The Bartered Bride
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.
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Table of Contents
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
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Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
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.
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.
