Main character for Wagon of Salvation
Created by Suzy
(I picture her to look a little like Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire)
Bernice and her brother Jasper were born into a life of luxury and breeding, but their path through that life was destined to be rocky and turbulent at best. Her mother Bernadine was the only child of the then richest man in the United States. Bernadine had the misfortune of falling irreconcilably in love with a petty crook and gold digger, who apparently was intent only on liberating Bernadine and her father from their money. Bernice was born a healthy bonny baby mere months after her parents wedding and flourished under her mothers love.
Desperate to keep her family together, and against her fathers wishes Bernadine listened to the desperate pleadings of her husband and convinced that moving to California was the answer to all their problems, set off in their covered wagon to a new life and renewed happiness when Bernice was 15 and Jasper was 4.
The journey was a travesty from the start, Bernadine husband left his wife and small children not a week into the journey, but he didn’t count on the spirit and courage of his wife and teenage daughter. They worked hard as a team, with the courage and tenacity of ten men, chased from the wagon by a petty ignorant wagon master, they wandered lost and without hope of finding their way back to the trail until Bernadine was thrown from the wagon and died a slow and painful death before her children’s eyes, whilst trying to instil the knowledge in her beloved daughter that would help her to survive in this rugged land.
Bernice had almost lost hope when Buck and Ike found them, despite the fact that she knew they were strangers and she should be afraid of them, she couldn’t help but be drawn to the tall, handsome stranger, who she instinctively knew would never harm her. She did not realise, however, that whilst she reminded him of a fragile porcelain doll with the voice of an angel, he was under her spell from the moment he met her, protective of her when she needed but also aware of her iron will and quick Irish temper, letting her have her own space when she needed it.
Nobody knows where the relationship will head, but one thing is certain, Buck will protect her the best way he can, always there to lend her a shoulder to cry on, or to lean on him when things get too much. All his protection may be for nothing though, can he protect her from her own father or from her brothers wish to be with his daddy….
