Touched by Time

by Zoe Matthews

  TOUCHED BY TIME

  Mail-Order Brides/Time Travel Series, Book 1

  Written by Zoe Matthews

  And

  Jade Jensen

  Copyright © 2015

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be copied or reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  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

  Get Zoe Matthews’ Starter Library FOR FREE

  If you enjoyed this book----

  Also by Zoe Matthews

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS/CONTACT INFORMATION

  Get “An Unexpected Family,” “Colorado Dreams” and “Southern Belle,” both for free!

  Details are at the end of “Touched by Time.”

  Chapter 1

  Kimberly woke up with the alarm ringing in her ears and she swung her hand to turn it off. She groaned and slit one of her eyes open to make sure it really was time to get up. She groaned again when she saw that it was indeed 7:30. She only had a few hours before she had to be at work.

  She wasn’t looking forward to work today. She worked as a trauma nurse in an ER hospital in Denver and she had gotten home late the evening before because she had covered a shift for another nurse. Kimberly remembered how excited she was when she first got the job. She had always wanted to work in a large emergency room since she graduated from college three years ago. She had been working at this ER for six months, but it hadn’t turned out to be the job she thought it would be. Her manager, Angie, for some reason developed an intense dislike for Kimberly right from the first day on the job, and things had gone downhill from there.

  Angie always made sure Kimberly did the jobs no one else wanted. She sometimes even assigned Kimberly jobs the CNAs or orderlies should have done. Even though she had been hired to work with trauma patients, she rarely got that opportunity. Today was supposed to be her day off, but another nurse had called in sick during her shift the day before. Just before Kimberly had left for the night, Angie had insisted she come in this morning to help out.

  Kimberly dragged herself out of bed and headed to the shower. She quickly dressed in her green scrubs and pulled her dark brown hair into a ponytail to keep it out of the way at work. She always made sure it was long enough to fit into a ponytail easily; she hated it when her hair would tickle her face at work. She stared into the mirror at her tired green eyes. Even her fair skin was starting to look dull. She wasn't sure how much longer she could stick with this job. She went to the kitchen and prepared some oatmeal and toast. She knew her roommate, Nicky, had already left for the day to teach at a local elementary school.

  She smiled as she thought of her best friend. Kimberly thought of Nicky as a sister. Her name was Nicole, but she felt the name was too stiff for her bouncy personality, and preferred to be called Nicky. When Kimberly was 15, her parents had been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. Her mom and dad had gone out for their twentieth anniversary and had never come home. She missed her parents desperately and didn’t like to remember how much her life had changed after their deaths.

  Kimberly didn’t have any other family, so she had been put in the foster care system by the State of Colorado. The first few families that took her in were awful. In one of the homes, their own children treated her almost like a servant with the parents’ encouragement. In another one, the man had tried to abuse her, but luckily, her birth parents had insisted she learn the art of Kung Fu, and she had been able to defend herself. Nicky’s family had been her third placement. Nicky had been her same age and Kimberly had been blessed to be able to stay in her home until she graduated from high school. In fact, Nicky’s parents had let her stay until after graduation even though she had turned 18 four months earlier and the state had stopped paying for her care.

  Nicky’s family still treated her like she was part of their family. Kimberly stayed with Nicky during college breaks and went to some of the family parties. Nicky had an older brother, Justin, who treated her like a little sister. Kimberly enjoyed sharing an apartment with Nicky. They rented a townhouse together. Justin lived in the same complex with his young son, Garrett.

  Kimberly sat down and opened a newspaper to read while she ate her oatmeal. Nicky had been purchasing newspapers over the last few weeks because she liked to use them to help teach her fifth grade students about current events, although she secretly only enjoyed the comics portion. Nicky wanted her class to learn how to research many different ways to find current events, not just using their computers and tablets, but also books at the library, encyclopedias, and current newspapers. Nicky had made arrangements for several different newspapers to be delivered to their townhouse from Denver and the surrounding area. Kimberly had opened up a small newspaper called The Denver Rocky Mountain Gazette.

  Kimberly quickly found the classifieds and started to read them to see if there were any new openings for trauma nurses in the Denver area. She couldn’t see any that she was interested in applying for. She paged through the rest of the ads while she finished her breakfast until she got to the personal section. A strange ad jumped out at her. It was very unusual.

  The ad had a small black and white picture of a woman who wore a large fancy hat. The hat looked straight out of the late 1800s. Kimberly could tell that the hat was black and had various types of flowers on it. There was even what looked like a feather and some ribbon. Kimberly knew that during the 1890s, these types of hats were very popular. The woman’s dress also looked like it was from that era. It was lighter in color and had puffed sleeves, although the bodice was plain looking. The picture was small, so it was hard to see many details, but it definitely looked like it had been taken in the 1890s.

  The font in this ad was very different than the rest of the ads. It also looked like an ad someone might find in a newspaper in the 1890s. Kimberly had always been fascinated by that time period and she liked to read all the fiction novels she could about that era. She often would say that sometimes she felt she had been born in the wrong time period.

  She was surprised to find that this ad was advertising for mail-order brides. This was one of the many subjects Kimberly enjoyed reading about. She always felt the women who answered these type of ads were very brave to do so. Most of them went to a part of the country they had never been to before, usually to a different life than they were used to. Some were orphans and others did have families but weren’t happy with their lives. She knew that most of them immediately married the man they had been corresponding with as soon as they arrived.

  Kimberly knew that not all of the marriages were happy ones, but she had read e
nough to feel a great admiration for these women who left the life they knew to marry a man they didn’t know for a chance at a better life. Kimberly was curious and so she read the ad. It read:

  Respectable hardworking men are looking for equally hardworking women who would be willing to travel to their homes in the west and marry. Many choices to choose from. If you are an unmarried woman who is between 18 and 30 years of age and are interested in a new life, please write to the following address for more information.

  Please address any letters to Mrs. Victoria Hilton.

  Kimberly looked closely at the address that was provided. From what she could tell, it was located in the Denver area, probably in an older section of the city. She found it peculiar that a phone number, email address or web site hadn’t been provided. Most of the ads she saw in newspapers always had at least an email address or phone number.

  Suddenly she became aware of the time and knew she would need to hurry if she wanted to make it to work on time. She grabbed a pair of scissors and carefully cut the ad out of the paper. She placed the ad in her cell phone case for safe keeping. She had made plans to meet Nicky for lunch at the hospital cafeteria and she wanted to show her friend the ad. She was curious to find out what Nicky thought of it.

  ****

  Kimberly sighed with relief as she sat down at a table in the cafeteria to wait for Nicky. The morning had been rough and Angie had almost not allowed Kimberly to take her lunch when she was scheduled to, but in the end, Kimberly had been able to slip out before Angie gave her another job to do “real quick before you go for lunch.”

  She arranged the salad and fruit she had purchased and started to open the dressing packet. Nicky arrived in her normal bouncy manner. She was fairly tall and her hair was almost black, so she was easy to spot. She sat down with her packed lunch of a sandwich. Nicky worked at a nearby elementary school, so the two of them met for lunch at least once a week at the hospital cafeteria.

  “How is your day going?” Kimberly asked as she took a bite of salad. She listened as Nicky told her a few things that happened in her classroom. She always had some fun stories to tell. She had the unusual talent of talking so fast, Kimberly could miss an entire conversation unless she was listening closely. "You remember the troublemaker I told you about, Bryan? I think I finally got through to him. It just hit me in the middle of the night last night, I've really got to get on his level.” She kept rambling for a while, while Kimberly's attention kept going back to the ad. She couldn't logically explain why an ad like that would be in a modern paper. Once Nicky hit a lag in the conversation, Kimberly jumped in.

  “Look what I found in one of your papers this morning,” Kimberly asked as she pulled the ad out of her phone case. She passed the paper to her friend and finished her salad as Nicky read the ad.

  “This is really weird,” Nicky said, laughing. “Who would actually answer an ad like that? I bet it’s a scam.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Kimberly said. “But don’t you think it is interesting that the ad looks like it came right out of a newspaper from the 1890s?”

  “Yeah, especially the picture of the woman.” Nicky was energetic, but she could always sense when Kimberly needed her to be more serious, and she looked more closely at the ad. “There’s just an address. No email, phone number, nothing else.”

  “I thought that was strange, too.” Kimberly pushed her salad plate away and started on her fruit.

  “You know what you should do? You should answer this ad.” Nicky’s eyes shined, loving the challenge this ad had created.

  “What?” Kimberly laughed, thinking Nicky must be joking. First Nicky thought it was a scam and then she was encouraging Kimberly to answer it?

  “It says to write and ask for more information. It would be interesting to see if someone actually sends you something. Plus, who could better answer an ad for this woman? You would dress like this woman in the ad if you could, and you know it!” She playfully jabbed at Kimberly.

  Kimberly thought about it for a moment. “You’re right. It would be fun. I’d write just for a joke.” She laughed, but also felt a thrill of excitement. She didn't do spontaneous things very often.

  “You probably shouldn’t use our address though, just to be safe.”

  “Good suggestion. What address do you think I should use?” Kimberly wondered.

  “Why don’t you use my school address and have it delivered in care to my name.”

  “Are you sure? Then they will have your name also.”

  “Well, just use my first name then.”

  Nicky pulled a pad of paper out of her large flowery bag that she carried around with her all the time. Kimberly always teased her that it was a bottomless bag. Anything anyone ever needed could be found in Nicky’s bag. Even though, to Kimberly, it was a disorganized mess, Nicky always seemed to know just where she had placed things. Nicky added a pen, then an envelope and a stamp to the pad of paper.

  Kimberly grinned at her friend. “What else do you have in there? Maybe a mailman?”

  Nicky grinned back. “I gave my kids a new assignment this morning. I am teaching them how to write letters the old-fashioned way. They are to write to someone about something that is important to them. I will teach them how to address an envelope the proper way and then the kids can mail their letters. I am hoping whomever they write their letters to, will be willing to write back to them. Although, Isabelle- you remember the girl with the long brown hair that goes clear down to her behind- wants to write to her favorite actress, and I don't expect any answer from her!”

  Kimberly smiled, and looked at her watch. She still had 20 minutes before she needed to be back to work. Kimberly wrote her letter, while Nicky interjected every couple lines to add a word here or there. Finally, the letter was deemed perfect:

  Dear Mrs. Victoria Hilton,

  I am writing in response to the ad placed in the Denver Rocky Mountain newspaper on April 25th. I would like some more information about being a mail-order bride. Please send it to this address.

  Kimberly added Nicky’s school address and then signed it.

  “Well, I guess we will see if we get a response,” Kimberly commented as she folded the paper and placed it in the envelope Nicky had provided. As she addressed the envelope, she wondered if she was being crazy. Who nowadays sends away for a mail-order bride? But then Kimberly didn’t think she’d get a response. She figured that this letter would be returned to her, saying the address couldn’t be found.

  After telling Nicky goodbye, Kimberly walked by the mailbox that was just outside the hospital and dropped the letter inside. As she walked to the ER to finish her shift, she wondered if any other women would believe the ad was legitimate and also send away for information.

  Chapter 2

  Mrs. Victoria Hilton sat at what was her late husband’s desk in her large Victorian home in Denver. Her butler, Collins, had just delivered a large stack of envelopes to her. She was thrilled that her carefully placed ad had created so many responses. A few of them were negative, of course, accusing her of taking a man’s hard wages and leading innocent girls astray, but she just tossed those, and didn’t let them dampen her enthusiasm for her new business endeavor.

  She picked up a metal letter opener and started to slit open the first letter in the stack. The letter opener had been placed by a picture of herself and her late husband, Charles. He had passed away a few years ago. She had spent 45 wonderful years with him. It had always been just the two of them since they were never blessed with children. She stretched her finger out and traced her husband’s face in the picture frame. She missed him so much. She wondered what he would think about her new mail-order bride business if he were still alive.

  She thought back to the day she first met Charles. They were both living in England at the time. The first time she ever saw him was on the day before their wedding. Both of their fathers had made arrangements that Charles and Victoria marry each other when they were both still
young children. She remembered how scared and nervous she was. It was to be a match that would benefit both families financially. She had traveled with her parents to Charles’ family home and had dinner with his family. She had sat next to her mother and Charles had sat across from her, but neither of them had even talked to each other beyond the expected greetings. Even then, she thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. A few days later after the wedding, they had moved into his family’s home. Charles wasn’t the oldest son, so he wasn’t slated to inherit any property, although he did inherit quite a bit of money.

  A year after they married, Charles decided he wanted to immigrate to America. He wanted to start his own business, one that wasn’t connected to his family. He wanted to succeed on his own merit and not his family’s name or money. They traveled to America and had settled in Boston. Collins, a man who had been Charles’ valet, came with them, and took on the role of their butler.

  Charles started his own transporting business. It started out small; he transported goods from Boston to the surrounding cities, but eventually it grew, and he started to transport goods all over the Eastern United States. Then ten years ago, he decided he wanted to open an office in Colorado, so they moved to Denver. After he died, Collins helped Victoria sell the transporting business since they hadn’t had any children, and there was no one to inherit the company. She received a large amount of money from the sale, enough to live very comfortably for the rest of her life.