Excerpt
Chapter One
Springwater, Montana Territory,
Fall of 1882
The distant hills were skirted in every shade of crimson, yellow, and brown, the sky a blue so deep that it caused something to twist softly in the depths of Olivia Wilcott Darling's spinsterly heart, the air crisp with the promise of an early frost, perhaps even of snow.
Olivia, busy throughout that October morning burning dry branches pruned a month earlier from the trees, shrubs, and lilac bushes growing in her yard, stopped to touch the back of one hand to her brow. The acrid, autumny scent of woodsmoke roused within her an odd but familiar feeling of sorrowful festivity. Though she mourned the summer, vibrant early on with peonies and lilacs and sleepy bees, and then later with roses, the fall was still her favorite time of year. She loved its vivid colors and strange, chilly promise and, at moments like this one, with the fragrant fire crackling cheerfully nearby, with her fine, spotless white house rising behind her, solid and very nearly grand, she felt expectant, as if something were about to happen. Something out of the ordinary, something wonderful.
A frie ... read full excerpt from A Springwater Christmas ebook