Silver Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #1)

by Rose, Amelia

  She made tea and slid it onto the table in front of me along with fresh cookies I couldn't look at. Her girls weren't home, and her son was in college. It was just the two of us, and she chattered inconsequentials as she made the tea, telling me about the hens that wouldn't lay and the lizard that kept sunning himself on her kitchen floor.

  "Now," she said when she joined me at the table with her own tea, and a tray with the cream and lemon and sugar, "tell me what's happened." Her warm blue eyes, so much like both Hutch's and Matthew's, met mine.

  How? How could I tell her? But it left me in a rush.

  "I've been confused since I came here, out of place, lost, I love it here, but it isn't Boston, I miss my home, I miss my sister, and I was determined, going to make a home here, and Hutch is the most handsome man, truly, I saw him in the train station and should have been afraid to speak to him if it weren't I had no choice. Marriage of convenience, I mean, it was all arranged and it's not that either of us didn't know that but he's confided in me, told me things he didn't necessarily have to even if a husband should tell a wife and let her share the burdens, I'm not a wife yet, he's not my husband, I thought it was respect and I thought I was starting to care, we'd talked about when to have the wedding, probably just the justice of the peace unless we have to wait for a circuit judge, and it was all going according to plan, I mean, more so, you know?"

  She couldn't have but she nodded.

  "I thought I was falling in love with him, that wasn't something I expected or anything I had to have, I thought how many marriages are and how many would work better if that came later and I thought it might but it might come later and then, well, that would be part of it."

  She was watching me, very quiet, maybe the way she'd watch a potentially dangerous animal, maybe only giving me space to start making sense in.

  I didn't know if could do that. "And then I met Matthew," I barreled on. And stopped. Because I'd seen in her face she'd just caught up to everything I had said.

  "Matthew," she said. "Of course, it's Matthew."

  I closed my mouth slowly. There was no judgment in her face. That almost made me feel worse. Surely, I deserved some.

  "I understand," she said and covered my hand where it lay on the table with hers.

  "No, you don't. You can't. I mean, I didn't want. I didn't mean to. It was – there was something there. I needed to know I could get past it. I needed to know what I'd be walking away from, and that I could walk away from it."

  She waited as if to see if I had finished. I hadn't, quite.

  "I'm falling in love with Hutch. I wanted to be certain there was nothing there with Matthew."

  "I understand,” she said with complete conviction. And this time, I believed her.

  Shadows gathered in the kitchen as we worked together, canning the peaches I'd brought. Annie didn't need them; her own trees were groaning under the weight of fat pink fruit but we needed to do something with the bounty and keeping our hands busy made it easier to talk.

  "I knew your mother," she said, looking contemplatively across the kitchen at nothing. One hand hovered over a peach, clutching a sharp knife. "She wasn't much older than me, though enough we didn't do much together. Aren't girls silly? We think a few years means you need a different set of friends."

  I quartered another peach and discarded the pit. "I thought she spent a lot of her time with her own brother and with Hutch." Saying his name provoked a shiver in my stomach.

  Her gaze sharpened onto me. "There was that, too. Whatever they tell you about her being another mother to them, she was another playmate." She curled off another piece of skin from the peach she held.

  Surprised, I nicked myself with the knife. "My mother?"

  She nodded, set the peach down without paying attention to it, both hands on the sticky, juice-covered counter. "A regular tomboy, always keeping up with the others." She glanced at me. I could feel the uncertain smile on my face. "I wish I could tell you stories, but she spent more time with them than with me." She shoved the bowl of cut peaches out of the way, began moving aside the skins, dumped the pie crusts onto the board, and began rolling them out. "Now, my brothers. Them, I know."

  I swallowed, stilled, wished I had more peaches to cut, and waited.

  "Matthew is closer to your age than Hutch. He's young, old enough to take a wife but hard to imagine him doing so. We both followed Hutch out here, me with John, who thought a grocers would be a good choice and it was until..." She stopped, didn't look at me, said, "Well. But we had many good years together, and I love this place. And not long after John was lost that Hutch's Ellie took ill. I couldn't leave then."

  I hadn't realized it had been so many years since she'd lost her husband, and she'd remained for her brother or, more likely, both of them.

  How can you be so kind to me? I wanted to shout. I've hurt both of those men you love. But in the next instant, as she removed the bottom crust from the oven and began filling it with slices of peaches, she told me.

  "Matthew's the youngest. Back home in Alturas, when all of us were growing up, he was the special one, the baby of the family and my parents spoiled him. We all thought when he came to work the mines with Hutch that he was growing up." She made a fist with one hand, lightly tapped the edge of it on the counter, and turned so she could meet my eyes. "He's not a bad boy. Man, I guess. He's 24. He's just wild. And not the wild that shoots off its guns on a Saturday night or gallops through town for the pure fun of covering everyone's clean hanging laundry with dust."

  She didn't say anything for a few minutes, and I quietly picked up a dish cloth and began sweeping the peels into a pile she could rake into the soil of her own garden. I hoped she'd go on. There had to be more. Something that would not absolve me but would quell the fear that spun inside me, help me find a way through the guilt.

  What she said surprised me more than anything else.

  "He met Ellie first. Did you know that? No, I can see you didn't, and I'm not sure there's any reason either of them would have told you. But maybe you should know. She was closer to his age than to Hutch's, not that I think that makes a difference. Hutch came out when he was 20 and Matthew followed along when he turned 17. There was so much silver coming out of the mines then, and when Matthew came, John and I followed not long after. Good years, and none of us really thought it would end."

  I looked around her house. It was small, comfortable, scrupulously clean, but it showed the signs that Hutch's did, evidence of pennies stretched and money scarce.

  "Did Matthew buy into the Silver Sky with Hutch?" I asked. Hutch had said he'd see Matthew at the mine. I wanted there to be some reason Hutch couldn't simply fire him and send him away there, too.

  She nodded, distracted as she placed the top crust on the pie, crimped the edges and cut vents. "First, they talked about a casino. Would have called it The Faro Queen. But Hutch wanted silver and he bought the mine, and Matthew, he saved up for a while. Didn't take him long. He's a hard worker when he wants something, just every so often he thinks he's found a way around something. Tries to go the easy way." She was staring off into space again. Abruptly, she turned and looked directly at me, then took my sticky hand in her floury one and led me to the table.

  "Matthew met Ellie first year here. She was a tiny little thing, with big brown eyes and long brown hair. She wasn't anything like either of them, she was quiet and you never knew what amused her unless you watched close. Then you might see a tiny smile on her lips. She watched life like it was a play, really. She never jumped in."

  I leaned forward, interrupting her thoughts because she was falling inward. "Did you like her?"

  "Ellie? Yes, very much so. She was kind and quiet and where I'd actually have expected Hutch to marry someone more like – " she hesitated, then said, "Well, your mother, someone with spirit, someone who could ride and climb and hike with him and maybe catch tadpoles better than him. He fell in love with her."

  She released my hands and slapped hers ont
o her apron with a There! Gesture, and started to rise.

  I put out a hand and stopped her and she sank back down to her chair as if she'd known that wouldn't satisfy me. "He fell in love with her. But Matthew did first?"

  Annie closed her eyes briefly, and took a breath. "Matthew did first. Which is not to say our Matthew doesn't fall in love indiscriminately, by which I mean no slight, but he's very free with his favors. And Ellie – Ellie loved them both. She loved me and John and our children. She loved her family and she loved being outside. And she loved children."

  She sighed and stood, and I let her this time, because I didn't think she was going to stop talking. She focused on me again.

  "Not much more to tell. She loved them both. She loved Hutch more. I think she fell in love with Matthew first, but he hadn't settled, was still seeing other girls and by the time he had fallen hard enough to seriously court her, she'd fallen in love with Hutch."

  She went back to the bench, now starting to peel potatoes, and it was time for me to return to, if not home, to Mr. Longren's house and start my own preparations. I stood and gathered the basket along with a few early apples she'd given me. Two questions now circled in my mind, one I could ask, the other I could not.

  "Did Hutch know?" I asked. She had her back to me and I saw her stiffen, then slump a little.

  "He found out. But by the time he found out, Matthew was himself again, seeing this girl this week, this girl the next, avoiding ever promising himself so he had no contracts to breach. After that, Ellie and Hutch were married and very much together. We all just ... went on."

  I crossed the kitchen to give her a quick hug, the basket with the new apples bumping between us. "Thank you," I said.

  Annie smiled. "They're just apples. The pies will be done soon. Will you stay and take one back?"

  It was quite a bit more than apples but I appreciated her discretion. "I can't wait. I have my own supper to see to."

  Out on the street again, this time not running but probably still disheveled, I walked through the early evening with the basket on one arm and my thoughts in a storm.

  I had asked Annie if Hutch knew and she had answered that he had, too late.

  I had not asked her if Matthew, then, had wanted nothing more from me than to be used as a weapon against his brother.

  Hutch didn't talk at dinner, except to thank me for preparing it. I tried to leave him be. I could wait it out. If he still meant to marry me, we would have to talk.

  Wouldn't we?

  I had nothing to look forward to, for now. A long summer's night waited after the kitchen was cleaned and the dishes washed, and the summer sun was not yet down. I had my books, the mystery novel that had so caught my attention before I headed West. I had embroidering I could do, and likely shirts of Hutch's I could patch. There was always laundry in every household and economizing meant not sending it out. I could weed the garden more, or walk through the town. I could write a letter to my sisters, or to my new family in California, who had sent me a letter greeting me and who likely knew nothing of what had occurred here in Nevada. I could find ways to entertain myself.

  What I wanted to do was to sit with Hutch as the sun went down as we had that first night, and talk about our lives. I wanted to find commonalities and differences, shared joys and those things that made us both shudder. I wanted to plan for the future and sew a wedding dress and I could do none of those things. Likely I had myself to blame but the question now lodged in my mind: Had Matthew sought my company only to hurt his brother?

  Hutch made an offer of assisting with the kitchen cleanup, which I refused. He'd worked a solid day in the mines, worked quite late following the events of the afternoon. When I had returned from Annie's, the few belongings Matthew had had with him were gone. I could clean the sitting room until there was no trace he'd ever stayed there. I could weed the garden and uproot every stalk of corn. It would change nothing.

  The light was going from the day as I sat at the kitchen table, my embroidery before me, untouched, when I heard the footsteps running into the yard, panicked hard steps across the porch. I was on my feet and in flight before Hutch came from his den to answer it. I knew that panicked cadence, and anticipated what he'd find as he answered the door.

  Mr. Barnett stood on the porch, terrified as a first time father, which from what I'd seen, he was far from. "Mr. Longren, is Miss Lucas in? It's my wife, sir, the baby's coming."

  Hutch turned back and looked at me. I was already wrapping my shawl around me, had already gathered the basket I carried in lieu of a doctor's black bag.

  I wanted to ask him if he minded, but I couldn't. I couldn't leave this poor scared man or his wife alone and if they'd come for me, then where was Dr. Horton? I wouldn't ask permission. Hutch Longren was not yet my husband.

  I paused at the door and couldn't think of anything to say to him. Mr. Barnett was already at the edge of the porch, looking ready to spring from it and run again. A buckboard was tied at the gate, one horse looking downcast and resigned.

  Hutch Longren was not yet my husband. He might never be my husband. This was my calling. I did not need to ask his leave. Nor could I tell him when I'd return. That was in the hands of fate and in the will of the unborn child.

  I searched his eyes for a moment but they revealed nothing. At last, I simply nodded, murmured, "I'm sorry," and meant it for more than he knew, and followed Mr. Barnett out into the long light of evening.

  Mr. Barnett didn't talk either. He urged the horse to trot, forcing it to carry us as quickly as possible to the far end of Gold Hill. Around us, the Nevada night was harsh, all sharp black shadows and gold reaching light as the sun set behind us. The sage gave up strong scent and as we turned from the main roads into the neighborhoods of Gold Hill, sage grouse and quail flew up like dust clouds, tsk-ing discontent. Cotton tail rabbits ran across the rutted dirt track, and magpies dove for carrion along the road. From somewhere in the foothills that surrounded us, some bird repeated a sharp, clarion call.

  The night was still hot, the wind died down. I would have liked to have such a night to stroll along the hotels in Virginia City, to meet new neighbors, to walk on my intended husband's arm.

  Mr. Barnett stopped us shortly before their own gate. The children clustered wide eyed in the yard, looking as if they expected an Indian uprising or for coyotes to run down out of the hills and set upon them, rather than for the arrival of a little sister or brother. There were an indeterminate amount of them, all blond as their parents, with big eyes and dirty faces. For all that she had such a number of children, I was willing to bet Mrs. Barnett had already been laboring for most of a day and had not been up to attending the children for days before that. Mr. Barnett was rumored to spend quite a bit of time (and funds) at the hotels or, more likely, their saloons. Probably they'd hoped not to have need of my skills or the doctor's.

  "Where is Dr. Horton?" I asked.

  "Haven't been able to find him." He was already at the door, but I stopped, and opened my basket. The children watched me suspiciously until I pulled out wrapped hard candies and passed them around. Times like these it never hurt to bribe the older children to keep out from underfoot at the same time reassuring them they weren't forgotten.

  From inside, I heard Mrs. Barnett call. "Henry!"

  Time to go. "Will you come in?" I asked him.

  He nodded though it looked more like he meant No. "For a little while."

  I smiled. It was easier when the husbands knew they couldn't stay the course. They were always heavier and much more awkward to move than their wives.

  He stepped to the bedroom door with me, made a sort of general hello gesture to his wife, said gruffly, "I've brought the midwife," and vanished so quickly, only familiarity would convince Mrs. Barnett that had been her husband.

  I smiled after him and started into the room to find her sweating and tired but smiling also. "He's better off out there with them," she said.

  "I've no doubt. When did the
pains start?"

  As I had supposed, they had started at dawn. She had labored for most of the day, convinced the child was coming, until she began to falter and still no baby.

  And there was nothing now but to see to Mrs. Barnett and her child, to distract her from anything I needed to do, which was to touch and look and move her about, to locate the child's head, which was where it belonged, and convince her to let me make her a cup of tea to "ease the passage".

  Surely there are such things but mine was no more than tea. My mother had taught me from the beginning that the woman herself was the best and worst coach, could do the most for herself and make her own path hardest. The tea was tea. The idea behind the tea was important. And if that didn't work, I had midwifery skills to fall back upon, but far better to let nature take its course.

  I gave her the tea and sat next to her on what looked to be a milking stool. We talked about how long the family had been in Gold Hill, and how many other children she had, and how Mr. Barnett's job at the bakery was going and that I had not, in fact, known that was where he worked and did she recommend their bread? Oh, she did, indeed, though there was another baker in Virginia City, which she dared to say might be a bit better, and then too why spend money to buy bread when she had a recipe she'd be happy to share with me and – and – Miss Lucas, I think the baby is coming.

  It was, and it did, and within an hour of my arrival, I called Mr. Barnett to visit his wife and new son, then stayed long enough to insure her health and convince the father away from his new arrival long enough to see me back to Mr. Longren's house.