Mail Order Ruby
Widows, Brides and Secret Babies
Book 20
By Teresa Ives Lilly
Mail Order Ruby
(Widows, Brides and Secret Babies-Book 20)
COPYRIGHT Mail Order Ruby © 2020 Teresa Ives Lilly Lovely Romance Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, Elissa Strati, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Cover design and logo inset by Black Widow Books, Virginia McKevitt, cover artist.
Chapter One
Ruby Dawson stared into her wardrobe; her mouth opened wide in shock. All her daily dresses had been removed and the space filled with new bright, colorful outfits; the type of dresses her mother wore when dancing in the Golden Dawn. She stepped back, her hand shaking. These dresses were not the right size for her mother, so it could only have one meaning, the thing Ruby had been dreading for the last several years: her mother had finally decided it was time for Ruby to start dancing.
Ruby heard a soft sound from behind, and turned to find her baby brother’s eyes open where he lay in a dresser drawer that doubled as a cradle. She moved across the room and lifted the curly haired child.
“Hello, darling. Did you have a good nap?” Ruby sat down and placed the fifteen-month-old on her lap. The child squiggled around then plopped his thumb into his mouth and leaned his head against her chest.
The boy hadn’t learned to speak yet. There had been a few mumbled attempts, but each time his mother had even taken the time to listen to his attempts when he didn’t say ‘Mama’, perfectly, she’d given the child a shake and put him back in his crib. Ruby believed that kept him from trying to speak.
Her little brother had not been a welcomed child. A wealthy gentleman had fallen in love with Ruby’s mother and planned to marry her, but when he found she was with his child, before the wedding, he’d given her a handful of money and walked away, not wanting his lifestyle to be cramped by a child.
“He thought he could clean me up and take me to his home, but not if I were carrying his child,” her mothered often complained bitterly; however, to Ruby’s relief she’d still gone through with the pregnancy although she’d threatened several times to find someone who could ‘do something about it’.
Those had been worrisome days filled with prayer, and since Timmy was born, Ruby’s mother could hardly even be called a mother. She left the child in the care of other saloon girls and whenever Ruby wasn’t in school, she was the only mother figure he knew.
As she sat holding the boy, the door flew open and her mother, dressed in her noted color of blue velvet, entered the room. She eyed the child on Ruby’s lap, but didn’t acknowledge him. The boy turned his face away from his mother, as if hiding his own eyes would protect him from her displeasure.
“Ruby! I’m glad you’re home. Did you see your new wardrobe?” The women’s voice emphasized each word.
Ruby forehead furrowed. “Yes, Mother.”
The woman swooshed across the room and flung open the wardrobe. She pulled out one dress at a time and held them up for inspection, her eyes glittering. “Yes, yes. These are lovely.” She held up one that was a bold red with black ribbons tied in bows all over its bodice. She pulled out another even more brazen.
Ruby felt her cheeks turning warm from embarrassment. She clenched her hands. “Mother, the dresses are lovely, but where did you put my clothes?”
Her mother waved her hand slightly. “Falderal. You won’t need those schoolmarm things anymore. Next week you turn eighteen and Blake wants you to start your job at his saloon. He purchased all these gowns for you. That was generous I’d say. When I started dancing only one dress was bought for me. I had to earn the rest.”
Ruby bit her bottom lip. She wanted to scream but that had never done any good before. She’d been putting this moment off for two years, having begged her mother to allow her to finish school first. But Ruby did not want to be a saloon girl, even if it was a somewhat respectable saloon, and the dancers were paid well to mingle with the crowd and dance with the men; nothing more. Just the thought of those drunk men touching and holding her, turned Ruby’s stomach.
That lifestyle went against everything she believed in. Her hopes, dreams and belief in God did not include wearing such daring clothes and being held by a different man night after night. She’d been praying for a direct answer to the problem for a long time and thought she’d been given the answer. However, she still wasn’t sure.
She watched as her mother pulled three more dresses out, holding them up in glee. Yet, Ruby thought she also recognized a glint of jealousy in her mother’s eyes. Suddenly, the woman slammed the
