Sorrow's Field -e

by RD Larson

Sarah, blind and motherless, leaves Algiers to sail to England. A marriage arranged by her father to an American more thirty years her senior seems inevitable. Yet Sarah has a secret. From the theaters of 1880's London to the moors Sarah's courage drives her forward to fulfill her dreams. This is an exciting romantic adventure by RD Larson, author of MAMA TRIED TO RAISE A LADY, EVIL ANGEL and the Eppie Finalist, SAVING REVEREND CLAYTON, co-authored with Louise Ulmer

ISBN 1-59431-487-X Romance / Historical / short story

Cover Art by Maggie Dix

Also available in RTF and HTML formats.



Sarah took a deep breath as the scent of land filled her mind. England smelled very different than Algiers. She could almost remember the green fields. Almost but not quite. She shivered with anticipation.

“Sarah, we’ll be going ashore soon. Are you ready to meet your future husband tonight?” Cyril Holycross leaned near the young woman, his breath hot on her neck and cheek. “Perhaps Sedgwick St. James will be there to greet you.”

“He won’t want a blind bride, Father,” said Sarah, shifting her feet a bit to get away from the fetid smell. He wasn’t truly her father. She knew he didn’t even love her. Until the death of her mother she had barely known him. Sarah had lived a separate life in the grand villa with her adoptive mother, Solange visiting with friends and other French residents of Algiers. Cyril Holycross kept to his business and to his adventures.

“Do you miss Mother?” Sarah asked him. Her blind eyes turned toward his face as if somehow she could read a message of truth. She could only see shadowy darkness. “I miss her terribly.”

“Yes, of course, Sarah, she was my wife and my companion. I will never forgive myself for allowing the two of you to go to the Market that day without armed guards. I was such a fool. I could have lost you as well. And now I will be alone.” Cyril’s voice broke convincingly. The ship, The Belted Will, quivered like a leaf in the wind.

Liar. Liar, Sarah screamed at him from within her mind.

“Then why are you sending me to the American West, to marry a man thirty years older than I am? Why? You could keep me with you.” Sarah’s temper flared. “If you cared.”

“You will have a better life than the hazardous one we’re now living in Algiers,” Cyril said, harshly.

Sarah fell silent. He wasn’t her real father nor was his wife, Solange, her real mother. She had been given to him when she was eight, no doubt for a “better life,” she thought bitterly. She remembered the name of the place she was born, Sorrow’s Field. She remembered her mother’s singing and she remembered her baby sister. But that was all.

Solange, her adopted mother, had loved her dearly, as though she’d been born of her body. Every good lesson Sarah learned from Solange had been from the heart. That terrible day two years ago when thieves set up on them, with knives and clubs as they shopped under the awnings at the Market had forever changed Sarah’s life. As she escaped she saw her mother killed. In her fright, Sarah plunged against a sharp pole broken by a horse and hit her head. Days later she had woken up nearly blind and without her mother.

She had wept and raged and threatened. Cyril blamed himself, as he had not made any efforts to regularly send guards with his wife and daughter. Their maid and his butler had been with them but they had been killed also in the robbery. Algiers had been his home for thirty years and Cyril Holycross was well known as a cruel, heartless man. People were too afraid of him to covet his possessions. And his wife was generous to those less fortunate. He had thought he was beyond violence with his money and power.

When the dreadful deaths occurred, he swore he would find the killers and he would find Sarah a wealthy husband who would look after her forever.