Page 2 of Charlotte

He waited for that truth to strike him properly. It did not. The cold had taken the sharp edge off everything, even fear. He curled around the arm that hurt least and worked his hands beneath him as best he could.

“Peterson!”

The shout came once, maybe twice. Or perhaps he only wanted badly enough to hear it that his mind supplied the sound.

He tried to answer.

Nothing came.

The white closed over everything.

Chapter One

June 19, 1886 — The Dock at Wild Rose Ridge

Charlotte Bellamy saw Wild Rose Ridge come into view and decided, with no evidence whatsoever, she loved it.

Her sister, Odelia—or Delly as Lottie called her—would have called that premature. Odelia preferred evidence, records, and conclusions reached only after a person had exhausted every unpleasant possibility. Lottie preferred to believe a thing might be wonderful until it proved otherwise.

So far, Wild Rose Ridge had not proved otherwise.

The town sat between lake and mountain, rough at the edges and breathtakingly beautiful. A white church steeple rose above the roofs along Main Street. Smoke drifted from the lumber camps beyond the trees, and snow still marked the highest ridgeline even though June had already put wildflowers along the shore. Down near the beach, men were hauling fresh-cut lumber into stacks beside a half-built structure, while the mill sent its steady grinding sound into the clear air.

Lottie pressed both hands to the rail of The Merry Jo and leaned forward.

“It’s exactly like a storybook,” she whispered.

“It is exactly like a logging town,” Delly said beside her. “Which is what the advertisement promised, so at least no one has lied to us yet. Mind your hem. The rail has been tarred, and tar does not come out of poplin with prayer alone.”

Lottie laughed and looked down at her skirt. The hem had missed the tar by an inch, which she considered providential, and Delly would almost certainly call coincidence.

“It’s wonderful,” Lottie said.

“It is remote.”

“It has a church.”

“It has a mill, which means noise.”

“It has mountains.”

“It has mountains covered in snow in June. That is not a recommendation.”

“It has my future husband somewhere upon that dock.”

That silenced Delly for nearly three seconds, which Lottie counted as an achievement.

Her stomach gave a small, eager twist as the steamship eased closer to the dock. Somewhere in the crowd stood Mr. Peterson. C. Peterson, according to the papers from the Sisters Mail-Order Bride Company. He was a logger, quiet and well thought of in Wild Rose Ridge, according to what the Busy Bees had written.

His letters were tucked safely in Lottie’s reticule, tied with blue thread and worn soft along the folds from being read too often. They were not elegant letters. His spelling wandered without supervision, and he had once used three different spellings of the word weather in the same paragraph. Underneath the awkward sentences about rain, timber, and the price of nails, Lottie had found something.

Kindness, perhaps.

Or loneliness.

Possibly both.

A man who noticed the rain made everything green could not be entirely hard. A man who warned his intended bride the winters were severe and the mountain roads were not fit for foolish shoes had, at the very least, given thought to her toes. Lottie considered that an excellent foundation for marriage.