Heiress

by Susan May Warren

  Abel stared at the offering a long time, and just when Esme thought he might turn away, he took it.

  She nearly leaped into the cage when it settled on the ground. Daughtry followed, then Abel closed the gate, then the door behind them, then reached through the window and pulled the bell signal.

  The cage started slowly, bouncing as they rose.

  As the darkness settled around her, she found herself in the pocket of Daughtry’s chest, her ear pressed to his jacket. His heartbeat seemed even more thunderous than hers.

  “Were you afraid?”

  He looked down at her, his eyes white against his now dirty skin. “Terrified.”

  She laughed, more of an avalanche of emotion than humor. “I never want to do that again.”

  His face sobered. “And yet these miners do it every day.”

  She looked over at Abel. He was considering her, his eyes white in the darkness, his expression grim.

  “We have to find out who’s sabotaging the mine and stop them.”

  The cage slowed as it reached the top, finally lurching to a stop. Abel opened the doorway, then the cage.

  Even from behind Daughtry, Esme heard the rabble, felt the tension as they piled out. A hoist man met them, his gaze going from Abel, then to Daughtry.

  “What’s the matter?” Daughtry said. Behind him, she heard shouting, saw what seemed like a mob outside the entrance.

  “Crandall Norman’s dead—and we caught the murderer. It’s the man from Butte Mining. They’re gonna lynch him.”

  Daughtry glanced at the mob then at Abel. They shared a moment, something they’d lost, perhaps, years ago, and had only found again under the crannies of the earth.

  Daughtry turned to her. “Please. Go home. I promise to tell you everything that happens.” He looked at her, with those dark eyes, the ones that had told her to trust him, the ones that believed in her.

  She nodded.

  * * * * *

  She waited, stopped the presses, pacing in her office. The moon had already risen, the light pale upon the floor.

  “What if he doesn’t come? Why didn’t you stay? You know it would have been a front-page story.” Ruby sat on the edge of her desk, having spent the last hour typing Esme’s article into the linotype machine, reformatting the entire front page.

  Hudson waited to run it through the press.

  They’d left room for the update from Daughtry. So, the paper would go out late. She’d finally scoop Ellis Carter.

  But more, she wanted to know who’d been sabotaging the mine. Who had killed Crandall, and so many other men.

  “He asked me to go home,” she said, not sure why she’d obeyed him. But something on Daughtry’s face had convinced her that he would tell her the truth.

  He just didn’t want her to watch it.

  For the first time in a long while, years, maybe, she wanted to trust a man, to let him protect her.

  Ruby was staring at her. “You have feelings for Daughtry Hoyt.”

  Esme had bathed, slicked the mine’s breath from her skin, but she couldn’t dislodge the way Daughtry had made her feel. The firm grip of his hand over hers, sweetness in his gaze when he’d called her beautiful under the glow of a carbide lamp.

  I would like to go to dinner with the most beautiful woman in Montana.

  She should have said yes.

  Clearly, it showed in her expression. “I…maybe I do.” The confession of it uncoiled something inside her. A grief, or maybe a fear.

  She could fall in love again. Be happy.

  But Ruby didn’t smile. “Are you sure, Esme? He’s not one of us. He’s a rich man’s son.”

  Esme shook her head. “But he is us, Ruby. You should have seen him down there. He asked Abel for help, even though I think he might have known his way back. And he understands the miners, the mine. And you should have seen his face when he found out that Crandall had been murdered.”

  Ruby folded her arms across her chest. “I just hope he doesn’t break your heart.”

  A step sounded outside on the boardwalk, and Esme met him at the door, her hand on the latch when he entered.

  Daughtry appeared wrung out, burdened, as he walked into the room.

  She let her emotions lead and wrapped her arms around him, not caring about the sweat embedded in his shirt, the greasy dirt on his face, his hands. He curled his arms around her, and for a second, leaned down and seemed to draw in the smell of her.

  “They didn’t lynch him,” he said. “But they wanted to.” He put her away from him, met her eyes. “He was the rabble-rouser at the union meeting the other night. Apparently, he’s been on site for the past five weeks.”

  “He’s our saboteur.”

  “Yes. He shot Crandall at the Horn. But Crandall managed to sound the distress whistle before he died. He identified his killer to the miners just coming off shift from the Neck shaft. They caught up with him, and we got a confession. The Butte Miners Union has been committing the sabotage. But he said they were paid to do it…by Ellis Carter.”

  “But why?”

  “So I’d be forced to sell to Anaconda. And the Silverthread miners would have to join the union. It means more dues, more power for Butte.”

  “They killed people so they’d have striking power?” Ruby’s voice had a dangerous, lethal tone.

  “I knew Ellis was behind this,” Daughtry said. He sat down, ran his filthy hands through his hair. “But we only have the word of the BMU. We can’t prove it.”

  “We have to expose Ellis Carter and his crimes,” Esme said quietly.

  “How?” Daughtry said, his eyes tired. She’d never seen him so shaken, so defeated. “He is above the law. He’ll deny it and just send more saboteurs, and it won’t matter if we catch them. He owns the Butte sheriff. He even bought his own senate seat.”

  “He doesn’t own President Roosevelt.” Esme crouched before him, reached up, and wiped dirt from his chin. “Clean up, Daughtry, because you’re taking me to dinner.”

  Chapter 15

  “Welcome to the ‘Richest Hill on Earth.’ ” Esme stood back to allow the porter to open the door to her suite.

  “It’s so grand,” Ruby said, her eyes wide. “I always knew Daughtry was wealthy, I just never knew how much.”

  Esme hadn’t the heart to tell her that this room could fit twice into her room back in New York. But then again, she could fit her current bedroom three times into this top-floor suite of the McDermott Hotel in Butte.

  Esme entered the room behind Ruby. “Yes, grand, if you concentrate on the red brocade wallpaper, the velvet drapes, the sitting room, the white marble hearth.” Indeed, she had transported yet again back to her youth, with the golden chandelier dripping with the hues of twilight, the smell of roses on the round table by the window. “But don’t look out the window.”

  Even from here she saw the steel headframes rising behind the hotel, the dark smoke of the smelters hovering like a hand over the city, turning it dusky. The city smelled of rotten eggs and even breathing the air seemed poisonous.

  Behind her, yet another porter ferried in her trunks with tonight’s accoutrements. The first contained one of the grand dresses Daughtry had bequeathed her. The other held her undergarments, her clothes for tomorrow’s ride home, and her dog collar she’d taken from the safe at the Times. She’d kept a weather eye on it as they’d traveled from Silver City to Butte, not sure why she’d brought it.

  Certainly she wouldn’t need it tonight. But some errant urge inside her compelled her to bring it, to fit herself back into the mold, if not the name, of Esme Price.

  “I don’t care. It’s glorious.” Ruby flung open the double doors to the bedroom, tossed herself onto the large, silk-covered bed with fluted pillars rising to the frescoed ceiling. “I could live here.”

  Esme caught her smile. “Then I guess I won’t have to worry about you getting into trouble tonight while I’m at dinner.”

  “I’ll be waiting with anxious breath for
you to tell me everything the president says.” Ruby came over to the trunk, opened it, and gasped. “This dress is breathtaking.” Over a flowing, royal-blue satin skirt lay an embroidered crepe overskirt, all of which tucked into a white gauzy top, low cut and gathered at the apex of the waist with a blue floret.

  Esme watched her draw it out slowly, stuffed as it was for travel. Dawn knew how to pack a dress, and this one had survived the twenty-six-mile journey without damage. Ruby caught it up and carried it to the wardrobe, hanging it inside. It would have looked more spectacular on a dress form, but still it caught the light, the silver and gold threads shimmering.

  “I’ve never seen such a beautiful dress. Or slippers!” Ruby had returned to the trunk to pull out the crinoline then opened the other trunk to discover the white satin high-heeled shoes. She set them beside the trunk and dug back in. “And what’s this—a corset?”

  She turned to Esme, mischief in her eyes. “Don’t tell me that Daughtry gave you this too.”

  “No, thank you very much. That’s mine.”

  Ruby got up, set it on the bed. “It’s so fancy, so much lace.”

  “It’s imported. From France.”

  Ruby stared at her. “How did you get an imported lace corset? Did you work for one of those high society women?”

  Esme walked to the trunk, withdrew the case with the pearl dog collar. Perhaps tonight wasn’t the best night to wear it after all. Too many questions. Too many memories. “Something like that.”

  She tucked the dog collar in the drawer beside the bed. “Ruby, do you know how to do hair?”

  “I can braid, but—”

  “No matter. I’ll teach you how.”

  Two hours later, she’d bathed, instructed Ruby on an elemental hairstyle that swept her hair up from her neck, with a long braid that wound into the back. Dressing seemed more complicated than she’d remembered, from the bloomers and the crinoline, to the chemise and corset—how she’d forgotten her posture over the past seven years!—and finally the magnificent dress.

  The dress hugged her body, flowing over it like it had been made for her.

  “You’re breathtaking,” Ruby said, and Esme felt it as she considered herself in the mirror. And not only the dress—something had changed inside her since the last time she wore a dinner costume. No longer the woman who cowered inside her attire, she saw herself, suddenly, as an accomplished woman.

  She belonged in this dress. And perhaps, also in pants and an apron behind the linotype machine.

  A knock at the door echoed through the suite.

  “It’s Daughtry.”

  “I need my gloves. And my jewelry.”

  Ruby stared at her. “You have jewelry?”

  “Please tell Daughtry to wait in the parlor. I’ll be out presently.”

  Ruby shut the doors behind her and Esme retrieved her gloves. Then she pulled out the jewelry box with the dog collar. For a moment, she wished she still had the pearl earrings to match, but then she wouldn’t have this life. Her birthright had purchased her future.

  Standing before the doors, she took a breath. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.

  Once upon a time, she’d given God her future, her hope.

  Perhaps, tonight, He’d bring it to pass.

  She opened the doors and mouthed the word “prism.”

  Daughtry turned, and for a moment the world stopped on his smile. His eyes shone. “You are more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen.”

  Oh. He stood and extended his hand. She allowed him hers.

  “You managed to get the dirt off,” she said. Indeed, if she’d been a debutante, she would have hoped that he scrawled his name on every line of her dance card. In his gray and blue silk waistcoat, his cutaway jacket, the dark pants, and a bowtie, he appeared fresh from the Metropolitan Opera.

  She handed him the jewelry box. “Would you carry this for me?”

  He searched her eyes then nodded, putting it into his inner jacket pocket without looking at it. She began to work on her gloves, but they tangled in her hand.

  “Allow me,” he said, and took them from her, holding them open. She worked her hand in and drew the glove up above her elbow. Then, the other. She took his arm.

  Outside, the lights glittered beneath the cloud of smelter smoke. His shiny brougham waited at the entrance, and a footman helped them into the carriage. He climbed in beside her.

  It seemed incongruent for them to be ferried in their finest attire through a city populated with saloons and brothels, with women displayed in large windows, and raucous music drifting into the streets.

  “I despise Butte,” Daughtry said and handed her a handkerchief for her to press to her mouth.

  Carter’s mansion sat on a hill overlooking the city, a red-bricked, gabled house that could equal anything on Fifth Avenue. Still, it seemed too elegant, too gentry sitting above the tiny wooden houses of the working class boroughs of Butte.

  They pulled up to the gabled entrance, the house lit up and spilling into the darkness. Through the window, she spied men already seated at a long table, the blinds open to the street. Strange. Mrs. Astor always obscured the public from a view of the wealthy.

  A footman met them, although Daughtry helped her down.

  She took a breath.

  “You look nervous.”

  She glanced at him.

  “I hear there will be everyone from senators to miners here tonight. But you will be the belle of the ball.”

  She had heard that Carter’s young wife of twenty-three years—to his sixty-two—might be in attendance tonight. At twenty-seven, Esme felt ancient.

  Daughtry knocked at the door.

  The butler, of course, answered, and Daughtry presented his name.

  The butler asked them to wait and closed the door.

  She shivered in a breeze from the mountains. “I should have brought a wrap.”

  “You can wear my jacket on the way home.”

  The door opened.

  The butler stared at them, and for a moment, Esme returned to the moment when her father, so many years ago, had discovered her with Oliver. She’d opened the door, and Oliver’s father, the butler, stood there on the stoop, behind him Father’s footmen, bearing his orders, his anger. She stiffened on Daughtry’s arm.

  Then, “I’m sorry, sir, but you are not on the guest list.”

  Daughtry just stared at him, nonplussed. “But I am. I received an invitation.”

  “Apparently, your father received an invitation. You, however, did not.”

  Daughtry stiffened and Esme felt a muscle pull in his arm. “But I am attending in his stead,” he said very softly.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Carter has ordered you sent away.” He closed the door.

  Esme heard Daughtry’s breath, tremulous, and in her heart, heard his words about his mother, in Esme’s New York. All our money couldn’t buy her respectability.

  But Daughtry was, in her estimation, the only respectable Copper King.

  “I’m sorry, Esme. Perhaps we can find a nice dinner someplace.” He made to move away. She held his arm.

  “No.”

  He looked at her.

  “We’re getting into this dinner party. We are talking to the president. We are holding Ellis Carter accountable for his crimes.”

  She turned her back to him. “There’s a necklace in your pocket. I wasn’t sure I wanted to wear it until now.”

  She heard him reach into his pocket and pull out the jewelry case. A pause. He cleared his throat. And then, “Oh, my.”

  She lifted her chin as he secured the collar around her neck, the cold jewels prickling her skin. Then she turned back to him.

  His face was solemn. “What are you doing?”

  “Knock again, please.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She looked up at him and suddenly wanted to cry. “Would you still care for me, still want to court me, if I were rich?” />
  He stared at her, even more flummoxed, if that were possible. “But—aren’t you poor? Because, last time I looked, you live above your newspaper. You seem poor.”

  “I have a newspaper.”

  “That you sleep at. You don’t even have a proper house.”

  “I’m not poor.” She drew in a swift breath just as the door opened. The butler stood like a gunslinger, backlit by the entry hall lights. “Please tell President Roosevelt that Esme Price, daughter of New York Chronicle publisher August Price, would like to present herself for dinner at his table.”

  She managed not to touch the jewels at her neck, but noticed that the butler’s gaze ran to them a moment before he nodded. “Please, come in,” he said. “It’s cold out.”

  She couldn’t look at Daughtry as they waited in the hall, but he leaned into her ear anyway.

  “I honestly thought you were just a very avid scholar of Page Six.”

  She smiled as the butler returned to escort them for dinner.

  * * * * *

  She didn’t expect the dinner company around Ellis Carter’s massive table. Mayor Mullins, of course, and she recognized the owner of the Amalgamated Copper Company seated at the far end, along with the president’s aides. But seated at the table along with the dignitaries was a cross-section of every face in Butte. A negro man, a Chinese man, an Englishman who reminded her very much of Abel, a red-haired Irishman, a Greek, and an Italian. And finally a man who bore the fair coloring of a Swede.

  They all stood and introduced themselves. She could nearly swim in the whiskey on their breaths.

  From everything she’d heard about Ellis Carter, she doubted he would impress her. She sat opposite the senator—she had no doubt he ogled her décolletage, or perhaps her jewelry—and thought she just might lose her appetite if she had to watch him shovel quail soup into his bearded maw.

  She hadn’t come for the dinner anyway.

  She’d come, perhaps, for the look in every man’s eye when President Roosevelt greeted her with warmth, like she might be his long-lost daughter. He hadn’t changed severely in seven years—still robust, still the handlebar moustache, the way he peered through a person, disarming her even as he offered her a seat. “What is August’s daughter doing out here in the middle of mining country?”