The Independent Bride Read Online Free

Abby in any manner wasn’t a good idea.
    “Cows are branded with their owner’s mark. During spring and fall roundups ranchers cut out beeves for sale, brand the new calves, and castrate the males. That’s fundamental knowledge. Surely you can’t expect to survive out here if you don’t know things like that.”
    Abby raised her chin defiantly. “Thousands of people come West knowing as little as I do, but they manage to learn. I will, too.”
    “You don’t know enough to sell the items before you.” He knew he’d hit on a weak point, but Abby didn’t back down.
    “We just got here. We haven’t even had time to see where Father lived.”
    Bryce was ready to tie them up and force them to leave, but he figured they’d make that decision on their own once they saw their living quarters. Abner hadn’t been noted for being particular about his surroundings. Bryce couldn’t understand how such a rough man could have fathered two such lovely daughters. They must take after their mother. He could certainly understand why their father had kept them safely back East.
    “He lived through there,” Bryce said, pointing to the door at the back of the room.
    Just as the women turned their attention to the door, two enlisted men burst into the trading post. They came to an abrupt halt when they saw Bryce.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked.
    “We heard mere were two women in the store,” one of the men said, apparently too agitated by the sight of Abby and her sister to think of some evasive explanation. “We wanted to be the first to ask them to marry us.”
    Abby and Moriah looked at the two soldiers as if they’d lost their minds.
    “Women are rare at Fort Lookout,” Bryce explained. “You and your sister will probably receive proposals from every single man at the fort inside a week.” Once the men got a good look at them, they’d be fighting to see who asked first. Bryce had to stifle an impulse to throw both men out on their backsides.
    “Why?” Abby asked. “They don’t even know us.”
    Didn’t the woman have a mirror? Didn’t she know she was pretty enough to make even a sensible man forget himself? “A man whose wife becomes a laundress gets to move out of the barracks into a shanty. An industrious wife can earn two or three times what he earns a month, as well as providing him with home-cooked meals and other creature comforts. Women are in such high demand, no one can keep female servants.”
    Abby’s look of astonishment turned to indignation. “You can tell all your soldiers they’ll be wasting their time. Neither of us has any interest in getting married. We certainly aren’t interested in doing so to enable our husbands to live better while we slave to support them.”
    They’d have to have my permission to marry,” Bryce said. “I won’t give it.”
    “A free-born man has to have your permission to marry?” Abby asked, looking at him in amazement.
    “It’s regulations. The army allows only as many enlisted men to marry as we have need for laundresses. At the moment we have enough.”
    Abby looked as though she would explode. “I’ve never beard anything so medieval in my life. You would never actually deny a man the right to marry, would you?”
    “It’s my responsibility to think of the good of all the men, not just of one or two. Yes, I would deny permission to many.”
    “I expect you’re married, with a house full of kids and servants.”
    “I’m a widower with a young daughter. I have only one servant, and he’s a man. The two women I hired are both married now.”
    That was another reason he needed to be posted back East. His parents thought he should have left his daughter with them, but he hadn’t wanted to be separated from her. There was the question of proper schooling and, later, a suitable husband. He needed a post back East to build his career, and with his family connections, he had a good chance of getting one soon if there were no troubles with