Queen of Cherry Vale

B Glad Judith

Description

When newly widowed Hattie Rommel chooses a second husband, she doesn't expect him to fulfill her most secret dreams. She just wants him to take her to Oregon. Emmet Lachlan marries Hattie with the understanding that he will be free to leave her behind, once she is safely in Oregon. He is a wandering man, not a settling-down farmer. Then an old trapper bequeaths them a map to a valley where gold lies on the ground for the taking. While Emmet and Hattie gather the gold, they also discover each other. Even lost in love's magic, they both know it cannot last. When they run afoul of murderous renegades, they must flee across untamed mountains to the hidden valley Hattie calls Cherry Vale. In the home she's always longed for, Emmet discovers a peace he's never sought. The end of summer means they must resume their interrupted journey. Can Hattie leave the only place that's ever felt like home? And if she does, will Emmet give up looking for what's on the far side of the hill?

Sujets

• Westerns
• Historical romance
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: Uncial Press
• Date de parution: 13 octobre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781601740090
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE QUEEN OF CHERRY VALE
Behind the Ranges, Book I
 
By
Judith B. Glad
 
Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges-- Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go.
Rudyard Kipling: The Explorer
 
 
Uncial Press       Aloha, Oregon 2006
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein areproducts of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirelycoincidental.
The Queen of Cherry Vale Copyright © 2000, 2006 by Judith B.Glad
Previously published by Awe-Struck E-Books
 
ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-009-0 ISBN 10: 1-60174-009-3
Cover design by Judith B. Glad
All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work inwhole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known orhereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein areproducts of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirelycoincidental.
Published by Uncial Press, an imprint of GCT, Inc.
Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com
Dedication
To Neil with love. If you hadn't believed, this book wouldnever have happened.
 
* * * *
 
Author's Note: Cherry Vale doesn't exist, but if it did, you would find it along the SouthFork of the Payette River. I would never have discovered it without the many wonderful folkswho've shared the splendor of Idaho's mountains and forests and rivers with me.
Prologue
1845
The women wept for family and places to be left behind while the men spoke of newlives and unexplored lands.
The women dried their tears and sorted the minutiae of their lives, discarding memoriesand treasures, weighing each thing against the knowledge that it must be carried two thousandmiles and more. Food was more important than foofaraw, needles and pins more valuable thanvelvet bonnets and shoes with French heels. Chests and trunks were packed with sturdy clothingand underwear, potions and simples. They mourned the chiffoniers they left behind and maderoom for the chests and chairs they took. And if an empty corner was found for grandmother'schina platter or the family Bible, well, no one would know until they reached Oregon.
They learned much along the way. Shoes made for country lanes were too frangible forthe mud and rocks and endless miles of the trail. Food tasted just as good cooked over buffalodung and dusty bodies felt clean when washed in a cupful of precious water. A circle of spreadskirts was enough for privacy, and no one noticed soft cries of completion when the ever-presentwind soughed around the wheels and canopies of clustered wagons.
The prairie and the mountains taught hard lessons. That life was more precious than thechina platter or the butternut cabinet, that a plowshare might mean survival while a silver teapotdid not. That there were hardships far worse than leaving behind all they knew and loved, forOregon was far away and many of them would never see its rich green valleys.
For Hattie Rommel, the journey West was but one more move in a life filled withmoving. She hid her tears from Karl, for he had no patience with women's vapors. A wife wentwhere her husband did--it was her duty.
Perhaps, in Oregon, she would find a home.
Chapter One
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And may God have mercy on your soul."
The muted chorus of 'amens' still shivered in the chill of early morn when ColonelWhitehead shut his Bible with a snap. "Let's get rollin'," he said.
A light touch on her arm roused Hattie from her stupor. She let dusty soil dribble fromher fingers onto the blanket-wrapped form that had been her husband. A gentle arm turned heraway from the grave. The women around her murmured their sympathy. She let them lead herback to the waiting wagons, didn't resist when she was urged to climb onto the high seat ofhers.
Dust choked her as the first wagon slowly swung into the broad track across the emptyprairie. The oxen stepped out in line, big, gentle Odin not needing the touch of the goad carriedby young Japhet Stone. The white ox was so intelligent that he hardly needed guidance, butColonel Whitehead had nearly had a conniption fit when she said as much, back when Karl hadfirst taken sick.
She was so tired, so numb. So empty. It seemed like she'd been nursing the sick forever.The cholera had caught up with them along the Platte and Annie had been one of the first tosicken. Poor little tyke, she'd not suffered much. It had taken her so quickly. Hattie still lookedfor her among the children of the train, until she remembered once again that the child she'draised from babyhood was gone, left in an unmarked grave beside the trail. Karl hadn't grievedany more for his daughter than she had. Than she did, for her arms were still empty, her heartstill aching.
And now Karl was gone too. She grieved, but she was angry too. With him. Withherself.
He'd promised to protect her, to give her a home. Then he'd left her alone, halfway toOregon, where she hadn't wanted to go in the first place.
No one had taken sick for more than a week now, so maybe they'd left the bad water andthe miasmas behind them. The air in these high valleys seemed cleaner somehow than it did backhome, or even on those endless plains before the divide.
Soda Springs tonight, the colonel had said. Hattie had promised Japhet and Silas someof her precious store of sugar to sweeten the soda water that was supposed to gush from theground. They, at least, were still young enough to be able to laugh and play at the end of a long,hard day. She was too tired, too old, even though she was scarcely twenty. She felt a hundred andtwenty.
She could still turn back. Almost every day they encountered a group returning to theEast. To civilization. To safety.
No. She could not--would not--go back. She'd left nothing behind. Her future, no matterhow bleak, was somewhere out there. Toward the sunset.
In Oregon she could put down roots and build a place of her own, somewhere she wouldbelong for the rest of her life.
* * * *
Emmet topped a rise and halted, looking across the rolling countryside. A line of whiteshapes in the distance marked still another wagon train. Would they never stop coming, theseseekers after paradise?
He'd been looking forward to a bath in the hot pools at Soda Springs. There was still asliver of castile soap in his possibles, left from a long ago week in Paris. He had a hankering tofeel its spicy scent on his skin, instead of the reek of wood smoke and horse. He'd been in themountains too long.
He nudged his horse into a walk, letting the gelding find its own way down the hillside.Back when he'd come up the Mississippi with Clymer and Jones, he'd figured a year or two in thewilderness would be enough. The life had suited him, though, and he'd stayed until the itch in hisfeet grew too intense to resist. He'd found a certain peace in the cold, wet, difficult work ofrunning traplines in frozen forests, a contentment in long winter nights in a smoky log cabinwhile he and Buffalo Jones spun impossible tales and repaired gear.
But it was time to move on again. He wanted music and laughter and most of all, hewanted silky, clean women who smelled of flowers, not of fish and bear grease.
Emmet waited until dark for his bath, certain the emigrants would be in bed almost asearly as the chickens they carried in cages tied to the sides of their wagons. His moccasined feetmade no sound on the hard-packed ground, nor did his well-worn buckskin pants rustle as woolwould have. The sounds of the night were soft around him, usual sounds, nothing to alarm hiswell-trained perceptions.
Until he heard the splash.
It was not a fish, not a beaver. He froze, each sense on the alert.
Another splash, followed by a formless cry. Emmet stepped off the path, into thesagebrush. Slipping from one tall shrub to another, he approached the bank that overlooked thecreek.
In the moonlight, white shoulders gleamed with droplets of water, slim arms lifted adark cloud of hair, dripping, from the water. Even as he watched, she stood, her body temptingand perfect in the pallid light. She wrung water from her hair, stepped carefully toward the shore.As she bent and turned, patting herself dry with a tattered linen towel, he almost wept at thebeauty of her. His sex strained at buckskin, demanding, hungry. His body all but trembled at theforce of his sudden desire.
She was within three feet of him as she climbed the path. He could have reached out andgrabbed her, could have silenced her alarmed cry and carried her far from the security of herwagon, there to ravish her until his body was drained and empty. He could almost feel the satinof her warm skin, taste the sugar of her hot mouth.
She smelled of lilac and he let her walk on.
* * * *
For the first time in weeks, Hattie felt almost alive. The long sleep, almost all day, as thewagon jolted and swayed along the trail, had healed her body of its crippling exhaustion. As forthe other, the loneliness that she was all too familiar with, well, there was no cure for that. She'dknown it before and survived. She'd survive again.
What a relief it was to feel clean once more. Karl had never understood her love ofswimming, and had forbidden her to bathe in the pond, even wearing her chemise. As if anyonebut him and Annie would have seen her, but that hadn't mattered to Karl. It was indecent, he'dinsisted, for her to want to undress herself like that. If she had to immerse her whole body inwater, a tub before the kitchen fire was enough, just as long as he was warned so he wouldn'tembarrass them both by walking in