If Patrick and Charles had caught her at the train station, she would be in her room right now, freshly bathed and preparing for her wedding. There had been no time to order a wedding dress from Paris, but Patrick had commissioned a fashionable gown from the finest seamstress in Omaha, a lovely affair of white satin and old point lace to celebrate the Christmas season along with the marriage. But there had been no celebration in her heart.
Lavinia dressed and buttoned her warm coat, her stomach pacified and her heart grateful. God had answered her prayer on that freight train three days past. He had given her that window in time to escape from those who wanted to dominate her. Here in Colorado she could celebrate her life and this season of rebirth.
The sharp wind pricked her skin when she opened the door. She may have little money now, but as she stepped through the snow, her confidence emboldened, she prayed that He would continue to provide. In time, she hoped, all things would be made new.
Wooden buildings lined the rocky cliffs to the right of the valley and columns of smoke spattered the crisp blue sky with gray. A pounding sound echoed through the valley as she walked back toward town.
Was this the Coronado Mine where Isaac worked? She’d been relieved to discover he was a miner and probably lived in one of the boardinghouses in town. At least she wouldn’t be competing with him to sleep in the barn.
The Western Union was located beside the assay office, just as Isaac directed. She tried to take better care not to draw attention to herself as she walked toward the office. The less conspicuous she was, the better—at least until Mr. Tipton helped her navigate between the truth and Patrick’s lies.
When she stepped inside the Western Union, the operator scanned her tailored cloak before he met her gaze. She moved up to the wooden counter, trying to muster her confidence. He didn’t need to know that she’d never sent a telegram before.
She retrieved her coin purse and set it on the counter. “I would like to wire a friend in Little Rock.”
“Then you’ve come to the correct place.” He slipped a pencil out from behind his ear and tapped on the paper in front of him. “What do you want to say?”
She clicked open her purse as she tried to organize the words in her mind. She must communicate her whereabouts clearly, but she didn’t want to alert the operator or the recipient of the message to her name or the specifics of her predicament. Also, she wasn’t certain how many words she could afford to send.
Mr. Tipton was spending December with his eldest son in Little Rock, so she gave the operator the information to address it. Then she began to dictate her short message. “Visiting Aspen in Colorado. Please wire immediately.”
When she paused, he looked up again. “Is that everything?”
“Do I need to write more?”.
“No, but—whom should I say it’s from?”
She couldn’t include her name, but perhaps there was another way. “L.S. will suffice,” she finally said.
He raised his eyebrows. “An initial is the same price as an entire word.”
“Just the same,” she said. “I want to use initials.”
“It’s your money.” He scribbled down the remainder of the message and picked up the paper. “That will be seventy-five cents.”
Her fingers trembled as she pulled out her quarter. She’d wanted to keep a little money for food just in case she didn’t find work.
“I don’t know if I have that much—”
He began to crumple the paper. “Well, you’ll have to come back when you do.”
Tears began to swim in her eyes, but she blinked them back. She would not give up now. “What if I sent less words?”
“Sorry.” He shrugged. “It’s the same price for ten words or less.”
She slowly placed the quarter on the counter and then her five dimes. She’d hated her stepbrother’s gambling, and now it felt as if she were gambling as well in her attempt to find Mr. Tipton. But without Mr. Tipton’s help, she would never be able to return home.
The operator took her money, and as he tapped her message, she slowly recounted her pennies. There were still six of them left, huddling together in her purse as if they were afraid she might pluck them out, too.
The operator stepped back out to the counter. “I wouldn’t expect a reply until after Christmas.”
She tried to stop the trembling in her lower lip, but it wouldn’t cooperate. “Of course.”
“Where should I deliver your reply?” he asked.
She clasped the purse shut. “I’ll return for it.”
Her heart cried out for her father as she stepped back into the street. He may have been distant during those last years of his life, but he would never let her go hungry. Even his marriage to Eloise had been to help provide for her.
But neither her father nor his money could help now. Somehow she must stretch these pennies until she found work. Or until Mr. Tipton found her.
The steady rhythm from the stamp mill pulsed through Isaac’s office. The hammering was a welcome sound in all the buildings that surrounded the mine. Enormous stamps were crushing the ore, separating the metal from tons of rock—the valuable pieces of silver from the waste.
Outside the window was a covered portal that led down into the Coronado Mine alongside a snow-covered mound of tailings that had been stripped from the tunnel. He and Ned Tucker had spent much of the day working on the plans to build another shaft so they could uncover the new vein of silver. The miners at the Coronado made a good hourly wage, so few would complain about the increase in work, and they were all keenly aware that their jobs were in jeopardy if they failed. Most of his miners were good, hard-working men, and he didn’t want to lose a single one of them to a mine closure or a cutback.
Tomorrow he would close the mine—the only day of the year the company did so. He’d have a strike on his hands if he asked his men to work on Christmas Day.
Harvey, the superintendent of the mill, stepped into his office. “Here’s the paper for you,” he announced as he slid the Rocky Mountain News across Isaac’s desk.
Isaac glanced up at the clock, surprised to see it was already past four. As he and Ned hovered over their plans, scratching notes and diagrams for the new shaft, they’d lost track of the hours. It was nearly supper time and his noon meal still sat untouched in the pail on his shelf.
Harvey leaned back against the doorpost. “Are you two going to the service tonight?”
Ned erased a line before looking up. “I’ll be there.”
Isaac smoothed the wrinkles from the newspaper and set it beside his and Ned’s drawings. “What service?” he asked.
Harvey sighed. “The Christmas Eve service.”
Isaac looked back out the window at the sun dipping behind the mountains. “Perhaps.”
A wisp of smoke hovered over the trees near his house, and his mind wandered back to the lovely woman who’d slept inside his barn. Was she still there, or had she left after sending her telegram? She’d hesitated when he had asked her name, and it made him wonder even more at her story and the reason such a beautiful woman, clearly accustomed to wealth, would find shelter in his barn.
What would she do if he invited her to the service with him? He smiled at the thought. The town would be shocked if he escorted a woman to church. It might be amusing to make his friends and even his employees wonder, but he guessed Kathryn wouldn’t want the attention. It was probably better that he not be seen with her in public, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t celebrate the birth of Christ with her in the barn.
Harvey eyed the pencil drawings. “When do we start the new shaft?”
“In a week,” Isaac said.
“We’ll need at least three months to finish it,” Harvey said. “Maybe four.”
Isaac collected the diagrams into a pile. “We only have one month.”
Harvey’s eyes grew wide. “And then what?”
“Let’s discuss that after Christmas.”
Harvey opened his mouth a
s if to ask another question, but the whistle blew outside the office, and the miners began their short walk down to the boardinghouses in town. Harvey bid his good night, as did Ned Tucker.
Unless Isaac lit the kerosene lamp beside his desk, it would be too dark for him to work much later, but he had time to glance at the headlines of the newspapers before he began his trek down the mountain.
He perused the headlines about the silver mining boom in Colorado and the story about Nellie Bly’s attempt to travel around the world, but when he turned the page, he dropped the newspaper back on his desk, shocked by the picture on page three. On the first column was an illustration of a woman who looked remarkably like the woman who’d spent the night in his barn. Except this woman’s name wasn’t Kathryn—at least not her first name. It was Starr—Lavinia Kathryn Starr.
MISSING FROM OMAHA.
He read the headline twice and then scanned the story. According to the article, Lavinia Starr, the daughter of the multimillionaire Albert Starr, had gone missing from her family’s mansion in Omaha on Sunday. Her stepbrother, Patrick Dittmar, and her fiancé Charles Mahler were greatly distraught. Mr. Dittmar, the article said, was a successful businessman in Omaha and Lavinia’s guardian. He believed his beloved sister to be near Denver and was so concerned about her mental state and whereabouts that he was offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information that helped him find her.
Isaac pressed his fist against his forehead, the number tumbling around in his mind. Ten thousand dollars would buy him the three months he needed to save the Coronado and begin making a profit again. And if Lavinia, in some sort of distressed state, had gotten lost, he would be helping by returning her to a safe place and to the care of her stepbrother and fiancé.
He slowly read through the article one more time. It was odd that the writer didn’t mention the possibility that someone might have kidnapped her for ransom, and it was also strange that there was no report of this fiancé pleading for her return.
Mr. Dittmar said he was scared for his sister, but what if his sister had decided to leave on her own?
A snowflake whisked past his window, and as he stood, he folded the newspaper and tucked it into the pocket of his overcoat. The illustration of her features was almost as precise as a photograph. Plenty of other people in Aspen received the Rocky Mountain News, and if they recognized her, they would surely contact Mr. Dittmar to claim his reward.
He should probably wire Mr. Dittmar straightaway, but something seemed off about the entire prospect. Before he contacted this man, he wanted to give Lavinia the opportunity to tell her story.
Perhaps she had a perfectly good reason as to why she preferred sleeping in a drafty barn on a pile of hay to a mansion in Omaha. Or a marriage to Charles Mahler.
Chapter 6
The sandstone chapel was located near the edge of town, and the stained glass windows glowed from the light inside, a beacon on this cold winter night. Lavinia didn’t dare go inside the church, but she stood nearby under a pine tree and listened. Beautiful music teemed from the pipes of an organ, flowing out into the churchyard, and she softly sang the lyrics with the congregation.
“Silent night, holy night,
Shepherds quake at the sight;
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!”
In the starlight, she could almost see the heavenly hosts strewn over the mountains, rejoicing at the birth of the Savior. Perhaps it was a night much like this one when Christ was born, cold and clear as the men trembled at the sight of scores of angels spanning—illuminating—the sky.
The music faded into the night, and she closed her eyes and imagined the families standing together inside the church, fingers circled around a candle. How she longed to be among them, holding a candle and the hand of someone she loved. Just as she had done years ago with her mother and father.
Loneliness burrowed into her skin like the cold. Instead of idyllic Christmases past, painful memories flooded back to her.
Nine years ago, the Christmas before consumption stole her mother’s life, her father had given his wife the most exquisite necklace with tiny oval-shaped rubies and a stunning diamond. When Father remarried, her stepmother confiscated all of the jewelry for her personal use. Eloise liked to flaunt the ruby necklace every Christmas, almost as if she enjoyed the pain it inflicted on her stepdaughter.
Patrick had been much more exacting in his cruelty. He was seven years older than Lavinia, and when she was younger, Father sent Patrick to attend a university on the East Coast. Each summer and Christmas he returned, and he seemed to thrive on tormenting her while Father was at the office and his mother looked the other way. Why he hated her so, she never understood, but his hatred ran as deep as her wounds.
One Christmas, when she was eleven, Patrick found the beautiful letters her mother had written to her before her death, the letters she treasured more than anything else, and he burned them. He locked the front door of their house so she couldn’t save them, but through the living room window she watched him burn her prized letters over a candle, one at a time. A rock broke the glass, but it was too late to stop him. Patrick collected the ashes of her letters into his palm and brushed them into her bloodied hand.
She cringed at the memory, wishing she could erase it from her mind on this Christmas Eve. Patrick had threatened to hurt her dog if she tattled. She hadn’t believed him and told her father what Patrick had done, but both her stepmother and stepbrother accused her of lying.
Eloise ranted for hours about her husband’s spoiled child who broke windows. Lavinia had been confined to her bedchamber for a week, and she quickly discovered that she preferred the solitude of her room to the company of her stepbrother. She didn’t come out again until he returned to school.
Two summers later, her dog disappeared. Patrick never confessed, but she suspected he knew exactly where Rose went. He had been angry with Lavinia that week for telling Father that he’d been frequenting a gambling hall. Even though Patrick hated her, he had a healthy respect for her father and what would happen to his future if he angered Albert Starr.
After Father lectured him, Patrick promised to stop, but Lavinia didn’t believe for a moment that he quit. He may have respected Father, but Patrick hated the power he had over him. He gambled in secret, and his cruelty toward her became more covert until she wondered if her stepbrother was at fault for her persistent forgetfulness and clumsiness or if she was losing her mind. Whenever Patrick left for school, order was restored in her mind and their house.
After Father’s death, Patrick began to pay her back in the open for the anger he’d pent up for so long, and now that his mother was gone, there was no reason for him to restrain himself. The marriage to Charles, she had no doubt, was quite calculated though she didn’t know what the two men had conspired for her future.
In the months before he died, Father had promised he would provide well for her when he was gone, almost as if he knew his life was nearing the end. A carriage accident swept him away suddenly and there was no time for making new plans or even saying good-bye. Still he had promised—
Tears came again.
At Eloise’s funeral, Patrick informed Lavinia that his mother left the Starr fortune and estate in his care. There was no provision left for her. Her only choice, Patrick had said, was to marry Charles. He insisted she do so right away before Charles changed his mind. Patrick’s urgency frightened her almost as much as the thought of spending the rest of her life with a man notorious for his philandering.
Mr. Tipton would tell her the truth about her inheritance—if she had any inheritance. When she’d tried to send him a telegram from Omaha, Patrick had stopped her. She wouldn’t stop fighting for the answers now. Somehow she would sift and separate the truth from the lies.
When the church doors opened, Lavinia rushed away from the building before anyone saw her. The host of stars led her through the valley and back to the old barn for the night. Th
e embers glowed red from the fire she’d started before the service, and she added a log and stoked it until it turned back into a blaze.
As she sat back on the hay, she wondered again about the first Christmas almost two thousand years ago. What did Mary feel like the night before Jesus was born? She had Joseph beside her, but on the cusp of childbirth, she must have felt a twinge of longing for her mother. And she must have had some questions and even doubt perhaps in God’s promise to her.
Lavinia glanced around at the worn walls and the rotting floor.
How could the Son of God be born in a cold, damp barn?
She reached into her pocket and took out one of the two penny candies she’d purchased at the general store—an almond with a candy shell. It was hardly a Christmas Eve banquet, but as she slowly ate, it pacified the aching in her stomach. She shouldn’t have eaten all the salted pork and dates this morning or offered it to a miner who’d probably had a full meal for his breakfast. But she’d been so hungry and thought he was hungry as well—
Her eyes felt heavy, and with the clean blankets and fire warming her, she drifted off to sleep on her bed of hay. Hours seemed to pass before she woke, and when she did, she heard the deep breathing of someone asleep on the other side of the room. She looked over in the firelight and saw Isaac resting on the floor near the stove.
Her heart began to race at the impropriety of spending the night across the room from a strange man. But Isaac was beginning to feel less like a stranger. Not only had he brought her coffee, but she suspected that he’d delivered the blankets and wood as well.
She didn’t want his help—and she could pretend she didn’t need it—but the truth was that his provisions sustained her on this winter night. She was grateful for the food and warmth. And that she wouldn’t have to spend her entire Christmas Day alone.
Isaac’s back ached when he woke beside the stove. The fire had subsided, but the room was still warm. It seemed ridiculous to sleep on this hard floor when he had a perfectly good bed at home, but he couldn’t let Kathryn—Lavinia—stay in the barn alone.
The WESTWARD Christmas BRIDES COLLECTION: 9 Historical Romances Answer the Call of the American West Page 16