Page 16 of Seven Brides for Beau McBride (The McBrides of Montana #3)

Ellie went hot and cold. She scanned the platform for her prospective groom, but there was only a knot of miners fetching their luggage, and a solemn Indian resting in the shade of the station.

Well, Ellie would have to tell her McBride that this wasn’t going to work.

In their letters Beau had been the more sensitive of the two, and he was clearly awful , so his brother, or cousin, or whatever he was, was bound to be even worse.

“Her dress is less hideous without the shawl,” Diana interjected hurriedly. And then she reached over and pulled at the knot on Ellie’s shawl, whipping it off her.

Ellie felt like a pastry on a plate as the McBrides considered her anew. She pinched Diana warningly on the arm, not appreciating her “help”.

“Is your brother here too?” Diana asked, tucking Ellie’s shawl under her arm where she couldn’t get at it. “Ellie would love to meet her husband-to-be.”

“Yes, Junebug,” Beau chimed, “where is this woman’s husband? My… brother.”

“ Prospective husband,” Ellie corrected sharply, “I haven’t agreed to anything yet.” And nor would she after this.

“Probably for the best,” Beau said dryly.

Ellie smarted at the insult. “Your brother didn’t seem to mind me,” she found herself snapping. “He sent for me, after all.”

“It was a much nicer dress in the photograph, though,” Junebug said. She sighed. “I ain’t never understood the color brown. It ain’t the color of anything worthwhile.”

“Chocolate cake,” the solemn Indian interjected from where he sat on the bench by the station. He had a long serious face and was slowly cutting off a chunk of chewing tobacco.

“Huh.” Junebug seemed taken aback. “Well, you got me there, Sour Eagle. I might need to rethink some things.”

“This here chewing tobacco is also brown,” he added.

“I ain’t partial to the stuff so you’re only proving my point.”

“Even if you were partial to it, you ain’t allowed it,” Beau interrupted.

Ellie and Diana exchanged a bewildered look. Talking to these people was like walking into a windstorm; it was hard to keep your feet.

“I really think brown is best for chocolate cake, not dresses, though,” Junebug was saying.

“Chocolate cake and chewing tobacco.” The man called Sour Eagle popped his chunk of tobacco in his mouth and commenced chewing slowly.

Beau McBride sighed. “The dress ain’t the problem here, no how.”

“It ain’t? So you don’t mind her looks?” Junebug McBride nodded. “Well, that’s something.”

Diana cleared her throat. “Ellie and I are exhausted after our long travels, and this isn’t quite the greeting we expected.”

That was putting it mildly, Ellie thought.

“It seems like there’s been some kind of misunderstanding,” Diana said.

“Why don’t we ask Junebug if there’s a misunderstanding,” Beau suggested. And then he stared at his sister, waiting for her to explain.

Junebug let out an irritable exhale. “I can explain, but I didn’t expect to be giving my speech with you here,” she told her brother. “And I didn’t expect Miss Moonglow to be here either.”

“Miss Moonglow? Do you mean me?” Diana asked her icily.

Ellie admired Diana’s regal poise. She herself felt far from poised.

“Right. Fine. I get it. Everyone’s testy after a long journey.” Junebug reached into the pocket of her dress. “I’ll just give my speech.”

“You were serious?” Beau wasn’t pleased. “It’s an actual speech?”

“It’s a good one too,” Bascom the station master said approvingly. “I’ve heard it a few times already and it’s a corker.”

“It sure is,” Sour Eagle agreed, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the dirt. “Leaves no stone unturned.”

“How long is that thing?” Beau snatched the sheaf of paper out of Junebug’s hand. He flicked through the pages. “Don’t you dare tell me you read this whole thing to all those girls.”

“Hold on,” Ellie interrupted. “All what girls?”

But no one was listening to her.

“Give me that. It works best orated, not read silently like a damn book.” Junebug snatched the pages back off Beau.

“It’s the size of a damn book.”

“All what girls?” Ellie refused to be ignored.

Something was very wrong here. Her imagination kicked into action, conjuring up all kinds of horrible scenes.

Had they been trafficked west into a life of iniquity?

She’d once read a lurid serial about a girl who’d been trafficked; an unworldly innocent’s spiral into sin on the streets of London.

The wholesome country girl had been tricked into taking a mail coach to the city, and had ended up working the streets, drowning her sorrows in gin sinks and longing for the pure love of her village sweetheart, forever lost to her now that she was a soiled dove…

“You’re not listening.” Junebug clicked her fingers in front of Ellie’s face, snapping her out of her reverie. “I went to all the trouble to write this just for you and you ain’t even listening.”

Ellie blinked, startled to be on the dusty platform and not in the dankness of a London gin sink, drowning her sorrows. Sometimes her imagination was a little too good.

“You wrote it just for her?” Beau McBride was sour. “Her and five others, you mean.”

“What?” Startled, Ellie met his gaze. His midnight eyes were turbulent with displeasure. “What do you mean five others ?”

Junebug stomped her foot. “You ain’t got a lick of circumspection in you, Beau!

” She took Ellie by the arm and yanked her over to the station house.

“Sit here.” She pushed Ellie down onto the bench next to the Indian, who spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. “We’ll do it over here, where he cain’t ruin it. ”

Ellie shot Diana a helpless look. They had to get straight back on that train.

Junebug held her papers grandly in front of her.

“Felicitations, Miss Eleanor Neale, and welcome to the congenial town of Bitterroot, the jewel in the territory of Montana.” Junebug McBride read with impressive gravitas, although she seemed to digress abruptly, looking up from the pages with a flare of irritation.

“Although it should be admitted to goddamn statehood by now and if I could get my hands on those foot draggers in Washington—”

“Junebug,” Beau warned. He’d stepped up behind her and was reading over her shoulder. “Stick to your darn speech.”

Junebug shot him a look but went back to her script.

“Where was I? Jewel in the territory… I hope you had as comfortable a journey as possible, given we could only spring for a third-class ticket, and that you enjoyed your time on our fine Montana rail, which I hear is the best in all the United States.” Junebug paused.

“Although we should also be one of those states,” she muttered under her breath.

“I’d like to sincerely apologize for my brother’s absence here today. ”

“You can cut that bit this time,” the solemn Indian observed. He gave Ellie a kind smile. “Given he’s here today.”

At the Indian’s words Ellie’s gaze flew around the platform.

Her own Mr. McBride was here? Where? Was he lurking surreptitiously, trying to get the measure of her before he stepped forward?

Because that seemed ungentlemanly in the extreme, not to mention unfair and unjust and downright rude. Especially given his family’s insanity.

“Can everyone stop interrupting? And can you stop drifting off and pay attention?” Junebug clicked her fingers in front of Ellie’s face again.

“Do we really need this whole carry on?” Diana’s cool voice cut through the chaos. “Why don’t you just give us the gist of that speech of yours and then we can get on with things.”

Ellie rose from the bench and slid past the McBrides to join Diana. They were getting out of here right now. She was going to sit on that train until it pulled away.

“What did you mean, five girls?” Diana pressed Junebug.

“I’m getting to that.” Junebug went back to her pages. “My brother is a flighty man,” she read.

“I ain’t.” Beau glared at her.

“She’s not talking about you,” Ellie told him sharply, “she’s talking about my Mr. McBride.”

“They’re both flighty,” Junebug said, stepping out of Beau’s reach.

“They would be, given they’re the same person,” the station master said sagely.

“They what ?” Ellie and Diana turned shocked faces on the McBrides.

“I ain’t at that bit yet!” Junebug raged. “You men ruin everything! And you’re upsetting my bride.”

“ Your bride?” Ellie couldn’t understand what was happening. But she had an idea of how to find out. She snatched the speech out of Junebug’s hands.

“The meat of things is on page three,” Beau advised her, “the rest is a lot of palaver.”

“Palaver!” Junebug let loose a salty string of curses at her brother. “I worked hard on that and you better believe me every other girl liked it!”

As Beau advised, page three offered up the answers.

“You ordered more than one woman?” Ellie said, appalled. “Wait. Hold on…” Her stomach curdled lemon-sour as she turned the page. “There’s no other brother…?”

“There’s too many brothers,” Junebug said in disgust. “That’s my whole problem.”

“But… all these women… and me… are for you ?” Ellie thought she really might swoon as she met Beau’s gaze again. There was no other Mr. McBride. There was only him. She’d come all this way to marry him. Her interiors didn’t know if they should be floating or sinking.

“You’ve extirpated this whole thing.” Junebug threw up her hands. “I didn’t have any of this upheaval with my other brides. If you’d just let me read that thing in full, you’d calm right down.”

“I don’t want to be calm!” Ellie scrunched the speech up.

“Ellie.” Diana was sounding less cool now. “What is going on? What’s this about other women?”

Ellie turned a fierce glare on Beau McBride. He flinched. “Well?” she demanded. “Tell her. Go on. Tell your intended that you have a whole town full of brides! You flimflammer!”

Beau flushed. “Now, wait a hot minute—”

“These people have lured us here under false pretenses.” Ellie was gathering steam. “Who knows what their real motives are. It’s a scam. A con! We’ve been grievously deceived, Diana. They’re probably going to sell us to woman-starved mountain men!”

“Hey!” Junebug protested. “None of that’s in the speech.”

“No,” the station master agreed. “The speech is about how it’s wise to get to know someone before hitching yourself to them for life. And how Beau here hasn’t had the opportunity to know many women and how, as his loving sister, Junebug here has taken it upon herself to see he chooses wisely.”

“She also wants to make sure you women choose wisely too,” the solemn Indian added, around his mouthful of tobacco. “You may decide he’s not the man for you.”

But Ellie wasn’t listening. Wild pictures had filled her head, of a backroom operation where women were hooked by romantic letters and brought all the way to these dark woods to be sold to snaggle-toothed men who carted them off to the mountains in order to have their way with them…

Oh, who knew what horrors had befallen the five women who’d arrived before Ellie…

She was so deep in her imaginings that she was barely aware of Diana prizing the speech out of her hand.

And while she imagined gaunt and misused brides pale as wilting moths in the greenwood, subject to the whims of men who held them against their will, she missed the terse conversation Diana had with the McBrides.

It was only when Diana started leading her away from the train that she came to her senses.

“I don’t want to hear your nonsense,” Diana said firmly when Ellie exploded with descriptions of what she’d imagined. “There’s enough nonsense here as it is without you adding to it. Give Beau your bag to carry and we’ll go sort this mess out.”

“There’s nothing to sort!” Ellie wasn’t about to give her bag to that entrapper of innocents, and she certainly wasn’t going anywhere with these people.

But, as Diana set off into the raw town with the McBrides, Ellie realized she had no choice.

Because she had to protect Diana. “Stop!” she shouted as she chased them down.

But none of them listened, and none of them stopped.