The Valiant Hearts Romance Collection

by Kristin Billerbeck

  Thomas couldn’t do more than stand, cemented in his spot, while the man spoke. The worst part was, he had excellent points. Much of what he said was valid.

  It had been easy in his studies to get swept up in the theories without recognizing what they were—not absolute laws but educated guesses made upon studying general trends. His professors would cluck at his amateurish application of what they’d tried to teach him.

  He didn’t respond to the men who confronted him—what was there to say?—and at last, they muttered among themselves and then dispersed.

  Thomas studied the hotel again, trying to see what others did. Opportunity? Growth potential? The future of Mackinac Island?

  No matter how he looked, he saw nothing more than an expensive venture based upon financial faith. There was only one thing that faith was acceptable in, and that was his relationship with his Creator. Other than that, relying on projections was foolish.

  Not unlike relying on theories?

  Francie had said that his intelligence was a gift from God, but when he asked too many questions, and each question spawned even more, he could only see his intelligence as an encumbrance.

  He felt a weight at his side and looked down. The yellow dog that had been outside the store the day he’d met Francie was leaning against him and gazing up at him with soulful liquid eyes.

  “So what do you think, old fellow?” he asked the dog, tentatively scratching the top of the animal’s head. “You probably think it’s a good idea. A hotel means more pats on the head, and more scraps of food thrown your way.”

  The dog didn’t answer, and Thomas sighed. “There’s not much difference between us then, is there? We all want pretty much the same thing—a bit of fond recognition and some sustenance.”

  A carriage approached, and the dog’s ears perked up.

  “Go on,” he told the dog, and the animal jogged after the carriage, his plumy tail held high.

  Thomas, his mind spinning, took one long, last look at the hotel before turning on his heel and stalking away.

  The evening had been especially solitary for Francie. Marie had gone to bed right after dinner, pleading a headache. Aunt Dorothea was in the parlor, tatting a doily, while Grandmama Christiana snored softly in the chair beside her. Even Middle Meg had gone to her room early, a new novel sticking out from the pocket of her apron. Francie said her good nights and headed upstairs.

  In the night air, sounds carried with amazing clarity. Francie crouched at the dormer window, letting the rising breeze ruffle her hair as she brushed it out before sleep. This window, a tiny little thing, looked out over the garden, and she loved to look at the darkened setting from above the second story.

  Perhaps it was the quiet, the insulation from the sounds of life below, that made her feel a bit closer to God. Tree branches, heavy with leaves, rustled in front of her, so close that if she reached out, she could touch them.

  Dearest God, I feel my life changing. Now, more than ever, I need Your steady hand on my shoulder.

  She’d never had a beau. Such things hadn’t been a part of her life. Of course, she had thought about it, dreamed of love and marriage and a family, but that had stayed just that—a dream.

  Thomas Carlton was fascinating to her. His stilted speech, his worried frown, his extensive schooling—all made her eager to learn more about him.

  But she knew she needed to be careful. The boarding school had teemed with rumors of those girls who’d fallen hard for the first man to come their way, whether his intention had been friendship or romance. Too often their hearts had been broken and their reputations stolen.

  Not that Thomas would do either of those things to her—nor had he given her any solid indication that he was being more than polite. Still …

  She put down the brush and leaned her chin in her hands. It was nice to be able to dream again. She stared at the shadowed garden.

  The breeze stirred her hair again, and she pulled it back, preparing to braid it loosely for sleep. As she started the plait, something moved in the garden.

  It was too big for a rabbit or a bird. The yellow dog would never move this carefully. Could it be a deer?

  She leaned forward and tried to make it out as it slipped through the garden. Silhouetted against the moonlight, the figure was clearly not a deer. It was a person. She couldn’t make out at this distance if it was male or female.

  The wraithlike shape slipped through the far reaches of the garden, back where the lilacs were ending their blooming. It paused, made a move back, then forward, as if hesitating which way to go.

  It darted from tree to bush, and then, as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.

  Francie’s heart—and her thoughts—raced. What had she seen? She didn’t believe in ghosts, but on the other hand, she had seen something she couldn’t explain.

  The door behind her creaked open, and she spun around, fear turning her blood to ice. Her pencils scattered around her feet.

  “Francie?” It was Aunt Dorothea. “Dear, are you up here?”

  “Yes.” The word came out as a whisper.

  “Are you all right? Your voice sounds odd.”

  Francie managed a faint laugh. “You startled me, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry. I heard a sound up here, and I wanted to make sure that those silly squirrels hadn’t taken up house in here again. We had such trouble with them last year.”

  “No squirrels,” Francie said, gathering up the fallen pencils. “Just me.”

  “Are you sure you’re feeling well?” asked Aunt Dorothea. The small lamp she held cast eerie flickering shadows across her face. “Goodness, girl, you’re as white as a ghost!”

  Chapter 4

  The late-night mysterious garden visitor was nearly forgotten in the early morning clatter of Sea Breeze. Middle Meg was singing her usual mélange of songs, but this time she’d strayed from her usual repertoire of hymns. Francie suppressed a smile as the family employee easily segued from “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” to “Annie Laurie.”

  Marie, her ebony eyes glimmering mischievously, said in a low aside to Francie, “Today’s musical theme must be Scottish women.”

  Grandmama Christiana cleared her throat noisily, but Francie noticed that a tiny smile curled the edges of her normally tight lips. “Marie, I neglected to tell you that I found your embroidery bag by the garden gate yesterday. It’s in my room now, on my bureau. You may retrieve it after breakfast.”

  “Thank you,” Marie answered eagerly. “I thought I’d left it at the Carltons’, but apparently it was here all the time. I’m delighted you found it!”

  For a moment, Francie thought she might have found a clue to the shadowy figure’s identity, but she realized that the bag had been lost before she’d seen the ghostlike image; the two couldn’t possibly be connected.

  Aunt Dorothea sailed into the room with a great swish of her full taffeta skirt. “Good morning, loved ones,” she caroled. “Do you like my new dress? Leonard brought it with him, and Middle Meg, the dear, made the last of the alterations to it.”

  Marie scooted her chair back. “It’s quite an interesting color. Not purple, not black. Plum, I guess?”

  “I believe that’s it indeed.” Aunt Dorothea dropped a kiss on each of their heads. Marie smiled, and Grandmama Christiana grimaced slightly.

  “Where is Leonard today?” Grandmama Christiana demanded. “Is he still asleep?”

  Aunt Dorothea poured herself a cup of tea as she answered. “Oh, not at all. He was up long before any of us. He was planning to go to the Grand Hotel.”

  Grandmama Christiana sniffed. “Why is he going to that place?”

  “Why, he has business there, of course. His bank had something to do with the funding.”

  “Dreadful!” The older woman looked distressed.

  Aunt Dorothea put down her teacup and faced her mother-in-law. “Christiana, why do you dislike the hotel so much?”

  “Well,” Grandmama Christiana began, “it�
�s going to be noisy.”

  “Noisy?” Marie guffawed in a very unladylike manner. “Once the thing is built, the island will go back to its usual blandness. Personally I like the excitement, even if it does mean hammers and saws.”

  Her grandmother ignored her and continued, “And I worry about the kind of people it’s bringing in.”

  “Now, I must object to that,” Aunt Dorothea said. “That’s not—”

  “I mean—” Grandmama Christiana’s words shot out like bullets “—the young men who are swinging those hammers and manning those saws.” She glanced first at Marie and then at Francie. “Those young men have nothing but a good time on their minds.”

  Marie flung her napkin onto her plate and pushed back her chair so fiercely that it fell back with a loud crash. “Enough of that! Enough! I am not a child, and I am not foolish! Please give me the respect of treating me appropriately!”

  With those angry words, she grabbed Francie by the arm and pulled her along.

  Francie had only a flashing view of Aunt Dorothea’s astonished face and Grandmama Christiana’s horrified expression before she and Marie tore through the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry—” Francie tried to tell Middle Meg as they nearly knocked her over on their way out, but to her surprise, the rotund woman grinned broadly and winked.

  What a strange house this is, Francie thought—and how wonderful!

  Overcast skies and choppy waters greeted Thomas at the ferry’s side. The passengers who disembarked looked a bit queasy, and many gripped the railing with white-knuckled hands.

  But one man, his thinning hair in wet disarray, bounded toward him, a wide smile creasing his sunburned cheeks. “Thomas!”

  “Father, it’s good to see you again.” The words were true. His father had an energy that brightened any room.

  Rev. Carlton wrapped his son in a bear hug, ignoring the water-drenched jacket he wore. “And I am delighted to see you, too. I must say, though, it’s so good to be on terra firma again.”

  “The ride was rough, I gather,” Thomas commented.

  “Praise God, we made it. And I don’t use our Lord’s name lightly. There were times when I thought we would capsize, but between the skill of the ferryman and the grace of God, we managed only to get a tad waterlogged from the spray.”

  They loaded Rev. Carlton’s bag and trunk into the small carriage and began their way back to the house. They had just passed the last shop when a large yellow dog darted in front of their cart, and Thomas had to pull back on the reins. His father slid forward, catching himself before losing his seating entirely.

  The animal didn’t even stop to look at them but continued in its quest for the squirrel that vanished behind one of the storefronts.

  “I haven’t seen that dog before,” Rev. Carlton said as he righted himself.

  “Are you hurt?” Thomas asked him, and as soon as his father assured him that he was all right, Thomas continued. “I don’t know who that dog belongs to. I’ve seen it twice before, but then I’ve only been here a very short time myself.”

  “It’s a handsome animal,” his father said. “Whoever owns it is fortunate indeed.”

  “Fortunate? We could have been killed!” Thomas expostulated. “The dog needs some sterner supervision.”

  To his amazement, his father laughed and reached across the seat to hug him. “Thomas, you’ve led a far-too-sheltered life. Supervising a dog, indeed!”

  The next week passed in a flurry of dinners and guests at Sea Breeze. More than ever, Francie realized how special Uncle Leonard’s time with them was. Not only was his family glad to see him, the entire island community took the time to drop by and visit.

  Francie’s head spun with the flurry of activity, and the only time her life seemed at all settled was within the cool sanctuary of Aunt Dorothea’s garden.

  There, flowers danced onto the pages of her sketchbook. A caterpillar in a top hat bowed to a ladybug with an oversized satchel. Two daisies put their heads together in a smiling pose. On a hollyhock stem, a family of bees clad in striped trousers gathered nectar.

  This was her haven. As her fingers captured the pictures her imagination created, she spoke with God. I’m a bit confused. I don’t know how to act around boys—around men. There’s a young man—oh, You know him—Thomas Carlton. He’s interesting to me, but I don’t know how or why, and I certainly don’t know what to do. Is he a friend? Or—oh, dearest God, please help me know—is there more to it than that?

  God answered her in this quiet spot, perhaps not the way some would imagine, but with a calming reassurance that she was loved; despite all the cares and worries of the world, that was what mattered the most.

  Her book soon filled with drawings. By the end of each evening, she scaled the steps to the quiet room with the tiny dormer window that looked out on her enchanted garden, and, no matter how tired she was, she absorbed the wonders of the garden in the shaded evening light.

  And each night, her shadowed mysterious figure returned. Francie leaned as far forward as she could until her face was pressed against the glass and her breath made faint clouds on the pane, but the moonlit shape remained just out of her visual reach.

  Finally, just as she was about to leave and go to her bed, another movement in the garden caught her attention. It was another form, gliding in to join the first.

  She held her breath and watched, entranced, as the two shapes met, embraced, and separated. Then, together they merged into the darkest areas of the garden and vanished.

  Who were they? What were they?

  Francie hugged her knees to her chest and pondered what she’d seen. Although her imagination created whimsical situations that could never happen, she knew the difference between them and reality. She never expected to see a fairy wearing a petunia blossom as a skirt, and equally she never thought to see a specter—no, two specters—in the garden.

  Ghosts? No, never. That was as likely as her flower-clad fairy. Such things simply did not exist.

  Certainly her creative mind hadn’t pulled them from her daydreams, had it? Francie bit her lip as she mulled over that possibility. No, she decided, what she had seen was too real to be a capricious fabrication.

  She stared out the window at the garden, now free of any ethereal forms. What she saw was simply a nighttime garden, bathed in the moonlight. A kind of sadness struck at her heart. What if someone else were aware of the garden’s visitors? What would become of the two apparitions that came from separate sides of the greenery, met, and left?

  She almost didn’t want to find out their identities, at least not yet. Having a mystery of her very own proved to be exciting and thrilling.

  Francie smiled. Life was getting quite interesting.

  Chapter 5

  Thomas, is there any chance you can look at the fence in back?” Mrs. Carlton’s voice floated up from the bottom of the stairs.

  He put a marker in the book he was reading, a treatise on the physical matter of the universe, and laid it aside. He knew his mother didn’t want him just to look at the fence; she was expecting him to do some sort of repair.

  “I’ll be right there,” he called back, as he gave the book a parting pat. He’d found it a fascinating study, and he left it reluctantly. But his mother needed his help, and that was more important.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when he joined her. “One of the slats is down, and a dog has been in and out all day, digging wildly.” She grinned at him. “You don’t suppose there are bones under the grass, do you?”

  “I’m fairly sure there aren’t,” he answered, trying to match her light tone, “unless someone lost track of a cemetery and we’ve managed to build right on it.”

  She shuddered dramatically. “Do me a favor, Thomas, and after you nail the fence piece back, see if you can repair the damage to the lawn, too. Now, I’d better hurry back inside. Marie Harris is due any minute for an embroidery lesson.”

  If Marie is coming, Francie might be with her, an inte
rnal voice whispered to him, and if Marie’s with your mother, you might be pressed into occupying Francie. The thought made him smile—and hurry in his task.

  He went to the shed in the back where the tools were kept, found a hammer and a handful of nails, and located the section of the fence that was broken. Already the day was heating up, so he took off his jacket and draped it over the fence post.

  Fortunately, this job seemed to be fairly easy. Nailing a board was something he could do. Beyond that, carpentry was out of his league.

  The problem became readily apparent. The dog in question, a yellow Labrador retriever—the same animal that had almost upset them when his father had arrived—had no intention of leaving him alone to make the repair. Instead, it leaped joyfully around him, licking his face and putting its paws on his shoulder. When Thomas hammered, the dog apparently thought he was playing and tried to knock the hammer out of his hands.

  Pushing the dog away just increased the canine’s interest in Thomas’s activities. He put all his energy into fixing the fence, and as he swung the final blow at the nail, the hound lunged and with a thump, tipped Thomas onto his back.

  “No! No!” Even as he objected, Thomas started to laugh as the dog planted its huge paws on his shoulders and licked his face enthusiastically.

  “Need some help?” Francie’s voice sounded from the path that ran behind the Carlton home.

  Of all the times for her to come along, this had to be the moment. He wished the earth would open and swallow him whole.

  “Is this beast yours?” he asked as he tried to avoid the dog’s slurps.

  “No, he isn’t. Marie told me he belongs to the fellow who owns the carriage tours, though. I think he calls the dog Emerson.”

  Hearing his name, the dog stopped licking Thomas’s face and sprinted happily to Francie, who chuckled and let the dog greet her. She picked up a stick and hurled it down the clearing behind the fence, and the dog charged after it. “I’ll take him back to the carriage stables. I don’t know if he’s never tied up or if he is some kind of an escape artist, but he’s always being brought back to his owner, like a wayward child.”