A Mail Order Bride for Thanksgiving (Love by Mail #5)
Christina Ward
Chapter 1
Sunny Springs, Alabama, October 1872
The chicken nuggets Betty made were gone as soon as she had set the plate down on the table. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Betty Williams was the best cook in Sunny Springs. Usually Betty was proud of that fact, but that day it upset her. Does no one think of me as anything but a cook?
She leaned back in her chair tapping her foot to the rhythm of the cheerful music. Despite it being her cousin’s wedding, she sat alone, next to the two widowed aunts at the single ladies end of the table. She crossed her arms. Both younger and older girls dance just a few feet away.
Betty sighed. Every mother in town had praised her cooking to the skies, but none of their sons had asked her to dance. To think that she’d cooked Stephen Collins his favorite, raccoon fricassee, only for him to give it to Rosanna Haley.
“Why don’t you dance, Betty?” A plump, older woman nudged her.
“I would, Ma, if someone asked me to,” Betty muttered.
Her mother sighed. She took a bite of cornbread and turned to her seatmate. “My Betty makes the sweetest cornbread in all of Sunny Springs, don’t you think, Kelly?”
“Ain’t no one who can do it better than your Betty, and you know it, Jean,” Kelly McRyte, a woman with graying hair replied.
“She’d make a fine wife, my daughter.”
They kept talking as if Betty wasn’t sitting within earshot.
Kelly nodded. “Ain’t she seeing anyone?”
“Sadly, no. I keep telling her to lose weight!”
Betty rolled her eyes and pressed the glass of water to her lips in case they actually tried to involve her in the conversation. She’d heard it all before, but it still hurt, and knowing that the eligible young men in town didn’t seem to notice her hurt even more. She saw many a time their eyes stray to the women with lithe frames.
The song changed and while some women retired for a break, others, all around Betty, were asked for a dance. One man, a stranger likely on the groom’s side, almost stopped by her, but instead he just gave her a look that made her blush as he walked two tables down to pick up some local beauty. Betty cleared her throat, and turned to her mother, “Ma, I’m gonna see the Reverend-”
“But what about the dance, dear?” her Ma asked. “Maybe if you wait a little while longer, Hector Ark might swing by.”
Unlikely. That young man built like a blacksmith had his arms full of the mayor’s daughter.
“I’ll be back before you know it.” Before her mother’s scalding look could change her mind, Betty got up and made her way to the Reverend’s table.
She looked on at the dance. Her cousin Stella stepped around her husband with poise that only someone of her small frame could accomplish. Betty looked away. All she could do was cook, and where did that get her? She had cooked a lot of the dishes for her cousin’s wedding, but no one seemed to care.
Betty caught a distorted reflection of her image in an empty silver platter left on the table. There was nothing wrong with her figure, yet people kept insisting that she should change just to snag a man.
“Betty? Aren’t you gonna dance tonight?”
She looked to her right to see the Reverend, Mark Larsen, piling chicken and cornbread onto his plate.
“Not tonight,” Betty said. “Couldn’t find anyone willing to take this gal for a spin.”
The pastor tilted his head, a sadness filled his eyes but still he gave her a reassuring smile. “Now, don’t be too harsh on yourself dear.”
Betty chuckled. “I’m not. Other’s do it for me.”
The pastor lifted the chicken to his lips, looked at Betty, then he put the food back down. He placed his plate back on the table. Oh, no. Here it comes. He stood ramrod straight, tilting his head towards her – something he did when giving advice to arguing couples.
“Betty, what’s the problem?”
She glanced away from the dancing couples. “Reverend, do you think there’s a man out there who’ll accept me?” She gestured at her chubby cheeks and round curves.
“Of course, child!”
She thinned her lips at him. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
The pastor laughed and patted his silver hair. “I am not. In fact, I think I know something that can help you.”
Betty raised a brow. “Divine intervention?”
The pastor took his plate and motioned to an empty bench.
“Let’s go sit over there.” When they did, he said, “I’ve presided over many a marriage, you know, and for a few years now, I’ve wedded people who had met each other through the papers.”
“The papers?”
“The matrimonial ads. A man needs a wife? He puts up an ad in the papers. A woman’s looking for a husband? She answers an ad…”
Betty gasped, eyes wide. “Really, is it that simple?”
“Yes,” he nodded.
“That sounds as easy as chicken pie!”
“I actually find baking a chicken pie very difficult...”
Betty burst into laughter and hugged the old man. “Oh, Reverend, you’re a godsend!”
“I try to be.” He took a bite of the chicken and sent her a delighted smile, then he added, “Now, there’s this agency from Montana, called Love in the West...”