Male-Order Catalogue

By Fleeta Cunningham

While ordering a birthday gift from a mail order catalog, Lavinia Cates remembers her sister's comment that life would be easier if one could just order a beau the same way. She contemplates the idea and, on a whim, fills out a fantasy order for the handsome gent in the cashmere mackintosh on another page. In 1900, a spinster of 24 has little hope of marriage, but with Matt Holland, the handsome railroad agent, taking an interest in her, Lavinia might change her expectations. When he’s not courting Lavinia, Matt hunts for train robbers, tries to stop the notorious Jessups from selling homemade “white lightnin’,” and partners with a Texas Ranger. Along the way he learns why he was warned that Texas ladies have a lot of determination—and are handy with shotguns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781509205653

Fleeta Cunningham

A fifth generation Texan, Fleeta Cunningham has lived her entire life in Texas, both small towns and big cities. Drawing on all of them, she writes about the unique character--and characters--of the southern states. After a career as a law librarian for a major Texas law firm, writing a monthly column for a professional newsletter and other legal publications, she returned to her home in Central Texas to write full time. Fleeta has been writing in one form or another since the age of eight. When she isn't writing, she teaches creative writing classes, makes quilts, and designs miniature gowns for her huge collection of fashion dolls.

Book preview

Inc.

Santa Rita, Texas? That’s where you’re going?

You’ve heard of it? Matt doubted his friend was thinking of the same town. It’s a small place, barely on the map, but it seems to be well located for my purposes.

I know something about it. With obvious effort Julius restrained his amusement. I know enough to figure you’re in more danger from rapacious spinsters—scrawny, fiftyish, and slightly crack-brained, probably with carping voices and a dozen cats—than you are from train robbers down there. He patted his pockets and came out with a folded sheet of paper. Here. My clerk brought it to me this morning. One of your Santa Rita spinsters decided to order herself a husband from our fall catalogue. See for yourself. And note how nicely you fit her specifications. One long finger pointed to the column for Item Description. Just look. Six feet, dark, wavy hair, blue eyes, thirty years old, and she’ll accept no substitutions.

Matt took the order form and read the lines where Julius pointed. He had to chuckle at the naiveté of the customer, before a deeper reason for the order suggested itself. How much loneliness, how much despair did that form represent?

Praise for Fleeta Cunningham and…

ELOPEMENT FOR ONE

Well-crafted story… exciting plot… interesting characters… The love between the two main characters is precious, from beginning to the final, exciting conclusion… I am now determined to read the rest of the series.

~The Romance Studio (5 Stars)

~*~

BLACK RAIN RISING

One of the most fantastic books I've read this year… grabbed my attention from the first sentence… A memorable, entertaining, and well-written story… An author of increasing distinction who will never disappoint her readers.

~Two Lips Reviews (5 Lips, Recommended)

~*~

HELP WANTED: WIFE

Ms. Cunningham writes a sweet romance story where the two cantankerous characters both agree to smooth out the rough spots and try together again.

~Long and Short Reviews (5 Stars Terrific Read)

Male-Order Catalogue

by

Fleeta Cunningham

The Help Wanted Series

The Santa Rita Series

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Male-Order Catalogue

COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Fleeta Cunningham

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Rae Monet, Inc. Design

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Vintage Rose Edition, 2016

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-0565-3

The Help Wanted Series and The Santa Rita Series

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

To Cary Kittrel and the Bastrop Public Library Staff:

Without them, I would be floundering.

Many thanks for all the hours

you spend answering the unanswerable.

Read all of Fleeta Cunningham’s books:

The Santa Rita Series

Don’t Call Me Darlin’

Black Rain Rising

Elopement for One

Half Past Mourning

Cry Against the Wind

Help Wanted: WIFE

Male-Order Catalogue

The Shame of Merline Gates

~

Bal Masque

Close Encounter with a Crumpet

Double Wedding, Single Dad

Till the World Is Safe for Dreams

(Till the World Is Safe for Dreams also appears in the anthology Brides of Christmas, Volume One)

All of the above titles

are available at The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

www.thewildrosepress.com

Chapter 1

I sound envious as well as disapproving. Prim and spinsterish, even bitter. Lavinia Cates took one more look at the letter before she folded it for mailing.

Regardless of how it sounds, I must tell Lottie our reckless sister has again leaped before she looked. Of course, Lilah Rose has always been impetuous. But to elope, and with that Jessup boy! And her not even eighteen. If only she’d picked some nice boy from a good family, someone worthwhile, I’d be less skeptical. Oh, I wish I had insisted Ranger Fellis go after Lilah Rose and that boy.

She’d told the news bluntly, Lavinia supposed, but she wouldn’t pretend to be anything other than dismayed. Lottie would know better. They’d shared everything, tribulation or celebration, for the last seven years, since their parents died of influenza. Together they’d tried to guide Lilah Rose, curtail her impulses, and instill a measure of caution in her headstrong nature. Judging by the note on the dining table this morning, they’d failed. Lilah Rose had left caution, and common sense, behind. I love him so…please understand…his parents will let us have the mill cabin…don’t worry. The hasty words were engraved in Lavinia’s mind, a few scribbled lines to say Lilah Rose had slipped away with a drunken miller’s son to be married by the justice of the peace in Winslow. One of the prominent Cates daughters married to a Jessup. Everyone in Santa Rita knew the Jessups brewed white lightning and made surreptitious rounds to deliver it on Saturday nights. This elopement will provide grist for the gossip mill for weeks. I won’t be able to go anywhere without the old biddies making comments and offering condolences. Lavinia picked up her pen, meaning to find a way to soften the news to Lottie, but words wouldn’t come.

She nibbled the end of her pen. I was never impulsive or irresponsible. Never so blindly in love I’d just leave a note and run away. No, she hadn’t been, Lavinia remembered with a measure of indignation. Consequently, at twenty-four, she was unmarried, with neither suitor nor sister nearby to warm her heart. If only…

Lavinia put the pen aside. No point in opening that door again. If her parents had lived another year. If Lottie had been a little older. If Carrick had been willing to wait a while. If anything had been just a little different, Lavinia would be married, have a home of her own, perhaps children. If only… But it didn’t happen that way. You did your duty, took the responsibility, and here all of you are. Lottie, happily playing social secretary to Cousin Penny and seeing all the glamour of New York; Lilah Rose, pretending to be grown up and trying her hand at housewifery. And you, Lavinia, the spinster sister, with no life outside of keeping house for a spoiled cat and playing piano for Sunday school.

Not another word! Anything she added to the letter would be nothing more than resentment laced with sour grapes. Lavinia sealed her letter, planning to mail it in the morning. Meanwhile, the last light of day faded, a crisp wind rustling dry leaves against the windows. Twilight came as she hurried to close the curtains and light lamps. Evening chores wouldn’t wait, and if she didn’t stir herself, she’d be finishing up in pitch dark. She took a heavy shawl from the hook inside the kitchen door and braced herself for an hour in the rising wind and deepening shadows.

With hens in their coop, the last of the fall pumpkins and squash gathered, dinner finished, and the kitchen tidy, Lavinia’s small cottage felt painfully empty, the rooms unnaturally quiet. No chattering sister dried dishes while recounting what every young lady had worn to the girls’ friendship circle at the parsonage. The new music on the piano remained unopened. Not a single ribbon or scarf tumbled over the back of the loveseat. Lavinia, the soul of tidiness and order, felt a bit lost with nothing to pick up, put away, or mend. Even Mephistopheles, the rotund black cat, simply turned around in his basket by the kitchen