Pieces of Dreams Read online

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First edition published by Berkley Publishing Group

  “The Quilting Circle” Anthology

  1996

  Second edition published by Berkley Publishing Group

  “With Love” Anthology

  2002

  Third edition by Steel Magnolia Press

  2012

  Copyright © 1996 by Patricia Maxwell

  Cover Design by LFD Designs For Authors

  Praise for the Author

  “Jennifer Blake…a master story teller.”

  ~Long and Short of It Reviews

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  “Jennifer Blake is a veteran of the romance novel industry, and it shows. She definitely knows how to write a…romance!”

  ~Reader to Reader.com

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  “Blake’s writing style remains the standard in historic romance; lyrical, effortless and a delight to readers who savor the subtlety of prose.”

  ~Amazon.com

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  “…a master writer.”

  ~Harriet Klausner

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  “Ms. Blake’s storytelling brush paints a picture for the mind’s eye that is both strikingly clear and true to life…truly a Master of her craft.”

  ~A Romance Review

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  “I look forward, as always, to further creations by this wonderful author.”

  ~Genre Go Round Reviews

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  “She builds a strong background, creates three-dimensional characters and weaves sexual tension into a lively love story.”

  ~RT Book Reviews Magazine, 4.5 Stars Review

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  “The prose is like butter, and it is very hard to stop reading! I loved the descriptions and the skill Blake has to bring her reader into this medieval world.”

  ~Heather Hiestand

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  “Each of her carefully researched novels evokes a long-ago time so beautifully that you are swept up into every detail of her memorable story.

  ~RT Book Reviews

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  “Blake…has rightly earned the admiration and respect of her readers. They know there is a world of enjoyment waiting within the pages of her books.”

  ~A Romance Review

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  “Jennifer Blake is a beloved writer of romance—the pride and care she takes in her creations shines through.”

  ~Romance Reviews Today

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  “…another satisfying read by the Incomparable, Jennifer Blake”

  ~A Romance Review

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  Chapter One

  Amelia Bennington glanced up from her stitching as the steam whistle of the J. B. Cates blasted one last time from the landing at the end of Main Street. The steamboat was leaving, finished with the stop for Good Hope on its regular run from New Orleans to St. Louis and beyond. It had made a fairly long halt this evening. There must have been a team of Missouri mules to be loaded or maybe a passenger to be put off.

  None of the other young women sitting around the quilting frame suspended from the ceiling by grass ropes was paying the least attention to the boat. As Melly looked around at her friends in the glow of the lamplight and listened to their low, laughing voices she felt the sudden rise of emotion. They were all so dear. She wanted to remember this evening for the rest of her life, every last detail: the steamboat's musical warning, the bumbling of moths and gnats about the hot lamp globes, the smell of the fresh-made lemonade served by Aunt Dora to ward off the late August heat, the scents of thyme and basil and roses wafting from the front garden through the open windows.

  Soon it would all change. She would become Caleb's wife, and nothing would ever be the same again.

  The waves of her thick, dark hair caught the lamplight as she allowed her gaze to rest one by one on the four friends who had been such a large part of her life—the four who would be her bridesmaids. Green-eyed Esther Montgomery with her strong face softened by incredibly long lashes and her forthright, common sense views on everything from female suffrage to the best way to make wax posies. Lydia McDougall, tall, auburn-haired, with her tendency toward the dramatic, her warm temper, and her warmer heart. Barbara Zane of the doll-like, china-blue eyes and ash brown curls, known to all as Biddy because she was as petite and aggressive as a bantam chick. And Sarah Franks, Melly's second cousin, serene and statuesque as some ancient Greek earth goddess, with silvery-blonde hair and Mediterranean-blue eyes, always doing for others, especially her father and three brothers. Of all the friends Melly had known from childhood, these four were truly special.

  It had been a blessing to be near them as she was growing up, Melly thought, sharing their problems and heartaches as they had shared hers. Three near-spinsters and a widow—the fact they were all over twenty and without husbands had made them unusually close.

  It was the natural order of things that they would marry, change, and grow apart; Melly knew that. She was anxious to be wed, to go with Caleb to the farm he was building for the two of them outside town; of course she was. But at the same time, she could not help feeling a little blue, and even a tiny bit fearful.

  Leaving her needle standing upright in the thickness made of two layers of cloth on either side of fluffy cotton batting, she smoothed slender fingers over the silken surface of the quilt top on which they were all working. There was so much love, so many hopes and dreams sewn into it.

  The center square was in a starburst design that she herself had pieced over the winter and spring just past. Put together with the scraps left after making her wedding gown of pearl-colored oriental silk, it also incorporated pieces of silk and satin in various shades of blue remaining from the dresses made for her bridesmaids. In the center of the starburst was a Greek cross with four equal arms. Across the center Melly had used gold thread and looping Spenserian script to embroider her wedding date: September 10, 1843. She’d inscribed her initials in the arm above it, with Caleb's in the one below. The squares set around this focal point, in a star design with a diagonal cross, had been pieced from the silk and satin dress scraps by Melly's Aunt Dora, the woman who had raised her after the steamboat accident that killed her parents. Then each of the four corner squares had been done by a bridesmaid, and featured diagonal bars embroidered with their names and a small sentiment or token of remembrance.

  Though they all called it a Friendship Quilt among themselves, it was far more to Melly. Wedding present, house-warming gift, treasured keepsake, it was a shimmering work of art and a lovely reminder of her friends and everything they had meant to each other. More than that, it was a symbol of everything that she would soon become.

  Two weeks from this very night, she would walk down the aisle of the church in her gown of rich, flowing silk. Afterward, she would drive away with Caleb. In the house he was building for her with sweat and the toil of loving hands, the two of them would truly become man and wife.

  How strange to think that it would be upon her in just a matter of days. The waiting of their three-year engagement had been so long that it had sometimes seemed it would never end.

  “Melly's daydreaming again, girls.” Esther Montgomery, seated at the lower right corner of the frame, made the accusation with a quick glance from her soft green eyes. “Just look at her blush. Two guesses what's on her mind.”

  “Nothing of the kind!” Melly said in laughing indignation, though she could not help the darker flush whose heat rose to her face.

  What would it be like, really, to be a wife? What would she and Caleb say to each other, what would they do, once they were alone together? How would they find their way past the embarrassment of undressing and getting into bed?

  Yes, and what, precisely, would happen then?

  Melly thought she had a glimmering from the few comments she had overheard between Aunt Dora and her bosom cronies. It seemed all too likely that this physical union would be awkward. Yet from it would come the mingling of their two souls, hers and Caleb's, as well as the birth of their children. Caleb was a good man, level-headed, kind, gentle; she would have to trust that his love and her own common sense would see her through the ordeal.

  “And why shouldn't she be thinking about it?” Sarah Franks asked with her usual protective instinct. “Caleb Wells is handsome enough to make anybody's heart beat faster.”

  “As if she would dwell on such a thing!” Biddy, used to making herself heard above the hubbub of a one-room school in her job as a teacher, had no trouble speaking over the other girl's voice. “Melly's more likely contemplating how to decorate her new parlor.”

  Esther made a disparaging noise, but Melly seized on the suggestion. “That's exactly what I was doing, thinking how nice it would be to display our quilt for visitors to see. I could fold it over a bench—or maybe hang it like a tapestry if I can persuade Caleb to make some kind of support for it.”

  “If?” Sarah said with lifted brows. “You know Caleb would cut off his arm and hand it to you if he thought you wanted it.”

  “Oh, Sarah, don't be disgusting,” Biddy said.

  “Well, he would!”

  “Sarah's right.” Lydia McDougall joined in with a nod that made her auburn curls dance. “Do you recall the time Caleb took off his coat and laid it across a puddle so Melly wouldn't get her new shoes mu
ddy? That was years ago, when she was hardly more than twelve or thirteen.”

  “I thought that was Conrad,” Esther said, referring to the twin brother of Melly's fiancé.

  “I'll have to say it sounds the kind of thing Conrad would do,” Sarah Franks said with a thoughtful look in her rich turquoise eyes. “He did have a gallant way about him.”

  “Still does, I'd say,” Esther agreed. “Just look at the way he sent the silk for Melly's wedding dress. Amazing, to think of him picking out such lovely stuff in far-off Cathay and sent it all the way across the sea.”

  “It would have been more to the point if he had brought it himself,” Biddy said. “And come to his brother's wedding.”

  “A ship’s captain in the China tea trade can't do just what he wants, Biddy.” Sarah’s tone was one of quiet reason.

  “Anyway,” Lydia said, “I know Caleb gave Melly his piece of apple pie at the last home-coming at the church because I saw him.”

  “Yes, and he gave her his hat to use for a fan at the revival the other night when it was so stifling hot we were all about to swoon.”

  “I forgot my fan,” Melly said. “And Caleb said he didn't care for the apple pie.”

  Sarah laughed. “Well, that was a bold-faced lie, because I saw your Aunt Dora put a piece big enough for two men on his plate not ten minutes before.”

  “No wonder he was so generous, then!” Lydia's golden-brown eyes sparkled as she spoke.

  “Anybody who works as hard as Caleb needs a lot of nourishment,” Sarah said soothingly. “It was still good of him to give up a treat for Melly.”

  Esther waved her needle in Sarah's direction. “You ask me, he works too hard. He used to be a lot of fun, back before Conrad went off to sea. Now he's turning into a drudge without two words to say for himself.”

  “Don't you think that's natural?” Melly looked across the quilt with an earnest smile in her dark eyes. “Caleb has a lot on his mind with the farm, the new house, and the responsibilities ahead of him.”

  “All I'm saying is, you'd think he'd act happier about the whole thing.”

  Melly had to agree that Caleb had been rather solemn of late. Still, he had always been known as the steadfast, dependable twin; that was his strength. She said, “He's happy in his own way, I'm sure of it. He's just quieter about it than … well, than Conrad used to be.”

  “Who wants cookies with the next round of lemonade?”

  That cheerful call came from the doorway leading from the back of the house into the front parlor where they were working. It was Aunt Dora, bustling in with a platter of gingersnaps in one hand and a new pitcher of frothy lemonade in the other. Her gray-streaked blonde hair curled in wiry tendrils from the bun on top of her head and her round face was flushed from the heat of the outdoor kitchen where she had been baking in the relative cool of the evening. She set her burdens down on a side table and wiped her hands on her apron, then began to refill glasses.

  “Did I hear somebody mention Conrad? Mercy me, but that boy was a scamp! Enough to give trouble a bad name, he was, but such a charmer that a body really hadn't the heart to scold. I recall the time he put a bucket of water up the apple tree outside my window so Mr. Prine got a regular drenching when he came prowling around on Saturday night. Dampened the man's ardor for a good two weeks, it did!”

  Mr. Seymour Prine was a long-time resident at the boarding house run by Melly's aunt. He was also a suitor of many years standing. But as the Widow Bennington had a fierce dislike of indulgence in strong liquor, so long as Mr. Seymour got drunk every Saturday night, the pair seemed destined to remain apart. It was a shame, really. Mr. Prine was as quiet and pleasant-spoken a gentleman as anyone could expect from Monday through Friday: neat and clean in his habits, angular of frame, with upright posture and a fine head of silver hair, highly respected as a teller at the bank down on Main Street. But on Saturday night he wended his way to the riverfront saloons. There he had a few, then a few more. By midnight he was back at the boarding house outside Aunt Dora's window, where he stood with his hat held over his heart while he spouted stanza after endless stanza of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám—with special emphasis on those parts concerning wine and amorous dalliance. Aunt Dora was scandalized. Or pretended to be.

  “Poor Mr. Prine,” Sarah said.

  “Poor Mr. Prine, my eye!” Aunt Dora set a fist on her ample hip. “The idiot man just stood there dripping and moaning about drowning his glory in a shallow cup!”

  Esther winked at Melly as she joined Sarah in teasing the older woman. “But only think how faithful he's been.”

  “Yes, and think of how convenient it is that his bed and his lady-love are in the same place.”

  A wicked smile tilted Esther's wide, mobile mouth. “Dear me, Aunt Dora, you don't mean—”

  “I do not!” the older woman fumed, her blue eyes snapping. “Which is a fact you know very well, Miss Priss! It will be a cold day in Hades before that whiskey-soaked galoot winds up in my bed. The very idea! I've a good mind to take my gingersnaps straight back to the kitchen.”

  “No, no, don't do that, dear Aunt Dora,” Lydia cried. “You know she didn't mean anything.”

  “What Lydia is trying to say,” Melly interpreted with a laugh, “is that she's starving, as usual. I'm sure everyone will be nice as you please in return for a cookie.”

  “Well, that's all and good, but it's a man she should be trying to please, along with all the rest of you.”

  “Like you?” Esther inquired, the picture of innocence as she met the older woman's gaze.

  “I had a man once, God rest his soul, and don't need another one.”

  “Nor I,” Biddy said in near inaudible tones.

  There was a brief and sympathetic silence. They were all well aware that Biddy's young husband had been struck by lightning as he plowed in the field only months after they were wed. That had been over two years ago, but she still wore black.

  Then there was Sarah. Though she never spoke of it, and did not now, she had also lost her man. She and a young carpenter named Theodore Frazier had been engaged a few years back, but Theo had stepped on a nail while repairing a barn and died, agonizingly, of lockjaw. Since then, Sarah had devoted herself to her father and brothers, and to nurturing her roses and herbs and her flock of chickens.

  “Yes, well,” Aunt Dora said, clearing her throat. “You're all still young and prime for loving, regardless, and there's no reason you shouldn't find it like Melly here.” Her eyes took on a sudden brightness. Abruptly, she turned and set down her pitcher. “Hold on, now. You've just put me in mind of a way to maybe help things along. I'll be right back!” Her skirts jerked and swayed as she bustled off in the direction of the kitchen.

  The young women looked at each other, mystified and a little wary. Melly pushed her chair back from the quilting frame and rose to fetch the cookie platter. “I don't know what Aunt Dora's up to,” she said as she began to pass them around, “but we can't let good gingersnaps go to waste while we find out, now can we?”

  She was back in her chair, brushing cookie crumbs from her mouth while leaning carefully away from the quilt top, when her aunt returned. As she saw the kitten in the older woman's arms her brows lifted. Aunt Dora paid no attention.

  “All right, ladies, gather close around the quilting frame now, and push all the needles through and underneath out of the way,” the older woman called with a wave of her free hand. “What we're going to try is a tradition handed down from my grannie, one that maybe came from the old country in years gone by. The saying goes that if you drop a cat onto the quilt frame at a quilting bee, then the girl it runs to will be the next to marry. Yes, and the first man through the door will be her groom.”

  “But that's not a cat, only one of Vanilla's kittens,” Melly protested.

  “Looks mighty like a cat to me,” Aunt Dora said, holding the mewling kitten up to her face and rubbing noses affectionately. “Besides, a big one like Vanilla might claw the silk, and we can't have that. Now ladies, are you ready?”

  Esther tilted her head. “What if the first man through the door should be Mr. Prine?”