Harlequin Historical November 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: The Christmas Duchess\Russian Winter Nights\A Shocking Proposition\The Wrong Cowboy\Rescued by the Viscount by Christine Merrill

Author:Christine Merrill [MERRILL, CHRISTINE/SKYE, LINDA/ROLLS, ELIZABETH/ROBINSON AND ANNE HERRIES, LAURI]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Stafford waited until Marie was settled in a chair before he pulled the letter out of his pocket. It had still been in his saddlebag in the vestibule. After handing the envelope to her and watching her brows pull down, he walked around his desk and took a seat.

“I’m assuming you recognize that.” A part of him wanted to start questioning her, but another part told him to take it slow, let her reveal her story.

“Yes, it’s the letter I sent Mr. Wagner.” She’d turned it over, was staring at the wax seal on the back.

“I picked it up when I was in town the other day.”

“I mailed it a long time ago,” she said. “I never imagined it would take that long to arrive.”

“It probably didn’t. Mrs. Smith had it. Said she was holding on to it until Mick got back.”

“So he never saw it?”

Stafford shook his head.

“Did Mrs. Smith put this on it?” She was delicately running a finger over the wax seal.

Stafford figured the woman had resealed it, but it made no sense for her to seal a letter that hadn’t been in the first place. “You didn’t?”

“No, I used some of Emma Lou’s—Mrs. Meeker’s—stationery. It was prepasted.” Marie laid the envelope on the desk.

Verna Smith had been a burr in his side—everyone’s side—since she’d married Henry only six weeks after her second husband had died and the two merged their dry-goods stores. The way she’d raised all of Henry’s prices could almost be counted as stealing, and her meddlesome activities irked everyone, but this really irritated him. Stafford lifted the envelope off the desk. “She must not have been able to reseal it, so thought this might fool everyone.”

“Are you implying she opened it and read it?”

“Yes.”

Marie, looking stunned, glanced from him to the envelope and back again. “That would explain how she knew the children’s last name.”

Protectiveness as he’d never known it bloomed inside him. “What did she say?”

“Just something along the lines that they were the Meeker children.”

Her timidity implied that Verna Smith had said more, but he wasn’t going to dwell on that now. “What does the letter say?”

“Open it. Read it. It explains how Emma Lou and John Meeker died in a fire, and since he, Mr. Wagner, that is, was Emma Lou’s cousin, he is the only family the children have left.” With a wave of her hand, she said, “Go ahead. Open it.”

Stafford did, and read it. The letter, in perfect penmanship, explained just that, and how she didn’t think Mick would want the children sent to the orphanage so she was bringing them to him. He read it twice before saying, “It doesn’t say anything about you being Mick’s mail-order bride.”

Her grimace was accompanied by red cheeks. “That was my friend Sarah’s idea. I didn’t have enough money to pay the train fares. Sarah told me about a woman she knew who became a mail-order bride and the husband paid for her travels upon her arrival.

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