Rocky Mountain Dawn (Rocky Mountain Bride Series Book 1)

  Rocky Mountain Dawn

  Rocky Mountain Bride Series, Book One

  By

  Lee Savino

  ©2015 by Blushing Books® and Lee Savino

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  Savino, Lee

  Rocky Mountain Dawn

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68259-144-4

  Cover Design by ABCD Graphics & Design

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the Author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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  Table of Contents:

  Author's Notes

  About the Author

  Ebook Offer

  Blushing Books Newsletter

  About Blushing Books

  "Esther Richardson, get out of that tree!"

  The branches of the apple tree shook, dropping fruit, and the short, plump matron on the ground squawked and shielded her head. At her feet, a pair of tow-headed children tucked their heads under their mother's skirts to escape the volley of hard, unripe apples.

  The shaking became violent, and more fruit bounced to the ground, along with a few dead twigs. Then a blonde head poked between the leaves.

  "Mama?"

  The squat woman on the ground stomped her foot. "Naughty girl, get down before you fall and break your neck."

  One of the larger boughs danced wildly, and then a young woman dropped out of the tree. Her mother shrieked again as the girl staggered, then righted herself.

  "I'm fine, Mama. The ground broke my fall."

  The two children stuck their head out from behind their mother's skirts and giggled.

  The young blonde winked at them.

  "Honestly, climbing trees at your age, what will the neighbors think?"

  Esther shrugged and brushed back her honey-colored hair. "If I was a boy, you'd let me climb."

  "You are not a boy...oh, if your father was here. I'd have him spank you, old maid of twenty-two or not."

  "I'm not an old maid," Esther cried. "You have to be twenty-five at least to be a spinster. I'm merely considering my offers." Pulling her two siblings out from behind her mother, Esther set off in the direction of the house, her complaining mother in tow.

  "You have no offers, according to your father."

  "I know Mr. Miller asked for me." Esther dipped and caught up an apple, walking while she polished it against her dress.

  "That was three months ago, and your father turned him down firsthand."

  "Well," Esther said, biting into the apple. "I can hardly keep up with every suitor."

  Her mother sighed. A pity her eldest had been a girl, blessed with a quick mind and a sharp tongue, strong will, then pretty green eyes and long shining hair. The good boys she found too slow, the sharp ones too ugly, and the successful ones she challenged to live as Jesus and give all their money to the poor.

  One disgruntled mill owner had stormed out of dinner, telling Mr. Richardson his daughter was a radical.

  Her poor mother remembered all this, and drew in a big breath. "At fifteen, I met your father..."

  "...and married a week later, I know, I know. You always told me you should've waited." Esther threw her arm around her short mother who was breathing hard, trying to keep up with her daughter's strides. "Anyway, Mark Spencer said he would take me."

  "Heavens, no," her mother said, thinking of the town hooligan. Handsome, to be sure, but just the other day Doctor Whitney had treated a poor beggar who claimed Mr. Spencer's fine buggy had run him off the road.

  "What use have I for a husband, anyway?" They approached the house, and Esther threw her apple core into the midden. "Most men smell bad and think that books are for propping open doors. I want a scholar. Someone who wants to travel the world with me and see strange things and talk to different peoples. I want to see the world."

  "Oh, Esther." Her mother groaned and wished, not for the first time, that her eldest had been a boy.

  *****

  At dinner that night, her mother told Esther's father of her afternoon escapade. Her father frowned over his spectacles but said nothing until his wife had turned away to fuss over a younger child.

  "My dear daughter, what am I to do with you?"

  "Nothing, Papa. I just needed solitude."

  Her father looked over the rowdy dinner table,
filled with his eleven children and shrieking wife. "I understand. You need to leave home, get away. I thought seminary would settle you, but you seem more restless than ever."

  "I just want to do something." Esther leaned in, face shining. "All the things I studied, all the knowledge I gained, I want to use it."

  He shook his head. "You should've been a man. Then at least I could set you up in a parish."

  "I don't want to settle here. I want to adventure."

  "Well, until then, no more climbing trees. You give your mother a scare." Her father pushed away from the table and stood with a sigh.

  Esther rose with him. "Let me help you to your study, Papa."

  "No, no." He waved her away. "I have some important business to go over. And under no circumstances are you to come in and snoop among my papers. Don't think I don't know that you snuck in to read about the Abolitionists when I was gone." His finger waggled in her face, but there was a twinkle in his eye.

  *****

  The moon hung bright and shining in the sky when the tree next to the Richardson's house started shaking softy.

  Esther wriggled out onto a branch to a half open window. Grunting, she got it open and dropped into her father's study, right behind his big desk. There was still some oil in the lamp, and she lit it quickly, glancing around her favorite room in the house. Tonight, the books held no interest for her.

  Sifting through her father's papers, Esther found three newspapers, as new as last week, and set them aside. As she did, a letter fluttered to the floor. Picking it up, she read the solicitation from the American Mission Board to her father for funds, and had an idea.

  It took the rest of the night, but by dawn she had a perfectly penned letter to the Board, introducing herself as a single woman of Baldwin, Maine, and offering to carry their cause West.

  "I cannot send money," she wrote, "but I am a pious woman, hardworking and true, who wishes to do God's work. Please consider sending me to preach the good news to the people of the frontier."

  *****

  She mailed the letter, and when fall turned to winter and winter into spring without a response, she forgot about it.

  Which is why, when one late afternoon she was dressing for dinner, she looked up in surprise at the sound of horses. Two men rode into the yard, one familiar and white-haired, and the other a stranger—young and very, very tall.

  She recognized one as the local doctor and turned to her next youngest sister. "Mattie? Are any of the others ill?"

  "No," her younger sister answered, hustling to the window. "Why would old Dr. Whitney be coming today?"

  "He must want to meet with Father." Esther scrambled to take off her work frock and replace it with a new one, a rich purple that she wore only to church.

  "Esther?"

  "What is it, Mattie?" The blonde stood in front of the mirror, fixing her hair.

  "Who's the other rider? The tall man?" Mattie stayed peering out of the window.

  "Perhaps his apprentice?"

  "He doesn't look like an apprentice."

  Tripping over her skirts, Esther flew back to the window in time to catch a glimpse of the tall man with brown hair and dark brows. The stranger was younger than his fellow rider, but probably around thirty. He wore a dark jacket and suit that Esther could tell was very fine—the latest fashion according to the newspapers from Boston.

  "But so tall. He may not fit in the door," Esther murmured, and left Mattie craning to see if this was so, while Esther went back to the mirror to finish putting in her hair pins.

  "Esther?" Her mother called up the stairs, just as young William arrived at the top of them, breathless.

  "You're wanted in the parlor," he told his older sister.

  "What? Why her?" Mattie started from the window, but before she reached the door, Esther shut it firmly.

  The blonde took the front stairs so as to avoid the kitchen, where her mother would surely be waiting to lecture her. After sending William back, Esther paused on the landing to peer into the parlor.

  The two men stood in the receiving room. Old Dr. Whitney looked his usual grizzled self, so Esther barely spared him a glance. Her eyes were all on the stranger—taller than her by almost a foot. Another few inches and his brown hair would touch the ceiling. Up close he looked younger, probably in his late twenties, but he stood with assurance of a much older man. He had a lean face and dark, forbidding brows.

  A rustle of her skirts betrayed her, and the strange man's head whipped around. Esther met his gaze boldly, and made her way down the steps, her head held high. Once she descended, she sent her smile all around, at ease even in the center of three men's attention.

  "Esther." Her father cleared his throat. "Dr. Whitney is here and he brought along a young man as his guest. Mr. Johnathan Shepherd—excuse me, Doctor Johnathan Shepherd."

  So he was a doctor, too. That still didn't tell her why he was here.

  She dropped a curtsy from her spot on the last stair. "Welcome." If she stood straight, and stayed on the last step, she could almost look the tall stranger in the eye.

  "Miss Richardson." The newcomer's mouth quirked a little, as if he understood what she was doing. For a second she wished she'd thought to put on her green frock, the better to bring out the color of her eyes. At least she was wearing her newest lace gloves.

  "What brings two doctors to our door? Is someone ill?" She feigned worry, widening what Mr. Spencer called her "fine green eyes."

  "No, child," her father sputtered. "They're here for you."

  "Me? But, I assure you, I am feeling quite well."

  At this, the stranger, along with Dr. Whitney, exchanged amused glances. Still, they said nothing, as if waiting to see what else she would do.

  Behind her she could hear her mother in the kitchen ordering Maddie to set another place for dinner. Then a plate crashed to the floor.

  Her father seemed to expect her to say something more, so she smiled broadly at Dr. Whitney. "Would you like to stay for dinner?"

  "I've already invited them," her father said. "It seems there is much to be discussed about your future." He peered at her through his spectacles, a chastising look she recognized well. When she was younger, it would herald a spanking. Now that she was almost twenty-three, her father hadn't had cause to put her across his knee in a long time.

  "My future?" She risked another glance at the tall stranger. He'd fixed dark eyes on her, and with his height, heavy brows and bony face, he should seem threatening. Instead, he looked like he was about to laugh, and she found that intriguing.

  "They're from the American Mission Board," her father said. "They received your letter. The one you sent requesting a missionary post in the West."

  "Oh yes, I remember." She colored a little, realizing her father would've found out one way or another. She shifted a little from foot to foot, wondering if she'd earned a punishment, and hoping her father would wait until the guests were gone before meting it out.

  Now the strange Dr. Shepherd was smiling outright. The happy look transformed his face from a sober, gauntness, to a breathtaking beauty. He really should find a wife, she thought, someone who will love his homely looks and fatten him up.

  Dr. Whitney coughed, and Esther fixed her attention on him. Now both the older doctor and her father seemed to be suppressing a laugh, and it made her cross.

  "What's going on?" she asked.

  To her surprise, Johnathan Shepherd stepped forward to offer the answer. "Miss Richardson, I also wrote to the Mission board, requesting a pastoral position West of Kansas Territory. They agreed, on the condition I take a wife."

  She stared up at him, speechless for the first time in her life.

  "Miss Richardson." He smiled down at her. "I'm here to see if you will consider me for a husband."

  *****

  "I'm sorry, Father," Esther said later that night. "I should've told you about my letter."

  "It's all right, my dear." Her father laid down his bible. "I had hoped yo
u would leave seminary and settle down and marry some Maine farmer. It was selfish of me to want to keep my eldest daughter close."

  She smiled at him.

  "I'll leave any punishment to your future husband," he said. "Do you like the young Dr. Shepherd?"

  Cocking her head to the side, Esther considered it. Once they'd sat down to dinner, she'd barely paid any attention to her new suitor, even though she'd been seated by him on a bench. Instead, she'd plied Dr. Whitney with questions about his travels, as usual. The old man seemed flattered, but kept trying to drive the conversation back to his colleague. It seemed Dr. Whitney had a high opinion of Johnathan Shepherd, who had gone to medical school in Boston, then felt called to seminary. Such a young man to have completed both.

  Esther felt that to become a minister and a doctor before thirty was rather showing off. She herself had gone to seminary, and usually she'd take the opportunity to debate with a fellow graduate. Tonight, however, she ignored Mr. Shepherd entirely, having learned a long time ago how to drive a suitor crazy. Young men, she'd found, were much more interested in the chase than a woman who simpered all over them.

  So all night, she pretended to ignore him, even going so far to sound cold and disinterested when she said goodbye. Again, she noticed the corners of his mouth turning up, as if he was more amused by her behavior than infatuated.

  "Esther," her father called, breaking into her musings. "I asked you if you liked him."

  "I suppose it doesn't matter," she said. "He's a man of God, and he and I are called to the same mission. We both can do a lot of good."

  Her father harrumped. "I would hope to see you settled with a rich young doctor, a man who could keep you in all your pretty dresses and fripperies, and bind you up if you break your bones falling out of trees. But I suppose Dr. Shepherd is someone you could love."