Page 29 of Seven Brides for Beau McBride (The McBrides of Montana #3)

Nine

The entire town of Bitterroot turned out for the mushrooming picnic.

Beau watched from Mrs. Champion’s porch, astonished as people filed along the little creek and up past the clearing where Abner’s saloon crouched.

Every place in town had closed up shop for the day, and even the girls from the cathouse were going along, dressed in sensible clothes and boots, carrying baskets to throw their mushrooms in.

Beau didn’t really get it. Mushrooms were fine and all, but were they really worth a whole town’s attention?

Even Kit and Maddy had come down the hill for it.

And Junebug was in her element, bounding along in her old denim overalls, her dog splattering through the creek after her, looking less like a fancy lady’s dog and more like its usual bedraggled self.

It wasn’t even a nice day, Beau thought, as Purdy Joe and Jonah ambled past. What did Jonah and Purdy need with mushrooms, damn it? Had everyone lost their wits?

It was overcast and chilly, with the smell of rain on the brisk breeze. And they all wanted to slog about the woods pulling up fungus? The sullen weather wasn’t the slightest bit romantic; it was nothing like the picture Ellie had painted, that day she’d gone and hooked herself on the fence.

Beau smiled despite himself, remembering the sight of her standing pressed hard up against the fence, her skirts hanging over the palings, pretending for all she was worth that she wasn’t stuck.

She was the oddest girl. He didn’t know how long it had taken her to extricate herself after he’d left, but the next time he’d climbed over the fence to get to the hotel, there’d been a threadbare scrap of petticoat on one of the palings.

He’d unsnagged it and tucked it in his pocket.

The memory of her there, pretending everything was fine, tickled him no end.

His gaze drifted to the hotel next door, where Ellie stood on the porch waiting for Diana.

She gave him a little wave. She sure wore the ugliest clothes.

She was in a bulky old coat that looked like it belonged to someone twice her size.

Underneath, she had on that ugly gravy brown dress.

The only thing uglier was the limp calico bonnet she’d tied around her head.

Its floppy bow sat under her pointed chin like a droopy spider.

He wondered what she’d look like in something prettier, something more like what the other girls wore.

Like Diana, he thought, his attention caught by his soon-to-be bride as she stepped out onto the porch next to Ellie.

Diana’s coat was blue. It wasn’t expensive, or brand new, but it was in far better condition that Ellie’s and tailored perfectly to Diana’s willowy figure.

You couldn’t see Ellie’s figure at all in that bulky black thing.

“I’ve packed you a hamper for the picnic,” Mrs. Champion said, bustling out the door behind Beau.

“It should have something for everyone. And I put in those little pastries that you like, the kind with the strawberry preserve in the middle.” She handed him the hamper, which weighed as much as a calf.

“Thank you.” He watched as she piled a stack of blankets on the hamper. Goddamn. Was he supposed to haul this thing all the way up to the rise behind Abner’s? What did she have in there? More of Ellie’s books?

“There’s fried chicken and potato salad,” Mrs. Champion chattered as she followed him off the porch. “And some of my fresh sourdough.”

He suppressed the urge to pull a face. Mrs. Champion’s bread was infamously bad.

Her pastries weren’t great either, as polite as he was about them.

But her chicken was worthwhile. Maybe he could just sit on a blanket and eat chicken while the rest of them scrabbled around the leaf mold for mushrooms.

Not that Ellie would let him, he thought as he hefted the hamper and went to collect her and Diana. He had a feeling she’d rip the picnic blanket out from under him and snap it at his ass to chase him off into the woods after Diana.

“Isn’t this nice?” Ellie said brightly as he staggered towards them under the weight of chicken and blankets.

Her cheeks were apple pink in the brisk morning air and she was grinning from ear to ear.

There was a tiny little dimple tucked into the corner of her mouth, he noticed.

She took a deep, bracing breath. “Don’t you love fall?

” Ellie stepped right past him and left him to escort his bride.

He watched her go, with an increasing feeling of anxiety.

Diana smiled at him as she stepped down off the porch and his stomach twisted. What was he supposed to say to her?

“Don’t you look a picture,” Mrs. Champion clucked at her. “Doesn’t she, Beau?”

“A picture,” he agreed. His heart sank as Mrs. Champion bustled off too, leaving them alone. The older woman was swift as a mountain goat, overtaking Ellie and powering up the hill like she couldn’t wait to start snapping off mushrooms.

“Do you, uh, like mushrooming?” Beau asked Diana. He felt painfully awkward around her. Maybe that was just what happened when you liked someone.

“I can’t say I’ve ever been,” she told him. He liked her accent. Ellie had the same one. They had a rounded, funny way of talking, with flat sounds mixed in. I cahn’t say I’ve evah been. It was kind of charming.

“Shame it’s not a nicer day,” he said lamely.

Diana sure liked being quiet. She walked beside him, but didn’t seem to feel the urge to chatter.

As they followed Ellie uphill past Abner’s clearing, Beau racked his brain for something to talk about.

Why was it so hard to talk to her? It hadn’t been hard to write to her.

Maybe he should just pretend he was composing a letter?

“When Junebug was little,” he blurted, jumping in feet first and instigating a conversation, which was really more of a monologue, “we had the devil of a time stopping her from eating the poisonous mushrooms. She thought the amanitas would be sweet because they were all red and white like candy. Morgan threatened to lock her in the cabin during mushroom season but, in the end, Kit told her pixies lived in them and if she ate them the pixies would die. That seemed to help.” He cleared his throat.

“Although we did catch her officiating a lot of pixie funerals, every time she found a smashed mushroom.”

Diana laughed. It was a soft, breathy sound. “My father told me we had fairies living at the bottom of our farm,” Diana told him. “When we lost the farm, I left flowers for them, so they’d remember me.” She sounded sad. “There weren’t any fairies in Fall River.”

Okay. He could do this. Look. They were talking.

Ellie had advised him to ask Diana questions about herself. So, he asked her more about her family’s farm, and then about Fall River, and by the time they’d deposited the picnic hamper in a clearing with all the other hampers and blankets, he’d moved on to asking her about Ellie.

“You met her in the boardinghouse?” he asked, glancing over to where Ellie was standing with Junebug, ostensibly listening to Thunderhead Bill orate on the qualities of poisonous mushrooms and how to recognize them.

Ellie had gone off into one of her dazed states, staring into the woods with a quixotic half-smile.

She was liable to pick every deadly mushroom in the woods, Beau thought, given she wasn’t listening to a word Bill said.

“I met Ellie on my first day,” Diana said fondly.

She was gazing at Ellie too and shaking her head at the blatant daydreaming.

“I hated that mill so much—I still hate it. You can’t imagine.

The long hours, the way your back aches, the noise, the suffocation, the homesickness.

I never would have survived without Ellie. ”

As they headed into the woods, Diana told him about her early years at the mill, about the backbreaking work, about sharing a room with Ellie, about Ellie reading to her through long homesick nights.

It was nothing he hadn’t read in her letters, but it was nice to listen to it.

As she told him about Ellie’s propensity to get into trouble for daydreaming at work, Beau relaxed.

The warmth radiating from Diana when she spoke about her friend loosened her up and made her easier to talk to.

“You really love her,” he observed.

“I do. And she loves me. We’re like sisters.”

Beau snorted. “Not like my sister. She probably would have smothered me with a pillow if I’d kept her awake at night.”

Diana did that little breathy laugh again. “Junebug does seem a little… wild.”

“You have no idea. The last time she ordered up a bride—”

“The last time ?” Diana gasped. “How many times has she done this?”

“Twice before. If you count now, I guess it’s eight times, if you reckon with each individual bride.

Morgan wanted to send her off to boarding school after the first time,” Beau admitted.

“I can’t imagine what he’ll do when he finds out about this .

” He took in the colorful herd of brides wandering the woods.

“It’s probably a good thing for Junebug that military schools don’t take girls. ”

“Oh, you can’t send her away!” Diana was vehement. “I think she’d be more homesick than I was.” Diana paused and looked up at the canopy of pines. “I’ve only been here a little while, and I can’t imagine leaving this place. It’s even more beautiful than you described.”

Beau followed her gaze. The stands of fir and pine were deeply green against the grey skies. Their clean perfume was sharp in the air. “Ah, you haven’t even seen Buck’s Creek yet,” he said. “And I’d hope you can’t imagine leaving, since you’re supposed to be marrying me.”

She gave him a searching and uncertain look. “You still want to marry me? Even with all these lovely girls here?”