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Romantic Times 4 STARS! " . . . a remarkable romance" Faith V. Smith
"Will’s
Saving Grace is a book that reminds me of a journey that takes you to a
fantastic wonderland where you never wish to leave. Sometimes things are not
always the way they appear and this story is no exception. The author has
created such an extraordinary piece of work that you can’t help but feel you
have taken that excursion into the lives of the characters as they tug at your
heartstrings and become real. I enjoyed the way the characters all went through
some kind of discovery. In the aftermath their struggle brought such incredulous
joy in life that the conclusion was a lesson well learned as they reaped
incredible rewards. This reader could practically see the expressions on their
faces in their words.
Cynthia Scott is a wonderful writer who speaks from her heart. She
created the in-depth characters of Grace and Will with much sensitivity that it
was hard to put it down. The ending will leave you feeling warm all over. Her
story speaks in volumes with all the tender emotion that she has instilled in
this fabulous story. She is a talented writer."
Reviewed by: Linda
"Cynthia Scott has penned an unusual story of an English woman from the nobility who comes to appreciate the friendliness and honesty of the Texas panhandle. When she tries to return to her English manners and circumspection, she is not happy with the restrictions of that life. Both Grace and her father relish the freedom of Texas and feel fulfilled in that setting. Grace, Will and the Earl are all appealing characters who will lodge in readers' hearts. WILL'S SAVING GRACE is a winner!" Jean Hanke
"This was a well written and fun book to read, for the following reasons:
the characters were realistic and the reader can see Grace change her selfish
ways. She starts doing things by herself instead of having servants help
her. She also realizes she has more freedom in
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Excerpt from will's saving grace:
Texas Panhandle, October, 1885
Two more brothers dead.
Will
Donegan stared at the message, grief hollowing his gut.
The
curse of the Devil’s Moon still nipped his heels.
He
blinked, three times, then raised a hand to tug his hat farther over his hair,
then paused in mid-air, clenching his fist to resist the urge. Instead, he curled his fingers over the letter, folding it in
half--again and again--until the square fit easily between his thumb and finger.
Then he squished it, squeezing with all his might, praying his strength
would erase the devastating words.
It
didn’t work.
For
ten years he’d searched, working his way from east to west across Texas,
trying to find the remains of his family, kin he had no notion existed until he
was nearly twenty. All the years
before, when he’d thought he was alone and unloved, he’d had eight brothers
and sisters scattered across the Lone Star state like tumbleweeds.
Orphans, like him, sent to whichever Irish family’d take them in.
His
sisters were untraceable--all supposed married and known by other last
names--but Will had believed he’d find his brothers.
The farther he traveled, though, the fewer folks recognized the Donegan
name. No matter how many letters
and telegrams he sent, no matter how many notices he posted, no one had news.
This town, Clarendon, Texas, one of only three in the isolated Panhandle,
had been his last lead.
Two
more brothers dead.
He
crumpled the paper and admitted what he’d dreaded the moment he’d set out.
No doubt about it, the trail had gone cold.
He
was alone after all.
“Bad
news?” Mrs. Potter, owner of the
general store and the woman in charge of the crate-sized post office, glided
toward him.
“Not
good.” Will sagged against the
plank that served as a counter. Complaints,
excuses, arguments and pleas against the injustice of the message spun through
his mind, but he didn’t voice them. He’d
learned early in life to suffer in silence or face a beating, and old habits
were hard to break. “Much obliged
for your help.”
“Will,
are you ill?”
“No,
ma’am.”
In
each town, there’d always been one person who’d assisted him; the
telegrapher, the local preacher, or the storekeeper.
Mrs. Potter, a woman from back east, helped him here in Clarendon and was
the only one who’d taken a personal interest.
But she’d just lost her husband. He
couldn’t burden her with his troubles.
“I
don’t want to pry,” she said gently, “but may I ask if anyone had news of
Lee?”
He
straightened. Lee.
His twin.
Will
unclenched his fist and scrambled to open the letter.
His heart pounded like a hammer, and his tongue thickened with desperate
hope, but he managed to read the important parts aloud.
“Mr. Donegan. I regret to report Patrick and Sean Donegan are
deceased--ranching accident and tornado. Lee
Donegan was never found.”
“Never
found?” Mrs. Potter arched a
blonde eyebrow. “Does that mean
he’s dead and they didn’t find the body?
Or--”
“They
never found any information.”
“Oh,
Will.” She laid a hand on his
arm. “That means Lee could still
be alive.”
He
took a deep breath. All his life
he’d had strange pangs and twinges. Sometimes
his stomach would cramp. Other
days, he’d feel so happy he wanted to shout out loud.
Some folks had blamed the curse, saying the Devil had hold of him. At
first, Will had been too young to understand, and believed he was evil, that old
man O’Hara had been right to beat him, to drive out the forces taking over
Will’s body. Later, as he grew
and felt good, helpful feelings within his heart--and love for his adopted
mover, he no longer believed he had a black soul, only that he was cursed with
bad luck. Everything he touched
seemed to go wrong. Even that
horrible night--
No,
that was best forgotten. Better to focus on the future.
And his future meant finding his family, specifically, Lee, his twin.
Discovering he had family, particularly a twin had been hope-fostering
news, and at that moment he’d grasped the truth: he’d been experiencing
Lee’s emotions, suffering his pain, sharing his happiness.
Now
Will turned his mind inward and searched his feelings, looking far beyond his
grief. . . Yes!
That eerie connection was still there, that sense of fullness, of
belonging.
“You
bet he’s alive,” Will said. Renewed
strength flowed through him. His
long-ignored Irish heritage, just strong enough for him to believe in fairies,
leprechauns and spirits unseen, convinced him if Lee had died, Will would have
known it; felt pain or intense loss. “He’s
alive, Mrs. Potter, and I’m going to find him.”
“Amen
to that,” she said. “Shall I
inquire farther north? I have
acquaintances in Kansas, and my late husband had relatives in Colorado--”
“Something
tells me Lee’s in Texas,” Will said, “but it doesn’t hurt to try.”
Mrs. Potter handed him some paper and a stub of a pencil.
He scribbled a note giving the little information he had about his twin.
“Here,” he said, handing her the folded letter.
“Where to first, Denver or Dodge City?”
“Dodge
is the closest. I’m expecting the
mail coach any day. I’ll send it
right out.”
“Thank
you, Mrs. Potter.” Will tipped
his hat, grabbed his sack of supplies and turned to the door.
A shaggy, silver-bearded geezer met him on the steps.
“You
finished jawing with these tee-totalers?” Buford “Cookie” Wilson asked.
Will
grinned in spite of himself. Cookie
rustled up grub for the cowboys on the Single Tree Ranch where Will had worked
the last few months as a blacksmith. He
was gruff, but Will liked him and understood the man’s sour mood.
Methodists had settled Clarendon, and they didn’t allow an ounce of
liquor in their town.
Ranch
hands, cowboys and chuck wagon cooks looking to wet their whistle or drown their
sorrows were flat out of luck, and avoided Clarendon--“Saint’s
Roost”--like the plague.
“Let’s
go,” Will said.
“Got
them supplies my Annie wants? Our
new owner’s coming tomorrow. We
go back without them fancy fixin’s and she’ll have both our hides.”
“Flour,
molasses, lard,” Will said, indicating the sack, “and some jars of who knows
what.”
“Don’t
understand that daughter of mine sidling up to them dang Britishers.
They ain’t nothing but look-down-your-nose-at-good-folks snobs.”
Will
climbed onto the seat of the buckboard, and grabbed the reins. An English outfit had bought the ranch all right, but that
didn’t mean anything because foreigners seemed to own half the land in the
Panhandle. The new owner of the
Single Tree Ranch, though, was different.
He
was worse.
“He’s
an earl,” Will said harshly. “He’s
nobility.”
“Ain’t
a thing noble about it,” Cookie said, spewing a stream of tobacco into the
dirt. “Just a fancy way of saying
he thinks he’s better’n everyone else.
Why he ain’t even worked his own stock.
What man’s better’n another who ain’t even roped and branded his
own cattle?”
Will
shrugged. He’d learned to read
from three books; The Bible, The Farmer’s Almanac, and Oliver Twist by Charles
Dickens. Mr. Dickens had put things
pretty plain. The English
couldn’t abide the Irish, the poor or orphans.
God
help him he was all three. The
moment Earl of Wherever found out, Will’d lose his job.
Then how would he find Lee? His
soul told him his twin was close, so close.
If he left the ranch, left the Clarendon area and Mrs. Potter’s help,
how would he find the last of his family?
His
heart dropped to his knees, and pain fiercer than anything he’d ever felt
gripped him. He had to keep his
job, find his brother and settle to a place he could call home.
Otherwise he’d face the one thing he feared most.
Being
alone--for the rest of his life.
*
*
*
Lady
Grace Aldridge pressed her scented handkerchief to her nose, and tried to
breathe something other than dust. The
stagecoach lurched, forcing her to grab the thinly padded leather seat for
balance. A warm, dry wind gusted
through the open windows, threatening to again dislodge her broad-brimmed hat.
She secured it with her other hand and sighed deeply.
“Why
not simply remove the hat altogether?” her father asked from the seat facing
her.
“Father,
please. A woman outdoors
bareheaded? It’s unseemly.”
He
indicated his own hat on the seat next to him, then gestured toward the endless
landscape of long grasses. “My
dear, who would see?”
“Good
grooming is necessary for good health, not just appearances.”
“Of
course.” He smiled indulgently,
then went back to reading last week’s copy of the Dodge City Daily Globe.
Grace
shook her head, aware she behaved foolishly.
Worrying about her hat and hair was pure rubbish.
It was an old habit, her compulsion to talk nonsense when upset, a habit
she thought she’d broken five years ago, after her mother died.
Although,
she must admit that nothing had distressed her since that time quite like this
trip.
She
glanced at her father. James
Aldridge, the Earl of Sheffield was still a handsome man.
Perfectly groomed caramel-colored hair lay close to his head and long
sideburns merged to form a stylish mustache, emphasizing his firm jaw and
clefted chin. Save for the
smattering of gray at his temples and the lines framing his mouth, he looked
young and quite at ease.
She
envied him. He gave every
appearance of a man out for a leisurely drive in Hyde Park, instead of someone
bouncing over the rough terrain of the isolated Panhandle of Texas.
“Are
you certain the driver will take us straight to the ranch?” she asked.
He
peeped at her over the top of his paper. “I
convinced him he could stop there as well as at the stage station.”
The
last stage stop had been little more than a stone-sided hole in the ground--a
dugout, the driver had called it. She
shuddered at the memory, then caught the twinkle in her father’s eyes.
“Oh, you convinced him.” She
smiled. “And how many shillings
did your convincing require?”
“Dollars, my dear,” he said, “and worth every unimportant one of them.”
“Unimportant?”
She arched an eyebrow. “But
I assumed money was indeed the reason we left London so abruptly--a difficulty
with the returns from the investments in this ranch.”
“Quite
right, but this journey has been more tiresome for you than I expected.
After the long train ride, I couldn’t bear for you to sit up all night
on a stagecoach.”
Scolding
herself for selfishly betraying her discomfort, she straightened.
“Thank you, Father, but I am perfectly comfortable.
Besides, when you asked me to accompany you, I expected that the
excursion would be arduous.”
“Yes,
you have borne the trip well.” He
sighed. “I’m grateful for that,
because I require your assistance.”
“You
do?”
Grace
braced herself, waiting for him to say what she already suspected.
He
put aside his paper and leaned forward. “You
are clever with conversation and putting people at ease. Texas is quite different from England, and we’re outsiders.
If I’m to discover the extent of--”
“Extent
of what?” His expression darkened
and Grace frowned. “Father,
something has troubled you since before we left London.
Please tell me what it is.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t believe Mother Nature is totally responsible for the losses on this ranch.”
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