Mail Order Bride: Cora - Paradise Lost And Found: Brides Of Paradise, #4

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CORA

PARADISE LOST AND FOUND

BRIDES OF PARADISE BOOK 4

MAIL ORDER BRIDES

BY GRACE HEARTSONG

PARADISE LOST AND FOUND

Cora McGuinness laid the newspaper down with a sigh. All of the bride ads wanted young, pure, previously unwed women—girls, more like. They didn’t have to explicitly say so, but Cora could read between the lines. She’d heard stories about girls in her tenement building who’d gotten out of the harsh confines of New York City—who’d answered a strangers’ bride wanted ad and had ended up just that in six months time. They’d escaped west, a vast and golden ideal of space and air and freedom. The west was a place where people could start over. A place where people could start from nothing. And the men there, working hard to prosper as others had, were in need of wives. Women in the west were in short supply, and just a few letters exchanged was all some men needed to secure a wife.

But Cora was near thirty years old with a daughter of ten. Cora and her husband, Ronan, had come to New York from Ireland ten years before. Upon arrival, with no employment prospects, her husband had signed up to fight for the Union Army in a war he knew nothing about. But it paid.

Ronan had died in the last year of the war, with little Shannon ripe in Cora’s belly. The army had sent her his last pay, but since, she’d been struggling to make ends meet in a merciless city.

Cora and Ronan had dreamed that America would be a new start; New York City was the famed place of dreams—wasn’t it? Cora had soon found a room within a tenement by the Five Points, and although she had no family in America other than the child growing in her womb, she’d soon made friends with the other families in the building. Those families became her new family, those families helped provide for her and cook for her after the news of Ronan’s death had come.

She’d had Shannon, but had let the other women of the tenement care for her for the first several months. Cora had been far too distraught to look upon the baby’s face, so like her father’s. Their dreams had died with him. And for what? He had given his life to ensure Cora and their unborn child were provided for, but without him, what had been the point of it all?

There was always the option of returning to Ireland—but that required money that she didn’t have. And even if she did—what would she do? Where would she go? Times were tough there to begin with—that’s why they’d left in the first place. Ronan had no family left there, and Cora only had an old aunt who wrote every now and then, but who was of no means to provide for Cora and Shannon.

And so, they’d both stayed in New York. It had taken nearly a year and a half for Cora to get back to some semblance of normal life. She took a job as a maid at the nearby Starlight Hotel, and had worked there ever since. And the families she’d lived in such close quarters with had watched little Shannon when she wasn’t at school. Sometimes Cora worked late, but she’d always made it a point to get home to tuck her daughter in. It was a hard life, but weren’t all lives hard? Suffering was human.

But it wasn’t until Shannon contracted a nasty cough that Cora began to re-think New York City altogether. It had surprised her—how quickly her perspective had changed on nearly everything after her daughter had grown ill. Shannon deserved better. She needed good air and medicine and space to recover, but it was a life Cora had no means to provide.

The only way Cora could possibly see to drastically change their situation would be to answer one of the bride wanted ads. But who would want her—nearly ancient by bridal standards at twenty nine and with a ten year old daughter to boot. If the prospective man owned a farm, perhaps Cora could spin it in such a way that Shannon could earn her keep. And her daughter was a hard worker—always helping with chores and cooking around the tenement. But her work had slackened as her sickness had grown worse.

Her spirited, dark auburn-haired daughter had even stopped attending school and was mostly laid up in bed.

Who on earth would want to take on a widow and a sick child?

Cora sighed again. There was always the option of working double shifts at the Starlight Hotel—but at what cost? Yes, she might have a bit more coin, but would it be enough to afford Shannon’s medicine? What’s more, Cora would never forgive herself if something happened to Shannon while she was away.

She turned again to the newspaper and leafed through. The only way out was to try, and she could lose nothing by trying. Perhaps there was a man out there fool enough to take them on. But even if she did find an ad that piqued her fancy, she would have to try very hard not to appear too desperate or too pitiful. She could not abide by being taken to wife out of pity or guilt. Yet if she mentioned Shannon, this reaction was all she was likely to get.

She read each ad, focusing hard as the words formed themselves into imagined men in her mind. In truth, she had thought from time to time over the years what it would be like to marry again. She and Ronan had only been married a year before he’d been killed, and they’d hardly gotten to live any life at all together. But who could compare to Ronan McGuinness? He had been charismatic, jovial, yet foolhardy at times. He’d been roguishly handsome with his dark hair and eyes, considerable height, and lithe frame. On the boat over, she’d been poked fun at with her overtly Irish looks - pale skin, freckles, and corkscrew curls of copper red. And every time, Ronan would threaten her jesting assailants with a fist. That made her smile.

Ronan had been a man loyal to the last—a man willing to sacrifice anything for her and their unborn child. And in the end, he had indeed.

The letter R caught her eye:

Roger Claremont of Paradise, Iowa seeking a loving companion. I am a self-made man. I came here with nothing and now own the grandest hotel in town. Work has taken much from me, but it will not take my ability to find a woman to settle down with. I have dark hair and eyes, am tall, kind, and generous. Only true and honest ladies need apply. Send response care of the Claremont Hotel in Paradise, Iowa.

Cora couldn’t shake her funny feeling. Suddenly this Roger Claremont was Ronan McGuinness speaking to her from the dead, speaking to her through this silly ad in the newspaper. But a hotel owner? She was a mere maid at a hotel. She thought now of the Starlight’s owner—a grumpy and portly man over sixty years old. What if this Roger Claremont was the same?

She quickly chided herself. Who was she to judge a man’s looks if he excelled in kindness and fair treatment? Both qualities were admirable and rare, from what she’d seen around the tenement building at least. And she could not judge doubly so given her own situation. She herself must look a fright—her corkscrew curls often turned frizzy and large over the course of the few days. Some days she couldn’t even get a brush through it, and her struggling with a knot was sometimes the only thing that made little Shannon giggle anymore.

But Cora had seen the paleness of her own skin, the dark purple smudges beneath her eyes and the sallow quality of her cheeks. It was if all the bones and joints of her body were cut sharp and protruding, as if they rattled around within her skin. Most of the food she received she gave to Shannon. Cora’s