“I wanted to make sure you were feeling all right. Any fever?” Thorne asked.

      “I don’t think so. See for yourself,” Charity said.

      Thorne hesitated, then, looking into her eyes, he laid his hand on her forehead. “I think you’re cool enough.”

      Charity blushed. She had never felt like this before. Was this what love felt like? Could she have been wrong to plan to lead a solitary life after she was widowed? Such a decision had seemed perfectly sensible at the time. Only now was it coming into question.

      Her eyes searched the depths of Thorne’s dark gaze. Was she imagining it, or was there truly a new tenderness in the way he looked at her?

      Afraid he would deny such emotions, she simply smiled at him and said, “Thank you for looking after me.”

      VALERIE HANSEN

      was thirty years old when she awoke to the presence of the Lord in her life and turned to Jesus. In the years that followed she worked with young children, both in church and secular environments. She also raised a family of her own and played foster mother to a wide assortment of furred and feathered critters.

      Married to her high school sweetheart since age seventeen, she now lives in an old farm house she and her husband renovated with their own hands. She loves to hike the wooded hills behind the house and reflect on the marvelous turn her life has taken. Not only is she privileged to reside among the loving, accepting folks in the breathtakingly beautiful Ozark mountains of Arkansas, she also gets to share her personal faith by telling the stories of her heart for Steeple Hill’s Love Inspired lines.

      Life doesn’t get much better than that!

      Valerie Hansen

      Wilderness Courtship

      “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”

      —Matthew 25:40

      To all the parents who continue struggling to do the best they can and to those extraordinary individuals who take in other people’s children and make them their own. It is truly a gift.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Epilogue

      Questions For Discussion

      Prologue

      New York, 1853

      The wooden deck of the three-masted freighter Gray Feather rose and fell, rocked by the building swells. Thorne Blackwell knew a storm was imminent, he could smell its approach in the salty air, hear the anxiety in the calls of the soaring gulls and feel the changing weather in his bones. Pacing nervously, he awaited the arrival of his half brother, Aaron, and Aaron’s family. Once they were safely aboard he’d relax. At least he hoped he would.

      It had been over two years since Thorne had heard from Aaron, or any of the other Ashtons for that matter, and he wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Would Aaron have contacted him if he hadn’t been desperate? It was doubtful. Then again, Aaron had good reason for whatever misgivings he still harbored.

      Thorne braced his feet apart on the pitching deck, pushed his hat down more tightly over his shoulder-length dark hair and drew up the collar of his woolen frock coat against the impending gale. Of all the nights for anyone to decide he needed immediate passage to San Francisco, this had to be the worst. Then again, Aaron’s note had contained such evident panic, perhaps the risk was warranted. Thorne hoped so, since Naomi and the child would also be boarding.

      Lying at anchor in the crowded New York harbor, the Gray Feather was fully loaded and awaiting final orders to embark on her third voyage around the horn. They’d hoist sail at dawn and be on their way, providing the storm didn’t thwart their plans. Thorne had fought nature before. But for the grace of a benevolent God, he would have been a resident of Davy Jones’s locker instead of the owner of the finest full-modeled vessel ever built in Eastport.

      Why God had chosen to spare him from drowning at sea when so many of his comrades had lost their lives he didn’t know. The only thing of which he was certain was his current role as his only sibling’s protector.

      Peering into the fog he spied a bobbing lantern in the prow of a small boat off the starboard. Shouting orders, he assembled members of the crew and affected a safe, though treacherous, boarding.

      Aaron handed the sleepy two-year-old he was carrying to his wife, then shook Thorne’s hand with vigor and obvious relief. “Thank you. I was afraid you might not want to help us. Not after the way we last parted.”

      Touched, Thorne hid his emotion behind a brusque facade. “Nonsense. Let’s get you all inside before the rain begins in earnest. Then you can tell me everything.”

      He winced as his brother placed a protective arm around Naomi’s shoulders. Her head was bowed over the blanket-wrapped child in her arms, her face hidden by the brim of her burgundy velvet bonnet, yet Thorne could see her golden hair as clearly as if they were once again walking hand in hand through a meadow and dreaming of an idyllic life together.

      He set his jaw. Whatever else happened on this voyage, he was not going to resurrect a love better left dead. He and Naomi had had their chance at happiness, or so Thorne had thought, and she had chosen to wed Aaron, instead. That was all there was to it and all there ever would be. He had long ago concluded that romantic love was highly overrated and nothing had happened since to change his mind.

      Guiding his guests into the captain’s cabin he explained, “I’ve arranged for you to occupy these quarters until we can prepare a suitable suite elsewhere. It’s not the quality you’re used to, of course, but it’s the best I could do on such short notice.”

      “It’s fine,” Aaron was quick to say as he ducked to guide his wife to a chair beneath a swaying lantern suspended from a beam. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

      “All I ask is an explanation,” Thorne replied. He leaned against the inside of the cabin’s narrow door and crossed his arms. “What has happened to make you so insistent on leaving New York?”

      Aaron’s gaze darted to his wife, then rested lovingly on the small boy asleep in her lap. “It’s mostly because of Jacob,” he said sadly. “Father has grown more and more irrational as the years have passed. We think he may be going insane, although no doctors will agree to it and chance losing the exorbitant retainers he pays them. He’s turned against us just the way he turned against you.”

      Thorne