Heart of Mercy (Tennessee Dreams) Read online

  Table of Contents

  What Others Are Saying About Sharlene MacLaren and Heart of Mercy

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Evans Family Tree

  Connors Family Tree

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Questions for Discussion

  About the Author

  A Preview of Threads of Joy - Book 2

  What Others Are Saying About

  Sharlene MacLaren and Heart of Mercy

  Mercy me, what a love story! Sharlene MacLaren has done it again—swept me away with a tender tale that has stolen both my breath and my sleep. Rich with historical detail, small-town magic, and the wonder of hearth and home, Heart of Mercy will coax tears from your eyes and hope from your soul.

  —Julie Lessman

  Author, The Daughters of Boston and the Winds of Change series

  This Tennessee mountain Romeo and Juliet story is a roller coaster ride of a tale—and it’s MacLaren’s best yet. Of course, I think that about each of her books!

  —Lena Nelson Dooley

  Author, Love Finds You in Golden, New Mexico,

  and the McKenna’s Daughters series

  Three words come to mind when I think of Sharlene MacLaren’s amazing novel, Heart of Mercy: Lovely, lovely, lovely! Truly, one of the best inspirational historicals I’ve read in ages, with the ideal mix of romance and intrigue. Highly recommended!

  —Janice Thompson

  Author, Queen of the Waves

  Feuding families. Forbidden romance. A first real kiss that leaves you breathless. With nail-biting excitement, a heart-tugging marriage of convenience, and a powerful message of faith and forgiveness, Heart of Mercy is Shar MacLaren’s best book to date. I loved it!

  —Vickie McDonough

  Author, Whispers on the Prairie and Call of the Prairie

  Heart of Mercy grabs you from the first page, and by the time you look up, you care about the characters so much, you don’t want to look away.

  —Mary Connealy

  Author of “romantic comedy with cowboys”

  If you’ve read Sharlene MacLaren before, you already know she’s a masterful storyteller. If you haven’t, you’d better clear some space on your “keepers” shelf, because after reading Heart of Mercy, you’ll want to devour every Sharlene story you can get your hands on! Once again, she delivers a poignant tale that features people just like us—flawed, wounded, and struggling to hold fast to faith…and the belief that true forgiveness and lasting love really exist.

  —Loree Lough

  Author of 100 award-winning books

  Publisher’s Note:

  This novel is a work of fiction. References to real events, organizations, or places are used in a fictional context. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

  All Scripture quotations are taken from the Revised Version of the Holy Bible.

  Heart of Mercy

  Tennessee Dreams ~ Book 1

  Sharlene MacLaren

  www.sharlenemaclaren.com

  [email protected]

  ISBN: 978-1-60374-963-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-60374-987-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  © 2014 by Sharlene MacLaren

  Whitaker House

  1030 Hunt Valley Circle

  New Kensington, PA 15068

  www.whitakerhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending)

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical—including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system—without permission in writing from the publisher. Please direct your inquiries to [email protected].

  This book has been digitally produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its availability.

  Dedication

  To Charity, my wonderful sister-in-law and forever friend. I am so thankful and blessed that Dick chose you. When I think how

  tirelessly you cared for our mother, my heart fills to overflowing. Thank you for being the generous, caring, fun, and loving individual that you are. You have lived up to your name many times over.

  I love you.

  Evans Family Tree

  Connors Family Tree

  1

  1890 • Paris, Tennessee

  Fire!”

  The single word had the power to force a body to drop to his knees and call out to his Maker for leniency. But most took time for neither, instead racing to the scene of terror with the bucket they kept stored close to the door, and joining the contingent of citizens determined to battle the flames of death and destruction. Such was the case tonight, when, washing the dinner dishes in the kitchen sink, Mercy Evans heard the dreaded screams coming from all directions, even began to smell the sickening fumes of blazing timber seeping through her open windows. She ran through her house and burst through the screen door onto the front porch.

  “Where’s the fire?” she shouted at the people running up Wood Street carrying buckets of water.

  Without so much as a glance at her, one man hollered on the run, “Looks to be the Watson place over on Caldwell.”

  Her heart thudded to a shattering halt. God, no! “Surely, you don’t mean Herb and Millie Watson!”

  Mercy Evans and Millie Watson, formerly Gifford, had been fast friends at school and had stuck together like glue in the dimmest of circumstances, as well as the brightest. Millie had walked with Mercy through the loss of both her parents, and Mercy had watched Millie fall wildly in love with Herb Watson in the twelfth grade. She’d been the maid of honor in their wedding the following summer. And she’d rejoiced with the couple at the birth of each of their sons, now ages five and six.

  But her voice was lost to the footsteps thundering past. Whirling on her heel, she ran back inside, hurried to extinguish all but one kerosene lamp, snatched her wrap from its hook by the door, and darted back outside and up the rutted street toward her best friends’ home, dodging horses and a stampede of citizens. “Lord, please don’t let it be,” she pleaded aloud. “Oh, God, keep them safe. Jesus, Jesus….” But her cries vanished in the scramble of bodies crowding her off the street as they made the turn onto Caldwell in their quest to reach the flaming house, which already looked beyond saving.

  Tongues of fire shot like dragons’ breath out windows and up through a hole in the roof. Like hungry serpents, flames lapped up the sides of the house, eating walls and shattering panes, while men heaved their pathetic little buckets of water at the volcanic monster.

  “Back off, everybody. Step back!” ordered She
riff Phil Marshall. He and a couple of deputies on horseback spread their arms wide at the crowd, trying to push them to safety.

  Ignoring his orders, Mercy pressed through the gathering mob until the heat so overwhelmed her that she had no choice but to stop. At the same time, a giant arm reached out to halt her progress. She shook it off. “Where are they?” she gasped, breathless. “Where’s the family?”

  The sheriff moved his bald head from side to side, his sad, defeated eyes telling the story. “Don’t know, Miss Evans. No one’s seen ’em yet. We been scourin’ the crowd”—he gave another shake of the head—“and it don’t appear anybody got out of that inferno.”

  “That can’t be.” A sob caught at the back of her throat and choked her next words. “They were at my place earlier. I made supper.”

  “Sorry, miss.”

  “Someone’s comin’ out!” A man’s ear-splitting shout rose above the crowd.

  Dense smoke enveloped a large figure emerging from the open door and staggering like a drunkard onto the porch, his arms full with two wriggling bundles wrapped in blankets and screaming in terror. Mercy sucked in a cavernous breath and held it till weakness overtook her and she forced herself to let it out. Could it be? Had little John Roy and Joseph survived the fire thanks to this man?

  “Who is it?” someone asked.

  All stood in rapt silence as he passed through the cloud of smoke. “Looks to be Sam Connors, the blacksmith,” said the sheriff, scratching his head and stepping forward.

  “Sure ’nough is,” someone confirmed.

  Mercy stared in wonder as the man, looking dazed and almost ethereal, strode down the steps, then wavered and stumbled before falling flat on his face in a heap of dust, bringing the howling bundles with him.

  Excited chatter erupted as Mercy and several others ran to their aid. Mercy yanked the blankets off the boys and heaved a sigh of relief to find them both alert and apparently unharmed, albeit still screeching louder than a couple of banshees. Through their avalanche of tears, they recognized her, and they hurled themselves into her arms, knocking her backward, so that she wound up on her back at a right angle to Mr. Connors, with both of the boys lying prone across her body. In all the chaos, she felt a hand grasp her arm and help her up to a sitting position.

  “Come on, Miz. You bes’ git yo’self an’ them chillin’s out of the way o’ them flames fo’ you all gets burned.” She had the presence of mind to look up at Solomon Turner, a former slave now in the employ of Mrs. Iris Brockwell, a prominent Paris citizen who’d donated a good deal of money to the hospital fund.

  Mercy took the man’s callused hand and allowed him to help her to stand. By the lines etched in his face from years of hard work in the sweltering sun, Mercy figured he had to be in his seventies, yet he lifted her with no apparent effort. “Thank you, Mr. Turner.”

  Five-year-old John Roy stretched his arms upward, pleading with wet eyes to be held, while Joseph, six, took a fistful of her skirt and clung with all his might. “Come,” she said, hoisting John Roy up into her arms. “We’d best do as Mr. Turner says, honey. Follow me.”

  “But…Mama and Papa….” Joseph turned and gave his perishing house a long perusal, tears still spilling down his face. John Roy buried his wrenching sobs in Mercy’s shoulder, and it was all she could do to keep from bolting into the house herself to search for Herb and Millie, even though she knew she’d never come out alive. If the fire and smoke didn’t kill her, the heat would. Besides, before her eyes, the flames had devoured the very sides of the house, leaving a skeletal frame with a staircase only somewhat intact and a freestanding brick fireplace looking like a graveyard monument. Her heart throbbed in her chest and thundered in her ears, and she wanted to scream, but the ever-thickening smoke and acrid fumes burned to the bottom of her lungs.

  With her free hand, she hugged Joseph close to her. “I know, sweetheart, and I’m so, so sorry.” Her words drowned in her own sobs as the truth slammed against her. Millie and Herb, her most loyal friends. Gone.

  Sheriff Marshall and his deputies ordered the crowd to move away from the blazing house, so she forced herself to obey, dragging a reluctant Joseph with her. At the same time, she observed three men carrying a yet unconscious Sam Connors across the street to a grassy patch of ground. Several others gathered around, trying to decide what sort of care he needed. Of course, he required medical attention, but Mercy felt too weak and dizzy to tend to him. Best to let the men put him on a cart and drive him over to Doc Trumble’s. Besides, she highly doubted he’d welcome her help. He was a Connors, after all, and she an Evans—two families who had been fighting since as far back as anyone could remember.

  She’d heard only bits and pieces of how the feud had started, with a dispute between Cornelius Evans, Mercy’s grandfather, and Eustace Connors over property lines and livestock grazing in the early 1830s. There had been numerous thefts of horses and cattle, and incidents of barn burnings, committed by both families, until a judge had stepped in and defined the property lines—in favor of Eustace Connors. Mercy’s grandfather had gotten so agitated over the matter that his heart had given out. Mercy’s grandmother, Margaret, had blamed the Connors family, fueling the feud by passing her hatred for the entire clan on to her own children; and so the next generation had carried the grudge, mostly forgetting its origins but not the bad blood. The animosity had reached a peak six years ago, when Ernest Connors had killed Oscar Evans—Mercy’s father.

  “That man’s a angel,” Joseph mumbled into her skirts.

  “What, honey?”

  “John Roy was wailin’ real loud, ’cause he saw somethin’ orange comin’ from upstairs, so he got in bed with me, and after a while that angel man comed in and took us out of ar bed.”

  She set John Roy on the ground, then got down on her knees to meet Joseph’s eyes straight on. His were still red, his cheeks blotchy. She thought very carefully about her next words. “Where were your parents?”

  Joseph sniffed. “They tucked us in and went upstairs to their bedroom. John Roy an’ me talked a long time about scary monsters an’ stuff, but then, after a while, he went to sleep, but I couldn’t, so I got up t’ get a drink o’ water, and that’s when I heard a noise upstairs. I looked around the corner, and I seed a big round ball o’ orange up there, and smoke comin’ out of it, and I thought it was a dragon come to eat us up. I runned back and jumped in bed with Joseph and tol’ him a mean monster was comin’ t’ get us, and I started cryin’ real loud.”

  John Roy picked up the story from there. “And so we waited and waited for the monster to come after us, but instead the angel saved us. I think Mama and Papa is prolly still sleepin’. Do you think they waked up yet?”

  Mercy’s throat burned as powerfully as if she’d swallowed a tablespoonful of acid. Her own eyes begged to cut loose a river of tears, but she warded them off with a shake of her head while gathering both boys tightly to her. “No, darlings, I don’t believe they woke up in bed. I believe with all my heart they awoke in heaven and are right now asking Jesus to keep you safe.”

  “And so Jesus tol’ that angel to come in the house and get us?” Joseph pointed a shaky finger at Sam Connors. The big fellow lay motionless on his back, with several men bent over him, calling his name and fanning his face.

  Mercy smiled. “He’s not an angel, my sweet, but that’s not to say that God didn’t have something to do with sending him in to rescue you.”

  “Is he gonna die?” John Roy asked between frantic sobs.

  “Oh, honey, I don’t know.”

  She overheard Lyle Phelps suggest they take him over to Doc Trumble’s house, but then Harold Crew said he’d spotted the doctor about an hour ago, driving out to the DeLass farm to deliver baby number seven.

  A few sets of eyes glanced around until they landed on Mercy. She knew what folks were thinking. She worked for Doc Trumble, she had more medical training and experience than the average person, and her house was closest to the scene. But thei
r gazes also indicated they understood the awkwardness of the situation, considering the ongoing feud between the two families. Although the idea of caring for him didn’t appeal, she’d taken an oath to always do her best to preserve life. Besides, the Lord commanded her to love her neighbor as herself, making it a sin to walk away from someone in need, regardless of his family name.

  She dropped her shoulders, even as the boys snuggled close. “Put him on a cart and take him to my place,” she stated.

  As if relieved that his care would fall to someone other than themselves, several men hurried to pick him up and then carried him to Harold Crew’s nearby buggy.

  “What about us?” Joseph asked.

  The sheriff stepped forward and made a quick study of each boy. “You can stay out at my sister’s farm. She won’t mind adding a couple o’ more young’uns to her brood.”

  Joseph burst into loud howls upon the sheriff’s announcement. Mercy hugged him and John Roy possessively. “Their parents were my closest friends, Sheriff Marshall. I’d like to assume their care.”

  He frowned and scratched the back of his head. “Don’t know as that’s the best solution, you bein’ unwed an’ all.”

  “That should have no bearing whatever on where they go. They’re like family, and they’re coming home with me.” She took both boys by the hands, turned, and led them back down Caldwell Street, away from the still-smoldering house and the sheriff’s disapproving gaze. Overhead, black smoke filled the skies, obliterating the night’s first stars and the crescent moon.

  2

  Sam Connors fought his way to consciousness like a mouse trying to work its way through a maze. Everywhere he turned, he hit a dead end, his mind clogged with thick fog and his head pounding like a hammer striking an anvil. His lungs burned, and he desperately needed to take a long, deep breath. Voices he couldn’t distinguish called his name and spoke in broken sentences; he couldn’t piece together what they wanted, let alone lift his heavy eyelids to see which voice belonged to whom. Now and then, he heard a woman order everyone to hush up or leave. Presumably, the voice belonged to the woman whose gentle ministrations he sensed—a cold cloth dabbing his forehead; a chilly metal instrument pressed to his chest. He found comfort in the voice, even though he didn’t recognize it. He liked its no-nonsense quality.