Title: 'Tis the Season Book 3: Cinder Bella
Author: Kathleen Shoop
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 228
Genre: Historical Fiction
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?
Read a sample.
Cinder Bella is available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble & Kobo.
First Chapter:
1893
Shadyside, Pennsylvania
The week before Christmas…
Bella’s breath caught. The coyotes’ high-pitched yips and howls trailed from a distance. Living in a city, she hadn’t thought they’d get so close to the Westminster property, but now her livelihood was threatened. She should have acted sooner. She kept on. The snow fell thick, brightening what would have been a dark night without the land blanketed in white to reflect the crescent moon’s shine. She swallowed her rising fear as she stepped through the fresh fall, winding along the maple- and evergreen-lined path that led from the barn to the coop. Bella hated the thought of shooting any living thing, but she would do it if necessary.
The coyote calls came again. Closer. A chill spun up her spine. She stopped and juggled the shotgun under one arm, the tin bowls tucked under the other, and jars of vinegar clutched to her midsection. Her cat, Simon, accompanied her, stopping when she did. Bella turned her head to hear better. The coyote cries were coming from the east end of town. She clicked her tongue at Simon. He leapt onto her shoulder. His landing was gentle as could be, but still Bella’s coat seams tore a little more as the cat nestled into her.
She forced her feet to move again and picked up speed. “Tomorrow we bring the hens inside. No more of this evening trek to lay new vinegar. Those pesky coyotes can hunt somewhere else.”
Simon meowed and nuzzled her ear with the top of his head.
She reached the coop. Simon hopped down and made his rounds, circling the enclosure. He hopped through the high snow, crisp landings breaking the silence. The hens were snug and safe, but the idea of coyotes rustling around her prized hens was too much. She hadn’t slept well for days.
Margaret, the Westminster’s housemaid, had informed Bella that she’d heard stories that the four-legged hunters had been making their rounds in Shadyside and East Liberty, feasting on Christmas turkeys, chickens, even pets. The yipping drew closer and Bella poured vinegar into the bowls and circled the coop with them, hoping it would be enough to keep the predators away, that the fresh snow wouldn’t dilute the sharp vinegar scent. With the bowls in place she sprinkled some cayenne pepper near the foundation of the coop as well.
Finished with that chore and Simon back on her shoulder, she held her breath listening for preying animals. Silence. Only Simon’s purring and the shushing of fast falling snow filled her ears. Still, she wouldn’t sleep well. She had to keep those hens alive and laying. Her very existence depended upon it. She and Simon trudged back to the barn and soon she was tucked into the bed she’d made in the loft.
It would be a long night, but she had her books, a view of the coop from her loft bed and she had Simon. She struggled to stay awake, tearing her gaze from her storybooks when any sound startled her. But at some point, sleep came. She awakened quick and shot to sitting. The coyotes? Nothing. Just her dreams. She fell back onto her pillow with a deep exhale, arm tossed over her forehead, the cat warming her feet. Bella scratched the quilt. “Come on, Simon.”
She turned on her side as Simon crept up her body then plopped beside her and curled into her belly. Bella rubbed him behind the ears and looked through the window. Christmas was coming. The best time of the year. Stars twinkled between spindly winter maple tree branches and peeked over evergreen crowns.
The crescent moon glimmered and Mother Nature’s great lights turned the snowy expanse beyond the barn into a jewel box waiting for a debutante to pluck a few stones. Pittsburgh’s princesses were daughters of industry, bankers, politicians, and inventors. Their fancy holiday balls thrown by families who mimicked the wealthy habits of royalty were legendary and grew larger and more decadent each season. She imagined the Frick, O’Hara, Schenley, and Westminster daughters with snow laid diamonds strung through their hair, draped around necks, and ringing wrists and fingers. The women were known to sparkle like the winterscape itself. Their jewelry was that beautiful, magical.
Bella stretched and yawned. A New Year’s ball. That’s where Bella’s latest fictional heroine was headed. Once upon a time… she spun a tale like she always did when she wakened to a fresh day. This tale involved a protagonist fending off evildoers—the four-legged, furry kind. The silly story made it clear—Bella would set the hens up inside the barn at night until the coyotes moved on.
She eyed the empty oil lantern, the candle burnt to a nub, and the borrowed books stacked on the orange crate beside her. It was her night reading that led to daydreams of someday writing her own stories. Not that she had the time. Opening a book and slipping into the pages of worlds others had created was plenty for her. It had to be.
The sun was waking, drawing a thin sapphire line across the horizon, the signal it was time to rise. Bella jumped out of bed, readied for the day with an extra set of stockings and her sweater with leather buttons. It had been knitted by Mrs. Lambert who said the eggs Bella sold her were magic. Just a week back, the woman appeared at the barn door with the sweater and a hen no longer interested in laying, asking if Bella would get her to produce, and save a few eggs out for her each week.
“Just a few’s all I need and you can do what you will with the rest,” Mrs. Lambert had said.
Charmed. Magic. The woman had said the words a dozen times, insisting that though Bella’s eggs seemed ordinary on the outside—what they did once cracked open was inexplicable.
Though outlandish, the woman boldly claimed the eggs made the best cheese and potato casserole her husband ever ate, and that being the case, he turned sweet on her all over again. “A new man—the man I used to know—appeared with every bite he ate.”
“Egg casserole did that?” Bella had doubted. Absurd.
“It might sound ridiculous to you, a young woman probably juggling dozens—well, at least a handful of suitors—but yes. I’m quite sure the eggs did it.”
Bella didn’t reveal that she had exactly zero suitors. She buttoned the sweater, remembering Mrs. Lambert’s bright eyes. Magic. The idea was silly, but somehow felt true and so Bella had embraced the gifts. Who was she to argue with what might turn a spent husband loving again? If all it took were eggs, perhaps she ought to fire up a scrambled egg table at the market and maybe even find a man for herself. Perhaps a nice Christmas advertisement in the Pittsburgh Gazette would bring the right caller.
Bella chuckled. She didn’t have the funds for things like publicizing her desire for someone to share her life with. But she did have ideas. When Mrs. Lambert had left and was nearly gone from sight it occurred to Bella to ask a question. “How did you find me?”
But the winds were picking through evergreen stands and hid her voice from the woman who just kept on. Bella Darling wasn’t someone people could just “find.” She was a loner, a family of one, plus her hens and the cat, just grateful she’d lucked into the chance of living in the barn of one of the wealthy Ellsworth Avenue families in Shadyside, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. And so Bella added another spent hen to her flock, loved on her, fed her the special oat mixture, and marveled when the newest addition began to lay alongside the two she’d been gifted from Mr. and Mrs. Westminster.
Bella would have thought it was magic, too, if she’d read it in a fairy tale. But, since it was her real life and she was no one extraordinary, she decided it was simply her kindness and devotion that brought on the laying.
Her kindness was what brought her the hens in the first place. She’d saved the life of Mr. Westminster and he’d rewarded her with the original pair of spent hens. When he saw that she got them to lay and his wife proclaimed that the three eggs added to the bread recipe made three times the amount of bread, they offered Bella the old barn to live in.
“She can only stay as long as the hens lay,” Mr. Westminster had said.
“I can make syrup, too,” Bella said. “Noticed you have quite the stand of maples.”
Mr. Westminster studied her, scratching his belly. “Mr. Hansen will be by to tap the maples. I’m sure he could use a hand. If you help him collect the sap and make syrup you can stay.”
Mrs. Westminster had leaned into her husband and whispered something.
“No. Barn’ll do,” he said. “Plenty of warmth with the fireplace added. I hear the loft is toasty as can be.”
“For as long as she needs a home, then,” Mrs. Westminster added.
Bella could tell Mrs. Westminster was irritated with her husband.
“If she’s lucky,” he said, “getting spent hens to lay and helping Mr. Hansen will continue for as long as she needs a home. We aren’t running a poorhouse. So don’t spread it around, Miss Darling. We’ll have a line of hopeless souls down the drive and onto the avenue if you tell anyone where you live.” Mr. Westminster tore a hunk of the bread from the loaf and shuffled out of the kitchen.
“Oh, that is good,” his voice had carried from down the hall.
And so, since February 1893, Bella Darling had lived in the barn, tended the hens, nurtured the cat, made maple syrup, and lived contented in spare shelter and with borrowed books. The only time she felt dissatisfaction was when she turned to share an exciting bit of a story with someone else and no one but Simon was there. She didn’t need the parties and balls and excursions that were described in the novels in order to be happy. Just someone to share her life with, her books with—that, she wanted more than anything.
Someone to love. If only magic could deliver her the man of her dreams. She arranged the holiday pine boughs and holly sprigs on the fireplace mantel then tugged on her boots to go collect the day’s eggs and head to market. He, whoever he was, didn’t have to be a man who loved stories like she did—but he needed to like them enough to listen as she reported what happened in them. Someone to gasp and hold her tight as she grew teary-eyed over the life and times of characters who weren’t even alive. Then her contented world would be fully whole.
About the Author:
Bestselling author Kathleen Shoop, PhD writes historical fiction, women’s fiction, and romance. Shoop’s novels have garnered awards in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), Eric Hoffer Book Awards, Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and more. You can find Kathleen in person at various venues. She’s on the board of the Kerr Memorial Museum, teaches at writing/reader conferences, co-coordinates Mindful Writers Retreats and writing conferences, and gives talks at various book clubs, libraries, and historical societies.
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Cinder Bella is available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble & Kobo.
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