Trail of Dreams…in TWO days!
Guess what? Only two more days until Trail of Dreams launches! But how about we get started now? Here you go….
Chapter One
Nebraska Territory, 1863
As far as Katie Boyle was concerned, the Oregon Trail was a slice of heaven on Earth.
“I love the sky,” she commented in her thickest Irish brogue to her new friend, Emma Sutton. The two of them walked together, arm in arm along the hard-packed dirt of the trail. Dozens of wagons rolled along the worn path beside them, the sound of their wheels and the clopping of the oxen that pulled them music to Katie’s ears. “I love the grass too. It’s the tallest I’ve ever seen and it rolls like the waves of the ocean.”
“Mmm hmm,” Emma replied, eyes downcast, cheeks pink in spite of the hat that shielded her face from the sun.
“It’s a fair sight better than the actual ocean,” Katie went on, peeking at Emma from the corner of her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as sick as I was on the ship that brought us over from Ireland.”
“Oh?”
“Aye. The way it rolled and tossed on the waves? Well, I didn’t think I’d make it to America. I cursed my mam, cursed the heavens, and you can be sure I cursed Aiden Murphy most of all.”
“Aiden?” Emma flushed and stole a glance behind them to where Aiden walked with Dr. Dean Meyers, the object of Emma’s affection, several yards back.
“I’m sure it’s his fault somehow,” Katie teased, twisting to look where Emma was looking.
Katie arched an eyebrow at the spring in Aiden’s step and the cocky angle of his shoulders. The afternoon sun shone down on his dark hair, lending a sparkle to his blue eyes. He wore his fiddle in its case slung across his back. He’d worn it since the moment they’d all set foot on the road that led from their humble village of Ballymote, all the way to America and the trail they walked now. That fiddle had been a part of him for as long as Katie had known him, which was to say his whole life.
Aiden caught her watching and winked. Katie promptly ignored his audacity and the flutter in her gut.
She glanced to Emma, but her new friend had missed the entire impish display. Emma had eyes only for Dean Meyers.
“He’s a brazen beast, isn’t he?” she asked, referring to Aiden.
“He’s lovely,” Emma replied, staring straight at Dean. The moment he glanced up and met her eyes, Emma snapped to face forward. She smoothed a hand over the skirt of her overly formal dress—something her mother had forced her to wear to catch a man—and cleared her throat.
Katie did her best to hide her smile. She’d only known Emma for a short time. Not much more than a week ago, the wagon train Katie and her family were traveling with had come across Emma and her mother and Dr. Dean Meyers at a lonely way station. They’d been there for a week as Emma’s ankle healed from an injury sustained in a tornado.
A tornado. The very thought of it set Katie’s heart pounding. She could only imagine how exciting it all had been. Between the little Dean had said and the looks he and Emma had been exchanging for the last week, Katie surmised there was more to the story than met the eye. No matter how much she hinted and pried for more information, Emma had said little about it. Bless her, but Emma said little about anything. At least she didn’t mind if Katie talked until she was blue.
“I still think you should march right up to that man and kiss him, bold as brass,” she said, tilting her face into the sunlight.
“What?” Emma gasped, clutching her arm tighter. “I could never.”
Katie laughed. “I don’t suppose you could, but wouldn’t it make a sight? I’m sure half the old biddies in this wagon train would clutch their chests and drop dead of heart attacks. I’d be glad though,” she finished.
“You would?” Emma blinked.
“Yes, and why not? Love is a beautiful thing, and watching two young people fall head over heels down the hill of love to the valley of bliss is a rare treat.”
Emma blushed darker. “If only that were possible.”
“And who says it’s not possible?” Katie hugged Emma’s arm tighter. The laughter of children—some of them likely her younger brothers and sisters—rang up and down the line of wagons and a light breeze blew the rich scent of earth and grass across their path. How could anything not be possible?
“My mother,” Emma sighed, shoulders sagging. “You know she has it in her mind that I should put Dean aside and give all of my attentions to Dr. Sandifer.”
Katie’s lips twisted in a bitter sneer. “That great lummox.” She knew too well the fuss Mrs. Sutton was making over the blustery, arrogant doctor that had joined their wagon train in Independence. What she didn’t know was why a woman who seemed to be in all her right mental faculties would toss a peach like Dean Meyers over for a pit like Russell Sandifer.
Emma heaved another sigh and lowered her head to stare at the toes of her and Katie’s shoes as they poked out from under their dusty skirts—one cotton, the other silk—as they walked. It didn’t take much for Katie to see how deeply her friend was hurting over the entire confusing thing.
“Bah. I hate to see you so fussed over the situation,” she said. “No girl as pretty and as smart as you are who has a man like your Dean pining for you should be thwarted by something as common as a mother.”
“Mother has been through so much,” Emma argued.
Katie cut her off with a sniff. “All mothers with bright-eyed children have been through so much. My own mam struggled through the Great Famine while trying to raise more than half a dozen children, all while my father sweated and toiled to put food on our plates.” She shook her head. It wasn’t something she liked to think about. They’d come to America precisely so they wouldn’t ever have to think about those times again.
She brushed her free hand through the air as if to clear the past. “You’re not the only one whose mother thinks they know what’s best for them where men are concerned,” she confided.
“Oh?” Emma perked up a bit.
Encouraged, Katie went on. “Aye, Mam’s had it in her head since I was knee-high that I should fall in love with and marry Aiden. Aiden!” She snorted. A swirl of something warm and tickly and unwelcome filled her gut.
Emma started to glance back at Aiden and Dean walking behind them, but stopped herself. “Aiden seems like a perfectly acceptable young man.”
“And that’s his problem,” Katie insisted. She took a breath. “Aiden and I have known each other almost since the day we were born. He’s only a few months older than me. I consider him one of my best friends, really, I do. But his mam and mine have been thick as thieves and just as crafty since their school days. Right from the cradle, they determined that Aiden and I were meant for each other.”
“How romantic.” Emma smiled.
“It is not romantic,” Katie growled. “It’s been a bloody big nuisance. Imagine, my whole life, everywhere I go and everything I do, Aiden has been there. He was there when we were young ones, skipping stones in the pond and chasing after foxes in the fields. He was there when we sat in that great, drafty school having numbers and letters and history pounded into us. And he’s been there, cheeky as a beggar, playing right into our mams’ schemes by bringing me flowers and playing on that blasted fiddle outside my window at all hours of the day and night. Flowers, when all I want is a friend. Imagine. He crowds me so much that I can’t tell whether my thoughts are my own or his. Why, when Da and Mam decided to pull up roots and move to America, he convinced his entire clan to come with us, just so he could continue to bother me.”
Emma listened to the speech, her mouth dropping open more with each word and her eyes filling with stars. When Katie finished and tipped her head in a stubborn nod, Emma said, “That’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard.”
“Ha,” Katie laughed. Her heart beat faster, but she did her best to ignore it. “It’s a dull story at that. Can you imagine what it’s like to have a rogue like Aiden shadowing your every step, never leaving your side?”
“It would be wonderful,” Emma sighed.
“Aiden is good, but dull as toast,” Katie protested. “I don’t want a boy everyone expects me to marry, a boy who I used to catch frogs with. I want adventure. I want excitement. I want to explore and discover and fly. There’s so much more to this wide world than the town and the people you’ve had around you your whole life. I want passion when I fall in love.” She grabbed Emma’s arm with both of her hands, her whole body vibrating with the force of her longing. “I want to fall in love with a valiant hero, a man who will risk life and limb to save me and… and rescue me from a dragon.”
She was so wrapped up in the image she painted for herself that she almost didn’t hear when Aiden called out, “There are no dragons in America,” behind her.
Katie jumped, flushing with heat at the sound of his voice. She told herself it was embarrassment at being caught pouring her heart out where others could hear. She let go of Emma’s arm and twisted to glare at Aiden. “Shut your gob, Aiden Murphy,” she ribbed him the way friends did.
Aiden, being Aiden, only beamed at her. “Now why would I do that when you’re talking nonsense and need to be set straight, a ghrá?”
“Ack! Don’t call me that,” Katie growled. She faced forward once more and kept walking, but her skin prickled as though she’d given herself away.
The scene continues tomorrow, so come back for more!
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