pictured bringing Miss Diana Newchurch up to Buck’s Creek and introducing her to his brothers. He could only imagine the comparisons she’d draw…
Maybe it would be better if her breath did stink of onions.
Maybe then she’d be content to settle with someone like him.
Someone who could pickle a cucumber, but not work a forge; someone who could sing, but not mine for silver; someone who didn’t intimidate a single blessed person. Not even Junebug.
Although not much in this world intimidated Junebug. Not even Morgan.
Enough of these thoughts. He wasn’t useless.
He could hunt and trap better than any of his brothers, and he ran the trading post better than any of them too.
Hell, he was the one who’d set up trade with the Gros Ventre and the Blackfeet, and he was the one who’d organized to sell Kit’s cookware at the mercantile down in Bitterroot.
Not that his overbearing brothers ever gave him credit for it.
Nor had they credited his brokering with that catalog company out east, which provided fur for ladies’ hats.
He was goddamn enterprising. Enterprising enough to make any bride proud.
Beau carefully untacked Miss Diana Newchurch’s photograph from the wall and tucked it in his pocket.
This was a happy day, damn it, and he was going to enjoy it.
And Miss Diana Newchurch was well aware of what she was getting into—the lord knew he’d written her a mountain of letters.
He’d spilled his insides out in those letters.
He felt a touch embarrassed about it, really, writing about meadow grass and memories and all kinds of secretive feelings.
“Wowee, you sure look fancy.”
Beau jumped at Jonah’s voice. He snapped around to find his little brother in the doorway, the weight of his saddlebags making him list to the left.
Only Jonah wasn’t so little anymore; he’d bulked up while he was off prospecting with Purdy Joe.
Shoveling all that dirt had given him some serious shoulders, although he was still only nineteen and struggled to grow a full beard.
“When did you get back?” Beau didn’t mean to sound surly about it. He was just surprised. And Jonah’s new shoulders underlined his fears about his own runtiness.
“Nice to see you too,” Jonah said mildly. He dumped his bags on the closest bed.
“Git that off there, that’s my bed.”
“Since when?”
“Since you and Morgan lit out and left me the cabin. You can have the old bunk in the main room to yourself.” Beau went to lift the saddlebags off his bed but recoiled from their sweat and grime. He didn’t want to ruin his new coat.
“I didn’t leave you the cabin,” Jonah protested. “I only went for a month. Besides, Junebug’s still here—unless she finally agreed to move into her bedroom up at Kit’s place?”
“I wish,” Beau grunted. Junebug was still very much lodged in the loft of their cabin, like a racoon.
“What happened to make you so sour while I was gone?” Jonah removed his hat, revealing a dirty tumble of dark curls that needed washing and cutting. He hung his hat on a hook over Morgan’s old bed.
“I ain’t sour.” Beau snatched the hat back off the hook. This was his room now, damn it.
“Fine. What happened to make you so flat-out peevish, then?” Jonah took the hat off Beau and hung it back on the hook. “What’s Junebug done now?”
“Nothing. That I know of,” he said grudgingly. “And I am glad you’re back, it ain’t the same around here without you. It’s just that you caught me heading out.”
“Out where?” Jonah looked Beau up and down, his gray eyes narrowing. “You know Morgan don’t like you hanging around the whorehouse. Especially not in broad daylight.”
“Morgan ain’t here. Besides, I’m full grown and can do what I like.
But I ain’t going to the whorehouse.” Beau didn’t particularly like the whorehouse neither, not that he was telling his brothers that.
He knew he was supposed to like it, but he didn’t.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to enjoy it—hell, the sight of those girls in their skimpy underthings made his blood run hot.
He stayed awake nights thinking about it.
But thinking about it and acting on it were two different things.
It was plain awkward to have a stranger get so intimate and his few fumbling experiences had been excruciatingly embarrassing.
It had just been so, well, pragmatic. There wasn’t a lick of romance in it, or any real feeling at all.
Although the girls at the cathouse were nice enough and they all tried to coax him back, Beau would rather flirt with them from the safety of the porch than join them inside.
And he honestly thought they were kinda glad too—he didn’t imagine all that groping was a picnic for them neither.
“So you’re not visiting the whores.” Jonah got an amused look on his face.
Which was rich, because as far as Beau knew, his little brother had only stepped inside the whorehouse once, and he’d stepped straight back out again.
Jonah didn’t seem interested in the women in the slightest, and he liked to joke that Beau had taken all the interest for himself.
“Huh,” Jonah drawled, “I guess you already found out about the girls, then.”
Beau frowned. “What girls?”