He had retraced his route several times after following along the route she had surely taken. He couldn’t understand how he could have missed her. She must have taken the wrong turn somewhere along the way.
Hamilton carefully turned the wagon around and set off quickly to where the roads diverged, following the wrong road, hoping desperately it would end up being the right one.
A couple miles further and his heart was starting to sink. It had been hours. This section of wilderness expanded in all directions for miles with barely a soul stirring at the best of times, let alone during a snowstorm.
He was just about to give up and turn around to find another road she might have chosen when he caught sight of a splash of color. It was almost the same color as the coat she had been wearing. Before he had even brought the horses to a standstill he was on the ground and running forward.
“Sadie,” he called to her as he pulled her up from the ground. “Sadie, my darling girl, wake up. Are you hurt? Wake up and tell me. I swear to you, I’ll never let you out of my sight ever again.”
He almost wept with relief when he realized she was still breathing, but her skin was so white it was the color of the snow that was continuing to fall around them. He needed to get her to warmth. Staring in the direction she had been facing, he realized the young woman wasn’t a total fool. There was a rather ramshackle barn off in the distance.
Hamilton quickly unhitched the horses, laying Sadie over one of them and covering her with the furs from the wagon before leading them all in the direction of the dilapidated building.
Once there, he was relieved to see there was some old straw that he was able to divide — some to feed the horses and some more to create a cocoon of sorts for himself and his wife.
He managed to wrestle Sadie out of her soaked overcoat, relieved to realize that she wasn’t wet all the way through. If he'd had to, he would have lit a fire, but Hamilton was afraid he would end up burning down their only source of protection from the storm.
“Sadie, wake up, sweet thing. I need you to try to open your eyes.” At her soft moan, Hamilton redoubled his efforts to wake her up, relieved to have some signs of life. “Come on, Sadie. I know you want to sleep, but you need to talk to me. I don’t want to take your clothes off to examine you for injury if I don’t have to.” Despite his fears, he had to chuckle over the fact that his words finally prompted a reaction out of her. She groaned a little bit but finally her eyes fluttered open. When her gaze seemed to finally focus on him, he was amazed to see a soft smile stretch her face.
“Hello there,” he said to her. “I was getting mightily worried about you.”
Tears filled her eyes, one tipping over the edge of her lashes, and he quickly wiped it away. “So sorry, Ham, didn’t mean to be an idiot,” she mumbled. He smiled over her use of his shortened name, but he quickly corrected her.
“I’m the idiot, not you. I never should have allowed you to get out of the wagon. It was foolish beyond forgiveness at the best of times, but I should have realized that the weather was going to take a turn.”
Her chattering teeth prevented her from saying too much more, but Hamilton was relieved to see her gaze was clearing. He didn’t think she had hit her head.
“Did you slip and fall? I found you lying prone in the snow.”
“So cold,” she said, making Hamilton wonder if she was talking about now or then. He pulled her tighter into his side, willing his own heat to warm her. “So lost,” she added. “Tried to get to the barn but slipped. Was going to just rest for a minute to catch my breath.” She sounded breathless as she said it, and Hamilton’s heart constricted at the risk they had run. He was lucky he had found her when he had. A little bit longer, and she would have been covered by the falling snow. He squeezed her tightly to him, surprising a gasp of laughter out of her. “Still need my breath,” she added.
He chuckled, too, but didn’t loosen his grasp by much. “I was never so happy nor so angry all at once in my life,” he said as he stared into her face and dropped a light kiss onto the tip of her nose. She blinked slowly at him, and her brow furrowed into confusion.
“Am I dreaming?” she asked.
“No, my darling, I’ve got you. We’re safe, and dry, and somewhat warm. We’ve got the horses and some straw, and we’ll be all right here until morning when we’ll make our way home. To our house that you are making into a home for us. And I swear to you, I’ll tell you all my secrets. It just might take some time to get them all out.” She offered him a drowsy smile, and Hamilton wasn’t sure if she even fully understood what he was saying. But he couldn’t hold back. “The first secret I have to tell you is that I love you.”
Her eyes had drifted closed, but they popped open as his words seemed to register. Her gaze was more alert and her smile was shy but more lively than before.
“Really?”
“Really! I swear to you, I’ll never keep anything from you again, nor will I ever let anything bad happen to you.”
Sadie shrugged, but happiness started to shine through her features. “Bad things happen,” she said in a soft voice. “But I love you, too.” She paused for a moment. “And I’ll try not to be ridiculous in the future.”
Hamilton held her close, grateful they had survived. He had come so close to losing the beautiful future he now saw unfurling before them.
Epilogue
Sadie stood on the edge of the porch watching the lane. She knew she was being foolish. It was doubtful the Delaneys would have left their house at six o’clock in the morning, so they couldn’t possibly be arriving yet. But she was anxious for them to get there.
It was going to be a perfect summer day. The children were finished with school, so it was good timing for the family of six to come for a visit. The telegram had arrived the week before.
THOUGHT ABOUT SURPRISING YOU BUT DECIDED TO ADVISE YOU SIX TO ARRIVE NEXT WEEK TUESDAY
Sadie and Hamilton had laughed long and hard over the message before Sadie swept into a fervor of preparations, much to Hamilton’s dismay.
“Shouldn’t you be taking it more gently, in your condition?”
Shooting him a playfully exasperated glance, Sadie had answered, “I’m pregnant, not dying.”
Hamilton had laughed but added, “I’d like to keep it that way. Here, let me do that,” he had offered as he grabbed the mop from her hands and finished the task.
“Thank you. And I’m glad you’re getting practice. You can’t even tell I’m carrying yet, but in a few months, I’ll truly need your help with this type of task. For now, while I promise you I won’t do too much, the doctor said there’s nothing wrong with me continuing to do my usual activities.”
“Well, preparing for six visitors isn’t your usual activities,” Hamilton had replied stubbornly. “We should have told them to stay away.”
“No, we shouldn’t have,” Sadie countered with a firm shake of her head. “Stop worrying. Women have been bearing children since the beginning of time. There is no reason to expect anything to go wrong. And certainly doing a few house chores isn’t going to do me any harm at this point.”
Hamilton joined her on the porch, interrupting her musing.
“Hello beautiful.”
Sadie grinned at him. The endearment was significant considering his strange feelings about physical beauty. Hamilton had come a long way in the short time they’d been together. It was hard to believe they’d only been married nine months. She felt like she’d known him for a lifetime.
“I know you’re excited about them coming, but shouldn’t you be sitting down?”
“Hamilton Foster, we’ve been over this. I am not going to wrap myself in cotton wool for the next six months.”
Hamilton sighed. “Six months. It’s such terrible timing, though. You’ll be giving birth in the dead of winter.”
Sadie grinned as she sidled up to him, draping her arms around his middle as his automatically came around and pulled her closer into his side. “Maybe tha
t will be a good time to show me all your California properties, then. I’ve heard they don’t get winter there.”
His arms tightened around her while he shuffled her around to be more comfortable in front of him, and his chin dropped down onto her head. Sadie sighed contentedly, the sense of home-coming settling over her like a warm blanket.
“Some of my places there do get winter, some don’t. Maybe that would be a good idea. Although I thought you would prefer to be here. You seem to be a nester.”
Sadie giggled. “I never knew that about myself, but you’re right. I really do like being home. But I enjoyed it when we took advantage of the early thaw and you took me to California in February and showed me some of your places. It’s hard to believe the train actually goes all the way from coast to coast now. But, you’re right. I would rather be here when the baby comes. Not to compare myself with the animals, but you’ve helped them give birth. Don’t you think you will be able to help me?”
Even though she couldn’t see his face, she could imagine him paling at the thought when she heard his breathing change. She tightened her arms around him, pulling her head out from under his chin so she could look into his face, accepting his light kiss as she did so.
“Ham, my darling, stop worrying. I know it’s motivated by loving concern, but you’re going to drive us both batty before the baby even gets here. We’ll need all our mental faculties fully intact to cope with his or her arrival, so stop borrowing trouble. It’s a perfect day, our friends are coming to visit, we’re perfectly happy and healthy and in love. Nothing could be better than this.”
His smile nearly took her breath away as he dropped another kiss onto her upturned face. “You’re right. I promise to try a bit harder to stop worrying. But since, as you know, my mother left when I was only eight, I have very little experience with female issues. And delivering my own child is not something I want to experience, as I am absolutely certain it will not be the same thing as a colt or calf.”
Sadie grinned up at him. “You’re probably right. We could hire a nurse to come and stay with us. Since you’re the one who’s so worried about it, it might be a good way for you to spend a bit of that abundance of money you didn’t want to tell me about.”
Hamilton’s chuckle rumbled through her making her shiver with delight as her smile widened. “Are you ever going to forget about my previous secretive nature?”
“Eventually,” Sadie answered after a slight pause. “It’ll be easy to forget about since you seem to have made such a complete turnabout. I mean, I bet you would even let me count your gold if I was so inclined.”
“Of course, I would,” Hamilton replied, his tone a mixture of affront and amusement. “It just might take you a while.”
Sadie laughed while she tightened her arms around his waist. “I’m glad you’ve grown comfortable telling me about your different businesses and investments. I find it fascinating even if I don’t fully understand how some of it works. You’ll probably have to explain the borax process at least one or two times more before I could speak intelligently on the matter.”
Hamilton loyally countered her words. “You can speak intelligently on any matter, since you’re far smarter than anyone would think from looking at you.”
Sadie couldn’t prevent her burst of laughter in response before she sighed. “Hamilton, you’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that your mother’s beauty had nothing to do with her faithlessness.” She tightened her arms to prevent him from pulling away. “I still think you ought to try to find her so you could confront her. You’ve only ever heard your father’s side of the story. Since you were so young, you can’t really trust your own recollections. I can assure you, I’m far from the only trustworthy woman on earth. While you’ll never have to worry about finding another wife, you still ought to work on your views as we will want to make friends with people. Especially with a child on the way. I’ll need to know the other mothers when he or she goes to school, at the very least.”
“Well, none of the women around here are very pretty, so it’s not much of an issue.” He chuckled and dropped another gentle kiss to her lips while squeezing her back when he realized she was about to protest. “I know. You’re right about my mother. I shouldn’t have judged all other women on her bad behavior.”
Sadie’s frown prompted a sigh from Hamilton. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t even know if her behavior was so very bad. But I do know that you would never leave your child behind, no matter the circumstances.”
Hamilton was quiet for a moment, looking out over his land, which always seemed to bring pleasure to his troubled soul. Sadie didn’t interrupt his process, content knowing he was making an effort to alter his thoughts.
“I will consider hiring someone to look for her,” he said in a tired voice before his tone lightened. “But in the meantime,” he continued, keeping his gaze on the horizon. “I love you, I’m thrilled to have you, even if you’re so pretty it hurts my eyes sometimes. More importantly, I trust you, and if that small cloud of dust over there means what I think it does, our friends are going to be here in the next ten or fifteen minutes.”
The first part of his speech had made Sadie feel swoony with the depth of her own love for her handsome husband, but the rest of his words made her pull out of his arms with a little jump of agitated joy as she pulled off her apron and reached up to feel if any of her hairs were out of place.
“Sadie.” His tone was a little sharper than he had maybe meant it to be as she brought a slightly startled gaze to his face. “You look perfect, the house is ready, you’ve cooked and baked until the house is overflowing, and you’re with child so you shouldn’t be overly excited anyway.”
With a happy gurgle of laughter, Sadie threw herself back into her husband’s arms. “I love you, Hamilton Foster. I’m looking forward to the rest of our lives together.” Then she stood on the tips of her toes and stifled any more of his worries with the gentle pressure of her warm lips.
The End
About the Author
I’ve been writing pretty much since I learned to read when I was five years old. Of course, those early efforts were basically only something a mother could love :-). I put writing aside after I left school and stuck with reading. I am an avid reader. I love words. I will read anything, even the cereal box, signs, posters, etc. But my true love is novels.
Almost ten years ago my husband dared me to write a book instead of always reading them. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, but to my surprise I love writing. Those early efforts eventually became my first published book – Tempting the Earl (published by Avalon Books in 2010). There were some ups and downs in my publishing efforts. My first publisher was sold and I became an “orphan” author, back to the drawing board of trying to find a publishing house. It has been a thrilling adventure as I learned to navigate the world of publishing.
I believe firmly that everyone deserves a happily ever after. I want my readers to be able to escape from the everyday for a little while and feel upbeat and refreshed when they get to the end of my books.
When not reading or writing, I can be found traipsing around my neighborhood admiring the dogs and greenery or travelling the world with my favorite companion.
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Other books by Wendy May Andrews you will enjoy:
Another American Historical, read:
Book 1 in the Orphan Train series:
Sophie
She’d happily give him her heart … if only it wouldn’t cost her the only home she’s known
Sophie Brooks thought she had everything she could want in life. Friends, loved ones at the orphanage where she was raised, a job that gives her purpose, and a chance to help children every day … what more could she need? But a chance encounter with a handsome stranger has her wondering if a life—and love—outside the orphanage might be exactly what she never knew she needed.
Renton Ro
bert Rexford III has never wanted for anything. Until he meets Sophie. The charming, intelligent beauty draws him like no other. But, thanks to a disapproving benefactor who threatens to pull the orphanage’s funding, his pursuit of her could cost Sophie everything she holds dear. She’s all he wants in the world, but how can he ask her to give up so much when all she’d get in return is his heart?
It’s not long before Sophie is forced to weigh her loyalty to the only home she’s ever known against the needs of her heart. Can love prevail—or is the cost simply too high?
Available now on Amazon
If you like Regency Romance, read
Inheriting Trouble
Book 1 in the Bequest Series
The inheritance was meant to better her life,
not muddle it.
Georgia Holton, wellborn but nearly penniless, is best friends with one of the Earl of Sherton’s five daughters. When she is invited to accompany her friend for two weeks of the Season, Georgia jumps at the opportunity to have a little adventure away from her small village.
The Earl of Crossley is handsome, wealthy, widowed, and jaded. He has no intention of courting any of this Season’s debutantes. After all, every woman he’s ever known has been dishonest, including his late wife. But when a chance encounter throws him into contact with the Sherton ladies and their lovely friend, he can’t help being drawn to Georgia’s beauty and endearing personality.
When confusion about Georgia’s small inheritance becomes known, a sense of obligation to right a wrong forces the earl and Georgia into close association.
A Bride for Hamilton Page 9
