Cheryl Reavis - An Unexpected Wife

Her Deepest Secret

Giving up her out-of-wedlock son was the only right choice. Still, Kate Woodward aches that she isn’t part of his life. She can’t heal herself, but she can help former Confederate soldier Robert Markham rebuild his war-shattered life. But helping Robert is drawing them irresistibly close—even as Kate fears she can never be the one he deserves….

Battlefield loss and guilt rekindled Robert’s faith and brought him home to Atlanta. And Kate’s past only makes him more determined to show this steadfast, caring woman that she deserves happiness. Now, with her secrets revealed and her child in danger, Robert has only one chance to win her trust—and embark on the sweetest of new beginnings….

“Where is Kate?” Robert asked.

“She is giving away most of the contents of our food basket to a woman with three hungry children,” Mrs. Kinnard said. “As she should. Now, about—”

“Excuse me,” he said, pushing his way through the crowd again to get closer to the train.

He stood waiting on the platform, watching Kate progress all the way until she finally appeared. She was so…beautiful to him and had been since the first time he saw her in the downstairs hallway of his father’s house.

Maria was right. He did want Kate to be a preacher’s wife—his wife—and he didn’t see how their situation could be any more impossible.

I love her, Lord.

He didn’t know when it had happened, or how. All he knew was that it was so, that she was in his mind night and day—and now he was only moments away from breaking her heart….

CHERYL REAVIS

The RITA® Award-winning author and romance novelist describes herself as a “late bloomer” who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of thirty. “We had to line up by height—I was the third smallest kid,” she says. “After that, there was no stopping me. I immediately gave myself permission to attempt my other heart’s desire—to write.” Her books A Crime of the Heart and Patrick Gallagher’s Widow won a Romance Writers of America coveted RITA® Award for Best Contemporary Series Romance the year each was published. One of Our Own received a Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series Romance from RT Book Reviews. A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband.

An Unexpected Wife

Cheryl Reavis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen

your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.

—Psalms 31:24

For my mother, in honor of her birthday—

92 years and counting. Thank you, Mommy,

for always being my biggest fan.

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

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Kate Woodard stood looking out the parlor window, more than content to be in her brother’s finally empty house and do nothing but watch the falling snow. It was deep enough to drift across the veranda now, a barricade—she hoped—from any outside intrusion.

The house was cold; a strong draft at the window made the lace curtains billow out from time to time. She could light a fire in the fireplace—if only one had been laid on the hearth and she knew how. When she made her impulsive decision to deliberately miss her train, she hadn’t for one moment taken into consideration that it was the dead of winter and she knew next to nothing about managing parlor fires, much less the one in the kitchen. Tomorrow she would do something about all that—hire someone or...something. Now she would savor the peace and silence of the house, and it would be enough.

She had come to Salisbury, North Carolina, to visit her brother and his family in the hope that a change of scenery and the rowdy company of his adorable young sons—two adopted, one his by blood—would redirect her mind. She was so weary of living the false life that had been foisted upon her when she was hardly more than a child herself. She needed...respite. She needed the privacy to feel all the emotions she had to keep bottled up for the sake of propriety. She wanted to weep—or not to weep. She wanted to pace and fret, if that seemed more applicable to her state of mind. She wanted the freedom to think about her own son. Her lost son. He was thirteen now, and the web of lies surrounding his birth had held fast. No outsiders knew young Harrison Howe was her child and not the child of her parents’ closest friends, nor did they know his brother was not his brother at all.

John.

He had made a much better brother than father—at least before the war had changed him so.

All these years Kate had lived on the fringes of Harrison’s life, watching him grow, being his friend but always carefully exercising the restraint it took not to make Mr. and Mrs. Howe or her own family think that she might be trying to get close to him. She was so good at it that she sometimes thought the people who knew the truth forgot that she was Harrison’s real mother.

Her latest news of him was that he had been sent to a prestigious boarding school deep in the Pennsylvania countryside, the alma mater of many—if not all—the males in the Howe family and the one place Kate believed he would not thrive. He wasn’t like the Howe men—John—or the senior Mr. Howe. He was more like her father—and her—thoughtful and observant and studious, and the fact that he required spectacles would make him even more of a target for boarding school jibes and pranks.

But there was nothing she could do beyond sending him small gifts of books and candy. He had sent her a carte de visite in return. She cherished it, but seeing his wistful young face staring back at her from the photograph only underlined her growing fear that he was miserable.

So she had come to her brother’s lively household in the hope of forgetting at least for a time the helplessness she was feeling—only now she had put herself squarely into a different kind of helplessness. If she’d taken the time to think about it, she might have been discouraged by her lack of housekeeping skills. The original plan—her brother Maxwell’s plan—had been that she would return to her parents’ home in Philadelphia while Max and Maria and the boys and their nanny were away. There were no other servants in the house; Max relied on his soldiers to accomplish what few of the heavy chores Maria would allow them to do. He had even assigned one of his nervous young officers and his wife, who were traveling to New York City, to see her safely to her destination. But she had forgotten the basket of food Maria had packed especially for her to take on her long train journey. When she hurried back inside to get it, she realized suddenly that she didn’t have to go. She was the last person to leave. She could stay behind; no one would be the wiser. Without a second thought, she had feigned a sudden “sick headache,” dismissing the fainthearted lieutenant despite his legitimate fear of what her brother might do to him for not carrying out his orders. She had felt sorry for him and for his young wife, but she had still embraced the opportunity to have the solitude she had craved for so long.

She gave a quiet sigh and pulled her cashmere shawl more closely around her, caressing the softness of the wool as she did so. The shawl was not quite rose and not quite lavender, and it suited her coloring perfectly. It had been a birthday gift from her father, and as such, it was very much a symbol of her social status, especially here. Ordinarily she was mindful of the fact that she was Kate Woodard, of the Philadelphia and Germantown Woodards, the seemingly respectable sister of Colonel Maxwell Woodard, commander of the occupation army garrisoned in this small Southern town—and she behaved accordingly.