Page 8 of Seven Brides for Beau McBride (The McBrides of Montana #3)

For all I got a lot of family living in my pockets, sometimes I get lonely.

It’s a nighttime kind of feeling, silent like.

It feels like midwinter nights, when the snow is thick and the light is blue and everything is muffled and spring seems like something you dreamed.

Lonely is a winter feeling, don’t you think?

Even though in winter you’re cooped up with everyone.

Somehow, being surrounded can make you realize there’s no one to know the inner workings of you. Does that sound silly? I guess it does.

No, it wasn’t silly. Sitting there in bed, reading someone else’s mail, surrounded by sleeping mill girls, Ellie knew exactly how he felt. She’d been surrounded her whole life, and yet she’d always felt alone until Diana came along.

Loneliness is a working feeling for me, she wrote back while Diana slept, wondering if she’d have the nerve to send the letter without telling her friend.

I feel it worst at the mill, when I’m hemmed in by people and noise.

The looms crash and the shuttles click and it’s too loud to speak and it’s hard to even think.

I think loneliness would be a nighttime feeling too, if I didn’t have my friend.

She’d glanced down at Diana and felt a stab of guilt.

Diana always handed Ellie Beau’s letters after skimming them, but she had no idea how closely Ellie read and re-read them.

Diana no longer bothered dictating letters back to Beau, trusting Ellie wholeheartedly to write the right thing for her.

Which made Ellie feel even guiltier, as she stayed up late into the night writing page after page, cramming them into tightly folded packets, hoping Diana wouldn’t notice their bulk and wonder why on earth Ellie needed so many words.

When I first came to the mill, before my dear friend was here, I used to read all night long, and then I wasn’t lonely at all. Do you think it’s strange that people who aren’t even real can make you feel less alone than people who are?

No, he wrote back. When we were kids, in the bad times after Pa ran off, Kit used to read to us.

To Junebug, really, but we all listened in, and there was one hungry winter where he read us an epic—it must have been a thousand pages long, and it took him all winter to get through.

It was a French book about a criminal, and a revolution, and all kinds of upset, but somehow all that imaginary upset made ours easier to bear.

“How odd to start with just the word ‘No.’?” Diana had frowned when she’d read his response. She’d been doing her usual skim, but this time had snagged on the opening. “Like he was answering a question. Did I ask him a question? What was it?”

“It’s probably a rhetorical flourish,” Ellie had told her hurriedly. “But it’s nice he likes books, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so.” Diana had shrugged.

I ain’t never told anyone half these things, he wrote in the letter, the one where he finally proposed.

And I don’t reckon I quite understand what’s got into me.

Except I feel like I could tell you anything.

I wonder how it would feel to tell you all these things in person, rather than spilling them out in ink and sending them off.

I’d like to watch your face, to see your thoughts happening, to know how you feel.

I was walking the woods the other day, not for any purpose, other than thinking about you away from people, where I could give it my full attention.

And the fall color was in full riot, the leaves falling slow and spiraling, like gold and orange snowflakes, and I wanted with all my body for you to be here with me.

It seemed I wished so hard I almost made it happen.

I know this is rash and hasty, and my brothers will never understand it, but it’s what I placed the ad for in the first place… Would you do me the honor…

“Go on, you can say it,” Diana had said gleefully as she spun on the spot, the pages of his letter make a whooshing noise in her outstretched hand. This letter she’d done more than skim. This letter she’d read with painstaking care.

“Say what?” Ellie’s mind was stuck on the vision of Beau McBride walking the fall woods.

In her imaginings he was a mysterious figure outlined against the spiraling autumn color, a dashing silhouette, pining for a woman he wrote secret letters to like a hero from the most swoon-worthy novel.

Ellie’s heart was missing beats like it had forgotten its task.

She’d only been half listening to Diana.

“Say that I was right.” Diana was bright with triumph.

“You were right,” Ellie sighed, feeling overwhelmed by the romance of it.

“Ish,” she amended. “You were right- ish. You still haven’t met him yet.

He might not be as good in person.” Her gaze followed the pages of his letter as Diana held it close.

No one who wrote like that could be anything but perfect…

Diana gave a sly giggle. “Oh, he is.”

And that was when Ellie learned she wasn’t the only one who’d been keeping secrets. It turned out Diana hadn’t shared every letter she’d received from Beau. And she hadn’t let Ellie see every letter she’d sent to Beau either.

“I might have sent him a photograph of me,” Diana confessed, her blue eyes shining.

Ellie felt an odd twisting in her belly. She felt queerly jealous.

“I went down to the photography studio last month and got one of those little cabinet cards made of me.” Diana was pink with pleasure. “I got the man at the studio to address the mail for me.”

If Diana had sent Beau a photograph, then no wonder he was proposing. It was her beauty, more than Ellie’s letters, that had won him. Ellie tried to ignore the dark stab of feeling the thought caused.

“And look what he sent back!” Diana fished in her pocket and withdrew a folded scrap of paper. She unfurled it and handed it to Ellie.

It was a portrait done in charcoal on a ragged bit of paper; the energetic lines were smudgy at the edges, but the artist was talented. And the subject was… too good to be true.

“That can’t be him,” Ellie protested. Her heart had forgotten to beat again.

The man in the portrait looked like a Bourbon prince.

He belonged in one of the etchings in the history book on the parlor shelf.

He had a high forehead, strong cheekbones, and a heart-shaped jaw; there was a dashing dent in his chin and his plump upper lip had a strong cupid’s bow.

The artist had directed the man’s sultry gaze straight out at Ellie, and she felt oddly unsettled.

“There’s no way this man is a backwoodsman!

” Although he did look like a man who could write about roses and meadowgrass and walking autumnal woods dreaming of his bride.

“Who even drew this, out there in the middle of nowhere?” Ellie said in disbelief.

“He said there was an artist at one of the mining towns nearby.” Diana was smug, removing the portrait from Ellie’s grasp. “He rode a whole day to go get this done for me.”

“But why would an artist be in a mining town?” Ellie couldn’t accept the portrait. She couldn’t have been writing to that. Mercy, if she met a man that beautiful in real life she probably wouldn’t even be able to squeak hello.

“Honestly, Ellie! Who cares! Focus on the important things— look at him. ”

Ellie had looked at him. She had the racing heart to prove it. “That could be a picture of anyone,” she’d said limply.

Diana pinched her playfully. “Listen to you. ‘He might not be writing the letters; this might not be a picture of him.’ You cynic. I thought you were supposed to be the romantic one!”

“So did I.” Ellie felt numb at the thought of Diana marrying Beau McBride. For many reasons. “Are you really going to say yes?”

But that was a ridiculous question. Who wouldn’t say yes to that face, and those letters?

“Yes!” Diana was giddy. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

From the moment Diana had said that first yes, Ellie had known she’d have to find a way to follow her, and by the time Diana had said the last yes, she’d decided how.

“I knew you weren’t a cynic!” Diana squealed the next day when she caught Ellie scouring the advertisements, circling any that mentioned Montana. “Oh, this will be perfect! We can have a double wedding!”

Yes. Only Ellie had trouble finding a suitable husband.

She wrote to a few, but they were all crude, and many were borderline illiterate, if not totally illiterate.

Some hired public letter writers to respond, and those letters were stiffly formal.

Not one of them wrote with so much as a sprinkle of poetry.

And as much as Ellie wanted to follow Diana, she didn’t want to lock herself into a life with someone she had nothing in common with.

Her needs were modest(ish): someone kind, who wasn’t a drunk, or violent; someone who cared about more than finding just a brood mare or a housekeeper.

And he had to live near Diana’s new home in Buck’s Creek.

That proved to be the sticking point. Ellie and Diana ordered a map from a catalog and pored over the sketchy width of Montana, trying to calculate distances.

“There’s really no point if I can’t be within half a day’s ride of you,” Ellie fretted, ripping the latest letter in two when she realized Grasshopper Creek was more than a hundred miles away from Diana’s new home. “Who knew Montana was so big?”

She’d really begun to despair. But then one day she’d received a response and, miracles of miracles, it came from Buck’s Creek, Montana. The exact same town Beau McBride was from. It was like finding a needle in a haystack.

“I thought Beau said there were only McBrides in Buck’s Creek,” Ellie said disbelievingly as she read the letter, which contained no name, only the identifying number of the advertisement: 262.

“Maybe they’re related! Oh my, we could be actual sisters!” Diana lit up. “Imagine that, El!”