The Preacher's Bride Claim

by Laurie Kingery

  Elijah gazed down at his bride-to-be, lost in Alice’s loving sky-blue gaze, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “The Lord has been amazingly good to us.” He’d once loved Marybelle, but now he had been given a new love and a new life. Thank You, Lord.

  He looked back on how far God had brought the two of them in just three short weeks, from strangers with secret wounds to a loving couple who would soon wed. There would be trials and troubles ahead of them in this new land, but he could go through it all with a smile, with Alice by his side.

  “I was reading my Bible this morning when I woke up under the tree where the infirmary will be built,” Alice said. “And I found this wonderful passage in Luke—‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.’” She gestured all around her, at the grassy meadow with its wildflowers, and on beyond that, in the direction of the Cimarron River, at the Brave Rock that rose up out of it, at their friends. “I think He’s done that, don’t you?”

  “Spoken like a true preacher’s wife,” Elijah said and kissed the top of her head.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE SOLDIER'S SECRETS by Naomi Rawlings.

  Dear Reader,

  This is the first time I have been asked to participate in an author continuity series, and I found it an enormously challenging and enjoyable process, working with two other authors to make sure our plots and characterizations mesh to form an enjoyable three-book series. I’m grateful to the editors of Love Inspired Historicals for their confidence in me and to fellow continuity authors Karen Kirst and Allie Pleiter, who wrote the second and third book in this series respectively.

  Alice Hawthorne is dear to my heart because she, like me, is a nurse. In my “other job” I have spent many years in emergency nursing, which gave me an added understanding in the challenges she would have faced nursing the sick and injured on the Oklahoma prairie. Who knew all those classes in nursing history would come in so handy? And I sympathize with Elijah, for it’s often difficult to know if the vows one makes in the midst of turmoil are really the Lord’s will or not.

  I would love for you to visit me at my website at LaurieKingery.com to learn about future releases and past books. I also participate in a blog at ChristianFictionHistoricalSociety.blogspot.com. My blog date is always the nineteenth of the month. And for the fans of my Brides of Simpson Creek series, I’ll be returning to Simpson Creek with my next book. The publication date will be posted on my website.

  Blessings,

  Laurie Kingery

  Discussion Questions

  Elijah Thornton is a minister, yet his brothers have lost their faith. Do you think he feels this is a bad reflection on him as a minister? Why or why not?

  Alice Hawthorne is fleeing an abusive relationship in an era when women’s options were much fewer. Have you ever been in this position? How did you handle it?

  Alice initially wants to leave her profession, nursing, behind. Have you ever felt that way about your profession or job? How did you handle it?

  Gideon and Clint Thornton have both lost their faith during a period of loss, but Alice has not, even though she lost her father and is suffering adversity. Why do you suppose Gideon and Clint did, but not Alice?

  Can you imagine yourself taking part in a land rush such as those that took place in Oklahoma Territory? Why or why not?

  The Thornton brothers are the targets of bad feelings from the Chaucer family. Have you ever been in a situation like this? Were you able to work it out?

  Alice makes a number of friends in the tent city of Boomer Town, who essentially become part of her new family. Do you have friends like this who are as close as family?

  Alice was afraid of loving Elijah because she thought that he would try to control her, like most men, as she sees it. Besides Maxwell Peterson, who might have been responsible for her feeling this way?

  When Elijah lost his fiancée, he thought this was a sign that God only wanted him to serve the church from that point on. Have you ever mistaken God’s will for you? What did you do about it?

  The U.S. government opened lands to settlers that had formerly been set aside as Indian territory. Should the government have done that? Why or why not?

  What character in this story did you most connect with? Why?

  Elijah seeks to handle the enmity from the Chaucer brothers in a way that glorifies God. How does he show by his actions in this matter that he is a Christian?

  At the beginning of this story, Elijah is publicly denounced by Horace LeMaster, an ally of the Chaucers. Have you ever been publically criticized and embarrassed as Elijah was? How did you deal with it?

  Winona Eaglefeather and her nephew, Dakota, choose to adapt to a new culture. Have you ever had to do that?

  Alice had parents who supported her early dream of being a nurse, even if it meant she left the farm. Did your parents support your goals as you were growing up, and if so, how did their support help you achieve your goals?

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Love Inspired Historical title.

  You find illumination in days gone by. Love Inspired Historical stories lift the spirit as heroines tackle the challenges of life in another era with hope, faith and a focus on family.

  Enjoy four new stories from Love Inspired Historical every month!

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  Prologue

  Calais, France, June 1795

  Brigitte Dubois wrapped her arms about herself and trudged down the deserted street, darkness swallowing her every step. Night air toyed with the strands of hair hanging from beneath her mobcap, while mist from the sea nipped relentlessly at her ankles and a chill slithered up her spine.

  It mattered not that it was summer, warm enough to sleep without a fire in the hearth, warm enough to draw beads of perspiration on her forehead, warm enough to attend her rendezvous with a shawl rather than a cloak. The cold came from inside, deep and frigid, a fear so terrifying she could hardly stay ahead of it. So her feet stumbled forward, over the cracked and chipping cobblestones, past the rows of houses shuttered tight against the darkness.

  One night. One meeting. Then she could go home, gather her children and leave this wretched city.

  Or so she hoped.

  The breeze from the Channel swirled around her, ripe with the salty tang of sea and fish, while the clack of her wooden shoes against the street created the only sound in the deserted city besides the rhythmic lap of waves against the shore. The warehouse loomed before her at the end of the road, dark and menacing and ominously larger with each step she took toward its rusty iron doors.

  Another shudder raced through her. Would this place become her tomb on this muggy summer night?

  No, she’d not think such things. She had a house to return to, children to feed and a babe to tend. Alphonse wasn’t going to kill her, not tonight. Her children were too important.

  Which was why she had to get them away.

  She slowed as she neared the warehouse, raising her hand to knock upon the small side door. But just as her knuckles would have met the cold iron, it swung inward.

  “You’re here.” A guard hulked in the doorway, his voice loud against the empty street and tall stone houses.

  “As I was told to be.” She straightened her back, but not because she wanted to. No. Her shoulders ached to slump and her feet longed to slink into the shadows hovering beside the building, to creep back to her children and her house and the safety those four squ
are walls offered.

  But safety was a mere illusion. No one was ever truly safe from Alphonse Dubois.

  “Come in.” The planes and edges of the guard’s face glinted hard in the dim light radiating from inside. He was huge, taller than her by nearly half a mètre and powerful enough to fell her with the club hanging at his side. Her eyes drifted down to the massive hand gripping the door, and she took a step back.

  “That’s the wrong direction, wench. And Alphonse doesn’t like to wait.” The guard’s knuckles bulged around his club.

  “Of course.” She spoke easily, as though her body wasn’t trembling. As though her lungs didn’t refuse to draw breath at the idea of stepping over the threshold.

  “I said move.” The man yanked her inside.

  The door slammed behind her, its bang resonating through the packed warehouse. Gone was the grimy smell of coal smoke and familiar taste of the sea that permeated the streets of Calais. Aromas sweet like chocolate, tangy like salt and smooth like tobacco wrapped themselves around her.

  Crates towered high, leaving only a narrow pathway through which to walk. Labels marked the sides of each and every box: silk from Lyons, and lace from Alençon and Arras, Dieppe and Le Puy. Tea from India, cocoa and cigars from the Caribbean. Sea salt from the Île de Ré, and more barrels of brandy than one could imagine. All sat stacked one atop the other in endless columns.

  The contents of the single warehouse were worth a fortune in any land. But with France and England at war, Alphonse would reap even greater sums for his illegal French goods once his men smuggled them onto the English market. The trade materials like tea and chocolate and cigars would arrive on British shores under cover of darkness and away from the greedy eyes of the king’s excise agents, bringing yet more profit to the smuggler.

  And Alphonse had warehouses like this scattered through half of northern France.

  “This way.” A hot hand clamped around the back of her neck and shoved her forward, weaving her in an interminable maze toward the center of the warehouse.

  When the crates finally stopped, she stood in a small open area in the middle of the warehouse.

  With Alphonse Dubois looking on, seated dead in the center of his smuggling empire.

  Heir to a seigneury by birth, he wielded more power now than an inheritance ever would have given him. All of Calais knew his story, though she knew it better than most. He was a firstborn son who hadn’t been content to accept the lands handed down for centuries, nor had he wanted to make do with his family’s dwindling coffers. So rather than sitting in his chateau and watching as it crumbled about him while he ran through his precious few ancestral funds, he’d gone off and gotten himself rich.

  Illegally.

  Now Alphonse had as much money as England’s king himself—and just as much power in a town such as Calais.

  “Brigitte.” The thin blade of his voice sliced through the air. “How pleasant to see you.”

  As though he’d given her a choice, as though earlier this afternoon he hadn’t sent two of his henchmen to her house and summoned her while her children watched.

  He studied her through eyes yellow with age, that putrid amber and the pale pink tint to his lips the only colors in a face otherwise gray as stone. “Sit.”

  It had come to this then, time for him to issue orders and her to defy him. Did he see the way her hands trembled? The fear that threatened to burst from her chest in a sob?

  “I prefer to stand, mer—”

  The guard shoved her forward, and she nearly toppled into the table. “A defiant one, she is. You can see it in her eyes.” He planted both hands on her shoulders, forcing her down until she crumpled into the chair.

  Alphonse’s pink-tinged lips curved into a cruel smile. “You’re dismissed, Gerard.”

  The guard moved back against the crates to stand beside another man, equally as muscular and thick of chest, and carrying another large club.

  Alphonse took a sip of steaming liquid from a mug beside his hand, then reached for a sweet biscuit sitting on the table. He wore gray as always, the color matching his silver-tinted hair and aging skin. The monotonous color palate created an image more akin to a corpse then a living, breathing man.

  “I hear you plan to leave Calais.”

  He’d found out.

  She clutched her shawl against the base of her throat.

  “Foolish woman.” His eyes hardened into two frigid stones. “Did you think I’d let you steal my grandchildren away in the night?”

  She hadn’t a choice. He’d suck her children into the smuggling business if she didn’t leave. Julien and Laurent were safe in the navy for now, but what of Danielle and Serge at home? How young did boys start running messages for Alphonse? Seven? Eight? Could Alphonse take Serge even now? And as for Danielle...

  Brigitte swallowed, the type of work available to a girl in this industry too unbearable to imagine.

  “No one leaves my employ without permission,” he snapped.

  “I’m not in your employ and never have been.”

  Something calculating and methodical moved behind his eyes. “No, you’re family.”

  She cringed at the word. “My husband’s dead. That eliminates any connection between you and I.”

  “It would, had I not five grandchildren whom you keep from me.”

  “With Henri dead, the children belong to me, and I’ll not allow you to employ them in your wretched schemes. I’m not my husband.”

  “No, you most certainly are not.” Alphonse ran his eyes slowly down her, his gazing lingering until revulsion flooded her body. “You claim you want to leave Calais, and let’s say, just for the moment, that you have the money and means to do so. What do you intend to do? Where do you intend to go?”

  To Reims. To my family.

  She’d never be free of him if she said such things. He’d track her down and find her, taking her two oldest sons when they came home from the navy. Or he’d tell her she’d need to house his men and store his goods when one of his minions was in the area.

  “Did you know, Brigitte, I have a rather marvelous memory?” He watched her through those hard, death-colored eyes. “It helps when one runs a business such as this.”

  A business? He spoke as though his smuggling success was some legitimate form of trade.

  “For example, I seem to recall when you and my son first met. You were living in Reims, were you not? Acting as a governess?”

  “I...” He couldn’t remember where she came from and who her family was. Wouldn’t use them as threats.

  “I remember well, but every so often my mind fails me.” He snapped his fingers, and one of the guards stepped forward, a sheaf of papers in hand. “I’ve learned to take excellent notes, you understand.” He took the papers from the guard and flipped through them. “Ah, yes, everything is here. You’re the niece of a seigneur, and your elder sister married a seigneur’s third son. Your father has passed on, but your mother apparently maintains good health and resides in your childhood home. I wonder how your mother and sister have fared, what with the Révolution and all.”

  She gripped the edge of the table, her nails digging into the aged wood. “How dare you.”

  “When my informants tell me you plan to leave Calais, that you hide away money and slowly pack your things, I ask myself, where might my dear daughter-in-law go? And why might she go there? And then it comes to me, where you hailed from, who your people are. Then just as I feel a spark of compassion and think that perhaps it’s time for you to return to Reims, I remember my sweet grandchildren. Grandchildren who are useful to me.”

  “I won’t let you touch them.”

  “I’d always intended for Henri to run my enterprise after I passed on.” He continued on as though her words meant nothing. “’Twas a natural decision, you se
e, with him being my only son. But now that he’s dead, one of your boys shall have to take over.”

  The breath whooshed out of her, and the air surrounding her grew thick and heavy. He couldn’t get to the older boys. They were safe in the navy.

  Weren’t they?

  “So which shall it be? Julien or Laurent? Julien would be advantageous in that—”

  “What do you want?” She spit the words between them.

  He winged an eyebrow up.

  “That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?” She toyed with the ends of the shawl lying in her lap. “To ask something in exchange for letting me move to Reims?”

  He laughed, a soft, cruel sound. “Very astute, Brigitte. You always have been, you know. ’Twas why I was so in favor of Henri’s marrying you from the first.”

  “I’d not have married him had I known he was a smuggler.”

  That cruel smile curved his lips yet again. “Which was why you made him such a perfect wife. You faithfully stayed home and bore his seed, not luring him away from his duties with words of love and flattery. Oui, you were perfect. Too dutiful to leave, yet too angry with his work to distract him.”

  “You’re evil.”

  “It serves me well, does it not?” He took a sip of tea. “But let’s begin negotiations. I have a certain task in mind, one that would perfectly suit a widow with three children to tend. You fulfill your assignment, and I let you and the children return to Reims. I’ll even give you money to buy a house there. A nice little cottage near your sister, perhaps?”

  She drew in a long, slow breath. Only one job, and then she and the children would be free. The proposition seemed almost too good to be believable. But then, he hadn’t yet said what he wanted in exchange. “If I do your bidding, Julien and Laurent return to me in Reims when they reach port. They don’t come to you.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I won’t kill for you.”

  Alphonse’s smile turned from cruel to dangerous. “Don’t worry, ma chère. I seek only a spy. And justice. For the man who killed your husband.”