Let Me Love You by Mary Wine Read Free Book Online Page B

gained.
    He didn’t doubt he’d have Brianna stoking the dirty black stove in front of him. She’d bend to his command just like a prairie pony did when you starved it long enough. He licked his lower lip as he considered what she might do when her belly ached bad enough for food. Some of them whores did some mighty fine things with a man’s cock. Seeing as how Brianna had all the same parts as those women, he was looking forward to having her at his mercy. Planting a baby in her belly wasn’t going to be half the fun, not hardly.

Chapter Three
    Brianna awoke to discover that winter wasn’t wasting any time in arriving. There was ice on the river this morning. Small clumps of snow lay on the bank and they didn’t completely melt away by afternoon. Ice flowed down the river, heralding the onslaught of the cold weather.
    Brianna ran a longing hand over a new length of flannel fabric waiting near her sewing machine. Making a winter dress sounded wonderful. She stroked the black cast-iron machine with a loving finger, taking a moment to enjoy the fact that she didn’t have to sew by hand anymore. Powered by a foot treadle, the sewing machine practically flew through stitching fabric together. Every stitch was perfect too. Just watching it made her giddy like a child with a new toy. Only it was a woman’s toy. Her father had bought the machine last season and she still had trouble believing she owned such a modern convenience. It sure would save money, if she could make her own clothing instead of buying garments at the mercantile.
    More money might even be earned if she made men’s shirts and sold them in town. Home goods went for a good sum in Silver Peak due to the lack of women. Miners wore out their shirts and without a wife they were reduced to buying new ones from women who had learned how to make money with housewifery skill. More than one westerner found himself being kept by his wife, when his dreams of striking gold didn’t materialize. Savvy women had discovered that their skills in the home were worth cash to the hordes of miners. Once her daddy returned, she might just take up tailoring and strike a bargain with the mercantile in town.
    With two incomes, the land bill wouldn’t be a problem ever again. A bright smile covered her face as she gave the machine a loving pat. Yes sir, she and her father were going to make it in the West without finding any gold. They would just provide the services that the miners and farmers needed. Back east, huge factories kept a single family from prospering. That was why her father had moved them west. Opportunity was here for those bold enough to pit their fortunes against the harshness of getting started.
    The creaking of a wagon interrupted her ideas. She went to the door to peek out of the view hole now that her window was boarded closed.
    A smile moved her lips up as the widow Lambert climbed down from her buckboard. Bonnie Lambert was as sweet as a summer strawberry. Pushing the bar up, Brianna pulled the door open and stepped into the yard to greet her guest. Bonnie wouldn’t have any money to offer, but she always waited until the end of the season before attempting to barter for her grinding. That sort of consideration made her a good friend. The widow had lost her husband to fever after an accident, but her three young sons still managed to bring in enough of a crop to feed the family. Brianna would bet the widow had been sending her youngest son over the hill to look at the river every morning this week to see if the ice was getting thicker. Judging the perfect time to make her appearance.
    “Good afternoon, Bonnie. Is that Tomas? How did he get so tall?”
    Brianna worked into dusk on the Lambert grain. It was actually less expensive to burn kerosene in her lamps for work light than coal in her stove to heat the cabin. The labor of working the mill kept her warm, so she lit the lamp. It was a race against winter, because her mill used water to power it. Once