Sage: A Sweet Western Historical Romance (Walker Creek Brides Book 5)

by Miriam Minger

  “Good God, look out!”

  Sage screamed as a massive stallion reared above her, hooves pawing the air. She lunged out of the way, but not fast enough to avoid a flashing hoof that grazed her temple.

  Momentarily stunned, she crumpled to her knees, only to hear a sickening thud when the rider toppled backward onto the ground.

  Chapter Two

  Her head throbbing, Sage stared in horror at the young man lying so still only feet away from her.

  The same young man with thick, white-blond hair whom she’d nearly collided with on the street a few weeks before Christmas and who had come into the mercantile days later—only to be rebuffed by the Levinsons while she’d hid breathless behind the counter.

  Tall, strapping, and more handsome than any man had the right to be—oh, dear God, was he dead?

  Sage tried to stand up, but the sudden burst of pain in her skull landed her back in the dirt. Instead, she crawled on hands and knees past the horse that nickered and tossed its head while her heart hammered in her throat.

  Oh, no, oh, no. First, she’d been branded as a harlot and now she’d killed one of Walker Creek’s most renowned citizens!

  Of course she knew his name…Andreas Hagen. Everyone knew Andreas Hagen, especially all the unmarried women in town. If she’d overheard any name while working quietly in the back room of the mercantile during the day, it was his. Such feminine dreams pinned upon him, such starry-eyed hope and breathless expectation from mothers and daughters alike.

  And now he lay upon the ground as motionless as a corpse and it was her fault!

  Why hadn’t she looked first before dashing into the road, so entangled in her panicked thoughts that she hadn’t heard the pounding of hooves until it was too late?

  Swallowing hard, Sage reached his side and saw at once that he was breathing, her relief so immense she nearly collapsed again. Yet his face was so pale, too pale. Might he have broken bones, a broken back?

  Now she did force herself to stand up, sucking in her breath at another sharp pain that nearly dropped her to her knees. She must be injured, too, after that glancing blow to her head, but she didn’t have time to think about that now.

  Andreas needed help. A doctor. Heaven help her, time was of the essence; she could tell that simply by looking at him.

  The wind was picking up and growing colder, and a glance at the darkening sky told her that the weather was turning. She couldn’t leave him lying there unprotected. Without another moment’s delay, she unfastened her cape with trembling fingers and settled the garment over him, though she shivered in her plain brown dress. Then she turned her attention to his mount, who still stood close by.

  Thankfully, she’d been raised around horses, but she had never ridden one as massive as the roan stallion that swung its great head around to look at her as she cautiously approached him.

  “Easy, boy…I need your help. He needs your help,” she murmured, reaching out to grab the reins.

  Relief swept her again when he didn’t try to break away from her, and instead stood there patiently as she lifted her skirt and petticoat above her knee, grabbed the pommel, and hooked her ankle-booted foot into the stirrup. With a deep breath and a prayer heavenward, she hoisted herself into the saddle, though she swayed for an instant as the world seemed to whirl around her.

  “No, no, you can’t faint, you can’t faint!” she told herself fiercely, kicking the stallion into a hard gallop. She leaned forward to clutch his thick red mane with one hand, the reins held tightly in the other.

  She didn’t hear the ragged groan behind her or see that Andreas had suddenly sat up, holding his head in his hands for an instant before turning to gape after her in surprise.

  Her only desperate thought as she barreled toward town was to make it to the Frederick Hotel, where townsfolk were dining after church. People who could help Andreas, save Andreas!

  Everything in a blur, she rode past the schoolhouse at one end of Walker Creek and then the blacksmith shop and the mercantile. Sage wondered fleetingly if Samuel and Mary might be choking on their coffee upstairs in their cozy dining room to see her flying by. She reached the hotel so quickly she was certain Andreas’s stallion must be a racehorse, and she almost toppled from the saddle when she pulled up sharply on the reins.

  Her head feeling now as if it might explode, she slid to the ground and staggered up the front steps and into the massive foyer, where people stared at her as if in shock.

  “Please…Andreas Hagen needs help! He needs help!”

  Her cries seemed to echo from the high ceiling, but it was the men rushing from what must be the dining room, startled-looking women following in their wake, that swept Sage with fresh relief.

  As a strange cloudiness seemed to blur her vision, she recognized Caleb Walker, the most prominent citizen of Walker Creek, and Mayor Logan running toward her.

  “Sweet Lord, she’s covered in blood!” shrieked a woman close by. Sage turned her head in confusion as her knees suddenly grew weak beneath her.

  “Blood?” she whispered, reaching up to touch her temple that throbbed now with a pain unlike anything she’d felt before. She stared almost without comprehension at her wet fingers, and then glanced down at her bodice stained a dark red.

  “Miss Larsen, can you hear me?” came the mayor’s voice as if from a great distance, Sage collapsing in his arms. “You said Andreas needs help. Where is he?”

  “By the creek…lying in the road. He fell from his horse…please, you must help him…”

  Sage heard a young woman’s anguished cry and alarmed voices all around her, until her head lolled forward and she heard no more.

  “Oh, Andreas, I can’t bear how close you came to being killed!”

  Andreas squeezed Anita’s hand, but he didn’t take his eyes from Sage as she slept fitfully in the infirmary bed while Dr. Charles Davis checked her pulse.

  His wife, Molly, a striking woman wearing a plain gray dress and with a starched white cap atop her honey-colored hair, stood by his side, ready to assist him. His brother-in-law Seth’s adoptive parents, the two of them had treated Andreas a time or two, offering the finest medical care in the county. As Dr. Davis conferred with her in a low voice, Molly’s concerned expression only amplified Andreas’s uneasiness.

  Yes, he’d suffered a hard fall and had momentarily blacked out, the wind knocked from him. Yet that was nothing compared to what had happened to Sage when Thor’s hoof struck the right side of her head. Thankfully, the bleeding stemmed at the hotel by Dr. Daniel Grant, who had been dining there with his wife, Pearl.

  Andreas had been half walking, half loping his way back into town when his brother-in-law Joshua, Caleb, and Dr. Davis met him with a buckboard wagon, their strained expressions at once flooded with relief.

  Yes, he was fine, Andreas had quickly explained, telling them that he’d gone for a ride along the creek when Sage had darted into his path, startling Thor, who had reared and tossed him. She must have thought he was terribly injured because she’d covered him with her own cape and then taken off with his horse, much to his surprise when he’d regained his senses to see her riding away.

  Clearly she’d found help at the hotel, but Andreas’s query into her welfare had been met with a look passed between Joshua and the doctor that made his blood run cold.

  “She’s unconscious,” murmured Charles as he gave Andreas a hand up into the wagon. “Molly and Dr. Grant have taken her to the infirmary. He’s scheduled to visit some homebound patients, but he’ll stay until we get there. She took a sharp blow to the head—”

  “Thor,” Andreas had cut him off, his stomach suddenly churning. “I’d hoped his hoof had missed her.”

  Now his gut clenched all the more as he gazed at Sage, her face so deathly pale, a white bandage wrapped around her head with a small red blotch near her temple where blood had seeped through. Charles had assured him moments ago that any bleeding had finally stopped, but just seeing that spot served as a stark
reminder of what she’d suffered.

  And still she’d ridden like the wind to find help for him, having no clue from what anyone could tell that she’d been so grievously injured—

  “No…no! I’m not a prostitute…you can’t do this to me!”

  Anita’s shocked gasp was nothing to Andreas’s sharp intake of breath as Sage began to toss and turn on the bed, Charles leaning over her to try and press down her slender shoulders.

  “She’s delirious. Molly, I need a dose of laudanum!”

  Charles’s wife had no sooner hastened away when a keening moan erupted from Sage, her face constricted in anguish.

  “No, nooooo! Stay away from me, stay away!”

  “Andreas, you hold her down on one side while I take the other!” Charles bade him. Andreas obeyed, amazed that a young woman so slight, so petite, could fight them so desperately.

  “Beatrice…she’ll kill me if I tell anyone what happened—no, no, no! He’s drunk, too drunk to-to…oh, God, please help me! I can’t push him off me! He’s so heavy…I can’t push him off me!”

  “Andreas, hold her firmly! That’s it, Molly, I’ll lift her head and open her mouth so you can give her the dose—quickly now!”

  Andreas did as the doctor commanded, his thoughts spinning from what he’d heard as Sage coughed and sputtered from the dose of laudanum, making him fear she was choking. Then just as abruptly as the fit of delirium had started, she collapsed upon the mattress, all the fight gone out of her.

  “It’s passed,” Charles said with a heavy sigh, shaking his head. “God only knows what horrors this poor girl has suffered, but she’ll rest now…not so much from the laudanum but sheer exhaustion.”

  Andreas backed away from the bed, raw fury filling him as Anita looked on open-mouthed, so stunned by what they had witnessed that the blood had drained from her face.

  “Anita, will you stay with her until I return?”

  For a moment his twin sister stared at him as if uncomprehending, her blue eyes as stricken as he’d ever seen them.

  “Anita, please. You’ve been so good to sit here with me this long—”

  “Of course I’ll stay! I don’t care what anyone says about her, no, not a soul! How could I not stay with someone who did everything she could to help you—but, Andreas, where are you going?”

  He didn’t answer, not trusting himself to speak as he took one last look at Sage—her pale cheeks streaked with tears, her long brown hair matted with dried blood—and then stormed from the infirmary.

  “How’s Miss Larsen?” Joshua queried Andreas as he stepped into the foyer of his brother-in-law and sister Ingrid’s home. The smell of apple pie baking and the sound of young ones playing upstairs—Davy and Emily, Ingrid’s stepchildren—lent a surreal note after the harsh scene Andreas had just left at the infirmary, and he shook his head grimly.

  “It’s a wonder the blow from Thor’s hoof didn’t kill her, but Doc Davis thinks she’ll pull through. I wanted to ask you a few questions, and then I’m going back. She’s sleeping, but Anita said she’d sit with her until I return.”

  “You have Anita mixed up in this now?” Joshua said tightly as he pulled Andreas into the drawing room. “The girl’s a prostitute, Andreas! As soon as Gladys Winchell’s petition has enough signatures, the women of this town are going to run her out of here—”

  “Over my cold, dead body.” Andreas yanked his arm away, not missing the sudden tic in Joshua’s jaw. His brother-in-law might be the mayor now, but he still walked and talked like a sheriff and probably always would, which Andreas was counting on. “You told me that you didn’t think she’d been here long before you closed the brothel, right?”

  Joshua nodded, the tic in his jaw still working.

  “As sheriff, I imagine you and your deputies kept close watch on these things. The number of women Beatrice Dubois employed. The men coming and going from the brothel, just in case there might be trouble. Regulars, or those just passing through town, right?”

  Again, Joshua nodded, which made Andreas rush on.

  “I had a beer at the Red Dog a few days before, but I didn’t see Sage, and you know how Beatrice liked to parade around new girls. I did hear talk of her looking to hire a lady’s maid, though, because some of the men in the saloon were laughing about it. A madam wanting a highfalutin lady’s maid to look after her, one of them said, and I thought it uppity myself.”

  “I heard talk of it, too, but where are you going with all of this, Andreas?”

  “I’ll tell you where I’m going,” he echoed, his own jaw growing tight as he quickly relayed to Joshua what he’d just heard from Sage in her delirium. He always knew when his brother-in-law was growing angered because his gray eyes took on a steely hue. “Something’s not right here, Joshua, not right at all. Did you see anybody different among Beatrice’s patrons that night at the brothel?”

  Joshua didn’t readily answer, but then he shook his head as if remembering something.

  “Most everyone was a regular and we didn’t stop them from scrambling home to their wives, the miserable louses. There was another man, though, one I hadn’t seen before. He was passed out drunker than a skunk on a bed, reeking of whiskey, his boots kicked off, but other than that still dressed. A couple cold buckets of water roused him enough to ride out of here. Said he was a gambling man just passing through, but I didn’t get his name and he didn’t offer it…though Beatrice might know.”

  “I think Beatrice might know a lot,” Andreas said grimly, his hands clenching into fists. “I told you Sage cried out something about how that woman had threatened to kill her. So what in God’s name do you think might have happened that night?”

  Joshua’s expression had hardened as if he was working through things in his mind.

  Meanwhile, Andreas couldn’t resist helping him along as he grew angrier by the moment. “Beatrice looking to hire a lady’s maid and then Sage showing up at the Red Dog maybe a day or two before the brothel closed?”

  Joshua nodded. “Except maybe Beatrice had something else in mind, Miss Larsen being as pretty as she is. A gambler with his pockets full of money would have been a strong enticement for her, but then he was too drunk to do anything more than pass out—”

  “God help him, that better be the way it all went down,” Andreas bit off. “If it’s true, and I’d wager my life on it, then Sage Larsen is no prostitute at all—”

  “I thought she had a naïve look about her,” Joshua cut in, almost as if talking to himself, “which is why I guess I gave her a chance to start over here. Blast it all, I never asked her where she came from or how she found herself in Walker Creek…just assumed the worst…”

  As Joshua fell silent, shaking his head as if he blamed himself at that moment for what might have happened to Sage, Andreas drew closer when he heard his sister’s footsteps coming down the hallway.

  “If you want, I’ll take the train to Austin tomorrow morning and bring that woman back here so you can question her.”

  “No, I’ll go with a couple of Sheriff Braun’s deputies. If the ladies in this town are going to ever leave Miss Larsen in peace, we’ll need more witnesses to corroborate her story—Beatrice and maybe some of her girls, and that gambler, if we can track him down.”

  “Oh, it’s you, Andreas!” Ingrid said as she entered the drawing room, wiping her hands on her apron and then tucking a stray strand of blond hair behind her ear. “I knew I heard voices. How’s Miss Larsen? I’ve never seen such selfless bravery as what she did for you today.”

  Some of his anger cooling that he’d been blessed with three warmhearted sisters, as well as fair-minded brothers-in-law in Seth and Joshua, Andreas went to her and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “I don’t know yet, but Doc Davis and Molly are doing everything they can to help her. If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be at the infirmary.”

  And there he would stay, Andreas vowed to himself as he shook hands with Joshua and then headed out the door.

/>   He had no intention of leaving Sage’s side again until he knew she was out of the woods and on her way to a full recovery, the ladies in town and their fool petition be hanged.

  Chapter Three

  “It’s almost suppertime, Andreas. Shall I bring you something to eat when I return?”

  Andreas shook his head and stood with his sister to stretch the muscles in his legs for a few moments.

  He and Anita had been sitting beside Sage’s bed for hours, except for an occasional break to get some fresh air, but he’d been encouraging his sister to go home for some time now. Stubborn as always, Anita had refused until Dr. Davis had insisted as well that she leave the infirmary by none-too-subtly pointing out the smudges under her eyes and her growling stomach.

  “You don’t need to come back, Anita, I’ll be fine. Tend to yourself, will you? I’m sure Juanita has something good to eat waiting for you. You heard what Doc Davis told you—”

  “Hardly accurate, I’m sure,” she said with some affront. “Smudges, indeed. I am hungry, though—oh, dear. There goes my stomach again.”

  Her embarrassed smile told Andreas that, for all of her dramatic airs and high aspirations, she was still the sweet, guileless sister he’d always known. Thankfully, they lived only a few blocks away in a home Caleb had generously provided for them, along with their wonderful cook and a couple servants to look after things.

  “It’s not dark yet, otherwise I’d take you home myself. Be careful driving the carriage—”

  “Born ten minutes after me yet always acting the big brother. Of course I’ll be careful.” Anita glanced at the bed, and bent down to gently squeeze Sage’s hand. “She’s been sleeping so peacefully, thank goodness. I do hope she’ll feel better very soon…for her sake and yours. Now at least I understand why you’ve been so out of sorts.” Anita sighed wistfully as she turned back to him. “Maybe someday I’ll have feelings for someone like you already have for Sage—oh yes, you can’t hide these things from me, Andreas. I’ll see you in the morning.”