Chapter One: The Letter
The bell over the door of Everett’s Stationer’s jingled when Violet stepped inside, letting in a draft of salt-tinged air from the harbor. A haze of coal smoke hung in the chilly January morning, and the cobblestones outside were slick from last night’s snow and today’s freezing drizzle. She unpinned her bonnet, shaking a few damp strands of chocolate-brown hair from her face, and offered Mr. Everett a polite nod as she approached the polished oak counter.
“You’ve a letter, Miss Violet,” the shopkeeper said, holding out an envelope as though it carried some particular weight. “Postmarked Galveston, Texas. My word—quite the distance.”
Violet paused mid-reach. Galveston. She had never been away from Boston, and the word alone raised an image of open skies and sunbaked earth, so unlike Boston’s crowded streets. “Thank you, Mr. Everett,” she murmured, accepting the letter with gloved fingers.
It was heavy stock, the paper thick and slightly rough, the handwriting bold and slanted. She noticed her name—Miss Violet Carter—written in a confident hand, the ink so black it seemed freshly laid. The return name in the corner caught her breath:Thomas McBride.
She didn’t know a Thomas McBride.
Violet turned the letter over twice before slipping it into her satchel. She still had Mrs. Kellam’s bread order to collect from the bakery before returning home. The three flights of narrow stairs up to the room she rented in the boardinghouse would be easier to climb without the sudden flutter of nerves the letter brought.
Her boardinghouse sat on a side street near the Common, the brick façade weather-darkened by decades of Boston winters. The landlady, Mrs. Kellam, kept the place orderly and warm, provided you paid your rent promptly and did not disturb the other tenants. Violet had lived there since she was nineteen, when the couple who had adopted her passed away within months of each other—her mother from a fever, her father from what the doctor called “a weakening of the heart,” though Violet suspected grief had rushed it.
Her small chamber overlooked the street. It held a narrow bed, a washstand with a porcelain basin, a writing desk, a small side table by the room’s entrance, and one oak wardrobe with a door that never quite closed all the way. The lace curtains had been her own addition, as had the stack of worn books along the sill—novels, poetry, a few bound volumes of essays her father had loved. A single rug softened the bare pine boards, its colors fading but still warm underfoot.
After delivering the loaf of bread to her landlady, Violet climbed the rickety steps to her room, opened the door, and breathed a sigh of relief to be home. Placing her satchel on her bed, she lit a small oil lamp and unpinned her cloak. The letter lay on the desk where she set it, an unassuming shape for something that might hold … what, exactly? An opportunity? A trick? A mistake in identity?
Her fingers worked the seal open carefully so as not to tear the paper. Inside, the writing was neat but firm, every loop and line betraying a man contented to purpose.
McBride Ranch, Texas
December 3, 1855
Dear Miss Carter,
You do not know me, but I write with earnest purpose. My name is Thomas McBride. I own and operate a cattle ranch in the Republic lands of Texas, a considerable distance from your city. My sister, Mrs. Margaret Alcott of Providence, is acquainted with Mrs. Emeline Foster, who I understand to be your late adoptive mother’s dear friend. Mrs. Foster spoke warmly of your character, your business, and your steadfastness in hardship. I seek a wife, and my circumstances are such that I cannot stay for the slow courtships common in town life. The ranch is a demanding place, but also a good one, and I have means to provide in comfort.
If you might consider such a union, I would be pleased to correspond further and arrange your passage here. I will be forthright—life in Texas is not without trials: heat, storms, and a country still shaping itself from the wild. But I believe it can offer more than it asks.
Respectfully,
Thomas McBride
Violet read it twice, then set it down slowly. She pressed her fingers to the faint mark behind her left ear—a small birthmark, the shape of a heart. She had touched it since she was agirl whenever thoughts of her parentage crept in. Her adoptive mother had told her she’d been left as an infant on the steps of a foundling home in Boston, bundled in a blanket, with no note. The matron had found a home for her with the Carters, a couple who had longed for a child. Violet had never wanted for affection—yet in her sun-kissed skin, darker than the fair complexions of her neighbors, she saw the unspoken question she carried:Where did I come from?
And now here was a man, hundreds of miles away, offering her a place in a life entirely different from the narrow streets and harsh, damp winters she knew.
She rose and crossed to the window, parting the lace just enough to see the street below. A peddler was calling out his products, the singsong cry mingling with the rattle of carriage wheels. The smell of the harbor’s low tide drifted faintly in, mixed with the yeasty smells drifting from the bakery down the way. Boston was bustling, familiar, and yet … confining.
At twenty-three, Violet was no longer considered a young debutante, and marriage prospects in her circle had dwindled. The milliner’s shop where she worked paid enough for her board and modest needs, but not enough to imagine a home of her own. Sometimes she thought she might remain here forever, a solitary figure at her boarding room window, watching the seasons pass through a pane of glass.
She turned back to the letter. Thomas McBride’s words were plain, not fancy—no false poetry, no promises of endless romance. Yet there was something steady in his tone, something that hinted he was a man who meant what he said. That in itself was rare.
Later that evening, as she took her supper in the common dining room, Mrs. Kellam remarked on the letter. “I heard that you’dgot a letter,” she said, pouring tea with the authority of one who dispensed news as readily as sugar. “Texas, was it? Do you have kin there?”
“No,” Violet replied, folding her napkin. “A … business proposal, of sorts.”
Mrs. Kellam’s brows lifted. “Well. I should think a young woman might have reason to keep an open mind, in these times. Though Texas … that’s near the edge of the map, Miss Violet.”
Violet smiled faintly. “So it seems.”
?
That night she lay awake longer than she meant to, listening to the sleet patter against the window. She imagined the ranch—she had never seen one, but in her mind, it spread across miles of land, dotted with cattle and ringed by mountains or maybe rolling hills. She wondered what sort of man Thomas McBride was. If he was as handsome and tall as she imagined, with a voice deep from shouting across wide spaces. If he would look at her and see something more than a question mark in human form.
The idea both unsettled and intrigued her.
