Colorado Dream (The Front Range Series Book 4)

by Charlene Whitman

  Colorado Dream by Charlene Whitman

  Copyright ©2016 Charlene Whitman

  All Rights Reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book, for the most part, are fictitious, although the author has tried to keep as historically accurate as possible. Some license was taken with names and settings of actual people and places but with honest intent. Any errors in this regard remain the fault of the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook 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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover and interior designed by Ellie Searl, Publishista®

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  Morgan Hill, CA

  Praise for Colorado Promise

  Book 1 in The Front Range Series

  “A fresh new voice in Historical Romance, Charlene Whitman captured me from the beginning with characters I won't soon forget, a sizzling-sweet romance, a love triangle, spiteful villains, heart-throbbing heroes, and a plot full of intrigue that kept me guessing. Ms. Whitman's magnificent research transported me to the Colorado plains and left me longing to join the characters amidst the wildflower-dotted fields, rushing rivers, and panoramic Rocky Mountains. Fans of Historical Western Romance will not soon forget Colorado Promise.”

  —MaryLu Tyndall, best-selling romance author

  “An adequate writer of historical fiction will include minor bits and pieces about the setting of their story. A good writer will do a bit of research to make sure there are historical facts included in the pages of their novel. A superb writer will create characters that could have actually lived during the time in which the story takes place and allows them to act as people in that time period would have really acted. Charlene Whitman is a superb writer."

  —Examiner.com

  “Ms. Whitman's voice is honest and true to the times. Not only in the way her characters spoke but also in the narrative. I lost sleep because I wanted to know what happened next. It's one of those stories you become invested in the characters. Five stars and 3 ‘YEEHAWs’ to Charlene Whitman and Colorado Promise!”

  —author Su Barton

  Praise for Colorado Hope

  Book 2 in The Front Range Series

  “This was one of the BEST books I've ever read! The heart-stopping adventures are believable and gripping, but best of all is the empathy and understanding you'll feel for the heroes! You will fall in love with the two protagonists, whose hearts are good and kind. And you'll love to hate the antagonists, whose hearts are cold and calculating. It's a very realistic portrayal of two different kinds of human beings--those who care for others and those who care only for themselves. Whitman's savvy and understanding of human nature is matched perfectly with her beautiful writing ability: her descriptions draw you in; her pacing keeps you hooked; and her emotional sensitivity will keep you turning pages long into the night!”

  —author Pamela Wells

  “With excellent characterization and superb imagery, Charlene Whitman brings this story to life! I loved the dramatic storyline and its pulse-pounding danger and tender romance. Monty and Grace Cunningham are such endearing characters! My heart ached for them and all they endured. Their story is one of loss and despair, but is also one of abiding love and hope. I loved this captivating journey and look forward to more adventures on the Front Range!”

  —Britney Adams

  “A great writer paints stunning pictures with words. Ms. Whitman is a great writer. Her characters are realistic and unique; their reactions to the oft-outlandish circumstances in which they are placed are genuine and often heart-wrenching. I read much of this book with tears in my eyes. A definite page-turner.”

  —M. Anderson

  “I was so utterly thrilled to have a story hold my attention this completely. It is the second in The Front Range series, but the story was complete within itself. Monty’s and Grace’s faith in God was strong as they met with many disastrous situations. It was also a story of holding onto hope when there appeared to be no hope. To me, this is the perfect story to ‘cocoon’ yourself in to your favorite reading spot, and try not to come out ‘til you’re done.”

  —D. Coto

  Also in The Front Range Series by Charlene Whitman

  Colorado Promise

  Colorado Hope

  Wild Secret, Wild Longing

  Chapter 1

  September 9, 1877

  New York City, New York

  The slap on Angela Bellini’s cheek burned, but not as fiercely as the hurt in her heart. The pain and disappointment smoldering there sizzled like hot embers, threatening to reduce her to a pile of ash. She glared at her father’s back as he stomped out of the room.

  Why couldn’t her papá understand? She would not marry Pietro, no matter how wealthy his family was, no matter how many years her papá and his had planned such an arrangement. “It is our way, Angela,” he had told her again, his face hard and eyes dark and menacing, leaving no room for debate. “And you will marry him. You are twenty years of age—you are lucky he is still willing. You’ve made him wait long enough.”

  When she forced her objections past the rock lodged in her aching throat, she knew what would follow. What always followed. Her papá’s rage erupted in a torrent of Italian curses that ended with a slap that knocked her nearly senseless against the foyer wall.

  As she slid down in a heap by the front door, she had caught a glimpse of her mamá in the kitchen, her back turned to her in unspoken submission. Angela huffed. I will never marry and become like you, Mamá—squashed under the thumb of some man who wants only subservience and a crowded apartment full of squalling babies.

  She swallowed back tears. She would not cry—not today. Today she would take the first steps—real steps—toward her dream. And no one, not even the powerful and prominent Giusepe Bellini could stop her.

  Their tiny stuffy apartment rumbled—as it always did six times a day and twice each night—from the Third Avenue El Train fifty feet away. The noise of the wheels clacking and the platform rattling mingled with the loud voices of her downstairs neighbors arguing—Mr. Paolino’s tenor to his wife’s shrill soprano. Outside her window, carriages clattered on cobblestones in sharp staccato, and shoppers and merchants carried on in boisterous conversation, sounding no more pacifying than an orchestra tuning their instruments.

  On most days Angela could drown out the suffocating symphony of Mulberry Bend by rehearsing violin caprices in her head, imagining her fingers flying over the fingerboard, her right hand bowing the strings, eliciting the sweet and sonorous timbre of her instrument.

  But on this stifling, humid September afternoon, the many pieces she’d memorized—no, absorbed into her very soul, as if food that nourished her—flitted away, out of reach, as she pulled down the heavy carpetbag from the hall closet—a bag that she’d found months ago stuffed behind a stack of wool blankets.

  She stopped and listened. Her mama was humming in the back room as she folded laundry. Her two younger siblings were off playing with neighborhood children—in the street, no doubt, as the sweltering heat was worse indoors.

  Angela’s hands shook as she dabbed her perspiring forehead and neck with a handkerchief and went through her
mental list of all she would need on her trip. Not much—she’d only be gone ten, perhaps, twelve days, if all went as planned. She pushed from her thoughts her papá’s impending fury at her insolence and the resulting punishments that would await her upon her return. But she had made her decision, and there was no turning back.

  Hurry, she told herself. Her papá had gone downstairs to the corner market, and while he often spent an hour or more on Sunday afternoons smoking cigars with the men of the neighborhood, discussing the politics of her close-knit Italian community and their various business ventures—and arranging their daughters’ marriages, she thought bitterly—he could return at any time.

  In her bedroom, she gathered the neat stack of clothes she had put in her bottom dresser drawer, then stuffed them into the traveling bag along with her few womanly items, her prayer book, some sheets of music, and a spare pair of shoes. She checked her reticule and found the roll of bills—the money she’d earned over the last two years from babysitting and teaching music lessons through Signore Bianchi’s instrument shop on Second Avenue. She hoped it would be enough for the quality of violin she planned to buy.

  Mr. Fisk hadn’t answered her inquiry regarding pricing in his letter. He merely assured her he would provide her with an exceptional instrument and that they would work out the financial details once she arrived in Greeley, Colorado.

  Would her meager savings be enough? It had to be, for she couldn’t return to New York and face the audition committee without a proper instrument.

  The director’s words still stung. “You’re a talented musician, Miss Bellini. But you bring shame to your craft by playing on such an inferior violin. Come back when you have an appropriate instrument.” The three committee members had politely frowned when she flustered an apology and hurried to the exit of the symphony hall, pressing down her humiliation and frustration as tears welled in her eyes.

  Her papá could well afford to buy her a violin of exceptional quality, and every year at Christmas she begged him to indulge her love of playing with the purchase of a new one, but he only laughed in cool disdain and waved her away. “Give up your foolish dreams, Angela. Your place is in the home, with a husband and children. Not on the stage.” Her papá regarded music appropriate only at holidays and festivals and family gatherings, and only traditional song and instrumentation. He didn’t—couldn’t—understand this dream she nursed. The dream to play in the New York Philharmonic, to play on stage before an audience, to be a part of the creation of ethereal music that filled a great performance hall and moved listeners to tears.

  To make matters worse, her older brother, Bartolomeo, sided with their papá, constantly nagging her to “get married already and stop being a burden on the family.” Although he was but two years older, he and Dora had three children. And Dora—and most of Angela’s other girlfriends from her school days, who were also married—gave her constant looks of pity, as if Angela was missing out on life’s greatest joy. But they just didn’t understand.

  She had to fan the tiny spark of her dream to keep it alive, to prevent it from being snuffed out by her papá’s stern expectations and society’s demands. And it had nearly been extinguished a month ago, upon her papá’s brash public announcement of her engagement to Pietro—an arrogant youngest son of a successful wine merchant who had no love for music—none whatsoever. She harbored no hope that he would ever understand her passionate need to play the violin, and no doubt he’d forbid her pursuit of her dream.

  And then she’d read an article in the Times about one George Fisk, a master violin maker in a newly founded town in the West—a place called Greeley. On a whim she’d written him. Why? She didn’t know. She could purchase a violin in Manhattan—one of sufficient quality. But there was something about the description of this man, Fisk. The way he spoke about the instruments he made. The care and time and love he put into each one. He built his instruments with a passion and love for beauty and music that resonated with her. For, she wanted more than a good violin. She wanted one that spoke to her soul, one made just for her. George Fisk promised he could provide just that. But she had to travel halfway across the continent. Was she willing? he’d asked her.

  Yes, she wrote him. Yes, more than willing. Although, she’d never traveled outside of the city, and the thought of venturing into wild country, alone, made her stomach twist. But Fisk had told her not to worry. He would see to her accommodations and show her around his “wonderful little Western town.” And she had to admit—she was ready for an adventure.

  She looked around her cramped tiny bedroom situated in a crowded apartment in a busy, noisy city. I’m more than ready for peace and quiet, and to get away from Papá’s mean spirit and violent temper.

  What must it be like to stand under a wide-open sky spattered with stars, with no neighbors quarreling or trains rattling or horses’ hooves clacking on stones? Her heart yearned for such open space, for such silence. Silence that longed to be filled with beautiful music. She imagined nature itself performing a symphony of birdsong and coyote howls and water cascading over rocks. Those were some of the images her mind drifted to as she played, and she longed to merge her own musical voice to that of creation, if even just for a day or two.

  She smoothed out her counterpane and plumped her pillows, careful to leave her room clean and neat, though that would hardly diffuse her papá’s wrath or her mamá’s fretting. After taking a last look around and assuring herself she had all she needed, she put her summer bonnet on her head and tied the strings under her chin. Then she put her leather purse inside the cumbersome carpetbag and hefted it with one hand. But when she reached for her violin case sitting on her dresser, she hesitated.

  The peeling black leather case had been opened and closed hundreds of times over the years, and while she had a special place in her heart for this little violin that her aunt had given her ten years ago—a present that changed her life and ignited the dream in her heart—she would never play it again. It had outlived its purpose in her dream.

  She slung her wool coat over her arm, though why she thought she needed it in the heat of summer, she couldn’t say. But she had no idea what the weather might be like in Colorado, so close to the mountains called the Rockies. Then she checked her timepiece—a family heirloom given her by her grandmother. It faithfully kept the time so long as she wound it each day, and it now told her it was 3:10. She had twenty minutes to catch the El to the Grand Station in Midtown.

  She drew in a long breath and let out a sigh. No more stalling—she must not miss this train if she meant to board the five o’clock railway heading west.

  Five days on a train—how would she manage? She couldn’t afford a sleeper car, so she would have to sleep sitting up in her seat, among so many strangers and subjected to the dust and smoke and grime. She stiffened at the thought of such cramped quarters and lack of privacy. But it was worth it, to get the violin of her dreams. Be brave, she told herself. You’ve endured worse.

  She peeked into the narrow hallway and heard her mother still humming in the back room. Taking quiet, cautious steps, she tiptoed to the front door and cringed when the wood creaked on the hinges as she opened it. A glance down the hallway and a moment’s silence told her no one was nearby or ascending the stairs to the third floor.

  But her breath of relief hitched in her throat upon hearing her mamá’s voice behind her.

  “Angela, mi cara, where are you going?”

  Angela spun around and dropped the bag to the floor at the landing. Her heart sank at the look on her mamá’s face. She only then remembered that she’d forgotten to set out the note she’d written and hidden in her desk drawer.

  “Oh, Mamá, mi dispiace. I . . . I am taking a trip.” She gulped, not knowing any soft way to say this and fearing her mamá might try to stop her. Or worse—go fetch her papá.

  Her mamá hurried over to her and took her hands, then squeezed them again and again. Her tired pleading eyes stabbed at Angela’s heart. “Non
capisco—I don’t understand. Where, why . . . ?”

  Urgency pressed Angela; if she missed this train, she would have to buy a new ticket another day. And she would no doubt lose the money spent on the first ticket—something she could ill afford.

  She picked up her bag and lugged it down the stairs, her mamá trailing behind.

  “Please, mi cara, tell me you are not running away. My heart would break.”

  Angela stopped midflight and turned to her mamá. She reached out and grasped her hands. “Oh no, Mamá. I am only taking a short trip. I’ve arranged to purchase a violin—”

  “But your bag! What trip? How far are you going?” Her mamá seemed about to swoon, and the hot stairwell with its cloying sooty air was no doubt making her mamá feel worse.

  “Come walk with me,” Angela said in a soft, loving voice, hoping to dispel her mamá’s rising agitation, all the while sensing time marching to a quick metronome in her head. “I’ll explain.” You must hurry!

  And while she tried to tell her mamá how she was traveling to a town called Greeley in the state of Colorado to buy a violin, she could see the questions and confusion rising to hysterical proportions in her mamá’s eyes.

  “No, you mustn’t go, Angela. You know what your papá will do when he finds out! Just come back with me, back to the appartamento, per favore. Per la tua sicurezza.”

  Angela scowled as she practically dragged her mamá across the busy street, weaving through coaches and hansom cabs and horse-drawn buggies, and dodging the piles of animal refuse adding stench to the heat rising from the cobblestones. My safety? How could she think of our home as a safe place? Papá thought nothing of striking his wife for the least infraction—a lukewarm supper, taking too long to bring him his slippers, or failing to fetch the day’s newspaper. Her mamá still sported a swollen eye surrounded by black and green bruising. Punishment for undercooked veal picatta. Yet, her mamá took her blows without a word of complaint.