Below them, the ranch lay invitingly lush and verdant, the creek running full from recent rains, calves fattening for market in the fall.
And above them, atop a new gate post and crossbar, hung a hand-carved sign that said “Fair View Ranch.”
Clay sidled Duster up against Pen and his leg pressed her as he leaned in for a heated kiss that left her weak kneed and slack-reined. With the same penetrating look he’d given her that first day at the depot, he lowered his voice to a most intimate tone.
“You are the fairest view on this place, Mrs. Ferguson. Welcome home.”
Epilogue:
April 1886
Sophie squeezed Clay’s hand as he helped her from the buggy. It was so much easier than climbing down from the buckboard, though she could have managed perfectly well driving herself. But he would not hear of it.
He needed to check in with John at the livery, he’d said. Clay “checked in” with John every time she made a call. The last time she’d seen the boy he was sporting a hat that looked remarkably like Clay’s and a proud smile that said he’d saved his “appreciation” money for just that purpose.
With one hand holding her satchel, she pressed the other against the only remaining curve of her waist and arched her back.
“Tired?” Blue eyes searched every inch of her face for truth. Feigning unlimited endurance was futile.
“A bit.”
He frowned.
She lowered her chin and looked up at him through her lashes, a delightful tact she’d learned early in their marriage. It completely undid him.
He deliberately looked away. “I’ll be back in a half hour. That’s plenty of time.”
She scoffed and brushed her lips across his unshaven cheek, which he quickly turned to capture her kiss with his own. If such ardor held through the years, they would have a passel of children and need a bigger house.
Abigail Eisner met her at the bell-topped door to the tailor’s shop, her infant son sleeping soundly in her arms despite the jingling welcome.
Sophie lightly touched his olive complexion with the crook of her finger. “How is little Isaac today?”
Abigail kissed his downy head. “For the moment he is quiet.”
Sophie smothered a laugh and followed Abigail to the apartment at the back of the haberdashery. Clay and John had remodeled the long, narrow shop, moving the couple’s living quarters downstairs and Hiram’s sewing and fitting area upstairs.
They had even installed two handrails, one on either side of the curving stairs.
Sophie seated herself on a stout wooden chair, ensuring her ability to rise again, and took the sleeping babe while Abigail prepared tea.
When she returned, she set the tray on a table nearby, then reached for Isaac and placed a cloth-wrapped parcel in Sophie’s hands.
“For you and all you have done for us.”
The young woman had no way of knowing that Sophie’s calling ministered to her own heart as well as others’ as she learned more completely the value of weeping and rejoicing with mothers, regardless of their circumstances.
At Abigail’s anticipatory posture, Sophie loosened the ribbon from a perfectly hemmed flannel that would serve her own child in the near future. But what it held brought sudden tears to her eyes and gripped her heart to the point of cutting off what little breath remained in her crowded lungs.
A cross-stitched sampler unfolded to reveal a verse from Abigail’s Scriptures, one that Sophie knew was found in her own, yet was often overlooked.
Therefore God dealt well with the midwives:
and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.
And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God,
that he made them houses.
Exodus 1:20-21
Sophie struggled for words and pressed the sampler against her breast, allowing her tears to flow unchecked. “Thank you,” she managed to whisper. “I will cherish it.”
When Clay called for Sophie, Abigail saw her to the door, past customers admiring Hiram’s work on a recently completed man’s suit, and she promised to call again in a week unless things progressed as she expected.
“You’ve been crying,” Clay said as he handed her up. “What’s wrong?”
Rather than walk around, he climbed in after her and stepped over her bulging self with his long, strong legs. “What happened? Is everything all right?”
Taking one of his rough, sun-browned hands, she held it to her lips, then pressed it against her heart, and looked into his dear face. “Everything is perfectly all right,” she said, watching as he read her eyes, finding truth within them, and finally relaxing.
“Then why are you crying?”
Of course a man would not understand a woman’s emotions at all times, especially when they appeared to contradict and fluctuate as hers did so frequently these recent days. But she would try to help him. She would always try.
“Because, my dear husband, His mercies are new every morning.”
~
Thank you for reading Book 3 of the Front Range Brides series,
An Impossible Price.
If you enjoyed Sophie and Clay’s story, I would so appreciate a brief review on your favorite book site – just a sentence or two.
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Acknowledgments
It takes many hearts, hands, and hours for a book to come to completion, and for this I am grateful. I’d like to thank advance readers Nancy Huber, Jill Maple, Cindy Pottenger, and Amanda Beck; my editor Christy Distler; and you, the readers, for allowing Clay and Sophie’s story to flow into your hearts. Most of all, I thank our good and loving God for pouring this story into mine.
Thank you for reading Inspirational Western Romance. If you would like to leave a brief review on your favorite book website or other social media, it would bless my boots off!
About the Author
Bestselling author and winner of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction, Davalynn Spencer can’t stop #lovingthecowboy. When she’s not writing, teaching writer workshops, or playing on her church worship team, she’s wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Connect with her online via:
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~May all that you read be uplifting.~
An Impossible Price: Front Range Brides - Book 3 Page 23