Moment of Grace

by P. Creeden

  Moment of Grace

  Belles of Wyoming, Book 9

  P. Creeden

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  About the Author

  A Pony for Christmas

  A Bride for James

  A Bride for Henry

  Promise of Home

  Brokken Rising

  Brokken Pursuit

  Moment of Grace © 2019 P. Creeden

  Cover by Virginia McKevitt

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

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  Chapter One

  Spring 1881 Belle, Wyoming

  Ever since Grace Lynn Adams was a little girl, she loved baking, especially for others. The winter had been rough and had taken the life of their dear, sweet mother with it, right at the beginning, before Christmas. Before the bells had even vanished from the Town Hall. Normally, that sort of thing would have set Grace on a mission to find out what had happened, but instead, overwhelming sadness and guilt had consumed her. She’d barely left the house throughout the cold months. If it hadn’t been for their neighbors, the Maynards and the James, she and her younger sister, Catherine might have starved and joined their mother in the grave. But with spring, new hope came, too. She’d wanted to do something she loved. She’d missed the joy of baking and creating something that had the ability to take her mind off her worries. And nothing assuaged guilt like doing something loving and charitable.

  Grace sat the pie on the counter top, grabbed a light coat, and began walking toward her neighbor’s house. Overhead, the blue sky made her feel as though the world was full of possibilities, even after great loss. Though sadness still pricked at her heart like a thorn she couldn’t remove, she felt lighter just with the beginning of spring. Bird song filled her ears from the branches of the trees along the lane. Though the buds on the branches had not sprouted enough to offer shade, the noonday sun didn’t yet have the intensity of summer to need the leaves to help.

  Before Grace had even finished walking up to the doorstep, a woman’s voice called out from her right. Laura Maynard came around the side of the house, surrounded by about ten young rabbits. She gestured for Grace to join her with a wide smile. “Lovely to see you, Grace Lynn.”

  “There you are!” Grace shouted and lifted the plate she held in her hands. “I made you a pie. Is it all right if I place it in the kitchen for you?”

  “Go on. And then come back out here. I want to talk to you. We haven’t spoken in ages.” Laura swiped her hands on her lovely, spring-yellow pinafore that brought out the shiny bits of blond in her brown hair as the sun shone down.

  Grace nodded, quietly stepped inside Laura’s quaint home and placed the dish on the counter top. The smell of cinnamon and spiced apples from the pie began to seep into every corner of the small kitchen. When Grace returned outside, Laura walked toward her with one of the rabbits in her hands.

  “What do you think I should name him?” She smiled, passing the ball of fluff over to Grace.

  The tiny bit of life in her hands reminded Grace that they were very close to Easter. Just five days away, now, and thus closer to what should have been her wedding date. She’d agreed on an Easter wedding date back in the fall when Charles had asked, but that was before the winter and before she had betrayed him. Afterward, they had hardly spoken to one another.

  Did she really want to get married now, anyway? She’d wanted her mother to be with her on her wedding day, but now that wasn’t going to be possible. The overwhelming sadness that had been her constant companion returned. The thorn in her heart feeling more like a dagger once more. Grace pulled the bunny closer to her chest.

  “Are you all right, child?” Laura’s head tilted to the side as her worried eyes studied Grace. Her brow creases deepened.

  Grace blinked and pushed all those thoughts away. “Of course,” she said, but the bitter burning of tears sat behind her eyes, begging to be let free.

  “What’s on your mind?” she asked, guiding Grace to her front porch where a worn white bench sat, beckoning Grace to finally tell her secrets. Secrets that had been haunting her for months, now.

  “Laura, do you think if someone does something awful—cruel, even—but they didn’t mean to … not really … could that person be forgiven?”

  She laughed gently as if to brush off Grace’s fear like a mosquito on her shoulder or dust off her work clothes. “Grace Lynn, I know you and your siblings must feel a lot of guilt for not being there for your mama when she passed, especially with Will and Emma both married with families of their own, but you know it’s not your fault you weren’t there. You did nothing wrong.”

  Grace sighed and put her face into her hands.

  But Laura’s hands grabbed hold of her wrists and pulled them apart. “Look at me. No. Look me in the eyes, Grace. You were out at the James family’s stables, helping to tend to the horses. You didn’t know.”

  “Right …”

  “Besides.” Laura nudged her. “Your mama wouldn’t want you focusing on things you ain’t in control over. Focus on the present, not the past. I don’t believe I seen you and Charles on one of your evening walks in days!”

  That same feeling of betrayal stabbed at Grace’s heart again. She wasn’t ready to talk about Charles. Months ago, when they had been courting, life had been simpler. Her mother had been alive. The winter hadn’t come and sucked away all of the will to live and love from her. A heavy sigh escaped her lips. She needed to leave.

  “Perhaps I should go find Charles and go for one of those evening walks,” Grace said quietly, swallowing down her secrets, standing up and excusing herself.

  “Thank you for the pie!” Laura called out as Grace walked away. Grace waved in acknowledgment but couldn’t turn back to look at her.

  What Laura didn’t know was that Grace had been there—she had been in the house when it happened. She wasn’t in the stables then, like everyone thought.

  She feigned to head towards Charles’s farm, though she had no intention of speaking to him. It wasn’t as though he would like to speak with her, either. Last time they’d met, he acted as though he couldn’t stand to even look at her. She had betrayed him. The man who beheld Grace’s dirty wings and broken halo could no longer see her. She kept walking until she was long out of sight from Laura and the rabbitry while thoughts of Easter and spending time with family filled her mind. What if Charles told them? What if everyone found out about what she did? And why hadn’t he told them yet? Was he waiting until Easter—when everyone would be gathered together in one place, his family and hers? The thought made her sick. She was so consumed in by her fears that Grace didn’t notice she had started walking the trail that led to the township’s river. It wasn’t
until she heard the water and felt its coolness in the air that she become alert to her surroundings.

  The birdsong intensified near the river. This was the trail she took with Charles every day during their courtship, and she hadn’t walked it since the day he’d turned his back on her. She had hoped for a long time that she and Charles would marry one day. The two of them had grown close when his family took over the Old Williams’ Farm in town, where her father had used to work. After Papa died, Grace had spent time lurking about the Williams Farm, climbing trees and playing with the stray cats. Only when she visited the farm had she felt close to her papa. Memories flooded her.

  One day, Charles caught her jumping the fence, and like any farmer’s son who saw a stranger hopping their fence, he assumed she was a thief to steal their livestock, eggs, or worse - their money. He didn’t yell for his father, though. Instead he approached her, himself, and said, “Look, if you would only ask instead of trying to steal, I could help you.”

  Grace had blinked at him, feeling indignant at his accusation. She crossed her arms over her chest. “But I’m not stealing.”

  “Then why are you trespassing? Hm? Ain’t no one ever trespassed for anything but stealing!” His frown soured his face and screwed it up as though he’d eaten a lemon.

  “I ain’t trying to steal,” Grace huffed and wiped the mud from her pinafore, frowning. Honestly, she’d looked very much like a thief, but she would never have taken from that place.

  Cocking his head, he narrowed his eyes and asked, “Who are you?”

  “If you must know, I am Grace Lynn Adams and I have no need to steal from the likes of you.” Grace had held her chin up high, as if she had possessed a confidence that she didn’t feel.

  He had laughed and held out his hand. “Well, Grace Lynn Adams, my name is Charles Roy James. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss.”

  For a long while Grace just eyed his hand and lifted a brow at his sudden smile. The boy could certainly switch from sour to smiling quickly. There was no way that Grace would do the same, though. Reluctantly, she had given the young boy her hand, unashamed to display her annoyance. “You do know, don’t you, that a true gentleman waits for a lady to offer her hand in greeting, not the other way around.”

  He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “I kind of forgot. Pardon me.”

  When their hands touched, though, he squeezed it harder than she’d expected. She wasn’t sure what to make of him that day except that she wasn’t certain she even liked Charles James. Little did she know that one day it would be that very hand that would send butterflies swimming in her stomach. It wasn’t until five years later that Grace told him the real reason she had been sneaking over to his farm. He’d always asked, because after their encounter, she had spent nearly every day playing on his farm with him. Or helping with the farm chores. When he’d ask, though, she always told him an elaborate story filled with magic and adventure, like the ones her father used to tell her. Charles would always smile and say, “What a woman, you are, Grace Lynn Adams!”

  And Grace would giggle, and he’d join her with laughter of his own.

  The giggling and playing turned into holding hands the older they got and one day when Mama got mad at Grace for spilling a bucket of milk, she ran to the only person she knew who wouldn’t judge her for such a foolish mistake. They had been sitting on a swing his grandpa built when they were little. Charles tucked her hair behind her ear, after she had told him what she had done. “Is that why you’ve come here ever since that first day?” he whispered, changing the question ever so slightly, “To steal milk from Bessie over there?”

  Grace had laughed. Then she had started crying.

  “I came over that day because my Papa used to work here. Before … before he died.”

  Grace hadn’t had any time to feel that sharp pain of grief wash over her then, because Charles pulled her quickly to his chest, kissed her forehead and then pulled himself back. “What a woman you are, Grace Lynn Adams!”

  When she had smiled through her tears, he leaned in, his eyes upon her lips. They were thirteen, and he’d set her heart aflutter. When his warm lips touched hers lightly, it had felt like a butterfly or a hummingbird, but searing, like a flame. She’d been so surprised, she’d gasped and pulled back, her fingers touching her lips. She’d run away from him, then, unsure how to respond to his sudden gesture, but for days, she could still feel his lips on hers. And it would be a few years before he’d try to kiss her again.

  Chapter Two

  Charles

  Charles’s grandmother had always said, “Nothing good ever came from holding a grudge.”

  But what did she know about what he was going through right now?

  Anger still heated up the back of his neck as he threw a bale of hay over the fence and into the cow field. The spring grass was only just beginning to sprout, and though the cattle still preferred it, there wasn’t enough of it yet to fill their bellies. He still needed to throw them the last of the winter hay while patches of clover and buttercups dotted the field. In the sky, a far-off rain cloud threatened to come toward the town of Belle. The rains of spring didn’t do enough to quench his anger. This wasn’t the betrayal of someone trying to steal his business or gossiping around town; no, this was something worse. Something no one ever spoke much about, something that was never supposed to happen to a man like him. And he couldn’t help but imagine what people would say.

  He should have known better. He’d brought it on himself for courting a woman like her.

  He’d known Grace’s reputation, but also felt that they all talked about her like that because they didn’t know her. He knew her. At least, he had thought he did.

  When his family first moved to Belle at nine-years-old, he’d had no friends. Other boys didn’t like him and called him hoity-toity. Then he’d met Grace Adams. She had practically fallen into his life when he’d needed her most and there was always something special about her. There was fire in her eyes, and she didn’t seem to care what others thought about her. Her fearless attitude amused him. And she had a softer side—she cared for her ailing mother, her younger sibling, and just about anyone else she saw suffering. But how could someone so pure and so kind do what she did?

  Charles wiped the sweat from his brow. He’d gotten away with not thinking as much about these feelings when winter had been all around him, but with the coming of spring... with the coming of Easter, when he’d planned on marrying her, he couldn’t help but remember his pain. He headed back into the house for a cold glass of lemonade if he could find it, but when he stepped in, he found a couple of farm hands sitting at the table already. Edgar Maynard, the younger gentleman got to his feet and offered Charles the chair on which he’d been sitting. Then he proceeded to pour Charles a glass from the pitcher.

  “Laura is worried about Grace,” Edgar mentioned his own wife, Grace’s friend, quietly as he set the glass in front of Charles.

  “Oh?” Charles asked, picking up the glass and taking a long swallow.

  “Laura says Grace’s been staying inside a lot these days. Her older brother Will hadn’t seen her out much either. Says she’s always complaining of feeling ill, but she refuses to let the doctor see her.”

  “Oh…” Charles had to bite his tongue. He’d wanted to say that she was ill but not the kind of ill any doctor could treat. He’d wanted to call her out for her sins, for her betrayal. She had tried talking to him a few times, but he just couldn’t bring himself to even look at her. One day, she’d even had the nerve to leave his favorite baked bread that her Mama used to make at his door. She hadn’t even knocked. She didn’t even try to see him. It wouldn’t have mattered though, of course. How could he forgive Grace when he couldn’t even begin to chew on what had happened?

  What he had seen and heard that night in the stables crushed every truth he had ever knew about her, about the two of them as a couple, about everything in his entire life. There wasn’t an apology in the world that c
ould change his mind about what he had found out.

  “Is she ill?” James, the elder workman, asked, looking up from his drink on the table.

  Charles’s hands still gripped the coolness of the glass as I set it back on the table. “She … is … recovering.”

  James huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Charles, I’ve known you for as long as I’ve known my wife, so you can’t lie to me. You both do this thing with your eyes when you lie.”

  “I am not doing anything with my eyes!” Charles snapped as he glared at him.

  “You just did it again,” the elder workman said with a chuckle as he slapped a hand on his knee.

  “James, fine. I don’t know.” Charles resigned himself to staring at his glass again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Did something happen with you two?” Edgar asked as he refilled the glass. Even though Edgar was the younger of the two workmen, he was still nearly five years older than Charles. The two workers liked to get into Charles’s business and give helpful advice. But right now, advice was the last thing he wanted. This was something he’d rather keep to himself.

  Charles stared at the tabletop, studying each dent and wondering where it came from. Anything to avoid meeting eyes with either of the two men. If he did, he might end up telling them just what he’d seen the night that Grace’s mother had died. Even though the idea of lifting the burden of that weight gave him a sense of hopeful relief, Charles couldn’t be a part of confirming what everyone had said about her in town. That she wasn’t good enough for him. If he heard anyone say that about her, he might find himself fighting for her honor. He didn’t need to put himself into that kind of situation.