An Angel in the Mail Read Online Free PDF Page B

looked out the window. Muddy streets, crowded, weather-beaten buildings. No elegant stores or restaurants. Nothing similar to what she’d left behind. Well, certainly better than the miles of prairie she’d crossed. But surely Oregon City would be more of a city ?
    Was this even part of the United States? Had she left the States completely behind? Of course she had. Hadn’t she? Maybe she should stop the coach and hurry into the sheriff’s office they just passed and peruse a map.
    I’m becoming hysterical.
    She inhaled a deep breath to calm herself. However, with the restriction of her corset, all she managed to do was make herself dizzy.
    Why, oh why did Sylvia do this to her? She should’ve refused, fled to one of her friends’ houses. Anything but face a strange man who expected to be her husband in a very short while.
    Angel allowed the knitter and the large man to precede her out of the coach. The doctor had departed a while back, never noticing his missing possessions. No one felt the need to enlighten him. She reached for the driver’s hand to step out of the coach.
    Good heavens—I smell!
    No blinding sun here, the cloud cover gave everything a dull, lifeless appearance. She looked around, and aside from a crowd standing in front of the post office, she didn’t see a man who should have been here to meet her. Maybe Mr. Hale had changed his mind, and she was stuck here with no money, job, or a place to stay.
    Should I be relieved if he had?
    Movement caught her eye as she watched a group in front of the post office walk toward the stagecoach. Her eyes grew round, and sweat trickled down between her breasts. With horror, she realized this most likely was her new family. Mr. Hale had brought all his children to meet the stagecoach.
    Tall, blond, and broad shouldered under a brown suit, the handsome man carried a little girl with blond curls and a pretty pink dress and bonnet. Four boys, with varying shades of blond and brown, slicked back hair, followed behind him. With clean faces, and wearing church clothes, they resembled chicks trailing a mother hen.
    Angel tried to smile, fought the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. Her stomach clenched, and her hand rose slowly to her throat. She fisted the cloth reticule in her other hand until the whole thing was a wrinkled mess, much like the rest of her.
    Passengers alighted from the stagecoach. Nate breathed a sigh of relief when a pudgy woman, carrying a knitting bag, waved to a young woman, holding an infant in her arms, and two toddlers clinging to her skirts. For a moment, he thought she was Angel. A huge man followed, who wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Several moments passed, then a young woman put her foot on the step of the coach, and accepted the hand of the driver.
    From what he could see, she could have been pretty, but it was hard to say. As he approached, he noted her appealing figure, but other than that, she was a mess. Her hair hung down in clumps from her bun. A hat, which had apparently been through hard times, teetered on her head like a squashed doughnut. The dress she wore was stained and dirty, gaping at the waist. Her entire body was covered with a fine coating of road dust. He stopped in front of her. Sweat ran down from her temples, leaving tracks of white skin against the dirt.
    “Angelina?”
    “Yes,” she stammered, “I’m Angel.”
    “Papa.” Luke tugged on Nate’s arm. “Is our new mama a hooligan or a no-account?”
    Angel’s eyes darted from side to side, then she looked directly at him, grabbed her middle, and threw up.
    “Papa!” John shouted and jumped back, banging into Nate. Startled, Julia-Rose wailed at the top of her lungs.
    “I told you I don’t want no gol-darned new mama,” Mark yelled as he turned and ran back toward the post office.
    Angel buried her head in her hands and cried.
    Nate looked helplessly around with a screaming daughter in his arms and a distraught bride-to-be wailing in