Mail-Order Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

of his gray uniform, he told himself. He used to take pride in looking presentable.
    She took a half-step forward. “What do you want?”
    â€œAre you Miss St. Clair? Miss Skylla St. Clair?”
    â€œCould be. Are you peddling something?”
    â€œIn a manner of speaking.”
    Assessing the female he would take for his second wife, Brax saw that her coloring appeared more pasty than alabaster, alabaster being the complexion most prized in the South. And those eyes were not only beady, they had a nasty little cast to them. No matter how low his expectations, he’d truly rolled snake eyes one more time. This St. Clair woman was no prize.
    She wasn’t even a woman. She was a girl. Probably no more than a well-developed fourteen or fifteen. Geoff’s lie had come to pass. No wonder Brax hadn’t recalled Titus’s description—she’d been but a babe at the time. Damn. Double damn. “Are you sure you’re Skylla St. Clair?”
    â€œAre you some sort of pervert, or are you plain deaf and stupid? I said I’m Miss St. Clair.”
    Great.
    Damning the fates, Brax patted his pocket to make certain the envelope containing the St. Clair marker hadn’t slipped. “May I present myself?” He sketched a bow. “I am Braxton Hippocrates Hale of Mississippi and Texas. Descendant of Charlemagne and the first families of Virginia. A—”
    â€œWho?”
    He repeated the lineage that had brought his mother great pride, but had elicited yawns from Brax. Until now. When he needed to make a good impression. “. . . and I am a combat veteran of Major Titus St. Clair’s company, Hood’s Texas Brigade, the Army of Northern Virginia. As well, I was a subordinate to your late uncle before his demise at Second Manassas. Later I served the Confederacy as physician to the maimed lion, General John Bell Hood.”
    I’m straight from the hoosegow, and I’m here for the deed to your ranch. How ya like them apples, cupcake?
    He took her hand and feathered a kiss across its chubby, stubby fingers before handing over an ivory chess piece, the queen. The signal of Petry’s approval. “Virgil Petry sent me.”
    The scrutinizing gaze she took was one normally reserved for a persnickety cook picking through a mess of okra to cull the wormy ones. “I kinda wanted a darker haired fellow.”
    â€œHow ’bout I slap some boot polish on my head?”
    â€œIt’s worth a try.” She dropped the antique chess piece into a pocket of her skirts; it clinked, as if solid had contacted solid. Miss St. Clair turned, her hoops billowing. “You might as well come on in. I guess.”
    Geoff, who’d stayed out of sight on the porch, but close to Brax’s right, handed over a jar of peaches and a pan of chocolate fudge. These luxuries, bought from a farm wife near Fredericksburg, had taken the last traveling money, but Brax had felt it only proper not to arrive empty-handed.
    He started to cross the threshold. Sensing Geoff in his trail, Brax thrust the heel of his Wellington back toward his accomplice’s shin. “Tend the horses,” he mouthed silently.
    Titus St. Clair’s niece wheeled around. “Are you just gonna stand there all day, staring off into space like some lunatic?” she demanded. “Are you head-shot or something?”
    Her uncle had been many things, but not ungracious. On the other hand, his niece, if she had ever learned anything about Southern hospitality, had forgotten it. When Brax attained the house’s cool and shadowed interior, he said, “These are for you. Thought you might enjoy a treat or two.”
    â€œYum!”
    Standing in the middle of the front room, she snapped up the gifts as fast as a hound gobbled a pan of scraps. She dug out a piece of the fudge, stuffed it into her mouth, tucked the pan under her arm, unscrewed the jar lid, and was sucking the syrup off a slice of