In Love's Territory: A Western Historical Romance

by Lucy Evanson

  She got out of bed gently in order not to wake Tommy and went to the window. It was indeed going to be a lovely day; the sky was studded with fluffy white clouds and a pleasant breeze poured in through the window, tempering the warmth of the late-summer sun, and she waved to Sam as he drove up to the road, a crate of cheeses in the bed of the wagon.

  Kate put on a simple farm dress—becoming a mother had changed her ideas of what was appropriate to wear, what with Tommy constantly grabbing things, spitting up on other things and chewing on still others—and eased him into her arms before she went downstairs.

  Her father gladly took her son off her hands while she ate breakfast, and they spent the rest of the morning watching after Tommy as he chased crickets in the grass in front of the porch. When Sam returned from town, Mary had already packed them a picnic basket, and Kate and Tommy went to join Sam for the short ride to the creek.

  “Oh, wait just a second,” Kate said, suddenly turning back. “I just wanted to take another look at the letter I was writing to Laura.” She quickly returned to their bedroom and retrieved the letter from the bureau, sliding it into the picnic basket before they got aboard the wagon.

  It was a pleasant afternoon for a ride; the red parasol shielded Kate and Tommy from the bright sun and the color of the sky and the fields had never seemed so vibrant. Tommy cooed and gurgled at the horses as they went, and in only a few minutes they had reached the tall aspen that grew alongside the creek.

  Sam tied the horses and spread out a ground cloth for them all to sit on while they ate, and soon they were enjoying lunch in the shade, accompanied only by the sounds of the creek and birds chirping overhead.

  Tommy pointed to the water and then looked at his mom, his eyes huge and his desire clear. Kate laughed. “Okay, I think your daddy can take you down there by the water,” she said, pulling his shirt off and leaving him only in his diaper.

  As she watched the two of them playing on the bank of the creek, Tommy screaming with delight as they scared up frogs that went bounding into the water, Kate reread the letter she had written to Laura the night before.

  Dear Laura,

  As always, it was delightful to hear from you and I thank you for the kind wishes you sent. I must confess, it has been some time since I’ve thought much about Boston, and your letters are always a welcome reminder of my life there, like a visit from an old friend.

  How thrilling to hear that you’re with child! I am positively overjoyed for you; I can tell you that motherhood suits me well and I now can’t imagine my life without my boy. I’ll be happy to give you some advice on the life of a mother in my next letter.

  We continue to do well here on Taylor Farm; Sam’s business is growing as fast as Tommy does and we expect to even start work on our own home next spring. Of course, we’re going to build here on the property—especially with a baby, I can’t imagine moving too far away from my family.

  This brings me to the question you raised in your letter, regarding when I was planning to come home. It turns out that I already am.

  Love,

  Kate

  She folded the letter and replaced it in the basket before going to join her family. It wasn’t often that you got perfect days like this, and she didn’t want to waste it.

  THE END

  Thank You!

  Thanks for reading In Love’s Territory. I sincerely hope that you liked it as much as I enjoyed writing it. The final section of this book has information about my other titles, including the Love’s Territory prequel story Hearts Upon a Midnight Clear and the Westward Hearts series of mail-order bride novels.

  Don’t miss any new releases! Sign up for our very occasional newsletter by clicking here.

  Finally, if you enjoyed this book, please take a moment to leave a review. Reader reviews are critical to the success of small publishers and, just as importantly, help your fellow romance fans to identify their next books.

  Now, enjoy an excerpt from the next Love’s Territory novel, Husband on Credit. Thank you, take care, and be well!

  Lucy

  Excerpt from Husband on Credit

  Nathan watched as the waitress crossed the bar, returning to his corner table with his drink. She placed the glass of whiskey in front of him and stuck out her hand.

  “That’s twenty-five cents,” she said.

  He reached into his pocket and fished around for coins, praying that he actually had the money. When he opened his hand, he found a scrap of paper, some lint, and a quarter he had forgotten about entirely. Guess this is my lucky day, he thought, handing her the coin. She took it without saying a word and spun on her heel, heading back to her perch behind the bar and stopping only to roughly shake the shoulder of an old man at the next table.

  “Hey, wake up,” she said loudly. “If you’re gonna sleep, then you gotta go. This ain’t a hotel.”

  The old-timer nodded softly, but as she walked away his head drifted down to the table again and Nathan was pretty sure he could hear snoring shortly thereafter. So this is what I’ve come to, he thought. They should name this place Rock Bottom. As it happened, the bar was called Miners’ Oasis, though there was nothing remotely green nor fertile about the place; its only attraction was that it was the cheapest of the three saloons in Mineral Point.

  When Nathan had first arrived in town only a few weeks earlier, he had spent his first day looking for work and his first night at Sally’s. Sally Paar owned the nicest tavern in town, complete with a piano player, a full kitchen and the cutest girls you ever saw, delivering smiles with every drink. He would have returned the following night too, but good sense got the better of him once he counted the rest of his money the next morning.

  His rooming house charged seven dollars a week for full board, but after seeing the damage that Sally’s had inflicted on his wallet, Nathan decided to pay only for his room and breakfast. That brought his weekly bill down to three-fifty, which would be much more manageable until he could find work. Fortunately, Mineral Point was a large, vibrant city—especially when considered next to his native Plainfield—and he’d certainly find a job in short order. And if he were hungry after only one meal a day? The better to motivate him.

  Nathan managed to spend the next several days surviving on the egg, toast and weak coffee that the rooming house provided every morning, while spending much of each evening at Bill’s Bar, which was not nearly as nice as Sally’s. There was no music, and Bill was nowhere near as pretty as the girls over at Sally’s, but for the prices, Nathan couldn’t complain.

  After a couple of weeks of this, however, he began to realize that he was on a truly untenable path. Every day was turning out to be the same: he’d go from business to business, door to door, asking about available work, and it was beginning to appear that there was none to be found. He certainly didn’t want to return to Plainfield, hat in hand, when he’d bragged about going off to make his fortune to everybody he could find. After speaking to the innkeeper, he’d decided to forgo breakfast, which brought his weekly bill down to a dollar seventy-five. If he only ate when he was absolutely famished, and he found a job quickly, he’d be fine.

  It hadn’t quite turned out that way, however, which is why he was now sitting at the corner table in this dim and dirty tavern on a Saturday night, instead of enjoying the music and fine food over at Sally’s. Today had been the last straw. He had gone to the Point Plaza hotel in the afternoon, explained to the woman at the desk that he was looking for work, and she had asked him to have a seat in the lobby to wait for the hotel manager.

  He had tried to mask his excitement as he sat there, his stomach gurgling and his feet tapping; after weeks of asking around, this was the first time that he’d made any progress. In a few minutes, the door to the office opened and a middle-aged, potbellied man with a fine set of whiskers came out. The receptionist said a word to him and nodded in Nathan’s direction; as the man approached, Nathan stood up to shake hands.

  “I understand you’re looking for
a job,” the man said. “I’m Albert Gates, the hotel manager.”

  “Good to meet you, sir. I’m Nathan Larrimore.”

  “Let me show you around so you get a feel for the place,” Gates said, leading Nathan through the lobby and up the wide staircase. They went from floor to floor as Gates explained the history of the hotel, taking care to point out the fine details that—he said—set the Point Plaza apart from its competitors, from the hand-cut crystal wall sconces to the thickly woven carpets that covered the floors. Nathan could hear the pride in his voice as he narrated the tour, and by the time they arrived back in the lobby, Nathan was sure that he had found just the place he’d been looking for.

  “So, it looks like you’re in pretty good shape,” Gates said. “A bit thin, but you’re healthy? How’s your back? No problems?”

  “My back?” Nathan asked. “Uh, no, it’s fine.”

  “And your legs? You have strong legs?”

  “Well, strong enough to get me around, I guess,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  Gates pointed to the stairs. “Well, our bellhops go up those stairs a hundred times a day,” he said. “If your legs aren’t strong now, they will be pretty soon, I assure you,” he added with a grin.

  “Bellhop?” It felt like Nathan’s empty stomach had just dropped into his shoes. “That’s what you’re hiring for?”

  “Sure am,” Gates said. “You got lucky—we haven’t had an opening for months, but one of our guys just moved away.”

  “Mr. Gates, I appreciate you taking the time to show me around and everything,” Nathan said. “But to be perfectly honest, I was hoping that there might be something else available. You know, something maybe more…professional? Like assistant manager, perhaps?”

  Gates couldn’t conceal the faintest hint of a grin as he looked Nathan up and down, from his dusty shoes and slightly frayed pant cuffs to the too-loose shirt collar around his neck.

  “Have you ever had a job, son?”

  “Of course, sir,” Nathan said. “Back home in Plainfield I worked on the farm.”

  “Did you finish school?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you been here in Mineral Point?”

  “Going on three weeks now.” His stomach growled as if to emphasize the point, but Gates pretended not to hear.

  “Nathan, I’m sorry, but this is the only position we have available right now,” Gates said, extending his hand. “I tell you what—why don’t you take some time to think about it, and if you change your mind, you come back and see me.”

  “Thanks for your time, Mr. Gates,” he said, shaking hands. Nathan left the building and the heavy front doors swung shut in a rush, as if the hotel itself had wanted him gone. For the rest of the afternoon, he’d wandered the streets, passing by the same shops and businesses that had turned him down previously, and eventually found himself back at Bill’s Bar. He had been defeated.

  Nathan stared down at his drink. There was a trace of lipstick on the rim of the glass; he wiped it off with his thumb and tried to ignore the other dirty smudges. This wasn’t the kind of place where they took constructive criticism well.

  He leaned back and looked around at his fellow customers. Surely the only thing that bound them to him was their common interest in a cheap place to drink. There was the table of miners on the other side of the room, all of them uniformly covered in mud and grime and getting louder with every passing minute. There was the repulsive middle-aged woman, her skin yellow and her hair stringy, passing from man to man like a crow picking over corpses; once in a while she would convince somebody to step outside with her and they would only return in five or ten minutes. Nathan had a pretty good idea of what they were doing, but he didn’t care to imagine it. Then there were the patrons like Nathan: sitting alone, not attracting attention, not concerned with anything but the drinks in front of them, each man presumably wrestling with his own problems.

  He took a sip of whiskey and gritted his teeth at the scorching trail it left down his throat. He sniffed the glass. It smelled like whiskey, but in less than a month in the big city, Nathan had become suspicious and cynical. It wouldn’t have been too much to believe that they had poured him a shot of grain alcohol with some kind of coloring added. He let out a long sigh and took another drink. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, he thought. Tomorrow I have to head for home.

  It was a trip he was not looking forward to. In retrospect, it might not have been his best idea ever to explain exactly how he felt to all of the people who had annoyed him in Plainfield. His parents. His neighbors. The mayor. Nope, it was not going to be a happy homecoming. Nathan rested his forearms on the table and let his head drop down.

  “No sleeping!” the waitress shouted from behind the bar.

  He sat back up again. Still, he had no other options. The job at the hotel had been the only possibility he’d heard of since he’d arrived, and if he was going to do physical labor, then he might as well go back home and work on the farm, where he wouldn’t have to pay rent every week.

  A loud burst of laughter from the miners’ table drew his attention, and he watched as the men called the waitress over to order another round of drinks. Whatever savings the miners found by drinking here must have been offset by the volume of liquor they consumed, but it didn’t appear to bother them in the slightest. Nathan had even briefly considered working in the mines, but that combined hard labor with the added attraction of a possible death far underground. No, thank you, he thought as he shivered and took another drink.

  While he watched the waitress shuttle back and forth between the bar and the miners, he reviewed his plan for the next day. He would get up as usual at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock in the morning—his landlady had an almost maniacal insistence that her lodgers get up at that time, and she roamed the halls with an old cowbell to enforce it. He would try to clean up as best he could with the single small basin of hot water he was allowed, and then he’d attend to his shoes and clothes to make himself as presentable as possible. Then he would walk the twenty minutes to the church he’d discovered earlier in the day. If the poster he’d seen was correct, he’d probably only have to sit through an hour or so of sermonizing before the potluck lunch began; hopefully nobody would notice that he hadn’t brought anything himself, and he could finally eat a full meal before heading for home.

  From Mineral Point to Plainfield on foot. He shuddered at the thought of the long walk; it would take him several days to get up there, and the weather wasn’t getting any warmer. He could almost feel the cold wind, and he shivered again before realizing that somebody had just entered the bar, letting in a wave of cold air.

  Nathan turned to see who had come in. Standing just inside the door, surveying the crowd, was a blond woman he had never seen before. She looked like she had had a rough day. He could see mud on her boots and the hem of her dress, as if she’d been stomping around the same streets he had. Her hair, which appeared to have once been styled, lay collapsed and limp; as he watched, she brushed a strand out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. She’s pretty, Nathan thought. Looks kind of tough, but pretty.

  She searched the room with narrowed eyes and a pinched look, like she wasn’t expecting to find what she was looking for. Her eyes passed over Nathan as if he were a table or chair before her shoulders slumped and she went up to the bar.

  Nathan watched as the bartender, a tall man whose shoulders were as broad as a barn door, went over to the woman and began to pour a whiskey, though she hadn’t said a word to him. She dug in her small black purse and eventually pulled out a coin, which she slid across the bar to him, then took her drink in hand and turned to look at the patrons again.

  Yes, she was definitely a good-looking girl. Nathan would have guessed that she was about twenty-five or so; she was just at that age that finds a balance between the beauty of youth and that of maturity. Still, there was something in her eyes that made her seem older than she looked. Perhaps it was a hin
t of sadness, or a weariness that hung about her. It was hard to say.

  He looked down at his drink. There was about one swallow left, and he would need it if he was going to go talk to her. This was no wilting flower by the roadside, waiting for anybody to pick her; from the looks of it, she was probably the one who did the picking most of the time. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. He downed the last of his drink and stood up.

  Just at that moment, the door to the bar opened again and a small, wiry man blew in along with the cold air. He also paused to look around, and when he caught sight of the girl at the bar, a lopsided grin revealed his crooked yellow teeth.

  “Well, if it ain’t Cora Rice,” he said, heading more or less straight for the bar. He stepped uneasily at times, as if this weren’t the first tavern he’d been to this evening. Nathan sat down.

  “Evening, John,” the girl said as he arrived at her side and gripped the edge of the bar to keep himself upright. “Looks like you’ve been out and about a little bit tonight.”

  “Honey, I’ve been out, about, all over town tonight,” John said. He pounded his fist on the bar. “Get over here, Henry!”

  The bartender slowly looked over at them, as an ox might regard a fly that was buzzing around his ear. “Let’s see the money first,” he said.

  John shot his hands into his pants pockets and dug around, coming up with nothing. The bartender snorted and turned back to his conversation with the waitress.

  “Let me get one for you,” Cora said. She withdrew another coin from her purse and laid it on the bar. “Henry, can you get him a whiskey—”

  “Brandy!”

  “Oh, okay, a brandy then,” she said. “It’s on me.”

  The bartender looked at her closely for a moment, then shrugged and reached for a dusty bottle on the back bar. He uncorked the bottle and poured a healthy shot, then took the coin and tossed it into the cash box behind him.