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    Dreaming About His Future Life: Four Historical Romance Novellas
    Dreaming About His Future Life: Four Historical Romance Novellas
    Dreaming About His Future Life: Four Historical Romance Novellas
    Ebook167 pages2 hours

    Dreaming About His Future Life: Four Historical Romance Novellas

    By Doreen Milstead

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    About this ebook

    Oregon Trail Journey After The Civil War, is the story of a southern woman and her older brother, striking out for the West to escape the hardships of the South after the Civil War. She didn’t want to leave her home but not wanting to be left isolated, she went with him. The wagon train along the Oregon Trail is led by a seasoned veteran of the War, on the opposite side. Romance develops but the brother is still bitter about the south losing the war. When a virulent disease erupts the wagon master abandons the wagon train, taking just the brother and sister and a single wagon, as he strikes off along the trail alone. Tragedy strikes later and the sister has to make a hard choice.

    Harriet & Gavin’s Story - A woman is kidnapped from her coach while on her way to Southampton to join her mail ordered fiancé in America. The man tells her that he’s a travel officer there to help capture a trafficking gang and although cooperative, she feels that something is wrong. Once they reach Boston and after meeting her intended, she is again taken while staying at an inn on the way to Colorado. This time she knows that something is wrong and goes kicking and screaming into the night with her abductor. The mystery is revealed later at a farmhouse along the way.

    The Woman Stonemason & The Italian Break-Down Town - Set in the Middle Ages, this story is about an Englishwoman who is sent to Italy to become the bride of an Italian stonemason, living in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius. She is an intelligent and inventive woman herself and along with her husband, then come up with several highly unorthodox solutions to both warring factions, and taxes.

    The Bishop And His Forbidden Love - This historical romance set in the Middle Ages is about a young bishop who finds himself yearning for a nurse’s aide that he meets at a hospital where he goes for help with his migraine headaches. The woman is mysterious and reputed to be a Bourbon, yet he cannot find her after their tryst and continues to search Italy, then France, for months after the brief affair. It’s years later that the mystery of her disappearance is finally solved.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSusan Hart
    Release dateMar 30, 2017
    ISBN9781370705061
    Dreaming About His Future Life: Four Historical Romance Novellas

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      Book preview

      Dreaming About His Future Life - Doreen Milstead

      Dreaming About His Future Life: Four Historical Romance Novellas

      By

      Doreen Milstead

      Copyright 2017 Susan Hart

      Oregon Trail Journey After The Civil War

      Harriet & Gavin’s Story

      The Woman Stonemason & The Italian Break-Down Town

      The Bishop And His Forbidden Love

      Oregon Trail Journey After The Civil War

      Synopsis: Oregon Trail Journey After The Civil War, is the story of a southern woman and her older brother, striking out for the West to escape the hardships of the South after the Civil War. She didn’t want to leave her home but not wanting to be left isolated, she went with him. The wagon train along the Oregon Trail is led by a seasoned veteran of the War, on the opposite side. Romance develops but the brother is still bitter about the south losing the war. When a virulent disease erupts the wagon master abandons the wagon train, taking just the brother and sister and a single wagon, as he strikes off along the trail alone. Tragedy strikes later and the sister has to make a hard choice.

      Mary looked at her dirt-stained gloves, the rain spattering down from the sky unevenly. She’d just thrown a handful into that gaping hole, the one that had become her parents’ final resting place. Her brother, Matthew, tossed his handful in, and it thumped against the caskets below. Mary shuddered. She preferred to remember Mother and Father in happier times — not like this.

      They were riding in a wagon on the way home from visiting a friend one day when the horses had taken a curve in the road a bit too fast. The wagon, they’d surmised later, had hit a large rock in the dirt and overturned.

      Both Mother and Father had died almost instantly, the sheriff told Mary and Matthew, as if that was some comfort. One of the horses was so badly injured that it had to be shot. The other they sold.

      She and her brother had sold everything. It was more of Matthew’s doing, mostly. Mary had no choice but to go along with it. He was five years older than her twenty and was convinced that no one had her best interests in mind more than himself.

      I agree that it’s a tragedy Mother and Father have died, he said as she sobbed in the sitting room, thirty minutes after the sheriff had imparted his grim tidings. Think of it as an opportunity to shed this life and begin anew.

      Mary had no desire to shed anything about her life. She wanted Mother and Father back — Father’s ever-present pipe and the sweetness the tobacco infused his clothes with. Mother and the click of her knitting needles, creating scarves, hats, and mittens, no matter what the season.

      Matthew had presented this idea before, when their parents were still alive. He wanted to go west, to get away from the pervasive stench of defeat that still wafted throughout South Carolina.

      Absolutely not, Father had said, his pipe puffing small clouds of smoke furiously.

      People walk around here hanging their heads like dogs, Matthew argued, his face red with passion. I can’t stand it, Father, I won’t. If you all won’t accompany me to California, I’ll go by myself.

      I forbid you, Mother said, the clicks of her needles punctuating each syllable.

      Matthew had been fifteen at the war’s end, always embittered that Father refused to fight — and kept Matt, still a youngster, from going to war himself.

      Mary remembered the Battle of Rivers Bridge, though she’d been just a child. She remembered seeing the lines and lines of navy uniforms marching past the farm, taking what they wished from the fields. As a little girl, she wept in outrage.

      They’re stealing from us, she whimpered into Mother’s arms.

      They need the food just as much as we do, Mother said calmly, even though she was shaking, her hands gripping the family bible. They can have as much as they’d like.

      Father had to take a raging and frothing Matthew inside the house, as the boy ranted about the Union soldiers on their property.

      Why doesn’t Father fight? Mary asked. Nearly all of her friends who attended lessons at the schoolhouse had fathers or brothers or cousins or uncles fighting in the war.

      Mother had thought a long time before answering.

      Father thinks that only God should decide who lives and who dies, Mother explained slowly. He would only fight if God called him to do so.

      And God’s not telling him? Mary asked.

      That’s right, Mother said. They sat down in a rocking chair on the porch of the old farmhouse, Mary sitting on her mother’s lap.

      Mother opened the bible to Ecclesiastes. Mary knew the verses almost by heart, mouthing the words as Mother read.

      There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

      Mother smiled down at Mary. Now, you read it, she said.

      Mary began again. There is a time for everything …

      They sat and watched the soldiers eat their ways through the fields.

      Yes, that was how Mary preferred to remember Mother and Father. They had their problems, like any other family. Matthew was generally the source of most of them. He was brash and hotheaded, the very opposite of Father, who always thought things through.

      Still, the vast majority of Mary’s memories were fond ones. Mother and Father’s lives were cut far too short. She wished it didn’t have to be like this.

      I would now like to read a favorite bible passage of mine, the reverend was saying as workers flung shovelfuls of heavy mud into the hole. The caskets were very nearly covered.

      Mary hooked her arm with Matthew’s, leaning her head on her brother’s shoulder. He patted her hand comfortingly.

      So we are always of good courage, the reverend said. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

      He paused for several long moments for that to sink in. It was a small funeral, but theirs had been a small family. Mary and Matthew didn’t have any grandparents who were alive, and Mother and Father had both lacked siblings.

      The friends whom Mother and Father had visited prior to their untimely death were at the funeral, of course, weeping as if everything was their fault.

      That passage was from Corinthians, the reverend continued, and it tells us that we should look forward to the time when we get to be by Jesus Christ’s side in heaven. Our lost loved ones are already there. We grieve for ourselves, left down here on Earth. They are home already, home with our Lord.

      Matthew and Mary walked back to the farmhouse, which sat only a few miles from the churchyard. By then, the rainclouds had parted and the sun slanted through, illuminating different parts of the open road in front of us.

      You don’t have to take me to California, she said for perhaps the eighth or ninth time. I have a number of friends who would be happy to take me in. I could get married and then you wouldn’t have to worry about me ever again.

      Matthew laughed at her. Her arguments were the same each time.

      We’re too good for charity, he said, and I won’t have you marrying some stranger. There will be plenty of men to choose from in California — and none of them will walk around muttering things about what could have been.

      Matthew was acutely aware of the defeatism present in our town, Mary noticed. Even though the war had been over for a decade, the recovery continued. Shattered homes were still being dismantled, copses of trees still bore scorch marks from the Union soldiers’ torches.

      The only reason the farmhouse had survived intact was because the family had let them eat from the fields without trying to stop them. The soldiers had been hungry and desperate, after all, just as desperate as the Confederates.

      Still, this state and our little hometown held so much personal history for Mary. It was her home — the place where she had happily grown up. She was beginning to suspect that Matthew’s memories of South Carolina were nowhere near as fond as hers.

      Finish packing, little sister, Matthew told her as they walked into the door of the empty home. We leave tomorrow.

      Mary went to her room. She’d already packed — dresses, boots, books, and little trinkets to remind her of South Carolina filling up a small trunk. She just wanted to be alone for a while, alone with her thoughts and alone with her home.

      She sat on her narrow bed, picking up the bible Mother used to read from. Mary stroked the thin, gold-edged pages. Knowing that Mother had often done the very same thing offered a small degree of comfort.

      Mary turned to Corinthians and reread the passage the reverend had recited at the funeral. The reverend was right. Both her parents were good Christians. They were surely looking down from heaven at this very moment. Couldn’t they help her? Couldn’t they save her from leaving? She didn’t want to go to California with Matthew.

      She was sure he had some half-cocked idea about making his fortune in gold or some other mining activities. That was no life for Mary. She knew if Mother and Father were still alive, they would at least prevent Matthew from taking her across the country.

      They were not here, not anymore.

      A tear slipped down Mary’s cheek and spotted the open bible. She sniffed, passing her fingers quickly over the page so the liquid wouldn’t mar the fragile paper.

      Mary read the passage her sorrow had highlighted.

      "Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

      For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’"

      Corinthians again, Mary noticed. It certainly had a lot to say about death.

      She closed the book and reclined on the bed. It was going to be the start of a long journey tomorrow. Mary wasn’t immortal. She had to get some rest.

      Jake checked his supplies, making sure the trunks were closed and barrel tops were tight before tying everything down. The trail got bumpier every time, it felt like. He’d gotten it down to a science, the packing and supplies. He could make it stretch like no one else, buying only the bare essentials at trading posts. Usually, however, he had to split some of his goods with others in the train who weren’t as frugal or careful.

      It wouldn’t look good if anyone on his trains went and died on him.

      Most people didn’t believe Jake when they asked him what he did for a living.

      You mean you go back and forth across the country all the time? they’d exclaim, dumbfounded. Don’t you get tired of it?

      He usually politely extricated himself from the conversation at this point. People made him uncomfortable, on the whole. He preferred open land, the trail, the sense of going in the right direction, a simple goal to simply travel to a landmark, then the next one, then the next, until they reached a destination.

      Jake required simplicity in his life now. The war made it necessary.

      He looked at the people assembling with their fancy wagons stuffed with all the trappings of their past lives. At least two families were hoping to drag their stoves across the country. Jake shook his head.

      The stoves would be dumped halfway along the trail if they made it that far.

      The number of people looking to leave South Carolina wasn’t surprising to Jake. He found himself leading more people out of the South and then westward.

      The war had been hard on everyone, but the South was still in tatters — physically and emotionally. People wanted

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