A Bride for Harper by P. Creeden

Author:P. Creeden [Creeden, P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-08-13T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Sadness still hung on Mabel’s shoulders. It had been a week since they had buried her father, but she still missed him every moment of the day. Her eyes might have been dry at the moment, but she never knew when something in her environment would strike the nerve in her and she’d start crying again. As she stepped off the stagecoach in Fort Laramie, she took a deep breath to steady herself.

The first thing she saw was the church standing in front of her. What would it have been like to have been married there? What would it have been like to have her father and husband present for the wedding? Jealousy sprang in her chest. Maude had had a proper wedding with a man whom she’d already loved, and father there, to give her away.

Afterwards, with only her family present, they had a short ceremony for Mabel to say her vows to a man she’d never met. At least her father had been there for that, more than a month ago. How had so much time passed so quickly? How had it become May already? Her pastor had sent word to Pastor Greene, here in Laramie about the day of her arrival, but as she looked about, it seemed the military town went about its own business, and no one was there, waiting for her. She frowned and stepped up to the stagecoach driver. “Are we late, sir? What time was our arrival scheduled here in Laramie?”

The driver lifted a brow and smiled at her. “No, Miss. We’re about forty minutes ahead of schedule. If you need to await someone, you can do it in the stage coach office. If you like.”

She nodded as the men set her steamer trunk upon the wooden slats of the covered porch in front of the office. She sat upon the trunk and waited. Horses were coming and going out of town, and any one of them could have held her mountain man, but as each one passed her with a gentleman doing little more than nodding her direction, her heart began to sink. How would she know Mr. Harper Jones when she saw him?

A barking dog caught her attention as the sun began sinking in the sky to just the right height that she had to shade her eyes to look to the west. A brown and white setter came bounding up ahead of a man walking on the road with a sled behind him. Blue eyes flashed in her memory as she thought of the man who’d opened the door for her at the general store six weeks ago. The dog was the same as was the sled. The man came, pulling the sled covered in furs behind him, but he wore a suit instead of the furs she’d seen on him that day. His longer brown hair was tied back, exposing his strong, square jaw. She wondered if he was going to the general store again as he continued toward her.

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