Emmeline's Exile (The Alphabet Mail-Order Brides Book 5) Read online

  Copyright© 2019 by Josephine Blake

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  EMMELINE’S EXILE

  By

  Bestselling Author

  JOSEPHINE BLAKE

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Emmeline accepted the newspaper from Dorothy with a dull scowl on her face. Madame Wigg sat, perched precariously upon a large boulder in the garden of her own School and Foundling Home, looking mighty pleased with herself.

  The other girls Dorothy, Beulah and Catalina—her dearest friends—had called her to the garden just moments ago to discuss a very serious matter indeed. Madame Wigg was dying. The doctor had informed her that her life was nearly at its end, and she had announced her desire to insure that each of her girls would be cared for. She’d told them that she wanted them to spread her principals over the Western half of the state, and had offered them each a grant if they would marry and beget schools of their own.

  Emmeline tried to focus on the newspaper Dorothy had handed her, but the words were a gray blur. Since her sight had begun to fade, she’d had to rely more and more on her other senses. It was easier when she sat at the pianoforte, her fingers always seemed to weave music of their own accord but…there were some things she truly needed her sight for. Choosing a groom from amongst the desperate pleas for wives stamped out in newsprint in her hands would certainly be one of them. She glanced up at Madame Wigg, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

  Over the years since Emmeline had been dropped on the doorstep of the school, there had been many rumors of the elderly woman’s demise, none of which had come to fruition. Emmeline had half-wondered if this time was just another ruse on the old woman’s part, but it did not appear to be so this time. Madame Wigg—or Wiggie as she was so fondly called—was pale in the cheeks. The constant sparkle of mischief in her eyes seemed to have dulled. Was she truly dying?

  “Well, Emmeline?” The old woman leaned heavily upon her seat, fixing her with an obstinate stare. Emmeline could not bring herself to argue, no matter that her throat was pinched and her eyes had filled with sudden tears. Wiggie had taken her in when she was little more than an infant. She had fed her and raised her and provided her with an education that she never would have received anywhere else. She could not deny her this.

  Emmeline squinted down at the pages before her and jabbed her finger unseeingly at an ad. “This one,” she murmured. “I’ll write to him.”

  “Lawson Aldridge,” Dorothy read out, peering over Emmeline’s shoulder and gripping it tightly in one hand. “He’s a pharmacist from a town in Wyoming called Buffalo Creek...”

  Emmeline did not allow her tears to tumble from her cheeks until she was safely ensconced in the music room. She could not take it in. Here, in the school where she had grown up, in the room she had taught in for years… this was where she belonged. Not in some forsaken corner of the world where the society would be foul and the culture would be sorely lacking. She loved New York. She loved the beautiful parks. She loved the orchestra that she had to scrape her meager funds together to see once every few months. She loved the tall buildings and the shops, the little bakery around the corner… but most especially, she loved the school. How could Wiggie send her away?

  She sank down onto the bench behind the small cottage piano at the front of the room and pressed her face into her hands. Everything in the music room where she taught the students of the Foundling Home was meticulously organized. As her sight grew worse and worse, Emmeline had kept everything neatly in its place, so that she would always know where to find it.

  She shifted her weight forward and reached beneath the piano bench to withdraw the notebook onto which she always placed her own compositions. She knew the songs by heart, but it did not make it any easier to see the blurred shapes of the notes she had once loved. Emmeline flipped to the back of the book and drew out a folded letter. Her fingers knew its creases, and her mind hardly required assistance as she stared down at the words there. She knew what it said.

  Emmeline had been left here at the school with a note in her tiny fist and nothing more than the clothes on her back. The note had not said much. Wiggie had given it to her when she had been fifteen. The contents spoke of love, desperation, and a hope of a better life for her. It also gave the reason that her mother had been unable to care for her. The reason she had abandoned her. Emmeline’s mother had been blind. Blind and living on the streets of New York. Emmeline had never known her name. She had never come back for her, and Emmeline often wondered if the woman still lived.

  Emmeline bowed her head, not seeing the tears that fell onto the parchment in her hands, but hearing their quiet drip as they made contact.

  This letter was the reason that Emmeline knew she was destined to lose her sight. She had not sought confirmation from a doctor because she had the confirmation here in her hand. She was going blind, just as her mother before her had done, and there was nothing she could do about it. How would she ever survive on her own in the wilds of Wyoming?

  She knew she had no choice, the other girls had all agreed. She had chosen her groom.

  Emmeline straightened up. It would not do to crumble. You are stronger than this. She would do as Wiggie asked of her because she owed it to the woman who had given her a chance at life, and she would keep her blindness a secret from her future husband so that he might accept her. What man would want a sightless bride?

  With a strange, determined resilience forming within her aching heart, Emmeline stood. She tucked her letter away within her notebook, and strolled gracefully over to her writing desk in the corner of the room. There, she took out a blank sheet of paper and began her letter to Lawson Aldridge.

  It took her several hours, as the words on the paper shifted and blurred. She missed lunch, but had the letter ready for the postman when he came that afternoon. With a dull ache in the pit of her stomach, she bid the man “Good day,” and squinted at him as he tucked her letter into his bag. Now, all that was left for her to do was to wait for a response. When it came, she would seal her fate with the stroke of a pen, and then take the train to Wyoming to begin her exile.

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  Emmeline couldn’t see well enough to avoid the people shunting her forward on the train station platform. She clutched her small, leather handbag to her chest and opened her eyes wider, attempting to make sense of the hustling, bustling throng of New Yorkers that seemed desperate to board the train.

  More terrified than she cared to admit, she began negotiating her way across the gap between the platform and the train steps. Her foot slipped. Something nudged her in the middle of the back.

  “Pardon me,” said a hurried voice and a blurred silhouette rushed past her.

  Emmeline inhaled sharply through her nose, breathing in the scent of steam, oil and soot. She slid her foot out from her body slowly, feeling… feeling for the edge of the platform. If she stepped forward and her leg was caught in the gap, she would make an utter fool of herself.

  “Get along there!” Emmeline jumped as a conductor’s voice rang out beside her. It took Emmeline a long moment to realize that the man standing there was offering her his hand. Grateful, she took it and allowed him to guide her up the train steps. Fumbling in her coat pockets, she drew out her ticket and handed it to him. She heard the click of the stamp. “Have a pleasant journey,” and the conductor disappeared again before Emmeline could ask him to point her to her seat.

  She sighed and entered the compartment.

  Her hands were trembling by the time she found her place and sank gratefully into it. Around her, people were chattering happily. None of them seemed to be alone. Emmeline imagined how it must be for them, traveling with the ones they loved. Emmeline was leaving everything and everyone that she loved behind. Well, not completely behind her. From the sounds of it, Beulah would be heading to Texas to start her school, and Dorthy to New Mexico. They were all going their separate ways, all at Wiggie’s insistence.

  Emmeline had exchanged several letters with Lawson Aldridge by now. She had sifted through each with difficulty, holding them right up to her eyes to make out the scribbled words.

  Mr. Aldridge lived in the mountains of Wyoming. He had written to her about the passing of their schoolmarm in a southern town called Buffalo Creek. The name of the town had sounded so familiar to Emmeline…when she had wracked her mind, she vaguely remembered a scandal a few years back during which one of the most wealthy and prominent families in Manhattan had relocated to a small Western town in the middle of nowhere. It had been in the society pages for ages. Brittle they had been called? Or was it Brittler? If Emmeline was recalling correctly, their eldest daughter had been married to a savage of sorts after turning down some of the most eligible bachelors in the city. Dianna Brittler. Yes, that was it.

  She snorted derisively, and then caught her breath as the gears began to grind beneath her feet. There was a jolt, and Emmeline lurched in her seat as the train began to move off down the track. Imagine if you arrive in Wyoming and the man you’re to marry is some sort of savage.

  A wry smile flitted over her lips. She had sorted through all the letters time and time again, but the one that had really held her attention had been the one where Mr. Aldridge described the school and the town of Buffalo Creek. The town that Thomas Brittler had helped put on the map, so to speak, by purchasing and honing a nearby piece of land for his coal mines.

  She had written back to Lawson Aldridge, and they had done little more than exchanged a handful of letters before deciding they would suit. Emmeline hadn’t told him much of herself. She hadn’t wanted to scare the man away from marrying her.

  She hadn’t told him of her growing blindness.

  She was sure this was best. Emmeline knew in her heart that no man would accept such a flawed bride. As she sat inside a train car that was chugging steadily westward, she could not help the panic that surged over her in a tangible wave. What if Mr. Aldridge discovered her secret before they married? Her fingers tightened convulsively on the handles of her bag, her breath coming in sharp gasps. What if he would not have her? She didn’t have enough money to return home if they did not marry… What would become of her? She held in a sob, her eyes filling.

  How could Wiggie have done this to her? Why was she forcing Emmeline to leave the school? Everything at Madame Wigg’s School and Foundling Home had been firmly set in its place. There had been routine and organization…Now, Emmeline was heading into a chasm of the unknown, and she suddenly felt as though the future was lurking before her like a great beast, with its jaws open wide to swallow her whole.

  Chapter Two

  Lawson Aldridge wasn’t the only man sitting at the bar in the Jeweled Belle Saloon that night, but he was certainly the one in the foulest temper. He could still hear the sound of his eldest brother’s voice in his head.

  “It’s time you settled down, Lawson. You’ve lollygagged about for long enough.”

  Lawson ground his teeth and pounded his fist on the bar for more whiskey.

  “This is absurd!” he’d shouted at his brother an hour ago. “I’m not doing it. You write back to that woman and tell her not to come.”

  But Jason Aldridge merely laughed. “It’s too late. She’s on her way. I sent her the money to take the train in a few weeks ago. She’ll be nearly here now.”

  Lawson grunted his thanks as the bartender poured him another shot. “Imbecile,” he murmured under his breath, picturing his brother’s smug face. “Idiotic, meddlesome fool.” He threw back his drink and pulled his lips back from his teeth as the welcome burn skated down his throat.

  Jason Aldridge, Lawson’s older brother by five years, often took it upon himself to pay him a visit where he lived in Buffalo Creek. Each of his visits stood out horribly in Lawson’s memory. Three years ago, Jason had purchased ten head of cattle for Lawson and instructed him to breed them for profit. He’d then left the cattle for Lawson to deal with and headed back to his family in Cheyenne. A few months later Jason had returned and demanded a percentage of the profit as payment. Lawson had given him half the money that he’d made when he sold the ten head to get them off of his hands. Jason’d raged for weeks at the fact that Lawson hadn’t done as he was told.

  Last year, his brother had taken it upon himself to bring Lawson a treasure map he had won in a game of cards. “Look, I can’t go,” he’d said. “Penny and the girls need me to be bringing in a decent income, but you’ve got nothing tying you down!” Lawson had refused flat-out to leave Buffalo Creek on some wild goose chase and again, his brother had not spoken to him for weeks.

  This time, though…this time Jason had gone too far.

  Lawson set his elbows on the bar top and tipped his head into his palms. What in the devil was he going to do with a schoolmarm that had come to Buffalo Creek specifically to be his bride?

  “I’ve got it all worked out,” his brother had said earlier that afternoon. “The local teacher here, she’s gone, see? And the town is looking for someone to take her place. You need a wife! It’s about time. This woman will be everything good for you. You’ll see.”

  But Lawson didn’t want to wait for the blasted woman to arrive, just so he could scrape up the funds to turn her around and send her straight back to New York. Apart from that, the whole thing just didn’t make sense. His brother had always been a selfish man. When had he ever done something for Lawson’s real benefit? There was something else going on here. Lawson scrubbed his thumbs over his unshaven jaw, his forehead still plastered to his raised palms. How does me having a wife do any good to you, Jason? What are you hoping to gain from this?

  It didn’t matter. The whole idea was errant nonsense. He’d have to go to the station tomorrow and explain to the woman. What had Jason said her name was? Emmeline?

  Lawson looked up and reached for his glass of whiskey, reflecting in a sort of furious haze, that Emmeline was a very pretty name indeed.

  He arrived early at the train station with an aching head, hoping that the train was still a ways off because he thought his brain might just burst at the sound of a whistle. He sank down onto one of the newly painted benches, lo
oking around.

  There were only a handful of people standing on the depot platform this afternoon. While Buffalo Creek had nearly quadrupled in size in the last few years, it was still a relatively small town. The train station itself was a new addition, only built last year, at the insistence of Thomas Brittler and his fancy family up on the hill.

  Lawson glanced up at the large manor house the Brittler family had built when they had first arrived in Buffalo Creek. It perched at the top of a massive set of rolling hills that surrounded the town, peering down at them like a benevolent king of old.

  The town of Buffalo Creek sat in a low dip between hills of green and brown. In the distance, you could just make out Laramie Peak. For a long while, packing across the mountain to Hunton’s Ranch had been the only way to catch a train out of this neck of the woods. Not anymore.

  Thomas Brittler and his coal mine had made Buffalo Creek a profitable place to find work. It drew it all sorts of characters, from families and hard-working gentlemen, to scoundrels of a different sort, and even a handful of Indians. Lawson frowned up at the distant hills. Mr. Brittler had made it known far and wide that he was willing to employ any man with a steady set of hands and a strong back, even the Sioux.

  Lawson wrinkled his nose in disgust. The town had had more than their fair share of trouble with the tribe that camped just outside of Buffalo Creek. They weren’t the friendliest of sorts, but not bad for the fur trade in the area.

  You couldn’t live in this town and voice any sort of opinion about the red-skins, though. From what Lawson had come to understand, Thomas Brittler’s eldest daughter was married to one of them savages.

  Lawson had seen them strolling down the street, as cool as you please, with their young daughter beside them. Since Thomas Brittler owned half the town, to cause a stir on the matter was about as safe as poking a sleeping bear in the eye. Thomas Brittler was a fair man, but insult his family and you’d be out of a job in no days flat, even if you didn’t work for him.