Laura Abbot - Into the Wilderness

WOUNDED BY LOVE AND WAR

He survived a battlefield massacre and, before that, his fiancée’s betrayal. Cavalry officer Caleb Montgomery is unable to trust in anything now, especially himself. But then he’s stationed in Fort Larned, Kansas, where Lily Kellogg, the lovely army surgeon’s daughter, begins to rekindle his faith—and his hope.

Caleb is the kind of gallant, surprisingly sensitive man Lily never expected to find on the Western frontier. Since childhood, she has longed for the stability and culture only the big city can offer, and her most cherished wish is suddenly within reach. Still, putting both their dreams to the test is the one way she and Caleb can find their road home…to each other.

“Is there still hope for us, Lily?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.” She turned away then. “St. Louis is everything I thought I wanted. Until you.”

Caleb knelt in front of Lily, hoping against hope that she would hear and respond to the urgent call of his heart. He picked up her hands and held them in his, seeking in her astonishing blue eyes the response he longed for. “Dearest Lily, I ask you before God to become my wife. I pledge you my undying love.”

Her eyes filled with tears, Lily shook her head back and forth, gripping his hand tightly. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came. Adrift, Caleb could only stand, draw her to her feet and enfold her in his arms. Her slight body trembled in his embrace and muffled sobs gave evidence of her distress. Finally she stepped away and gazed at him with such love he feared ever forgetting this moment. A glimmer of hope. That was all he needed….

LAURA ABBOT

Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, Laura Abbot was deeply influenced by her favorite literary character, Jo from Little Women. If only, Laura thought, I could write stories, too. Many years later, after a twenty-five-year career as a high-school En-glish teacher and independent school administrator, Laura’s ambition was unexpectedly realized. When she and her husband took early retirement and built their dream home on Beaver Lake outside of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, he bought her a new computer and uttered these life-changing words: “You always said you wanted to write. Now sit down and do it!” Happily, she sold her first attempt to Harlequin Superromance, a success followed by more sales to the same line.

Other professional credentials include serving as an educational consultant and speaker. Active in her church, Laura is a licensed lay preacher. Her great blessing, however, is her children—all productive, caring adults and parents—who have given her eleven remarkable, resilient (but who’s prejudiced?) grandchildren, including at least three who show talent in writing and may pursue it as a career. Jo March, look what you started!

Laura enjoys corresponding with readers. Please write her at LauraAbbot@msn.com.

Into the Wilderness

Laura Abbot

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

—Isaiah 43:19

To Paula Eykelhof, editor extraordinaire,

with gratitude for her encouragement,

guidance and enduring belief in me.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Dear Reader

Discussion Questions

Chapter One

Fort Larned, Kansas

March, 1869

Lily Kellogg stood before her mother’s small grave marker, oblivious to the raw spring chill. Mathilda Louise Kellogg, b. 1820, d. 1868. Beloved wife and mother. From these few words, who would discern the bravery and compassion of the woman buried there? Or how quickly she had succumbed to the influenza that swept through the fort a few short months ago, despite the heroic efforts of Lily’s father, the post surgeon.

Once again Lily asked the familiar questions. Is this ultimately what we amount to? A few facts etched in cold stone? Do we rest for eternity beneath a blanket of grass battered by wind, sleet and snow, subject to infestation by creatures both crawling and flying? Standing there motherless, she struggled to believe in a merciful God.

Too late she thought of the questions she should have asked her mother, but hadn’t, and the family stories she should remember, but couldn’t. Yet she knew her mother had loved her, as she had loved her father, brother and sister. In part, she blamed this isolated place for her mother’s death. If only they had remained in Iowa, living with her maternal grandparents as they had while her father served in the Union Army. When the conflict ended and her father elected to remain in the military, her mother, not without misgivings, had insisted that she, Lily and Lily’s older sister, Rose, accompany him to this remote fort on the Kansas plains. Her mother had loved fine things and had assumed she would always live in the familiarity of the town where she grew up and in comfortable proximity to her well-to-do parents.

Since her death, Lily had harbored a painful question: Would Mama still be alive if the family had stayed in Iowa? She cast a baleful glance at the headstone. It all came down to choices, and her mother, a faithful wife, had chosen to follow her husband. Now that Mathilda was gone, Lily knew her father depended even more upon his daughters and worried whether Fort Larned was a suitable home for two unmarried women, one twenty-one and the other twenty-four.

Gazing at the gray clouds scudding overhead, Lily permitted herself a moment of self-pity. She tried not to complain and to trust in God’s plan for her. But surely her destiny lay someplace else—in a city lively with creativity and dedicated to progress. Blinking back tears, she laid her hand gently on the grave marker.

The clatter of mounted horses interrupted her reverie. The arrival of new troops was no novelty, and, like others before them, these soldiers deserved a welcome. Gathering her cloak around her, she waved. Their leader glanced in her direction, smiled and lifted his hat.

Whether it was his erect posture astride the black horse, his light brown curls blowing in the wind or his engaging smile that caused her heart to skip a beat, she couldn’t say. Perhaps it was his air of confidence, the hint of mischief in his smile or his fleeting resemblance to the brother she had lost in the war that moved her. She turned away. He is just another officer, she reminded herself. Just another officer.

Dismayed by her spontaneous reaction to the man, Lily hurried toward home. No good could come from idle speculation about the new captain, handsome or not, and no such man could ever derail the exciting future she planned for herself.

When Lily returned to their quarters attached to the hospital, her sister met her at the door. “You look chilled. Come warm yourself by the fire.” Rose gathered Lily’s cloak and hung it on the hook in the entryway. “I’ve brewed some tea.” She bustled to the stove to fetch it while Lily settled in the rocker in front of the hearth, grateful for her sister’s solicitude. Rose, always a steadying influence, had moved effortlessly into her mother’s homemaking role.