Brokken Knight
Page 1
Brokken Knight
Brokken Road Romances
Book 1
Lynda Cox
Table of Contents
Title Page
Brokken Knight (Brokken Road Romance, #1)
Dedication
April 1867 | 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
Author’s Note:
Brokken Knight © 2018 Lynda Cox
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Any discrepancies in the timeline between Brokken Knight and the other novels in The Brokken Road series are entirely my doing. Working with several other authors and attempting to keep an unbroken timeline for when characters arrived in our fictional little town in Texas proved to be a challenge. In a few places, that timeline needed to be twisted a bit.
There are also minor characters in this series who appear in several of the stories. As with the timeline, there may be discrepancies in how those minor characters are portrayed from book to book.
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Dedication
Brokken Knight is dedicated to Jacque and Jan. Our brain-storming session on the way to Jackson, MS, gave life and form to Mathew and Abigail. Thank you!
I also dedicate Brokken Knight to one of my beloved collies—“Dixie”(American Kennel Club Champion Wych’s Where Honor Lies). Pro aris et focis.
April 1867
Chapter One
Mathew Knight folded a tersely worded telegram and slipped it into an envelope containing a small advertisement torn from The Hawkinsville Daily Ledger and two, single-paged letters—the only other communication he’d had with one Abigail Bailey. Hampered as he was by his useless left arm, returning the envelop to the inside pocket of his threadbare frock coat proved to be the greater task.
“Where you headed?” Boredom dripped from each syllable of the ticket agent’s question.
He should just walk away. What kind of man accepted a train ticket from a woman he’d never met to travel to some backwater town in Texas as a mail order groom? No man in his right mind. But, then he wasn’t sure he’d been in his right mind since a place called Camp Douglas in Illinois had made him question his very humanity.
“Mister, you want a ticket to somewhere or not? You hear me, mister?”
He heard the ticket agent. He made sure his right ear was turned to the man so he could hear him. Maybe a backwater town in Texas was the better place. Maybe there, he could forget who he was and, if the Almighty was generous, everything he failed to do. Mathew drew a deep breath, took a step closer to the ticketing window, and said, “I’m Mathew Knight. I was sent a telegram informing me there is a ticket here in my name for travel to Brokken, Texas.”
The agent puzzled and then glanced at the filing cabinet on the other side of the small room. He turned around, walked to the cabinet, and picked up a rectangle of paper. After a cursory glance at the page, he returned to the window. The ticket was shoved across the counter to Mathew. “Train’s running on time. It’ll arrive at the station at half past the hour. It’ll pull out at a quarter till.”
Mathew glanced over his shoulder at the large clock on the wall. It wasn’t the first time he’d been hungry. He’d survive.
His gaze shifted down to the small boy clutching the hem of his frock coat in quiet desperation. Dark brown eyes peered at him, set in a face too pale and much too thin. The tick tock of the wall clock marked his conscience.
He wouldn’t ask a four-year-old to go hungry. Not after promising the child he would never be hungry again.
“Is there someplace close I can get a meal to take on the train for him?” He tilted his head down to the boy.
The agent leaned over the counter, peering at the boy. “You’ve only got one ticket. The boy can’t ride with you.”
“He can sit on my lap.”
“Can’t do that. He’s got to have a ticket.” The agent plopped down in the chair behind the window, as if that settled the matter.
The clock counted the seconds, each tick-tock louder than the last, until they sounded as loud as gunfire.
“I’m not leaving my son.” The sense of desperation he’d felt for the last four years grew, tightened around his chest and constricted his throat. “How much is a ticket for him?”
“Same price as yours.”
Mathew glanced down at the thick card in his hand. His throat seized, choking him. It was nearly every penny he had. If they didn’t eat for three days... A distant whistle drowned out the steady rhythm of the clock. “Give me a ticket for the boy.”
“It isn’t in that Rebel script, is it? Can’t take that.” The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a hand-printed sign proclaiming only federally backed certificates or gold would be accepted. He then adjusted his glasses and scribbled on a piece of a paper in time with the sudden tapping of the telegraph.
Mathew shook his head. Confederate money was as worthless as his left arm, though he did have a five-dollar note tucked into the depths of his tattered and almost empty haversack. Why he continued to keep it, he didn’t know. It wasn’t as if it would ever be worth anything again. He pushed what Union backed money he had across the counter.
The agent held the “horse-blanket” up to the light streaming in the window and subjected the bill to intense scrutiny. Seemingly satisfied the money wasn’t counterfeit, he slid a ticket and a few coins change along the counter to Mathew.
“Half a block down, there’s a widow woman who sells fruit and bread. This time of year, there’s not much fruit, but she always has sweet-breads and jams. She’s also got a real soft spot for the little ones.” The ticketing agent gestured out the door, toward the street. He stood and added, “Her strawberry jam is the best. Almost as good as my mother’s. I can hold the train for an additional five minutes so you can get him something, if you hurry.”
Mathew hefted the child onto his hip and walked as quickly as he could down the street.
The widow woman was right where the agent said she would be. Tight curls in varying shades of grey escaped the brightly colored scarf tied securely around her head. Her calico dress, though often patched, was clean. Her dark face split with a wide smile and her darker eyes crinkled when Mathew stopped at the table covered with her wares.
“He’s a righ’ han’some little one, massah.”
“I’m no one’s master. Never was.” Mathew gestured at a loaf of what appeared to be fres
hly baked bread. “How much for a loaf and some of your strawberry jam?”
She named her price. Mathew looked at the few coins in his palm then dropped them into the depths of his pocket. He turned away with a mumbled, “Thank you.”
The train rumbled into the station, smokestack belching black smoke. He was much too aware of the small child’s longing gaze at the near veritable feast the woman was selling.
“Hungry,” the little boy whispered in Mathew’s right ear.
“I know, Ethan. I’ll figure something out.”
“Mistah, wait.”
Mathew looked over his shoulder. The widow held out a loaf of bread and a small jar of preserves. Ethan held his hands out for the bread, straining to reach the loaf. Mathew shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t have enough money.”
An undefined sadness softened her smile. “I seen too many young ‘uns go hungry. I’s never gonna let it happen to any more if I can feed ‘em. I ain’t gonna miss it, and he shore will.”
He swallowed what little was left of his pride when she put the bread in Ethan’s outstretched hands. Mathew took the small jar from her and dropped it into his haversack, then pried the loaf from Ethan’s hands and secured it in the currently less than empty sack. “I appreciate this. Thank you.”
Her smile softened further. “You git on out of here now, before I try to give you another loaf and some o’ my rhubarb jam.”
For the first time in a long time, Mathew felt a smile cross his face. “Yes, ma’am.”
He was almost to the station when four large men, all of them as dark as the widow woman, stepped out of a narrow, heavily shaded side street, blocking his route. Mud spattered their blue uniforms and caked their brogans. The stench of alcohol clung to them as thick as pine tar. They stood shoulder to shoulder on the boardwalk. Several people turned around or stepped into the street, forced to navigate the clinging, heavy, sticky Georgia clay to avoid the uniformed men.
Mathew’s stomach clenched into icy knots, but he kept walking. The ticketing agent could only hold the train for so long, and the boardwalk was the fastest route back to the station.
Ethan buried his face against his chest. A shiver raced over the child and his shallow, rapid breaths hissed against Mathew’s frock coat.
Mathew halted when he could advance no farther. He was much too aware of the averted gazes from those walking past in the street. “Let me pass.”
The only one of them who wore any rank, two chevrons on his upper sleeves, elbowed one of his compatriots. “Still thinking they’s runnin’ things.”
The laughter accompanying that comment held an ugly note. Ethan’s arms tightened around his neck, and he doubted the child could press his face any more tightly against his chest. The child’s shivering became deep, convulsive shuddering.
“Let me pass, Corporal.” Mathew lowered his sight to a button on the man’s shell jacket to hide his sudden, seething rage for those responsible for Ethan’s terror. “Please.”
Before any of the men could jeer at him further, Mathew was nudged to a side by a whirlwind in faded, patched calico. The widow shoved the man who spoke first, her palms flat against his broad chest. “You ain’t right. Dress you up, let you think you’re somethin’ important, and all you do is prove to these people you ain’t got the brains the good Lord gave a goose.”
“Now, Momma, we was—”
“Don’ you ‘Now, Momma’ me, Thomas White, actin’ the fool an’ all. Y’all get outa this man’s way.” She glanced over her shoulder at Mathew and reached into a pocket on her dress and extended a handful of coins to him. “You forgot to git your change.”
Mathew looked from the four men, to the small woman holding them at bay, to the money she held out to him. Even though every hair stood on the back of his neck, he managed to shake his head and say, “No, ma’am, I didn’t forget it. It’s—”
“I ain’t takin’ your charity.” She cut him off, her expression tightening as she slanted her gaze to the four men and then to Mathew. “Take your change and git.”
He quickly weighed his options. He could take the money, accepting her charity or he could refuse and tell her she was mistaken, he wasn’t owed any change. Either way was fraught with pitfalls. If he took the change, he guaranteed Ethan would have a full belly for the next several days. But, that meant, he would choke on his own pride. And, she called her son a fool? He was the bigger fool, by far, for refusing.
Mathew scooped the change from her palm and deposited it in his pocket with the nine cents he had left after purchasing Ethan’s ticket. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Without even acknowledging him, she waved both her hands at the four men, as if she was shooing flies from a buttermilk pie. “Git outa the man’s way. A field hand got better manners than the lot of you.”
They parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Mathew gulped in a deep breath and walked through them, while holding Ethan tightly to his chest. Ethan’s fearful trembling matched the frantic pace of his own heart.
The widow continued to rail at the four men until he could no longer hear her when he entered the train station. He hefted Ethan higher onto his hip and jogged out to the train.
He settled Ethan on a bench mid-car, next to the window on the side opposite from the station and then sat alongside the child. Ethan scooted to the edge of the seat, and looked up at him, his dark eyes wide. “I bad?”
“No, Ethan, you’re not.” How had the child reached the conclusion he had misbehaved?
“Lady yell.” The boy ducked his head, hunching into himself, as if he expected a sharp rebuke, or worse, a physical correction.
Ethan’s lack of language skills only compounded Mathew’s guilt for failing his wife and son. “She wasn’t yelling at you. She was yelling at the men who blocked the boardwalk.”
A loud hiss of steam, accompanied by the mournful wail of the train’s whistle, signaled the train’s imminent departure. Another long release of steam engaged the pistons. Mathew threw his right arm across Ethan’s chest to prevent him from falling forward with the massive locomotive’s forward lurch.
Ethan’s reaction was instant. He flung his thin arms over his head and cowered. “I sorry.”
As before, this reaction was just as unsettling as it had been the first time Mathew witnessed the child’s response to any rapid gestures. Mathew turned on the seat to fully face his son. He gently pried the boy’s arms off his head and tilted his face to him. “I promised you that no one would ever hit you again, didn’t I?”
The boy nodded, though the distrust haunting his eyes burned through Mathew’s chest hotter than the fires that had destroyed Atlanta. Only time and keeping his word would rebuild Ethan’s trust.
Chapter Two
Mathew tucked his worn frock coat tightly around his son. It might be mid-spring and it might be the deep south, but the night air filling the passenger car was chilly and damp. Lightning flickered on the far distant horizon, promising rain before dawn. Gusting cross winds moaned over the roof of the car and set the lowered flames of the gas lamps flickering. Mathew turned his attention to his fellow passengers, most of whom were sleeping.
The bench directly across the aisle from him was occupied by what he assumed to be a pair of spinsters, as neither wore a wedding band, and they shared the same last name. Sisters, they told him. The war had driven home the point that life was much too short, and they wanted to see the places their sea-faring captain father had always spoken of. He nodded politely when they told him they were off on a grand adventure to California, and he wondered if either of them knew what travel across the desert by stage could possibly entail.
A young couple with their two children occupied the front bench. They kept as much as possible to themselves and had their tickets at the ready with every stop. The smaller of their two babes was hardly more than a few weeks old. The other could walk but was unsteady on her small feet. Her father continually deflected any attempt from the child to toddle nearer to any of
the other passengers. Even when Mathew assured the little girl’s father it was all right for her to walk the aisle, the man had cut a frightened glance to the other passengers, dropped his gaze, and mumbled a response Mathew couldn’t hear.
Watching her wobbling steps was bitter-sweet for Mathew. He had missed all of Ethan’s first attempts at walking and running. With darkness, the couple’s child had fallen asleep about the same time as Ethan. Mathew mused all children, no matter the color of their skin, were much alike in that aspect. Put enough food in their bellies, keep them warm, and as soon as the light faded, they drifted into slumber. Thanks to the widow’s bread and strawberry jam, Ethan finally had a full belly.
The last occupant of the railroad car was the enigma for Mathew. The former cavalry officer had done nothing that Mathew could note to merit the young couple giving him such a frightened deference other than he wore a Confederate officer’s great coat. He supposed that was enough. As little as two years ago, and even if they had all the proper paperwork, there would have been nothing stopping anyone from forcing the couple off the train and into chains as runaways. The officer had boarded the train at the first stop outside of Atlanta, sat alone in the very last row, and shunned all attempts to engage him in conversation. While most of the men Mathew knew who still wore part of their Confederate uniforms did so out of sheer necessity, this one wore his great coat as if served two purposes—as a suit of armor and a badge of honor. On either side of the man’s upright collar, a single gold star occasionally caught the flaring of the lamps.
Realizing he stared as he tried to unravel the mystery of the stranger, Mathew turned his attention to his son again. The weight of the boy’s head on his thigh reminded him of his responsibilities. He traced the child’s profile in the dimmed light. Ethan had inherited his brow, nose, and chin. The soft curls, ash-brown hair color, and brown eyes were from the boy’s mother. Since he had found Ethan in an orphanage, protecting and caring for him had become his only concern.