Stormy: Four Historical Romance Novellas

By Doreen Milstead

Reading Charles Dickens Along The Oregon Trail – Orphaned, a woman tries to fit in with other families as she travels the Oregon Trail headed West PLUS Starving For Love & Saved By The Stranger - What if you were losing your sight, had to work or starve, and the job you did was making you go blind? This dilemma faces a starving young woman in Victorian England, and when she is making her way home one evening a stranger tries to grab her purse, which holds a few meager coins PLUS The English Woman Who Loved Cats - A woman from Liverpool with an enormous talent for painting and a huge love of cats decides to go to Bakersfield California and become the wife of a farmer, even though she is very young PLUS The Organ Playing Mail Order Bride - When a sheriff finds that he needs someone to help take care of his two children after his wife dies, he never thought that he’d get an organ playing non-believer like the woman who arrived on his doorstep one day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387585281

Book preview

Stormy: Four Historical Romance Novellas

Stormy: Four Historical Romance Novellas

By

Doreen Milstead

Copyright 2018 Susan Hart

Synopsis: Reading Charles Dickens Along The Oregon Trail – Orphaned, a woman tries to fit in with other families as she travels the Oregon Trail headed West.

Reading Charles Dickens Along The Oregon Trail

CHRISTMAS HAD ROLLED by as if it was just another day for Pricilla. Oh how she missed her mother and father who had both died from a fever that hit the small community called Elizabeth town. She was born in Kentucky and her advantages were few.

Her family home consisted of a small cabin filled with a quietness that drove her to tears at times. Her mother and father never had any other children, so Pricilla was forced to grow up without any siblings, and this made her very lonely at times.

She was a bright child from the time she came from her mother’s womb and her father had always told her that she would make her mark in the world with a bang, just as she let out her first cry when she was born. She used to love to hear her father tell her stories of her birth, as he sat her upon his knee.

It was a cold December night in 1826 and the snow outside their tiny cabin had drifted up over the doors, front and back. The wind had blown the snow with such force that it made it impossible for her father to try to make it to town to call for a doctor.

With no way to get her mother to town or for the doctor to come to the home, it was up to her father to deliver to the world his first child. As Pricilla would listen intently to her father, her eyes would watch his ever so closely to see his reactions to her being born.

It thrilled her when she would see his eyes light up when he would tell her how beautiful she was. He always said that she was pure white, as the snow outside and that her little lips were plum red, and she had a head full of the whitest hair. Her mother would just sit and sigh as her father would tell the story, as she had heard it so many times.

Pricilla was closer to her father than she ever was to her mother. Her mother always seemed so reserved and never shared very many heartfelt things with her as she grew up. It always disturbed her to talk about Pricilla’s birth and she never had much to say. Pricilla tried to not let that bother her so much because her father had explained to her that when her mother found out she could not have any more children, she seemed to sink into a shell that she has never peeked back out of.

Her mother wanted a house full of children and it was not meant to be for some reason, and this practically destroyed her mother. She never was the same after that. This hurt Pricilla and left her with an emptiness that she was never able to fill. She longed to have a relationship with her mother, but always felt like she was being rejected, blamed somehow because she was the only child born to her mother.

Pricilla had hoped that in time her mother would come around, but with her mother and father dying to scarlet fever, that chance was never granted. When her parents died in front of her, she made a vow that one day she would be a doctor and she would find a cure for that dreadful disease that took her family from her.

Since she had no one to turn to, she was sent to live with an old Aunt, her father’s sister that her family had not seen in years. She was packed up by a family that lived down the road, and was shipped off to Auburn Town, Tennessee and her life began as quickly as it had ended at her family home.

When she arrived by buggy her Aunt met her in town at a local grocery, and with her she had a list of rules and she handed these over to Pricilla even before greeting her. As her Aunt shoved the rules in her hand, she leaned over and whispered in her ear Here are the rules and I expect you to go by them.

In addition, the Aunt turned around and began walking away, leaving Pricilla getting her first dose of reality at what her new life would be like.

HER PREDICTIONS OF this seemed to be accurate because her life with her Aunt consisted mostly of rules and regulations and again she found herself without compassion or any kind of a bond. She had already lived twelve years of her life with only the physical touch that came from her father and here she was again, having to live the same way with her Aunt.

But, Pricilla faced up to it and figured that she would make things different when she would have her own children, filling her home full of an abundance of love, physical and emotional. And, she looked very forward to that time.

For now, she would just be creative with her own imagination and this is what carried her through the years. Her Aunt did not believe in Pricilla going to a public school even though it was only about a mile from her home. Therefore, a neighbor of her Aunt’s taught Pricilla.

Her teacher was a hard-hearted woman who had grown old and she was not able to teach Pricilla anything that she would consider up to date. She hardly learned any history at all and it seemed the only thing this teacher really knew was proper grammar.

The teacher was always scolding her because of the words that Pricilla would express herself with and it led her to become quiet most often, being afraid to open her mouth much. And, with her Aunt not being much of a conversationalist, Pricilla was left alone once again.

But, the teacher did contribute something in the deal and she often brought her books to read, along with papers and journals. Among her favorite reads were those of Charles Dickens. She found herself falling into his fiction characters he had built in his short stories and novels, which allowed Pricilla to experience other worlds other than her own.

Her favorite read of Charles Dickens was mainly the Pickwick Papers Journal that was a weekly and monthly publication. Charles Dickens supported education, stood for children’s rights and was against slaver and this stole her heart from the start. Every week her teacher would bring her these journals and she would sit for hours, as she would read his latest opinions.

These journals carried her through much boredom and loneliness. Among other favorites was Dickens’ Christmas Carol that she read when she was seventeen years old. This story satisfied her imaginations being so filled with families and the heart of Christmas.

Before she left her Aunt, she also enjoyed Dickens’ The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth, but her favorite was the Pickwick Papers Journals. Her teacher also brought her authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and the poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and she enjoyed them as well.

Pricilla found herself with a desire to travel the world and to find her place in society such as Charles Dickens had. She spent many hours in quietness, as her mind would race with new ideas for her future. She had a keen interest in studying to be a doctor due to losing her parents to disease, but her true love was teaching.

She made a vow that she would become a much better teacher than she had been provided with, and this kept her mind occupied for many hours of a day. She was filled with desire and she had the freedom to dream.

PRICILLA’S NINETEENTH BIRTHDAY was just about there and she was sitting and thinking about her life and what she could do to make her birthday very special to her. She knew that her Aunt Lenora would not be offering up any sweet surprises, since she had lived with her since she was twelve years old and the finest thing her Aunt had done for her was to buy her a new dress to go to church in, when she had her sixteenth birthday.

It was a nice gesture, but she was not allowed to wear that dress anywhere except to church, so it hung over a chair in her tiny room the rest of the time. As she sat and stirred the thoughts in her head, she came up with a lovely idea; she would leave.

She had heard that thousands of people were taking the Oregon Trail out to new territory and she could only dream of beginning her life on new fertile ground. Her Aunt had brought home a newspaper from a local grocery and Pricilla had seen in there that hundreds of families would be meeting locally so that they could take drives to St. Joseph, Missouri to begin the trail.

As she thought on this for a time, she had already decided that nothing was keeping her in Auburn Town and that she would find a way to not only tell her Aunt she was going, but she would find a way to get on that trail.

Perhaps, she thought, she could offer her services as a nurse or a teacher for children on the trail. So, as the sun continued to rise that day, she at once took measures into her own hands to find out how to get on board the wagon train.

Her Aunt was going to be gone all morning to visit some lady folk about ten miles away, and it would give her plenty of time to ride her horse into town to check out the site where people were preparing to head out on their journey.

Putting on her finest clothes and grabbing her bonnet for her head, she grabbed a suitcase and threw in some clothes, just in case something would come up immediately. Heading out the door and jumping upon her mare, she rode swiftly towards town, with a smile in her heart and great expectations.

She then remembered that she would like to take some of her books along on the trail, if she was able to get on the trail, so she galloped back to her home and stuffed in as many as she could into her saddlebags.

Arriving in town, she was amazed at the swarms of people. There were families in wagons backed up for miles and she wondered where she should go to see about getting on the train.

As she slowly rode her horse towards the lines of wagons, she carefully studied each wagon, looking for something or someone to stick out among the crowd. Along the train she saw such a variety of people and she saw many single men as well, and she steered clear of each one of them.

About half way down the train she saw an elderly woman and man whom she thought might be a good prospect and riding up to their wagon, she tenderly asked Sir, hello ma’am; could you tell me if you could use another person on your wagon as you travel such a long ways? I believe I could be put to good use, for I know how to cook a good breakfast, can wash and mend clothes and I am strong too. As the old man and old woman looked at Pricilla, their thoughts were not on what she could do for them, but rather how much trouble such a young girl could be and they replied quickly.

No young lady, I don’t believe that we would be able to keep up with you or perhaps, put up with your foolishness! We’re not used to young people.

Knowing that she would more than likely suffer through many rejections, she nodded her head in thanks and traveled along. After more rejections and no invites, she was beginning to get very discouraged and felt like she was about to cry.

But, she did not realize that there was a family a few wagons