by Holly Bush
“Our silver, Beau. That would take nearly all of it, would it not?”
“Yes. We will have the gold, but it would be lean until we would have a yearling to sell. But I think it will be worth it. With the Morgan name and pedigree, we will be able to get high prices for our horses. Nellie is a Tennessee Walker and I think would breed well. I don’t know anything about Bristol.”
“Then we will be frugal. Perhaps I can take in sewing or do some other work.”
“Are you sure, Eleanor? I don’t want to force you into something you do not want to do. It will only cause us problems in the end.”
“I am sure. I trust you. And we can never know unseen events that may change things and make our plans work or fail. I trust you to do the best for us.”
He smiled, clasped her hands across the table, and kissed both her palms. “This is the start of it, Eleanor. This is the beginning. Remember this day so we can tell our children and grandchildren how we began our empire at Paradise.”
He turned to read the clock sitting on the mantel of the room. “We should go. Are you done?”
“Yes, yes, of course. We should be getting back home.”
He hurried her out the door, down the planks, and to the portion of the street that was dry.
“The stable is the other way, Beau,” she said and hurried to keep up with his long strides.
“There’s something I want you to see. There’s the train.”
Eleanor went up the steps to the train station platform as the whistle blew, Beau at her back. “What could we possibly want to see here?”
“Over there. The passengers are getting off. Straight ahead, Eleanor.”
She complied, with little idea why they were there, but weaving nonetheless through the travelers boarding and departing the train. “There are more people coming and going than I would expect,” she said and looked up at her husband. He was busy scanning the crowd. “What is this about, Beau?”
“Train only comes down this spur every two weeks. No other stations for a hundred miles, maybe more.”
“Beau? Why are we here?”
“Eleanor? Eleanor?” she heard and turned to the crowd of passengers that had just disembarked. She shaded her eyes.
She took in a sharp breath and felt her husband’s arm come around her waist. “Aunt Brigid?”
A white-haired woman dropped her bags where she stood and hurried to them. She pulled Eleanor into her arms, stroked and patted her hair, and kissed her cheek.
“It is me, lamb,” she said softly. “Cry as much as you wish. Aunt Brigid is here.”
Eleanor did not know how long she stood in her aunt’s embrace. There was a familiarity that was more than she could parse. The woman looked so very much like her brother and sounded like him, too, that Eleanor would have known her as McManus anywhere. It was as if she were able to hug her father one last time. She dried her eyes on a handkerchief that Beau handed her.
“How did this happen? I thought you were ill.”
“I was ill, Eleanor, very ill. It took me months to recover, but I am well. My sickness made me realize how ridiculous your father’s and my arguments were. I was planning to visit your family in Allentown when your father said he had accepted the post in Charleston. And then I got your letter. Oh my dearest! To have witnessed what you have! You’re a strong girl, Eleanor.”
“It was horrible, aunt. All of it.”
“And we shall talk at length, but I am getting quite cold. Where is this hotel you told me about, young man? You are her young man, her husband, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I am,” Beau said and pulled his hat from his head. “Beauregard Gentry, at your service.”
Chapter 6
Eleanor’s thoughts were in shambles and she would have far preferred to stand right where she was and have her questions answered, but her aunt was cold, as the wind blew across the station platform when the train pulled away, and she was as well. She linked arms with her and led her to the warmth of the hotel lobby.
Aunt Brigid untied the ribbons on her hat and unbuttoned her coat. There was a fire in the potbelly stove and she stood before it, holding her hands out to warm them.
“How did you know how to find me?” Eleanor asked. “I fear the letter I sent you right after my parents died was hardly legible. I was hysterical, I think.”
“Of course you were,” Brigid said.
“Your aunt’s reply arrived by stagecoach on the first of December. I was in the mercantile buying the lamp oil when Mr. Fisher handed me her letter. I didn’t give it to you then, I should have, but I wanted to see if I could get her to travel here and surprise you. Her letter to you is unopened back at Paradise. Her address was on the outside of the envelope, and I wrote to her. I paid a man I met at the stables taking the train to Philadelphia to hand deliver my letter to her.”
“I received Mr. Gentry’s letter and closed my shop up and began making arrangements to travel here to you. I sent him a return letter the following day.”
“I got it yesterday, ma’am. I was ever so relieved that you were arriving. Eleanor is grieving sorely and she needs family.”
Eleanor felt the tears tumbling off of her cheeks. “Aunt Brigid. They are gone. All of them.”
“Yes, dear. I know.”
“Can I take you both back to our home, to Paradise? I will bring you back to the hotel this evening. That way you can have privacy to talk,” Beau said.
“Yes, please, Beau. Should we arrange a room for you, Aunt Brigid? I am sorry to say we don’t have a place for you yet in our cabin.”
“It’s already arranged,” Beau said. “I’ll tell the clerk to put her bags in her room.”
“After all is said and done, Eleanor, there is no one for me in my little town any longer, and why would I not want to be near my brother’s daughter? I can sew clothing in any town. Why not Winchester?”
“You would close up your shop?” Eleanor asked as she turned from the fireplace to serve her aunt a cup of tea. “Father said you were very successful making clothing for the wealthy women of Philadelphia.”
“Not every year has been profitable, but most have. My assistant wants to buy the store and has relatives willing to lend her the money. She has earned it, to my thinking, having put up with me for the last fifteen years. She is capable and will do well, I think. Fresh ideas will be welcome. What do you think?”
Eleanor cried then, in earnest. “I have felt very alone, even though Beau has been all I could ask for in a husband and more. I love him. I am certain of it. But I grew up with my sisters and Mother and Father and a large church family. I would be very pleased if you were here, near us. Beau has great plans for our property and future. I would want you to be part of it.”
“Then your husband will have to make inquiries for me for a storefront with living quarters above on one of the main streets. I will plan on spring to be here permanently.”
Eleanor clasped her aunt’s hands. “I am so happy. What a wonderful Christmas present you have been.”
Beau took Aunt Brigid to town to the hotel near sunset and returned cold and weary after dark.
“I have torn myself up inside, knowing that I withheld a letter from you. It was wrong of me.”
Eleanor walked to him where he stood at the mantel, poking and prodding the fire to life and staring at the flames. She put her arms around his waist. “You are high-handed sometimes; I can already tell that about you. That does not mean I am not grateful for everything you have done for me, and I know whatever you have done was to make me feel better, to comfort me. There is no one in this world I would rather be beside than you. I love you, Beauregard Gentry.”
“I love you, too, Eleanor.”
A brisk wind was blowing and swirling dry snow when Eleanor and Beau arrived at the hotel to pick up Aunt Brigid for Christmas church service the following morning. He had worn his best shirt, one of three he owned and the same one he’d worn the day they’d married. His hair was slicked back, and
he’d scraped every bit of mud he could from his boots. Both women were dressed fancy and fine, just like Aunt Dorthea on Christmas Day. He drove them the few blocks to the church and climbed down from the wagon to help them down and to the church doors.
Eleanor kissed his cheek. “Thank you for bringing us. It will be an hour or more, I imagine. Where will you be?”
“I’ll be out front waiting.”
Eleanor and her aunt turned to the church and waited with many other townsfolk in line to greet that nitwit Buckland, all wrapped up in his self-righteous glory, shaking hands with the men and inviting the women inside. Beau’s wife and her aunt were already making new acquaintances with the family ahead of them. He stood and watched the procession as he leaned against the wagon where he’d parked it across the street. He hand-fed Bristol and laid a wool blanket over her and Nellie as they’d both worked up a sweat and now stood in the cold air. He supposed he could take the wagon to the stable. Theodore wouldn’t care if he got his animals out of the wind.
But he didn’t. Beau was watching his wife nod, shake hands, and hold some woman’s infant while the other attended a small child. His wife looked fine holding a baby. A tall man came down the street toward him then, and Beau wondered who he was and where he came from as he’d just seemed to appear from between the two buildings Beau was sheltering beside. The man walked up to him, smiled, and laid a hand on his shoulder. It was odd, Beau thought at the time and after, that it didn’t bother him in the least that a stranger was touching him.
“Merry Christmas,” the man said. “You are Beauregard, are you not?”
Beau tilted his head. “Yes, I am. You have me at a disadvantage, sir. I do not know your name.”
The tall man smiled. “I see you looking at your bride. She is the one there in the green and red silk with her aunt beside her. She is a beautiful young woman.”
Beau looked at Eleanor, at her smile, heard her laugh, watched as she touched the head of a small child. “Eleanor’s beauty lies within, although I consider her the loveliest woman I’ve ever met. There is no woman braver than she. I am in awe of her.”
“Then why do you stand here, son? Why are you not with her?”
Beau looked down at the ground as he moved a stone back and forth with the toe of his boot. “There’s a man in there that wanted her first. He wasn’t good enough for her, but he was one of her kind. I’ve drifted around and done some things, some killing even, that makes me not one of her kind.”
“The killing you’ve done saved her life, did it not?”
“Yes, it did,” he said, and wondered how much of Eleanor’s story had been told around town. He hated to see her be the subject of gossip. Yet, who knew those details except he and Eleanor?
“Do you love her?”
Beau looked at his wife, now shaking hands with Reverend Buckland. “Yes. With all my strength and being.”
“Then go to her. Hear the Savior’s story and the sacred music beside her. Be brave, Beauregard, as your wife is brave. She loves you above all others.”
He turned and looked at the man. He was familiar, yet Beau was certain he’d never met him. What was it about him that compelled him to do just what the man had said? To go to Eleanor and begin new memories for her, new Christmas memories, new traditions that they would share with her aunt and their children yet to be born.
“I will do just that,” Beau said as the man walked away. “Happy Christmas to you.”
The tall man turned. “Love them both, Beauregard. Keep Christ in your heart and guard Brigid and my dear Eleanor.”
“I promise,” he said.
The church bells pealed at that moment and Beau looked at the steeple. Brigid? His dear Eleanor? He turned quickly but the man was nowhere to be seen up or down the street or even in the alley behind him. He had vanished.
Beau hurried up the stone steps of the church and opened the heavy ornate door. He walked down the center aisle, hat in hand, looking for his wife, and found her near the front of the church. He slipped into the seat beside her, smelling the pine draped on the altar and the wax polish used on the oak pews. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Beauregard,” she whispered. “I am so glad you came inside. What changed your mind, husband?”
He covered her hand where it held her hymnal. “I made a promise which I will keep forever and a day. Merry Christmas, Eleanor,” he said and kissed her.
About the Author
Thank you for your purchase of Into the Evermore. Eleanor and Beauregard raise three children at Paradise and Matthew Gentry’s story will release in the spring of 2017.
Please stop by my website, hollybushbooks.com, to read samples of all my American Historical romances including The Crawford Family Series – Train Station Bride, Contract to Wed, The Maid’s Quarters, and Her Safe Harbor. Stand-alones Romancing Olive and Reconstructing Jackson are set in the United States post Civil War and prior to the turn of the century. Cross the Ocean and Charming the Duke are both British Victorian historical romances.
I announce new releases and other book news on my FaceBook page, my Amazon Author page, and my BookBub page. I’d love for you to stop by!
The first few pages of Matthew Gentry’s story are below.
For more information or to contact me:
@hollybushbooks
hollybushbooks
www.hollybushbooks.com
[email protected]
Preview
1869 Outskirts of Lexington, Kentucky
“Don’t pinch, Esmie! It hurts!”
The blond woman propped against the foot of the metal bed giggled and fondled her own breast. She glanced at the man lounging against the headboard and ran the tip of her tongue around her lips. “Tillie seems put out, sweetheart. Why don’t you and me have some fun?”
“I like to have fun, too, Esmie. I’ll play,” the redhead lying on her side next to the man said.
Matt Gentry took another swig of whiskey from the bottle in his left hand. He was drunk, but not so far gone that he couldn’t enjoy himself with the two naked women in his bed, but it had been a day or so, he thought, since he’d done much of anything but drink his rye and screw. He was almost tired of it. Almost.
Esmie crawled to him, eyes on him, and began to kiss and lick his bare leg. He leaned back against the pillows and gave a hum of contentment as Esmie found other things to run her tongue over. Not to be outdone, Tillie crouched near him, swinging one enormous breast in front of his face as she did. He sucked her nipple until it stood straight and hard. His hips were starting to pump when the door to his hotel room flew open.
Matt’s right hand shot up, aiming a six-shooter at the man in doorway, and he disengaged himself from Tillie’s breast to take a look-see at who he was pointing his gun at. “Ben? Is that you?” he asked.
“Who else would it be?”
Matt shook his head and started to laugh. “Who else would it be? Ha! How about that, girls? Who else would it be?”
Ben Littleship, the ranch manager for Paradise, his family’s spread in Virginia for as long as Matt could remember, was staring at him. Ben was as stone-faced as a man could be, but even Matt in his stupor and having been away from home for well on eight years could tell he was disgusted with what he saw. Matt pushed Esmie away and sat up. The room tilted even though he had two feet on the floor. “Go on girls. Get some clothes on and take a walk.”
“We could entertain ourselves, honey,” Esmie said and winked at Ben Littleship, “and your new friend, too.”
“Does he owe you any money?” Ben asked the two women.
“He pays us good but we’d do it for free,” Tillie said.
“Go on,” Matt said. “Time for a break.”
The two women walked around the bed and to the door. Ben held out a coin as they went by. “Have a pot of coffee and two meals sent up. Right quick.”
Esmie took the coin, bit down on it, and dropped it in the pocket of the silky robe she wore. “Sure thi
ng, honey.”
Ben sat down in the one chair in the room, a dainty velvet-covered item, and looked out the window of the second-floor room.
Matt pulled on his pants and ran a hand over the stubble of his beard. His hair was dark red, nearly brown, just like his mother’s, and he was as powerfully built as his father with a broad chest and thick arms. He rubbed at his left shoulder where a horse had kicked him years ago.
“What are you doing here, Ben?” Matt waited while the old man casually watched the passersby on the street below. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here?”
“Eat first.”
“Mother send you? She worried the devil in me finally won? Sure as hell wasn’t Daddy that sent you, that’s for damn certain.”
Ben turned his head to stare at him. The two men were quiet together for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Tillie opened the door and let in a young boy carrying a tray of food and an older woman behind him carrying coffee and tin mugs. Tillie winked at him, and he could see Esmie over her shoulder, smiling wickedly. The two women suddenly looked cheap and sordid, but he imagined he looked the same to them. A young drunk with plenty of money, little judgment, and a reckless glint in his eye. Ah . . . what had he become?
The woman and boy left the room and Matt shooed the two women out the door. He eyed the beefsteak and fried potatoes and burped. He filled a mug with coffee, hoping Ben did not see his hands shaking as too much liquor, too little sleep, and no real food he could remember had taken their toll.
Ben pulled a plate from the tray and sat it on the table beside him. He opened the napkin, shook it, and laid it across his lap. He cut the meat into small pieces, speared a potato, and ate. Matt found himself staring at the ranch manager as if he’d never been taught any fine manners or courtesies and did not know what to make of the behavior of a gentleman. Matt went to the washstand, lathered up his hands with the scented soap beside the bowl, washed his face and arms, and rinsed out his mouth, gargling with the warm water and nearly gagging. He combed back his hair and tied it with a piece of rawhide.
