A Light on the Mail Order Bride's Love [EBOOK]

Chapter 1 <br>

1881, California<br>

“Father, for the fifth time, that is not who I am, or represent. It is good you found happiness in ranching and agricultural life, but I am an engineer.” <br>

Taylor Brooks ran an impatient hand through his tousled black hair. Sometimes, his father had him so exasperated, all he wanted to do was scream. <br>

Why couldn’t the man just accept that he wasn’t into ranching like him? He had never despised his father’s choice of being a rancher. Why couldn’t the man see that not everyone must go down that path?<br>

“Engineer?” his father bellowed, his blue eyes almost popping out from their sockets. “This is what people would hear you say and they wouldn’t hire you to work for them. They are the ideas of a mad man.”<br>

Mad man? Surely that was going too far. Granted, his ideas were radical. He had to admit that, but he believed in a bright future ahead. <br>

Life was not simply to get by, not simply harvesting metals and minerals, but harvesting electricity—that was the future, and the future would move past mining and herding sooner than later.<br>

Tired of arguing because his father would never understand his beliefs, Taylor simply walked out of the large sitting room. His black polished shoes sounded heavy on the wooden floor as he walked down the hallway.<br>

Brushing away specks from his waistcoat and tweed coat, he left the house and walked towards the gate.<br>

Taylor grimaced when he saw a spot of dust on his black trousers. He removed his handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped it off. He hated looking for anything other than orderly. <br>

His father repeatedly told him that he dressed like a dandy. This had elicited laughter from him several times. His father didn’t understand that being garbed in a shirt, waistcoat, coat and trousers didn’t mean that he dressed like a popinjay. He always had to look the part of the businessman that he was.<br>

His father was always clad like the rancher that he was, mainly in dungarees. While Taylor had no problem with that, he couldn’t be attired that way. After all, he wasn’t a rancher, and he didn’t think that he would ever be.<br>

At the gate, he turned and looked at the wide expanse of land with its lush vegetation, and the backdrop of mountains towering over it like a shelter. Buildings consisting of the red brick ranch house, bunkhouses, a stable, and a barn covered one part of the land. An orchard with several fruit trees lined the other part of the ranch. <br>

Taylor walked down the road to take a stagecoach to San Jose, where he worked. He had come to tell his father how things were going well with his plan to transmit electricity in the town. He should have saved his breath. His father was more interested in asking him when he would start participating fully in ranch activities.<br>

When he was growing up, he had been forced to take an interest in ranch work. But he had known at a young age that ranching wasn’t for him.<br>

If only Papa would accept that. <br>

Taylor was in the middle of a big deal with the lighting of the moonlight tower in San Jose. He believed that his innovative plan for electrical transmissions would change his life and society as well. Unfortunately, his father didn’t realize that should he achieve his plan, he would make a lot of money.<br>

The streets were laden with wagons carrying people and goods all over the place. Men were dressed like him, while others who were just coming in from mining camps at the outskirts of the city looked very unkempt. Women and children also moved about the various buildings consisting of grocery shops, saloons, bars and an inn. <br>

He went to the livery and paid the stable lad for his horse he had taken there that morning. The lad brought out the black stallion and Taylor swiftly mounted it. Although he liked the hustle and bustle San Jose offered, he preferred living in the quiet town a short distance away.<br>

Taylor tipped his hat at the people he met along the way. He smiled at the women who batted their eyelashes at him. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for women to be that forward with him. Wherever he went, women sought him out. He believed that it was because he was somewhat different from the menfolk around there. Most of the men in Carson were either miners, ranchers, or store owners. To them, Taylor stood out.<br>

Taylor tried to be as polite to them as possible. He declined their bold offers. Most of them backed away when they saw he wasn’t interested. But not all.<br>

Taylor returned to thinking about his dream, which would give him a sense of completion and meaning if achieved. Maybe then his father wouldn’t see his thirty-six years of existence as a waste, which he believed to be so now.<br>

He was just about to leave the place to head home when he bumped into someone.<br>

“Whoa!” <br>

A grimace, which he hid by running his hand across his clean-shaven chin, turned Taylor’s lips. Of all the people to come across in town that day, Roger Tate was the worst.<br>

“Who do we have here? Taylor Brooks,” the man announced in that booming voice of his. <br>

“Mr. Tate,” Taylor returned with a small smile on his face. He was beginning to wonder if the miner was following him around. Everywhere he turned, he always bumped into Roger. And the man never failed to put his proposal forward.<br>

“If I had known that I was going to bump into you today, I would have come along with Isabella.”<br>

Taylor regarded with amusement the tall, robust man with a thick moustache. Roger removed his brown hat and ran his hand through his thinning brown hair. <br>

“Have you given any thought to my proposal?” the man questioned as usual. “If you marry my daughter, I’m ready to finance this electricity dream of yours. I might not know much about it, but I know that my daughter wants you.”<br>

Taylor had no doubt that Roger would be able to fund his plan. The man was a wealthy rancher who owned an estate and employed a lot of workers. <br>

Isabella, Roger’s daughter, was a fine woman with straight blonde shoulder-length hair and blue eyes. She was always well-dressed to cover her tall and slim frame. <br>

Although her complexion was very pale from not coming out in the sun to do any work, she was nonetheless beautiful. But she was too spoiled and very traditional. She wanted what she’d grown to want. <br>

After just a few minutes spent in her company, he had come to the realization that she had no aspirations. Unfortunately for him, Isabella had taken one look at him and decided she wanted him. And because her father gave her whatever she wanted, the man had been trying to pressure him into marrying his daughter.<br>

What both father and daughter didn’t understand was that he wasn’t in a hurry to marry. When he did, he wanted it to be to someone else, somebody passionate about something, just like him. <br>

A woman who was very different from Isabella, who would share his dream, and not fall asleep while he was trying to tell her about it.<br>

Then, it hit him.<br>

He could find such a woman if he placed an ad in the newspaper. He had heard of mail-order brides, but he never thought that he would have to resort to ordering one.<br>

But desperate times call for desperate measures, don’t they? <br>

Belatedly realizing that Roger was waiting for an answer, Taylor offered the rancher a small smile. <br>

“Thanks for the offer, Mr… er… Roger, but I have to say no. Again. Please excuse me.” He brushed past the man and hastily rode away from him.<br>

“Think about it, Taylor,” Roger called after him. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”<br>

Taylor didn’t bother replying to him. He rode back to the city, to the office of the Matrimonial Times. Taylor reached the office and penned down what he desired in a wife. Not that he really needed one. Getting the women in the place, particularly Isabella, to leave him alone was his sole aim. <br>

He placed the ad in the hope that the right kind of woman would enjoy such a lifestyle. Maybe the woman who would respond might understand his views.<br>

He could only hope.<br>