Mail Order Runaway Read online

  Engaged to the Wrong Man…

  Hoping to escape her mother’s control and a fiancé she doesn’t love, Elinor Travers switches places with her best friend, Addie, who is having second thoughts about marrying her own fiancé—a Montana hay farmer named Gideon, who offers the life that Elinor has always dreamed of.

  Abandoned as a Boy…

  Gideon Cartwright spent years denying his own dreams so he could raise his younger siblings after his father abandoned them. At last, he can concentrate on his farm, and settle down with a wife of his own. But will his mail order bride’s charade remind him too much of the father he resents, and cost Elinor her one chance at true happiness?

  Mail Order

  Runaway

  by Julianna Blake

  Copyright 2013 Julianna Blake

  Published by Timeless Hearts Press

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to an authorized eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  www.JuliannaBlakeAuthor.blogspot.com

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  Julianna Blake’s books are usually sweet historical romances. They do not contain any explicit or descriptive scenes of intimacy. However, they are not Christian in nature, and may contain kissing and possible brief allusions to mild sexual tension. [We include this warning, because bestselling sweet historicals often end up on Christian/inspirational romance bestseller lists, due to automatic algorithms in a retailer’s search engines, and this may confuse readers looking for only Christian-themed stories. This is beyond the publisher’s and author’s control. Timeless Hearts Press always places books in the appropriate categories.]

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  October, 1890

  Montana

  The horse galloped at full speed down the main road. Hot tears coursed down Elinor’s cheeks, turning icy before they even dripped off her chin. The wind against her face was frigid, and she realized too late that the weather had become too cold for the way she was dressed.

  No matter, she thought. The brisk air would clear her mind. She was so furious, humiliated, and heartbroken—her heart ached as her mind replayed his words over and over again.

  She hadn’t decided where she was going, only that she had to get as far away as she could. Perhaps she’d ride into town and see the pastor. He’d know what to do.

  As the minutes went by, snowflakes began to fall from the sky. Soon, they whirled in a vigorous dance, and fat white flakes that coated her hair, then melted into frigid drops that seeped through her clothing. It wasn’t long before she could scarcely see the road in front of her.

  The wind blew harder, and her hands were freezing, curled over the reins.

  Endless minutes crawled by, and it only got worse. At last she pulled the reins, bringing the horse up short, scanning the world of white. She wasn’t even sure how far she’d gone toward town.

  She wasn’t going to freeze to death for the sake of her pride. She tugged on the reins, turning the horse around. At least…she thought she was. The snow was melting not long after it touched the ground, but beyond her the world was nearly obliterated by a curtain of white.

  She didn’t want to overwork the horse in the cold weather—a cold, sweaty horse could end up being a sick one—so she rode back at a fast trot. The wind was less harsh at the slower pace, but it still seemed even colder.

  The wind whipped her skirts, exposing the bottom of her legs. Her calves were ice cold, and her fingers were numb. That can’t be good, she thought. The snow was finally beginning to stick to the ground, obscuring it.

  Now Elinor truly felt fear—she was lost. She had no idea how far she had wandered, or how far from the road they were. She wasn’t even sure that she and the horse were going in the right direction.

  Tears blurred her vision once again, but it didn’t matter—she couldn’t see anything but her horse and the curtain of snow. She drew the lapel of the sacque around her neck as tightly as she could, but with the wind pulling at it, it made little difference. All she could hear was the crunching of snow beneath the horse’s hooves, and the sound of labored breathing—both her own and the horse’s. Do horses freeze to death as fast as humans? If he gave out sooner than she did, she had little chance of survival.

  She was so tired. Tired of lying, tired of hiding who she was. Tired of trying to sit, twisted upright, in the stupid side saddle. Tired of trying to keep her eyes open. She let go of the reins, leaning forward, clinging to the horse’s mane as best she could.

  Then she closed her eyes.

  Chapter 1

  FOUR MONTHS EARLIER…

  Charlestown, Massachusetts

  July, 1890

  “How did you become the luckiest girl in the world, Addie?” Elinor rolled onto her back, laying across Addie’s bed. She held the letter above her head with both hands, reading the words again, even though they were already seared in her memory.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Addie chided as she slid the last pin into her copper-colored hair. “You’re the one about to marry a textile baron.”

  “Bah! He’s no more a textile baron than I am the queen of England. His father owns a small, run-down textile mill, which is the only reason my father thinks I should marry him. It doesn’t matter to him that Walter is a bore, or that I’ll be miserable every moment for the rest of my life.” Elinor sighed, letting the arm that held the letter flop over her head to cover her eyes. Hot needles of tears pricked at her eyes. I will not cry. Not here. Not now.

  “You’re exaggerating.” Addie rolled her eyes, hands on her hips. “And you’re also wrinkling my freshly-made bed.”

  Addie’s pinched expression coerced Elinor to raise herself up off the bed quilt. “Oh bother, one of your six-dozen siblings will be along to mess it up for you in a second or two.”

  “Exaggerating again. And if you must mess up a bed, choose Margaret’s.” Addie flicked her hand toward the other two beds in the small room. “She makes a terrible bed, to begin with.”

  “Six siblings, six-dozen, what’s the difference?” Elinor sighed and got off the bed, smoothing the quilt in a half-hearted gesture. “I don’t know how you do it. I’d go mad living in such chaos.” Even though I always wished I had brothers and sisters of my own…just maybe not quite so many.

  As if to prove Elinor’s point, a crash sounded from below
, in the general direction of the kitchen, after which, squalls and crying ensued. The disapproving tones of Addie’s harried mother followed.

  “I am going mad,” Addie complained. “Why do you think I’m becoming a mail order bride? I need to get out of here. I’m ready to start a life of my own. I don’t want to be trapped working in the shirtwaist factory forever. And the boys around here aren’t standing in line to marry a bookworm like me.”

  “That’s preposterous. You’re a terrific girl, and any man would be lucky to have you.” Elinor grabbed Addie by the hand, squeezing it. “But I do wish you wouldn’t go. You’re my best friend! How will I survive my boring, endless life with Walter if I don’t at least have you by my side?”

  “I don’t want to leave you behind, but we both know that even after you’re married, your parents will do everything they can to keep us apart. You had to sneak out just to come here today! What are you going to do, sneak around and lie to Walter after you’re married, the way that you lie to your parents? That’s not an ideal way to start off a marriage.”

  “I know, I know!” Elinor sighed, covering her face with her hands. “It’s not like I want to lie—but what choice did they give me? Just because Papa inherited some money and moved us to the Back Bay, I’m supposed to leave my best friend—my whole life—behind?” She paced, flailing her hands as she talked, the beloved letter crinkling with every movement. “The last two years since my family moved away from Charlestown have been miserable for me. It’s not fair! I just want to be friends with you, find a man that I love—and who really loves me—and live a normal life.”

  Elinor sagged onto Addie’s bed again. “I’m tired of Papa’s ambitions…and Mama’s, too. She makes me take painting lessons, piano lessons, French lessons…all so I can fit in with the other ‘accomplished young ladies’. Bah!” She held up the letter, shaking it. “This is what life is about! Love. Marriage. Babies. A farm, and a barn full of chickens and horses and adorable little wooly lambs. Most important, a life with a real man—not one who equates marriage with a business proposition!” Elinor flopped backward onto the bed again. “I’m tired of having to play a role. Embroidery. French. Piano lessons. Ugh! Why can’t I just make my own decisions?”

  Addie crossed her arms. “There are far worse things in the world than having to take piano and French lessons. I have to take violin lessons, from my mother. And I have to work all day at the shirtwaist factory. Plus there’s helping around the house. When was the last time you had to change a diaper, or take a sister to the park, or do the dishes for a family of nine, or—?”

  “Fine, fine, I get it. I’m an only child, and lazy to boot.”

  “I wouldn’t say lazy. You get done what’s expected of you. And before you moved and got a whole staff to wait on you, I always saw you work hard whenever your mother asked you to. But now, you’re just very…unsatisfied.”

  “You act like I’m a spoiled brat. Believe me, I’m not! Mama and Papa have spent almost all the inheritance on the new house, and buying their share in the factory, and the servants. They can barely make ends meet, because they’re trying so hard to maintain a lifestyle that they can’t afford. There’s no room for any extravagances for me, beyond what is necessary to show off to their Art Club friends. So believe me, I’m not showered with trinkets. They might have to let half of the staff go.”

  “I didn’t realize they’d let it get that far. How awful for the staff, losing their jobs like that.”

  “Mama and Papa think I don’t know, but I’ve heard them arguing. They think my marriage to Walter will bring Papa new business connections that may help keep us afloat.” All it will bring me is misery. Elinor imagined herself standing before Walter in the church, and a panic swept through her. Her head spun worse than it ever had from a tight-laced corset. She fanned herself with the letter and tried to push the image away by filling her mind with happy things. Green fields of alfalfa. Fluffy white sheep. Baskets of home-grown vegetables.

  Gideon Cartwright.

  “I’m sorry.” Addie’s voice intruded. “Honestly, I’ve never thought you were spoiled. You just seem so unhappy, and even though things aren’t perfect, you still have quite a grand life.”

  The panic receded and Elinor took a deep breath, letting it out in a shaky puff. “It seems that way, doesn’t it? But it’s not. I’ve done everything my mother has expected of me—including sacrificing the rest of my life, all for her ambitions! I know it sounds shallow, but you just don’t understand, Addie. My life seems perfect on the surface, but I’m miserable.”

  “Elinor, your perspective is skewed. You should see the hardships that the girls at the factory have to live through. Some of them have lived through terrible accidents, being orphaned, nearly starving to death. They’d all give anything to have the life you have.”

  “I’d rather work in a factory than live this way. I feel like a prisoner. A pretty prison is a prison nonetheless. All my choices have been taken away from me. I had hoped to escape my parents’ expectations when I married, but I fear I’ll be doing their will long after they’re gone. I think Walter is just like them. He cares about appearances. Not love. Not family. My life is not my own. I thought my best friend, of all people, would understand that.” Elinor thrust herself from the bed and stalked over to the window, looking down at the children playing in the street.

  Tremont Street was a narrow lane lined with three-story row houses. Groups of young children ran about playing ball, skipping rope, laughing and having a fine time, until they were called in for supper or for chores. Elinor had once called Tremont Street home, too—her old house stood just across the street, with a nearly identical layout to Addie’s. The new owners hadn’t kept up the old house as well as her mother had, and it looked both familiar and strange at the same time.

  They’d grown up together since the girls were five years old, when the McGilvray clan moved in across the street. Adelaide McGilvray and Elinor looked so much alike that people who didn’t know them often mistook Elinor for yet another McGilvray daughter. Addie and Elinor would giggle, and never corrected the mistake, because they both talked often of how much they wished they were sisters. When they played “house”, they would often pretend they were sisters, who had grown up and married handsome twin brothers. “Someday,” Elinor remembered saying, “we’ll have houses right next door to each other, and we’ll have babies at the same time, so they can be best friends too. And they’ll look alike, and they’ll tell everyone that they’re sisters, just like we do!” Both girls had giggled at the thought.

  They had been inseparable. Now a gulf existed between them—a chasm forged by the inheritance money and her parents’ greedy ambitions. Elinor had been too absent from Addie’s life to see her increasing burden of responsibility, and Addie had never been privy to Elinor’s home life—even when they were neighbors, Elinor’s mother hadn’t cared for “that little Irish girl across the way,” and didn’t want Elinor to bring her in the house. Though they tried to maintain a friendship after Elinor moved, sometimes it felt like they were strangers, instead of the “almost-sisters” they used to be.

  Elinor hated the life she’d been forced to live for the last two years. She shivered, thinking of all the times she’d been taunted by the rich girls at her school, or when she’d overheard adults tittering behind her parents’ backs at the Boston Art Club events. The Travers family had never really been accepted in the Back Bay, but Mama didn’t care. They had “arrived”—in her mind—and that was all that had mattered.

  Once Papa was a partial owner in the shirtwaist factory he once helped manage—and where Elinor had begged him to get Addie a job as a seamstress—he had made many business contacts at the Club, and had somehow finagled the son of a textile mill owner to marry his only daughter, much to his own delight. Papa had missed his calling—he would have been a brilliant salesman.

  In two years, Mama and Papa had taken away her home, her school friends, and her very best friend in th
e world…and then they had taken away Elinor’s dream of marrying a man who truly loved her, and living her life on a picturesque little farm.

  Elinor laid her head against Addie’s bedroom window. The glass felt almost cool on her forehead, a welcome relief in the sweltering unfinished attic room that the McGilvrays considered to be a bedroom. Mama had finished and decorated their own upper story for her tenth birthday.

  “What’s really bothering you?” Addie’s voice broke into Elinor’s thoughts. “You’re far more out of sorts than usual.”

  Elinor sighed, then looked down at the letter still clutched in her hands…the letter that said all the things she had been longing to hear someday from a man who loved her more than life itself. The letter that said things that she now knew she would never hear from any man. Ever.

  Because the letter hadn’t been written to her.

  It was written to Addie.

  “I…I suppose I’m just jealous. Dreadfully jealous. Insanely jealous.” She laughed, turning to hold the letter aloft. “He has horses. And chickens. And sheep. Oh, how I adore sheep!”

  “You’ve never even seen a real sheep.”

  “I don’t care! And he has his own farm—acres and acres of land. I’ve always wanted to live on a farm!”

  “I know.” Addie’s voice was soft with sympathy

  Elinor recalled the times she had pestered Addie with tales of the perfect little country farm she hoped to have someday in Roslindale, and begged Addie to consider a country life as well. Now Addie was getting the life she had never shown an interest in. And she’d be left behind. Mrs. Walter Newell.

  Her stomach flopped, threatening to revolt.

  Elinor paced, skimming through the letter’s contents, each word making her heart soar—then dash like an injured bird to the ground. “He wants to take you for walks in his hay fields,” she recounted with bitterness, “and watch the sunset with you. He told you that you looked beautiful in the miniature that you sent him, and he can’t wait to hold your hand in his. This should be my life.” Elinor shook the letter in the air. “It’s the life I dreamed of. And I’m glad you’re getting it—I truly am. I’m so happy that you won’t be stuck as a spinster, or working in a factory until you catch the eye of some boy who barely earns more than you do. I’m glad that you won’t be stuck here, and that you can board a train and have an incredible cross-country adventure and spend the rest of your life with a man who loves you…who knows you, and loves you for who you really are. Truly, am so very happy for you…”