Carved in Love

By Savanna Sage

Everyone thinks Ellie’s father was killed by Indians, but she doesn’t believe it. In fact, she would go looking if she knew how to find him. When she meets handsome Curtis Locken and his mysterious friend, Moses, she not only feels stirrings of love, but rising hope that she might find her father at last.
Southerner Curtis Locken moved west to escape a relationship that went terribly wrong. When he sees a captivating young woman fall into the path of a moving train, he manages to pull her to safety. Intrigued not only by her beauty but by her individuality and spunk, he is determined to see her again.
Can Curtis overcome his troubled past and learn to love again?
Will Ellie’s powerful desire to bring her father home endanger her prospect of love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Savanna Sage
• Release date: Oct 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370686322

Book preview

CARVED IN LOVE

Tracks of the Heart, Book One

By Savanna Sage

This is a work of fiction, which means that the views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author. Incidents, places, and characters are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead, or any actual locales or events, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the author’s written permission, except in the case of short quotations embodied in articles and critical reviews. In that case, go for it!

Copyright © 2016 Savanna Sage

Dedication: to Loraine Hansen, who has the kind of love in her life that most women only dream of.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Shirley Ann Hales for expert information on carving and whittling, Amelia C. Adams for inspiration, Steven Novak for a dreamy cover, and Scott Dirk, Robert Dirk, Linda Pratt, Mary K. Olsen, Greg Anderson, Connie McCaughey, Shelbie Ordakowski, Janet Olsen, and Nancy Abbott for their invaluable expertise in proofreading and editing.

Book One: Carved in Love

Book Two: Escape to Love

Book Three: Two Hearts for One

Book Four: Written From the Heart

Book Five: High Wire Hearts

Chapter 1

The first dress Eleanor Ransom made for herself nearly killed her. It came right down to being her own fault with those big stitches she took, but the enterprise was entirely her mother’s idea.

Mama set great store in family traditions, believing they should carry on no matter what. Great Grandma was a seamstress, Grandma was a seamstress, Mama was a seamstress, and if Mama had anything to do with it, Ellie would be a seamstress, too. A young lady of nineteen is no lady if she can’t dress herself, Linnea Ransom told her daughter, her finger aimed at Ellie for emphasis.

I’m eighteen, Mama.

Nearly nineteen. I was able to sew a full dress by the time I was twelve.

Linnea had repeatedly tried getting her only daughter interested in sewing, as intently as Ellie tried to make her mother understand that she would much rather wrap her hand around a whittling knife than pinch a needle between her fingers.

Yet Mama persisted, her businesslike mind discounting her daughter’s arguments. Anything can be learned with the proper application of effort and desire, Mama insisted, standing the full 5’ 4" height of her sturdy, square body. Even her pretty face was square, surrounded by her light hair and blessed with warm brown eyes that lit up when she smiled, which happened most often when Papa was around.

A musician by trade, lighthearted Papa was engaged at the dance hall nearly every night, sawing away on his violin, running his fingers up and down the piano keys, or blowing a lively tune on his harmonica. He put value on pursuing what a body felt it was called to do, so much that in his eyes, following the heart was more important than tradition. So when Mama had called to a younger Ellie, ready to march her to the sewing basket, Wilburn had taken one look at his daughter’s downcast blue eyes, a smaller version of his own blue eyes, and created various methods to distract his wife.

He might ask Linnea for a haircut, mention that he would sure appreciate some of her famous apple pie, ask her to show him which of the projects she had lined up for him that she most wanted finished around their modest home. He might even say, Linnea, my love, dance with me. Then he’d pull his wife into his arms and spin her around the parlor, her long skirt swishing out in a billow which her husband managed to avoid tripping on. A head taller than his wife, long and lithe, Wilburn still managed to match his steps to hers.

Oh, Wilburn! Linnea protested, sending a look of devotion up at his grinning face, even though the lines on her forehead made it look as if she was trying to be stern.

While her mother was distracted, Ellie escaped outside to roam the nearby woods in search of perfect pieces of wood to carve. In the absence of their daughter, Wilburn often played his harmonica while his wife sewed, the two of them perfectly content in one another’s company.

On one occasion, Ellie walked into the kitchen and caught her papa kissing the back of Mama’s neck. Papa pulled away with a grin, while Mama ducked her head and rubbed the spot as if trying to take away the feel of his lips. Wilburn, you stop this nonsense and go out and chop more wood, Linnea commanded.

Yes, my love.

Now that Papa was gone, Linnea seemed determined to get her daughter to spend more time with needles and thread, as if that might bring him back, inviting her to dance. She had shown Ellie how to use enough pins around the hem to keep the fabric flat and even, and to take small stitches while sewing the pieces of fabric together.

But pinning bored Ellie nearly to tears. There were much more important things to do than take fine stitches in a long seam. Ellie couldn’t help pointing out that her seams were longer than most, since she was taller than Mama. I am content with my old dresses, Ellie insisted.

But they are too short, Linnea pointed out. And you needn’t complain about your height. You’re not as tall as your father, you know. Linnea turned suddenly and dashed a hand at her eyes.

Ellie’s heart lurched. She hadn’t meant to make Mama cry. The sting of missing Papa pricked at her, making it hard to breathe. Bending over her work, she decided it was better to stop complaining and simply get the job over with. In the silence, Mama left her alone, so Ellie used her time well, getting the project done with big, impatient stitches on the pink calico that her mother had chosen for her.

The final loathsome stitch was made while Linnea was in the kitchen sifting flour into a bowl and cutting lard and salt into it. Mama made sure to bake two pans of biscuits for dinner so that Ellie’s 17-year-old twin brothers wouldn’t leave the table hungry.

Ellie hastily tied a knot at the end of the thread as her mother had shown her, sticking the needle halfway through at the point of her last stitch, then winding the thread around the needle twice. Last of all, she pulled the needle the rest of the way through, making the thread she’d twisted around it form a knot.

Snipping the thread, Ellie hurried to her small bedroom tucked under the sloping roof shared by the kitchen. Her parents’ larger room was the on the other side of the living room, which was simply an extension of the kitchen, and her brothers shared the upstairs with its steeply sloping roof.

After pulling on her new dress, Ellie tied the bow in back, which made one side of her dress pull up higher on her waist than the other. It didn’t matter to her, but she untied the bow and retied it more loosely, hoping to keep Mama from noticing. Ellie had no intention of unpicking the threads and resewing it.

When she walked back into the living room, Linnea was wiping her hands on a towel. She looked up and stopped as if her hands had turned to stone. Her dark-eyed gaze slid up and down the new dress. Did you press that?

Ellie pinched the stiff new skirt fabric between her fingers, hoping that Mama wouldn’t notice that she’d cut the skirt narrower than the pattern. She simply didn’t want the bother of all that fabric tangling around her legs in case she felt like running. I pressed as I went along. The truth was, she’d used the heavy old iron on a few of the pieces she’d cut out, but not every single one. If there were no coals in the stove to get the iron heated enough to press the wrinkles out, Ellie didn’t want to be bothered with building a fire. Besides, some of the pieces were so small, they seemed practically unnecessary. How would anyone even notice if they were ironed flat or not?

Do you remember I told you the dress goes together best if ironed first? Linnea hung the cloth on a wooden dowel next to the sideboard and moved closer. Once the whole thing’s done, you press it again.

Ellie took a step toward the door. Seems like pressing twice is once too much.

Not if you want to look your best.

I’m just going to the train station, not to church, Ellie said, putting her hand on the door latch. I want to meet the train.

Mama’s gaze moved from the dress to Ellie’s haphazard job of pinning up her hair. Linnea reached up to tuck the white streak running down the side of Ellie’s head down among the dark strands. Ellie tolerated her fussing. She was used it. Except for the white strands, Ellie’s hair was the same dark color as her father’s, with waves slipping over her shoulders as she brushed it out at night. Papa always told her the white streak was angel light that had come down with her from heaven, but the kids in Rambling, Colorado, had other, less attractive ideas about its origin.

Some of the girls whispered and laughed behind their hands while the boys chanted, Skunk Girl, Skunk Girl, pee-yu! Holding their noses, they circled her, watching for a reaction as keenly as an owl searched for mice to pounce on and devour.

Ellie’s initial embarrassment gave way to anger. She managed to get in some licks at the laughing boys ducking away from her long arms swinging their way. If she happened to catch hold of one, she flung him to the ground and pierced him with a blue-eyed stare from her impressive height.

Linnea sighed. I don’t understand why you want to meet the train.

Ellie wasn’t about to tell her mother that she wanted to be the first to take a look at the new shipment of woodworking tools. Mr. Cready at the general store told her last week that he expected the shipment to come in on the next train. Once at the station, Ellie could follow the shipment to the general store, watch the wooden crates pried open with crowbars, and look at the tools all she wanted. She might even purchase some, if the price was not too dear. If anyone looked askance, she could always say they were for one of her brothers.

Linnea sighed. At least be sure to wear a bonnet.

Ellie grabbed her blue bonnet from the hook by the door.

That doesn’t match, Linnea said. I’ll just have to make you a new one from the pink scraps.

Ellie bit her lips together to keep from reminding her mother that she had wanted to sew a blue dress, but mom had insisted on pink, declaring it as Grandma’s favorite color. Ellie had no way of knowing Grandma’s favorite color, but she couldn’t help but wonder if Mama’s real reason was because she thought that pink might somehow influence her daughter to go after more feminine pursuits.

Ellie couldn’t help that she loved working with wood. Aside from the occasional nick of the blade on a finger, which was easily disguised with a pair of gloves, Ellie couldn’t understand why her mother was so against her woodcarving. Even when Ellie pointed at the gracefully curved legs on Mama’s favorite French clawfoot dish cupboard inherited from her grandmother and said, Someone had to carve them into such feminine shapes. It could very well have been a woman, Mama remained unconvinced.

Papa had liked carving wood, too. His most ambitious project had been the kitchen table legs. Is that why Mama thought it was a masculine occupation?

Ellie stepped outside in her pink dress, swinging the blue bonnet