A Chance of Love: Sweet Grove Stories, #2

By Emily Murdoch

Katherine Morrison's elopement at 16 ended badly – and there's only one occupation for a fallen woman in 1841.

 

Too ashamed to return to her family and too destitute to avoid the work that shames her, she puts her faith in the Lord that he will save her from her own mistakes. But when a customer collapses before her work is done, she has a chance of returning back to the life that she wanted.

But that life is gone. Her sister Elizabeth has moved on, and Thomas Bryant has his own agenda. He's fallen for the delicate yet fierce woman who seems to have a past that even he cannot untangle. When a chance letter reveals the location of Katherine's sister at Thomas' family orchard, they cannot help but grasp at the opportunity to find their families again.

 

Could the chances that continue to come their way be more than just coincidence? And can either of them find any happiness in the lives that they have chosen?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emily Murdoch
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201962142

Emily Murdoch

Emily Murdoch is a writer, a poet and a lover of books. There's never a time she's without a book. Her debut novel, If You Find Me, released in 2013 to global high praise and critical acclaim through St. Martin's Griffin and Orion/Indigo UK. If You Find Me, a Carnegie Medal 2014 longlister and a Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2014 finalist, has earned starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, and School Library Journal; is a Young Adult Library Services (YALSA) Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA) selection of 2014; was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice for June 2013; an Irish Times Editors’ Pick for 2013; an Editor’s Pick for UK’s The Bookseller 2013; a Booklist Youth Editors' Choice for 2013; and a Booklist Top Ten Pick of 2014. If You Find Me has also been nominated and included in numerous state awards/high school master reading lists, amongst those in: SC, TX, KY, RI, PA, WI, OR, DE, CT, SD, NH, OK, VT, and AR. If You Find Me was also a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards Best Books of 2013 in the Best Debut Author and Best Young Adult Fiction categories, and was a finalist for the German Children's Literature Prize 2015, along with a finalist for the German Buxeholder Bulle Award 2015. If You Find Me has been translated and published in Canada, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Brazil, Hungary, Turkey, and Vietnam, as well as in Braille. When she's not reading or writing, you'll find Emily caring for her horses, dogs and family on a ranch in rural Arizona, where the desert's tranquil beauty and rich wildlife often enter into her poetry and writing. Emily's other passion is saving equines from slaughter. She uses her writing to raise awareness of this inhumane practice, with the goal of ending the slaughter of America's horses and burros through transport to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. She provides sanctuary to abused and slaughter-saved equines who dazzle her daily with their gentle gratitude in exchange for security, consistency, food and love. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Emily hopes her penchant for writing will do just that. All-in-all, she's a lefty in a right-handed world, writing her way through life and smearing ink wherever she writes.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The night was hot, and sticky, and yet Katherine Morrison’s work was not complete.

Just five minutes, she pleaded through the half open door as she struggled to re-tie her corset in the sweltering heat. Her fingers fumbled as her eyes dragged themselves open, heavy with tiredness. Five minutes, Madam, is all I need and I shall be quite suitable for another . . . guest.

Corset finally tied, she sat up straight on the large double bed occupying the majority of the room, and her sweeping gaze took in the shoes untidily piled along one wall, the countless shawls hung over a chair in the far corner, and the five dollars her previous guest had left on the dressing table.

A whole dollar over her asking price, and Madam Nancy had not seen it yet. What were the chances? Katherine tiptoed across the room, expecting her last gentleman of the night at any moment, and slipped the extra dollar into a secret compartment behind the looking glass. You never know when you are going to need an extra dollar.

The movement drew her attention to the reflection, and she winced. The last five years had certainly not been kind to her; there were lines where laughter used to be, and the borrowed finery adorning her neck covered more than one bruise. Her lips curled downwards where they once sprung up into joy easily, and there was a darkness, a sadness furrowing her forehead.

He will be with you directly!

The voice didn’t seem to emanate from anywhere, but Katherine knew Madam Nancy was hollering at the bottom of the staircase. The old rickety house she made her place of business was three floors high, and the room allotted to Katherine was at the very top.

Katherine swallowed. She was sore from the night’s activities, and the last thing she wanted was another client. Surely she had earned peace and quiet?

But five minutes rest, and I shall be ready.

She should have expected the response from Madam Nancy, but Katherine had hoped – but not a chance. The loud footsteps echoed throughout the place, and instinctively she returned to the bed, placing herself on it with as much decorum as she could muster before the door was flung open.

You are ready when I say you are ready, spat the overweight Madam. I did not take you in for nothing, my girl; you are here to work, not to lie about like a lady of leisure.

Katherine swallowed, and then raised herself as though she had the importance she was attempting to portray. I understand, Madam Nancy. I merely wished to undertake a short toilette, to ensure I was perfect for my next gentleman.

The two women stared at each other; one, over fifty, sweltering unpleasantly in the heat of the night, dressed in the fashions of the 1820s with a slight rip along one sleeve; the other, vacating her teenage years and dressed in the most opulent of the modern 1840s fashions, silks and ruffles and pearls.

If anyone had been viewing this exchange, they would have guessed instantly which way the force of the argument would go, and they would have been correct.

Very well. Madam Nancy spoke curtly, but inclined her head as she dropped in a half curtsey. I shall give you fifteen minutes – no more, mind. He is already downstairs, and he has asked for my best. Count yourself lucky you have remained the best on my books, despite that you have been here for three years. It is not 1838 no more, my girl. You may find that in 1841, you find yourself out of a situation.

Skirts rustled as she tried to sweep out of the room dramatically, but she caught sight of the money on the dressing table, and scooped up four of the dollars.

And be nice to him, she added as she slammed the door behind her.

Katherine stared. Be nice to him? She was about to bare her body, bare her very soul to him, and her Madam advised her to ‘be nice’?

Shame, a common emotion for Katherine Morrison, flooded through her, and the heat of the night seemed to return with full force. To think she had come to this; a prostitute in a Madam’s house, scrabbling to save five or six dollars a day when her board cost her that much – and for what? Where did she think she could go?

And yet time had been afforded her now, and she took it. When your time, your body can belong to a man, any man who has four dollars, you start to appreciate the time you have alone.

The dressing table had a small basin with a ewer beside it, and Katherine sank into the chair before it and dipped the waiting sponge into the water. It held the cool of the night, and pressing it to her temples brought such calming relief, a smile nearly surfaced.

This was not the life she had imagined. A sad smile crept over her face as the memory of Mr Gilman swam through her mind. Goodness, but life could have been different if . . .

Unbidden, she flinched. Well, it was no matter. When an elopement ends badly, there is but one occupation for a fallen woman. Now she was too ashamed to return to her family, and too destitute to avoid the work that shamed her.

Oh, but she hated herself – hated what she had become. This was not the life she had been raised to, and her older sister no doubt had long moved on, making an excellent marriage herself. Sometimes, in the darkest of nights when a man had just left her with insults on his tongue and a raised fist, she thought about Elizabeth; she was probably living in San Antonio, with their grandparents. When Kitty Morrison wasn’t praying to God to deliver her, she was praying for the sister who seemed thousands of miles away. But though she placed her faith in the Lord, why would He save her from her own mistakes?

Footsteps. They were heavy, heavier than Madam Nancy’s. He was ready for her, and she had no choice but to accept him into her room, her arms, and her bed.

Lord God, deliver me.

---

Thomas Bryant swallowed, and the world before him spun slightly until he placed a hand to the wall. Then it righted itself.

The wall was brick, red and rough, and it grounded him. He had not expected the long walk across Nacogdoches to feel – well, this long. But then, a lonely walk always feels twice as long, and he was more lonely than all the creatures on God’s Earth.

An elderly couple passed him in a carriage, and though he tried to incline his head to them, as soon as his forehead dipped the world started to dance again, and so he desisted. Not that they had seemed to notice, anyway. His clothes, passingly respectable but with a little too much dirt ground in than was acceptable; his hair, a little too long to be a gentleman’s; and his face, pale despite the sunlight. Dawn had come, and it was a new day, and he hated it.

No. Hate was perhaps too strong a word. At least for this. As Thomas willed each foot to move before the other in an attempt to reach his sordid destination, he corrected himself silently. He didn’t hate the day; he hated himself.

The finery he had dressed himself in, the airs he had given himself when he had first moved to Nacogdoches – they seemed foolish now, and not even the letter burning a hole in his pocket was enough for him to return. What could he say to them, after all he had done? How could he possibly make amends?

A lady was coming towards him on the sidewalk, and he stopped, rather than accidentally fall into her. She glanced at him, and then sped up.

Thomas sighed bitterly and could not help but give a wry laugh. There had been a time when a woman such as she – any woman – would have slowed to see him better, and smiled coyly out of the corner of her eye, and perhaps dropped a handkerchief before him so he could retrieve it and present it to her.

No more. Now he was alone in the world, and he felt it with such strength, it was an ache in his chest.

Which was why, on the first day of June the Lord’s year of 1841, he had made a decision. It was not one he was proud of, but then Thomas Bryant had so little to be proud of that he barely knew what the feeling was. He was alone in the world, unredeemable, and tainted by his own choices. He could sink no further, and so he may as well give in to the last temptation that he had never allowed himself to linger on.

He was going to find himself a woman.

Now, like the other gentleman of the town, he knew Madam Nancy’s was