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The Bartered Bride
Cheryl Reavis
Do We Marry Or Not, Caroline Holt? It occurred to Caroline that everyone in her small North Carolina community accepted the obvious reason for her agreeing to marry Frederich Graeber. She was pregnant, and the real father of her baby was unwilling. She was due in a few short months. Her unborn child would have everything to gain by Caroline making the strong, silent farmer her husband… .The Marriage Pledge "If you marry me, then the child will be mine… ." With Frederich's words ringing in her ears, Caroline made her decision. She'd become his bartered bride… and risk giving this enigmatic stranger her heart free.
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u3ebb2da5-1feb-5311-9b1e-61ae79c64f13)
Excerpt (#ud17cfabb-c42c-5437-8fd5-1fcfe121a66a)
Dear Reader (#ufabad00c-2d4b-5b65-8ae4-b05827779929)
Title Page (#u3ed89f06-30b1-51cf-a8a7-002c5fe3d18a)
About the Author (#uf935848c-db68-5785-b698-ec0ed4fec81d)
Dedication (#ufa6ec948-92cc-5aba-b5cb-e2022937c348)
Prologue (#u6b3258ac-744d-5ba7-970d-5efff00578d2)
Chapter One (#u6f27cdc9-589e-5a75-9f72-92edf9e4fd09)
Chapter Two (#ud1775c66-0588-5248-a032-c51ddb79ead3)
Chapter Three (#u13343765-9fc1-5997-b6aa-f92c4359624c)
Chapter Four (#ubceaa687-3f70-5883-8b10-bffc34d70b69)
Chapter Five (#udc46ca4e-b971-57f7-bb29-63845d9e53df)
Chapter Six (#ud97298e9-afa7-510d-801c-b3bb75f85e78)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Frederich held her tightly, awash in emotion,
afraid that Caroline would suddenly remember who he was and pull away. He grazed her cheek with his rough hand, stroked the dark hair he’d been so longing to touch.
“I would do anything for you,” he whispered to himself—in German.
He held her, feeling her sorrow and his own, determined to keep her close like this for as long as she would allow it. But the horse pranced nervously, and she abruptly let go of him and slid from his grasp to the ground, hurrying into the house without once looking back.
He sat there completely overwhelmed. He couldn’t deny the truth any longer. He cared far more for this exasperating woman than he ever intended, and he wanted her—as a friend, a lover, as a wife…!
Dear Reader,
We are delighted this month at the return of three-time RITA Award winner Cheryl Reavis to Harlequin Historicals. Her heart-wrenching tale, The Bartered Bride, is set in Civil War North Carolina. It’s the story of a pregnant woman who has little choice but to marry her sister’s widower, a man whom she considers heartless, but who, over time, teaches her the healing powers of forgiveness and love.
Abigail Cooprel suddenly comes face-to-face with a man who is the very image of her adopted son in Abbie’s Child, the second book from talented newcomer Linda Castle, whose first book, Fearless Hearts, was released during our annual March Madness promotion in 1995, to loud acclaim.
Multigenre author Merline Lovelace makes history come alive in her new release, Lady of the Upper Kingdom, the dramatic story of forbidden love between two strong-willed people separated by the treachery and distrust that exists between their two cultures, the Egyptian and the Greek. And from Catherine Archer comes Velvet Touch, the sequel to her previous Medieval, Velvet Bond, the bittersweet story of a young nobleman who is sent by his king to arrange a marriage and settle a feud, only to fall in love with the intended bride.
Whatever your taste in reading, we hope you will enjoy all four Harlequin Historicals, available wherever books are sold.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell,
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to: Harlequin Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
The Bartered Bride
Cheryl Reavis
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHERYL REAVIS,
public health nurse, short-story author and award-winning romance novelist, says she is a writer of emotions. “I want to feel all the joys and the sorrows and everything in between. Then, with just the right word, the right turn of phrase, I hope to take the reader by the hand and make her feel them, too.” Cheryl currently makes her home in North Carolina with her husband and son.
For Josephine, who took me to a Robert E. Lee
lecture exactly when I needed to go.
Prologue (#ulink_32c4b124-9587-5b81-bea8-8a914963df20)
North Carolina
December 1861
Someone else was in the church. He stood listening for a moment, certain now that the faint sound had come from the back of the sanctuary.
“Wer ist da?” he called out, not wanting to frighten any of the old women who might have come to polish the candlesticks or put out the hymnals for the Sunday service.
No one answered.
“Who…is it?” he managed in English.
Again there was no reply.
He began to stack the oak logs he’d cut in the wood box near the potbellied stove. He could still hear the girls playing on the front steps by the open door; neither of them had followed him inside. There was much talk among the men these days about the possibility of army deserters or escapees from the new Confederate prison in town, but neither would have been of concern to him—if he had come to the church alone. He didn’t care about the politics of this country. He didn’t care who won the newly declared war or who escaped from the prisons. He didn’t care about anything except the fact that he had Ann’s daughters with him and he had given his solemn promise to always keep them out of harm’s way.
He took a moment to look around the sanctuary. He saw no one, heard nothing, and he decided that he must have been mistaken. But then the sound came again, a faint whimper he might not have heard if he hadn’t already been listening so intently. He turned and walked quietly toward the back of the church, and he saw her almost immediately. She was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that led to the schoolroom on the second floor.
“Bitte—” he began, but she jumped violently, startling him as well. He moved around so that he could see her better in the dim light, recognizing her now in spite of the fact that she turned sharply away from him. She wiped furtively at her eyes, bringing her feet up under her as if she intended to make herself as small as possible.
He stepped closer.
“Eli,” she said, making a great effort to look at him. She attempted a smile, but her mouth trembled and her voice was hardly more than a whisper. She turned away again, telling him something in rapid English he didn’t begin to understand.
He stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do. Her hair was coming down and one button at the neck of her bodice hung by a thread. If she had not been Ann’s sister and if his promise hadn’t included her as well, he would have left her sitting there.
“Caroline? You are…ill?” he said. He had neither the proficiency nor the inclination to ask anything more. Perhaps she’d had another argument with her brother Avery— in which case her current state was to be expected. He knew Avery Holt to be a bully, and he knew from Ann that Caroline did her best to provoke him. He wanted to just go, but for Ann’s sake, he stretched out his hand. Surprisingly, Caroline took it, her fingers cold and clinging in his.
“Was haben Sie?” he asked, making her look at him.
“…the children,” was all that he understood of her reply.
“Ja—yes,” he said, looking over his shoulder toward the open door. “Mary Louise is…here. Und Lise. Both— here—”
“Eli,” she said in alarm, trying to push him in the direction he’d come. “Mary Louise and Lise—please—bitte!”
He hesitated, but he understood that her distress was such that she didn’t want her nieces to see her.
“Bitte!” she said again, her eyes following his glance at the dangling button. She snatched it from its thread and shoved it into her pocket.
He stood up and walked quickly away, glancing back at her when he reached the end of the aisle. She was no longer sitting on the bottom step.
He stepped outside, firmly closing the church door behind him.
Chapter One (#ulink_581e7a69-4408-506b-b464-94c23bc307e2)
March 1862
Caroline Holt had been waiting all afternoon for her brother Avery to return. She kept walking to the window to look out across the fields toward the Graeber farm. That Avery would drop everything to answer a summons from Frederich Graeber was incredible to her. The ground had to be readied for the spring planting, and Avery despised their German brother-in-law.
It was nearly dark when he finally rode into the yard. She went hurriedly back to the churning, a task she’d let take far too long while he’d been gone. She worked the churn hard, determined not to give him the satisfaction of knowing she’d been so curious about his absence that she’d neglected the butter making. He came into the kitchen immediately, leaving the door ajar much longer than was necessary and tracking in mud with no concern at all for the backbreaking effort it took to keep the rough oak floor scrubbed clean. She shivered in the draft of cold air, but she made no comment.
“Frederich Graeber wants to marry you,” he said without prelude.
She looked up from the butter churn, but she didn’t break the rhythm of the churning. The statement was so ridiculous that her first inclination was to laugh. Her brother was not a humorous man, but still she thought he must be joking. Even if he had somehow guessed how badly she needed marrying, he wouldn’t have suggested Frederich Graeber— except as some kind of cruel joke.
“I want you to marry him. I’ve already answered for you,” he said. “They’re going to announce it in the German church Sunday—Frederich will make his formal pledge to you then.”
She continued to stare at him, realizing now that he was entirely serious and that this marriage plan must account for Frederich’s summons and for his willingness of late to bring her nieces here to the house to see her.
Poor Avery, she thought. He had no inkling of the impossibility of his arrangement. For the first time in her life she felt a little sorry for him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said in annoyance. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you, Avery. And I can only suppose that you’ve lost your mind.”
He gave a little smile. “Now why would you suppose that?”
“You know I can’t marry Frederich Graeber.”
“Can’t?” he said, coming closer. His hair was sweated to his forehead. Before he had departed for the Graeber farm, he and Frederich’s nephew, Eli, had been shoveling horse manure into newly plowed ground all morning. Avery still stank of it, and somewhere along the way he must have lifted a keg of beer—to celebrate the bargain he and Frederich thought they had made.
“It’s done, Caroline,” he said, his voice still calm because he was used to having his way. Indeed, who ever said no to him? And who else refused to tolerate his arrogance but her? Certainly not their mother when she was alive. And certainly not the women here. Caroline couldn’t account for the fact that so many of them preferred the civilian Avery and his finagled farmer’s exemption to the boys who’d gone for soldiers and were fighting in Virginia—except for the fact that Avery was here, of course. And he was handsome. But his handsomeness was far surpassed by his fickle nature. The list of widows and maidens who’d aspired and failed to marry Avery Holt grew longer every day.
“I’ve already told Frederich you want it,” he said, and she abruptly looked away from him. She felt light-headed again and she concentrated hard on keeping the rhythm of the churning by fervently whispering the work poem that went with the task.
Come-butter-come
Come-butter-come
