Where Love Runs Free (Tales from the Upcountry)
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What readers are saying about Where Love Runs Free:
I have just finished reading your book “Where Love Runs Free”. It is wonderful!!!!!!! I couldn't put it down for the last 10 chapters. The story was great and it had an awesome ending! I look forward to seeing it published and a best seller!! T Lane
Caroline, this story is amazing! Find me a boy like Ben! Goodness, finding a horse savvy man is difficult, let alone one who Fears the Lord as Ben does. I started this book last night around 8, and finished around 2am. I was sucked into it--and couldn't put it down! C Henry
This book has the breathless, ultra romantic feel of Gone with the Wind. The setting itself is romantic--a horse farm in South Carolina. And Angelina, the heroine, is as feisty and headstrong as Scarlett O'Hara. Friday has a nice, easy pacing in her storytelling, using exposition and dialogue and action and description with equal ease, and introducing various characters quickly and vividly. I enjoyed the immediate romantic tension that the author sets up and wanted to read more. DM, Editor
Where Love Runs Free
By: Caroline Friday
WHERE LOVE RUNS FREE
Published by Sixth Day Media, LLC
Marietta, Georgia 30068
www.sixthdaymedia.com
Graphic Sixth Day logo is a registered trademark of Sixth Day Media, LLC
All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without written permission from the publisher.
This story is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain.)
© 2012 Caroline Friday
Cover Design: Lynnette Bonner, indiecoverdesign.blogspot.com
Cover Photos: Bigstock, no. 29514190; The Killion Group, no. HIS0479
Interior Photos: Sixth Day Media, LLC
Author Photo: Sixth Day Media, LLC
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
South Carolina Upcountry
1890
CHAPTER 1
“Come on, Angel. You’re getting married in a month. Don’t you think it’s about time you tried on your wedding dress?”
“No, I don’t,” Angelina Raeford snapped, tossing her blonde curls over her shoulders. She hated it when her little sister, Jessie, pulled the cream-colored silk dress with pleats, lace, and blue ribbons from the bottom of the cedar chest. Even if it was her mother’s, she couldn’t bear looking at it for a minute. “And don’t call me Angel. I don’t feel like an angel today.”
“Well you sure got that right,” Jessie said, plopping her hands on her hips and raising an eyebrow. “What’s Edward gonna say when he finds out you don’t want anything to do with the wedding plans, huh?” Jessie’s soft, brown eyes flashed a deep black to match the color of her long, straight hair. Ever since Angelina could remember, people marveled that she and Jessie were related. But no one would doubt it today, the way Jessie hovered over Angelina. Now that their mama and daddy were gone, she acted more like guardian and nursemaid than sister—and her being two years younger too. Sometimes Angelina couldn’t wait for the day Jessie married some respectable man and left the details of her life alone.
Angelina studied her sister’s appearance, allowing her gaze to float from head to toe. Usually it was trousers, but today it was a dowdy, brown work dress splattered with the remnants of yesterday’s supper—chicken and dumplings. The cheeks were freckled and sunburned from not wearing a bonnet for a good three months, and the hands were starting to look like an old horse saddle. Angelina looked away and said with a sigh, “You don’t have to tell him.”
“Not tell him? He’s the groom! And he’s been asking where you wanna go for your, you know—” Jessie swayed toward Angelina and cast her eyes to the floor like a little girl hiding behind her mother’s skirts.
“No, I don’t know. And why are you whispering and acting all silly?”
“Oh, Angelina Raeford! You know exactly why,” she hissed. “It’s your honeymoon.”
“Oh, that.” Angelina pushed past Jessie with her nose turned up in the air. “Why on earth would I want to go on a honeymoon with Edward Millhouse?”
“Angelina!” Jessie exclaimed, with mouth open wide, almost making Angelina burst out in laughter. “You are evil and rude to say such a thing, and you wearing his ring all proud.”
Angelina pulled off her kid glove and smirked at the diamond solitaire set in a platinum setting that fit snug around her ring finger. It was nice, but not as nice as the one Robert Ellwood put on Rebecca Thompson’s finger. “Well, maybe if he’d made it bigger, I’d consider going.” She grabbed her Stetson off the end of the bedpost and planted a peck on Jessie’s cheek.
“Oh, you—I will not have you embarrassing this family with your behavior, you hear? Edward Millhouse is a respectable gentleman from Charleston! With money! You hear me? Where’re you going?”
Angelina stomped down the staircase, angered by Jessie’s reminder as to why she had gotten herself into this predicament in the first place. She slammed out to the porch of the farmhouse and breathed in a fresh gulp of air filled with the scent of fresh jasmine and honeysuckles. What did she care about Edward Millhouse and all of his Charleston riches and finery when it was such a glorious, beautiful day?
“Ella?” Angelina called to a tall, thin, Negro woman who was hanging wash on the line. “I’m going riding. You wanna have supper on the table at six o’clock sharp, now. The boys’re gonna be mighty hungry after a hard day with the horses, and I’m starving myself.”
“Oh, no you’re not!” Ella exclaimed, letting a pair of underdrawers plop down into the wash basket. “You’re not eatin’ with the boys tonight. I got strict orders from Miss Jessie that Mr. Edward, he’s comin’ over for supper later on, and he’s gonna want my fried chicken—”
“I don’t care what Miss Jessie said. I don’t wanna eat fried chicken with Mr. Millhouse. I’m eating with the boys tonight. At six o’clock.”
“Miss Angelina—”
“Six o’clock, Ella,” she said, making her way to the barn with long, full strides. “And not a minute after!”
“You better watch it or that Mr. Edward, he’s gonna give you a whoopin’ like you never seen, the way you been treatin’ him!”
“I’d like to see him try,” Angelina said under her breath, smacking her riding crop into her gloved palm.
“It
wouldn’t hurt you none, and that’s the truth!” Ella hollered. “Wouldn’t hurt you none a tall!”
The barn door slammed open, drowning out Ella’s last words. Angelina peered into the dim surroundings where Tom Humphries, a stocky, dark-skinned native Indian, led a beautiful, black gelding out of its stall. “There you are!” Angelina cooed at the horse.
“Afternoon, Miss Raeford. Got him all saddled up and ready to ride.”
She gently stroked the gelding’s neck and long mane. “Hey there, Eagle’s Wing. Hey there, boy. You have a nice rest, huh?” A kiss on its velvety nose was met by a wet snort that made her giggle.
“Give you a leg up?” Tom asked.
She looked at him coolly and smiled before stepping into his entwined fingers. Hoisting herself up, she swung her leg over the horse’s back and adjusted into the saddle. “I thank you, Tom.”
“You know you’re always welcome, Miss Raeford.” He led the horse out of the barn into the bright sunshine, holding onto the reins for a moment. Then with a long, hard look, he stared at her through a pair of squinted eyes. “Miss Raeford, I happened to overhear what Ella said. If you don’t mind me askin’, why’re you marryin’ that ole Mr. Millhouse? I know he’s rich and from Charleston, but you don’t need the money. The farm’s makin’ more than ever with the sales and all the stud fees we’ve been collectin’.”
Angelina didn’t see how any of this was his business, but she did trust Tom more than anyone in the world. He was like a father to her now that she and Jessie were on their own. “Well,” she said with a deep sigh, “I figure, if a girl’s gotta get married, it might as well be for money, don’t you think?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t. And anyway, who says you gotta get married?”
“I do. I can’t see all this disappear after Jessie and I are gone.” She waved her arm toward the barn and the two-story white farm house with wraparound porch. “I need to have sons to take over, and make this place bigger and better than it’s ever been. And that’s gonna take money, and lots of it.” Her voice sounded distant and faraway as she gazed upon everything that was Fairington Farm—the tack room and bunkhouse for the trainers and breeders, the horse riding rings and open fields, not to mention the horses that made their home here. “Before I die, I wanna see Fairington become one of the greatest horse farms in the country, greater than anything those ole Kentuckians are always bragging about. I wanna make sure what Mama and Daddy built lives on, forever and ever.”
“That may be well and good,” he said, adjusting his Stetson toward the back of his head, “but girl, you listen to me. Don’t go sacrificin’ your heart for earthly riches. Don’t do it. Your heart’s the most tender, precious thing you’ve got.”
“You sound like Ella. And Jessie.”
“No, I sound like your mama.” The squint in his eye widened for a moment, and his look became more revealing, like she was gazing into the eyes of her daddy.
“Don’t mention my mama like that again, you hear? Like you knew her.” Her voice shook as the emotion rose in her throat. “You didn’t know her. Not like that.” Then with a swift kick to Eagle’s Wing’s sides, she took off down the dirt road leading to the open field.
From an easy canter, Angelina moved the horse into a gallop and rode past a narrow row of canopied oak trees and a cluster of longleaf pines which opened up into another spacious, grassy field—so common in the South Carolina upcountry. She rode hard and furious, feeling the power of Eagle’s Wing’s long strides that matched the beating of her heart. Jessie and Tom were always telling her to slow down and be careful, but she couldn’t slow down, she wouldn’t! She wasn’t going to be like Tom, a tormented, lost soul who never took the opportunity life gave him, only settling for second best. People whispered that her mama had loved him, and that he had stayed on at Fairington because of her, but Angelina knew that wasn’t true. Her mama would have never loved a man like Tom. She loved only one man—her daddy. And besides, Tom was part Iroquois, and everyone in Laurel Grove knew an upstanding white lady couldn’t even think about loving a red man.
The wind stung her face and the bugs swarmed around her neck and ears, but she kept riding until they reached a hilltop known as Palmetto Ridge. Angelina brought the horse to a stop and dismounted, throwing the reins over Eagle’s Wing’s head. She removed the bridle and walked the horse to a large, shady oak tree with gnarly limbs that used to remind her of the arms of an old witch when she was little. Ducking her head from the low-lying branches, she plopped down on the ground and leaned against the trunk, allowing Eagle’s Wing to graze the surrounding grass.
The view was breathtaking—rolling fields bordered by clusters of pines and the Blue Ridge Mountains looming in the background. In the valley below was the silhouette of a large, white farmhouse that had belonged to the Smith family before Edward purchased it about ten years ago. Angelina slammed her eyes closed, trying to shut out the memory of its former occupants, especially one in particular—a young boy. Gritting her teeth, she resisted the temptation to do what she always did when she sat under this tree and thought of him.
A moment passed before she gave in. Taking a deep breath, she reached into a hollow at the base of the trunk and grimaced as her fingers brushed against something wet and mossy. Finally, they made contact with a smooth surface, and a little wooden box produced itself—dirty and water-stained, but intact. Angelina gazed at her initials carved on the lid: AMR, for Angelina McNair Raeford, her mother’s name.
After a bit of prying, the lid popped off, splintering a freshly filed fingernail in the process. She yelped, shoving her finger into her mouth where the coppery flavor of blood peppered her tongue. There it was, staring at her from inside the box—a pale, sandy-colored arrowhead that had been carefully carved, just for her. Hot tears pricked Angelina’s eyes as her fingers caressed the smooth surface of the rock. She could almost see him leaning over her, his long, black hair hanging over his shoulder like a curtain, framing a bright smile and a pair of dark, haunting eyes.
“Oh, Ben,” she whispered while the tears streamed down her cheeks. Why did you run away? Why? Angelina had asked herself this question a thousand times but never got an answer. She fell back to the ground and felt the wind rush over her, blowing a long strand of hair across her face. Through a break in the tree foliage, she watched the billowy clouds move through a sea of blue, and for a split second, thought she heard his gentle laughter rising over the top of the ridge, along with these words—
To be free, my Angel. To be free.
CHAPTER 2
Ben Eagle-Smith pulled on the reins of his chestnut stallion, Mighty Wind, bringing the thoroughbred from a gallop to a slow trot. The horse neighed like a ferocious lion as it rose up on its hind legs, pawing at the dirt road. “Whoa, boy,” Ben coaxed, wondering what had caused it to be spooked. Immediately, the stallion settled down and remained quiet, occasionally flinching against the reins. “That’s it. Nice and calm. We don’t wanna make a grand entrance. Just ease in, real simple.” In the distance ahead was a sign posted over the entrance to a substantial property that read, Fairington Farm.
Reaching into his vest pocket, Ben pulled out a black leather-bound book and swiped his hand over the cover where the initials AMR were embossed. Then removing his Stetson, he mopped his brow with his sleeve and opened the book, reading where his eyes fell. It was the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 16. “Vengeance belongs to the Lord,” he said, with little emotion in his voice. Closing the book with a snap, he tucked it in his vest pocket and settled the hat down low over his brow to shield his eyes from the sun. The wind blew a cool breeze, drying the perspiration on his skin and swishing his long, dark ponytail back and forth against his back like the tail of a horse. “Okay Lord,” he prayed out loud, “I’ll do things your way. But if it doesn’t work—I’m doing it mine.”
With a cluck of his tongue, Ben urged Mighty Wind down the long, winding path that led to the Fairington barn. He was amazed at how the property had ch
anged over the years. The oak trees were enormous now and the dogwoods were flourishing with pink and white blooms, along with the jasmine and wildflowers that coated the fields with a splash of yellow and blue. An extra wing had been added to the house, which was now painted a crisp white with black shutters, and the barn was twice the size of what he remembered.
A dark-skinned man stopped his wood chopping and squinted in his direction. He wasn’t Cherokee that Ben could tell, but was certainly Indian. As he drew closer, Ben recognized the man as Tom Humphries, the foreman.
“Hey there, stranger,” Tom said. “What can I do for ya?”
“Well, I was hoping to find some work,” Ben said. “Heard the missus here isn’t opposed to hiring half-breeds, unlike some of the other farms around here.”
“That’s right.” Tom squinted even harder under his Stetson and studied Ben, as if his memory was trying to place a face. Ben held his breath, but after a moment, could sense he hadn’t been recognized. “Well, what can you do?”
“Oh, about anything with horses, really.”
“Anything, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How ’bout shovelin’ out their stalls? That interest you any?”
“If that’s all you got.”
“All for now.” Tom tipped his hat back on his head and grinned. “We’ll see how you handle a shovel before we give you a go with the horses. How’s that sound?”
Ben nodded and dismounted Mighty Wind with one swoop of the leg over the horse’s head. “Tom Humphries’s the name,” Tom said, holding out his hand for a shake. “Yours?”
Ben wiped his sweaty palm against his trouser leg before shaking Tom’s. “Eagle’s Wing. That’s what my Cherokee folks call me, my mama mostly. But I go by Ben.”
Tom squinted again, studying Ben with a skeptical eye. “Uh huh,” he grunted, a spark of recognition flickering through his expression. “Last name wouldn’t happen to be Smith now would it?”