Taste of Victory (Australian Destiny Book #3) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Sandra Dengler

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113 pages

English

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Description

Book 3 in the bestselling Australian Destiny SeriesTaste of Victory returns to the turbulent story of Cole Sloan and Smantha Connolly which began in the bestselling Code of Honor. Sloan's sugar plantation lies in ashes, and both must seek a new future. Turn-of-the-century Australia presented them with many choices and both would seek success in the Riverina, the heart of the wool industry, agriculture and forestry in Victoria and New South Wales.Sloan uses the money he can salvage from Sugerlea to open up a brokerage. Investing other people's money with no personal risk promises to be lucrative, Samantha soon finds work as a clerical assistant to the dock master at Echuca, and becomes the real business manager behind the operation. Meanwhile Samantha's sister, Linnet, has found her way to the University of Adelaide where she develops her music.All goes well until Sloan tries to use his friendship with Samantha to work a good deal moving wool and timber, despite her refusal to compromise. The problems that erupt for each character will ultimately push them toward personal victory or defeat. Will it be the taste of victory?

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 septembre 1989
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441262561
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0202€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 1989 by Sandy Dengler
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomingon, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored ina 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.
eISBN 978-1-4412-6256-1
Cover illustration by Dan Thornberg
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
  1. Angel Reginald
  2. Sydney Silvertail
  3. Linnet’s Song
  4. Trouble
  5. Echuca Charlene
  6. Barmah
  7. A Paid Engagement
  8. The Wharfmaster’s Lackey
  9. Fantasia on a Pair of Songbirds
10. Variation on a Christmas Present
11. Intermezzo With Old Friends
12. Recitative on Love and Handel
13. Cutting Deals
14. Air on a Shoestring
15. Counterpoint on a Heart’s Theme
16. Betrayal
17. In Pursuit of Fame and Fortune
18. Hymn for Him
19. Tangled Threads
20. Flood and Crescendo
21. Coda
About the Author
Books by Sandy Dengler
Back Cover
Chapter One
Angel Reginald
1906
Nothing. Nothing but nothing. She stood in the very center of nothing and turned slowly in a complete circle. Everywhere she looked—absolutely everywhere—she saw nothing.
Samantha Connolly, now nearly twenty-nine years old, had been many places, but never before had she been nowhere. She had done many things, but never had she stood like this in a totally flat, totally lifeless plain. How far can the human eye see? she wondered. Miles, no doubt. Miles and miles. And in all directions, for hundreds of square miles, stretched pink dirt and blue sky; and that was all.
Once she had rather liked certain shades of pink and old rose, because they complemented her reddish-brown hair and pale Irish complexion. Now she was beginning to detest the color.
According to the locals here in New South Wales, this thoroughfare was a “track.” Apparently the country had no roads, for everything Samantha would have called a road was a “track.” It was not just an exercise in semantics. No road, or track, tracing its long straight lines across this land, was paved or cobbled. All were made of the same dirt as the land itself. In short, she was traversing a pink road the same color as the world stretching featureless to the horizon.
She glanced down at her black skirt flapping around her ankles. Pink dust had muted her meticulous laundering. Her white blouse, once crisp, was smudged dark and pinkish at the cuffs—no doubt at the collar, too. What was in her carpetbag that she could not live without? The all-important papers describing her status as a legal immigrant from Ireland with the full right to work here in Australia. She dug them out. What else? Nothing worth lugging the carpetbag through this, certainly. Already a barely noticeable film of pink dust tinged her papers. With a sigh she jammed them into her beaded reticule and stood erect.
Samantha walked for perhaps ten minutes, she estimated—it was difficult to tell. She glanced back. She could still see her abandoned carpetbag, a tiny dark blip on the smooth pink track. She turned her back on her worldly possessions and continued on.
And on.
And on.
The horizon began undulating in gentle, nauseating waves. The inside of her head buzzed. Despite so many miles of nothing stretching round about, she could see only the brilliance immediately in front of her.
Samantha sat down in the middle of the track. There was no danger of her being run over; no vehicles were in sight for miles. The heat penetrated her skirt instantly and made her hot legs much hotter. Her ravenous hunger had subsided, but now she was outrageously thirsty. She ran her tongue across her lips and felt how dry and cracked they were, like a fever line. They probably matched her nose, which had begun to peel on the voyage from the old country almost two years ago and was still peeling today. Her nose had never forgiven her for leaving the Auld Sod. Perhaps her nose was right.
Her mind hovered near total panic, but her body was too weak, too tired to pay any attention to her mind. She would sit like this, her head bowed beneath her broad-brimmed hat, until later in the day when the sun did not burn quite so fiercely. Then she would rise and continue her odyssey.
Intense warmth bathed her right side, her right arm, her right cheek. She seemed to float. Somewhere on high sang a solitary angel—a tenor angel, specifically.
Did God care so little for Samantha Connolly that He sent only one angel? Humph. On the other hand, why should He bother to serenade her with a full chorus? What, specifically, had she ever done for Him? Novenas, on occasion; the usual motions of worship. Well, perhaps not lately. Not since she arrived in Australia. After all, there was no appropriate church up by Mossman where she worked. Besides, she’d been busy. God knew that.
Ocean waves crashed upon her face. She licked the water off her parched lips and wished for more. It was pouring in her mouth, running out again. Pity. She would so enjoy a drink. Here came more, cool and wet. She swallowed some and inhaled some. The puddles in her lungs set her to coughing. Lovely cool trees blocked out the sun, swathing her in darkness.
Ocean? Trees? Despite the tenor angel’s warning, Samantha started to sit erect. Her head clunked against the tree overhead. She coughed the last of the water from her tortured lungs and lay still to assess the situation more rationally.
But there was nothing rational about this situation. The angel had made himself visible. He smiled cheerfully. He was dressed not in gleaming white but utilitarian brown. His thinning plain brown hair, combed straight back, could hardly be mistaken for a halo. And he wore glasses, squarish little half glasses that perched midway down his nose so that his gentle brown eyes could peer out over them. One rather assumes prophets are all bearded, but angels? This one sported a short, very neatly trimmed beard that nicely complemented his roundish face.
“Good afternoon, miss. My name is Reginald Otis.”
An angel named Reginald? Why not? Samantha tried to force a smile, but her poor dry lips would not stretch. “Sthamant-tha Connolly, sthir. How tdo ye tdo?” Whatever was wrong with her tongue? It kept sticking to the roof of her mouth.
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Connolly.” Either God’s angels are by nature extremely polite or he was enjoying some droll bit of irony at her expense, for there was nothing delightful about this situation in the least. Not only was she embarrassed nearly to tears, but her temples were beginning to throb with a most violent, massive headache.
Angel Reginald sat cross-legged in the sun before her, and Samantha lay in the shade, but it was not the dancing, leafy shade of trees. Lacking great silver wings with which to fly, the angel transported himself about in a wagon of some sort. He had parked it directly over her, a roof against the fiery sun. There stood his patient horses dozing perhaps a rod distant, a bay gelding and a coarse, oddly colored purple roan with a white face. What an ugly horse it was, with its huge, clumsy head and ragged color, to be serving as a substitute for wings! Although the angel had unhitched his horses, their harness still hung from them in drooping lines.
Careful this time to avoid bumping her head, she pulled herself to a sitting position. Without comment he offered her a tin cup of water. She gulped it down.
He refilled the cup, still smiling. Angels do smile a lot. “Now sip this one, lest your poor tummy rebel and you lose it all.”
What should she say? The shame still burned hot. “I feel rather like a person who has picked up a book and begun reading on page forty-four. Might ye please apprise me of what happened in the first forty-three?”
His laugh was the warm, heavy chuckle of an earthbound mortal. “I am traveling south to Deniliquin, and perhaps thence to Echuca. I encountered a carpetbag in the track. It’s in my wagon now, incidentally. I’ve brought it along. And then I encountered you. You seemed a bit discomfited by lack of shelter in this inferno, so I made myself helpful.”
“Meself be both indebted and very grateful.”
“Irish. I’ve not heard that lovely lilt since I left Sydney. Forgive my boldness; you’ve a charming voice, Miss Connolly. Now you must apprise me : why are you out here alone in the uttermost?”
“Uttermost. Me sentiments precisely.” She drank again. “Meself be southbound as well. I traveled from Mossman on the coast to Torrens Creek, an area where me sister now lives. After a brief visit with her and her bridegroom, I continued this way with Cobb and Company. But the stagecoach—argh! Meself became deathly ill from the lurching. At length, I asked to be let off.”
“In the middle of nowhere?”
“The driver’s very words. ‘In the middle of nowhere, mum?’ he asked. ‘’Tis that or suffer most unpleasant consequences of me illness inside y’r coach,’ meself replied. He let me out. I spent the better part of two days simply lying beneath a gum tree. What misery. Then a kindly squatter brought me another seventy miles before turning off toward his station to the east. He promised another Cobb coach coming through, but as yet it has not materialized.”
“Nor shall it. They went to a new schedule. It’s one of the reasons I purchased this rig instead of traveling by coach, as I usually do. After four days’ driving in the sun, I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of my purchase. I see now it was God’s plan. Glorious, is it not, the way He handles details so cleverly?”
“Me brother-in-law would be the first to agree with ye. A preacher he is, and a fine one. Luke Vinson, married to me sister Margaret.”
“A preacher!”