Read A Place Called Bliss Online
Authors: Ruth Glover
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Historical Fiction, #Theology, #FIC014000, #Religious Studies, #Christianity, #Spirituality, #Religious, #Philosophy, #Politics & Social Sciences, #Historical, #Genre Fiction, #Religion & Spirituality, #Atheism
A Place Called Bliss
© 2001 by Ruth Glover
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3932-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
To
the dear people
of First Christian Church
in The Dalles, Oregon:
Thank you for nine wonderful years!
Contents
Scotland—1878
S
ophia Galloway had been assured by the best medical advice in Kirkcudbright that her child would not be born on board ship. Whether on land or on sea, its safe arrival came first, of course. But land, with her own doctor officiating, was imperative; Sophia was no heroine, and the comfort would be best assured at home in Heatherstone, in her own bed. And it wouldn’t hurt to have Hugh standing dutifully by, helpless, as she went down into the vale of death for the sake of a Galloway heir.
But Sophia was not selfless in her desire for a child. For as long as she could remember, she had wanted a child, someone to call her own. Wanted it more than the wealth, which, she had been informed constantly across the years by her debt-ridden brother, was imperative for the Gowrie family coffers and could be obtained only if she married well. Wanted it more than the marriage itself, though, as she understood it, marriage was necessary.
Because of the urgent demands that she marry money, if not a title, and because she had no marriage proportion whatsoever due to her brother Preston’s profligacy—his licentiousness and dissipation had all but impoverished the Gowrie estate—marriage proposals had been few and far between. The two or three young gallants who had shown an interest in Preston’s charming sister had backed off quickly when her lack of a dowry was discovered.
And so Sophia, restless and frustrated and chafing sorely under the limitations placed on women of her station, had reached the less than acceptable age of twenty-five before marrying.
Her marriage, then, was stunning; all the more so if one considered money a factor. And of the importance of this she had been reminded often and pointedly by her graceless brother.
It was more than a marriage for Sophia; it was an escape. An escape from a disintegrating house that had been plundered by Preston of its saleable items, an escape from the shire of Wigtown where the Gowrie fall from pride and position to poverty and humiliation was well known and where no bachelor would look her way except with embarrassment and, sometimes, faint regret.
Be it said forever in his favor, Hugh Galloway, with magnificent aplomb, seemed never to see the signs of faded fortune in the Gowrie estate. He treated Sophia not as a bargain but as a prize. Though she could not say she was in love with the forty-five-year-old Scot, and though she fretted over the fact that his previous marriage of fifteen years was childless, she liked him and respected him. That was enough. And surely children would follow!
Though she thought it a waste of money, Hugh Galloway, without hesitation, transferred a generous dowry into Preston’s pockets.
Sophia knew the Galloway name, of course, from the adjoining shire of Kirkcudbright, and it was an old and honored one. Hugh Galloway had been a widower for several years. Now, for some reason, he had decided to remarry.
Secretly, at first, Sophia wondered what had fixed the Galloway man’s attention on her—overage, impoverished, and with a brother whose reputation had dimmed any earlier glory obtained through centuries of Gowrie ancestors and their notable services to king and country.
Hugh Galloway, quite frankly, told her why she had been his choice. Any lesser quality of person than Sophia Gowrie might have been chagrined, perhaps offended, but Sophia took it as a compliment from a man whose opinion she was beginning to prize.
Hugh Galloway’s future included living on the Canadian frontier. “Ontario, where we’ll be, is no longer the frontier,” he explained, visiting with Sophia one Sunday afternoon in the ravished hall of the Gowrie manor, “but it certainly is far removed from the culture and customs to which you have been accustomed.”
Canada! Something in Sophia, as in Hugh himself, was challenged.
“And you, my dear,” Hugh had said, fixing her with measuring eyes, “strike me as just the woman to face it with me.”
Unexpected color had surged into Sophia’s cheeks, for she felt elevated in his—as well as her own—opinion.
“My departure date is a year and more away,” he said, adding with a smile, “I thought I should get this important part of the preparation struck from my list.”
And even then Sophia felt no part of any list. Or, if she did, it was to feel contentment that she was at the top of it.
The banns were read and the marriage performed. Preston, in his cups as usual, bade his one sibling farewell with a maudlin display of affection that would have been missing if he had been sober. As for Sophia, she stepped into the Galloway carriage, waved to the few friends standing by, turned to her husband, and said, with a smile, “Now for the great adventure.”
It seemed to please the ordinarily taciturn, often dour, Scot. Along with these characteristics and the frankness he had already exhibited, Sophia was to learn of his impatience with
ineptness, pride of name and position, a certain ruthlessness. But all of it was tempered with a rigid sense of fair play.
At her comment, Hugh took her hand in the first show of intimacy between them, and somehow it conveyed the regard of which he had yet to speak and which he was to demonstrate by his actions rather than by his words.
An apartment at Heatherstone became their first home. Hugh had little time for the games society played, and though he only rarely introduced Sophia to the aristocratic circle of which he was undoubtedly an accepted part, she never felt it was to her detriment. It was, simply, that Hugh was fixed on the move to Canada and regretted meaningless interruptions.
“After all,” he said, “we’ll have it all to do over when we settle in Toronto. On my brief trips there I’ve made a few acquaintances; we won’t be entirely strangers in a strange land.” He explained to her that his business ventures there were under way, property purchased, and a home, even now, under construction.
“It will be almost a mirror image of Heatherstone,” he said fondly, “but better planned. After all these years I know what can be eliminated, what changed, and what improved.” He had planned for the same awe-inspiring impression but with more comfort and utility.
The next few months were not wasted time for Sophia. Slowly she began to understand the man who was her husband, and to adapt herself to his way of life and to pleasing him. With Hugh’s encouragement and guidance, an entire wardrobe was designed and most of it packed.
“The ladies in Toronto,” Hugh said dryly, “will study the newest styles avidly. We’re not going to a savage place, by any means. Now as for Angus—”
This was Sophia’s introduction to the Morrison family, who was to accompany them. Accompany them, and yet only temporarily.
“Angus Morrison was born at Heatherstone,” Hugh explained. “His father was groundskeeper until his death. Angus was a favorite of my father’s, who saw the boy’s intelligence and
character and invested in his education. After all that, Angus came right back here and went to work as overseer—a keen farmer is our Angus. He married Mary Skye, also born and raised at Heatherstone. Mary’s mother, Kezzie—” Hugh’s patrician face softened. “Kezzie has been like a mother to me.” Sophia already knew, and appreciated, the cherished Kezzie.
“And Angus?” Sophia pursued his earlier comment on savagery in the new land. “You seemed to indicate Angus might be going to Canada, too.”
“Angus and Mary and the children. Angus wants to be his own master, and I don’t blame him. It’s hard to resist the call of free land, freedom from the serfdom and servitude that has plagued his strata of society for generations. It’s a chance to break loose, even as it is for me.”
Hugh’s face darkened slightly. Being a second son, the grand Heatherstone estate had gone to his older brother. Fortunately his grandmother’s vast and extensive holdings had been left to him. But to be out from his brother’s shadow—Sophia could see an independent and arrogant man like Hugh would chafe under imperious authority, be it family or sovereign who held sway.
It had been while riding that Sophia had first met Angus Morrison. Her attention sharpened at her first glimpse of him.
Pulling her mount to a stop, Sophia asked, rather abruptly, “Who’s that man?”
The groom who was accompanying her, a youth from the stables—and another who had been born and raised at Heatherstone—shaded his eyes, glanced at the man who had vaulted a low stone wall and was proceeding toward a field where sheep were grazing. “Why, Mum,” he said, “it’s no’ but Angus, our overseer.”
Overseer and employee, perhaps; nevertheless there was in the man’s entire demeanor an air of authority. Perhaps
freedom
was a better word. He walked tall, strode easily; his head sat with some pride on his broad shoulders. His clothes, though
suitable for a worker and somewhat worn, were quality and fit him well.
Some impulse drove Sophia’s heels into the side of her horse. It bounded forward, over the wall, and toward the man, who turned at the sound of approaching hooves.
Breathless, though there was no need for it—it was the mare who had done the running—Sophia looked down into the craggy face of Angus Morrison. Instantly, joltingly, unexpectedly and heart-shakingly, came the thought:
Has love come, too late?