Brokken Yesterdays
Page 1
Brokken Yesterdays
Brokken Road Romances
Book Eight
Lynda Cox
Table of Contents
Title Page
Brokken Yesterdays (Brokken Road Romance, #8)
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Brokken Yesterdays © 2019 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 Yesterdays 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.
All covers designed by Carpe Librum Book Design, owned by cover designer, Evelyne Labelle.
Visit our Brokken Western Historical Readers Group on Facebook and Facebook page Brokken Road Western Historical Romances.
Dedicated to Nora. You have a unique and special voice. Keep writing. Never let anyone silence your voice.
Also to Kaiulani for all of your help. Thank you!
And, to another of my beloved collies, Georgia, AKC Champion Wych’s Spirit of Defiance. Deo Vindice!
Chapter One
Brokken, Texas
April 1868
Victoria English, sheriff of the town of Brokken, glanced from side to side as she made her last rounds of the night through the slumbering town. She preferred to walk in the middle of the street as too often the dull, hollow thud of her boots on the boardwalk intruded into the peaceful silence. The weight of the revolver she wore on her hip felt as comfortable and as much a part of her as her own skin. Her gaze skipped along the repainted façades, reconstructed buildings, and the fully-stocked store front windows.
Just a year ago, Brokken was in its death-throes. She let a half-smile twitch the corner of her mouth as she looked from business to business. Brokken had survived the loss of more than half their men, a tornado that had miraculously missed the town, an attack from an outlaw gang who believed the Brokken brothers had hidden stolen Confederate gold in town. As if the Confederacy ever had vast amounts of gold...
The Knight home drew her attention. Low-pitched light spilled out the windows she knew to be in the front parlor. Dr. Knight was out, and Abigail wouldn’t leave the parlor or extinguish the light until Mathew returned home.
She wondered which of the expectant mothers he attended to that night. Twenty-three men in total had answered their desperate plea to save Brokken and became mail-order grooms. Twenty marriages, fourteen expectant mothers, and three newborns revitalized their town. Her smile grew.
Victoria hesitated to step onto the porch. If Abigail wasn’t awake, knocking on the door would not only wake her, but also ran the real risk of waking five-year-old Ethan. She’d ask Abigail in the morning who was the new citizen of the town.
A large shadow separated itself from those near the blacksmith shop. Victoria peered through the darkness, recognizing the doctor’s buggy. The vehicle moved slowly, as if to avoid any of the rutting in the road. Curiosity piqued, Victoria waited. Unless there was a real problem, Mathew didn’t bring patients back to the house.
The conveyance halted at the hitching rail. Victoria moved closer. The slumped figure in the seat next to Knight didn’t appear alive. As the doctor scrambled from the buggy, the front door of the house opened, spilling light across the porch and onto the motionless form.
The breath froze in her lungs. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. Her head spun. Large spots danced in her vision. Her lungs refused to take another breath. As if they had suddenly taken root, her feet froze to the ground, though her knees buckled.
“Victoria, help me get this man into the house.”
Knight’s order broke her immobility. Faster than she had ever drawn before, Victoria pulled the revolver, cocking it even as she drew it up. “Get back in the buggy, Doc, and take him to the jail.”
“This man needs immediate medical treatment.” Knight didn’t even slow down in his haste to reach the unmoving passenger crumbled in the seat.
“Victoria!” Abigail’s voice carried from the porch. “What are you doing?”
Victoria spared a second to throw a glance over her shoulder at her friend. Silhouetted in the lamp light, Abigail’s extended stomach further increased Victoria’s resolve. “I mean it, Doc. You aren’t taking him anywhere except for the jail.”
Metal chattered against metal when Knight lifted the motionless figure and hoisted him over his shoulder with as much effort as if the figure weighed less than a sack of horse feed. When the doctor turned, a length of chain dangled down his back from the man’s wrists. Knight advanced a step, hesitating when Victoria added, “I’ll shoot.”
“Then shoot.” Knight halted, and his gaze dropped to the gun in her hand. “Or get out of my way.”
To her mortification, the muzzle wavered. She spread her feet to steady her stance, firmed her grip, and tightened her finger on the trigger. Abigail stepped between her revolver and the doctor.
“Vic, it’s not him.”
Abigail’s voice, softened with pleading, reached past Victoria’s pain and fear. Victoria allowed her to push the revolver down, her resolve cracking. The doctor advanced another step and the man over his shoulder groaned softly.
Victoria snapped the revolver up again, pushing Abigail to a side at the same time. Any cracks in her determination vanished, replaced with an implacable doggedness. “Put him back in the buggy and take him to the jail. If you don’t, I will arrest you and I will shoot him.”
She watched Knight’s sight slip from her revolver to Abigail and back again. Without taking her gaze from the almost skeletal form draped over Knight’s shoulder, Victoria repeated, “Take him to the jail. You can treat him there.”
“Mathew, do as she says, please.”
Knight nodded at his wife’s words, and then returned his charge to the buggy. Abigail’s gasp hissed in the night when the light spilling out of the house fell across the man’s features. That gasp reinforced Victoria’s belief of who she believed the doctor’s patient to be. Even with his cheeks hollowed, his skin discolored with bru
ising, dirt and heaven only knew what else, and half his features obscured by thick, matted facial hair, the ice-cold dread in her heart told her all she needed to know.
“I don’t know who you think this man is—”
Victoria nudged her head over her shoulder at Abigail, cutting the doctor off. “She knows who he is.”
“—he’s not in any condition to be a danger to anyone.” Knight climbed into the buggy. “I’ll wait for you at the jail.”
Victoria grabbed a metal rail supporting the leather hood and stepped onto the running board next to the doctor. Ignoring Abigail’s startled protest of her name, Victoria gestured with her revolver toward the small, squat building housing the jail. “Now you don’t have to wait for me.”
She should have dropped to the ground in a motionless heap from the glare Knight shot at her. He lifted the reins and lightly shook them over the horse’s back. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said to his wife.
VICTORIA LIFTED HER cup of coffee with both hands, the brew long gone cold, and looked out a jail window at the gray dawn. She gripped the metal as if she held on for dear life. Every fiber of her being quivered while nausea borne of an old terror left her light-headed. The cup between her hands bent, and the cold coffee dripped to the floor through a break in the weld.
Five years. For five years, no one had heard anything of him or from him. Five years.
“I’m going to bring Peter over here to strike those chains.”
She startled with Knight’s comment. “No. I’ll use those to manacle him to the bars.”
“Victoria.”
Knight’s voice dropped, whether from anger or shock, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t care what lowered his voice. The ever-lightening, drizzling gray dawn drew her attention and she startled again when the doctor took the leaking cup. He set the ruined mug on the window sill. He caught her shoulders and turned her to the cell. “Look at him, Victoria.”
The door was open. Panic drove any thought from her head other than to slam and lock that cell door. She reached for the door, an incomprehensible snarl ripping from her throat when Knight restrained her.
“I don’t know who you think he is—”
“He’s a killer.” She snapped her head around to glare at the doctor. “He killed m—he killed a baby.”
Knight’s firm grip on her shoulders didn’t alter, though some of the color drained from his face. “Then he needs to stand trial, but right now, he’s my patient. I am bound by my oath to do no harm. That means I have to get those chains off him and I can’t let you manacle him to the door.”
She stared at the motionless figure. Had he stopped breathing?
She wrenched free of Knight’s loose hold on her shoulders, angry with herself for the confusing sense of relief when her prisoner’s chest lifted fractionally. “I’ll go get Peter.” She shook her head to clarify her thoughts. “You stay with him. If he isn’t here when I get back, I’m holding you responsible.”
The doctor dipped his head in a terse acknowledgment. “He isn’t going anywhere in his condition.”
Victoria jammed her hat onto her head, clamping her mouth closed at the same time. She heaved the door open and marched out of the jail. In the middle of the road she paused, allowing some of the rigidity in her frame to ease, and looked over her shoulder. Moisture glistened on Knight’s buggy in the lightening gray, and the first sleepy twitter of a sparrow whispered across the square between the jail and the blacksmith’s shop. Lantern light from the two barred windows shimmered through the thick, swirling fog. She fully expecting to see that man silhouetted in the doorway.
A shiver rippled across her. With a deep breath and a squaring of her shoulders, Victoria looked away from the small jail and resumed her march to the blacksmith shop. She spent too much time learning how to be strong, how to be tough as nails, and she was the sheriff. No one was taking her badge from her; not without a fight. Not even her long-lost husband.
Chapter Two
Muffled voices penetrated the blackness, buoying him out of the depths and into a place where hell was very real.
“Is he alive?” A woman’s voice, unconcerned and full of ice, asked.
No. He had to be dead. No one could survive this kind of full-bodied agony, searing in every fiber of his being. The fires raging in every joint and muscle, clean into the bone, could only be from Lucifer. He didn’t even have the strength to open his eyes.
“Yes.” A man’s voice. Another voice he didn’t recognize.
A firm hand lifted his head and pressed something made of warm metal to his lips. A cup. He tried to turn his head from this new torment but somehow the contents poured into his mouth. A convulsive swallow and he choked, coughing, unable to strangle the cry as the liquid burned his raw throat.
“Small sips. It’s got a bitter after-taste.”
He braced himself for more of the same torture. This time, the warm fluid didn’t burn as much, and he swallowed it down. He still couldn’t force his eyes open. He could barely move. Why didn’t they just kill him?
“Relax, Jonathan. You’ve been through a lot. It’s going to take some time for everything to heal.” The male’s voice again, even as his head was lowered into what could have been a pillow.
He had enough of his wits about him to know he wasn’t tethered to the wall by the metal collar they’d put around his neck or manacled and chained to a twenty-pound metal ball. He wasn’t defensively curled up in a corner, either. He couldn’t dredge up enough strength to tell him most people called him “Jon”. The struggle to form even a single word left him shaking. “Where...?”
“You’re home. You’re in Brokken.”
He tried to shake his head and didn’t have the energy. The name was familiar, though he couldn’t remember why. After escaping Colbert’s jail, everything became hazy, disoriented, fragmented...vignettes of running under the cover of darkness, stumbling through shallow creek after shallow creek, pain a constant companion. “Who...who are you?”
The hand gripping his shoulder didn’t inflict any pain. If anything, there was an attempt at comfort and encouragement in the gesture. Confusion left him reeling.
“I’m a doctor. Name’s Mathew Knight. Just rest now. You’re going to be all right.”
Whatever the doctor forced him to drink pulled him back into oblivion. He had no idea how much time had passed before he regained his senses again. The vague recollection of being urged more than once to swallow down some sort of thick broth flitted through him. He managed to pry his eyes open and without moving surveyed his immediate area. Deep shadows hid the nearest corner, while darker, more-defined vertical stripes marked what appeared to be a cement block wall. A cautious turn of his head revealed the door to the cell closed. A lamp hanging from a beam of the low ceiling and out of arm’s reach created the deep shadows.
Keeping any movement to a minimum, he turned his attention to his own condition. The semi-sweet aroma of some salve rose from the bandaging wrapped around his throat, ankles, the wrist of his right arm, and from his left palm to just below his shoulder. The recalled sensation of the dog’s teeth sinking deep into his hand and arm, coupled with the snarling of the cur as it hung onto him and thrashed from side to side, washed over him with chilling intensity. He barely repressed a shudder. If he hadn’t thrown his arm up to protect himself, he would have had his throat ripped out.
The pristine white bandaging reassured him he hadn’t been hallucinating. A doctor had been there and had tended to him. However, he was still chained. A single manacle encircled his left wrist and a length of sturdy, newer chain tethered him. Without moving, he trailed his gaze as far as he could along the length of the chain. If he had to hazard a guess, the other end was secured to the bars of the cell.
Even the filthy rags he’d been wearing were gone. Someone had clothed him in a long nightshirt and a soft, cotton sheet covered him from the waist down. For the first time in longer than he cared to recount, he felt clean. The aroma
of the salve almost muted the harsh scent of strong lye soap. It stood to reason if his ragged, filthy clothing had been removed from him, someone also took the time to bathe his form. It would explain why the continual sensation of vermin crawling through his hair and on his skin wasn’t present any longer.
Somewhere behind him, he heard a door creak, then footsteps on what sounded to be a stone floor. A feminine voice he didn’t recognize asked, “Is he still asleep?”
“Yep.” That voice he recognized from the other night. Why in the name of heaven was a woman sitting guard in a jail?
A different creaking slid through the small building. Did someone sit down or stand up? He settled on someone standing when a second set of footsteps echoed across the stone floor.
“Victoria, you look terrible. When was the last time you slept in your own bed and got a full night’s sleep?”
Victoria...he should know that name. He didn’t know why, but he should know it. He wracked his brain, forcing the memories to return. Victoria...the woman who wrote the letter he carried with him ever since Tullahoma.
“I can’t leave a prisoner unguarded.” The voice he could recognize now as belonging to Victoria had a razor-sharp edge to it. “What are you doing here at this time of the night?”
“Ethan has an upset tummy—”
“He all right?”
The immediate anxiety in Victoria’s voice wrenched something deep in him. He shoved his confusing reaction away. Why did he care she was worried about some kid’s upset tummy? It wasn’t his concern. As soon as he could, he had to escape this jail and move on. The longer he was here, the greater the chances Colbert or one of his hired thugs would find him.
“—fine, but you know how Mathew is. He asked me to come and check on his patient.”
Mathew. The doctor. So, the doc’s kid wasn’t well. The second voice had to belong to the doctor’s wife.
A whisper of fabric announced the other woman’s approach. He noted neither a key turning the tumblers in a door or the sound of metal on metal as would be heard if the door was swung open.