Where Love Runs Free (Tales from the Upcountry)
Read Where Love Runs Free (Tales from the Upcountry) Online
Authors: Caroline Friday
What readers are
saying about
Where Love Runs Free
:
I have just finished reading your book
“Where Love Runs Free”. It is wonderful!!!!!!! I couldn't put it down for
the last 10 chapters. The story was great and it had an awesome ending! I look
forward to seeing it published and a best seller!!
T Lane
Caroline, this story is amazing! Find me a
boy like Ben! Goodness, finding a horse savvy man is difficult, let alone one
who Fears the Lord as Ben does.
I started this book last night
around 8, and finished around 2am. I was sucked into it--and couldn't put it
down!
C Henry
This book has the breathless, ultra romantic feel of Gone with the
Wind. The setting itself is romantic--a horse farm in South Carolina. And
Angelina, the heroine, is as feisty and headstrong as Scarlett O'Hara. Friday
has a nice, easy pacing in her storytelling, using exposition and dialogue and
action and description with equal ease, and introducing various characters
quickly and vividly.
I enjoyed the
immediate romantic tension that the author sets up and wanted to read more.
DM, Editor
Where
Love Runs Free
By:
Caroline Friday
W
HERE
L
OVE
R
UNS
F
REE
Published by Sixth Day Media, LLC
Marietta,
Georgia 30068
www.sixthdaymedia.com
Graphic
Sixth Day logo is a registered trademark of Sixth Day Media, LLC
All rights reserved. Except for
brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or
used in any form without written permission from the publisher.
This story is a work of fiction. All
characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any
resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.
Unless otherwise noted, all
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
(Public Domain.)
© 2012 Caroline Friday
Cover Design: Lynnette Bonner,
indiecoverdesign.blogspot.com
Cover Photos: Bigstock, no.
29514190; The Killion Group, no. HIS0479
Interior Photos: Sixth Day Media,
LLC
Author Photo: Sixth Day Media, LLC
Table of Contents
South
Carolina Upcountry
1890
“Come
on, Angel. You’re getting married in a month. Don’t you think it’s about time
you tried on your wedding dress?”
“No, I don’t,” Angelina Raeford snapped, tossing her blonde
curls over her shoulders. She hated it when her little sister, Jessie, pulled
the cream-colored silk dress with pleats, lace, and blue ribbons from the
bottom of the cedar chest. Even if it was her mother’s, she couldn’t bear
looking at it for a minute. “And don’t call me Angel. I don’t feel like an
angel today.”
“Well you sure got that right,” Jessie said, plopping her
hands on her hips and raising an eyebrow. “What’s Edward gonna say when he
finds out you don’t want anything to do with the wedding plans, huh?” Jessie’s
soft, brown eyes flashed a deep black to match the color of her long, straight
hair. Ever since Angelina could remember, people marveled that she and Jessie
were related. But no one would doubt it today, the way Jessie hovered over
Angelina. Now that their mama and daddy were gone, she acted more like guardian
and nursemaid than sister—and her being two years younger too. Sometimes
Angelina couldn’t wait for the day Jessie married some respectable man and left
the details of her life alone.
Angelina studied her sister’s appearance, allowing her gaze
to float from head to toe. Usually it was trousers, but today it was a dowdy,
brown work dress splattered with the remnants of yesterday’s supper—chicken and
dumplings. The cheeks were freckled and sunburned from not wearing a bonnet for
a good three months, and the hands were starting to look like an old horse
saddle. Angelina looked away and said with a sigh, “You don’t have to tell
him.”
“Not tell him? He’s the groom! And he’s been asking where
you wanna go for your, you know—” Jessie swayed toward Angelina and cast her
eyes to the floor like a little girl hiding behind her mother’s skirts.
“No, I don’t know. And why are you whispering and acting all
silly?”
“Oh, Angelina Raeford! You know exactly why,” she hissed.
“It’s your honeymoon.”
“Oh, that.” Angelina pushed past Jessie with her nose turned
up in the air. “Why on earth would I want to go on a honeymoon with Edward
Millhouse?”
“Angelina!” Jessie exclaimed, with mouth open wide, almost
making Angelina burst out in laughter. “You are evil and rude to say such a
thing, and you wearing his ring all proud.”
Angelina pulled off her kid glove and smirked at the diamond
solitaire set in a platinum setting that fit snug around her ring finger. It
was nice, but not as nice as the one Robert Ellwood put on Rebecca Thompson’s
finger. “Well, maybe if he’d made it bigger, I’d consider going.” She grabbed
her Stetson off the end of the bedpost and planted a peck on Jessie’s cheek.
“Oh, you—I will not have you embarrassing this family with
your behavior, you hear? Edward Millhouse is a respectable gentleman from
Charleston! With money! You hear me? Where’re you going?”
Angelina stomped down the staircase, angered by Jessie’s
reminder as to why she had gotten herself into this predicament in the first
place. She slammed out to the porch of the farmhouse and breathed in a fresh
gulp of air filled with the scent of fresh jasmine and honeysuckles. What did
she care about Edward Millhouse and all of his Charleston riches and finery
when it was such a glorious, beautiful day?
“Ella?” Angelina called to a tall, thin, Negro woman
who was hanging wash on the line. “I’m going riding. You wanna have supper on
the table at six o’clock sharp, now. The boys’re gonna be mighty hungry after a
hard day with the horses, and I’m starving myself.”
“Oh, no you’re not!” Ella exclaimed, letting a pair
of underdrawers plop down into the wash basket. “You’re not eatin’ with the
boys tonight. I got strict orders from Miss Jessie that Mr. Edward, he’s comin’
over for supper later on, and he’s gonna want my fried chicken—”
“I don’t care what Miss Jessie said. I don’t wanna
eat fried chicken with Mr. Millhouse. I’m eating with the boys tonight. At six
o’clock.”
“Miss Angelina—”
“Six o’clock, Ella,” she said, making her way to the barn
with long, full strides. “And not a minute after!”
“You better watch it or that Mr. Edward, he’s gonna give you
a whoopin’ like you never seen, the way you been treatin’ him!”
“I’d like to see him try,” Angelina said under her breath,
smacking her riding crop into her gloved palm.
“It wouldn’t hurt you none, and that’s the truth!” Ella
hollered. “Wouldn’t hurt you none a tall!”
The barn door slammed open, drowning out Ella’s last words.
Angelina peered into the dim surroundings where Tom Humphries, a stocky,
dark-skinned native Indian, led a beautiful, black gelding out of its stall.
“There you are!” Angelina cooed at the horse.
“Afternoon, Miss Raeford. Got him all saddled up and ready
to ride.”
She gently stroked the gelding’s neck and long mane. “Hey
there, Eagle’s Wing. Hey there, boy. You have a nice rest, huh?” A kiss on its
velvety nose was met by a wet snort that made her giggle.
“Give you a leg up?” Tom asked.
She looked at him coolly and smiled before stepping into his
entwined fingers. Hoisting herself up, she swung her leg over the horse’s back
and adjusted into the saddle. “I thank you, Tom.”
“You know you’re always welcome, Miss Raeford.” He led the
horse out of the barn into the bright sunshine, holding onto the reins for a
moment. Then with a long, hard look, he stared at her through a pair of
squinted eyes. “Miss Raeford, I happened to overhear what Ella said. If you
don’t mind me askin’, why’re you marryin’ that ole Mr. Millhouse? I know he’s
rich and from Charleston, but you don’t need the money. The farm’s makin’ more
than ever with the sales and all the stud fees we’ve been collectin’.”
Angelina didn’t see how any of this was his business, but
she did trust Tom more than anyone in the world. He was like a father to her
now that she and Jessie were on their own. “Well,” she said with a deep sigh,
“I figure, if a girl’s gotta get married, it might as well be for money, don’t
you think?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t. And anyway, who says you gotta get
married?”
“I do. I can’t see all this disappear after Jessie and I are
gone.” She waved her arm toward the barn and the two-story white farm house
with wraparound porch. “I need to have sons to take over, and make this place
bigger and better than it’s ever been. And that’s gonna take money, and lots of
it.” Her voice sounded distant and faraway as she gazed upon everything that
was Fairington Farm—the tack room and bunkhouse for the trainers and breeders,
the horse riding rings and open fields, not to mention the horses that made
their home here. “Before I die, I wanna see Fairington become one of the
greatest horse farms in the country, greater than anything those ole
Kentuckians are always bragging about. I wanna make sure what Mama and Daddy
built lives on, forever and ever.”
“That may be well and good,” he said, adjusting his Stetson
toward the back of his head, “but girl, you listen to me. Don’t go sacrificin’
your heart for earthly riches. Don’t do it. Your heart’s the most tender,
precious thing you’ve got.”
“You sound like Ella. And Jessie.”
“No, I sound
like your mama.” The squint in his eye widened for a moment, and his look
became more revealing, like she was gazing into the eyes of her daddy.
“Don’t mention my mama like that again, you hear? Like you
knew her.” Her voice shook as the emotion rose in her throat. “You didn’t know
her. Not like that.” Then with a swift kick to Eagle’s Wing’s sides, she took
off down the dirt road leading to the open field.
From an easy canter, Angelina moved the horse into a gallop
and rode past a narrow row of canopied oak trees and a cluster of longleaf
pines which opened up into another spacious, grassy field—so common in the
South Carolina upcountry. She rode hard and furious, feeling the power of
Eagle’s Wing’s long strides that matched the beating of her heart. Jessie and
Tom were always telling her to slow down and be careful, but she couldn’t slow
down, she wouldn’t! She wasn’t going to be like Tom, a tormented, lost soul who
never took the opportunity life gave him, only settling for second best. People
whispered that her mama had loved him, and that he had stayed on at Fairington
because of her, but Angelina knew that wasn’t true. Her mama would have never
loved a man like Tom. She loved only one man—her daddy. And besides, Tom was
part Iroquois, and everyone in Laurel Grove knew an upstanding white lady
couldn’t even think about loving a red man.
The wind stung
her face and the bugs swarmed around her neck and ears, but she kept riding
until they reached a hilltop known as Palmetto Ridge.
Angelina brought
the horse to a stop and dismounted, throwing the reins over Eagle’s Wing’s head.
She removed the bridle and walked the horse to a large, shady oak tree with
gnarly limbs that used to remind her of the arms of an old witch when she was
little. Ducking her head from the low-lying branches, she plopped down on the
ground and leaned against the trunk, allowing Eagle’s Wing to graze the
surrounding grass.
The view was breathtaking—rolling fields bordered by
clusters of pines and the Blue Ridge Mountains looming in the background. In
the valley below was the silhouette of a large, white farmhouse that had belonged
to the Smith family before Edward purchased it about ten years ago. Angelina
slammed her eyes closed, trying to shut out the memory of its former occupants,
especially one in particular—a young boy. Gritting her teeth, she resisted the
temptation to do what she always did when she sat under this tree and thought
of him.
A moment passed before she gave in. Taking a deep breath,
she reached into a hollow at the base of the trunk and grimaced as her fingers
brushed against something wet and mossy. Finally, they made contact with a
smooth surface, and a little wooden box produced itself—dirty and
water-stained, but intact. Angelina gazed at her initials carved on the lid: AMR,
for Angelina McNair Raeford, her mother’s name.
After a bit of prying, the lid popped off, splintering a
freshly filed fingernail in the process. She yelped, shoving her finger into
her mouth where the coppery flavor of blood peppered her tongue. There it was,
staring at her from inside the box—a pale, sandy-colored arrowhead that had
been carefully carved, just for her. Hot tears pricked Angelina’s eyes as her
fingers caressed the smooth surface of the rock. She could almost see him
leaning over her, his long, black hair hanging over his shoulder like a
curtain, framing a bright smile and a pair of dark, haunting eyes.
“Oh, Ben,” she whispered while the tears streamed down her
cheeks.
Why did you run away? Why?
Angelina had asked herself this
question a thousand times but never got an answer. She fell back to the ground
and felt the wind rush over her, blowing a long strand of hair across her face.
Through a break in the tree foliage, she watched the billowy clouds move
through a sea of blue, and for a split second, thought she heard his gentle
laughter rising over the top of the ridge, along with these words—
To be free, my Angel. To be free.
