Patchwork Bride. Jillian Hart

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      This was a Meredith that Shane had never seen before…

      A bell jangled as she opened the store’s glass door, waltzing toward him like sunshine on the darkest of days. As her shoes tapped on the damp boardwalk, he launched off the seat and with a bow, held out his hand.

      Meredith lifted a slender eyebrow, perhaps sensing his sarcasm. He could not stop the rolling crest of emotion threatening to take him over. The snow did not touch him, the wind did not chill him as she laid the palm of her hand softly against his. Time stopped, Shane’s soul stilled and her gaze found his.

      Wide-eyed and startled as a doe by a hunter, she did not move. Nor did he. A second stretched into a moment without heartbeat or breath, and he felt as if eternity touched him….

      JILLIAN HART

      grew up on her family’s homestead, where she helped raise cattle, rode horses and scribbled stories in her spare time. After earning her English degree from Whitman College, she worked in travel and advertising before selling her first novel. When Jillian isn’t working on her next story, she can be found puttering in her rose garden, curled up with a good book or spending quiet evenings at home with her family.

      Patchwork Bride

      Jillian Hart

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

      A man’s heart plans his way,

      but the Lord directs his steps.

      —Proverbs 16:9

      Contents

      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

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Letter to Reader

      Questions for Discussion

      Chapter One

      Angel Falls, Montana Territory, April 1884

      Lord, what have I gotten myself into?

      With the crisp April wind in her hair, Meredith Worthington braced her hands on her hips and glared at the mud-caked fender of their ladies’ driving buggy. The vehicle was currently mired in the deep mud in the country road. Totally and impossibly stuck and she didn’t know what to do. How would they get home from school?

      This had never happened when she was at her finishing school back east. Then again, she never would have been allowed to drive a horse and buggy along the busy city streets. A lady was expected to be driven, not to do anything as garish as handle the reins herself.

      “This is a fine mess I’ve gotten us into,” she muttered, sloshing through the mud in her new shoes. “Me and my bright ideas.”

      “You wanted to drive.” Her littlest sister rolled her eyes. “In fact, you insisted on it.”

      “Don’t remind me.” Not a request she’d regretted because she’d been wanting permission to drive for a long while, but why did this happen on her first day? She stared at the axle nearly buried in mud. Who knew the mud puddle would be that deep?

      “I bet you miss Boston now.” Wilhelmina, Minnie for short, hopped in the shallow mud at the shoulder of the road, making little splashes with her good shoes.

      “Miss that place? Hardly. Finishing school was like a very comfortable, very pleasant prison.” Meredith puffed at a hunk of hair that had fallen down from her perfect chignon, but the stubborn curl tumbled right back into her eyes. Much better to be home in Montana, even if she had to figure a way out of the very mud her mother had warned her against.

      She winced, already hearing the arguments. Her independent ways were not popular with her family. If she didn’t get the buggy home and soon, she feared she would not be allowed to drive ever again. And if she couldn’t drive, how would she secure employment and get herself to work every day? Her dreams may be as trapped as her buggy.

      “A prison? I’m telling Mama you said that.”

      “You will do no such thing,” she informed her sister, who squished around in the ankle-deep mud quite as if she liked it. “If you don’t stop playing and help me, we will be stuck here forever.”

      “Or until it starts to rain.” Minnie looked up from making shoe prints in the soupy earth. “It looks like a storm is coming. With enough rain, the mud will thin down and we can get the wheels out.”

      “Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do. Stand here in the mud and rain for hours.” She tugged affectionately on Minnie’s sunbonnet brim. “Any excuse to stay out of doors, I suppose.”

      “What? I like outside. I don’t know how I shall ever survive when Mama sends me away to school.” The girl wrinkled her freckled nose at the thought of the expensive and well-respected finishing school where two of their other sisters were currently attending. “Was it really like a prison? Is that why you don’t want to go back?”

      “No, I just didn’t like feeling as if I were a prized filly being prepared for a contest. Everyone was set on getting married, as if that is all a girl can do.” Her parents said that an appropriate match was the most important thing a girl could accomplish, and sadly, her mother was bent on finding her a suitable husband.

      Forget suitable and appropriate. She wanted true love in her life, the kind that surpassed reason, a riot in the heart and soul, an eternal flame of regard and feeling that outshone all else. That would not be easy to find.

      The cool wind gusted, reminding her she was about as far away from her dream as a girl could get. She swiped the curl out of her eyes again. Those rain clouds definitely appeared foreboding. She may as well concentrate on the goals she could attain.

      She braced her hands on the buggy’s muddy wheel well, ignored the muck that squished between her fingers and called out for Sweetie to get up.

      “We are never going to budge it. Our horse isn’t strong enough. We ought to unhitch Sweetie and ride her home. We can get Papa and Eli, and they can come pull out the buggy.” Minnie grinned, proud of herself for solving their problem.

      “Do you want to give Mama heart failure?” The girl, she feared, was a lost cause. “Our mother would never recover if her very proper daughters rode the countryside perched on the back of a horse for all to see.”

      The old gray mare gave another valiant try. The wheels rocked just enough to give a girl hope, but they could not escape the bonds of mud. Exasperated, she blew the lock of hair out of her eyes again. “Minnie! Why aren’t you helping? Do you want to stand here all afternoon?”

      “Look, I made a smiling face.” The girl grinned ear to ear, pleased with the imprint of eyes, nose and a curving mouth her shoes had made. “I don’t recognize those horses. Do you reckon that’s the new deputy? He looks in charge.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “The two horse and riders.” Minnie pointed