Very Pregnant & Moving to Australia: A Mail Order Bride Romance

By Doreen Milstead

One recently married and pregnant woman makes the long and hazardous trip from California, to Australia aboard a Clipper ship. There are many deadly incidents along the way until she lands in Sydney and finds herself all alone, with no idea how she will survive in a brand new country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329809444

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Very Pregnant & Moving to Australia: A Mail Order Bride Romance

Very Pregnant & Moving To Australia: A Mail Order Bride Romance

By

Doreen Milstead

Copyright 2016 Susan Hart

Synopsis: One recently married and pregnant woman makes the long and hazardous trip from California, to Australia aboard a Clipper ship. There are many deadly incidents along the way until she lands in Sydney and finds herself all alone, with no idea how she will survive in a brand new country.

Pacific Ocean

Between San Francisco, California

And Hawaii Islands

February 1858

The California Clipper’s eight sails flapped in the breeze taking them southward at thirty-eight knots per hour. Eva Gable slopped hard over the ship starboard rail of the California Clipper, one month from San Francisco's balmy shores. She held her stomach using her left hand.

Clutched in her right hand against the wooden railing, was her dog-eared copy of Madame Bovary, published last year by Gustave Flaubert. Her dad had bought her a copy as a going away present. Poverty made it unlikely he'd ever see his only daughter again, but she married a doctor.

You're in good hands, my child. A doctor can make a good living anywhere; even a place as inhospitable as Australia. And, with the Lord Jesus' good help, you'll prosper down under.

Eva's blue eyes opened wide as she retched again. Surely, this would be over with after a month at sea. Captain English Dobish announced, first in English, and then in Spanish, that they'd be near Hawaii in twenty days. He was used to sailing around Brazil and South America. Then they'd swing on to a Polynesian Island renamed Tahiti by English explorer James Cook.

After that they’d sail south before turning hard west through Cook's Strait passage to Wellington, New Zealand, for a straight shot at Sydney in New South Wales, Australia.

She was making a spectacle of herself, being fertile and full with child too. More than thirty passengers, on and off, watched her in anguish. She'd never seen a Chinese before, and Mr. Chin wore a different, expensive looking oriental wardrobe every day. A young scared looking boy, oval faced and with big eyes, was a boy named William. He clutched a big medical book.

He kept staring at Eva and seemed afraid of most anything. He mentioned pirates, and the California Clipper possibly sinking, and consumption disease as culprits in their collective demise. Emaciated, thin, she wondered if he'd eaten anything since leaving San Francisco. Even his voice gave off a wobbly, unstable tone of fright and scared emotions.

Another passenger, round faced, innocent eyed Alannah, who was anything but innocent, had curly blonde hair. Her half mourning dress was all black except for a thick two-inch purple hem. She’d arrived on the English ship Maria Asumpta, just in time to catch California Clipper's South Seas voyage.

Edward Inman, with a rough and unpleasant voice, was a big bodied and tall man. His messy blond hair framed his triangular face that looked as if one might cut themselves on it if they got too close, at least, from Eva's point of view. He wore a revolver in a gun holster at his hip, which was wrapped around his black, vigilante pants.