The remainder of the evening after dinner was spent drafting those blasted backgrounds in the library. Will joined Hazel and silently read a book on the recliner as she worked.
The absentminded part of her wondered once again if part of the reason he married a stranger was that he was lonely out here in the middle of nowhere. He certainly liked being near her when he was home.
Hazel read a book once about the Old West. Back then there were so few women in the settlements that it was common to write back east for a mail-order bride. Orphans or other women with no other marriage prospects would respond to the ads and travel by train to meet and marry their new husbands.
Honestly, she wasn't much different than those women. She had married herself off to a stranger to have a better life too. Those mail-order brides were probably as desperate and disillusioned as she had been.
