by Annie Boone
Eleanor and Matthew
Colorado Matchmaker Series Book 2
Annie Boone
Contents
Copyright
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
Epilogue
It’s not quite the end!
Preview – Rowena and Jeb from the Colorado Matchmaker Series
1. Rowena and Jeb
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Sweet River Publishing
Copyright
Copyright 2017, Annie Boone and Sweet River Publishing
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, electronic or mechanical, without written approval by the author, except for short excerpts used in a book review.
All characters, places, events, businesses, or references to historical facts are fictitious and products of the author’s imagination. Any references to actual people, places, or events are purely incidental.
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Chapter One
Boston, Massachusetts; 1877
Eleanor sighed. The faint smell of baking pies wafted past her nose, their fragrance weakened by the pies having cooled. It was a cold, damp spring day, and business was slow. People didn’t go to the open market when it was this soggy out unless they had to.
The weather wasn’t having a favorable effect on Eleanor’s wares, either. Usually she’d have a few days to sell her baked goods before they were too stale, but her rolls and pies seemed to soak up the moisture in the air. Perhaps it was just the dreary fog weighing Eleanor down, along with the warm coats, smart hats, and necessary offerings of every other man, woman and stall in the market.
“Slow morning, isn’t it?” Mrs. Kent, who worked at the vegetable stand next door, yelled over. Not many people were purchasing her wares, either.
“You’re telling me. I don’t know how many more days like this I can take.” Eleanor shook her head with a frown.
“Aye. This weather’s a devil to business.”
Eleanor sighed again. Mrs. Kent might be losing sales, but she didn’t have as much to lose as Eleanor. Her husband was a farmer, and very much alive. Even if they were low on money, they could live off their farm—at least for a while. Eleanor didn’t have that luxury. If she didn’t sell pies and all her other baked goods, she might not have a roof over her head.
Eleanor Trimble, at the tender age of twenty-four, had become a widow. Influenza had taken her husband John only months after their baby had been stillborn. That had been a year ago, and since then she’d been selling baked goods at the market. Eleanor’s pies were good, but it’s hard to build a life on selling baked goods in a market out in the open with just the sky above.
Picking up her knife, Eleanor sliced into a rhubarb pie.
“Can’t let all this go to waste, now can we?” She handed a large slice to Mrs. Kent.
Once a pie was started, it simply had to be finished. By the time the market closed, Eleanor and Mrs. Kent had eaten a whole pie between them.
Eleanor shook her head as she packed her unsold goods into the hand-cart she used to trek to and from the market. She’d eaten more pie than she’d sold, today. Eleanor really couldn’t take any more days like this.
The scene at home was not encouraging, either. As soon as Eleanor walked through the door, her mother put her hands on her hips and looked at her expectantly. Eleanor pulled the day’s meager earnings from her pocket and dropped the coins into her mother’s hand.
“One pie and a dozen cookies,” she said shortly, not waiting for her mother to reply before heading to the kitchen. Mother followed her anyway, incensed.
“What kind of day’s work is this?” she scolded. “I slave here all day, taking in laundry to make a few pennies, and this is the help I get from you? Ungrateful girl. We don’t have to support you, you know. You’re a grown woman. You’ve got to contribute to the family like a grown woman.”
Eleanor put away her left-over, unsold pies with her back to her ranting mother, mouthing the words of her lecture along with her. She’d heard this litany many times over.
Shortly after the death of Eleanor’s husband, the factory her father worked at had closed. He’d worked there for almost forty years. He now spent his days searching for new work, as without his income the family faced the threat of eviction, but he was too old and set in his ways for many employers to be happy with him.
The entire family was scrambling to take up the slack, from the widowed daughter to the youngest sons. The only people who didn’t seem concerned about the matter at all were Eleanor’s two older brothers, both well situated in trade jobs and both equally disinterested in their poor relations.
“It’s bad enough those brothers of yours can’t even be bothered to write.”
“Much less help out the rest of the family. Yes, Mama, I know.” Eleanor slumped wearily. “Trust me. I know.”
Christopher came scrambling into the apartment at that moment, interrupting Mother’s intensifying ire. He’d been dispatched to the post office to see if there was any mail. There was one letter, but not one that would make Mother happy. It was from Eleanor’s friend, Susannah Jessup, who’d moved out to Colorado to get married.
Eleanor disappeared to the semi-privacy of her bed. She shared a room with her younger brothers, but even when almost everyone was home she wasn’t likely to be bothered in there.
My dear Ellie,
I hope this letter finds you in better circumstance than when you last wrote. I have little to report of myself—
A few paragraphs detailing what news a small mountain town provided followed. Susannah wrote with enough detail and regularity about the residents of Pine Ridge that Eleanor knew exactly who she was talking about, even if she’d never met the new pastor or Matthew Connor in her life. Though Eleanor would have preferred reading more about what happened in Colorado, the subject of Susannah’s letter quickly turned to less pleasant things.
It distresses me to hear that life in Boston continues so bad. It makes me realize how few my problems really are in comparison. Even if I have no children, I have a husband and a comfortable home, and I’m not likely to lose either.
Do not think that I write only to brag about my good fortune, for I want to share it with you. I’ve discussed it with Lucas, and he’s agreed that it would be wonderful if you could come to Colorado and stay with us over the summer. I need help around the house anyway, and a change of scenery might be just the thing you need. If nothing else, it would be much harder for your mother to nag at you in Colorado.
If you do choose to come, send a letter back right away, and we’ll know when to expect you. I took the liberty of outlining an itinerary that would have you arriving by train at a most reasonable time of day, though traveling overnight would be required. But you know it is a long journey from Boston to Colorado Springs. It would be lovely if you could be here for at least part of the spring.
Eleanor chuckled. That was just like Susannah, to get an idea in he
r head and run away with it. Just like when she’d decided to move west in the first place.
Setting the letter on the bed, Eleanor took a speculative look at the cheap calendar she’d pinned to the wall. It was March twentieth and that only gave her a few days to make a decision and mail a letter to her friends.
“Eleanor!” Mother’s voice came shrilling from downstairs. “Get in here and help with supper!”
Well, it didn’t take long to make that decision. As far as Eleanor was concerned, being in Colorado before the snow melted was her new priority.
Chapter Two
If she used all the money she’d secreted away, including the sock she’d shoved under the mattress, Eleanor had just enough to buy the necessary train tickets to reach Pine Ridge, Colorado. She didn’t, however, have enough to buy tickets back to Boston. Once she got there, she would be stuck.
Maybe it’s actually a good thing. she thought. If I’m stuck in Colorado, I’ll have to start a new life. I won’t have another choice. She’d be taking a page out of Susannah’s book, and taking life by the horns. If only she could get rid of the conviction she was going to fail miserably.
Eleanor’s family thought she was going to fail miserably, too. Her mother told her over and over again at every opportunity that it was a waste of money. “Better to stay at home and be worthless in a city you know,” she said, “than to go be worthless in some miner’s hut in the mountains.”
Eleanor personally thought that she would gladly have lived in a miner’s hut if she didn’t have to listen to her mother call her worthless, but luckily she was going someplace much nicer.
It would take about three solid days to get from Boston to Pine Ridge by train, with transfers here and stops of a few hours there. Eleanor was amazed by the changing landscape. The city quickly gave way to small farms, which transformed into rolling, endless plains, which changed yet again into mountains. She stared avidly out the window as the train barreled along, too fascinated to be bored, and the journey was over almost before she knew it.
Susannah and her husband, Lucas, were waiting for her at the train station. Susannah squealed loudly when Eleanor stepped off the train, running over to catch her in a tight hug and subject her to a barrage of chatter.
“Eleanor, I’m so glad to see you! You’re the first person from Boston I’ve seen in almost five years! I haven’t even seen Mama since I left. How is Mama, anyway? I told you to check on her while I was gone. I write to her, too, but some things you just can’t tell through letters, and I want to know how you think she’s doing. And what about Mrs. Kent, the fish woman. Does she still have that cat hanging around her stall? The one with the white tail that tries to steal sardines?”
Behind her, Lucas silently bowed and picked up Eleanor’s suitcase. He knew better than to try to ford that flooded river of words.
“This is Lucas, of course.” Susannah gestured to him proudly. “He’s the sheriff around these parts, but you knew that already. Now you don’t have to take my word for it that he’s the handsomest lawman this side of Salt Lake City.” She beamed as she spoke, prompting a laugh from Eleanor and a calm smile from Lucas.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Jessup.” Eleanor said, holding out her hand.
“Yours, as well. And please call me Lucas. No need for formality out here in the mountains.” Lucas shook, two quick, efficient shakes before dropping her hand. “Susannah’s spoken about you at great length. It will be nice to actually talk to you instead of just talking about you.”
“I don’t talk all that much.” Susannah crossed her arms over her chest with a scowl.
“My love, you talk more than an army of gossiping old women combined,” Lucas said drily. “Possibly two armies.”
Eleanor laughed again. Susannah had been accurate in describing Lucas, from his handsome looks to his calm, sarcastic temperament. What Susannah hadn’t said outright was how much he loved her. His affection was obvious, even to Eleanor’s unpracticed eye. Lucas might tease Susannah endlessly, but it was out of playfulness rather than a desire to hurt.
Susannah matched him well. Her replies to his quips might not have always been clever, but she was never without a response. Eleanor had to admit that she’d often been envious of the picture of happiness Susannah had painted in the Colorado Rockies.
The only thing missing was children. On the outside, that didn’t seem to be a problem. Eleanor knew that they’d both been disappointed in their inability to have a child, but they seemed to be filling their worlds with each other quite nicely.
“Our buggy’s tied up out front,” Susannah said, pulling Eleanor through the train station by hand. “Our house is a little bit out of town. It’ll take us a while to drive there. The view is wonderful, though. You’ll just love these mountains. You can’t see anything properly by train, you really have to be out in the open air to appreciate them properly.”
The buggy was just barely big enough for three, with the suitcase stowed below. Eleanor tried to shrink herself down as much as possible, but she couldn’t hide from the fact that she took up more room than either Susannah or Lucas by themselves. The excitement she’d felt on the train melted away into awkward dread.
The journey was over. Now she had to deal with people knowing who she was and what she looked like, establishing her reputation as the fat widow in a new town.
Eleanor struggled against these somber ideas as the buggy rolled through town. That’s not the way to start a new life, she thought, and that’s what she was here to do. This was a new chapter for Eleanor Trimble. She’d even boldly left her black widow’s cap in Boston, cutting away as much of her old life as she could.
Thinking these encouraging thoughts, Eleanor watched the horse trot along at Lucas’ command.
Pine Ridge wasn’t a large city by any means. It was only a town, really. They soon left the town proper, the road now edged by forest, hills, and the occasional house. Susannah had been right about the view. No matter what direction Eleanor looked in, blue and purple mountains rose up over the trees. White peaks rose over those, covered with snow that Susannah said never melted. All the etchings and photographs in the world couldn’t prepare one for really seeing the Rocky Mountains.
The well-trodden main road split into several smaller ones, all winding off to different clusters of houses and shacks. Their path followed the left-most one, and fifteen minutes down the road they came to the Jessup family home.
Susannah said in her letters that Lucas had gone out of his way to make a comfortable home for her. Leaving his bachelor’s rooms in town behind, he’d bought some land just outside town and built a house.
It was nothing lavish, but it was large. Clearly the couple had been planning for a big, happy family. There was a bedroom for them to share, another for guests, and more bedrooms for children.
There was a sitting room with a view out the front window, and a spacious kitchen with room for a table and chairs. There was a library and a large dining room. An attic above and a cellar below provided more space than a single couple could ever need.
A front porch completed the picture, with a bench ingeniously hung from the porch roof by chains, creating a swing for quiet nights or happy children.
Children had never happened, though. Try as they might, children never came. Eleanor sometimes wondered, in the late hours after midnight, whether it was worse to carry a child only to lose it or never manage to conceive at all. She was forced to conclude that they were both sadly pitiful, either way. Her husband was dead, and there wouldn’t be any second chances, and all the Jessups could do was fill their empty house with grown people.
Starting with Eleanor. At least the grown people they seemed to take in needed them. That was important.
Lucas set her suitcase down with a heavy thump. All the bedrooms were on the second floor, and Eleanor’s looked out over the front of the house. The walls were painted white, and blue calico curtains fluttered over the window.
“
It’s not much, but I hope you’ll like it.” Susannah surveyed the room with hands on her hips. There wasn’t much furniture, only a bed, a wardrobe, and a washstand, and none of it was new. Still, it was more than Eleanor had had to herself in a long time.
“I love it. It’s perfect for me,” she said honestly. The idea of some real privacy for the first time in her life was delightful. Even when she’d been married, she’d never really had a room to herself.
Lucas left the room, and the two ladies busied themselves unpacking Eleanor’s trunk. Susannah hummed to herself as she carefully placed Eleanor’s brush and comb on the wash stand. Eleanor herself hung up her few clothes in the wardrobe, feeling profoundly embarrassed that this was all she had to bring. A few skirts, a couple of blouses, and two jackets were all the clothes she had in the world. All of her material possessions fit into a single suitcase with ease.
Her lack of clothes brought another pressing issue to mind.
“I know it’s a bit late for me to be bringing this up now that I’m here,” Eleanor said, blushing hotly, “but I can’t really afford to pay for my lodgings. I used almost every penny I had just to get here.”
She twiddled her fingers awkwardly, avoiding Susannah’s eye when she looked at her in surprise.
“You’re our guest,” Susannah said. “You don’t have to pay for anything.”
Eleanor shook her head.
“I can’t impose on you like that, though.” She looked down at her hands and then back up to Susannah’s sweet face. “If I have to pay my way in my own family’s home, I certainly can’t rely on your charity for the rest of my life.”