The Hand-me-down Mail Order Bride: Poppy Valley Series, #4

By Beverly Bernard

If you're looking for sweet, clean romance, take a trip to Poppy Valley!

Ada Shipley is headed for an uncertain future. When her father answers an advertisement for a mail-order bride, promising her to a gentleman she's never met, she finds herself on a train west to California.

Bart Callan has always found pleasure in his horses and his work running the livery in Poppy Valley. It had never crossed his mind to think about marriage.

When Ada finds herself alone at the train station with her mail-order husband-to-be nowhere in sight, Bart offers her a ride to Poppy Valley to spend time with the only person she knows in California, her cousin Amelia. While Ada makes attempts to track down her wayward betrothed, Bart finds himself drawn to the sheltered farm girl from Indiana. But when she finds out the truth about why her fiance failed to meet her at the station, she flees Poppy Valley in shame. 

It's time for Bart to tell Ada how he feels, but first, they'll have to weather some dangerous obstacles.

Get caught up in this wholesome historical romance and then be sure to check other titles in the Poppy Valley Series, The Schoolmarm's Surprising Suitor, The Blacksmith's Beloved Belle, and The Banker's Mail Order Bride.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beverly Bernard
• Release date: Nov 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386900795

Beverly Bernard

Beverly Bernard was born in the midwestern United States and currently makes her home in the Windy City. She has been a writer since childhood and enjoys crafting complex characters and stories that capture a reader's heart. She is mother to three kids and is owned by two cats and two dogs. When she isn't writing, she likes to knit and crochet, build websites, and play too many video games.

Book preview

One

RAIN HAMMERED AGAINST the windows of the train as it traveled through the stormy night. Ada watched the drops strike the window and run sideways before flying off into the wind. The train car was dark with only a single lantern near the door in the event that a hasty exit was needed. Most of the passengers were sleeping, and a young mother was crooning to her fussing infant to keep him quiet. Daybreak was still a few hours away, but Ada was too nervous to sleep. The recent weeks had flown by, and she was finally less than a day away from meeting her husband-to-be in California. She knew she should be excited, but instead she felt a nervous dread in the pit of her stomach.

Unlike most brides who joyfully anticipated their wedding day, she had never even met the man she was to marry. The match had been made by her father who had answered an advertisement in an Indiana paper. Not only had Papa answered one, he had answered four pleas from men seeking wives. Only Oliver Betts had written back, agreeing to take on a twenty-year-old potential bride. At her age, Ada was practically a spinster, and Mr. Betts was taking quite a chance on her, Papa said, but Ada didn’t care. Getting married wasn’t her idea at all. She was content to stay home in Indiana and care for her aging father. Her five older brothers had all left home. One by one they had found wives, married, and had children of their own. Only Ada remained behind, the youngest of the six siblings and the only girl. But Papa insisted she marry and have a family of her own. He didn’t want her to live her life alone and lonely, as he had after his wife’s death. Ada had never had a suitor, and none of the young men she had grown up with seemed interested in courting her. They were busy preening in front of well-dressed young ladies from nearby towns such as Shelbyville—not that the city girls wanted anything to do with them.

She toyed with the handkerchief in her hands, pulling it back and forth between her fingers. She had no idea how to be anyone’s wife. She had been raised by a man in the company of men. After her mother’s death, when Ada was only two years old, her father never remarried. Instead he raised his children alone. As soon as Ada was old enough to reach the stove, she took over kitchen duties for the family. She was a good cook—one of her few accomplishments. She did not sew or knit or long for babies of her own. She preferred the company of the horses her father bred and trained for farm work. When she wasn’t cooking or cleaning up after six messy men, she was in the barn with the horses. They were her only friends, since the girls she went to school with were not interested in including her in their activities. They ridiculed her ill-fitting dresses that had been donated by the church ladies’ auxiliary and the hand-me-down boots she wore that had once belonged to one of her brothers. Her hands were capable and calloused, not dainty and ladylike, and there was a smattering of freckles across her nose because she never remembered to wear her bonnet when she was outdoors.

A layer of condensation obscured her view, and Ada wiped it away with her handkerchief. The rain had stopped, and a nearly full moon peeked through the clouds. The landscape was flat and barren, nothing like the lush woods of Indiana she had played in with her brothers when they were children. She knew there were mountains near where she would be living, at least that’s what Oliver had said in one of his letters. There had been three of them, each one addressed to her, although her father had written the replies before showing them to her. She had no idea what her father had written on her behalf, but he must have embellished her qualities a great deal to interest someone as educated as Oliver. He was an accountant for a shipping company in California, which she imagined was a difficult and important job. She never was much good with numbers.

The sky outside grew a shade brighter with the coming of the sunrise. The train was due to arrive in Placerville at 11 o’clock in the morning, so there was still time to get some sleep. Ada closed her eyes and tried to calm her nerves. It wouldn’t do for her to be in a tizzy when she met her future husband.

THE SUN WAS HIGH IN the sky when the town of Placerville, California, came into view. Ada had managed to sleep an hour or two before waking to find that the sun had come up, and the barren landscape had given way to towering oaks and pines. In a pasture, horses grazed, and her heart leapt. She missed the horses who lived on her Papa’s farm. They were draft horses for working, nothing like the fancy slender-legged animals in the pasture, but she loved them just the same.

She thought the train was slowing down, and sure enough the conductor came through to announce that they would be arriving at their stop in a few minutes. Ada took a small comb from the pocket of her dress. She loosened her long braid, combed her dark blond hair until it was smooth, and then braided it once again. From the same pocket, she pulled out a bright red ribbon and tied it in a bow at the end of the braid. She had written to tell Oliver she would be wearing a blue dress and a red ribbon in her hair. She had no photographs of herself to send, so she had decided to find a different way for him to recognize her when he came to meet her at the station. She knew that he was tall and had dark hair and a mustache. She wondered what it would be like to kiss a man with a mustache. She blushed, embarrassed at such thoughts. She had never kissed any man, with or without a mustache, and once she thought about it and realized Oliver would probably expect such affection from her, she panicked. Surely, he would take that part of their relationship slowly—or so she hoped.

WHEN THE TRAIN’S GIANT iron wheels finally came to a halt, Ada pulled her faded valise from under her seat. Everything she owned in the world fit into just one bag. She had a few sets of underthings, a dress in addition to the one she was wearing, a simple cotton nightgown, and an extra pair of stockings with a run in them that was so small she was sure no one would notice it. She stood up and smoothed her dress, a blue calico donated by a member of the church congregation when they learned she would be going West. It fit her well, except across the bosom area where it was loose. Ada assumed its previous owner had been more well-endowed than she was, which wouldn’t take much doing. She hadn’t had time to alter it, which was probably a good thing since her sewing skills