Lady in the Mist (35 page)
Authors: Laurie Alice Eakes
Tags: #Love Stories, #Christian fiction, #Romance, #Fiction, #Historical, #Christian, #Midwives
“Dominick, is this possible? I mean—” She didn’t know what she meant. She couldn’t think of anything but the joy of him staying with her.
“I mean we can spend the rest of our lives together, have a family.”
“But your upbringing, your position.” She shook her head. “How can you give all that up?”
“It’ll take me longer than we have here tonight to explain it all. Suffice it to say that God has shown me another path, one not based on my family name but on the gifts He has given me. I’m not really going to be Kendall’s butler. I’ll work as his factor and man of business, and we’ll see where God takes us from there.”
“And He will take us if we let Him.” Tabitha laughed from sheer joy. “Oh, Dominick, is this real?”
“Quite.” As he drew her to him for a lingering kiss, the sun broke free and banished the mist.
Acknowledgments
Though she works primarily alone, no writer is an island, or if she is, many causeways link her to the mainland of humanity. Here I’d like to thank those paths back to sanity.
Therese Stenzel for starting the authors’ promotional group HEWN Marketing and agreeing that my English hero qualifies me for influencer support.
Debbie Lynne Costello and Kathy Maher for their Crown Marketing Group specializing in nineteenth-century American Christian fiction. Your friendship is even more valuable.
Kathy Cretsinger deserves special thanks for understanding my post-edits angst and agreeing to read the manuscript. Your phone call saying you loved the story came just when I needed it most. And your suggestion for a fix was insightful too.
A few blessed beings will likely see my gratitude in every book, primarily my editors for not telling me I’m a dolt, and the members of my household, both two- and four-legged, for accepting my weird hours as normal.
Without brainstorming from my talented critique partners, Louise M. Gouge, Marylu Tyndall, and Ramona Cecil, I doubt this fledgling idea that had been in the back of my mind for ten years would have turned into a full-blown novel.
As always, in addition, my agent Tamela Murray deserves that I do something humbling like clean her house every day for a month, for giving this story such swift and intense attention.
Finally, I wish to extend a special thanks to staff and professors in the Virginia Tech history department, especially Professor Roger Ekirch for allowing me to run with my project on midwives’ role in society, and Ms. Janet Francis for corralling her undergrads to give me research assistance. Matt and Mike, I hope you’re faring well, wherever your lives have landed you.
The role of midwives in history began to fascinate
Laurie Alice Eakes
in graduate school, and she knew that someday she wanted to write novels with midwife heroines. Ten years later, after several published novels, four relocations, and a National Readers Choice Award for Best Regency, the midwives idea returned, and
Lady in the Mist
was born. Now Laurie Alice writes full-time from her home in southern Texas, where she lives with her husband and sundry dogs and cats.
