Stone Dreaming Woman Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for Lael R. Neill

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  A word about the author...

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Stone Dreaming Woman

  by

  Lael R. Neill

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Stone Dreaming Woman

  COPYRIGHT © 2013 by Lael R. Neill

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Debbie Taylor

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Vintage Rose Edition, 2013

  Print ISBN 978-1-61217-649-9

  Digital ISBN 978-1-61217-650-5

  Published in the United States of America

  Praise for Lael R. Neill

  “STONE DREAMING WOMAN charms, delights and warms the reader's heart. I fell in love with Jenny and Shane and didn't want the book to end. Hope to see a lot more from this new author.”

  ~Fleeta Cunningham, author of the Santa Rita Series

  ~*~

  “A captivating read from page one!”

  ~Tiffany Green, author of Innocence Lost

  Dedication

  To the Rainbow Goddesses,

  who hung in there with me every step of the way

  and never let me lose faith.

  You know who you are!

  Chapter One

  The creaky old train approached the small station with a bump, a sigh, and a great exhalation of steam. Before it came to a brake-squealing stop, Jenny spotted her uncle on the platform and waved to him through the window. Though muffled to the ears, he seemed glad to see her, giving her a hearty wave in return. She rose, gathered her things, and made her way back to the door where the conductor waited for her. The young constable in the Red Serge of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police with whom she had been chatting during the trip from River Bend preceded her down the stairs and held his hand out to help her down.

  “Mam’selle,” he murmured with a polite nod. She thanked him in French and scarcely heard his reply. The conductor also held out his hand to her, but she ignored him and flew into her uncle’s arms.

  “Uncle Richard!”

  “Jen, you look beautiful!”

  “It’s so good to see you!”

  Their words came out simultaneously. She hugged him and kissed his cheek as he swung her around, laughing. Since her childhood, her uncle had always smelled of the same shaving soap and his one and only brand of pipe tobacco. The scent instantly took her back twenty years.

  He bore an amazing resemblance to her father. They looked enough alike to be twins, but the similarities stopped at the surface. Her father, John Weston, a fiery and uncompromising scientist, a physician and surgeon, fought tooth and nail for his patients. He could be hard and unbending when he felt himself in the right, which, she reflected, seemed like virtually all the time. Richard, however, had left a career as a history professor to become an author. He had written a comprehensive analysis of the Third Crusade, now mandatory reading for serious historians everywhere. A retiring, gentle, and sympathetic soul, he poured so much feeling into his work that his first novel, By the Grace of God, chronicling the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, enjoyed such resounding success that if he never wrote another word he could live comfortably the rest of his days. After a year of burdensome celebrity in New York, he fled to the woods of Ontario, where he bought a small ranch and settled down in peaceful obscurity to write to his heart’s content.

  “I swear you don’t weigh any more than a bag full of thistledown, and you look more like your mama every day. How’s my girl?”

  “I’m fine, and the trip wasn’t bad at all. I’m not even tired. I’m all ready for the grand tour of Elk Gap.”

  “Elk Gap is not very grand, so the tour won’t be much of a tour. Here you see it all.” He gestured down the street. Where the sparse snow had been driven down, the unpaved Main Street looked like a morass of icy ruts. Board sidewalks flanked it. A few businesses and some whitewashed clapboard houses with postage-stamp yards took up the near side of the street, while the far side boasted establishments like Mrs. Hammill’s, which, he informed her, functioned as a hotel, boarding house, and the town’s only restaurant. In a line with it stood a general store, a bank, a feed store, a livery stable, a smithy, and a barbershop where a friend of the proprietor could also slip into the back room for a discreet sip of moonshine or a couple hands of poker of an evening. An impressive three-story building reared itself just across the side street from the train station. A sign next to the door proclaimed Angus A. MacBride, M.D. Around the corner to the right she saw the post office, Calvary Presbyterian Church, and a block of houses, after which the street came to an abrupt end. True, there was not much to Elk Gap, but the local countryside, its high, rolling hills beautiful beyond belief, more than made up for the unprepossessing little town. The rustic setting instantly absorbed her. While she gazed around, her uncle directed the porters to place her three trunks in his old-fashioned spring-seated buckboard. A moment later he broke into her thoughts.

  “I realize it might be a little early for supper yet, but why don’t we go into Mrs. Hammill’s? A little break might be relaxing for you after such a long trip.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. We can have a nice, private chat. Do you realize I haven’t really talked to you since you came back from doing research in Europe? The last time you were in Virginia only four days, and I was still in medical school. We didn’t have a chance to visit at all.” She thrust a leather-gloved hand through his arm, and he patted it affectionately.

  “We can talk to our hearts’ content now. There’ll be a lot of long, quiet evenings in the next few months.”

  “I just need a peaceful place where I can regroup right now. It’s been…it’s been difficult for me lately.”

  “Well, you’re where you can relax and do exactly as you please. The quiet here in Elk Gap saved my sanity.”

  “I could use a little bit of that,” she sighed.

  “I know. I read between the lines in all your letters. You know, it looks like the weather is going to turn bad before nightfall. It’s been unseasonably warm this winter, but here that could change in an eyeblink. We’ll need to get going. I’ll treat you to dinner first, though. And Jenny, you’re all steel inside, just like John. He inherited all the drive and determination in the family and passed it on to you.”

  “I know. It’s a shame I wasn’t born a boy.”

  “Don’t ever say that. You’re much t
oo pretty to wish away your good looks.” He patted her wind-pink cheek. “Now let’s go have supper. It’s a good three-quarters of an hour drive home, and it can get pretty chilly without some fuel in the furnace.” He escorted her across the rutted street, carefully choosing the smoothest path.

  “I can see I need proper winter boots. Perhaps I should come to town and do a little shopping.”

  “Of course. Any day you want. If I’m not busy, I can have my hired man drive us, or you can come by yourself. Elk Gap is a quiet town. You can drive unescorted without a worry in the world.”

  “It’s not considered in bad form?”

  “Not here, Jen. This is the frontier. Ladies are more independent than they are in New York. That should suit you nicely.”

  He opened the door of Mrs. Hammill’s boarding house and she found herself directly in the large, plain dining room with whitewashed shiplap walls. In the warmth she detected the delicious odors of frying steak, onions, and apple pie. Suddenly she felt ravenous.

  “I’m going to take you up on that dinner. I’m hungry. I know I eat more than is ladylike, but I burn it off. Father says it’s because I have such an active brain.”

  “When John makes an observation like that I’d believe him. If I said it, on the other hand, you could call it an old wives’ tale and you’d probably be right,” he said with a smile. He helped Jenny with her Russian sable coat and hung it on a nearby hall tree. She left her matching hat and muff on a shelf, and Richard hung his red-and-black chopper jacket and black stocking cap next to hers. He escorted her to a table not far from the staircase that led to the upper floors.

  “Did I see a sign next to the door that said Royal Northwest Mounted Police?” she asked.

  “Yes. Two officers are assigned here in Elk Gap, and a third comes up from River Bend now and then if they need him. They live upstairs, and they use the room back there as their constabulary.” Richard gestured to a door at the rear of the dining room. It bore a twin to the sign on the outside of the building.

  “Goodness, does anything actually happen here?”

  “I gather that a few years back Elk Gap was a wide-open, rough town. There were moonshiners and ladies of ill repute, and there was a running war among the loggers, miners, trappers, and farmers. Now it’s so quiet I can’t imagine anyone so much as locking a door.”

  A moment later a dark-haired, moon-faced teenage girl in a white bib apron came to their table.

  “Hello, Mr. Weston.”

  “Hello, Maddie.”

  “We have roast chicken with bread dressing or sirloin steak and mashed potatoes. They both come with a dinner roll and your choice of corn or green beans. What will it be?”

  “Jenny?” Richard inquired politely.

  “I’ll have steak, medium rare, please. With green beans.”

  “Make that two, Maddie.”

  “And tea?”

  “Of course.”

  “No coffee?” Jenny asked.

  “No, ma’am. I’m sorry. We only make coffee if we know ahead. We can make it for you, but it will take a while to brew.”

  “This is Canada, after all,” Richard reminded her gently.

  “Tea will be satisfactory. I just arrived on the train from New York, and for a while I forgot where I am.”

  “Well, welcome to Elk Gap. I’ll take your order back to the cook. It won’t be long.” Maddie did everything but curtsey as she took her leave.

  “So, Jenny?” Richard prompted. She knew exactly what he meant.

  “I’ve written to every hospital on the East Coast. I’ve had plenty of completely insulting offers of nursing positions, and one hospital would hire me providing I limited my practice to obstetrics, gynecology, and pediatrics. And don’t even mention finding a practice I can buy into. I’m a surgeon, Uncle Richard. A surgeon and an internist. I want to practice general medicine, and so far nobody seems willing to let me.”

  “And for that you spent all that time in pre-med and medical school,” he sighed.

  “And of course there’s Father. You know he will have his way, come what may. He took it in very bad grace when he lost the battle against my going to medical school. Now he has it in his head that I should marry the son of a friend of his, and nothing else will do.”

  “Phillip Hildebrand, right?”

  “Yes. Phillip makes my skin crawl. His father operates his investment company just a hair this side of the law, and Phillip wants to go into politics. That’s the dirtiest business on the face of this earth. I’ve had all I can take of men who think they can push me around and patronize me just because I’m a woman. Truth be known, I’m probably smarter than ninety-nine percent of them.”

  “You get no argument from me on that score, Jen.”

  “I know.” She heaved a sigh. “You were always on my side in all this mess. I don’t think I’d have been able to stand up to Father and go away to school if you hadn’t backed me.” She looked up at her gentle uncle. Rimless bifocals fenced in his mild blue eyes and only the lightest dusting of grey touched his thinning, sandy hair. But he had yet to see his fortieth birthday; he was a full twelve years younger than his brother John.

  Jenny and her uncle carried obvious family connections. Both were petite. Jenny, perhaps five feet three, at the outside weighed a hundred ten pounds. They had the same oval face and tawny Weston hair, but she tamed her heavy, curling leonine mane only by braiding it or winding it into a knot. Her mother, a Virginia Brisbane related to the historical Custis family, had given her melting, dark eyes. The rest of her was delicately pretty. A big, horsy, pushy woman might have fared better in a male-dominated field like medicine, but a mind as keen as her father’s lay concealed under femininity reinforced by years of training in genteel New York manners. When her Weston intellect emerged, it often shocked people.

  Richard reached out and took her hand. “Sweetheart, while you’re here I don’t want you to worry about anything. Write all the letters you want and see if you can’t find a position acceptable to you. I’ll help in any way I can.”

  She gave him a wistful smile. “Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I know you’re risking your relationship with Father…”

  “No, I’m not. You forget I’m the Old General’s son too. I know how to handle John’s bluff and bluster.” Jenny found herself agreeing with her uncle’s assessment. Under Richard’s quiet exterior, the proverbial velvet glove concealed the iron hand. She’d realized early on that he had developed a deceptively unassuming demeanor as his defense against a father who raged and cursed and intimidated in order to get his way.

  Maddie arrived with their meal. It looked wonderful, and when Jenny cut into her steak she found it perfectly done. The cornstarch gravy with chopped wild mushrooms and onions gave the meal a surprisingly sophisticated touch. She cleaned her plate with gusto.

  “Didn’t you have anything to eat on the train?” Richard asked.

  “Mrs. Dean sent me off with a hamper, but that didn’t last forever. My breakfast this morning was an apple and a glass of milk between trains.”

  “No wonder you’re hungry. Now about dessert…”

  “I smelled pie when we came in.”

  “I think I did too. Mrs. Hammill’s deep-dish apple pie is the stuff of legends. She serves it hot with cream.”

  “You know, I think I still have a few cracks to fill, and apple pie is my favorite dessert.”

  “Apple pie it is.” At that moment the front door opened and a tall young man in the uniform of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police came in. He paused at the doorway to remove his hat and parka. His fair complexion looked pale despite the cold outside. He put his hat aside, rubbed at his very black, wavy hair with a gloved hand, and started toward the stairway.

  “Shane,” Richard called. The young man paused.

  “Bonjour, Richard.” Even Richard’s broad smile did not alleviate the seriousness of the officer’s face.

  “Jenny, may I present my friend, Staff Sergeant Sha
ne Adair, Royal Northwest Mounted Police. Shane, my niece, Miss Jennifer Weston.”

  “Mam’selle Weston. C’est mon plaisir. Pardonnez moi… Ah, excuse me. I mean, my pleasure, Miss Weston.” He nodded politely to her, but his face looked anything but pleased. His tone seemed as stiffly formal as his appearance, and for no good reason Jenny felt her hackles raise.

  “Je suis enchantée, Sergeant.” There. That’ll show you I’m no ignoramus, she thought smugly. In spite of her feelings, she favored him with her best Southern Belle smile. Not even the merest flicker across his granite face acknowledged her perfectly precise French. She took in his regular features, strongly square chin, lips rounded in a typically French way, and surprising agate-grey eyes. Heavy cheekbones gave his face a masculine angularity. He’s not unpleasant looking, if he would only smile.

  “How are you now, Shane?” Richard asked. From the stress her uncle laid on the question, she felt it was much more than social politeness.

  “I’m quite well. And you?” The reply was brief to the point of terseness.

  “Couldn’t be better, now that my favorite niece is here for a visit.”

  Almost reluctantly his gaze went from Richard to Jenny. “Well, Miss Weston, I hope you enjoy your stay in Elk Gap. If I may be of any service to you, you’ve only to let me know.” He turned slightly as though he were going to take his leave, and when Jenny took a second, careful look at him, he seemed pale and tired.

  “Won’t you join us for dessert? Apple pie will be my treat,” Richard offered.

  “Thank you, no. Perhaps another time? I’ve been up to North Village. I had to investigate a shooting, and I need to write my report and get it countersigned in time to post it on the evening train to River Bend. With all my other paperwork, that may be a tight squeeze.”

  “Definitely another time. You know you’re welcome at my house, day or night.”

  “Thank you. But I really must be on my way. It was nice to make your acquaintance, Miss Weston. Good day.” He nodded toward Jenny by way of acknowledgment but did not wait for a reply.

  “Good day, Sergeant,” she said to his retreating back. She watched briefly as he climbed the stairs. It was instant distaste on Jenny’s part. He seemed like the kind of sourpuss who did not even like himself. But she decided not to voice her opinions to her uncle, who obviously thought a great deal of the dour young man.