Read Westward the Dream Online
Authors: Judith Pella,Tracie Peterson
Westward the Dream
Westward the Dream
Copyright © 1998
Judith Pella and Tracie Peterson
Cover design by John Hamilton Design
Cover photography: Getty Images/Germany
Costumier: Theresa Blake/Rossetti, UK
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwiseâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
E-book edition created 2011
ISBN 978-1-4412-3237-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
To
Bud and Casey
With love
for sharing your son
and for all of the other
wonderful things you do.
âTracie
JUDITH PELLA has been writing for the inspirational market for more than twenty years and is the author of more than thirty novels, most in the historical fiction genre. Her recent novel
Mark of the Cross
and her extraordinary four-book
Daughters of Fortune
series showcase her skills as a historian as well as a storyteller. Her degrees in teaching and nursing lend depth to her tales, which spin a variety of settings. Pella and her husband make their home in Oregon.
Visit Judith's Web site:
www.judithpella.com
.
TRACIE PETERSON is the author of over eighty novels, both historical and contemporary. Her avid research resonates in her stories, as seen in her bestselling
Heirs of Montana
and
Alaskan Quest
series. Trace and her family make their home in Montana.
Visit Tracie's Web site:
www.traciepeterson.com
.
Visit Tracie's blog:
www.writespassage.blogspot.com
.
1
With a sheer will and determination to match any man in the rapidly growing audience, Jordana Baldwin studied the four-story brick edifice of New York City's Deighton School for Young Women and planned her strategy.
“You don't have to do this, Jordana,” her best friend, Meg Vanderbilt, whispered. “Leave off with this nonsense and let's go back to our room.”
Jordana grinned and tied her long brown curls back with a dark navy ribbon. “No! I said I'd do this and I will.”
“Butâ” Meg tried to protest, but Jordana would have none of it.
“I can do this,” Jordana insisted.
“My money's on Jordana,” one of the young men gathered behind the girls called out. The crowd of observers from the neighboring boys' school was growing rapidly.
“You have no money,” another chided, forcing the first to produce proof of his financial stability.
“I received a post from Mother this morning. She's always good to send me fortification.”
“Then pay me back the money you owe me from last week and I can place a bet as well,” a redheaded boy clamored.
Jordana took a deep breath and tried to ignore the revelry and ruckus. If she didn't hurry, they would all be found out, and then no one would fulfill the dare that Clarence Hooper had so thoughtfully issued only moments ago in the garden.
At sixteen, Jordana had no doubt in her abilities when it came to such physical demands. She just worried about how to get the thing done without causing herself any true embarrassment. Scaling buildings was a rage that had accompanied the technology to erect higher multiple-story structures. However, such a feat was usually left to the fearless males of their generation. Jordana thought this pure poppycock. She had lived in the mountains of Virginia for a good portion of her life and could climb rock-faced walls with the best of the men in her family. Of course, back home she had donned her brother's trousers to do such a thing. Here she had no choice but to hike her skirts between her legs in a most unladylike fashion and throw off the constricting jacket that completed the Deighton School uniform.
Carefully considering the best foot and handholds to be had on the brick structure, Jordana hurriedly pulled at the buttons of the navy wool jacket and tossed it to Meg.
“I think she's going to do it,” Clarence Hooper announced in awe.
“No, she'll play around until the headmistress comes and puts a stop to this,” another boy countered.
Jordana gave him a sharp look of irritation, then kicked off her shoes. “I have no plan to wait around for Mistress Deighton to show her prune face,” Jordana declared. “But neither have I any plan to fail at this challenge. I know what I'm doing and I don't see you offering to join me, Struther Harris, so unless you are volunteering to accompany me up the wall, kindly shut your mouth.”
The other young men laughed heartily at this and jabbed Struther in the ribs. They had come from the adjoining Deighton School for Young Men, where Mistress Deighton's brother, the most austere Reverend Obadiah Deighton, taught men of exceptional intelligence.
Meg leaned forward, a look of panic in her eyes. “Please, Jordana, don't do this. It isn't safe or becoming.”
“Bah!” Jordana replied and reached down to pull the back edge of her skirt through her legs. At this particular school, girls were not allowed to lengthen their skirts to the floor until after their sixteenth birthday. Having just turned sixteen, Jordana found her longer skirts a terrible nuisance. Personally she had cherished the extra two inches she'd grown in the last year because it caused her own skirts to go from the prescribed six inches above the tops of her shoes to eight inches. She liked the freedom of shortened skirts. At least she did not yet have to wear those hideous hoops women had so stupidly adopted as an important mark of fashion, and she was still able to get away with failing to cinch herself into a corset.
However, by pulling her skirts up, she was exposing a clear view of stocking-clad, shapely legs, and it was this, rather than her threat to Struther Harris, that caused the male viewers to go silent.
Jordana ignored their stares and turned back to the wall. Her gloves would also have to go, she decided. There would be no other way to get a good grip on the bricks.
“Hurry, the band has stopped playing in the parkway. That only leaves prayers and hymns before the classes break up for the weekend!” Clarence declared.
“Oh, all right,” Jordana replied, tossing her gloves to Meg. “Never have I seen more impatience from a group that has no intention of participating.” She reached out and felt the texture of the building and smiled. This would be better than she'd originally figured. The wall was easy to grab hold of; the porous brick and poorly set mortar allowed good handholds for the young girl to stick her fingers around. It wouldn't be as nice as a rock face, where natural formations provided occasional ledges and resting shelves, but it would work.
She whispered a prayer, knowing that God had kept her safe in all other times of her life. She had no reason to believe He would fail her now. It never even entered her mind that He might frown upon her activities and punish her with less than success in order to teach her a lesson. In her mind, God simply didn't work in that manner.
Reaching high above her head, Jordana secured her grip on the brick, then found footholds where her toes seemed to mimic her fingers and grasp the very bricks set before her.
She was off!
The crowd behind her cheered as she made her way cautiously and thoughtfully up the side of the building. Jordana's thoughts were fixed on finding the next handhold, but she was also completely aware of her audience, and that gave her the momentum to press upward. She liked the attentionâliked that she was impressing the young men of her social circle and scaring the girls witless. It entertained her far more than anything else she'd managed to accomplish in her years at Deighton.
Stretching her right hand upward, Jordana angled herself to the left. A nice gathering of lilac bushes ran parallel to the building, and Jordana figured if she slipped, they might at least break her fall. Probably not by much, she mused, trying hard not to think about the outcome of such a fall.
She passed the tops of the first-floor windows. Only three more stories to go. The cheers below were evidence of her captive audience, but other than this, Jordana had to force such thoughts from her mind. It was imperative that she focus on what she was doing.
Reaching out for a protruding piece of mortar, Jordana felt the piece crumble in her hands. Her grip now lost, she fought to throw her body weight to the side where her hold was more sure. For a moment, however, she very nearly dangled away from the building, causing everyone below to utter a collective gasp. Jordana felt her fingernails tear away as she tightened her hold on the brick. I can do this, she told herself over and over.
The one thing she had learned as a child was to never look down when climbing. Her brother Brenton, though rather awkward when it came to the outdoors, had used logic and reasoning to get himself out of many a tight spot and had passed such to her.
“Press toward the goal,”
he had said.
“Even the Bible speaks to the havoc created by looking back.”
With that in mind, Jordana found a new strength to continue. She maneuvered herself upward, seeking each handhold with a dedicated eye, pressing toward the goal of the ornate roof cornice. The cornice gave her some worry as it jutted out from the house and formed the base to the mansard-styled roof. Once she passed this obstacle, the remaining story would be a simple matter of easing up the concave slope to take hold of the roof cresting at the top. Then she would have met the challenge and shown them all that she was made of different stuff than most girls her age.
It seemed to Jordana she was always trying to prove something to someone. She took great pride in having been accepted to the Deighton School for Young Women in New York City. The school had a reputation of taking only the most intelligent young people and held the interest of surrounding colleges and universities as they eyed Deighton pupils as potential students for their hallowed halls. Jordana intended to go to a university once her two years were completed here at Deighton. She had wanted to go directly to college after completing her secondary studies at thirteen, but her father, ever the cautious one in the family, feared that exposure to a university might be a bit much at her tender age.
The top of the second-floor window offered her a brief bit of ledge to pause and catch her breath. Once again, she reminded herself to keep looking upward. Only after passing the third-floor windows and approaching the extended cornice did Jordana wonder quite seriously how she was going to get back down. Always when they'd climbed in the rocky hillsides of her Virginia home, they'd taken a bit of rope with them. It made for quick escapes down the mountainside and remained intact for future climbs. But this was different. Now she knew she had a most important decision to make.
“I'll simply stand for a moment on the top of the roof,” she grunted the words as she sought to master the cornice. “Then I'll slip back inside one of the fourth-floor windows.” Of course, it would help if one of the windows were open.
Without looking down, Jordana pulled her body up and around the cornice, where the concave of the roof afforded her a nice place to rest.
“Meg! If you can hear me,” she called down as loudly as possible, forcing herself not to seek Meg's face for acknowledgment, “go open the window just above me.”
A faraway voice called back in reassurance, and Jordana breathed a sigh of relief. Her journey was nearly over, and an exuberant feeling had begun to course through her body.
Easing herself upright, Jordana used the ledge above the window and the fish-scale shingles to master the fourth floor. And then, before she knew it, she was atop the roof looking down on the world below her.
The crowd had grown considerably, and Jordana's only sinking feeling of the moment came in the knowledge that no doubt her headmistress was already aware of the stunt. “There will be a reckoning for this foolishness,” Jordana could already hear Mistress Deighton say.
Trusting that Meg had had enough time to get the window open, Jordana eased over the cresting rail and started back down the roof. Without warning she lost her footing and slid a good two feet before she caught the side of the window and halted her fall. Breathing heavily and feeling her heart pound in her chest, Jordana maneuvered herself aright and felt for the opening of the window.
Good old Meg, Jordana thought. The window was open, and not only that, but protective hands were reaching to pull her inside.
“Meggie, I did it!” she declared as she practically fell into the room.
“I'll say you did.” The voice was not that of Margaret Vanderbilt, however, but rather that of her brother Brenton Baldwin.
“Brenton!” she exclaimed and wrapped her arms around his neck in a loving embrace. “Did you watch me? Did you see? Wasn't it grand!”
Brenton had no chance to reply, for Mistress Deighton's booming voice of condemnation rang clear. “Miss Baldwin, you will conduct yourself in a
proper
manner to my office. Immediately!”
Jordana met the woman's piercing expression. Mistress Deighton's hair, pulled back into a tight, orderly bun, seemed to have taken on a few more strands of gray since morning. Could Jordana's stunt have actually caused the woman a fright? It didn't seem likely, for Jordana was almost certain that nothing scared the woman.
“Yes, ma'am,” she muttered and reached her hand out to take hold of Brenton. “May my brother come along?” she dared to ask.
“Absolutely,” the woman replied. “What I have to say will be important to him, especially since he's acting as guardian for you while your parents are in Europe.”
Jordana flashed a smile to the obviously nervous Brenton. Poor goose, she thought. He really doesn't like things to be out of order.