by Lisa Plumley
“Come with me,” she told Adam as she took his hand, just moments after they’d settled things with the minister and thanked everyone. “I have the perfect idea for celebrating.”
To Adam’s chagrin, Savannah’s notion of celebrating meant parading through the streets of Avalanche and informing as many passersby as possible that they were wed. Her announcements were typically greeted with polite nods or bemused smiles and no great fanfare, but Savannah didn’t appear to expect anything more. To the contrary, she seemed downright giddy with the joy of marriage alone. Nothing could dampen her spirits. Even as they continued down Main Street, past the livery where they’d stabled Chester for the night, she didn’t tire.
“Hello!” she called out. “We’re Mr. and Mrs. Corwin.”
“Howdy.” Her sixteenth target tipped his hat, then scurried away, his boot heels ringing against the raised boardwalk.
“Hello!” Savannah said again. “We’re Mr. and Mrs. Corwin.”
“Hello.” The next person smiled. “Welcome to Avalanche.”
“Did you hear that?” After the man had passed, Savannah turned her cheery face to Adam. “Did you hear him say ‘Welcome to Avalanche’? Isn’t that nice? That must be the tenth—”
“Or seventeenth,” Adam observed more accurately.
“—person we’ve encountered so far, and not a single one of them has looked askance at us. Not even a little bit.” She sighed, then hugged his arm. “I could do this all day long!”
Adam would rather have shoveled horse patties than continue to confront strangers with their marital status. But Savannah appeared to be enjoying herself. For her sake, he stayed where he was. He even nodded in greeting at her next victim.
“Why would anyone look askance at us?” he asked.
Savannah froze. Then shrugged. “They just…might. Because we’re strangers here. You know how people can be sometimes.”
“No.” He guided her onward. “How can they be?”
Adam knew full well. People could be merciless, selfish and devious. His work as a U.S. Marshall and a detective had taught him that—and more. But Savannah appeared uncomfortable with his question for an entirely different reason than the foibles of human nature. It did not require the best of his investigative prowess to deduce that her slip of the tongue had something to do with the secret she was keeping.
“Tell me,” he urged. “Whatever it is, you can trust me.”
For an instant, Savannah seemed on the verge of doing exactly that. Then she jutted her chin upward. “Unkind, that’s how people can be. At least in my experience. But I don’t want to talk about it, especially on such a fine day.”
With a determination that bordered on doggedness, she fixed her gaze on the next person who headed toward them. “Hello! We’re Mr. and Mrs. Corwin.” Then she spotted someone else and inclined her head. “Hello! We’re Mr. and Mrs. Corwin.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said a tiny elderly woman.
They were up past twenty exchanges now, but still the woman’s response made Savannah beam. It was as though she could not get enough of being greeted and accepted by the townspeople. She hugged Adam’s arm, clearly tickled by the proceedings.
“I reckon we could meet ’most everyone in town,” Adam said in a dry tone as they walked past a millinery shop, “if we made a couple more circuits up and down Main Street.”
“Oh! Do you really think so?”
He’d been joking, but Savannah seemed beyond thrilled. He didn’t have the heart to disappoint her. He nodded.
“Excellent.” She smiled, then walked onward with new vigor.
“Hello!” she said to the next Avalanche resident they met as they approached a newly erected mercantile. “We’re Mr. and Mrs. Corwin. We’re visiting town today from Morrow Creek.”
The shopkeeper looked up from his broom, which he’d been using to sweep up sawdust—likely a remnant of his shop’s recent construction. “Nice place, Morrow Creek. My sister lives there.”
At that, Savannah stopped to chat and would not be budged.
Beside her, Adam did his best to keep up with the conversation. Mostly, though, he kept up a lookout for the Bedell brothers, the same way he’d done since he and Savannah had set out on their wedding trip. At any moment, one of those thieving killers could emerge from behind a saloon or thunder down the dusty street on horseback and turn Savannah’s day of celebration into a tragedy. More than most people, Adam knew what the Bedells were capable of…and none of it was good.
Not for the first time, he hoped Mariana was safe. He hoped she was working a case far from the Arizona Territory, with a new partner to watch over her. Maybe when Adam was in town with Savannah for Mrs. Finney’s tea party, he considered, he could make inquiries about Mariana. Or even wire the agency himself.
He hadn’t done so until now, for fear of alerting Savannah or Mose to his true identity. There’d simply been no way to send a message without revealing who he was and why he was there. But if he found himself in town, he could probably do more.
Like track the Bedells and finally bring them to justice.
Newly galvanized by the thought, Adam sent his gaze along the mountainous ridges that made up Avalanche. There were rocky gullies and hiding places everywhere here. Boulders provided good cover for gunfights. Twisting uphill roads offered perfect ambush spots. Improvidentially, Savannah had chosen one of the worst possible places for their wedding. It would be all too easy for Bedell and his brothers to get to them here.
Adam wished he’d been equipped to take Curtis Bedell into custody when he’d met him on the road. But with Savannah beside him, he hadn’t dared risk it. If she’d been hurt in a showdown with Curtis, Adam wouldn’t have been able to forgive himself. Just the thought of explaining to that gentle giant, Mose, how he’d allowed Savannah to be injured gave Adam chills.
So did the thought of Curtis Bedell forcing a confrontation between them. The eventuality felt all too likely. None of the Bedell brothers were known for being patient.
“I think we’d better get along.” Gently, Adam touched Savannah’s arm, drawing her from her conversation with the friendly shopkeeper. “You must be hungry by now.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine.” She smiled. “Mr. Yee was just saying—”
“I’m feeling a bit peckish, myself,” Adam pretended to confess. A glimmer of light and motion caught his eye at the looming rock face to his left. He watched it with one hand on his gun—but it was only an Avalanche resident, hanging laundry on a makeshift line. “We had those sandwiches a while ago.”
“You’re absolutely right.” Hastily Savannah made her apologies to Mr. Yee. “Why don’t we go on to the hotel? I’m given to understand they have a wonderful dining room there.”
Just as he’d expected, what Savannah would not do for herself, she would do for someone else…chiefly, him. She was, he’d learned during his time with her, generous to a fault.
Feeling sorry for having misled her—but not sorry for doing what he had to do to get her safely indoors—Adam took special care in escorting her. They chatted amiably as they proceeded to the nearby Beadle Hotel. The place catered mostly to visiting mining magnates, he learned from an overheard conversation as they approached, and had the gaudy decor to match.
Surprisingly Savannah adored it.
“Look!” She clutched his arm as they stepped into the lobby, her entire face glowing and awestruck. “It’s beautiful!”
He vowed on the spot to get them a room there.
Savannah smiled. “I feel so at home here, for some reason.”
Even as he wondered why a rural telegraph operator would feel most comfortable amongst gilt and velvet and imported statuary, Adam decided he should probably book two rooms. He still had an adequate bankroll hidden in the hollow cache in his boot—a precaution he’d taken since his days as a Marshall. If the lobby made Savannah this pleased, then sleeping under the ornate ceilings, fine mill-work and fancy bedsteads the hotel undoubtedly spo
rted upstairs would send her clear over the moon.
“It’s almost like one of those fancy theaters,” she said. “Only from the front of the house, where everything is lovely.”
Adam’s days of working in vaudeville jabbed at him. Front of the house was a term used by show folk. “You like it?”
Savannah turned in place, marveling. “Oh, very much so!”
“Then we’ll have to stay here tonight.”
“Here?” She stared at him. “But I only came here to dine. I’d expected to sleep in the wagon. That’s why I brought so many blankets. I thought if we were feeling very extravagant,” she admitted with an adorable wrinkle of her nose, “we might find a room in one of the boardinghouses nearby. Avalanche abounds with them, you know, because of the large population of bachelors.”
“I’ll have no wife of mine staying in a place that caters to riffraff like bachelors,” Adam teased. “We’ll stay here.”
For the first time, his joke drew no laughter.
“Hmm.” Savannah mused. “I do like the sound of that…”
“What, staying near riffraff? That’s a predilection you should have shared with me before we were married,” Adam said, still teasing her. “If I’d known you craved the company of bachelors, I would have—”
“No. Wife,” she breathed. “Your wife. I like that.”
In that moment, time seemed to stand still between them. There with Savannah beneath the lobby’s crystal chandelier, Adam realized to his surprise that he liked that, too.
He’d actually done it, he realized with a sense of awe.
He’d gotten married.
Of course their marriage wasn’t official yet, he amended to himself with a frown. If he had his way, it never would be. Adam did not intend to consummate their union—nor did he intend to deliver the signed marriage license that the minister had entrusted him with to the proper authorities for certification.
That way, their marriage would never be registered or valid. It was the only means he’d struck upon to protect Savannah from the fraudulent partnership they’d entered into. So long as Adam kept from making their marriage official, Savannah would be free to walk away from it later…unblemished and, he hoped, forgiving of everything that had happened between them.
It wasn’t the most brilliant solution, but it was the best he’d come up with. It would have to do.
“I did allocate a small amount of money from my nest egg toward buying us a nice wedding-day meal.” Beside him, Savannah lifted her reticule in demonstration. “So I hope you’re hungry!”
“I could eat a horse, tail and all.”
A smile. “Then we must get started. Shall we?”
With no hesitation or awkwardness at all, Savannah sashayed toward the hotel’s fine dining room. As she passed by the lobby desk and its attendant snobbish clerk, her assured movements left Adam wondering all over again. Why was a small-town woman like Savannah so comfortable with the fanciness of the Beadle Hotel? Why had she bandied about a show term like front of the house? And why, even more curiously, had she seemed to expect the people of Avalanche to shun her today?
Unkind, that’s how people can be, she’d said, appearing indescribably sad. At least in my experience.
More curious than ever to know what she was hiding, Adam stayed beside Savannah as they entered the dining room. He kept his hand protectively on her waist, guiding her with care and interest. If anyone could unearth her secrets, he reckoned it was him. But would he have enough time to do so?
More than anything, Adam yearned to believe the ruse they were presenting. He yearned to introduce Savannah as his wife and know it was true. He wanted to hold her hand and care for her and prove that he’d meant the vows he’d taken today. He did intend to love and cherish her. Promising that had been easy.
Savannah made it easy. She was lovable and kind, funny and capable and self-sufficient. If Adam had been the sort of man to daydream himself a perfect wife, Savannah would have fit the ideal he’d imagined. Even more so, had she known the truth about him. Adam had the sense that Savannah admired his work for the Marshall’s office and understood his other varied jobs as well. Savannah would have probably approved of his detective work, too. She might even, with her inherent love of adventure, have been interested in hearing about the cases he’d worked on.
He’d only ever shared those stories with Mariana—and she’d been a less-than-avid listener, owing to her own involvement in several of those cases. But his platonic workaday friendship with Mariana was nothing like the growing affection that had arisen between him and Savannah. Adam felt drawn to Savannah in a way he’d never experienced before and likely, he realized as the maître d’ approached them, would never experience again.
Determined to soak up as much of this day as he could, he smiled. “I’m looking forward to this meal. I don’t often dine in restaurants—mostly beside campfires and the like.”
“Campfires?” Wrinkling her brow, Savannah gazed up at him. “But in your letters, you told me you were a connoisseur of the restaurants in Baltimore. You mentioned several by name.”
Blast. Adam opened his mouth, hastily searching his mind for an excuse. He was adequate enough at concocting a cover story—something that was a necessity in his line of work—but here, with Savannah, he found himself slipping up far too often.
It was almost as though he wanted to be found out in the accidental lie he’d engaged in. But more than that, Adam figured, he was simply suffering from a lack of information. And it was costing him now. Although he and Mariana had had access to Savannah’s letters to her romantic “pen pal,” they had not been able to read Roy Bedell’s private correspondence to her. Nor had they been privy to all the conversations that Savannah and Roy Bedell had shared over the wires these last few months.
All they knew was that Edward Bedell had taken a job as a telegraph operator in Des Moines some time ago, and that Roy had intimidated the other operators into letting him loiter about the station while his brother worked. Eventually they’d robbed the place, of course, with the help of Curtis, Wyatt and Linus. But they hadn’t made away with enough money to make Roy abandon his lucrative marriage schemes. Despite Edward’s efforts to move the gang into other, more easily divisible “opportunities” for thieving, Roy Bedell had targeted Savannah next…and all the way across the country, Adam had been hired to stop him.
“It’s all right. There’s no need to appear so worried. I won’t spill your secret.” Laughing, Savannah linked her arm in Adam’s. She nodded to the maître d’ as he led them to a fine, cloth-covered table. “I quite liked the impressed look he gave you as he approached us and overheard your Wild West tale about campfire dining. That was very inventive of you.”
She thought he was embellishing his past in an effort to appear suitably rugged, as befit life in the Territory, Adam realized. Well, for now it was best to let her believe that.
“Yep,” he said loudly, so the maître d’ would hear him. “There’s nothing like a good elk steak thrown over the fire. Especially if you wrestle the critter to the ground first.”
“I hear that makes for extra-tender meat.” Savannah gave a sage nod, speaking at an equally noticeable volume.
“That’s right,” Adam agreed. “A good sockdolager to the nose, and the elk just gives up and begs to become your dinner.”
“I hope the food is just as tasty as that around here.” Wearing a skeptical expression, Savannah gracefully took her seat. “Otherwise, I’ll be depending on you to go elk wrestling.”
“I’m hardly dressed for that, am I?” Stifling a grin, Adam pointed to his wedding-day suit as he, too, took a seat. He felt ridiculously grateful to Savannah for indulging his supposed flight of fancy. “I’d need different boots, at least.”
Savannah pretended to examine him. “Yes. And maybe a hat.”
United in mischief, they gazed across the table at each other. The maître d’ stiffly signaled for a waiter, who scurried over and began outfittin
g them for their meal with napkins and cutlery and goblets of water. The waiter’s and maître d’s attitudes of hushed reverence only seemed to make Adam’s and Savannah’s shared joke even funnier.
“Is a black bowler hat good for elk wrestling?” Adam asked Savannah with his most thoughtful expression. “Or do you think a flat felt cap would be more appropriate?”
“Oh, I’m not entirely sure…” She pretended to vacillate.
Apparently seizing upon an area in which he could offer additional service, the maître d’ gave a discreet cough. Adam glanced up at him. The man leaned his head nearer.
“I would suggest a Winchester rifle and a wool derby, sir.”
Solemnly Adam pretended to consider it. “Very good. I’ll bear that in mind.” He could not look at Savannah, for fear of bursting into laughter. Straight-faced, he said, “Thank you.”
“You, sir, are most welcome.” The maître d’ bowed.
He made ready to leave, as did the waiter. Adam waited for their departure with his breath held, knowing that the slightest movement might make him laugh. But then Savannah raised her fingertips in a genteel signal. She nodded at the maître d’.
“I will require my meal to be freshly wrestled, just as my husband would obtain it,” she specified in an amicable tone. “I trust that will be possible in your establishment?”
Another, somewhat stilted, bow. “I will make inquiries.”
“Very good. Once a lady is accustomed to life with a hard-driving, truly Western man, it’s extremely difficult to settle for less,” Savannah said, chin high. “I’m sure you understand.”
“Indeed, madam.” The maître d’ nodded. “I certainly do.”
Both men left—and just in time, too. Marveling at Savannah’s audacity, Adam took her hand across the table. He couldn’t help laughing. “Thank you for playing along. That clinched it—if I didn’t love you already, I would definitely love you now.”