Heart of Gold

by Robin Lee Hatcher

  “I’ve upset you,” Alice said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. It’s all right.”

  “The war shouldn’t matter between you and me. Two women who both know what it means to lose the men they love in battles far away from us.”

  Alice was wrong. The war did matter between them. Shannon had wanted to marry Benjamin, had planned to marry him. She’d loved him. At least she’d thought so. Only sometimes her feelings for him seemed to have belonged to someone else. Without his photograph, would she remember what he’d looked like? She wasn’t sure she would, and she felt guilty for it.

  She didn’t like feeling guilty.

  Shannon rose from the chair. “I’m going to fix myself a cup of tea. Would you like one too?”

  Alice looked up at her, her expression a combination of sorrow and weariness. “Thank you. No. I think I shall sleep again. Perhaps a little later.”

  Shannon went to the window and closed the curtains, once again casting the bedroom into shadows. Then she left without another word. When she reached the kitchen, she stopped and made a slow turn. It was a wonderful room with an icebox and a stove that hardly looked used. Several windows let in plenty of light. Oh, how she could envy Alice Jackson such a kitchen.

  Only Alice most likely would never prepare a meal in this room. Alice was dying.

  Unexpected tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t want to feel sorry for Alice or for Alice’s son or her brother. And yet she did. Shannon knew something about losing one’s mother, knew what a hole it had left in her life—an empty space that nothing else seemed to fill. At least she had been sixteen. Todd was only nine, and he’d already lost his father. Now he was losing his mother too. The only family he would have left was the uncle he’d met for the first time last week.

  “What’re you doin’?”

  At the sound of Todd’s voice, Shannon quickly wiped away any trace of her tears. Then she turned. The boy stood in the doorway that led from the kitchen onto the veranda—a veranda that wrapped around three sides of this house on the hillside. Cheerily, she answered, “I was thinking what a lovely room this is.” It wasn’t truly a lie. She had thought that a short while ago.

  “Just a room.” Todd held the pup named Nugget in his arms, and as he spoke he rubbed his chin against the puppy’s golden head. “How’s Ma feelin’? Can I go up to see her?”

  Shannon forced a confident smile. “She seems stronger to me, but she’s sleeping now. I left her to rest while I came down to fix some tea.

  Do you need something?”

  The boy shook his head but came into the kitchen and sat on one of the chairs at the table in the center of the room. Shannon’s mother never would have allowed a dog in her kitchen, but Shannon suspected Alice Jackson wouldn’t mind.

  “Why don’t I fix you some hot chocolate? You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

  From the moment Matthew had been hired as a clerk for Wells, Fargo in San Francisco, his goal had been to become a driver. He’d worked his way from clerk to agent in a matter of weeks, and in a matter of months, he’d become an express messenger. In that capacity, he’d sat beside the stagecoach driver, armed with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, a breech-loading rifle, and a Colt revolver. It had been his responsibility to protect the important documents and express mail entrusted to him, not to mention the valuable minerals—called “treasure”—that were placed in the safe beneath the driver’s feet. He’d made numerous trips between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains in those early years, catching what sleep he could while the stage crossed sagebrush-covered plains or climbed rugged mountain passes.

  But drivers were at the top of the staging hierarchy, and that’s where Matthew had wanted to be. At the top. He’d wanted to slip on those silk-lined buckskin gloves and lace three pairs of reins between his fingers. He’d wanted to snap the whip above the heads of the horses or mules and feel them give another measure of speed. Sure, drivers were exposed to all extremes of weather—rain, wind, snow, sleet, the dry heat of a summer’s sun and the icy cold of a winter’s night—but no more so than a poor fool messenger.

  He’d finally gotten his chance to drive at the age of twenty-five, and that’s what he’d done for the last seven years.

  One thing he’d learned from his many years driving stagecoach for the company—speed was addictive. At first he’d driven hard to keep on schedule. Sometimes he’d done it to avoid getting scalped. But after a while, he’d just craved the rush that came with the race from one location to another.

  After ten days in Grand Coeur, Matthew missed that speed more than he’d thought possible. He found the work of an agent even more confining than he had eleven years before. He spent almost the entire day indoors, buying gold dust, drawing checks, receiving packages and preparing others to be sent out, serving as the telegraph operator, transferring bank funds. There were three of them in the office— Matthew, William, and Ray—and even so they could barely keep up with the demand for the company’s services. But he refused to complain. At least he could provide a home for his sister and her boy. He was thankful for that, despite wishing he was back on the driver’s seat of a stage.

  Such were his thoughts when he arrived home that evening.

  Opening the front door, he was met with delicious odors drifting toward him from the back of the house. Fried chicken, if he wasn’t mistaken. His stomach growled in anticipation.

  He moved toward the kitchen.

  Shannon stood at the stove with her back to him, an apron tied around her waist, taking pieces of chicken from the skillet and placing them on a platter. Todd sat at the table in the center of the room, the puppy on his lap.

  “Uncle Matt!” the boy cried when he saw him. He slid from the chair and set Nugget on the floor. “I helped Miss Shannon make biscuits.”

  “You did, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  Shannon turned to face him. There was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead and her face was flushed from the heat of the stove.

  Oddly enough, it seemed to make her even prettier than he’d thought her before. Not that he wanted to notice that about her.

  “Miss Adair, I never expected you to cook for us.” Although he was glad of it. His experience didn’t extend much further than warming a can of beans. His stomach growled again.

  “I enjoy cooking on occasion,” Shannon said. “My father says my fried chicken is superb.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  She carried the platter of chicken to the table and set it next to a plate stacked with biscuits. “I hope your sister will be enticed to eat a bit more than she did for lunch. She told me fried chicken is one of her favorites.”

  Matthew wouldn’t have known that about Alice, of course. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask.

  Shannon untied the apron and draped it over the back of a chair. “Mrs. Jackson slept a great deal of the day, but I think she might be a little stronger than she was yesterday. Her pain seems to have lessened and her breathing seems less labored.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “Please see that she eats as much as she can. She needs to rebuild her strength, and she can’t do that if she only picks at her food.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Shannon nodded. “Then I shall go home. I’ll be here first thing in the morning.” She moved toward the front door.

  Matthew turned and followed her. “Thank you, Miss Adair, for your help. Don’t know how I’d manage otherwise. I know a little about dressing wounds from gunshot and arrows and a thing or two about trying to save a man’s frostbitten fingers. But what’s wrong with Alice . . .” He shook his head, embarrassed by the helpless feeling that washed over him.

  A look of sympathy flickered in her eyes, then was gone.

  Just as well. He didn’t need her feeling sorry for him any more than he needed to be thinking she was attractive. All he needed was for her to use her nursing skills to care for his sister.

 
Night blanketed the town of Grand Coeur. Even the saloons had grown silent in this wee hour.

  Alice leaned her shoulder against the wall and stared out the window into the inky darkness, her thoughts troubled. Her brother still wasn’t ready to talk about what he would do with his nephew once cancer sent Alice to heaven. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. It had taken many weeks for her to come to grips with the truth.

  She was dying. Someone else would have to raise her son to manhood.

  Despite the years they’d spent apart, she loved her brother and she understood him. She knew he yearned to be back driving a stagecoach, although he was careful not to say so. She knew he was already restless from a more sedentary way of life. How long could he stand working as an agent before boredom sent him back to what he loved best?

  He needs a wife. He needs to marry a woman who will love Todd and take care of him when Matt is away.

  Pain pinched her heart. She hated the idea that Todd might learn to love someone else as his mother, that she might be replaced in her son’s heart. Would he forget her completely?

  She shook her head, trying to drive away the thoughts. She couldn’t think of herself now. She had to think of what was best for her boy. And what was best was for him was to be with family, to be with his uncle.

  “And his uncle needs a wife,” she whispered. “But where is he to find one with so little time left? Especially here in Grand Coeur.”

  She went to her bed and slipped between the cool sheets as her thoughts returned to earlier that evening when Matthew and Todd had joined her in this bedroom for supper. All three of them had enjoyed the meal prepared by Shannon Adair.

  Shannon Adair.

  She was young and attractive, a Christian, the daughter of a minister, and she seemed fond of Todd. Why not her? But something told Alice she would have to approach the matter carefully.

  Very carefully.

  8

  Shannon sat near the window of Alice’s bedroom, thumbing through the pages of one of her most prized books, Notes on Nursing by Florence Nightingale. She paused in the section on taking food.

  Every careful observer of the sick will agree in this that thousands of patients are annually starved in the midst of plenty, from want of attention to the ways which alone make it possible for them to take food. This want of attention is as remarkable in those who urge upon the sick to do what is quite impossible to them, as in the sick themselves who will not make the effort to do what is perfectly possible to them.

  Shannon lifted her eyes from the page to look toward her patient. What more could she do to help Alice take the nourishment she needed to improve her health? She barely ate enough to keep a bird alive. Even the fried chicken Shannon had prepared yesterday hadn’t tempted her to eat more than a few bites. Perhaps it was too rich for her stomach. But she could not grow strong on chicken broth or beef tea alone.

  Perhaps Shannon was expecting too much. According to Dr.

  Featherhill, Alice had only a few months at most to live. Still, Shannon had nursed dying men back from the edge of the grave. With good care and prayer, many patients had defied the predictions of doctors.

  She looked down at the book and continued to read.

  I am bound to say, that I think more patients are lost by want of care and ingenuity in these momentous minutiae in private nursing than in public hospitals. And I think there is more of the entente cordiale to assist one another’s hands between the doctor and his head nurse in the latter institutions, than between the doctor and the patient’s friends in the private house.

  “What are you reading?”

  At Alice’s question, Shannon looked up again. “Nothing important.” She set the book aside and rose from the chair. “Can I get you something? How about some beef tea and bread?”

  “Perhaps later. I would rather talk with you awhile. Please.”

  Shannon was not surprised by Alice’s request. The woman had asked the same thing numerous times over the past two days. Shannon found it impossible not to comply. After all, wasn’t that part of her job as a nurse? To do everything possible to make the invalid comfortable? But these too frequent tête-à-têtes felt much too . . . intimate to her. She would prefer their relationship remain a professional one, as nurse and patient. That was difficult to do as she learned more about Alice.

  “I was thinking about your home in Virginia,” Alice said softly.

  “The way you described it. I can see it clearly in my mind.”

  Shannon settled onto the chair beside the bed.

  “It’s hard to say good-bye to the places we’ve come to love, isn’t it? I was just sixteen when Edward and I left Oregon Territory and returned to his family home in Wisconsin. Of course, I wasn’t leaving anything so pretty as Covington House must be, but it was difficult all the same.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  Alice smiled. “We women do seem to always be following a man somewhere, don’t we? Me, going with Edward back to his boyhood home. And now coming here to be with Matthew because this is where his job is. You, joining your father where he pastors a new church.”

  Shannon couldn’t argue. It did seem to be a woman’s role to do the following. “I suppose, if not for the men in our lives, we women would never stray far from the places of our births. The entire population of the world might still be living within a short distance of the Garden of Eden if left to the gentler sex.”

  Alice laughed aloud. The response brought color to her cheeks and a sparkle to her dark eyes.

  She must have been quite pretty before she took sick.

  “I must remember to tell Matt what you said. He’ll find it funny too.”

  Shannon remembered that moment by the woodpile, when she’d been on her hands and knees, rump in the air, looking for the puppy. She hadn’t cared at all for his laughter then, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to give him another reason to laugh at her now.

  “When we were young, my brother loved to tease me.” Still smiling, Alice closed her eyes. “But he was good to me and looked out for me too. As a girl, I thought the sun and moon rose at his request. Of all the things I remember about my girlhood, I think it’s the sound of his laughter I like the best.”

  Begrudgingly, Shannon admitted to herself that Matthew Dubois did have a pleasant laugh.

  Alice released a sigh. “If not for Edward’s death and my illness, I wonder if I would ever have seen my brother again. But here we are.

  Together.” She looked at Shannon. “The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways. We see only the threads on the back of the tapestry.

  God sees the whole design.”

  Quiet faith. That’s what Shannon saw in the eyes of the woman on the bed. No self-pity. No anger over what lay before her. Peace. A peace that passed understanding.

  Have I ever known peace like that?

  She feared not—and she found herself strangely envious of the dying woman.

  Delaney Adair followed the boardwalk through town. When he made eye contact with others, he smiled and dipped his head in acknowledgment, but he didn’t stop or try to make conversation. His thoughts were busy elsewhere. He was busy praying, beseeching the God of heaven on behalf of lost souls—and it was quite clear to him that there were plenty of them in Grand Coeur. On Main Street alone he’d counted seventeen saloons and six brothels.

  A block back, he’d seen some women from one of those latter establishments sitting on a second-story veranda. Although morning had given way to midday already, they’d been clad in night attire. Revealing attire, at that. One of them had even called out to him, inviting him to come inside and partake of her pleasures. He recoiled at the thought.

  Poor lost souls, indeed.

  Then he recalled the story of Hosea and the example of unrelenting, all-pursuing, unconditional love that book of the Bible provided to God’s children. Perhaps the Lord would have him go back to that brothel and speak to that woman. Perhaps Delaney had missed a door God had opened. Perh
aps the scantily clad female was among the fruit he was here to harvest.

  Lord?

  He waited but felt no urging.

  Richmond had its brothels, of course, as did other towns in Virginia and elsewhere in the South, but Delaney had never felt called to visit those establishments or reach out to those women. Why was that? Because they were tucked away in corners of the city where he never went? Corners where they couldn’t be seen?

  Make the way clear, Lord. Help me to heed Thy voice.

  His thoughts turned to his daughter. He didn’t like the idea of her being exposed to such blatant sin. If a prostitute would call out to a man wearing the collar of a clergyman, might she not be just as bold with a decent young woman? He might want to limit Shannon’s exposure to those in town. Only how was he to do that? His daughter was not the sort to want to be closed away day after day. He supposed it was good she had her nursing duties to keep her occupied.

  Grant me continued wisdom as a father, Lord. Help Shannon become all that You want her to be.

  He stopped and looked behind him at the length of the street. God had called him to this town. He had called him here as His servant, to bring His word and His love to a fallen humanity. At first his flock would be believers, most of them merchants and their wives. A few would be miners and some with less respectable jobs. But wouldn’t it be something if the pews of the church began to fill with the broken and forgotten? With men and women to whom Jesus would say, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back as he turned again and began to pray afresh.

  9

  On Saturday afternoon, as soon as Matthew returned from work, Shannon went into town to do some shopping for the Adair household. However, before she reached the mercantile, a window display caught her eye. A dress shop, and in the window was a beautiful carriage dress of tartan glacé. The bodice was cut low and square. The full skirt was gored and slightly trained, belled by the crinolines underneath.