Restitution

By Fran Shaff

Restitution,
Book Two of the historical romance Tender Mysteries Series.

Running off with a handsome stranger is hardly something Amy McKittrick would do under ordinary circumstances.

Diego Consillo is hunting down a man who’s stolen over five thousand dollars, and beautiful Amy seems to be the key to finding him.

November, 1895. Hope Nebraska. For years Amy has been trying to make amends for a crime she’d committed when she was fifteen years old. She’s doggedly, habitually avoided sin since that one infraction, but when Diego comes to town making all kinds of horrible accusations she finds herself lying over and over again. Alone with him in the countryside, on the trail of a thief, as Amy succumbs to Diego’s charms, she feels worse than ever for misleading him, even as she begins to feel whole again by loving him.

Within days of leaving Hope Diego is ashamed he’s subjected a lovely woman like Amy to the harshness of a manhunt, but what could he do? He owes his loyalty to the people in Indiana who are counting on him to find the man who’s stolen their money, and Amy is his only chance for success with his mission. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so guilty if he wasn’t falling in love with the sweet, beautiful woman, but he was. And there wasn’t a thing he could do stop a love more powerful than either of them.

“Restitution” is the second book in the Inspirational American Historical Romance “Tender Mysteries Series” from Award-Winning Author Fran Shaff.

About the “Tender Mysteries Series:” After a flood annihilates a wagon train in 1888, eleven female survivors build a life in Hope, Nebraska.

Excerpt

Setup: Amy has injured her ankle. Diego has given her whiskey to ease her pain.

“My ankle...it’s hurting again,” she said. She began to shiver.

Diego’s concern for her wellbeing escalated. He knew it was necessary to keep a person warm and comfortable after an injury. Her shivering was not a good sign. It could mean a fever was getting started.

Or she could be cold due to the snow pack he’d placed on her ankle.

He went to the supplies, retrieved the last blanket, and returned to Amy’s side.

She was shivering even more vigorously.

He placed the extra blanket over her, but she continued to quake.

The only thing left to do was to try to warm her with his own body heat.

He removed his coat, pulled back the covers and got into her bed with her.

“Mr. Consillo,” she said through chattering teeth. “Get away from me,” she said softly, her voice weakened by the strength of the liquor.

“I’m sorry, Miss McKittrick, but I’ve got to warm you up as quickly as I can. Please, lie still so you don’t disturb the snow pack I’ve placed on your foot. And don’t...don’t fight me; let me warm you. Can you do that, please?”

“Mr. Consillo,” she said, sounding sober, though he knew she was not, “tomorrow, when I’m feeling better, I’m going to slap your face as hard as I can for violating me in this way.”

Her threat sounded quite convincing, yet, he couldn’t help but smile upon hearing her warning. She was no bigger than a sapling and no stronger than bumble bee.

“If it’ll make you feel better, Miss McKittrick, I promise I’ll offer my jaw to you as soon as you’d like to take out your revenge on me,” he said.

To his surprise, she snuggled closer to him. “Why thank you. And, even though it will not make you feel better, I’ll accept your jaw, and I’ll bruise it quite effectively with a swipe of my hand...”

He chuckled as she drifted off to sleep.

She was no longer shivering, but Diego continued to hold her anyway.

He figured if he was going to be properly slapped in the morning by this lovely woman, he might as well earn his punishment by holding her a little while longer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fran Shaff
• Release date: Oct 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301148936

Fran Shaff

Just about all of us want to get away from the demands of everyday life from time to time. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the luxury of being able to take off to some new, exciting place whenever we feel the urge--unless we like to read.A book can take us anywhere we’d like to go. For readers who enjoy living vicariously in pastimes or in modern times Fran Shaff provides a great escape in the more than twenty novels she’s published over the years. Fran’s fictional books have won awards from readers, reviewers and fellow authors, and her non-fiction has been acknowledged in this way too.Love is the main focus of all of Fran’s books, whether they’re contemporary or historical, serious or humorous, written for adults or teens. Love between men and women and among friends and families is featured in her books because there is nothing most of us want more than to love and be loved. Happy endings abound, but the journey to reaching that joyful final moment is always a rocky struggle, just the way we want our fiction (even though we could do without the drama in our real lives).Look for new, full-length historical romance novels from Fran Shaff in the ten-book “Tender Mysteries Series,” available now and debuting throughout 2013 and 2014. The first novel in the series “Resurrected” is available as a free download at most Internet bookstores. The series is available in single e-book and two-pack paperback formats.Reviewers say:“Ms. Shaff is a gifted writer that always delivers in her stories.” (The Romance Studio)“I have discovered a great new author in Fran Shaff. She writes with depth and understanding and digs deep into the emotional lives of her characters bringing the reader with her all the way.” (A Romance Review)“Fran Shaff is a wonderful writer whose prose speak with passion from her heart.” (Fallen Angel Reviews)“Ms. Shaff writes about characters that warm your heart and give you a good chuckle as well.” (Coffee Time Romance)

Book preview

RESTITUTION

Book Two of the Tender Mysteries Series

By Fran Shaff

Inspirational Historical Romance

For Everyone Who Loves a Little Mystery in their Love Stories

Restitution: Book Two of the Tender Mysteries Series by Fran Shaff

All Rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Fran Shaff

Characters, names and incidents used in this story are products of the imagination of the author and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.

Discover Fran Shaff books and short stories available in e-format, paperback and hardcover by visiting her website at: http://sites.google.com/site/fshaff

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This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

For the unsung heroic women who, over the last several hundred years, helped build the United States of America into a strong, caring country. Thank you for your dedication and sacrifice.

RESTITUTION

MOLLY’S PROLOGUE

The Longfellow Wagon Train Encampment on the Wishek River in Nebraska

The dawn of May 6, 1888 was shrouded in darkness. Black thunder clouds frightened early rays of light from the sky. Rain pelted trees, horses, and the Conestoga rigs in our encampment.

I, Molly McKee Longfellow, a red-headed, fair-skinned Irish woman, thirty-four years of age on that day, was in the Green family wagon which had been placed on high ground fifty yards from the Wishek River. Because Elizabeth and Liza Green, twelve and eleven-year-old angels, ailed with severe colds, their kind father Mitchell had parked the wagon away from the travelers camped near the river to avoid spreading their infections.

On that dreadful May morning, while I was soothing Liza’s forehead with a cool cloth, I heard screams filling the air. The deafening shrieks mingled with the roar of thunder and the stabbing strikes of the ominous rain against the stretched canvas above and around us. I moved deftly to the rear of the wagon and peered through an opening. When lightning flashed I saw figures of all sizes, some moving quickly, some paralyzed on their feet, almost all of them looking up river.

As I followed their gazes, a roar filled my ears, growing, growing, until it overtook the sickening sounds of the screams. Seconds later, lightning flashed, and I saw a flush of water descending down the Wishek. I estimated the giant wave to be twelve to fifteen feet high, though I learned much later others farther upstream believed it was only half that.

Whatever the height and breadth of the deadly liquid wall, the evil murderer took what it willed, its power seeming to equal the potency of the Almighty Himself.

Fathers, mothers, siblings struggled to fight the wrath of the river. I watched helplessly as some gave their lives to save others.

I wanted desperately to spring from my perch and find my three precious daughters, but my duties forbade me from doing so. I had two cherished charges who were too sick to help themselves if the water rose to the height of the wagon we occupied. I owed my allegiance to these girls and my trust to my husband who, I prayed, would take our daughters to safety.

Twice I threw up the coffee and biscuits I’d swallowed an hour earlier. The sight and sounds of all that transpired during my confinement in the wagon made me terribly sick.

An hour after I’d first peered into the storm from the back of the wagon, the rain softened and the sky brightened. It was then I realized the results of the river’s rampage.

We’d been a train of nine Conestoga wagons and six families, eleven parenting adults and eighteen children, some of age and some not. When we took an audit of survivors, as soon as the conditions allowed us to do so, I learned I was the only remaining adult, alone on the deluged prairie of eastern Nebraska with nine little girls ranging in age from eleven to fifteen years.

My dear husband James Robert Longfellow, a forty-five-year-old dark-haired, fair-skinned, handsome Englishman, who’d been with me since our wedding day on December 31, 1871 and all three of my baby girls, Mary Elizabeth, aged thirteen, Joanna, aged nine, and my beloved daughter Annie, aged eight, had been eaten alive by the furious flood.

A sadder, more horrifying day I had never known.

After the flood, we quickly located and buried as many bodies as we could find. Unfortunately, we didn’t find all of our loved ones. We did, however, encounter another child, a parentless, brown-skinned little Indian girl. We took her in and unanimously adopted her as one of our own. We called her Angie as we believed God sent the little angel to soothe us during our time of sorrow. I gave her my surname and my birthday, December 25. We estimated Angie’s age to be eight years at the time we found her, and we have kept her chronology of years according to that estimate ever since.

The nine child survivors whom I also adopted included the Willet girls, Deborah, aged fifteen, Susan, aged fourteen, and the twins Bonnie and Becky, aged eleven. Mary Phillips, who was fourteen at the time of the flood, and Amy McKittrick, who was fifteen, joined the Green sisters, Liza and Elizabeth, and Flossie Marquez, aged thirteen, as part of my new family.

Throughout the years since the flood, my ten espoused daughters have been a great blessing to me. They’ve given me the courage I’ve needed to provide them with home and hearth, with love and patience, with food and encouragement.

All of them have reached womanhood as I write this in the year 1900. I have earnestly beseeched God for one favor besides granting good health to all of my girls--I have asked often that each and every one of them find men who will cherish them and give them bountiful family lives. I have believed my girls would be able to find relief from the horrible suffering they’ve endured due to their familial losses only by creating progeny with dearly beloved husbands.

I’ve always had faith that nothing is impossible with God, but I have often wondered, would He hear me and answer my prayers according to my will, or did He have plans of His own which countered mine?

One day in the autumn of 1895 Amy, a beautiful girl with long, dark hair and deep green eyes, a sullen little thing, came home from work at the Guadalupe Orphanage in an exceptionally distressed mood.

Though Amy had suffered greatly each and every day since the flood due to the loss of her entire family and the boy she intended to marry, she usually masked her grief and kept it to herself. To the outside world she was a quiet, shy lass who generously offered her time and treasure to anyone in need. Only her adopted family understood the magnitude of the pain dwelling within her heart.

When I noticed her especially low morale on that day, I believed Amy’s troubled disposition was in reaction to the deaths of several children at the orphanage who’d succumbed to influenza. It wasn’t until I learned about a journey she was about to take that I realized the poor girl’s anguish seemed to have been caused by a pair of men who’d recently come to town.

Chapter One

Amy McKittrick had been working at the Guadalupe Orphanage in Hope, Nebraska for six years, ever since she’d turned sixteen. She loved her job, but she hated the sadness, sickness and death which were often a part of it.

Unfortunately, lately it seemed death came round much more often than happiness. November of 1895 had barely started, and already six children had died from influenza. Amy couldn’t help but wonder, with disease coming so early in the winter season, how many more of the two hundred and fifty-two children would they lose before spring?

Many times she’d wanted to quit the job she loved so she could leave behind the heartache brought about by the death of children, but she couldn’t leave the family-less children she loved, some of whom she’d cared for since she’d started her job.

The day she lost Emile, a boy she’d grown to love more than she should have, she chose to go home from work by way of Hope’s Town Square. A bed of roses was in the Square, and one of the yellow blossoms had refused to give in to the lethal demands of the freezing fall weather. Despite the chilly temperatures, the soft circle of sunshiny petals had continued to bloom, albeit a bit shabbily. She needed to see the hearty flower that day. Observing the resilience of hearty blossoms of all kinds had often inspired her, given her hope in dark times, and comforted her in hours of sorrow. The day she lost Emile her spirits needed lifting more than at any other time during her life since the flood.

As she followed the boardwalk along Center Street toward Town Square she was surprised to see Flossie near the gazebo there. Flossie Marquez, who’d become her sister when she’d lost her blood family in the flood of 1888, was talking with two men whom Amy had never seen before. Both men were wearing thick gray wool coats. The taller one also wore a black felt hat.

When the shorter of the two men put his hand on Flossie’s arm, Amy picked up her pace and made her way to the Square as quickly as possible.

Look, Amy heard the shorter man say as she approached, we know you know where that money is!

Flossie yanked her arm from his grasp. "I don’t know what you’re talking about! My father used the last of his savings to move us out of Indiana. We certainly did not have over five thousand dollars when we left with the wagon train."

Is anything wrong? Amy asked, making her presence known. The trio had been so involved in their discussion they hadn’t seen her approach.

The taller of the two men looked at her. A lock of dark brown hair lay across his forehead, having slipped from the shelter of his black felt hat. This is none of your concern, miss, he said in a gentle but firm voice.

Amy stood straighter, trying to stretch her five-feet, two-inch height to its maximum, though she could never match the near six-foot height of the man with the kind black eyes gazing down at her. Any business which concerns my sister concerns me, she said vigorously. Though it was not in her nature to be aggressive, she could compel herself to exhibit much more strength than she actually possessed if a situation required it.

You two are sisters? the shorter man with the cold brown eyes asked, a corner of his mouth inching into a half grin. But her skin’s as dark as coffee, and you’re as light as cream. How can the two of you be sisters?

We’re sisters, alright, Flossie said assertively. We’ve been sisters more than seven years and friends longer than that.

You needn’t be related by blood to be sisters, Amy added.

The taller man gave her a conciliatory look. We’ll take your word that you are Miss Marquez’s sister, miss. However, even if you are her sister, the business we’re discussing has nothing to do with you.

Flossie, wearing her black wool coat over her favorite deep blue dress, put her hand on her hip. Amy, these men think my pa stole five thousand four hundred dollars from a fund folks put together for a school for Mexican and Negro children in Terre Haute.

Amy was stunned by Flossie’s announcement.

Mr. Marquez died over seven years ago, Amy said, looking up at the taller man.

The money turned up missing about the same time Marquez disappeared, the shorter one said, shoving back a lock of brown hair which had fallen into his eye. We figure he took the money and headed west with his family to escape the law. There’s really no doubt about what he did. How else could a poor farmer make that expensive trip on the wagon train the way he did?

Flossie gave Amy an exasperated look. "How are we supposed to react to such an outlandish story? You know Pa would never steal from anyone, let alone from a church looking to build a school to help children of his own kind. She looked at the shorter man. And we were not poor! Granted lots of folks had more money than we did, but we made out okay on our own. We didn’t take handouts, and we didn’t steal!"

The taller man raised his hands to about the height of his shoulders. Let’s calm down. We truly don’t want to upset you, Miss Marquez, but we do indeed have grounds to suspect your father took the missing funds.

Who are you? Amy asked. We’ve never seen the two of you before. How do we know you aren’t a pair of confidence men trying to guilt Flossie into paying back money her father never took? You, she said, looking at the shorter one, are carrying a gun on your hip. I don’t care to converse with any man who carries a gun on his hip unless he’s involved in law enforcement.

The tall man took off his hat and neatened his dark hair with his long fingers. I am Diego Consillo, he said warmly, and this is my brother Paco. We’re from Terra Haute, Indiana where I teach eighth grade at St. Mary’s Grade School and Paco works as a carpenter. As for Paco’s gun, please, don’t be alarmed. He carries it for protection from snakes and badgers and wolves, not to hurt anyone, I can assure you.

Well, now, Flossie said, I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you if it was, but I don’t enjoy meeting men who spread fabricated tales about people I love. This discussion is over. She turned away.

Your pa stole our money, Miss Marquez, Paco said, grasping her arm.

Paco, let her go, Diego ordered. We’re not here to manhandle women. We’re here to find answers to questions which have plagued us for more than half a decade.

Paco released Flossie and inclined his head toward her. Forgive me, Miss Marquez. I didn’t mean to be rough with you.

Flossie lifted her chin. Don’t touch me again, Mr. Consillo, lest you live to regret it. Assertiveness had always come easily to Flossie, and, despite the fact that she had to stretch to reach a height of five feet, her dark eyes clearly showed Paco Consillo she was a force to be reckoned with.

Miss Marquez, Diego said temperately, we understand your reluctance to consider the possibility that your father could have done something outside the law. It’s never easy to believe one of our beloved family members has broken a commandment or a statute.

My father was a fine man. Ask Amy, she said, tipping her head toward her sister, "if you don’t believe me. Ask anyone who traveled on the wagon train with us. Every traveler who knew Abraham Marquez will tell you he was a good neighbor, a hard worker and an honest man."

I knew him exactly as Flossie describes him, Amy said.

Diego rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. Is there someplace we can go to get out of the cold so we can talk a little more about this? he asked, glancing around the Town Square. I noticed you’re shivering a little, Miss Amy. We’d best get you out of the cold.

It’s Miss McKittrick, Amy said. She glanced at Flossie. What do you think? Should we hear them out?

I think we should go straight home. The twelve hours I spent hunched over a sewing machine at the woolens factory today did enough to break my spirit already. I don’t want to waste my time or my remaining strength palavering with two low-down varmints who are doing their best to try to spoil my father’s good name.

Miss Marquez, Diego said, I assure you we have no intention of despoiling an innocent man’s name. However, we do have strong evidence that Abraham Marquez took the money in question. If you’ll consent to discuss this matter with us, perhaps you can help us by giving us a reason to believe our evidence is in error.

Amy took Flossie’s hand and found it to be as cold as her own. It seemed both of them had neglected to bring the muffs they usually employed with the