The Gold Ring_The Fifth Day

by Caroline Lee

  Head held high, she marched out of the room in a swirl of fancy fabric.

  “Hell,” Draven muttered under his breath as he re-holstered his weapon. He should’ve known this would land him in hot water. What was he going to do, if he was banned from La Maison des Chats?

  When the preacher had asked him to do this job, he’d known Draven didn’t want to kick the whores out. Hell, Draven liked the whores better than he liked the reverend. But when Hammond had evoked Charlie Hardt’s name—the one who paid Draven’s salary—he’d gotten his way.

  Time was, I wouldn’t care what some mayor thought of me.

  Before he’d taken this sheriff position, he’d been free to follow his own path, to pursue his own jobs. Of course, he’d also been free to starve, to nearly bleed to death from that gunshot wound, and to spend his evenings freezing, wrapped up in some lonely buffalo robe rather than in a whore’s arms.

  Yeah, he missed his old life sometimes, but there were some things about his new life that couldn’t be beat.

  But if Madame remained pissed at him indefinitely, he might have to leave Noelle. No way he could live in this town, knowing he couldn’t see—

  A noise at one of the side doors had him whirling around, his hand on the grip of his revolver. But as soon as he saw who it was, he relaxed. All of him relaxed, in fact. She had the ability to do that to him. Make him feel like all was right in the world.

  Pearl.

  She was petite, and blonde, and demure like a real lady would be. Even now, she stood politely in the doorway, a small broom clasped in her hands and her blue-eyed gaze on the floor, as if waiting to be invited in.

  “Hello, Sheriff.”

  Everything about her voice made him hard and soft all at once. Soft because she was the one woman he looked forward to seeing most in this town, and hard, because…well, because that was her job.

  He cleared his throat. “Hello, Pearl.”

  When she looked up and met his gaze, he nodded slightly, silently inviting her to join him. He’d always invite her to join him, no matter the circumstances.

  Shoot, she was the reason he cared so much about Mayor Hardt’s paydays. Draven would pay just about anything to spend a night in her arms. His head was suddenly hurting a hell of a lot less, just being able to look at her.

  She smiled softly at him as she stepped into the room. She always had a special smile for him, so different from the way the other whores looked at him. Their eyes landed on his scars, his eye socket, and it turned their own smiles into a sort of horrified grimace. Pearl, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice or care about his appearance.

  And as much as he’d told himself those scars didn’t bother him, it sure felt nice to have a woman who didn’t care.

  “I heard what you said to Madame, Sheriff.”

  She scooted past him to kneel by the shards of glass that used to be a plate and a cup, and Draven swore he could feel her warmth as she did so. Quickly, he dropped to a crouch beside her, helping her toss the larger pieces into the dustbin.

  He wanted to keep the conversation going. “And I’m real sorry about it, Miss Pearl. The mayor said those brides need a place to go, and your place is the nicest in town…”

  She glanced up at him long enough to smile shyly again. “It’s the only place in town worthy of them, I would think. Here, they’ll have real beds.”

  Beds that already get lots of use. But he didn’t say it, because Pearl might be a whore, but she was…

  She was more.

  He cleared his throat. “Still, I’m sorry to make you leave your home.”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged, focusing on sweeping the glass into a pile. “I actually thought I might ask Madame if…”

  She trailed off, and her hands stilled. Hesitantly, Draven touched her hand. “If what?”

  When she shrugged again, he pulled his fingers away. He probably shouldn’t be touching her like that, not without… Well, not without an invitation and money exchanged.

  But her pale blue eyes lifted to his, and she swallowed. “I thought about what it’s like to be new to a strange town, and to be scared. And I thought about the women who’ve been kind to me over the years, and I thought…” she trailed off, but only long enough to take a deep breath, which pushed her chest against her dress in all sorts of interesting ways. “I thought I might stay with them for tonight. To help them become more comfortable with Noelle and their new lives.”

  A fierce protectiveness wrapped itself around Draven’s chest, and he had to make an effort not to touch her again. Instead, he sat back on his heels, and nodded. “And you won’t have to work, either. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”

  He knew he’d said the wrong thing when her cheeks flushed pink and she dropped her chin once more. He cursed under his breath, which only served to make her flinch and shy away. And when he shifted his weight, she stood abruptly, the dust broom falling to the floor beside the pile of shards.

  Draven tilted his head back to watch her, wondering if there was anything he could say to make him look less like an ass.

  Probably not. He was an ass.

  “Pearl, I—”

  She cut him off, still not meeting his eye. “Merry Christmas, Sheriff.”

  And just like that, she was gone, scurrying out of the room as if he’d frightened her.

  But she’d never looked at him like he was frightening. She was the one who met his eye, who smiled sweetly at him, who took him in her arms and made him feel like a whole man again.

  And now, somehow, he’d screwed that up. Draven stood slowly, cursing his luck.

  Oh well. Madame was going to kick me out anyhow.

  Maybe it was for the best.

  Merry Christmas, indeed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The first day of Christmas

  December 25th, 1876

  Pearl Shelby smiled slightly as she filled in the shadow of the mountains with her pencil. It was a simplistic sketch, one without much detail, but she thought she’d done a good job capturing the feel of the city buried in snow. She was working off memory, but she’d spent enough of her days walking around Noelle and the surrounding mountains to know what the area looked like in winter.

  There.

  She added a final touch to the imaginary garland over Cobb’s Penn, and sat back with a satisfied sigh. Maybe she’d embellished a little, adding in Christmas decorations where there were none in the harsh little mining town, but she thought she could be forgiven. It was Christmas morning, after all.

  And it wasn’t like anyone would ever see this sketch.

  Last night, after she’d helped get all the brides settled and as happy as a bunch of exhausted, worried, and irritated woman could be, she’d met a nice woman named Birdie. She’d been sketching, and when Pearl realized Birdie was doing it to calm her nerves, Pearl knew she’d found a kindred spirit. After all, wasn’t that why Pearl herself so enjoyed her long walks in the surrounding mountains, and the sketches she did afterwards?

  Maybe that was why she’d suddenly become so brave, so willing to share her talent. No one else in town knew she enjoyed capturing God’s beauty on her precious paper…but she’d picked up the pencil and helped Birdie with a few details.

  They’d quickly bonded, and Pearl had gone to bed feeling…well, not exactly lighter, because their little town had just had a heap of trouble piled on top, but more peaceful than usual, anyhow.

  Which is why she’d woken early on this lovely Christmas morning, inspired to capture some of that peace on paper. One glance out the window she now shared with two brides showed her a landscape covered in serenity and grandeur; one she felt she’d captured adequately.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t spend the day lounging in here sketching, like she sometimes managed to do when Madame wasn’t nagging them. Pearls’ mornings were her own, true, but Madame often managed to find work for them to do in the hours before La Maison opened up.

  And most of the time it was easier to just
give in and do the work, rather than risk confrontation with the middle-aged harpy.

  Today though, Madame wasn’t here. She and the other girls had moved into Noelle’s abandoned saloon, but Pearl hadn’t. She’d wanted to stay and help the brides get settled and calm them down a bit, the poor things. It had seemed like an impossible task, to convince the livid Madame Bonheur to let her out of work for an evening—even if it was Christmas Eve!—but help had come from an unexpected source.

  Doctor Deane was about as handsome as a man could get, something that all the girls at La Maison liked to twitter over whenever he did their scheduled medical examinations. His faint Irish accent only added to the appeal of those kind eyes and gentle voice.

  But last night, he’d been anything but calm; he’d grabbed Pearl’s arm and demanded she stay with the brides.

  “Keep an eye on Cara,” he’d hissed under his breath. “Don’t let her say anything about me to the others! I’ll make an excuse for you to Madame.”

  Cara Donnelly was the pretty little Irish girl—younger than the others, but she looked nice. Pearl didn’t know why the Doctor was so scared of his mail-order bride talking about him, but she was grateful for an excuse not to move with Madame.

  So Pearl had put Cara and Fina—the Mexican lady with the pretty dark eyes—in her own room. She’d noticed Cara slept fitfully—probably because it was the first time she’d slept in a whore’s bed—but that was only because Pearl herself was awake to notice such things.

  This morning, she’d slipped out of the room before either awoke, to try to calm her anxiousness with a bit of sketching after a brief detour downstairs.

  And it had worked. She put down her pencil and carefully lifted the simple drawing of Noelle. It might not be the prettiest little town in all of creation, but Pearl had always loved the way it looked in the snow. Peaceful. Pristine. Hopeful. Everything it wasn’t during the rest of the year—especially when all the traffic turned the main street to slush. The snow somehow managed to camouflage the town’s horrible little secrets.

  Like the intense jealousy that had hit her as soon as those women had shuffled—cold and hungry and scared—through the doors to her home. Not that she minded sharing with them, no. She was jealous of their purpose here.

  No, girl. She forced her fingers to unclench around the edges of the paper, not wanting to ruin the calming sketch. You gave that dream up long ago. Forget it.

  Pearl Shelby wasn’t going to be marrying anyone. She wasn’t going to ever be a bride—mail-order or otherwise—and wasn’t ever going to work as some man’s partner to make a life together. She wasn’t going to ever see her children play with carefree abandon, or hold her husband’s hand as they watched their grandchildren smile.

  No, Pearl Shelby would be lucky to live past thirty. Surely the clap or some man’s fist would end it all for her.

  And she would miss out on all life could’ve offered. She might’ve been a bride, had Mrs. Genevieve Walters’ Lost Lambs Society been around when Pearl needed help. She might’ve come to Noelle as a bride, rather than a whore. She might’ve married a good, upstanding, handsome man who needed to convince the railroad he was willing to put down roots. She might’ve helped build his home.

  But while she was dreaming, she might as well admit the truth. The man she daydreamed about wasn’t upstanding or handsome, and didn’t care about putting down roots. The man she wanted wasn’t the marrying type.

  And that was alright, because neither was she. Not anymore.

  The murmur of voices from her room dragged her out of her sad thoughts. The brides must be awake—so much earlier than the whores were, since they didn’t have to work all night—and ready to face their new lives. Pearl had promised Doctor Deane she’d look after Cara for a day at least, and besides…she wasn’t so heartless she’d let those poor women flounder. They needed someone who knew the town and knew the house to help guide them.

  Pearl sighed again, though in resignation this time, as she carefully shuffled her latest drawing into a folder on the table in the small sitting room. She’d hide it with the rest of her sketches, then would go offer the women some help.

  After speaking with Cara, she made her way downstairs. On the steps, she paused, seeing a couple at the front door. It was that pretty little Chinese girl, with Woody Burnside and those three chickens that always followed him around. Woody was a good man—sweet, if a little smelly—and Pearl smiled faintly at the thought of him married and settled down. She knew Madame was expecting these marriages to result in more business for La Maison, but Pearl hoped the men chosen as grooms would be happy in their marriages.

  As she could never be.

  Swallowing down her maudlin thoughts, she slipped into one of the parlors and was halfway to the window—someone had twitched the curtains out of place, and she intended to straighten them—when a voice barked at her, “You may pour me another cup.”

  Pearl whirled. There was a woman sitting in one of the corner chairs; a pretty brunette with a haughty tilt to her chin. She was holding out a teacup in one hand, while she cradled the saucer in her other, as if expecting someone to jump right over and refill her beverage.

  Pearl’s eyes flicked to the elegant chestnut table beside the woman’s chair. Madame’s tea service was there, a faint whisper of steam rising from the tea pot. It was literally within arm’s reach of the demanding woman.

  But Pearl stifled her sigh and changed directions, heading for the tea set. She reminded herself that this woman had come through a terrible storm last night, and who knows what before then. From the way the brides had gossiped the previous evening, Pearl knew none of them had expected the town to look the way it did.

  It seemed their good Reverend Hammond had fibbed a little, which is why the brides were staying at La Maison, the nicest building in town. And if they’d come from Denver, then they must’ve been shocked to realize a whorehouse was the best accommodations.

  “What’s your name?” she asked kindly as she poured the woman more tea, resisting the urge to point out how easy it would’ve been for her to do it herself.

  The woman managed to sniff haughtily and took a sip of her tea. It must not’ve passed muster, because she straightened her spine, lifted her nose, and pinned Pearl with a glare. “Maybelle Anderson, of the Denver Andersons, and your tea is cold.”

  Glancing once more at the faint whiff of steam, Pearl tamped down the urge to roll her eyes.

  She’s probably scared and nervous about meeting her groom. Be kind.

  So she just smiled. “I’m sorry. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

  “As if I would ever converse openly with a whore?”

  Before the sting of those words had sunk in, Maybelle did exactly that. Well, Pearl reflected after the first minute and a half of hearing how wonderful Maybelle’s daddy was, the woman wasn’t exactly conversing. She was expounding. Extemporizing. Blathering.

  Pearl kept her smile fixed as she sat down on one of the nearby chairs and poured herself some tea, nodding at what seemed like appropriate times. Maybelle finished talking about her father—he was some sort of businessman, and very wealthy—and started in on her home. Apparently La Maison didn’t hold a candle to her family home’s gilt wallpaper, hand-carved banisters, expensive furnishings…

  Pearl used the time to think about the sketch she’d done upstairs, and what she would draw next. Maybe the view from the window in this parlor; the main street was being cleared, but the snow still clung—picturesque—to the roofs and perched on the signs.

  In fact, it was so pleasant just sitting here, sipping perfectly warm tea and thinking about the snow outside, that when Maybelle ran out of things to complain about La Maison, Pearl prompted her to continue. “If Denver was so wonderful, why did you leave?”

  Something close to doubt flickered across Maybelle’s face for a moment. But she brushed it off with what was obviously a forced laugh. “Because I wanted to get married! Not because I was being for
ced to or anything like that!”

  “Why would you be forced to leave Denver?”

  “I said I wasn’t, you ninny.” Maybelle’s expression had hardened. “It wasn’t like I was being pressured into marrying someone Daddy didn’t approve of, just so that someone could get his hands on my inheritance or anything.”

  “Pressured?” How could a man force a woman to marry him if her father didn’t approve? Pearl’s mind jumped to all sorts of horrible conclusions.

  Maybelle’s laugh was manic, her eyes wide and panicky. “I said I wasn’t being pressured. Try not to be so idiotic if you’re going to listen to my story!”

  It was obvious the woman didn’t want to talk about her reasons for leaving Denver, so Pearl shrugged and settled back with her tea. It had always been in her nature to set other women at ease, even when they were rude enough to call her names in their distress.

  “Very well.” She smiled softly. “What about your groom here in Noelle?”

  After the fraught exchange a moment ago, she hadn’t expected Maybelle’s pleased smile, or the way her already-too-pretty face lit up.

  “Horatio P. Smythe,” Maybelle breathed in a sort of reverent awe. “The most handsome man in this town. The richest too! And the only one worthy of a debutante like me.”

  Pearl’s stomach clenched the way it did when anyone said that man’s name. The smarmy newspaperman was the reason she was so close to being booted out of La Maison, and he kept coming ‘round, making life even more difficult.

  Maybelle, however, blathered on unaware of Pearl’s discomfort. “When our eyes met last night, I just knew. I knew he was the one for me— I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”