Charity MacNeil

By Eawynn Sharpe

With a hint of woodsmoke and a twist of tartan...

When a violet-eyed designer from Montreal lands in the heart of the Laurentian Mountains, her biggest surprise is neither the blizzards nor the wolves. It’s the warmth of the local people, and the gentle grit of one particular soul ...

Disconsolate and restless after the death of her beloved great-aunt Grace, Charity MacNeil drives up into the mountains on a whim. Thoroughly turned around by her malfunctioning GPS, she finds herself in a remote lakeside village, where the ‘For Sale’ sign on a disused hundred-year-old building catches her eye.

Peeking through the dusty nineteenth-century windowpanes, she decides on the spot to buy the Miner’s Bank. It isn’t long before she has installed herself in Braemar Village, restored the red stone building from top to bottom, and opened up an art gallery.

Lovely, quirky Charity, a young woman of oldfangled garb and sensibilities, embraces her new existence with zest and enthusiasm. Managing her boutique takes a great deal of time and effort, but it doesn’t prevent her from creating Victorian-style workwear on her great-aunt’s treadle machine, or traipsing through the woods sketching wild birds.

Enchanted with the landscape, and caught up in community events, Charity brushes away the wooing of a Mediterranean supergod, a visiting filmmaker who’s shooting his latest drama series on the village green. She laughs off her friends’ attempts to set her up with a suitable guy. She tries her best to ignore yet another handsome, intriguing stranger, one who shows up on the periphery, over and over again. Because, unfortunately, as far as Charity is aware, he’s married.

Julien Charpentier is a man possessed. The doting Dad of rambunctious, adorable twin girls, he works all hours of the day to monetize his farm. Between planting and pruning fifty acres of trees, caring for livestock, producing maple syrup, renovating his outbuildings, and harvesting apples for cider, he doesn’t have much time to socialize. And even if he did, would he want to?

But then he lays eyes on chestnut-haired Charity, in her outrageous Belle Epoque dress, her straw boater, and her red lace-up boots, and the ice in his heart starts to melt away.

Get ready to be captivated and charmed by Eawynn Sharpe’s warmhearted tale of love lost and love found. Just click on the Add to Cart button and settle in for a great read!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eawynn Sharpe
• Release date: Jun 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781777780302

Eawynn Sharpe

Eawynn Sharpe was smitten by Montreal on her first visit there at the age of eight. Her passion for this exotic, quirky city is matched only by her fascination with design and manufacturing.But when she met the love of her life, she decamped with him to Quebec's Laurentian Mountains. Working from their serene lakefront home, Eawynn and her partner design giftware products. In the interstices, Eawynn writes. She is currently at work on two new novels.

Book preview

PART ONE

PROLOGUE

My name is Charity.

Yeah, I know. How Dickensian is that? I dedicated my teenaged years to proving that I’m NOT that girl. Yet, here I am, dressed in an old-fashioned schoolmarm outfit, my long hair knotted into a big lazy updo, lace-up boots pounding a staccato drumbeat across the maple floor of my store, feeding split logs into a woodstove. And it’s snowing outside.

It’s not as if I can ask my folks what they were thinking. They died, twenty-seven years ago, in Borneo. My parents were on a mission to vaccinate the local population against tetanus and diphtheria. One day, midway through the rainy season, their canoe was swept away by floodwaters, disappearing down a swollen river. I was eighteen months old. They’d parked me at the encampment that morning, with an au pair. After multiple, frantic, long-distance phone calls, and some high-stakes international diplomacy, my Great-Aunt Grace claimed me as her own and conveyed me back to Canada, posthaste.

Don’t ask me about orangutans. I was, after all, barely a toddler, and my mother and father treated people, not primates. But I do remember, in dreamy fragments, the smell of the rainforest and the birdsong.

Oh yes, the birds. Every time I sit down to draw, a bird lands on the page.

⁂

It’s the birds that kept me going after Auntie Grace left.

She’d been in a senior’s residence for a couple of years at that point. Part of me suspects that she died of a broken heart.

We’d lived together, just the two of us, in her spacious nineteenth-century home in Westmount since the day she carried me off the plane from Indonesia. She spent most of her spare time in her back garden, where she’d created a permaculture paradise for birds and small mammals. Furred or feathered, we held them dear, though we drew the line at skunks.

Auntie Grace was fifty-five when she adopted me. She was newly widowed and childless, so thank goodness we were both fast learners. Her husband had bequeathed her the house and a tidy amount of cash—I wasn’t a latch-key kid. But twenty-odd years sailed by, and when she fell ill we had to hire caregivers, while I attended university. I’d been accepted into a degree program with a double major in Industrial and Graphic Design. The curriculum was brutal.

Grace and I decided that it would be best if the house was sold, and she went into a care home. It would have been dangerous to carry on with our program of patchwork assistance. I’m not the most muscled person in the world, and a fall on her part could be fatal. Plus there were so many stairs …

During my darkest moments, I beat myself up for agreeing to the move. I wonder if she wouldn’t have lasted longer, been happier, if she’d stayed on at home, despite the difficulties. But, realistically, I understand that the risks were too high.

I took an apartment next to the seniors’ residence and on weekdays, after finishing my courses, I proceeded directly to her side. Her new place was magazine–worthy. We engaged an interior decorator whose tastes echoed Grace’s own. The suite had a spare room, with a cot and a desk, where I could work quietly while my aunt slept. The windows gave onto a fantastic view of the city and the port. The attendants and the medical staff were first rate. The programmed activities were well thought out. The food was delicious.

But for all its creature comforts, it was a poor, pallid substitute for her garden of half-wild creatures.

1

Charity

July 2017

Auntie Grace lives on in my heart, and I speak to her daily.

I swear she can hear me—she’s certainly still guiding my decisions. After it was all over, after she was gone, my functional little flat in Montreal seemed bleak and cheerless. I’d graduated, so I didn’t have the challenges and stimulus of an academic schedule to impose direction on my life. Grace had been just a teensy bit frugal—according to the notary, her cash flow and investments had been cleverly managed. And then there was the life insurance.

Basically, I was well off, though completely lacking a plan. This was sixteen months ago: I shuffled listlessly through the days.

Montreal summers are always stifling. It was hard to know whether my lack of energy stemmed from the unrelenting heat or my ongoing grief. For whatever reason, I woke up one day in July and heard Auntie G. telling me to get dressed and hop on the subway. I got off midtown and walked into a car rental agency.

I’d like a compact car for the weekend, I told the clerk.

Where are you headed?

I’m driving up into the Laurentians. It’s my first time there.

Aha! In that case, can I interest you in a hybrid vehicle? It’s really easy on fuel. You’ll thank me for this—they’ve shut down most of the gas stations in the mountains. They weren’t up to today’s pollution standards. You won’t find fuel north of the Ottawa River until you reach Mont Tremblant.

I didn’t know that. I’d never been in the Laurentians.

Do you sell maps? Call me oldfangled. I didn’t want to navigate by squinting at a tiny screen.

His mouth twitched, just a little. There’s a map book in the car. When you return the car, let me know if you actually used it. The sweetheart vehicle I’m loaning you today has a super GPS.

⁂

Julien

May 2006

Passionate. Driven. Focused. Charismatic.

Muriel wasn’t just one word. We met by accident. I was enrolled in the forestry program at the university, and I worked for a tree service company on the weekends. It was springtime, and they’d sent me to prune a row of ornamental crabapple trees at the Montreal Botanical Gardens. This was right before the cherry blossom festival—the climate doesn’t support cherry trees, but the flowering crabs pinch-hit quite nicely.

I like to get there early in the morning, prior to opening hours. I work more effectively when I don’t have to be alert for park visitors, particularly teeny humans under the age of ten. So I’d stopped my truck along the walkway and was hauling my tools out of the back when this petite, blonde, blue-eyed angel came storming toward me.

Hey! she hollered. What do you think you’re doing?

I stopped short and surveyed the area. There was no one else in sight.

WTF. She was shouting at me?

Ah, are you yelling at me?

I certainly am! She put her hands on her hips and glared up at me. I’ve just spent an hour composing my shot, and now you’re about to ruin it.

Only then did I notice the tripod and camera a couple of hundred yards down the path.

I’m really sorry, Miss, but first of all, nobody asked me to watch out for you, and also, wait a minute, technically the park isn’t open yet.

I slept here overnight.

You what?

Slept. Up in a tree. With a sleeping bag. So I could get my shot.

I squinted my eyes together and repeated her words back to her, slowly. So you could get your shot. I must have shaken my head.

Mister … hmm? The light is changing as we speak. Now, can you please remove your pickup and wait ten minutes?

My name is Jules. And yes, I can.

I was already hooked, you see, by this little spitfire. And she was right. As we stood there, the sun peeped above the horizon; a misty pink pearlescent orb. The birds had started their morning roll call, sparrows and warblers twittering and trilling, jays squawking with glee, crows screaming out a hoarse tale of murder most foul. Anybody who thinks birds are peaceful creatures hasn’t spent time in a forest at daybreak.

I hastily reloaded my gear and rolled the pickup forward, past her setup. Then I waited.

Her demeanor changed. She seemed to breathe with the trees. Thoroughly engaged in capturing the dawn’s capricious iridescence, utterly confident in her tools, nothing else existed for her in that moment. I dared not move.

Twenty minutes later, she straightened up, turned sharply on her heel, and calmly, efficiently, packed her camera gear. She hitched her knapsack on her back, grabbed her tripod, and started off up the paved walkway to the exit.

Wait! I shouted, feeling a bit ridiculous. Could we do this again, some time?

The force of her smile sent me reeling backwards. I’m Muriel. See you at the café near the main gate at noon?

⁂

July 2017

The super-duper GPS worked just great, and before I knew it I was driving north on a two-lane highway.

Which needed work. Quebec’s secondary roadways are legendary for their disrepair, but I didn’t know that either, now did I?

With each passing mile, my spirits rose. I motored through quaint villages and vast tracts of dense forest. The road angled constantly upward as I was lifted from the near sea-level elevation of the St. Lawrence valley up into the highest mountains in Canada, east of the Rockies. Colorful fletches, brown, blue, red, and yellow, zinged among the trees. Was that a purple finch? How was it possible that Auntie Grace and I had never ventured north? This place was magical.

Not so magical was the state of my stomach. I’d thrown a package of almonds into my handbag. And nothing else. The rental agency had a vending machine, and I’d purchased a bottle of water, but early on in the afternoon I cursed myself for having skipped breakfast.

Not only that, the GPS seemed to have led us well and truly astray. I was traveling north on a so-called highway that more closely resembled a goat track, hugging the side of a mountain and praying that I wouldn’t tumble over a ridge and be lost to view. Aside from rental guy, there wasn’t even anyone to report me missing.

The global positioning system had no idea where we were. I’d turned off the annoying voice feature an hour earlier. How many times did I want to hear the instruction, ‘Now go off road’? I mean, are you kidding? Precisely which tree did the GPS want me to crash into?

I began to swear loudly and was about to retrace my route when I rounded a curve. My eyes fell upon a tiny, enchanting, pristine lake. Not more than two miles long, maybe a mile wide, it was an emerald mirror. A handful of small boats glided lazily along its surface. Wait. Isn’t a motorboat usually a noisy nightmare? These were silent. Were they FISHING?

Right there, where my mesmerized brain commanded my body to slow the vehicle down and pull over, right there was a tree-canopied lane leading to a point at the south end of the lake. Auntie Grace chose that moment to whisper in my ear, There must be a lot of birds here.

I guided my car down the laneway. Were those geese? A patrol of huge white things came waddling in my direction, honking noisily. I drove at five miles per hour, hoping they’d have the presence of mind to veer away from my bumper. No fear. They seemed accustomed to this. The feathery throng parted, and I pulled into a clearing, smack dab in the middle of a miniscule hamlet, without incident. Well, the massive birds were unruffled. Me, less so.

Still safely inside the vehicle, I glanced around. A cluster of a dozen houses was grouped around the playing field of a one-room schoolhouse. Opposite the homes stood a modest whiteboard church, with a house beside it that I took to be the manse. It was built in Regency style, with pitched gables and gothic windows.

Flanking its easternmost side was an old reddish stone building. Carved into the keystone arch were the words ‘Miner’s Bank 1905’. Its front façade boasted three enormous, mullioned, half-round windows. Skewing off the doorknob was a real estate sign. ‘A Vendre’.

It was for sale.

2

2006

I would have to say that this first encounter set the tone of our relationship.

Muriel was always pushing boundaries, charming friends and strangers alike into accommodating her most outrageous schemes. She pulled it off because she was, frankly, a genius who got sh--, who got stuff done. Her photo of the apple bower ran in newspapers across the country. And she’d just gone out and shot it on a lark.

Within weeks of that first meeting we were living out of each other’s pockets. I came to realize that Muriel was a supernova. And she needed someone in the background; someone calm, steady, reliable, to keep her anchored to this earth.

I was in my fourth year of university when we met, while she had three full sessions left in her grueling architectural studies. We moved in together, officially, the autumn after we first started dating. Fortuitously, I landed a full-time job. This freed her up to focus on her projects and courses.

We were, unwittingly, the power couple of her academic year. We hosted parties in our apartment every weekend. But these weren’t the kind of boozy events where people get falling–down drunk and act like dunces. Her peers wanted to discuss philosophical theory, contemporary music, abstruse mathematical constructs. Muriel would serve up a fabulous buffet; each week a different theme.

Gifted souls circled around us, like moths to a flame. It seemed as though everyone wanted a piece of my soon-to-be wife. I can name, among them, women and men who have ascended to the top of their professions—doctors, judges, Nobel-worthy scientists—who spent their Friday evenings at ours.

If I’m honest, I felt like I was out of my league.

⁂

July 2017

I parked the car and took my life in my hands.

The geese had gathered five yards away, and when I exited the vehicle they trumpeted and hissed. The noise they made sounded remarkably like a police siren, and I actually craned my neck and looked around for the patrol car. I uttered some soothing sounds, which seemed to have no impact whatsoever on the noise level, but the birds didn’t come any closer. They just waddled after me, barking and honking, as I made my way to the decommissioned bank.

I peeped through a glass pane in the front door. The interior surfaces were layered in dust and cobwebs. There was little furniture. A solitary oak banker’s desk, with an old gooseneck lamp perched on it, stood randomly in the middle of the room. Half of the end wall was taken up with ranks of ancient, wood and brass safety-deposit boxes. A long interior partition separated the main, two-story-high space from three smaller rear rooms. Its lower aspect was paneled in reddish wood. Starting at waist height, the wall was fully windowed, though most of the muntined panes were cracked or shattered.

Transfixed, I spotted an antique lift made from wrought iron with brass fittings. A curved, wooden staircase wrapped around it; I fancied that its walnut balustrade rail still gleamed under a hundred-year accumulation of grime.

Tin tiles dangled from the ceiling. An elaborate, rust-covered, wood-burning stove dominated the opposite wall. Oh boy, I thought, I’ll bet this place needs to be rewired. Which would imply that the walls might have to be ripped out and rebuilt.

Several dogs lent their voices to the geese chorus, and I almost expected a crowd of angry villagers to show up with pitchforks. So I was startled to hear, behind me, a clear, bell-like voice saying, You can get a real deal on this beauty. And the geese will guard it for free.

I whirled around. A woman in her mid-thirties stood at the bottom of the steps, holding a plateful of chocolate chip cookies and a frosty glass of milk. My stomach rumbled. Did I mention that I hadn’t eaten? A wee, rosy-cheeked guy, maybe two years old, stared up at me, one hand clinging fiercely to the woman’s apron.

Hi there, I’m Briu. This is Nate. Welcome to Braemar Village. Though honestly, these days it’s more of a hamlet. And, gesturing with the dish of delectable home-baked goodies, Come on over to the café and have a bite. First-time visitors get free treats.

I later learned that Bri was on a one-woman mission to tempt the best possible occupant into the former place of commerce, but that day I was merely starving and curious.

So preoccupied had I been in sussing out the bank that I’d failed to notice the exquisite café right next to it. A gorgeous old stone house, with the steepest roof pitch I’d ever seen, was fronted by a flagstone terrace. Antique, cast-iron bistro tables and chairs shared the space with meticulously maintained, winding garden beds. Bees buzzed contentedly, and hummingbirds darted about a feeding station.

Seated at a table, I gazed out at the long view across Lake Braemar, to the opposite extremity of the small but perfect body of water. Its contour was defined by rolling hills. The near end of the lake was a sandy beach, with dinghies lined up along it like little soldiers. Thirty feet offshore, ducks (mergansers? I really must bone up on my waterfowl) glided serenely past an ancient wooden pier.

I shook my head. Wow. Just, wow.

We get that a lot, she said with good humor. Now eat.

My heart surged. I chowed down a half-dozen biscuits and gulped that glass of frothy, creamy milk. Bri (I was already calling her that) had been busy indoors, but she materialized at my side with a platter of sandwiches and two mugs of café au lait. She took a seat, and we chatted as if we’d known each other since infancy. I spilled out my tale of sorrow and loss. In exchange, she indicated that she and her husband were longtime residents of the area. They’d left for a few years to attend college and then flown home at godspeed.

Thank the stars for public day care, she sighed. She and Simon had gutted and restored the one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old, Quebec–style farmhouse into their combined café and home. They’d done all of the design and most of the construction labor themselves. And when they were finally able to breathe, along came Nathaniel.

You’re a designer? She sounded intrigued. If Simon and I did it, you can TOTALLY manage it. I’ll hook you up with some great tradespeople in the district. Your gallery and this village? A match made in heaven.

Wait, what? The whole time I’d sat there, my hands had silently, restlessly traced invisible creatures of flight. An entire line of prints and paintings had sprung into my imagination, all of them featuring birds.

Yet, somehow, this woman I’d barely met had seen the artist’s atelier and gift shop that existed solely in the back of my mind. I shook my head.

⁂

May 2009

I suppose it was inevitable that Muriel would ultimately tire of the urban grind—that WE would tire of it, if I’m honest.

And so it was, that in her final year of university, she started talking about moving to the countryside.

I want to look out the window and see trees, she groused. And mountains. I’m done with concrete and asphalt.

Her sudden hankering for country living stunned me. Had you asked me, I’d have told you that Muriel was urban to the soles of her designer cowboy boots. But I didn’t question it, back then. My family has lived up in the mountains for generations. By studying forestry, I was, in my heart-of-hearts, planning my eventual return.

Though I didn’t have an actual home to go back to. My parents had decamped to Arizona, a decade earlier. My mom suffered from what the doctors assumed was severe arthritis, and she was convinced that the hot, dry climate was her ticket to wellness. Sadly, her illness claimed her life after only two years in the desert. Dad still lives out there, part time. He travels to Quebec for a few months of fishing, in the summertime.

So, with the ancestral freehold out of reach, we were at liberty to explore the Laurentians. The notion of cultivating a tree farm came to me in bits and pieces. Initially, I planned to carry on working as an arborist on contract, and Muriel would have her office in the closest town. This was at the point when remote work was just starting to be a thing.

We drove thousands of miles looking for exactly the right property. We assessed hundreds of listed terrains from the roadside. But don’t they always say that when you land in the right place you know it in your gut? That happened to us. It was a perfect spring day in mid-May, sunlit and unclouded. Birds were everywhere.

We stopped outside the gate of an overgrown homestead. The decrepit farmhouse was perched on a slope across a deep valley, a stream threading its way through the unkempt grasses below us. Sloping down toward the rippling brook, adjacent to the roadway where we stood, an ancient apple orchard was in full blossom, its loveliness screening us from the reality of just how tumbledown the barn actually was, how much work those slanting sheds would need.

We were in love. With each other, yes, but what I mean is, we were in love with the place. Muriel couldn’t wait to graduate so she could take up the renovations full time. Meanwhile, I slogged along trimming trees and advising clients on forest management, during the day. I spent my evenings clearing out a hundred years’ worth of debris from the farmhouse, the barn, and the dozen-odd outbuildings.

Upon winning her degree, Muriel was scooped up by a prestigious architectural firm in the city. This kept us apart during the week, but we concluded that it was the best trajectory for her budding career. She was a superstar, and the offers rained down. She settled for an office that was internationally recognized for its use of sustainable building techniques. She wanted to push advances in that practice area.

Admirers continued to encircle my wife, but now she was handling it more or less solo, because I was busy propping up the falling-down structures on our newly acquired land. Obviously, we could save a lot of cost by investing sweat equity. My sweat equity. Mine, and that of Uncle Martin and Aunt Edith, who lived five miles away.

Muriel, though, had the more demanding schedule. She worked seventy hours a week at the practice she’d joined, and when she came home she jumped right back on the computer and drew up the plans for our home and barn restoration. When we eventually received construction permits from the municipality, she project-managed the rebuild every step of the way.

3

July 2017

When I could not eat another bite, Bri offered me a tour of the village.

"There are