Promise for Tomorrow (Ribbons of Steel Book #3) , livre ebook

J UDITH P ELLA T RACIE P ETERSON
A Promise for Tomorrow Copyright 1998 Judith Pella and Tracie Peterson
Cover by John Hamilton Design
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pella, Judith.
A promise for tomorrow / Judith Pella, Tracie Peterson
p. cm. - (Ribbons of steel ; no. 3)
ISBN 978-0-7642-0693-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company-Fiction. 2. Frontier and pioneer life-Fiction. 3. Railroad construction workers-Fiction. 4. Baltimore (Md.)-Fiction. 5. Allegheny Mountains Region- Fiction. I. Peterson, Tracie. II. Title.
PS3566.E415P76 2010
813 .54-dc22
2009043081
To Everett Daves, Kansas Christian Newspaper
With thanks for your friendship, professional support, and all the wonderful things you ve done.
-Tracie
JUDITH PELLA has been writing for the inspirational market for more than twenty years and is the author of more than thirty novels, most in the historical fiction genre. Her recent novel Mark of the Cross and her extraordinary four-book D AUGHTERS OF F ORTUNE series showcase her skills as a historian as well as a storyteller. Her degrees in teaching and nursing lend depth to her tales, which spin a variety of settings. Pella and her husband make their home in Oregon.
Visit Judith s Web site: www.judithpella.com
TRACIE PETERSON is the author of over seventy novels, both historical and contemporary. Her avid research resonates in her stories, as seen in her bestselling H EIRS OF M ONTANA and A LASKAN Q UEST series. Tracie and her family make their home in Montana.
Visit Tracie s Web site at www.traciepeterson.com
Contents
What Has Gone Before
PART ONE May-November 1843
1 / Bad Tidings
2 / Preparations
3 / Confrontation
4 / Judgments and Accusations
5 / Turning Points
6 / Strongholds
7 / Choosing a Path
8 / Letting Go
9 / Adoption
10 / New Birth
PART TWO February 1849-February 1850
11 / Nightmares
12 / Landslide
13 / Thomas Swann
14 / Shared Interests
15 / The Confession
16 / The Road Ahead
17 / The Long Night
18 / Revelations
19 / Shaping the Future
20 / The Connaughtmen
21 / A Bit o the Blarney
22 / Kiernan
PART THREE February-December 1850
23 / Margaret s Homecoming
24 / Conflict and Strife
25 / Secrets
26 / The Strike
27 / Compromise
28 / The Hands of Time
29 / Reunion
30 / Sisters
31 / The Phoenix
32 / Pardon and Mercy
33 / Troubled Times
34 / Facing the Dragon
35 / Victoria s Declaration
36 / Beyond the Wall
37 / Return to Cumberland
38 / Seeds of Prejudice
PART FOUR September 1851-January 1853
39 / Cholera
40 / Victoria s Heart
41 / The Long Wait
42 / Intentions
43 / Kingwood Tunnel
44 / A Clannish Breed
45 / Troubled Days
46 / The Issue of Slavery
47 / Adams Women
48 / Carolina
49 / Hampton s Plan
50 / Bittersweet Partings
51 / To Wheeling and Beyond

What Has Gone Before
Carolina Adams, a young woman of spirit and determination, enjoyed a pampered life in Oakbridge, her family s plantation, outside of Falls Church, Virginia.
Growing up as one of the middle siblings in a household of seven brothers and sisters, Carolina had always been eager to understand the world around her. Young ladies of the 1830s were not encouraged to educate themselves in the ways of masculine studies such as mathematics and science, but Carolina desired to cross those boundaries. She was especially enthralled with the railroad, which she fell in love with the first time she saw a train roar into Washington City. When her indulgent father, Joseph Adams, permitted her a tutor, James Baldwin, Carolina began to realize part of her dream. Carolina s older sister, Virginia, also hoped her dreams to be fulfilled by James Baldwin-her more conventional dreams of becoming a proper southern wife.
James had once worked for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but while recovering from injuries following a rail accident, he was thrust into the job of tutoring Carolina Adams, and of courting her sister Virginia. What no one expected, least of all they, was that James and Carolina should fall in love with each other. James found healing in Carolina s friendship, and as she helped him come to terms with the past, James began to visualize his future with the railroad once more. In turn, Carolina found in James a man who was not threatened by her intelligence and regard for learning. She also found a soul mate with whom she desired to spend the rest of her life. Unfortunately, he had all but committed himself to Virginia, and Carolina was too insecure in her love to dare come between them, much less reveal her feelings toward James. Likewise, James refused to confront his growing affection for Carolina.
Torn by his conflicting feelings toward the two sisters, and pressured by family expectations, James allowed himself to be carried along by events, soon finding himself engaged to Virginia. But eventually realizing he could not marry a woman he didn t love, James broke off the engagement. However, in order to save Virginia from social embarrassment, he allowed her to publicly break the engagement herself. Then, unable to face Carolina and the social ostracism his ungentlemanly behavior would cause, James left Oakbridge and Washington for another position with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a job that would take him far away to unsettled lands.
The loss of James, along with the death of her two younger sisters from yellow fever and her mother s mental breakdown, caused much sorrow and discontent in Carolina. This was not helped by the unwelcome advances of her father s commission merchant, Hampton Cabot, who had come to Oakbridge on business-and with his own personal agenda, which included snaring an Adams daughter. Further complicating Carolina s life was Virginia s resentment toward her because she believed Carolina was the cause of the broken engagement to James.
Carolina watched her family become torn apart as her remaining siblings went their way in marriages, careers, and activities, while Virginia s bitterness toward her grew. On the very morning that Carolina decided to accept Hampton s marriage proposal, Carolina learned that Virginia had eloped with Hampton. The growing tensions of the household finally forced Carolina to leave home on her own. She took a position as a nanny to Victoria, the infant daughter of Blake St. John, a wealthy widower who lived in Baltimore.
Blake was a cold, indifferent father and was constantly absent. After five years, Blake announced he was going to move west and requested Carolina to assume full responsibility for Victoria and the St. John house while he headed off to parts unknown. Carolina realized she had come to love Victoria as her own, but she felt that to accept such a proposition would have made her appear to be Blake s kept woman. Not only that, but she feared that one day Blake would reappear with a new wife and take the child away from her.
This prompted Blake to make an even more startling proposal-a marriage of convenience to Carolina. She decided the sacrifice of a loveless marriage would be better than to lose Victoria to the orphanage to which Blake threatened to send her. All the while, however, Carolina s heart continued to long for James. She wondered how things might have been and of what she had lost as she took her meaningless marriage vows with Blake St. John.
When James finally reappeared in her life, he was crushed to find her married. She also confronted him with her suspicions that James father, Leland Baldwin, was swindling her father and other railroad investors. They parted once again, not on the best of terms. Later, while doing business for his father, James became aware of Leland s illegal activities and realized that Carolina s concerns were well-founded.
When Blake was killed in a carriage accident, leaving Carolina a wealthy widow, she returned to Oakbridge and her father. Carolina ran into James on the same train, and they talked sincerely to each other. James finally confessed that he couldn t marry Virginia because he was in love with Carolina. Carolina, in turn, admitted her love for him. James, determined to let nothing else come between them, proposed marriage, and Carolina accepted. After they were married, their hearts turned back toward the dream that had first brought them together-the railroad. Their yesterdays were colorfully woven into a tapestry that represented their past, but a promise for tomorrow was yet to be created.
PART I May-November 1843
For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our todays and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build.
-H ENRY W ADSWORTH L ONGFELLOW
1 Bad Tidings
James Baldwin ran a hand through his dark hair and sighed. It was almost impossible to concentrate on the words of his father. Leland Baldwin had made a most unexpected visit to the St. John house in Baltimore, where James and Carolina chose to reside after their marriage six months earlier. James was anxious lest his father would still be on the premises when Carolina returned. That could prove disastrous. It wasn t that Carolina wouldn t at least feign hospitality and civility; it was that she held Leland in absolute contempt for his swindling of her father, Joseph Adams.
It s not that I wanted things to be this way, Leland said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. The rotund man rubbed his chest, a seemingly nervous habit of late