The Heart's Haven - Softcover

Barnett, Jill

3.66

263 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671684124 ISBN 13: 9780671684129

Publisher: Pocket, 1990

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

In an age of clipper ships and gold fever, theirs was an adventure of fire and passion.

When Hallie Fredriksen's father was lost at sea, she was shocked to discover that he had named Kit Howland to be her guardian. Three short years ago, Hallie had blushed with a girl's infatuation for the handsome San Francisco whaling agent. Now, his kisses thrilled the blonde beauty, and his tenderness awakened a wondering need. But Kit had been cruelly betrayed in love...and did not trust his feelings for this impulsive woman who could lift his spirits with her laughter, and fill him with desire. And Hallie refused to bow to an infuriating man who would insist on treating her like a helpless child. Then chance made them husband and wife, and bound them in a battle of wills -- and longing. Amidst danger and treachcry they sealed their devotion. But only when they shared the the tender secrets of their hearts would they revel in the glorious love that would be theirs forever!

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Chapter 1

A patch of faded blue gingham hovered in the lofty branches of Abner Brown's precious apple tree. As the branches shuddered, dropping the delicate pink blooms onto the grass below, Haldis Fredriksen stopped. Her gray eyes narrowed when she recognized that familiar swatch of cloth -- the same cloth that was becoming more and more visible with each quiver of the tree. Grinding the heel of her boot into the soil, she turned and crept slowly toward the tree.

Hallie edged closer, using the furrow of lush rosebushes for cover. As she peered through the roses, she could see the checked fabric, now waving like a flag in the gentle spring breeze. She glanced from side to side, assuring herself that her nemesis, that priggish Mr. Brown, was nowhere in sight. When she was three feet from the tree, she straightened and planted her hands firmly on her hips. "Liv, get down out of that tree, now!"

There was a frantic rustling in the upper branches of the tree, followed by a heavy shower of apple blossoms. As the floral curtain thinned, a mass of gingham skirts and blond braids tumbled to the ground. Sitting indignantly on a bed of crushed apple blossoms was Hallie's nine-year-old sister, Liv.

"Thunderation! Hallie, you scared the spit out of me!" Liv stood up, carelessly slinging a knotted pair of black stockings over a shoulder before attempting to dust off her debris-covered behind. "A person could get hurt, having a body creep up on them like that."

"I know a person who'll be hurting -- and soon." Hallie turned Liv around and swatted the dust off the girl's skirt a bit harder than necessary. "You swore you'd stay oft Mr. Brown's property. Here it is only two days later and you're back in his tree again. Why?"

"I don't know," Liv mumbled. She gave Hallie a quick, guilty glance before she sat down and started fumbling with the knotted hose.

Hallie looked down at Liv. The young girl was tugging on a stocking over her bark-scraped leg and muttering something about crossed fingers. The sight struck a familiar chord in her. It seemed that all she did lately was lecture Liv. Was she being too hard on her, or was Liv just testing her limits? She'd been a handful for as long as Hallie could remember, but in the three years since their mother's death, Liv's belligerent attitude had worsened. Hallie had tried reasoning with her, but that hadn't worked. The young girl kept defying the rules. With Liv, you never knew what to expect next. But Hallie loved her, and because of that she couldn't let Liv's disobedience go unpunished. The child needed a lesson in keeping her word.

"Well, young lady, it seems you don't know why you're doing anything lately, doesn't it?"

Liv was silent.

Hallie tried to infuse a stern tone into her tired voice. "A day spent inside might improve your memory. And while you're trying to remember why you broke your word, you can do that stack of mending sitting by my bed."

"But Hallie -- "

"And if you finish before supper, you can give the boys a bath." Hallie watched Liv's face contort into a grimace of distaste. They both knew from experience that bathing the four-year-old twins was like being thrown from Noah's Ark -- only forty days and nights of rain was probably dryer.

Liv scrambled to her feet, this time ignoring her dusty derriere in an urgent effort to make a last plea. "A person could get sick, stuck in a stuffy house all day, breathing that stale air." Her eyes grew big as she added dramatically, "And then, if she got wet, a person could get lung fever and die!"

"You're going to wish you were dead, young lady, if you give me anymore backtalk. Now get!"

The angry flush staining Hallie's neck sent Liv scurrying toward home. As she rounded the corner, Hallie noticed Liv's shoeless feet. She started to call the girl back, but didn't want to risk alerting Mr. Brown. They'd been trespassing in his prized garden long enough, and if children's shoes weren't so hard to come by in San Francisco, she would have been sorely tempted to just leave them. But the memory of the last interminable wait for the very shoes Liv had so carelessly abandoned now sent her searching for them.

She looked around the base of the tree and found nothing. Poking in a few nearby bushes only resulted in disturbing a few bees. As she swatted the bugs away, she looked up and found what she was seeking. Dangling from one of the uppermost branches of the apple tree were Liv's new shoes.

Now what? Hallie thought, hoping some solution other than retrieving them herself would pop into her mind. For as long as she could remember, anything steeper than a flight of stairs had sent her into an attack of vertigo. Her one prideful attempt at overcoming this weakness was burned into her memory, along with the humiliation she had suffered when she, the captain's own daughter, had to be cut down from the tangled rigging some thirty feet above the ship's deck. The endless five minutes she had spent helplessly swaying from the ropes convinced her to accept her weakness.

Of course, that had been six or seven years ago. Maybe it had only been a childhood fear. Didn't one grow out of such things? She was much taller now. What could be so frightening about climbing one fair-to-middling-sized tree? Besides, she reasoned, how else was she going to get those shoes?

Hallie glanced around self-consciously, knowing she really shouldn't do it, but now she was convinced that retrieving those shoes somehow symbolized her emergence into womanhood.

The lowest branch was right above her head, and for, once thanking her Nordic ancestors for her majestic height, she pulled her five-foot-ten-inch frame onto the branch. By throwing her right leg over it, she managed to get into a sitting position. Feeling secure on her perch, she sat there grinning, surprised and proud of her newfound skill.

Fortified with confidence, she reached up and grasped the next limb, pulling herself into standing position. Then she made a mistake. She looked down.

The ground appeared to rise like yeast on a hot day. Her vision blurred and she wrapped her arms around the limb, holding on for all she was worth. Sucking in great breaths of air, she managed to calm her fluttering heart. Her sight cleared and she glanced around the tree, hoping to somehow recapture her nerve. It was gone.

Stuck in her precarious position, Hallie glared at the shoes. The blasted things were hanging high on the branch, and their mocking challenge egged her on. With one arm gripping the limb, she very slowly stretched her free arm toward the shoes. She was still a few inches shy.

She searched around for a twig to help extend her reach, found one, and tore it from the branch. Standing bravely on her tiptoes, she hooked the forked end of the twig around the knotted shoelaces. Gradually, she lowered the boot enough so she could grab its toe. With a quick tug, the leather half-boots came free, along with most of the blossoms on the high branch. Clutching the shoes in one hand, she waited for the drifting petals to clear, and then she turned slowly, trying to get a better grip on her security limb. Just as she started to squat, the wood cracked under the pressure of her weight. The branch tipped sharply toward the ground and Hallie slid down the limb, stripping it of twigs and blossoms before she skidded abruptly to the ground.

"My tree! My tree!"

The high-pitched wail pierced the air, penetrating Hallie's rattled brain. She brought one stinging hand up to brush the pale hair out of her face. There, with arms waving like the semaphore atop Telegraph Hill, was a raving Abner Brown. Clad in his usual black undertaker's garb, he was hopping up and down while he whined his tree litany.

"Mr. Brown, I...uh," Hallie stammered, unable to voice aloud any feeble excuse as she watched his apoplectic reaction.

His pallid skin was unnervingly lifeless for a man in his thirties, and its sallowness made his brown hair appear lank. The huge hook nose that dominated his homely face was his only bit of color. It was bright red. And as his jaw worked in and out, it looked to Hallie as if the man had finally grown a chin. The anger that emanated from his cold, penetrating eyes had a sinister quality that made her spine itch, and her eyes widened as she watched his long, skinny fingers form claws which she could picture wrapped around her throat -- squeezing.

"Mr. Brown, I know I've damaged your tree." Hallie swallowed, noticing that as his anger became more rabid, the knotty Adam's apple in his long throat began to twitch. "I'm sorry -- "

"Sorry! You're sorry?" he cried, walking over to stand directly above her. "I'll tell you what's sorry! You and those rowdy children. Don't have any respect at all for other people's property!" He paused and his pale blue stare turned into icy assessment.

Hallie sat frozen and fearful. But her fear subsided when he turned his calculating eyes away and began to pace back and forth in agitation.

"Do you realize I had this tree shipped from New Hampshire? It made it all the way around the Horn, enduring stormy seas and traveling with that gold-seeking riffraff. It survived the last three San Francisco fires, and what destroys it? A blight known as the Fredriksen family!" Abner stopped directly in front of her.

Hallie looked up at his accusing finger. "I know how you feel about that tree." Oh do I know, she thought, feeling an unexpected affinity with poor Liv. She watched him raise his spindly arm and shake one finger at the sky, a gesture she knew from experience preceded one of his lectures.

"Girlie, do you realize this is the only apple tree in San Francisco?"

Oh no, Hallie groaned inwardly, here it comes.

"It produces only the finest fruit. Back East, people pay the highest prices for the succulent apples from this strain of tree. They come from township after township to taste the crisp, luscious, red..."

Hallie stood while the man droned on. She knew the story well enough from the times he'd come to the house, dragging out Liv or the twins and accusing her of letting the children run wild. He called them vandalizing little urchins and said she was too young to control them. Agitated at the memory, Hallie shook out her skirts. She wasn't too young; she was almost nineteen.

Since her fifteenth birthday her father had left her in charge; he trusted her. As captain of a whaler, he was gone so much of the time that Hallie was left to rule the roost, and her roost consisted of her two younger sisters and her twin brothers. She tried to give the children a normal home, but with no mother, it hadn't been easy. And their home was changing.

In the last three years San Francisco had grown from a sleepy little village to a wild and sprawling port. Hallie had watched the city fill with men who were lured by the tales of gold. And now many of those same men were so disillusioned that they had become as savage as the criminals who had also swarmed West. It was hard, living in a place where gold fever drove even the best of men crazy.

Was that part of Liv's problem? Could she expect a young girl to behave when grown men showed so little restraint? Maybe they needed to get away from the violence of this city. She would talk to Da when he came home.

Hallie realized that Abner wasn't even looking at her, he was so enthralled, having reached the pinnacle of oratory bliss. As she bent over and picked up the troublesome shoes, her long blond braid flopped over her shoulder. She flung it back and began rummaging through the broken foliage in search of the large hairpins that held her heavy braid in a tight bun. She only found two. Shoving them into her shirt pocket, Hallie straightened.

Lord, that man loves to hear himself talk. She shook her head in disgust and then, out of boredom, turned to survey the wreckage. She wanted to cringe when she saw the damage. There were only a few dozen blossoms left on the fractured fruit tree, and its biggest base branch was angled down toward the ground. It was almost laughable the way the broken limb looked like a crutch. No doubt there would be little if any fruit ripening on that tree this year.

She knew she was at fault; she had practically destroyed his tree. But the way he was acting -- well, it was unnatural. Of course, Abner Brown was pretty strange himself, kind of picayunish. And he was always talking. But then, his job was dead people, and since the dead don't talk, it was little wonder he would rattle on whenever he came across a warm body.

Suddenly aware of her own warmth, Hallie looked up at the sun. Its position high in the sky indicated that most of the morning was already wasted. "Mr. Brown," she interrupted. "I'll pay for the damage."

"You sure will, girlie. Someone your age climbing trees when you ought to be watching those -- those brats!" He sneered. "I'm going to report this vandalism!" With that pronouncement, Abner Brown raised his gump of a chin, crossed his gangly arms and waited.

Hallie considered his threat, knowing it was made to intimidate her. The authorities hardly had time to keep peace, much less cause her any trouble. But Abner Brown had influence. He knew Sheriff Hayes well, since he was the only undertaker in the city, and what with the lack of law and order, heaven knew San Francisco had enough bodies to be buried lately.

"I said I'd pay for the damage," Hallie repeated. "How much do you want?"

Abner's eyes took on a larcenous gleam. He looked at the nearly naked tree and then toward its remains, scattered like flotsam all over the grass. He bent down, picked, up a blossom and began to stroke it affectionately. "Oh, I think five hundred dollars ought to do it."

Five hundred dollars! Hallie swallowed, hard. The greedy pirate had her trapped, and they both knew it. He could claim to have been able to sell the fruit to the miners for that much and he was most likely right. With so much gold exchanging hands, prices, especially for eggs and fruit, were outlandish. Men had been known to pay ridiculous amounts for scarce items.

Since she had damaged the tree, she felt responsible, but it stuck in her craw that he could legitimately extort that kind of money from her. She didn't need any trouble with Da gone, and on the slim chance that Mr. Brown could make trouble for her and the children, Hallie didn't call his bluff. She was mad at this chiseling weasel, mad at Liv, and even madder at herself for getting into this mess.

Feeling the heat of her anger bubbling forth made her anxious to get away. Giving in to it would only make things worse. "I'll have the money for you by Friday." She forced the cowardly words past her lips and briskly walked away. Just before she reached the perimeter of the yard, she heard his nasally voice.

"See that you do, girlie. See that you do."

Kit Howland crumpled the letter into a tight ball and pitched it across the room. Reaching over his cluttered desk, he lifted the brass lid from an ornately carved tobacco holder. His strong, dark fingers disappeared into the depths o0f the woo...

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.