The Valley of Life: A Pair of Historical Romances

By Vanessa Carvo

Let The Past Die With Him - An abused woman and her mentally challenged adult brother flee their home when she finally manages to escape, and she takes the train to Montana. Lucky to find a job immediately, their life starts to turn around, especially when the woman meets and begins to fall in love with a kind stranger who is well off and owns a ranch outside of town. Some secrets about her past start to emerge and she fears that their new life will be blown apart.

Turning an Arrangement Into Love - An Englishwoman leaves England for what she assumes will be a loveless marriage as all that they had agreed to was to care for her rancher, look after his home, and respect each other – but it didn’t include love. She does make friends with a freed black man in town and a few other people but later, something happens that will change her relationship with the rancher forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365394126

Book preview

The Valley of Life: A Pair of Historical Romances

The Valley of Life

By

Vanessa Carvo

Copyright 2016 Quietly Blessed & Loved Press

Let The Past Die With Him

Synopsis: Let The Past Die With Him - An abused woman and her mentally challenged adult brother flee their home when she finally manages to escape, and she takes the train to Montana.  Lucky to find a job immediately, their life starts to turn around, especially when the woman meets and begins to fall in love with a kind stranger who is well off and owns a ranch outside of town. Some secrets about her past start to emerge and she fears that their new life will be blown apart.

Marie shut the window so she would no longer hear her brother hollering from the back yard where he had planted himself for the morning. She felt sure it did it to irritate her and the neighbors who constantly complained about him and his doings. If it wasn’t yelling like this, it was turning over garbage cans, or pulling up people’s flowers or, in general, making an ass of himself in anyway his garbled mind could invent.

Years-wise, he was seventeen, but mentally, he was only about seven or so. Things would never change for Bob, either, lost as he was in a world of childhood, make-believe and anything that he could manage to invent to entertain himself. The one thing Marie knew for sure, though, was that Bob loved her to the highest standard the word could reach.

She had helped their mother care for him since he was born, and she had cared for him alone since their parents died three years before. When she married her husband, it was only a few months when Bob had come to live with them.

Today, she was in no mood for his antics as she had other problems to deal with. Namely, an abusive husband who had taken his anger out on her the evening before. Commonplace and daily, the hits just kept on coming.

She strolled across the kitchen and into the hallway, taking another look at her black eye and puffed lip, markings of the recent blows he had landed because he was angry at his boss. No fault of Marie’s, but her fault in his mind, just the same. She had to get herself away from him, but that would mean taking Bob, the crazy brother, with her. A rock and a hard place - the phrase fit her life perfectly. She often wished her husband would just disappear and give her peace.

Marie went to the back door to quiet Bob down some.

Bob, please don’t holler so loud. The neighbors can hear you easy enough.

He turned to face her and smiled that lost smile of his.

Can they? he asked with his mindless innocence. I can holler louder.

No, no, don’t do that. You want to come in for some lemonade?

He rose from the rickety yard chair that he had claimed years before as his own and headed toward Marie, smiling the same smile. He came inside and went to the kitchen where he stood until she joined him.

Go ahead, you can get your own. With that permission, he got a glass from the cabinet and poured it full from the pitcher on the counter. Then, he joined her at the small table.

You eye is black, he said in a matter of fact voice. Did you bump that door again?

Yes, she answered, almost proud that he continued that association between her bruises and the door story she had told him long ago when the hits first started coming. He thought her face was always showing those same door signs.

Does it hurt? Poor Bob. The only thing he could imagine was that pain that comes from a boo-boo or slight falling down injury. He had no concept of what she went through, or that anyone would actually hit another person. He didn’t know that many of her bruises came because Bob lived with them, a sore spot with her husband and the one thing that Marie would always defend with her life. The brother would stay with her, no matter what grief it brought to her.

They talked for a little bit about whatever subject came to Bob’s mind. Then, she heard the front door close and her husband walked into the kitchen. Home early - that wasn’t a good sign at all.

Well, I’ve been fired, he said, throwing his lunchbox onto the wooden counter. Now, there’s no job.

What happened? Marie asked, sure that his temper had finally done him in with the boss.

Don’t matter. I don’t have a job. Don’t ask stupid questions. He poured himself a glass of lemonade and drank it straight down. Bob turned to face him.

What does fired mean? It was an innocent question and one that Bob would never understand, but he asked anyway.

For the rest of her life, Marie would remember what happened next, but it would always come to her mind in slow motion, and the quickness of the actual event only brought her the shame that she could never have stopped it.

From out of nowhere, her husband drew back his fist and slammed into the side of Bob’s head. A nasty hit that sent his lemonade glass flying and pushed a look of such shock into his face that his eyes bulged from their sockets. Her hand went out, but the blow struck, and hell flew into her body.

Marie was out of her chair and swinging at her husband before she knew what came over her. Bob was the one thing in the world that he wouldn’t maim and maul the way he had done her over the years and months they had been married. She would kill him before he would hurt Bob.

However, it had happened, and she didn’t stop it.

Bob screamed like bloody murder as the pain of the hit registered with him. He grabbed the side of his face and rolled out of his chair onto the floor, shielding himself under