Gold Rush Bride

by Debra Lee Brown

  “Hmm?” Kate looked up from her work, an absent, faraway look in her eyes. Her hair had come undone again from her jaunt in the rain, and a few damp tendrils clung to her freckled face.

  For a moment he could almost imagine she was really his wife. The kind of wife he’d thought he married the first time. The kind who loved her husband.

  “Nothing,” he said, and slapped the newly skinned hare onto the cutting board before her.

  She snatched the buck knife out of his hand and proceeded to cut the meat into incredibly small pieces.

  “Quarter it,” he said. “Or cook it whole.”

  “Whole? You’re daft.”

  He noticed she’d set a pot of water on the stove to boil. The frying pan was still hanging on the wall, and the flour she’d borrowed sealed tightly away in a tin.

  “This rabbit will feed us for half a week at least. Longer if we stretch it with turnips.”

  “Half a week? Half an hour you mean. I could eat the whole thing myself in one sitting.”

  She shot him a pithy glance. “Aye, I expect you could.” She tossed a spare handful of meat into the pot along with the turnips. “Over my dead body.”

  He fought a smile that came out of nowhere. Watching her bustling about between the stove and the table, he thought of his short life with Sherrilyn.

  Her short life, he reminded himself. His smile faded.

  Sherrilyn had hated the frontier, had hated him for dragging her West. They’d had plenty of money at first, but she’d gone through it the first month. He recalled their lavish hotel meals, the food she’d ordered but hadn’t touched because she said it was badly prepared or of poor quality.

  Kate looked hard at the turnip peels that, in Sherrilyn’s world, would have gone into the trash. She bit her lip, considering, then tossed them into the pot along with the rest of what was to be their meal.

  A meal that Will would never forget.

  “You’re not eating,” she said a few minutes after she’d ladled a helping of the boiled meat and turnips into his bowl.

  He pushed the muck around with a spoon. The hare was tough as shoe leather and the turnips mush. He hadn’t seen her use even a pinch of salt, let alone any of the fragrant herbs Mei Li had given her.

  He watched as she sipped the weak broth and picked gingerly at a few bits of meat. “So, this is the kind of thing you eat back home in Ireland.”

  “Lord, no. We rarely had meat as fine as this. When we did, it was usually a bit of lamb that Michael bought with extra wages.” She shot him a half smile. “Or that Sean had pinched.”

  “Michael and Sean. Your brothers?”

  “Aye. Along with the twins, Patrick and Francis.” Her eyes sparkled in the soft lamplight. “But we call him Frank.”

  “You miss them.”

  A softness he’d not seen before washed over her features. She looked uncharacteristically fragile to him all of a sudden. “I do,” she said.

  Will listened as she related a story about how the five of them had once surprised their father on Christmas with a leg of lamb they’d bought with their savings.

  “A whole leg! From the butcher in Entwistle Street. Can you imagine?” She put down her spoon and waited for his reaction.

  At first he didn’t answer. He was recalling another Christmas, years ago in Philadelphia when he was a boy, shortly after his own father had made his fortune.

  The Clearys had lived under them in a basement flat for as long as Will could remember. Dennis Cleary had been just his age. They were best friends until Will’s father bought a house in a posh section uptown.

  After that, Will wasn’t allowed to see Dennis anymore. Dennis wasn’t the right sort of boy, his father had said. The Clearys weren’t the right sort of people for them anymore.

  Meaning they had no money.

  Looking at Kate, he realized he’d been wrong about her intentions. She was nothing like Sherrilyn. How could she be?

  “No, I can’t imagine,” he said at last.

  Pushing the onslaught of memories from his mind, he grabbed their bowls before Kate could take another bite of the awful stew. “But I can imagine a better supper than this dreck.”

  “Dreck?” She followed him outside and let loose a tirade of cuss words he didn’t even realize she knew as he poured the contents of their bowls into a rusted tin pail Dennington had used to feed stray dogs.

  “Vickery’s hound’ll love it, if he can get to it before the coons do.”

  “Vickery’s—” Kate reached for the pail, and he caught her hand.

  “There’s plenty of food, Kate.” He looked at her in the moonlight and read a desperate sort of panic in her eyes that he’d seen there once before, on the first day he met her.

  Her hand was rough, chapped from water and hard work, and seemed so very small in his. “Trust me,” he said. “The woods are full of game. I’ll hunt tomorrow. Besides, the wagon will be here soon with more grain than we could eat in a year.”

  She looked into his eyes, and he knew she struggled to believe him. Until tonight he hadn’t realized how far off the mark his first impressions of her had been. He squeezed her hand and willed her to hold his gaze. “There’s plenty of food, Kate.”

  Slowly she drew her hand away, and he could tell from the way she absently smoothed her hair and straightened her dress that she was embarrassed. “All right then.”

  He held the door open for her and followed her back inside.

  She shot a backward glance at the pail. “But Vickery’s dog best get here quick. That stew wouldn’t last a minute on a stoop in Clancy Street.”

  “Speaking of Clancy Street, didn’t your mother ever teach you to cook?”

  “Of course she did.”

  “Could have fooled me.” He grabbed the frying pan off the wall, a tin of flour and the last of the butter she’d been hoarding all week. “Bring me the rest of that meat.”

  “Oh, so you’re going to cook now, are you?”

  “Aye,” he said, mimicking her Irish brogue. “I’m going to cook.”

  She stood by him at the stove, arms crossed, a skeptic’s smirk and an arched brow conveying her disbelief. “Well, this I’ve got to see.”

  “Pull up a chair, Kate, and prepare to be amazed.”

  She was amazed. And stuffed as a Christmas goose.

  Kate cleared the last of the dishes from the table and carried them out to the back porch where Will was finishing the washing up.

  The rain had dulled to a light drizzle, and pockets of starry sky peeked at her through the fast-moving clouds. The porch was awash in moonlight, the air cool and thick with the scent of wet pine. All her senses came alive, and for the first time in months she felt relaxed.

  She told herself it was this wild and beautiful place that stirred her blood, that her feelings had nothing to do with the man standing beside her washing dishes.

  “Truly, Mr. Crockett,” she said to him. “I’ve never tasted anything so good. Well, except for Michael’s leg of lamb.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Michael?”

  “All of them. But Michael first.” She handed him the frying pan, and he swished it around in the pail of dishwater. “He was the one your father sent for. Why didn’t he come?”

  She wondered when he’d get around to asking her that. No one had asked, up until now. Not even Mr. Vickery. “Michael couldn’t come. I wouldn’t let him.”

  “You wouldn’t let him.” Soft lamplight streamed through the cracked door onto the porch, illuminating Will’s amused expression.

  “That’s right. And with good reasons.”

  “Such as…”

  “A new job, a new wife and a babe on the way.” Already born, she realized. Oh, how she’d love to see the wee thing. “Surely you don’t propose he should have left them?”

  “No.”

  “He’d wanted to bring them, but—”

  “No, you’re right.” His voice had an edge to it Kate had never heard be
fore. “You made the right decision.”

  Had she?

  Will handed her the frying pan, and she dried it, wondering how her brothers were faring without her. They had Michael’s wife, Hetty, to care for them now. But the girl was young and a bit fragile in Kate’s estimation, and had her own wee babe to look out for.

  “You’re sorry now, aren’t you?”

  “Hmm?”

  “That you came. That you…” She looked up and caught a hint of remorse in Will’s dark eyes. “That you married me.”

  Listening to the sound of the rain on the tin roof of the porch, her mind raced over the events of the past week. Had she to do it all over again, decide a course of action, she honestly didn’t know what she’d do.

  “No, Mr. Crockett, I’m not sorry.”

  He stared at her, silent, and for all the world she wondered what he was thinking.

  “Are you?”

  He shifted on his feet, and she could tell by the sudden stiffness in his demeanor that he was uncomfortable with the question. She felt embarrassed and wished she hadn’t asked it. It was clear to her what his answer would be.

  He tossed the dirty dishwater off the porch and nodded toward the dark stand of trees spread out behind the cabin. “It’s a hard life here. No place for a woman.”

  She nodded, recognizing this was his way of sparing her feelings. He was sorry he’d married her, but he was too much of a gentleman to say it. His response was a polite confirmation of his distaste for the whole situation.

  Regardless, her pride got the better of her. “Not nearly as hard as at home,” she said.

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it. What do you think I do all day in Dublin, Mr. Crockett? Sit on my behind and sip tea and eat bonbons from a fancy tin?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Some women do.”

  “Perhaps the women you know.”

  His face twisted into a scowl, and she feared she’d struck a nerve with her retort. Mr. Vickery had told her Crockett’s wife had been well-to-do.

  Obviously Will Crockett knew nothing of her life back home. She wondered what her father had told him of her. There was no imagining. When Liam Dennington had a few pints under his belt, he was prone to notorious storytelling, much of it made up.

  Still, Crockett’s attitude irked her. “Besides,” she said, “there are plenty of women here, and children, too.” None here in town, perhaps, but she’d seen several on the long wagon ride into the foothills.

  “Miwok and Chinese, you mean.”

  “Aye, mostly.”

  “It’s different for them.”

  “Is it now?” She’d never heard anything so daft. “Why? Mei Li works all day. I work all day. And at night she takes care of her family.” Kate was separated from her family, but she would take care of them if they were here. “She cleans and cooks. And I clean and—”

  They both heard the distinctive wheezing of John Vickery’s fat corgi as it barreled around the corner of the cabin and made straight for the pail of Kate’s rabbit and turnip stew.

  “Cook?” He arched a brow at her.

  She slapped the wet dish towel she’d been absently wringing across the porch railing to dry. “It’s a sin to waste food like that.” She watched, disgusted, as the corgi inhaled the stew. “There might have been hungry children at the Chinese camp would have liked it. Did you think of that?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Aye, that’s the God’s truth.” The man was impossible! She jerked the cabin door wide and started inside.

  “Wait a minute.”

  “Do you know what it’s like to watch a child starve to death, Mr. Crockett?” She crossed herself, remembering a grindingly poor family who’d lived across the street from them in Liffey Quay. “Or die in the cold winter from lack of a decent roof over his head?”

  He grabbed her arm and she spun toward him, sick of his manhandling, her free hand already balled in a fist. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the stinging fusion of pain and rage shining in those coal-black eyes of his.

  “Yes, I do know. I know exactly what it’s like.” His grip tightened around the soft flesh of her arm, and for a moment she feared he was really going to hurt her.

  Their eyes locked, his darting briefly to her readied fist, as if daring her to strike him. With a shock she realized he wanted her to do it. Lord, he did. But the anguish she read in his face unnerved her and made her wonder if his motive was something beyond having an easy excuse to rough her up.

  “Then,” she said quietly, “you know why I was upset about the stew.”

  His grip loosened, but she made no move to extract herself from his control. “I—I’m sorry,” he said. He released her, and she spent an awkward moment tidying her hair and smoothing her skirt as he locked the back door. When he turned toward her, he was in control again, eyes hard, jaw tight.

  She didn’t know how or why they’d come to angry words, but she suspected it was her own doing. “It’s my fault. I provoked you. I’ve always had a fierce temper. It’s best you know about it now.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll be out of here in a couple of weeks.”

  “Aye, I suppose we shall.” She should thank God she had a way out, a way home. Home was where she belonged. Not here in the wilderness, wed to a man she hardly knew. “Good,” she said.

  “My sentiments exactly.” He grabbed his dry clothes off the chair back by the stove and one of the blankets from the pile on her bed. “If you need me…” He paused in the shadowed doorway leading into the dark store.

  She nodded, understanding that again he was just being polite. She made ready to extinguish the lamp, then remembered something. “Mr. Crockett,” she said on impulse.

  He turned, his face half in darkness, half in light. It suited him, she thought. He was, after all, a man surrounded by no small amount of mystery.

  “Who was the child? The one who died.”

  He stood there, silent, watching her, his expression stone. Her heart pulsed steady in her chest, the rain on the roof echoing its beat. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. Mr. Vickery’s corgi, no doubt, his vigor renewed from a belly full of stew.

  Resigned to Crockett’s silence, and intrigued by the past he seemed so intent on guarding, she extinguished the lamp and moved blindly toward the bed.

  To her surprise, he continued to stand there in the doorway, soft moonlight lending a ghostly cast to his hardened features.

  “Dennis Cleary,” he whispered in the dark. “My best friend. He was the child.”

  Chapter Seven

  Time away from her should have done him good.

  It didn’t.

  He’d only worried about her, alone in the store all day. Will maneuvered his horse down the steep, manzanita-and-pine-choked ridge above Tinderbox, snaking his way back to the cabin. He’d left before dawn that morning, anxious to get an early start on replacing the game Kate had begged from Mei Li two days earlier.

  Foul weather had kept him from venturing out sooner, but today he’d woken to clear skies and a thin crust of frost on the ground. It reminded him that winter wasn’t far off, and the last ship of the year would leave San Francisco for Sitka in three weeks’ time.

  Two good-size pheasants swung from his saddle horn. A borrowed shotgun, a steady hand and a bit of luck had insured they’d have something decent to eat for the next couple of days. He’d have taken a deer or a pig if he’d seen any, but he hadn’t. Maybe next time.

  Will reached into his pocket to retrieve the painted miniature of Kate, and studied it for the third time that day. Even away from her, she was still in his mind.

  And under his skin.

  A fragile sort of peace had settled in the narrowing chasm between them. A chasm that, for a score of reasons, Will was determined to keep from closing all together.

  Their candid conversation of two nights ago hadn’t been repeated in the days since. All the same, he had an unsettling feeling that K
ate’s understanding of him had grown in that time.

  He’d gotten to know her better, too, despite his wish not to. She’d surprised him in any number of ways. But most surprising of all was her matter-of-fact acceptance of her fate, of the poverty she’d grown up in and was determined to return to, as soon as she made enough money for her fare.

  He didn’t understand her at all.

  The town was in sight. He made out Vickery’s cottage on the opposite hillside, smoke curling black from the chimney and twisting a lazy path across the reddening sky. Sunset came early this time of year. He urged Dennington’s gelding faster.

  Dan Dunnett’s raspy voice made his ears prick as he unsaddled the horse and tethered it to a pine behind the cabin. The supply wagon was finally here. About damned time. Will had just about resigned himself to the fact that Dunnett had broken his word. Good thing for Dan he hadn’t.

  He rounded the corner of the building and saw that the wagon was nearly empty. Kate flashed him an annoyed look as she toted a heavy sack of flour toward the store. He moved to help her, but Cheng beat him to it. The old man was surprisingly agile for his age.

  Will shrugged at her. “Looks like you’re doing fine without me. Wagon’s almost unloaded.” He raised the dressed pheasants, expecting her praise.

  She didn’t even acknowledge them. “We just started. Mr. Dunnett only arrived a moment ago.”

  “What?” He followed her inside, scanning the half-empty shelves of the store. Nothing new had been brought inside except the bag of flour Cheng deposited behind the counter. “Where’s the rest?”

  “There isn’t any more. What Dunnett brought is in the wagon.” She arched a fiery brow at him, as if it were his fault.

  He shot back out to the street. “Dunnett!”

  “Yo. Over here.”

  Will spotted him kneeling beside one of the wagon’s wheels. “Where’s the rest of the shipment? If you’ve sold it to Landerfelt, I swear to God, I’ll—” He jerked Dunnett to his feet.

  “Whoa! What the—”

  Ignoring Dunnett’s protest, Will hauled him to the middle of the street, prepared to give him the beating of his life.

  “That’s all there is, Will! I swear it!” Dunnett threw up his hands in defense. “I went to the fort, like always. But most everything I usually get was already sold.”