A matchmakers romantic d.., p.1
A Matchmaker's Romantic Dilemma: A Historical Western Romance Novel, page 1
A Matchmaker's Romantic Dilemma
WESTERN ROMANCE NOVEL
MADELINE THORNTON
Copyright © 2024 by Madeline Thornton
All Rights Reserved.
This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher.
Table of Contents
A Matchmaker's Romantic Dilemma
Introduction
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Forbidden Love and Thunder
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
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A Matchmaker's Romantic Dilemma
Introduction
Emma Shelby abandons the comforts of Northern society after inheriting a worn boarding house from her late uncle in Helena. Soon, she transforms the new place into a haven for wanderers, thriving in the tight-knit community, where her reputation as a matchmaker precedes her. Emma remains the orchestrator of love but never its willing participant… However, everything changes when a mysterious stranger arrives at her doorstep.
Emma is unaware that Nathan's presence is anything but coincidental…
Nathan, guided by logic and wealth, finds himself inexplicably drawn to the green-eyed proprietor of the boarding house. As days unfold, his gaze lingers on Emma, igniting a spark that threatens to ruin his secret mission. In the shadows of the boarding house, secrets simmer, and Nathan finds himself entangled in a web of emotions he never understood. The truth of his presence in Helena looms heavy, as his feelings for Emma ignite a strong flame inside him…
Will he find the courage to confess?
Each passing day pulls Emma and Nathan into a whirlwind of emotions, but secrets linger beneath the surface, threatening to destroy everything. Can they overcome the lies that stand between them, or will the truth sever their unanticipated connection? In a land where love is as unpredictable as its wild nature, Emma and Nathan must navigate the treacherous terrain of their hearts to discover if their love can withstand the storm…
Prologue
The wind whipped past the carriage like a howling, angry miser dead set on ensuring that everyone knew his misery. It shook the already quivering wooden boards underfoot and rattled the shutters that were closed tight against the bitter, biting cold of the early morning, but still the one body that sat huddled in the coach winced from how it managed to pervade the space regardless.
Even wrapped in a blanket, she could feel the icy tendrils attempting to paw at her. Her green eyes were shut tight against the insistence of it like she could deny that it existed at all.
Emma didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it.
She hadn’t thought there was a single place on earth that could be as cold as Boston in the morning, convinced that the wild West would be warmer and more inviting than the journey there thus far had been. But the closer to Montana that the coach drew, the colder the mornings became and the louder the wind seemed to howl.
“And, oh, Emma, how the lake sparkles in the warm summertime air!” her uncle had written. But Emma hadn’t passed one lake, sparkling or otherwise, in so many days of travel she was starting to wonder if the earth hadn’t swallowed up any hint of water at the news of her coming.
It was barely light outside of the closed shutters of the carriage, but Emma could hear the horses whickering back and forth, the driver and the hand calling back and forth over the roaring wind. She could hear the laughter in their voices—an oddity to her considering how cold to the bone she was—and the stamp of hooves against hard earth as the carriage flew along a path that barely seemed to exist.
She’d imagined the trip many times, over many letters back and forth with her mother’s brother as he’d tried to convince her to come out and visit him. She’d imagined camping beneath open skies and traveling with a pair of ruffians with hearts of gold. She’d pictured the wild countryside and the trees that she would admire, but it had never looked like this.
They’d been beset by storms the first half of their journey, rain pelting the wood and thunder so loud that it shook Emma’s bones.
Then had come the wind.
She’d barely had but a few glances of the lush greenery that they traveled through, and even that had only been in short intervals. Views she’d spent months getting excited about now seemed like only teasing previews of what she had so looked forward to.
“Oh, you’re being ridiculous,” she muttered to herself, clenching her teeth as she jerked the blanket more tightly about herself.
She’d have plenty of time to see the views. On the journey or otherwise, though she supposed that the return journey was a null and void point to try and entice herself with, being that there wouldn’t be one.
She frowned harder, wincing at the sudden stab of grief that thought brought with it.
Which, of course, was equally as ridiculous of her.
Uncle Frederick would be appalled that she was so melancholy on her long-awaited journey.
But he wouldn’t be there waiting for her like they had planned, and try as she might, that thought was a constant shadowed reminder in the back of all her excitement and complaints.
After months of planning, only just a few short days before her intended start to their visit, she’d received a letter from Helena, Montana. Only it hadn’t been from him.
It had been from his solicitors.
The news of his passing had been so sudden and unexpected that at first, Emma had convinced herself that she must have imagined it. Even rereading the letter, it had felt as if someone else were receiving the news and she was just sitting there watching them hear it for the first time.
He has left his only surviving relative, his sister’s daughter Emma Shelby, all of his worldly goods and possessions.
She’d somehow skipped over that line the first several read-throughs, so ensconced in her grief that it had faded into the litany of other words transcribed on the page.
“Miss Shelby,” a voice called from above, breaking through Emma’s drab little reverie with a sharp knock to the shutters. “Miss Shelby, I hate to wake you, but we’re comin’ up on Helena now, iff’n you wanted to get good and ready.”
Emma blinked owlishly at the shutters for a moment, the baritone of the carriage hand’s voice as deep as it had been unexpected.
Coming up on Helena?
Surely they hadn’t traveled that much since breaking camp!
She hurried to sit upright, shrugging out of the blanket only enough to throw open the shutters to find a shocked-looking Henry staring back at her from where he was bent awkwardly from the driver’s seat to pass the news along to her.
The carriage hand’s upturned nose pinkened, his dark brown eyes widening as he cleared his throat. “Sorry, ma’am. Like I was saying—”
“We’re already coming up on Helena?” Emma interrupted him nervously, biting down hard on her lip for how she’d interrupted him.
Green as far as the eye could see raced behind him, like the rolling hills of Montana were the ones moving, carrying the carriage to its destination along their flower-dotted backs.
Henry grinned, his chipped tooth glinting in the golden yellow glow that shone from above as the sun began to climb in the sky. “Yes, ma’am. Iff’n you’ll look out that’a way,” he jerked his chin behind him, “you can just see the town now.”
“You fool of a boy!” Daryl’s gruff voice sounded from the driver’s seat. “Turn around and get back up here before the horses jostle you on outta your seat!”
Henry grinned at Emma one last time, winking as he twisted to follow Daryl’s orders, and Emma’s breath caught in her throat.
He hadn’t been exaggerating, though he’d been in the way of her seeing what he was trying to reference.
Behind him, a town loomed in the distance. They were just close enough to make out the buildings and the strang
Her heart raced in her chest, the cold of the wind forgotten as she leaned forward eagerly.
There was no glittering lake in sight, that was still true, but the green hills seemed to nestle the town into them, the golden rays of the sun dancing atop their odd buildings and making the whole place shine much like the substance that so many settlers had rushed to Helena for when it had first been established.
She still felt that inkling of grief at knowing that when she arrived her uncle wouldn’t be there waiting with his red-tinged mustache and his burly, welcoming arms. But there was a warmth with it too, spreading through her chest and swelling within her.
Hope.
“We’ll carry ya right up to the boarding house, Miss Shelby,” Daryl called back to her with a grunt. “Ain’t no sense in makin’ ya walk none.”
Emma grinned, already taking the blanket fully off of herself to fold up and fussing about her travel-wrinkled dress and hair in preparation.
It was sweet and she wanted to thank them for it. She wanted to thank both Daryl and Henry for a great many things, but the words stuck in her throat.
Excitement.
After days of travel, she was finally there, all of her belongings packed up in the cases that she’d brought with her and the start of her new life so close that she could reach out and touch it—almost.
Even getting herself ready, she couldn’t bring herself to close the window back up. She stared out of it eagerly as the green landscape was replaced by a warren of mismatched buildings and houses, people already milling the streets in the early morning with a cheerful purpose.
Almost everyone they passed shaded their eyes against the rising sun to look at the carriage, more than a few raising the other hand in greeting.
And Henry and Daryl called out greetings right and left the whole way, addressing so many people by name that Emma’s head spun.
Boston was louder, at any time of day, but not nearly so conversational as Helena seemed to be, and lacking the intimate familiarity that people here seemed to address one another with.
“Righty’ho!” Henry called out as the carriage came to a shuddering halt. He swung down from the driver’s seat, laughing at Daryl’s muttering that Emma could only just make out, and made a show of opening her door. “Welcome, Miss Shelby, to the grand, illustrious Shelby Boarding House.”
Despite the nerves fluttering around her belly like butterflies after a morning rain, the words bolstered Emma. She took Henry’s offered hand with an unsteady smile as she stepped out of the carriage and onto the step just outside of the door.
It wasn’t until he’d helped her down onto the sidewalk that she got a good look at her new home.
As all of that hope and excitement tumbled about in her belly, a dreadful disappointment began eating away at the edges and threatening to consume all of it as she looked Shelby Boarding House over from roof to doorstep.
The once-white wood of the establishment was grayed and peeling, the brown front door as drab as it was weathered. There was no fancy lettering or bright flowers dotting the walkway like she had imagined.
“Oh, Uncle Frederick,” Emma whispered to herself as Henry dropped her hand and hurried to assist in getting her luggage out.
She felt almost as weathered and wooden as the dilapidated building in front of her as she walked forward, the key that her uncle’s solicitors had sent her trembling in her hand as she went to unlock the front door.
Even the key stuck, as if it too were just shy of being in prime condition.
Behind her, Daryl and Henry called out to one another again, but she moved as if led by an otherworldly force, walking into the boarding house with her heart hammering in her throat.
The wallpaper had suffered the same fate as the paint outside, peeling and old. Dust clung to the air as Emma’s eyes rolled over every inch of the outdated, shabby space.
“I could use some help bringing the boarding house into the new world,” her Uncle Frederick had written. “Some new paint, some new furniture. A new set of young eyes!”
She’d thought he was just being charming, but turning in a circle there in the middle of the entryway, the once-great oak desk dull and covered in a fine layer of what she hoped was dust and not grime, Emma realized just how understated he had been in his request.
The bright offer of a new life, a new future, with an income to support herself and a home and business in one seemed like some faraway dream looking at what she had been left.
Surely no one would pay to stay here.
“Miss Shelby?” Henry asked hesitantly as he followed her inside, her few suitcases tucked beneath both arms and clutched in his hands as he came. “You okay?”
Emma smiled, though it was tremulous, and tried to keep her dismay from being too obvious.
“Well, it’s not what I expected,” she admitted with a cheery brightness she didn’t quite feel. “But I’m sure with a little love and time, I can make this place something spectacular.”
Henry’s warm eyes sparkled as he bent to set her things down next to the entry desk. “I’d be glad to see it,” he promised with a quick grin. “And I’ll be glad to stay here once you do, too! When we come through. I’m sure a little polish’ll go a long way; I think my gran used to say as much.”
Emma nodded, holding her disbelief at bay. A little polish it would not be. Transforming this space was going to take every penny left to her from both her mother’s and uncle’s passing, and then some. Weeks of work, if she was lucky, and it really all was just cosmetic.
“I’ll have to set up a discount for postal employees,” she said instead of all of her grim thoughts.
Henry beamed.
“Henry!” Daryl hollered from outside, sounding impatient.
“That’ll be me, Miss Shelby.” Henry laughed. “But I’d like that. I wish you all the luck. And welcome home!”
Home.
That word seemed to ring in the boarding house even after Henry had rushed out of its door and slammed it behind him, disrupting the dust as he did.
“Mercy,” she whispered, trying to gather her wits about her as she gave the place another look over.
The books the solicitor had sent her showed that she had guests booked for three days from now. How was she supposed to transform the space in that little time?
She wandered further into the front room off of the entryway, eying the well-made furniture as she did. The bones were there, that much was certain… they’d just been gnawed on and left to gather dust by the passage of time.
In her mind’s eye, she could picture the space with new wallpaper and the fabric reupholstered on several of the chairs and couch. She opened the heavy curtains with a flourish, wrinkling her nose as she did so, and turned to survey the space once more with the gleam of the light from the window illuminating it all.
There was nowhere else to go. She’d walked away from her life in Boston, tying up all her loose ends before she’d come.
She had no family, no income, no trade that she’d learned to fall back on.
There was only this boarding house, left to her out of a fondness that she’d not soon walk away from.
She would just have to do what she could as she could, a room at a time.
“Young eyes,” she joked to the empty room with a sad smile as she started rolling up her sleeves. “Well, young or old, everything looks better clean!”
Getting herself cleaned up and rested was just going to have to wait. The boarding house needed a good dusting. After that… Well, after that, she would see.
Chapter 1
