The Most Eligible Bachelor Romance Collection: Nine Historical Romances Celebrate Marrying for All the Right Reasons (28 page)

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Lisa K. Jilliani, historian and living history interpreter, for the copy of the William Alexander diary, which first introduced me to the life of a colonial wagon master. Also to the lovely Liste Members of the 18cLife Yahoo group, especially Robert Sherman, living history interpreter at Middleton Place of Charleston, South Carolina, for patiently answering questions about colonial-era men’s boots and handling teams of oxen. As always, I uncovered a wealth of information I was barely able to tap in the course of one small story.
My thanks also to Becky, for taking a chance on a nobody writer, and to Ellen, for making my first real edits as fun as they were challenging.
A nod of thanks—and apology—to Alfred Noyes, for his poem “The Highwayman.” My deepest thanks to the Lord, who shuts doors but also opens them. And to my first readers and critique partners… both those who loved the story and those who didn’t. You all serve a very important purpose in my life!

The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
S
ONG OF
S
ONGS
2:8, 10

Chapter 1

The Great Wagon Road, lower Shenandoah Valley, on the eve of the American Revolution

I
can’t do this anymore.”

Samuel Wheeler said the words so quietly, he wasn’t sure his cousin Jedidiah heard him over the patter of rain and the creak and rattle of wagon and harness.

But Jed’s ears were sharp. “What do you mean? We have to make this run. All the way to Philadelphia and back, by the end of the month.”

The oxen foundered in a patch of mud. “Get up!” Sam called, tapping them with the slender goad he always carried, and they forged ahead.

“And,” his cousin said, “you can’t avoid seeing Sally again. As if you’d want to.”

Sam gritted his teeth.

“Of course, if you mean you can’t keep silent any longer about your feelings for Sally,” Jed went on, all reasonableness, “that’s a good thing.”

“You know very well what I mean.”

Hunched against the rain, Jed snorted. “Ah. That.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“’Tisn’t.”

“You are to blame for the entire thing.”

Jed chuckled. “You put on the coat and boots. Tied the kerchief around your face.”

Sam swallowed back a burn. “At your instigation. It was mad.”

“Ah, come now. Admit you’ve enjoyed it.” Jed grinned. “You picked up the whip and stood down tyranny. Put those redcoats on the run, muskets or nay. And they can’t find a shred of the one who did it, though his exploits are told all up and down the Great Road.”

The familiar elation rose within Sam, but he held on to his grump. “I get no sleep to speak of.”

“You slept well enough last night.”

“Aye, one whole night in three.”

“Stop bellyaching already. Besides, it’s tonight you’ll see Sally again.”

Sam backhanded his cousin’s shoulder, and Jed laughed, swaying away. “If we get there in time,” Sam said.

“Oh, we will, rain or no. Nero and Brutus are solid enough, aren’t you, boys?”

It wasn’t just the oxen. Sam eyed the trickling runoff in the wagon ruts ahead of the trusty pair. If a wheel or yoke didn’t break—they’d had that happen often enough, to be sure. He shifted his gaze to the low-slung clouds, draping the treetops that pattered with the drips and obscuring the rolling mountains above. Nothing overly threatening there, although one could never tell.

“In all seriousness, though.” Jed elbowed him. “When will you finally speak to Sally? It’s killing me to watch you make calf eyes at her and never say a word.”

An image of her face rose before Sam—deep brown eyes, flame-red hair peeking from beneath her cap, small white teeth flashing with laughter as she navigated tables at her father’s inn, a jaunty chin with a tiny cleft. Freckles scattered across cheeks too thin, some might say, for beauty, but—her whole being radiated more light and joy than he carried in his little finger.

A light and joy that drew him, moth to a flame, till he burned with a longing he could not douse, scorching hotter with each trip up the Great Road and back. But every time he found himself near her, his tongue grew thick in his mouth, his breathing difficult, his hands and feet clumsy. Speaking was out of the question.

Speaking his heart, unthinkable.

What did he have to offer her, after all? She was Sarah Brewster, called Tall Sally of the Lower Valley by some, daughter of the best-kept inn along the Shenandoah. Responsible for a good part of that keeping, herself. He was but an apprentice wagon master who made the run from his home in Charlotte Towne to Philadelphia, beholden to his uncle since childhood.

He had nothing. Might always have nothing.

Beside him, Jed snorted. “And still you say naught. Cousin, you’ll die a lonely old man if you don’t change your ways.”

“I can’t change who I am,” Sam muttered.

“Can’t you?” Jed shot him a smug little smile. “You put on the Highwayman costume—yes, at my behest, but you wear it. Redcoats and Tories alike shake in their boots because of you. What is one slip of a girl?”

The girl I love,
Sam wanted to say, but he’d not admit that to Jed. His cousin would never let him hear the end of it.

And this Highwayman business complicated everything. He could be shot, for heaven’s sake. At the least, found out. It wasn’t like that severely out-of-fashion coat didn’t mark him, or the boots—

It was the boots that started it all.

“Sally, where are the fresh linens?”

Her mother’s voice carried from the great room to the kitchen, near the back of the first floor. Shaking her head, Sally kept kneading, quarter turn, fold, push, not missing a beat. “On the table near the counter,” she called out. Then more softly, “Right where I told you, Mama.”

A pang of guilt assailed her. ‘Twasn’t Mama’s fault for being so beleaguered. Not when Jacky, already not a strong child, suffered a fever for three days straight, and in the meantime his twin, Johnny, got into enough mischief for the two of them. As if he sensed the seriousness of their little brother’s illness and poured all his worry into making trouble.

She tucked the bread dough into a stoneware bowl, covered it with a towel, and set it in a corner of the sideboard. It would rise and be ready to bake by morning.

“Sally.” Mama came around the corner, her plump, pretty cheeks flushed with exertion. A quick smile flashed despite the last few days’ worry, then faded. “I may need you to fetch the doctor for Jacky. I do not like the look of his fever today.”

Sally nodded. “Let me know when.”

It gave her a reason to call on her older sister, married to the blacksmith, with a pair of children of her own. Polly was small and round and pretty in the same way as Mama, making Sally feel scrawny and awkward by comparison—but she loved Polly dearly and still missed her daily company.

“Later. For now, go count how many rooms remain empty upstairs. We may have unexpected guests on such a wet night.”

They’d had many such guests. Sometimes the good weather brought them, as people traveled harder and farther, but others pressed on despite the rain. These were especially grateful for a warm fire and a hot meal.

Well, the inn was ready.

She whisked away to do as Mama asked, and while she was upstairs, the rattle of a wagon outside came to her ears. She peeked out the window at the end of the hall. It looked to be the Wheeler boys from Charlotte Towne. On their way up, if she remembered aright. Papa kept track of such things, and she should as well.

Task finished, she lifted her skirts and ran down the stairs, slowing just before reaching the bottom. Then back to the kitchen—yes, the stew and corn bread were ready. A good thing, too, for the Wheeler boys owned hearty appetites.

She hesitated in dishing it up—no telling how long it might take them to unyoke and stable the oxen and linger to talk with Father outside. So she kept herself busy with other things until she heard boots stamping at the back door. Johnny’s voice rose above the lower rumble of older male voices. “Any new reports of the Highwayman, Jed?”

Sally stifled a groan. That lad was obsessed with tales of the vigilante.

And of course Jed Wheeler indulged him. “Well, now, I just might. Let me think…”

The sound of their tromping covered his words as they made their way into the great room. Sally shook her head, ladling stew into stoneware bowls. As if it weren’t bad enough that every time a new tale made its way up the Road—or down—the other village girls were all atwitter. Not that such a figure wasn’t romantic enough, of course, but—a man like that would never look twice at her, not with all the others to pick from.

Especially not when someone more staid and plain never looked twice at her, either. But she was too sensible to care a fig for that.

She arranged the bowls on a tray, slid in a plate of still-steaming corn bread, added spoons and a generous pat of butter. One last moment to smooth her apron and kerchief—even a sensible girl had her vanity, after all—and then she picked up the tray and sailed into the great room.

Jed and Sam had already found seats at their favorite table, hats off and hanging on the wall, with Johnny’s lean form draped over a chair facing them, his boyish face rapt. His back to Sally, Jed gestured wildly with both hands as he talked in that loud, brash voice of his.

Sam, as always, sat quietly next to his cousin, broad face placid and unmoving. He glanced up at Sally’s entrance, blue eyes meeting hers and widening a fraction before he nodded once and looked away.

Aye. Like that.

She pasted on a smile and kept walking.

“And then—the sheriff himself showed up to clap irons on the pair. The Highwayman had triumphed yet again, without ever firing a shot. Oh—hullo, Sally! Mm, what do you have for us tonight?”

She set the tray on the table and unloaded it. “Oh, just our usual stew and corn cakes.” A laugh bubbled—sparked by Jed’s infectious grin, she was sure—but other than a flicker from Sam, no response came from that quarter. She ignored the leadenness of her heart and set the empty tray against her hip. “So where are you boys off to this time?”

“Lancaster then Philly,” Jed answered, jovial as you please.

“Any mishaps on the way, so far?”

“None. It’s been as fine a trip as we could ask for, apart from the rain.”

Mama bustled in, carrying a pitcher and two tankards. “Gracious, Sally, serving the food before drink! Here you are, boys. Watered ale, our best for you, as always.”

Sally murmured an apology and stepped back, face burning. But Sam was head down, spooning his stew. He likely hadn’t even noticed Mama’s chiding her in front of guests.

Please notice. Please look up. Please look—at me.

But he did not.

Jed was already diverted, slurping from his tankard, shoveling in the stew, and launching into another tale for Johnny. And she had work to do.

Chapter 2

T
he rain stopped and the night warmed, leaving a damp fog to shift through the trees and town. Sally let her shawl sag around her elbows and dangled her basket from her fingertips as she drew a lungful of moist air. Ahh, honeysuckle. One of the loveliest fragrances ever.

The clouds covered the moon, but she knew well the path from her sister’s house on the other side of town, where she’d gone after delivering Mama’s summons for the doctor. She should have been home by now, but she and Polly had gone to talking, and time slipped away.

With only the Wheeler boys lodging tonight, it wasn’t as if Mama needed her overmuch, anyway. They were always among the easiest of guests.

She’d just reached the edge of her father’s orchard, which lay behind the barn and pens, when the singing of tree frogs and various insects gave way to the stamp of booted feet and muted sniggering under the trees. A lantern flashed then dimmed. “Well,” a male voice drawled, “if it isn’t Tall Sally of the Valley. Come give us a kiss, sweeting.”

Lord in heaven, have mercy—it was Willie Brown and his cronies. And not a quarter mile from home.

She kept walking, despite the sudden chill, and gripped her basket and shawl more closely.

“What’s the matter, love? Feeling shy tonight?”

A burst of guffaws split the air, and four or five shadows broke from the trees, surrounding her. Slivers of light escaped the lantern, which swung from the hand of one.

She was well and truly caught. Sally clutched her basket but stood as straight as she could. If the blackguard wanted to twit her about her height, well then, she’d use every inch God gave her. “Aren’t you cunning, lurking in the dark to trouble women and children. But don’t think I don’t know who you are.”

“And what does it matter? You’re naught but a tavern maid.”

She held herself still, schooling her features as well as her body. She absolutely would not be intimidated by this bully of a magistrate’s son. “You know the scripture as well as I. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’ ‘Twill catch up with you, sooner or later.”