Distance Too Grand (American Wonders Collection Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Regina Scott

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176 pages

English

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Meg Pero has been assisting her photographer father since she was big enough to carry his equipment, so when he dies she is determined to take over his profession--starting with fulfilling the contract he signed to serve on an Army survey of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in 1871. What she doesn't realize is that the leader of the expedition is none other than the man she once refused to marry.Captain Ben Coleridge would like nothing more than to leave without the woman who broke his heart, but he refuses to wait even one more day to get started. This survey is a screen for another, more personal mission, one he cannot share with any member of his team.As dangers arise from all sides, including within the survey party, Meg and Ben must work together to stay alive, fulfill their duties, and, just maybe, rekindle a love that neither had completely left behind.

Sujets

Historical romance

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 octobre 2019
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781493419555
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0461€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Endorsements
“Adventure, danger, and romance in a wonderful, fresh setting: the Grand Canyon of 1871. Readers will find much to love in A Distance Too Grand by Regina Scott.”
Julie Klassen , bestselling author
“Five star is not a rating I usually bestow. But Regina Scott’s A Distance Too Grand merits it. Lively, realistic, engaging characters. A compelling and intriguing plot with life and death consequences kept me turning pages. I hated to put the book down. Ms. Scott’s choice of setting is especially wonderful. This isn’t your usual wagon train–type Western. The Grand Canyon exploration by the US Army gives a whole new view of the West and is depicted with great attention to accurate historical detail. If you enjoy a unique romance set in the historic West, this book is for you!”
Lyn Cote , Carol Award–winning author
“I was needing a good book to read and found it with this one. A surveying expedition to the Grand Canyon provides the fascinating backdrop for this story. Regina has done an excellent job of bringing the setting and characters to life. I could see and feel the canyon and picture the characters going about their tasks. A balance of mystery, romance, and adventure with enough factual information that I almost felt I could take over for the heroine. I highly recommend this book.”
Linda Ford , award-winning, fan-favorite author of the Glory, Montana, series
“ A Distance Too Grand by Regina Scott is a grand story indeed. Full of action, adventure, suspense, and danger, this story set in 1871 in Arizona Territory is about an expedition to explore, map, and photograph the Grand Canyon. Led by Corporal Ben Coleridge, the small crew sets out with a woman photographer. Meg Pero has to prove herself and assure Ben, a man who once asked her to marry him, that she is capable at what her father trained her to do. While searching for his missing father, dealing with rugged terrain, and studying flora and fauna, Ben tries to protect Meg from a menacing threat. But he remembers the woman he fell in love with at West Point. Meg remembers the man she left behind to pursue her first love—photography. Soon that love returns as golden and rich as the sun shining over the massive canyon. But Ben and Meg will have to find a way across their own eroded hearts in order to chart their journey together. A splendid telling of a part of the dramatic National Park history of America.”
Lenora Worth , author of Their Amish Reunion
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2019 by Regina Scott
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2019
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—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1955-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Dedication
To Edward and William, for understanding Mama’s need to create, and to the Creator, for all the wondrous places he made for us to find.
Contents
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
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Sneak Peek of Book 2 in the Series
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
1

FORT WILVERTON, ARIZONA TERRITORY, AUGUST 1871
“You can’t be the photographer.”
Meg Pero blew a stray blonde hair out of her vision, aimed her sunniest smile at the Army clerk, and laid a gloved hand on the contract sitting between them on the scarred wood counter. “This is a legally binding document, and that is a senior officer’s signature, is it not?”
The clerk squinted down at the scrawl. “Yes, ma’am. But I was told the contract was with Matthew Pero. You’re not Matthew Pero.”
Indeed she wasn’t. She’d worked most of her life to be as good a photographer as her father. Few knew that she had taken many of the pictures attributed to him the last three years.
“If you look closely,” Meg said, bending over the contract, the sunlight from the door behind blazing across the crowded quartermaster’s office, “you’ll see the name is M. Pero. M for Margaret.”
Corporal Dent bent lower as well, dark wool cap slipping on his short brown hair, then raised his eyes to meet her gaze. “But you can’t be the photographer.”
She sighed despite herself. She’d been expecting the argument ever since she’d discovered the contract among her father’s effects. He had to have negotiated it more than five months ago, before he’d fallen ill. Papa had always been the one to negotiate their services.
“Men don’t like haggling with women, Meg,” he’d explained more than once. “Just smile and look pretty, then show them you can do the job better than any of them.”
She’d never liked that advice, but she certainly couldn’t follow it now if the clerk wouldn’t even give her a chance!
It had been like that most of her trip—arguments, protests. Women couldn’t be seen here, sit alone there. She was too short and slight to look imposing, more likely to smile than scowl. Normally men hurried to help when she glanced their way. But sweet words of persuasion and eager looks had not availed her much this time.
Things had been so much easier when Papa was alive. He could charm his way into any situation, make her presence seem perfectly reasonable. He’d probably have found a way to explain why she’d come riding up with the supply train to the dry red-rock plateau that held the adobe buildings of the fort, pulling ten mules loaded with photographic equipment that the clerk of the fort was attempting to turn away.
“It’s a perfectly good contract,” she said. “There were probably lawyers involved.”
He scratched at his navy wool jacket, and she envied him the uniform’s warmth. Though the last few days of travel from Utah had seen warm temperatures, the nights were cool. As it was, she wore her navy wool cloak over her sky-blue cotton blouse and tan twill skirt.
“I don’t doubt it’s legal, ma’am,” he said. “I also don’t doubt Captain Coleridge would put me in irons if I added you to the payroll.”
Captain Coleridge? Funny. She was certain Fort Wilverton’s commanding officer, who had signed the contract, had been a Colonel Coleridge. Not that she had any interest in making his acquaintance. That was one of the reasons she’d headed straight for the quartermaster’s office instead of fort headquarters. Someone would eventually inform the colonel of her presence, but perhaps she would be able to make her escape with the survey team without meeting him again. How could she reintroduce herself to the famous Army colonel when she’d broken his son’s heart five years ago?
“Captain Coleridge,” she said, “will be as bound by that contract as you are.”
He pushed the paper at her as if afraid it might bite. “But you’re a woman. Women aren’t photographers.”
Meg kept her smile in place. “On the contrary. There are ladies right now who run photography studios in England, Germany, and New York.”
“All well and good, ma’am,” he said. “But we can’t have women on a survey expedition.”
Now, that point she’d come prepared to argue. “Your commanding officer told my father in a letter that the cartographer’s wife will be joining the survey.”
“Yes, but Mrs. Newcomb can cook,” he protested, backing up until his shoulders bumped the rough-wood shelves behind him, setting the canteens stocked there to rattling.
“And I can take pictures,” Meg informed him. “I see no difference.”
“You would if you knew Mrs. Newcomb,” he muttered.
Meg refused to dignify the comment with a response. She’d traveled more than two thousand miles—by rail, wagon, and finally mule—to reach the fort. Corporal Dent couldn’t know the danger she’d left behind, a threat to everything she’d ever known. She could still see the glitter in her aunt’s green eyes as the family had returned from Papa’s funeral.
“You’ve been terribly cozened, Margaret,” she’d said, leading Meg into her dingy little house in Norfolk. “As far as I can see, your father filled your head with nonsense about your place in this world. At six and twenty, a young lady should be wed, with children playing at her feet.”
“But that would make it terribly hard to get the shot,” Meg had replied.
Aunt Abigail had not been amused. But then, Meg had learned, Aunt Abigail was never amused.
Truly, had there ever been two more different siblings? Her father had been joyful, carefree, expansive in gesture, vocabulary, and choice of living. His widowed younger sister seemed grim, weighed down, and tight-laced in body and spirit. Her son, Meg’s cousin, had been equally as restricted.
“You can have no further use for that camera equipment,” Cousin Harold had maintained, standing with his arms crossed over his broad chest in the door of the prison cell of a room they’d given her. “By rights, it should be mine. I’m sure I could get a pretty penny for it.”
Over her dead body.
Neither of them understood. She loved the trade she’d been baptized into, the way the world opened through the lens of her camera. It was a challenge and an art to choose the exact right angle, the exact right light, to create something extraordinary out of the ordinary, to share a glimpse of the divine. How could they ask her—no, order her—to give it up, as if it were something shameful?
Papa had refused to allow her gender to get in the way of their trade. He’d taken her with him to the edge of the battlefield and the wilds of the frontier. She’d met women who nursed wounded soldiers, taught natives to rea