Hannah Alexander - Keeping Faith

A Woman on a Mission

The wagon train ride from Missouri to Kansas territory is rife with perils. But there are bigger obstacles for Dr. Victoria Fenway than cholera or creek floods. Years ago, she and wagon-train captain Joseph Rickard were deeply in love. Now, Victoria is tracking the man who killed her late husband, and she is determined to continue his work rescuing slaves. She can’t allow herself to fall for Joseph again—not when he abandoned her once before.

Joseph told Victoria he’d love her forever, and he’s been as good as his word. Misunderstanding led to her marrying another man. But with dangerous slavers on their trail, he’ll do anything to keep her safe until they reach a new home—and a second chance.

“Things don’t always turn out the way we want them to, do they?” Victoria asked softly.

Something in Joseph’s gaze caught and held Victoria breathless. She looked away quickly, but for an instant ten years vanished and they were back on the deck of the riverboat on the Mississippi River, with the water splashing against the shore while she memorized every inch of his face.

“This isn’t the end,” he’d whispered. “It can’t be. I’ll never stop loving you.”

Then the whistle blew and the deck beneath them moved, and the years stacked atop each other once more. She blinked and shook the memory away, but not before she relived the heartbreak of loss. Not again. Never again. She couldn’t bear to feel that kind of pain for a second time.

HANNAH ALEXANDER

is the pseudonym of husband-and-wife writing team Cheryl and Mel Hodde (pronounced “Hoddee”). When they first met, Mel had just begun his new job as an E.R. doctor in Cheryl’s hometown, and Cheryl was working on a novel. Cheryl’s matchmaking pastor set them up on an unexpected blind date at a local restaurant. Surprised by the sneak attack, Cheryl blurted the first thing that occurred to her, “You’re a doctor? Could you help me paralyze someone?” Mel was shocked. “Only temporarily, of course,” she explained when she saw his expression. “And only fictitiously. I’m writing a novel.”

They began brainstorming immediately. Eighteen months later they were married, and the novels they set in fictitious Ozark towns began to sell. The first novel in the Hideaway series won the prestigious Christy award for Best Romance in 2004.

Keeping Faith

Hannah Alexander

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord,

the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.

—Isaiah 26:4

This story is written in loving memory of Lorene B. Cook, Sept. 13, 1925, to Feb. 25, 2012, whose inner strength will live on in my characters as long as the stories exist.

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

Chapter Nineteen

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

Chapter One

Dr. Victoria Fenway sat beside her young assistant in the opening of her host’s covered wagon, grinding herbs with mortar and pestle as she studied the tree-shrouded wilderness for a shadow, a shape or movement that might tell her their camp was being watched by a monster.

Broderick Thames, her husband’s murderer, was indeed a monster, and he was here in the south of Missouri. She had no doubt of that. For the past few days, after discovering the first unique track of the killer’s fire-red horse, she’d lived on the razor edge of fear. He’d come this way for a reason, but why?

A screech of youthful male terror reached her from a distance. She jerked, startled, spilling powdered chamomile everywhere.

Her fourteen-year-old helper, Heidi Ladue, dropped her empty teabags and caught Victoria by the arm. “Dr. Fenway, that sounds like Claude. Did you hear a splash?”

Victoria turned and tried to peer through the trees toward the roar of the flooded creek that had halted their journey today. “In that torrent? How could anyone hear a single splash?”

Another cry reached them from the direction of the creek. “The rope,” came a familiar voice. “Help me, please! Get the rope.”

Heidi scrambled from her perch on the wagon’s edge, long strands of her flax-pale hair dangling over her shoulders and the calico ruffles of her sleeves. “That is Claude. He’s in trouble!”

Victoria shoved her work aside and leaped from beneath the canvas of the Ladue wagon. “We don’t have the ropes. Your mother tied the horses with them.” They’d been unable to form a corral with the wagons on this narrow strip of land between cliffs and overflowing creek.

She ran toward the trees in an effort to catch sight of Claude but all she could see was muddy, churning water between giant trunks of oak and broadleaf evergreens. Heidi’s younger brother was not a clumsy boy. Could Thames be nearby? Could that wicked man have pushed him?

Heidi clutched Victoria’s arm and tugged. “He was with the Johnston boys earlier. Please come, Dr. Fenway. They had a rope. They were trying to make a pulley out of it to get the wagon across the water.”

Victoria allowed herself to be pulled forward. “They told you this?”

“No, ma’am, I could see it with my own eyes.” Heidi released her grip and turned toward the creek. “I heard them talking. I told the captain and he got on ’em, but they didn’t listen. They’ve been up to something, and I don’t see Claude, but right there’s the Johnston boys.”

She pointed toward Claude’s constant companions, blond-haired Buster and Gray Johnston. They stood across a narrow clearing beside a huge oak tree that shaded a section of the raging water. They were struggling mightily to straighten a tangled mess of rope that connected their wagon to the tree.

Despite stern reprimands, the boys appeared determined to float their wagon to the other bank before the floodwaters died down, like children taking a dare to prove they were men. They were proving just the opposite with their careless disregard for safety.

“Buster?” Victoria called out, clutching her funereal-black skirts and hurrying through treacherous mud toward the boys, Heidi at her side. “Didn’t you two hear your friend? He’s in trouble.”

“I know, but this here’s what he needs.” Buster held up an end of the rope in his hand. “It’s too knotted.”

Claude cried out again and Heidi turned to run toward the sound of her brother’s voice. “It’s the creek, Doctor. I know he fell into the creek!”

Buster tugged with more force on the rope, his face dripping with sweat. “I’m tryin’, ma’am, doin’ all I can, but he’s got to have this to get out!”

“Heidi, be careful!” Victoria turned back to the Johnston brothers. “Boys, please hurry. What is Claude doing in the water?”

“Hangin’ on for life right now,” Gray said.

Victoria could imagine all sorts of awful endings to this and it made her dizzy. “To what?”