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For Annie Kodak and Cindy Leuty, with love.

You’ve added so much to my life.

June of 1998

Port Orchard

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the Springwater stagecoach station, which will grow over the next few months, before your very eyes, into a thriving community, complete with a saloon, a schoolhouse, a church, and a newspaper, among other things. There are six books in the Springwater series, although I may do more. I love the idea of writing a long, involved story and watching this fictional town full of delightful people come to life. I hope the many and varied characters will become as dear to you as they are to me.

Let me know what you think at www.lindalaelmiller.com. We’ll add you to the newsletter list automatically, thus giving you advance notice of every new release, whether it is part of this series or separate.

God bless and keep.

Warmly,

Linda Lael Miller

CHAPTER

1

Montana Territory, 1870

SHE WOULD NEVER, in her long, long life, forget that first sight of him, riding through fresh snow high as the breast of his Appaloosa stallion, with the sky broad and ice blue at his back. Never forget those gleaming golden moments when she thought he was someone he was not.

Abigail, her six-year-old daughter, stood beside her at the window, perched on an upturned crate and peering through breath-fogged glass. “Look, Mama, he’s come for us! I told you he would—isn’t he spectacular?”

Evangeline Keating bit her lower lip, trying to diffuse the swell of reckless anticipation and plain fear rising within her. The rider was indeed “spectacular,” at least in build; his shoulders looked muscular and broad under his fleece-lined leather coat, his legs were long and straight, and he handled the reins with an easy grace that testified to a deep affinity with horses. She could not make out his features, nor the color of his hair, for he wore a battered hat, pulled down low over his face, no doubt as a protection against the cold wind of that morning when a heavy snow had arrived early, catching the landscape by surprise.

She didn’t really need to see him clearly, for she carried his likeness in her reticule, and had studied it over and over again. “Spectacular,” Evangeline echoed at last. She was thinking of what would be expected of her, once the ceremony had been performed, and almost, but not quite, regretting her decision to come west and marry Mr. John Keating, her late husband’s prosperous cousin. It wasn’t as though she’d had any real choice, after all. Charles had left her with nothing, willing his farm and other assets to his son, Mott, conceived of his first, true and sainted wife, Clara.