Publication Date: November 3, 2021
Pages: 228
Genre: Historical Fiction w/strong romance thread
She never had anything.
He lost everything.
Together they create a Christmas to remember.
December, 1893--Shadyside, Pennsylvania
Bella Darling lives in a cozy barn at Maple Grove, an estate owned by industrialist Archibald Westminster. The Westminster family is stranded overseas and have sent word to relieve all employees of their duties except Margaret, the pregnant maid, James the butler, and Bella. Content with borrowed books and a toasty home festooned with pine boughs and cinnamon sticks, she coaxes the old hens to lay eggs--extraordinary eggs. Bella yearns for just one thing—someone to share her life with. Always inventive, she has a plan for that. She just needs the right egg into the hands of the right man.
Bartholomew Baines, a Harvard-educated banker, is reeling in the aftermath of his bank's collapse. With his friends and fiancé ostracizing him for what he thought was an act of generosity, he is penniless and alone. A kind woman welcomes him into her boarding house under conditions that he reluctantly accepts. Completely undone by his current, lowly position, and by the motley crew of fellow boarders who view him as one of them, Bartholomew wrestles with how to rebuild.
With the special eggs as the impetus, the first meeting between Bella and Bartholomew gives each the wrong idea about the other. And when the boarding house burns down a week before Christmas it’s Bella who is there to lend a hand. She, Margaret, and James invite the homeless group to stay at the estate through the holidays. But as Christmas draws closer, eviction papers arrive. Maple Grove is being foreclosed upon. Can Bella work her magic and save their Christmas? Is the growing attraction between Bella and Bartholomew enough for them to see past their differences?
Excerpt
Chapter 4
Bartholomew
He didn’t know how long he’d been daydreaming before excited murmurs drew him back to the line he was standing in and his assigned errand. So distracted by his childhood memories, he hadn’t even noticed the egg girl arriving and fitting her bin into the table space the bread lady had cleared. But he did watch as the bread lady hugged the egg lady and though he could see her only from behind, he could tell the egg girl was much younger. A scuffle in the line drew his attention to two women in front of him, one shouldering ahead of another for the “best selection of the special eggs.”
The dustup died down when the bread lady huddled up to referee. The egg girl was prancing away looking like she had the world on a leash, like he used to feel every day. Imagine feeling like that in such dire times. He watched those ahead of him gently place eggs in their baskets, only permitted to select twelve at most. None of them picked up eggs and weighed them in their palm. Choosing in the hopes of winning a double yolk was apparently only the desire of Mrs. Tillman and as he inched closer to his turn he was growing more self-conscious about what he had been commissioned to do.
When it was his turn he followed his orders, picking up each egg, closing his eyes and feeling the weight or whatever in his palm before either placing the egg back in the box and selecting another or putting it into the basket.
When he’d gotten to egg number six the woman behind him pinched the back of his arm. Not that it hurt through layers of clothing, but it startled him. “What?”
“What is right, all right. Think I got all day and night to wait for you to court each egg like it’s the princess you’re taking to the Christmas ball?”
He flinched and stared at the woman. Sooty cheeks and raw hands gave her station in life away. And her treatment of him caused him to lose any chance of responding. How dare she?
“Cat got your tongue, fancy pants? Let’s go or I’ll butt right in front of you.”
“Yeah, get the lead out,” another voice came from farther down the line.
“Ain’t got all day, sailor,” a third heckler joined in.
He lifted his basket. “I’ve been issued specific instructions for—”
A snowball smacked into his back, shutting him up. He spun around and scanned the crowd for who’d thrown it.
“See, even people not in line with us are tired of your mouth. Move it.” The woman behind him held his gaze.
He’d never felt so… he didn’t even know how to describe how this treatment made him feel. He tried to stop himself from rattling off the specifics of his resume and instead went with the general query of, “Don’t you know who I am?”
Another snowball thwapped his back.
“A regular jackass,” someone said from down the line.
He turned again to see who’d hit him with the snowball and the woman behind him used the opening to slide in front. He turned back and stuck his hand into the box, blocking her out. “I’ll hurry. Just let me get the other six.”
She crossed her arms, the baskets resting in the crook of each bent elbow. “Six seconds for six eggs. Get on with it, moneybags.”
“Thank you,” he said. He reached for an egg and lifted it in his palm as he had the others.
The woman started counting one, two, three and the rest of the line joined in. They were serious about him moving quicker. Mrs. Tillman would just have to understand. He didn’t doubt they’d toss him out of line if he didn’t just pluck eggs from the box and move on. And so he did. The last thing he wanted was to break eggs and have to shovel coal or something to make up for it when he got back to Mrs. Tillman’s.
“I have things to do, too, you know,” Bartholomew said. “You folks aren’t the only ones with obligations and—”
“Yeah, whada you have to do today, change into other pairs of fancy pants another three times before burrowing into a bed laid with golden goose feathers?” the woman who’d pinched him asked.
His tongue tied, but he didn’t stop himself from responding. “Uh…”
“Uh? Smoke a pipe of the finest tobacco? Yeah, what else? Sit all day with the paper while someone shines your shoes?” another voice from down the line said.
He straightened, face burning hot, blindly plucking eggs from the pile and placing them into his sack. All of those things would have been fairly close to his daily life before. Before it all crashed around him. “No. Newspapers, yes, but for the market reports and…” Suddenly his studying the news of the day seemed like a luxury instead of the work it was when pronouncing the task to the particular crew waiting in line. Suddenly, he had no words at all. “Forget it.” It was as though none of them knew he was a nice guy. It was as though they assumed he’d done something awful—that it was written across his forehead. He hesitated before moving to pay, considering whether to give them an education in all his achievements and good works. But the woman muscling past him sapped the last bit of energy he had that morning.
He paid and stalked away having been saturated with enough degradation to last the day, to last a century.
– Excerpted from Cinder Bella by Kathleen Shoop, Independent, 2021. Reprinted with permission.
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