A Bride For Brynmor (Songbird Junction Book 1) Read online

  A Bride for Brynmor

  Songbird Junction, Book 1

  Jacqui Nelson

  Contents

  Book Description

  Bonus Content

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Dear Reader

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

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  Excerpt - The Calling Birds

  Excerpt - Robyn: A Christmas Bride

  Also by Jacqui Nelson

  Songbird Junction Series

  About the Author

  A BRIDE FOR BRYNMOR

  A Llewellyn Brothers Western Historical Romance

  Songbird Junction, Book 1

  Can a sister who’s lived only for others find freedom with one man? Family has always come first—for both of them. He’s never forgiven himself for letting her go. She’s never forgiven herself for almost getting him killed.

  When Lark and her songbird sisters are separated fleeing their cruel and controlling troupe manager, only Brynmor Llewellyn can help Lark save her sisters and escape to the far west. But Lark wants more. And so does Brynmor. When they’re stranded in a spot as difficult to guard as it is to leave—a rustic cabin at a train junction between Denver and the mountain town of Noelle, Colorado—they find themselves fighting not only for survival but for redemption, forgiveness, and a second chance for their love.

  Will the frontier train stop of Songbird Junction be Lark and Brynmor’s salvation? Or their downfall when her manager—a con artist who calls himself her uncle but cherishes only his own fame and fortune—demands a debt no one can pay?

  A note about story links: A Bride for Brynmor is the first book in the Songbird Junction series. This American Western Historical Romance is a sweet-rated standalone read, but it also includes characters (such as reader-favorite Grandpa Gus Peregrine) featured in my Noelle, Colorado, Christmas stories: The Calling Birds (set in 1876) and Robyn: A Christmas Bride (set in 1877).

  Copyright © 2019 Jacqui Nelson

  A Bride for Brynmor, ISBN 978-0-9958596-7-8

  * * *

  THE SONGBIRD JUNCTION SERIES

  Welcome to Songbird Junction, where Welsh meets West in Colorado 1878. The journey to find a forever home and more starts here. Three Welsh brothers bound by blood and a passion for hauling freight—in Denver where hard work pays. Three Irish-Cree Métis sisters-of-the-heart bound by choice and a passion for singing—in any place that pays.

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  Chapter 1

  Denver, Colorado

  January 1878

  Alone in the shadows of the alley, Lark surveyed the sunny street filled with city folk who might end her family’s escape if they— She shook her head, rejecting her doubt. If wasn’t acceptable. She couldn’t fail them again.

  Her sisters had to make it to their pre-arranged meeting place across the street.

  She tucked her nose under her scarf, thrust her hands deeper into her skirt pockets, and rocked on her boots. Nothing helped. Her shivers grew because they weren’t from the frosty air or the snow-covered ground.

  She trembled with dread that her pursuit of freedom might end in her sisters’ deaths.

  Oriole, sweet as she was savvy, had chosen this location. But two years earlier when Oriole’s violin required repairs, Oriole had been the only one allowed to enter Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s Music Emporium.

  Lark had been disappointed not to view the treasures inside. Today, she cared only for what she might see outside—her sisters, who’d agreed to meet at the music shop if they were separated fleeing Cheyenne. After sixteen years together, the last twelve days apart made her heart ache unbearably.

  She kept searching for Wren’s tiny and timid form—so easily lost in a crowd. And smothered there as well. Being a couple years younger than Lark and Oriole hadn’t helped Wren’s confidence either.

  Wren may be the best singer in their three-woman songbird troupe, but she only shone when she performed in the circle of their act. She would suffer the most on her own.

  How could she have lost them? She’d lied and schemed and surrendered everything to keep their trio together, including her liberty and the man she loved. How had it all gone so wrong?

  Because Beelzebub wouldn’t let his pawns go without a fight.

  Their troupe manager, Ulysses T. Stone, was both a devil and a dog. He had a hound’s nose for finding people he could bamboozle into giving him what he craved most: fortune and fame. He coveted an audience’s attention as much as their money.

  Anger stirred the turmoil in her heart. He may be the maestro of manipulation, but she was the granddaughter of Cree warriors. She would not fail Oriole and Wren. She would find them and take them far away from the man who’d vowed to never let them go.

  She scanned the street for the wiry, dark-haired Irishman whose fake gentleman’s accent and dandified clothing concealed a thug carrying an arsenal of weapons, including a spring-loaded derringer under one ruffled sleeve. No one, in disguise or plain sight, matched his stature.

  She saw no sign of Oriole or Wren either. They’d agreed to meet at noon. Her pocket watch read five past one.

  Accept it. There’s no when or if. They aren’t coming.

  Or maybe they’d arrived earlier and gone? But not before leaving a message saying where. They’d agreed to do that as well.

  Abandoning her hiding spot, she crossed the street at a brisk pace. The snow crunching under her feet marked her progress as she slipped into the alley flanking the music shop and examined the wall from top to bottom. When she rounded the back of the building, she found that alley empty as well. A stroke of luck.

  She continued hunting for a crevice that held a piece of paper. There had to be a letter. Had she missed it? If she did a second pass, maybe she’d—

  “Looking for something?” The words cracked like a whip, close behind her.

  Cringing from the memory of his lash on her back, she spun to face Ulysses. The footlong strip of rawhide tied to his wrist remained lowered. A weapon she now feared had permanently scarred the one good Samaritan who’d been brave—and foolhardy—enough to step between her and her troupe manager.

  “You won’t find anything.” Ulysses’ smirk raised her hackles. “But I’ve found you. And with you in my grasp, your sisters will fall like dominos back in line.”

  Despicable lout. He loved to boast how he could control everyone, including men twice his size. He was a master of skullduggery and savagery.

  Lark had taken many of the punishments he meant for her sisters, but he’d always stopped short of striking her in the face or hands. If she couldn’t sing or play an instrument, she couldn’t earn him money. But when he’d seized her by the throat and squeezed so hard he’d hurt her vocal cords and made her voice raspy for days, Oriole and Wren had been adamant. They were finally leaving him.

  He caught her arm and dragged her toward the street.

  She forced herself not to struggle, to let him think he’d won, until they reached the thoroughfare and its people. Then she screamed. As loud as she could. “Fire! There’s a fire in the music shop.”

  The crowd surged toward her and swept her free of Ulysses’ hold. Unfortunately, they also hemmed her in. She braced her
spine against the shop’s clapboard front, surrounded, with nowhere to run.

  “Where is it?” demanded a thin man with a wealth of wild hair. He swayed like a windswept scarecrow, trying to peer over the ring of bonnets, bowlers, and fur hats surrounding him. “I can’t see no fire.”

  “Because there isn’t one,” a tight-lipped matron said as she adjusted her grip on her parcels. “There’s nothing here.”

  I’m here. She scanned the crowd for a kind face.

  When Wild Hair’s eyes met hers, he went still as a sturdy oak. “What mischief are ya up to?”

  The matron’s gaze jumped from her packages to Lark. “Yes, making a false claim is a serious matter.”

  So is escaping Ulysses.

  Who, with a glare so hot it could blister a frying pan, shoved through the crowd and reached for her again. “She’s not right in her head. I’ll take care of—”

  She struck the inside of his elbow as she darted sideways. A maneuver she’d learned from watching him fight. His pale skin turned a mottled red as he cursed and flicked his hand, trying to shake the tingling from the nerve she’d hit. She hadn’t much time before he launched a strike she couldn’t counter.

  “It’s a crime!” she proclaimed. “That’s what it is.”

  Wild Hair leaned toward her, eager to hear more. “What is?”

  “To lie about a fire. Take me to your sheriff,” she added before Ulysses could object. “He’ll reward you for removing me from your streets.”

  The townsfolk’s odds of receiving compensation were better than hers for receiving fair treatment from the law. Mixed-blood women who’d grown up in orphanages had to forge their own paths. Her deliverance might occur on the way to the sheriff when her escorts relaxed their guard. She’d find an opening to escape them and Ulysses.

  His expression had gone blank, which meant he was pondering something ugly. Maybe cracking his whip across her shoulder or hip where the welt wouldn’t show. If it weren’t for their witnesses, he wouldn’t have held back.

  “I’ll take her where she needs to go.” For every stride he came closer, she took one back.

  Until she ran out of room. Her gaze darted to his whip. She found his hand balled in a fist. Her stomach seized in anticipation of the worst. If she didn’t dodge him again, she wouldn’t be able to breathe or utter a word in her defense.

  A smile twitched his lips. “Ladies and gentlemen, this madwoman’s laborious little show is over. Don’t waste any more time on her. Go home.”

  “Doing the right thing is never a waste,” a divinely deep and familiar voice declared from the back of the crowd. “I’ll go wherever she goes.”

  The sight of an auburn-haired giant clad in a fine wool cap and a work-worn sheepskin coat trying not to topple her audience as he nudged them aside to reach her, filled her with delight and disbelief.

  How had Brynmor Llewellyn known she was here? At this hour, he should be hauling freight with his brothers, not visiting this shop or his living quarters above it. A complication neither she nor her sisters had known about when they’d agreed to meet here.

  The big Welshman only halted when he stood between her and Ulysses, shielding her, but also making it impossible for her to see around him and help him.

  When she moved to stand by his side, he heaved a sigh. Another familiar sound. Comforting and troublesome. Why couldn’t he understand? She didn’t want him to take a blow that was meant for her.

  “She shouldn’t have begged you to interfere again.” The return of Ulysses’ bland expression as he stared at Brynmor made her shiver.

  Brynmor snorted. “You don’t know her very well. She’s never asked me for anything.”

  Ulysses raised one brow mockingly. “And still you are here.”

  Brynmor’s voice rumbled like a storm on the horizon. “And you were promising to take her where she needs to go, which is to the sheriff so he can hear what you’ve done.”

  “I’ve done my duty.” Without taking his gaze off Brynmor, Ulysses angled his head to project his voice, loud and clear, to the crowd. “The law will agree. It’s my responsibility and my burden”—he pressed his palm to his heart—“to be the guardian of this chit who, unfortunately, is both mentally disturbed and my niece.”

  “You’re a caretaker,” Brynmor growled, “who only cares for himself.”

  The care this usually soft-spoken giant had shown for his family and hers had been her undoing. When she’d first seen him in Cheyenne, she’d acted no different from anyone else. She’d admired his strength but found his size intimidating.

  She’d kept him, and everyone else, at a distance.

  Then she’d caught Wren following his sister in order to learn how a woman was doing a man’s job. And Brynmor had caught her trying to persuade Wren to stay far away from the Llewellyn family.

  He’d teasingly asked why Wren was spying on his sister. When Wren had cowered behind Lark and not said a word, he’d demanded to know if they needed his help. He’d been as concerned for strangers as he’d been for his own sister.

  He’d told her, “No matter how challenging, family is a gift. So are good friends.”

  She stifled her own sigh. Back then he hadn’t met her uncle Ulysses and had known next to nothing about her. He’d always been generous with his viewpoint.

  She wasn’t a gift or a good friend or even a good person. She kept making things worse for everyone, while Brynmor did the opposite. He and his brothers were the reason their sister, Robyn, was so resiliently capable. After their parents died, all three brothers had helped raise her. But Brynmor, as the eldest, had set the tone.

  That voice…gentle but firm, playful but concerned had, for the first time in her life, made her feel safe. Her determination to keep him at a distance had wavered. He’d suffered deeply because of her weakness.

  “Don’t be fooled by this do-gooder’s bungling of the facts.” Ulysses yanked a wad of papers from his coat pocket and waved it in the air for everyone to see. “Look at the debts this woman has accumulated. Who will pay them if I don’t? I’m bound to her by all of her liabilities, including her bastard heathen blood.”

  When the crowd gasped, Ulysses’ tone turned as grave as a vaudeville actor. “’Tis true. My brother fathered children out of wedlock with”—he sucked in a breath as if it caused him physical pain to say the next words—“three Indian women. But the hand of God intervened. He died, and his children were placed in a mission whose saintly Reverend Mother eventually found me. Their last family left on earth. With too many to feed and house, she begged me to take my nieces.”

  An old lie with some truths. They all had Irish fathers who instead of marrying their Cree mothers had abandoned them. And after their mothers died, they’d ended up in the mission’s orphanage.

  But none of them were related.

  She called Oriole and Wren her sisters because they were bound by love. Ulysses called them his nieces to keep them shackled to him and their work. How he’d found them at the church mission in the Qu'Appelle Valley, far to the north of here, had become a tangle of lies peppered with just enough truths to keep them under his power.

  The charlatan ran his fingertips over the white streaking the temples of his otherwise pitch-black hair, calling attention to his wise old uncle persona. “The mission agreed that we should sign a contract of expectations. My nieces promised they would work to offset the cost of their upkeep.”

  “We never signed anything. You for—”

  “Oh, unhappy deceiver!” He stabbed his finger at her for emphasis. “Since becoming unbalanced like her father, she will lie that her signature was forged.”

  Curse him! And her for hoping she might fight him with words. While he had no musical talent, he had a flair for speeches and fabricating letters. Luckily, his abilities hadn’t extended to learning Cree. If Oriole or Wren left a message, it would be written in that language, and only they could read it.

  “She has paid any debt to you a thousand times over
.”

  Brynmor’s conviction made her stand taller. Every time she’d challenged Ulysses’ lies, everyone else believed him and not her.

  Ulysses thrust his papers higher. “These documents say otherwise.”

  “Do they also say you can own someone forever?” she muttered.

  “He’s a vile excuse for a human being.” Brynmor’s voice shook with fury. So did his entire body.

  Astonishment froze her like a block of ice. She’d rarely seen him angry and never like this, never on the precipice of losing control.

  He leaned toward Ulysses, his hands fisted, ready to throw his own punch. “His actions are immoral and illegal.”

  “They most certainly are not. I have the legitimate right to—” The screech of the shop door opening behind Lark cut him off. He shoved his way, none too gently, through the crowd and back onto the street. “If you insist, I’ll fetch the sheriff.”

  Another lie. He’d bring hired thugs before he involved the law. Unless… Had he, like he’d done in Cheyenne, already found a way to coerce Denver’s lawmen into doing his bidding?

  “When you find whomever you’re going after, come to my freight office,” Brynmor called after him. “We need to settle our own debt.” The tension in him eased with each word he said or maybe every stride Ulysses took away from them.

  She allowed herself to relax as well. Brynmor hadn’t known Ulysses as long as she had, but he understood him well enough. Standing with him like comrades in arms or, even better, like her heart’s companion, made her smile. Until she focused on his final word. “What debt are you talking about?”