Frontier Bride (Harlequin Historical) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Ana Seymour

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “If I weren’t a gentleman, this would be the opportunity for me to say I could help keep you warm.”

  “You’re not a gentleman,” she replied with a nervous giggle.

  He had walked up to the circle of pines and was using one foot to scrape the pine needles into a pile. “You’d better hope I’m a gentleman, Hannah Forrester, because it’s going to be one hell of a long night.”

  Something in his voice told her that he was not teasing. She walked timidly toward him and began to push the needles from the other side of the “bed.”

  “So are you, or aren’t you?” she asked softly.

  “A gentleman?”

  She nodded.

  He squinted to see her better in the dark. He spoke slowly. “I…don’t think so…”

  Dear Reader,

  Ana Seymour has been delighting readers and editors alike since her first book, The Bandit’s Bride, was published by Harlequin Historicals in 1992, and this month’s Frontier Bride is bound to do the same. It’s the story of a woman torn between her affection for the man who bought her indenture and her growing love for the rugged frontiersman who is guiding them to a new life in the territories. We hope you enjoy it.

  And don’t miss the third book in award-winning author Theresa Michaels’s Kincaid Trilogy, Once a Lawman, featuring the oldest Kincaid brother, a small-town sheriff who must choose between family and duty as he works to finally bring to justice the criminals who’ve been plaguing his family’s ranch.

  This month, Miranda Jarrett has written another of her delightful Sparhawk titles, this one, Sparhawk’s Angel, about a captain tormented by a meddlesome angel bent on matchmaking that Romantic Times calls “delightful, unforgettably funny and supremely touching.” And a sensible novelist brings love and laughter to the wounded soul of a neighboring earl in Deborah Simmons’s new title, The Devil Earl.

  Please keep a lookout for 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

  Frontier Bride

  Ana Seymour

  Books by Ana Seymour

  Harlequin Historicals

  The Bandit’s Bride #116

  Angel of the Lake #173

  Brides for Sale #238

  Moonrise #290

  Frontier Bride #318

  ANA SEYMOUR

  says she first discovered romance through the swashbuckling movies of Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power and the historical epics of Thomas Costain and Anya Seton. She spent a number of years working in the field of journalism, but she never forgot the magic of those tales. Now she is happy to be creating some of that magic herself through Harlequin Historicals. Ana lives in Minnesota with her two teenage daughters.

  To my dear friends…

  Bronwyn, Jan, Jeanne, Karen and Debi…

  Frontierswomen all!

  Prologue

  Philadelphia—December 1762

  Priscilla Webster was finally going to die. Hannah wiped cold sweat from the woman’s forehead, then straightened up, rubbing her own back. She looked out the window at the late afternoon darkness.

  Through the thick panes of glass, the first storm of winter was howling, but inside, the small room was sweltering. Randolph Webster had insisted on keeping the fire stoked to the maximum all this week as they waited for his wife to take the last of her short, tortured breaths.

  Hannah gave a deep sigh. She would miss Priscilla. When Hannah had arrived at the Webster household almost two years ago, she’d been apprehensive and weak from poor food and bouts of seasickness that had plagued her during the six-week crossing. She and the other hundred indentured servants on the Constant had been forced to remain below decks almost the entire trip, leaving her pale and dispirited. Priscilla Webster had greeted her more like a lost relative than a woman her husband had purchased. She had insisted that Hannah get sufficient rest and food those first few weeks until her spirits and her health were fully restored. After months of injustices and mistreatment, Hannah had drunk in the woman’s kindness like sweet water after a drought.

  “Is it snowing?”

  Hannah jerked at the sound. Her patient had not been conscious for the past two days, and Hannah had not thought to hear her voice again on this side of the grave. She looked down at the sick woman. Priscilla’s eyes shone unnaturally blue next to the red flush of her face.

  “Aye, mistress. There’ll be snow for Christmas, I reckon.” The Websters were among the few in Philadelphia who celebrated the holiday, Hannah had been delighted to discover. The past two Christmases had been full of all the merriment that she had once longed for as a child back in England. But there would be little celebrating this year.

  Priscilla gave a barely perceptible nod. “The bairns will like that.” Her voice was faint.

  “Will you take some broth, mum?” Hannah asked, reaching for the bowl that had been sitting untouched on the bedside table.

  Priscilla swallowed, and her chest moved in a feeble reminder of the violent coughs that had racked her for so many months. She looked up with a serene smile that made Hannah’s heart ache. “No, Hannah, lass. No food,” she said slowly, laboring over the words. “I’ll need no…earthly…sustenance…where I’m going.”

  Tears stung Hannah’s eyes. When Priscilla’s coughing had become so bad that Mr. Webster had quietly moved his things to the spare sleeping room, the sick woman had not uttered a word of complaint. When her lace handkerchiefs had revealed a terrible black sputum, she had merely apologized to Hannah for the extra laundry. And when the delicate hankies had been replaced by rough cotton towels that more and more often showed bright splotches of red, she had gripped her servant’s hand with weak fingers and told her how grateful she was that Hannah had come from afar to take care of her family. Hannah had never met a sweeter soul.

  “Let me call the master,” she said.

  Priscilla’s eyelids drooped, shuttering her bright eyes. Hannah quickly crossed the room and opened the door, admitting a whoosh of cold air. She didn’t have to call. Randolph Webster was waiting in the next room and was on his feet the minute he saw her.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, moving toward her.

  “She’s come ‘round a bit. She spoke to me.”

  Hannah turned back to her patient with Mr. Webster close behind her. “Priscilla?” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  His wife’s eyelids fluttered and she answered weakly, “It’s snowing, Randolph.”

  “Yes, love.” He moved around Hannah to sit in the chair at the side of the bed. Taking his wife’s hand, he asked tenderly, “How are yo
u feeling?”

  Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Randolph looked at Hannah. There was anguish in his brown eyes. His hair had pulled out of its binder and hung unkempt around his gaunt face. He leaned closer to his wife. “What is it, my love?”

  “Dress…the bairns…warm.” The strength seemed to flow out of her body with each word. She looked up at his confused expression and desperation flickered in her eyes. She turned her head toward Hannah.

  “It’s the snow,” Hannah explained gently. “She wants us to dress the children warmly.”

  Randolph nodded briefly at his servant, then turned back to his wife. “Don’t fret yourself, Priscilla. Peggy and Jacob’ll not be going out in this weather. It’s blowing up a storm.”

  Priscilla’s chest moved with another ghost of a cough. “Then…every…thing’s…just…fine.”

  Her eyes closed, and her hand fell from Randolph’s to the coverlet. He quickly retrieved it and leaned over to bring it up against his cheek. “Everything’s fine, love,” he repeated, his throat sounding full.

  Hannah blinked hard and turned to tend the fire. It was a moment before she felt she could speak. “Shall I leave you with her, sir?” she asked without turning.

  There was no answer from behind her. She put another log on the huge blaze, then moved around to the opposite side of the bed. “Do you want some time alone, Mr. Webster?” she asked again.

  Still clutching Priscilla’s hand, he looked up at her, and Hannah was shocked to see that his cheeks were wet with tears. She averted her eyes. “I’ll just wait m the next room,” she said.

  She leaned over to tuck the coverlet around her patient. The body underneath it had become so frail these past few weeks that it was sometimes hard to tell the bed was occupied at all. Hannah’s hand hovered, then froze. There was no movement. The almost undetectable rise and fall of Priscilla’s sunken chest had ceased. A feeling of dread settled in Hannah’s stomach. She glanced at Mr. Webster, but his head was bowed.

  She turned to the mistress’s wardrobe chest behind her and, with suddenly cold fingers, grasped the ornate handle of Priscilla’s prized silver mirror. Slowly she brought it back to the bed and held it over Priscilla’s mouth. There was no cloud. Hannah closed her eyes, and instantly the tears poured down her cheeks.

  An anguished sound from Mr. Webster made her look up. He reached across the bed and snatched the mirror from her fingers. “Priscilla,” he said, then repeated his wife’s name, almost shouting.

  “She’s gone, sir,” Hannah said, choking on a sob. “She’s gone to her Maker.”

  The mirror fell from his hand and slid down the covers to the floor. He grasped his wife’s shoulders and pulled her inert body into his arms, rocking back and forth in silent agony.

  Hannah’s own grief subsided for a moment as she witnessed her employer’s pain. Randolph Webster was not a warm man, and she had not grown close to him as she had to Priscilla. He had never made an effort to help her forget that she was his bondwoman, bound to him body and soul for three more years. But he was a good man and had loved his wife dearly. If Hannah dared, she would move to the other side of the bed and put an arm around his shaking shoulders. It was one of those moments when it seemed as if only physical contact could serve to comfort.

  Her torrent of tears dried as she stood watching him, unsure of what to do next. “Shall I fetch the children?” she asked finally.

  He shook his head without looking up, still cradling his wife’s body. “No! They’ll not see her this way.” His harsh voice ended Hannah’s urge to touch him. She took a step back from the bed.

  “Do you want me to go for the MacDougalls?” Priscilla’s parents owned a public house just down the lane from the Webster home.

  Randolph didn’t reply for a moment. He placed Priscilla’s body tenderly back down against the pillow, then looked up at Hannah and spoke in a weary tone. “I’ve lost my wife, not my wits, girl. I’d not send you out in a storm like this.”

  “It’s not far. I’m willing to go.”

  Randolph stood. “I’ll go myself. They’ll want to come be with the children. Then I’ll go on to Newbury.”

  Hannah’s eyes widened. “All the way to Newbury…in this weather?”

  He glanced at the bed. “She’d not want any but her brother to perform the service.”

  “But the storm…” Her voice trailed off as Randolph’s expression hardened.

  Neither spoke for a moment. Then Randolph bent to kiss his wife’s forehead. Without looking at Hannah, he said. “You will…tend to her?” His voice broke.

  “Aye.”

  Without another word, he was gone.

  Chapter One

  Philadelphia—April 1763

  “I declare, Hannah lass, Randolph’s gone soft in the head. But ye do not have to go along with him.” The burr of her Scottish homeland gave Jeanne MacDougall’s speech a pleasant softness, in spite of her adamant tone.

  Hannah shook her head and gave a swipe with the towel to the dish she was drying. She was helping Mistress MacDougall with the washing up in the big kitchen of the MacDougalls’ inn. “I’ve a contract, mum. With three more years to run.”

  “There’s nothing in that contract that says he has the right to drag ye off to live in the wilderness with no one for miles around.” Mistress MacDougall’s ample chest heaved with indignation. In the past her relations with her son-in-law had always been cordial, but she was furious over his plan to take her grandchildren away from the culture and civilization of Philadelphia for an uncertain existence on the frontier.

  “There are four families going,” Hannah replied gently. “I’m sure we’ll stay nigh one another.”

  “And what about the savages?”

  “Savages,” Hannah repeated under her breath, tightening her grip on the pewter bowl. She had dealt with savages before. The debt collectors back in London who had seized her mother’s bed from beneath her as she lay dying. The doctor who had refused to give Hannah even a little bit of physic to ease her mother’s pain. The magistrate who had declared that an eighteen-year-old girl who had just buried her only parent should be imprisoned or transported to pay the costs of her mother’s illness. “I’m not afraid of the savages,” she said with a grim smile.

  “I can’t believe Randolph’s serious about this venture,” Mistress MacDougall said, wringing out a towel as if she wished it were her son-in-law’s neck.

  “It’s hard to lose the children,” Hannah agreed. “But you should hear him describe the lands they’re opening up along the Ohio River—rich green meadows crisscrossed with silver nvers. The fish practically jump into your boat as you glide along, he says, and the crops grow themselves.”

  “I suppose the deer shoot themselves, too,” Jeanne MacDougall huffed. “Ye’d better hope so, or ye’ll all starve to death. Randolph knows nothing about hunting.”

  “I expect we’ll all help each other, at least until we get through the first winter.”

  Mistress MacDougall shuddered and her voice became teary. “Sometimes I just don’t think I can bear it. First we lose Prissy…and now the children.”

  Hannah dried one hand on her apron and put it on the older woman’s sleeve. “I’ll bring them back with me for a visit when my term’s done,” she said soberly.

  She leaned over to look through the door to the front tavern where Peggy and Jacob were playing precariously on a hogshead of ale. She and the children had spent a lot of time at the MacDougalls’ these past months. The Websters’ roomy house at the end of the lane, which had seemed so welcoming to her when she first arrived in America, was now full of shadows and grief. The children preferred to be here in the bright, busy inn with their grandparents. Especially since their father was rarely at home these days.

  “Mind that doesn’t tip over on your little brother,” she called to Peggy. The girl’s laughter stopped abruptly. She jumped to the floor and steadied the wobbling barrel. Hannah bit her lip and immediately regretted her words of
caution. It was so seldom that Peggy played these days. Losing her mother at the age of eleven had given her an instant boost into adulthood.

  “Go ahead and climb, if you like. Just have a care.” Hannah smiled at the towheaded pair then turned back to Mistress MacDougall. “They’re fine children. You should be proud.”

  “They’re all I have left of my Prissy,” Jeanne MacDougall said. “‘Tis unjust of Randolph to take them so far.”

  “Mr. Webster says that he needs a new start—that they all do. Or they’ll never get over Priscil…Mistress Webster’s death.”

  Jeanne MacDougall’s mournful expression turned sharp. “Ye seem to be very well versed on what my son-in-law is feeling and saying.”

  Hannah felt her cheeks flame. She hoped she was misinterpreting the direction of Mistress MacDougall’s comment. “I’ve heard him talk with the children. And with the other gentlemen who are joining us with their families. They’ve met often at the house these past months.”

  Mistress MacDougall’s face softened. “Ye’ve had a lot of work, Hannah, and no female in the house to give ye a kind word.”

  “Mr. Webster has been gone so much that it’s mostly been just the children and I. In truth, ‘tis not so hard as…” She stopped.

  “As when ye was nursing my daughter day and night and caring for the bairns, as well.”

  Hannah nodded. “The sadness weighed us all down those last weeks.”

  Mistress MacDougall took the towel from Hannah’s hand and pulled her over to sit beside her on the rough wood settle by the fire. “I was going to have Mr. MacDougall talk to ye, Hannah. But ye know how men are—great for blathering until ye have something you really want them to say.”