Heart and Hand: Gold Sky Series Read online

  Heart and Hand

  Gold Sky Series

  Rebel Carter

  Violet Gaze Press

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in book reviews.

  Copyright © 2019 Rebel Carter

  Cover Design by Najla Qamber

  Edited by Lena Tudor

  Published by Violet Gaze Press

  20-22 Wenlock Rd

  London

  www.violetgazepress.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Excerpt: Julian’s Story

  Thank You!

  About Rebel Carter

  For Erin, Melody, and the Geriatric Friendship Cult. On the bad days you gave me light and inspired me to keep writing, to keep dreaming, and to see that I had all the strength I ever needed right inside of me.

  July 4th, 1886

  Honest man seeking unorthodox marriage arrangement.

  I am in possession of a ranch of considerable size, totaling nearly 1,000 acres spanning Montana and Wyoming territories, and am a man of substantial means and good reputation. Must be resourceful and, above all, an independent woman. Young lady does not need to be proficient in cooking or housekeeping. Town is in need of a teacher, not a cook. Only a highly educated woman with the patience and mental fortitude to run a schoolhouse will be considered.

  Further details particular to marriage arrangement will be disclosed in future correspondence. Eager to hear from adventurous, open-minded women who are interested.

  Respectfully,

  Forrest Wickes

  PS: All wages earned from teaching will belong solely to young lady.

  Chapter 1

  “Have you heard? Julie means to join a veritable rake in matrimony. He intends to lure her to the wilds of the Montana Territory,” Julian Baptiste III, gentleman about town and heir to the Baptiste fortune, yelled as he skidded across the polished wood floors of the Baptiste family home.

  Julie jerked upright from the letter she had been writing. She barely had time to set her pen down before her twin brother waved a newspaper at her with a swoop of his arm. She frowned, leaping from her chair before he could utter another word.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” She clamped a hand over his mouth. “Are you insane? Just bandying about information like that? What if Papa heard you?”

  Julian’s whiskey-brown eyes widened. He let out a garbled string of speech into Julie’s palm, flapping the newspaper at his side.

  “What?” Julie shook his face with the hand covering his mouth. “What are you saying?”

  Julian rolled his eyes before he reached up and yanked her hand away. “I said, tell me it isn’t true, because your reaction makes me wonder what my sensible sister has done.”

  Julie bit her lip and gave a nervous shrug.

  “Define true.”

  “Oh, God. This is what happens to Vassar girls of a certain age, isn’t it? I never would have expected it from you, dear sister.”

  “You absolute cad.”

  “Perhaps a cad, but a truthful one. Who would have ever pegged me for the honest twin? That’s usually a virtuous woman character trait, which is a you thing.”

  “How do you know what I’ve said isn’t true?” Julie arched an eyebrow, and enjoyed a fleeting moment of triumph when her brother’s mouth dropped open.

  “So then you truly are engaged to be married?” he asked, eyes wide in disbelief.

  “Well, I…” Julie sighed and tucked her hands behind her back with a grimace. “It’s a delicate situation.”

  Julian pointed a finger at her. “What are you hiding from me? Out with it then.”

  “It isn’t polite to point, Julian,” she said primly.

  Undeterred, he pointed all of his fingers at her. “Answer. The. Question.”

  Julie turned away with as much dignity as she could muster. “I guess I should phrase my answer as this: I have accepted Mr. Wickes’s proposal of marriage.”

  Julian gasped. “Who is this man, this Mr. Wickes? He’s real? Where did you even meet him? The library? All you do is read.”

  Julie tittered nervously. “Funny you should say that.”

  Her brother continued to stare at her like she had gone mad. He blew out a sigh through his nose. “Julie…”

  “I haven’t met him. I read a...newspaper article.”

  “Dare I guess this article was featured in a matrimonial publication?”

  “Well, yes...”

  Julian put his fingers to the bridge of his nose and massaged the tender spot. “You have no reason to marry a stranger. Is the city boring you? Why don’t we take a trip to Europe? Perhaps Spain? You adore Spain.”

  “This isn’t about being bored.” Julie stopped short and tapped her chin in thought. “However, now that you raise the issue, perhaps it is.” She nodded at him, her long curls bouncing. “I think you’re right. I was unchallenged here. There really are only so many dresses I can be fitted for, or operas I can attend. I want to do more than that. I want to be challenged by life, Julian.”

  “No one gets married out of boredom, Julie.” Her brother paused and flung his hands out. “I’ll admit there are matches made foolishly, but that isn’t the type of woman you are. If you’re feeling restless, may I suggest taking up a hobby? Needlework, for instance, has been lauded as an exemplary way of keeping young ladies busy.”

  “I haven’t the patience for something so tedious, you know that.”

  Julian let out a deep sigh, the kind particular to long-aggrieved brothers the world over. “Then learn to gamble, by God. Anything but get married. Is this because you feel a need to nurture something? Shall I get you a kitten? A macaw, perhaps? I hear they have ungodly long lifespans.”

  “Julian, it’s time that I move on. I’m an o—”

  “Old? What? You are only 21, which is a perfectly suitable age to be unattached.”

  Julie crossed her arms. “Old? How do you mean?”

  “Wasn’t that what you were...” Julian bit his lip and rocked back on his heels. “Umm, about to say?” he finished weakly.

  “No,” Julie burst out with a glare. “I was saying that I am an out-of-work teacher. I am serving no purpose here in the city.”

  “Oh.” Julian laughed and then nodded along, looking relieved. “Out of work, yes, yes. Not old. Certainly not, my darling baby sister.”

  “By three minutes.”

  “And what a world of difference those three minutes have made.” Julian winked at her.

  It was true that he was the embodiment of an older brother. Protective, teasing, and always, always in command of his surroundings. In that manner, Julian was very like their father, while Julie took after their mother. She made careful decisions, observed rather than participated, and preferred the fantasy of books over the crowded ballrooms and salons of the New York’s haut monde.

  No matter how Julie tried there always seemed to be a disconnect between herself and her peers. By all rights, she should be, as her brother was, secure in fortune, looks, and charisma. But for Julie, her place within the Four Hundred was a different experience. She wasn’t the simpering debutante or heiress society expected her to be. And though
it would have made her life simpler, Julie wouldn’t change for anything.

  Her father, Jean Baptiste, who had fought for the Union in the War between the States, had met her mother, Manon Greene, on a dusty road somewhere between Richmond and Atlanta. Manon was a stunning woman, the product of French Creole and enslaved parentage. Jean and Manon had been married by the company chaplain, and her mother had remained by her father’s side every moment until the war had blessedly ended.

  Julie and Julian had been born a mere five months later.

  Since childhood, the Baptiste twins’ place in New York had been comfortable and secure with only moments of what her father referred to as “that ugliness” laying itself bare. Julian navigated their social sphere with the adeptness of a crown prince, but Julie drew into herself, her dark eyes observing from her place on the sidelines. In another world she could have been the debutante society expected, but that was a world in which her heritage didn’t cause her to exist at the frayed edges of blue blood lineage, where she didn’t stand with one foot in high society and the other planted on the red dirt of a Georgia road.

  By all accounts, Julie and Julian were happy, well-respected, and considered the cream of society by the social pages. It was hard for them not to be with their striking looks: all tawny skin, dark eyes, high cheekbones, and curly dark hair. The considerable Baptiste family fortune, link to the Spanish throne, and vast land holdings all helped.

  Or vexed, really. It depended on which Baptiste twin you asked, considering how hard Julie had tried to remain a wallflower through her formative years. It was all in vain, for she was a beauty, and there was no corner dark enough, no potted ficus tall enough, no dress hideous enough to hide her from the city’s eligible bachelors.

  She had enrolled at Vassar College and reveled in the refuge it provided her. But all good things come to an end and now, at 21, Julie was once again forced to participate in society’s most elite gatherings. And thus Julie had pitifully examined her future: a future full of days spent with men and women she couldn’t connect with, all the while feeling inadequate in her social failings.

  Unless she was married.

  Then she couldn’t possibly be expected to attend every ball and opera, now could she? At the thought she had sat up so suddenly in the carriage that her mother had offered her a snifter of brandy to calm her nerves, but Julie had declined, her mind already putting together a plan to catch a husband.

  But not any husband. He had to be a man who valued intelligence, freedom, and resourcefulness. A man who wished his wife to be independent. A man wholly uninterested in her family’s money or status.

  But where could she find a man such as that? Julie hated having to utilize the one venue society expected her to cheerfully pursue, but what she hated even more was trotting out, powdered and primped, in front of the same men she had known since diapers.

  How to secure an introduction to a man without the social pages splashing it across the headlines was another matter. Stumped by the problem of meeting her future-egalitarian-kind-educated-perhaps-also-mildly-attractive-husband, she found salvation when she lucked upon the Heart and Hand Matrimonial Times.

  She had almost discarded it as the maid’s afternoon reading, but a cursory glance of the newspaper had her reconsidering. Here was a veritable feast of men in search of wives. And so Julie had sat down and poured over the paper, and every subsequent issue she could get her hands on. And then she had found Mr. Forrest Wickes’s advert. It seemed nearly perfect in every way.

  Julie had written Mr. Wickes as soon as she was able and had waited anxiously for his first response. Thankfully, it had come far faster than she had expected. The two had fallen into a comfortable pattern of letter-writing.

  It was in those letter exchanges that the unthinkable happened. Against her better judgment she fell head-over-petticoats for Forrest Wickes.

  When he had proposed marriage to her after their sixth month of correspondence, she hadn’t been able to get her answer in the post fast enough. The ink had still been damp when she rushed her letter to the post only an hour after she had read Forrest’s succinct but heartful entry to her.

  I have fallen completely and wholly under your spell. If you find it agreeable, I ask for your hand in marriage.

  Four months had passed since then, and now Julian’s innate ability to disrupt any and all of her careful plans had surfaced, just when she had begun finalizing plans for her move to Gold Sky, a small town in the Montana Territory.

  To be fair, she had wondered when this moment would occur.

  “How did you find out?” Julie asked, putting her hands on her hips.

  “This,” Julian said, holding up the newspaper he had entered the parlor with. “It’s plastered from here to Gramercy Park.”

  Julie balked but said nothing, snatching the paper from her brother. She almost fainted when she read the headline.

  Heiress succumbs to desperation! Joins the mail-order craze!

  “Who intercepted my letters to Forrest? And I am not desperate,” Julie screeched. Immediately she made a mental note to begin an investigation to find the culprit and, upon succeeding, to exact a fitting retribution. Though she wasn’t sure what that would entail, she was certain there was a book or handy manual she could reference. “Of all the foul-mouthed things to call a lady! Desperate!”

  Julian steepled his fingers and considered her. “Are you…particularly sure on that assessment?”

  Julie glared at her brother and strode toward the fire. “Quite,” she said, throwing the newspaper into the flames with more force than necessary. “I just...well, I’m not desperate. I’m in love.”

  “What?”

  “When I looked to the Heart and Hand publication, I was looking for a way to be free, nothing more. I didn’t intend to fall in love, but it seems fate had different plans.”

  “You’re a few heads removed from the Spanish throne. How much more free should you like to be, Julie Anne?”

  “I’m not like you, Julian.” Julie sighed and ran her hands over her skirts with a frown. “I am not made for the Four Hundred. You are and you do it so well, but me...” She wrung her hands. “I tried, but I was never more happy than at Vassar in pursuit of my studies. I thought that if I found a man who would be content to allow me to do as I liked, then I could be happy.”

  “Oh, Julie.” Julian sighed, but his sister held up a hand and continued on.

  “That was when I found a matrimonial times, you see? I found the most sensible one... Forrest, er, Mr. Wickes.” Julie blushed and then swallowed at saying his name out loud. “I only meant to see if he was as agreeable as his advert made him out to be, and he was.”

  “And then you fell in love with him.”

  “Yes,” Julie said, lifting her eyes to her meet his gaze, “I did.”

  “And you mean to marry this man? Where are you even going? The newspaper said Wyoming, but that can’t be right. Please, tell me that isn’t right.”

  “No, not Wyoming.”

  Julian let out a relieved sigh. “Thank God.”

  “I’m going to the Montana Territory.”

  Julian let out a strangled cry. “That’s very nearly as bad. It’s absolutely primitive. Are sure I can’t talk you into a summer in Paris? Madrid?”

  Julie smiled at her brother. “No. No Paris.”

  “But—”

  “I’m marrying him. He will make me happy.”

  At that, Julian paused and gave his sister an assessing look. It was one that they had often shared over the years. Julie knew it was particular to them, because for all their differences they were as close as siblings could be. She met his gaze with as unwavering a look as she could manage, knowing that her brother would see the truth of her affections for Mr. Wickes there.

  After another moment of silence, Julian let out a groan.

  “You do love him.”

  “Of course. Why on earth would I be marrying him if I did not? I will admit that I am,” she sa
id, waving a hand, “behaving out of character.” Julian snorted at that but she continued with a glare. “But this is, he is, what I want.”

  “I've often heard Vassar girls are pernicious at best but now I believe it,” Julian said, but he smiled at her. Julie’s lips quirked up and she laughed.

  “Are they now?”

  “Yes, but they are also blessed with true and stalwart brothers who care deeply for their well-being.”

  “I have heard that.” Julie reached out, taking her brother’s hand in her hers.

  He squeezed hers. “Mother and father will try to stop you.”

  “I know.”

  Julian sighed at her and touched her cheek. “I will help you carry out your foolhardy plan, of course.”

  “I expected nothing less,” Julie replied and hugged her brother.

  “When do you leave?” he asked, resting his chin against the top of her head.

  “Three months.” She tucked her cheek against his, breathing in his familiar scent.

  Julian sighed, his breath warm against her forehead. “You are a truly perfect example of a Vassar girl.”

  “Thank you, brother.”

  “You’re welcome, sister.”

  That night, with Julian at her side, Julie braved the task of informing her parents of her decision to marry and move west. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it wasn’t the calm reception her parents had given her. Her family wasn't prone to angry outbursts, but she was sure they would have much to talk about over breakfast the next morning, once the revelation had sunk in. They loved her and she them, and hopefully that love would sway their opinion when they came to the same conclusion Julian had about her affection for Mr. Wickes.