I flicked my gaze to my friend Logan, quickly understanding the men’s intentions, but his expression was unreadable. I wasn’t about to tell these men anything. Logan called for another card and the old man dealt him one. Who was the poor woman arriving tomorrow? The need to warn her stirred to life inside me. No woman deserved what these men had planned for her. I needed to know the woman’s name and the best way to discover information was to let the men talk.
Jenkins didn’t know who he was playing cards with, for if he did, he would know that we always shared a woman. It was the way of our group, the dozen of us in town, plus those already settled at Bridgewater. We’d all spent time enjoying the culture and customs in Mohamir—a small Middle Eastern country where our regiment had been stationed—and were now traveling to Bridgewater where we could live our way without bothering anyone.
Our trusted friend, Whitmore Kane, had written telling us of the growing number of men settling on a ranch in the Montana Territory with their brides. He’d invited those from our regiment to join them. Two men—or more—marrying one woman, the custom of Mohamir, certainly didn’t follow the strict dictates of Victorian England. Puritanical America didn’t follow suit either, but based on what we’d seen of the Montana Territory, out here under the big sky, there was plenty of room to do as one wished. Even the Jenkinses believed that, but what they intended did not favor the bride in any way.
The Mohamiran marriage custom put the woman’s needs first. The husbands loved her, honored her, cherished her, protected her. Possessed her body and took pride in the pleasure he gave her.
Evan broke the silence. “I’m a one-woman man myself.”
That was the truth, for he—along with Daniel—would claim only one woman. Logan and I would share a bride. The others in our group, all bachelors, had already agreed to the same and now they waited for that one special woman to come along and change everything. Our way of life was nothing like what these men had planned for their future bride and the stench of the idea—and them—reeked.
Jenkins shook his head as if disappointed. “You don’t know what you’re missing. My boys here, they like a woman between them, but the whores upstairs—” he glanced up at the ceiling as if he could see through it to the working girls being fucked while we spoke, “—aren’t that eager anymore. It was over a long, cold winter night we came up with the idea for a mail-order bride.”
I wanted confirmation of their intentions. “Am I to understand you hired an agency to find brides for all three of you?”
“You talk funny,” the youngest one commented.
“I’m not from the Montana Territory,” I replied, as if people spoke with British accents elsewhere in the country. We didn’t need to draw attention to ourselves and our accents were easily noticeable. We came halfway around the world for a quiet life. We’d all had enough trouble to last a lifetime. My closest friend, the man with whom I would share a bride with, was an orphan. Logan’s father passed from a bad flu when he was only nine years old. He’d run the streets of Manchester begging for food and money, trying to help his mother survive. But she had faded away right before his eyes. After she died, he’d joined the military to start over.
When our regiment arrived in Mohamir, he’d been the first one of us to see the wisdom of their ways. Two husbands meant safety and comfort for a widow and her children. That was something Logan admired and respected about their society and I agreed.
The drunken sot sitting across from me, Harry, seemed to accept my excuse and my strange accent. He turned away from me and nodded his head at his father, seemingly content with my response. Bloody idiot.
Tad called for another card, stuck it into his hand, then said, “We didn’t use no agency. A newspaper advertisement was all it took.”
“And it’s not three brides,” Jenkins clarified, then pointed to himself and his sons. “Only one. Why the hell do we want three noisy women in the house when we only need one?”
I saw Logan’s eyebrows go up. He leaned forward, placed his forearms on the table. “You’re telling me you placed an advertisement for a bride to share? And you received a reply?”
I shifted in my seat, eager to hear the answer. If a simple advertisement would bring a willing woman to us, a woman content to marry two men instead of one, our bride problem could be easily solved. Apparently, Logan also saw the possibilities. Was this how it was done in America? I was used to arranged marriages among the upper class in England, but those matches were meant to preserve genetic lineage and station. This country broke from king and country a century before to avoid such legacies.
“She must be a hundred-year-old hag,” Evan said, rolling his eyes.
Logan chuckled, but Jenkins held his hand in a fist, shaking it in Evan’s face as if my friend were an idiot. “Now hold on. Of course not! She’s a nice young virgin. Twenty and five. And I got her likeness right here.” Jenkins dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thick photograph with ripped edges for Logan to see. Both Evan and I leaned forward for a glimpse of the woman, but Tad had other ideas. He ripped the photograph from his father’s hand before any of us could take a look.
“Damn it, Pa. They’ll try to steal her away.”
Jenkins looked to Logan, who shook his head in disgust and lied through his teeth, his thick American accent as fake as the smile on his face. “I already got a wife. Why would I want yours?”
Jenkins raised an eyebrow and Tad spit a wad of black slime onto the floor near my feet as his father preened like a peacock. “She thinks she’s marrying a forty-year-old widower with wee sons to take care of. And that part’s true.” He grinned and his eyes narrowed. “She’ll be takin’ care of my boys, just not in the way she thinks.”
Tad chuckled and looked to his younger brother. “She’ll be taking very special care of us with that pussy of hers.”
It was a good thing I only had one shot of that rotgut whiskey, for my stomach heaved at the plan these men had devised. The father was going to marry a woman and, without her knowing, planned to share her with his two grown sons. The poor woman thought she would be getting a younger man with small children. The elder Jenkins had to be fifty if he were a day.
My own mother had been married to an old man, a man in his sixties and she just eighteen. She was the second wife of my father, the marquess of Barton. It had been a loveless marriage, a marriage solely to link two families. My mother had been a pawn, just like this Jenkins’ bride. Where my mother had no power to deny her fate, this woman was choosing to become Jenkins’ bride. But why? What drove a woman to marry a man sight unseen? Desperation, if I had to venture a guess.
That didn’t make the situation any better.
“Taking care of you two with her pussy?” Evan pointed from Tad to Harry, his back stiff as a giant oak, but none of the Jenkins men noticed.
“It’s all in the family. We’ll all fuck her. Little Harry here has an itch that needs to be scratched. A virgin itch. Well, not quite virgin, since I’ll break her in first.” Jenkins winked at his youngest, Little Harry, who was well over six feet of solid muscle, his massive size no doubt acquired over weeks and months of moving rock in the mines.
“I doubt this woman will be too keen on the idea,” I said, keeping my voice neutral despite the gut-churning desire I had to pound Jenkins’ face into dust. My mother hadn’t been forced to bed other men. In fact, once I was born, the heir, I doubted she bedded any man ever again.
Logan and I would share a bride someday, but it would be for our wife’s benefit, not ours. When we claimed her, she’d be the center of our universe. We’d cherish her, love her, protect her, never do anything to defile her or betray her trust. We would be nothing like these men. If something happened to me, I was comforted to know that my future bride, and any children we might have, would be safe and cared for by Logan. I knew he felt the same.
I was the marquess of Barton, had been for the past five years when my father had died at the ripe age of eighty-eight. A bride didn’t stay safe and warm because of a title. It was the man who’d inherited it that she needed.