Free A Bargain For A Bride: Clean mail order bride romance (Montana Passion Book 1) by Amelia Rose Page A

needlework.
    “I can guarantee the milking and the shoveling, as unpleasant as that sounds. The fence may have to wait until you’re back on your feet. But surely it’s been this long, a few more days won’t be your ruination. Back to bed with you then, and Gretchen will bring in your breakfast shortly. Go! Go!”
    Moira shuttled him back into the room, but saw a light smattering of blood on the sheets that alarmed her. She grabbed up the lamp from the kitchen table and returned with it held high, leaning closer to inspect the bloody mark and then the stitches in Pryor’s head.
    “Oh, thank goodness, ‘tis only from your shirt!” she said with a relieved smile. “I am sorry for that, but we left you in your soiled clothes and it has stained your bedding. We’ll be sure to wash it fresh today. We didn’t want to move you any more than we had to; heaven knows we’d hurt you plenty during the stitching. Here, change into your nightshirt and hand out your work shirt. We’ll be sure to wash it, too. Gretchen is a wonder at the laundry, I promise. And we won’t look at you until it’s dry and returned to your person!”
    Moira was grateful for the early hour and the lack of sunlight so Pryor couldn’t see the bright red blush on her cheeks. Here she stood, openly discussing undressing a man, one she’d only known for a matter of a day or two. To his credit, Pryor seemed equally flustered at the conversation, but reached to take the nightshirt as he was told. She ducked out the door and closed it firmly behind her, letting it shut with more force than necessary to secure the man who would soon be nude behind the solid oak door.
    “My lady? Are you feeling well?” Gretchen asked, rushing to her and pressing her hand to Moira’s pink cheek, made all the more prominent by her ordinarily creamy white complexion.
    “Oh, yes, but I fear I may have just made a brazen fool of myself! I wasn’t thinking, and I told him to take off his clothes!” Moira said with a shocked laugh. Gretchen stared at her with wide eyes, nearly dropping the tin of biscuits she’d taken from the Dutch oven.
    “Mistress?”
    “Oh, no, I don’t mean it that way, don’t be daft! I meant I told him to change his clothes and you or I would wash the blood from his shirt!” The young women dissolved in a fit of surprised giggles, causing Pryor to laugh quietly to himself behind the closed door, enjoying their happy sound more than he thought he would.
    It had been a lonely three years for Pryor, years that had given him nothing but time to think. He occupied his days with work, providing him with a well-built and comfortable house, a small herd of five head of cattle, a secure pen where he kept a modest number of pigs, and two horses to pull his wagon and plow. All told, his hard work had allowed him to bring in three years’ worth of steady, comfortable wheat and corn harvests, save what had been lost each year to locusts and storms.
    What Pryor didn’t set aside from his harvests for seed and for his own sustenance had been sold each season, providing him with enough funds to outfit his land with a sturdy barn, a solid plow, and other tools he would need to survive during the years that wouldn’t be so kind on the frontier. He’d built a smokehouse to cure meats and a strong room above it to store his food for the winter months when game would be scarce, then spent the spring months when the ground was soft digging a root cellar to store vegetables from the garden beside the barn. He’d even had time and resources to build a strong, high fenced-in pasture to turn his animals out for fresh air without fear that he’d lose his livestock to bears or panthers, both of which were plentiful in the region.
    He was a man who’d been greatly blessed in his years on his claim, and he was painfully aware that all he’d built with his own two hands and intelligence could be taken away in an instant. A storm that leveled his property, a swarm of