Hannah's Journey

Hannah's Journey
Anna Schmidt

What could bring an Amish widow and a wealthy circus owner together? Though Hannah Goodloe knew she'd violated countless unwritten laws, she had to visit the only man who could help find her runaway son. But when the enigmatic Levi Harmon agreed to take her on his train, the results were utterly unpredictable.Levi never expected to find the embodiment of all he wanted in a woman in the soft-spoken, plainly dressed Hannah. And for Hannah, to love an outsider was to be shunned. The simple pleasures of family, faith and place to belong seemed an impossible dream. Unless Levi unlocked his past and opened his heart to God's plan.

“What will you do if your son’s infatuation with the circus life has not yet been satisfied?” Levi asked.

“I don’t know,” Hannah admitted.

“I mean, Caleb is what? Eleven, you said?”

“Almost twelve.”

“Then he has some time.”

He saw her peer up at him curiously. “Time?”

“Well, as I understand it, a boy does not make a final decision to follow the ways of the Amish until he’s maybe fourteen?” He had taken this conversation too far and soon she would start to raise questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Questions like how it was that he knew so much about the Amish life. He had almost opened the door to the past. What was it about this woman that made him want to do that? He’d had dealings with the other Amish before. But he had never had to face the daily reminder of what he had run away from all those years ago. Not until Hannah Goodloe had walked up to his front door and into his life.

ANNA SCHMIDT

is an award-winning author of more than twenty-five works of historical and contemporary fiction. She is a two-time finalist for a coveted RITA

Award from Romance Writers of America, as well as a four-time finalist for an RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award. Her most recent RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice nomination was for her 2008 Love Inspired Historical novel Seaside Cinderella, which is the first of a series of four historical novels set on the romantic island of Nantucket. Critics have called Anna “a natural writer, spinning tales reminiscent of old favorites like Miracle on 34th Street.” Her characters have been called “realistic” and “endearing” and one reviewer raved, “I love Anna Schmidt’s style of writing!”

Hannah’s Journey

Anna Schmidt

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For Yahweh has heard the sound of my weeping, Yahweh has heard my pleading. Yahweh will accept my prayer…

—Psalm 6:8–9

(New Jerusalem version)

To those who have dared

follow the beat of the different drummer.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Letter to Reader (#litres_trial_promo)

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Chapter One

Sarasota, Florida, May 1928

Levi Harmon pushed aside the piles of bills littering his desk and swiveled his high-backed, leather chair toward the series of leaded glass-paned doors that led outside to the front lawn. The room had been designed as a solarium, but Levi had seen little use for such a space and instead had located his Florida office in the room with its tiled terrazzo floor, its arched doors opening to the out-of-doors that he loved so much. After all, what was the use of being rich if not to live as you pleased?

He walked out onto the terrace and leaned against the stone railing. Before him the lawn stretched green and verdant past the swimming pool and rose garden, past the mammoth banyan trees that he’d insisted the builder spare when constructing the mansion and on to the gatehouse that was a miniature version of the mansion itself. He’d worked hard for all of this and had thought that by now he might be sharing it with a wife and children, but work had consumed him and he had never found a woman that he thought suited to the kind of vagabond life he’d chosen.

He’d come outside to think. Perhaps he should take a walk along the azure bay that most of the mansion’s rooms looked out on. That always calmed him whenever business worries piled up. And indeed, they had begun to pile up—not just for him but for many men who had taken the cash flows of their businesses for granted these past several boom years. He had started down the curved stairs to the lawn when he noticed a woman he did not recognize walking up the driveway.

She moved with purpose and determination, her strides even, her tall slender frame erect, her head bent almost as if in prayer. As she came closer, he saw that she wore a dark gray dress with a black apron and the telltale starched white cap that was the uniform of the Amish women. How was it possible that she had not been stopped at the gate, detained there while the gatekeeper made a call to the house?