Sara Mitchell - The Widow's Secret

“No, you’ve committed no crime, you handed over evidence and have cooperated fully. However…” Micah hesitated “…until we learn the circumstances surrounding Mr. Hepplewhite’s death, I’m going to need to keep an eye on you.”

“You think I’m responsible for his murder?” Jocelyn asked.

He reached for her hand, tightening his grip when she tried to wriggle free. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that if Mr. Hepplewhite’s murder is connected to the forged currency Benny gave you, that you might be in grave danger?”

“You want…are you saying you’re trying to protect me?”

“Don’t look so astonished. You’re a widow, living alone, with only a maid who no doubt leaves you alone at night. Why wouldn’t I want to protect you?”

Jocelyn had looked less traumatized when she thought he might be about to arrest her. “Because…” Her voice turned tremulous as a young girl’s. “Because the thought never occurred to me.”

“Well, get used to it, Mrs. Tremayne. I don’t know yet whether your involvement is happenstance or design. But either way, you’re now under my protection.”

A popular and highly acclaimed author in the Christian market, Sara’s aim is to depict the struggle between the challenges of everyday life and the values to which our faith would have us aspire. The author of contemporary, historical suspense and historical novels, her work has been published by many inspirational book publishers.

Having lived in diverse locations from Georgia to California to Great Britain, her extensive travel experience helps her create authentic settings for her books. A lifelong music lover, Sara has also written several musical dramas and has long been active in the music ministries of the churches wherever she and her husband, a retired career Air Force officer, have lived. The parents of two daughters, Sara and her husband now live in Virginia.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Don’t call me Naomi, she told them. Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.

—Ruth 1:20

Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and Who it was that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water…Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

—John 4:10, 14

For my mother, a true Southern lady whose life

exemplifies dignity, intelligence and faith.

Thanks for loving me, no matter what.

With much gratitude to the staff members in the U.S. Secret Service Office of Government and Public Affairs, and the staff of the U.S. Secret Service Archives. Their cheerful assistance and endless patience, not to mention the reams of invaluable information they provided, deserve recognition. Any errors or inaccuracies rest entirely on the author’s head.

Prologue

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

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Questions for Discussion

New York City

September 1884

A bar of orange-gold sunlight poured through the windows of the Binghams’ Fifth Avenue mansion, flooding the large guest bedroom where Jocelyn Tremayne had spent the past three nights. Tonight, however, she would be sleeping elsewhere. A persistent flutter wormed its way above the constricting whalebone corset; Jocelyn stood before the ornate floor mirror positioned in one of the room’s several alcoves, solemnly studying the strange reflection gazing back at her. She blinked twice to see if she could pray the freckles into disappearing, at least for her wedding day.

Her prayers went unanswered.

“You look prettier than the picture in a Harper’s Bazaar fashion catalog, Lynnie.”

Kathleen Tremayne stepped around the four-poster bed and gently lifted her daughter’s hands, gave them a squeeze as though to quiet their trembling. “Everything’s going to be all right now,” she whispered. “Don’t you worry, sweet pea. Your daddy’s in the study with Mr. Bingham and the lawyer now, signing all the papers.” An expression drifted through the hazel eyes, and Jocelyn launched into a flurry of words, anything to banish that expression from her mother’s face.

“I’m fine, Mother. Just…excited.” Nervous. Determined. But she would never admit to fear.

She might have willingly agreed to marry Chadwick Bingham, only son and heir to the Bingham fortune, in order to save her family’s Virginia estate, but she wished she’d at least been allowed to wear her own mother’s wedding dress, instead of Mrs. Bingham’s. The white satin gown, over thirty years old, dripped with seed pearls and ruffles and Valenciennes lace over six layers of starched (and yellowing) petticoats to achieve the once-fashionable bell shape. Jocelyn thought she looked more like a bridal cake than a bride. She tried not to think about her mother’s wedding gown, refashioned five years earlier into clothes for her two growing daughters.

Shame bit deep, without warning. Jocelyn was marrying a pleasant, courteous young man, but the union bore scant resemblance to her dreams. Even impoverished Southern debutantes with red hair and freckles dreamed of romance, not business transactions.

She thrust the pinch of hurt aside. Countless other Southern daughters over the past decades of Reconstruction and national recessions had married to save their families from starvation. In return for Jocelyn’s hand in marriage, the Tremaynes would be allowed to live out the rest of their lives on the thousand-acre farm her great-great-granddaddy had carved out of the Virginia Piedmont two hundred years earlier. Her younger brothers and sister would still have a home until they each reached their eighteenth year, even if their heritage had legally just been signed over to Rupert Bingham.

Perhaps the payment was justified. Until the war her father, and his before him, had run the farm with slave labor.

Kathleen tugged a lace hanky from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes as she gave Jocelyn a sweet smile. “Well. It’s time. Jocelyn? Are you sure…?”

“I know what I’m doing,” Jocelyn promised, even as a black chasm seemed to be sucking her into its depths. “I like my husband-to-be. He’s been nothing but kind. We’ll be happy, I promise.”

Her mother’s cool hands cupped her cheeks. “Your father and I love you very much. If—” She stopped, pressed a kiss to Jocelyn’s forehead. “Let’s go, then. You don’t need to start your new life being late for your wedding.”