A Summer in Time (Train Through Time Series Book 6)
Page 1
Table of Contents
bessmcbride@gmail.com
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Dear Reader
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Books by Bess McBride/Minnie Crockwell
About the Author
Gem opened her eyes to the sound of voices.
“Whatever has happened to you, dear?” a woman asked.
Gem looked up to see concerned sky-blue eyes peering into her own as a silver-haired woman bent down to study her.
She jerked upright.
“What?” she asked in a husky voice. “Who are you?”
With the blur of sleep clearing from her eyes, Gem could see that the woman wore a broad straw hat festooned with brown satin ribbons and black lace. A beautifully cut brown silk jacket hugged her plump figure. Matching skirts fell away to her ankles. A necklace of brown amber stones dangled around the neck of a delicately laced high-necked blouse.
“Has something happened to you, miss? You appear so—” The sweetly concerned woman stopped as if searching for words. She turned to her companion, a tall elderly man with a white mustache that stretched for miles across his slender face. He sported a black derby over well-groomed silver hair and an elegant black three-piece suit. The man did not bend over Gem but remained upright, studying her with equal concern in his kindly pale-blue eyes.
“I cannot help you, my dear,” he said to the woman, running a hand along his mustache.
Gem noted matching gold wedding bands on their left-hand ring fingers.
“I would not know the proper words,” the man said in a wry tone.
Gem blinked.
“I’m okay,” she said, her eyes passing beyond them with the sickening realization that she might not have been okay after all. She remembered falling asleep in the sleeper compartment, but she didn’t remember moving into a luxuriously appointed antique train car.
A SUMMER IN TIME
Bess McBride
A Summer in Time
Copyright 2017 Bess McBride
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the publisher and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Cover Art by Tara West
Contact information: bessmcbride@gmail.com
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
This story is dedicated to all my reader friends who enjoy the Train Through Time series of time travel romances.
And to my ancestors.
This one is for you, John Morrison!
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Dear Reader
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Books by Bess McBride/Minnie Crockwell
About the Author
Dear Reader,
Thank you for purchasing A Summer in Time. A Summer in Time is book six of the Train Through Time series. A Train Through Time was originally written as a stand-alone time travel romance, but readers asked for more, and thus a series was born.
This is John Morrison’s story, a turn-of-the-century man, scarred and maimed from a life-threatening train accident, who turned his back on the notion of love and family.
One twenty-first century relation, Gemima Holliday, isn’t having it. She’s unhappy that a gentleman as promising as John Morrison died without leaving heirs, without leaving descendants. When she finds herself thrust back in time, she determines to find out why.
Thank you for your support over the years, friends and readers. Because of your favorable comments, I continue to strive to write the best stories I can. More romances are on the way!
You know I always enjoy hearing from you, so please feel free to contact me at bessmcbride@gmail.com and through my website at http://www.bessmcbride.com.
Many of you know I also write a series of short cozy mysteries under the pen name of Minnie Crockwell. Feel free to stop by my website and learn more about the series.
Thanks for reading!
Bess
Chapter One
Gemima Holliday studied the old obituary in the Livingston Journal dated June 5, 1965.
John Morrison, a prominent attorney and judge of this county, was laid to rest today at Mountain View Cemetery in Livingston, Montana. Aged ninety years, Mr. Morrison died in his sleep of natural causes.
Mr. Morrison was a longtime resident of Livingston, having moved westward from Ohio in 1903. He is predeceased by his brother, Mr. Harvey Morrison, also an attorney, who followed his brother out from Ohio.
In his twenties, Mr. John Morrison suffered a catastrophic railroad accident in Chicago, which almost ended his life. The bones of his face were broken and lacerated in several places, his skull fractured, and his right arm severed from his body. Unable to work for many months due to the severity of his injuries, it was at first thought he would not sufficiently recover to continue his law practice. But Mr. Morrison fought back, returned to work, and ultimately moved to our fair city to begin a new life.
Having never married, Mr. Morrison leaves the bulk of his estate to charity.
The poor man! Gem swallowed agai
nst a hard knot in her throat as she imagined the pain John must have suffered during his injuries and recovery, especially in the absence of modern-day painkillers and plastic surgery.
Still, he seemed to have come back strong. She read that he had gone on to become a well-known judge.
But he had never married.
Somehow, that seemed the saddest detail of all to her. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like her own love life had been any great shakes, but she still had time. She still had hope that one of the guys she’d met online through the dating services would turn out to be a prince. She didn’t meet a lot of guys face to face in her virtual accounting business.
She brought her attention back to the obituary. She must have read it fifty times or more in the years since she had discovered it. Accompanied by a black-and-white photograph of John dated 1905, the photographer captured a grim sadness to John’s face. Gem calculated his age as thirty in the photograph. Even in black and white, she could see that his eyes were light, probably blue or green. Thick dark hair curled to just below his ears. A well-trimmed dark beard and mustache covered the lower half of his face. To hide his scars?
Gem saw no evidence of broken facial bones or lacerations in the photograph. An angled shot, his stylish three-piece suit showed his left shoulder and arm. She wondered if he had posed that way deliberately.
The stark description of John’s injuries in the obituary didn’t coincide with the photograph of the strikingly handsome man looking back at her with an impassive, unsmiling expression.
“I’m coming to see you, John Morrison,” Gem said. “I know where you’re buried, and we’re going to have a chitchat about this ‘never married’ business. I guess I can’t fix that for you now, but I’ll think of something.”
Gem grinned and closed her computer. She stowed it in her computer backpack and slung it over her shoulder. A check of her cell phone showed that it was time to leave for the King Street train station. The train was due to leave Seattle in about an hour, and it would take her only twenty minutes to drive to the station.
Eager anticipation made her heart beat a little bit faster. She had been on several historic locomotives in her time—short little rides around the Mount Rainier area—but she’d never been on a modern train.
Because the train left Seattle late in the afternoon, Gem had booked a sleeper, with plans to get off in Whitefish, Montana, when it arrived early the next morning. She had reserved a rental car to drive down to Livingston, Montana, where she planned to look up John’s and Harvey’s tombstones. Hoping to overnight there, she would then return to Whitefish the following day and catch the train to carry on with her trip to Chicago, where she planned to do some further genealogical research.
Traveling light, Gem carried only her backpack as she left her apartment and headed for her little blue car. She mentally checked off everything she had needed to do. Call her neighbor to remind her to water her plants. Pay bills. Get some extra spending cash. Grab her phone and computer chargers so she could work on the road. Pack her toothbrush and deodorant. She’d packed enough undies for a week. What else did a girl need?
The train station was busy. Travelers milled about, some sitting, some standing. Gem wasn’t entirely new to the station. She’d reconnoitered the day before so she would know where to check in. She checked in with the ticket agent, who reported that the train had just arrived, was being serviced and would be available for boarding soon.
Antsy, Gem wandered around the station, staring at the passengers. Did they all travel the train as a nostalgic nod like she did? She could easily have driven her car on her genealogical road trip back east—in fact, it might have been less complicated given that she had to leave the train, rent a car and drive south. But Gem had sought to combine both her love of genealogy and her love of trains into one great adventure.
A loudspeaker announced boarding sooner than she expected, and Gem adjusted her backpack and headed through the door. Having spent the extra dollars to reserve the sleeper so she didn’t have to sit up in a coach seat all night, Gem was directed to a sleeper car. A female conductor, casually dressed in a white short-sleeved blouse, blue tie and blue slacks appropriate for summer, checked her ticket and ushered her aboard, directing her to the upper level.
She stepped up onto a portable safety-yellow painted steel step stool and into the train. As she reached the top of the narrow stairs, a husky middle-aged man in a dark-blue vest, slacks and white long-sleeved shirt greeted her.
“Good morning, Miss...Holliday?” he said, looking at her ticket.
Gem nodded to confirm her name.
“I’m Steve, your steward. I’ll be taking care of you. Welcome aboard!”
“Thank you!”
She wanted to giddily confide that it was her first time aboard a modern train, much less a sleeper, but she held back. She was twenty-five, not an eight-year-old.
“Let me know if you need anything. There are complimentary juices, coffee and water at the end of the car. Dinner is from five to nine. It’s reservation only, so I would need to know what time you want to eat. I’ll come and turn down your bed at about nine o’clock.”
“Thank you,” Gem said again, surprised that she felt nurtured in some strange way by the male steward. She had obviously had her head in the clouds too long over the past few years if the idea of one steward turning down her bed gave her warm fuzzies.
Gem didn’t regret that she had devoted most of her spare time over the last three years to her passion for genealogy. Largely an online research hobby, she hadn’t met any young men in their twenties. Most people she “met” through genealogical websites and forums seemed to be considerably older than her. She understood a search for dead ancestors wasn’t a typical hobby for twentysomethings, but she had been hooked on ancestral research ever since her widowed father had asked her to research a family legend.
Her father, a Holliday, had always wondered if he was related to the famous gambling doctor of Tombstone fame. Gem had discovered no relationship to Doc Holliday, but by then, a year into her research, her father had passed away from cancer. She regretted that she wasn’t able to give her father the thrill of descending from a famous relative.
However, during the research, Gem found her own “special” relative, one whose history touched her heart. An adoptee, John Morrison’s mysterious life had fired her imagination. She had never figured out who his biological family had been, but that didn’t matter to her. She had claimed the lifelong bachelor with the severed arm as her own. Frankly, she had a weird sort of crush on him.
Gem checked out her compartment, much tinier than she had imagined as she recalled movies depicting sleeping compartments large enough to hold six people on trains that hurtled through the snow-covered Alps at night.
She dropped her backpack onto one of the small royal-blue cushioned bench seats. Clearly, exploring the compartment was already officially done. It was tiny—a sign on the wall showed how the bench seat folded out to become a bed, and that was that.
Gem peeked out of her compartment door to watch activities in the corridor. Passengers continued to board, and Steve greeted them, showing them to their compartments.
She caught sight of the coffee bar at the far end of the corridor. A pick-me-up cup of coffee was just what she needed. Keyed up by the exciting prospect of her first modern train trip, Gem hadn’t slept well the night before. She made her way down to the refreshment stand, filled up a cup of coffee and returned to her compartment.
She lowered herself to her bench seat and watched the activities on the platform. The conductor continued to guide passengers onto the sleeper. Her eyes drooped a bit, and she fought to keep them open.
No! She hadn’t booked the trip of a lifetime only to fall asleep before she even got out of the train station. Gem downed the rest of her coffee and jumped up to peek out into the hallway again. Compartment doors opened and closed, sliding on metal tracks.
“All aboard!” she heard th
e conductor announce, her voice drifting up from the platform. Gem ran back to her window to see the conductor lifting the portable step stool. She disappeared from view, and the train’s whistle blew.
The train rolled out of the station with a fanfare of clanking bells and a repeat of the endearing sound of the train’s plaintive whistle. A rhythmic thumping began as the wheels passed over the tracks. Gem oriented herself as the train traveled north through Seattle, passing through suburbs until it reached open countryside.
Torn between watching the view from the window and exploring the train, Gem opted to dash through the train for a quick tour. She turned right and made her way past the coffee station, continuing on to the end of the sleeper car. From there she passed through another sleeper car and then into the dining car.
Waiters busied themselves preparing tables for lunch, and Gem nodded happily and passed through to an observation car. Unlike the sleeper and dining cars, the observation car featured a domed glass ceiling and wide panoramic windows from which to view the passing scenery.
Gem grinned with pleasure and promised herself she would return to the observation car once they entered the mountains as they headed west through the Cascade Range. She retraced her steps back to her compartment, nodding to her fellow passengers with a joyful sense of camaraderie. After all, everyone who traveled by train loved them, didn’t they?
She tucked herself back into her cozy bench and stared out the window as the train headed into the countryside. The gentle rocking of the train lulled her into a state of drowsiness, and she fought against it. But no matter how hard Gem struggled to stay awake, sleep caught her, cradled her and pressed her head against its figurative chest. The vibrating wall of her compartment sent her into a deep sleep.