His Forgotten Fiancée

by Evelyn M. Hill

  Liza wasn’t sure she even wanted to ask for any details about Addy’s relationship with Mr. Brown. “So you agreed to pose as the grieving wife of a man you’d never met.”

  Addy shook her head. “That came later. Alfred brought me up to Oregon City. He said it was to see if I could get work here. At least, that’s what he said when I was down in Salem. When I got here, he...well, he wanted me to stay in my room here at the hotel and not go out. I only saw him. He found that...convenient. I was waiting here when he came in a tearing hurry one night. He needed me to come out and help him lure a man into an alley. Some man he’d met in the street, asking for directions to see you. He’d given him misleading directions, to buy time. There was some plan to kidnap the man, take him downriver to Astoria.”

  “Matthew.”

  Addy nodded. “Alfred said all they were going to do was put a bag over his head and send him on a boat down to Astoria. I don’t think they expected him to fight back as hard as he did. There wasn’t supposed to be any violence,” she added virtuously.

  Liza wasn’t sure how to reconcile that with the cuts on Matthew’s forehead and jaw, but she let it pass. There was something else she wanted to know. “How did he end up in the river?”

  “Apparently, he fell during the fight. I don’t know. I didn’t see that part. I’d gone back to the hotel. I think they all thought he had drowned in the river. I didn’t know he’d even been hurt until the next day, when Alfred said he’d showed up at the dry goods store. When he found out that you were planning to have him stay on the claim, he was furious. He said we had to come up with a new plan.”

  She twisted the handkerchief in her lap, avoiding Liza’s gaze. “Alfred figured that he could forge a license and pass me off as your man’s wife. By that time, I’d given up hope of hearing from my own husband. I don’t think he’d know where to look for me even if he did bother. I doubt he ever would. No man would want to marry me up here. Not if they knew I had a husband probably still living, out there somewhere. Or if they knew...” Her voice trailed off, and she put her hand on her stomach for a moment, a brief protective gesture. “I didn’t really see that I had all that much choice.”

  Liza sat there looking at the woman for a long moment. “So why are you telling me all this now?”

  “Because Alfred came to see me late last night,” Addy said. Her voice was so low Liza barely caught the words. “He said—he said that there had been an accident, that a man had been hurt and that there had been witnesses. Alfred thought he might have killed him.”

  “He was trying to kill Matthew,” Liza said flatly.

  “I didn’t know!” Addy practically wailed the words. “I never meant anyone to get hurt, never. I finally told Alfred I would not provide him with an alibi for last night. Then he left me and went to see the Baron. That’s all I know.” She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief.

  Liza regarded the weeping woman. Despite all the things that Addy had done, she felt a pang of concern. She had been abandoned, too. “So...what are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know what to do.” Addy hunched her shoulders, looking down at the handkerchief in her hands. She twisted the wedding band off her finger and gave it to Liza. “I don’t know what happened to the other things Alfred took from your man, but this belongs to you, seemingly. I’m sorry I ever joined in with Alfred’s scheme. I’d love to not be dependent on a man. But a single woman out here can’t claim land. Anyway, I’m better off in a town.”

  “Are you still going to tell people you are married to him?”

  “No. I just want to make a fresh start somewhere.”

  “We’ll have to find you some kind of work.”

  “I could get work as a seamstress, if there’s need of that up here.” Addy fingered the braided trim on her bonnet. “Albert used to bring me presents like this trim, so I’d have something to do with my time. I could make a living that way, maybe.”

  Liza reached out and clasped Addy’s hands. “The Baron can help you and should. After all, you were working for Mr. Brown, and he was working for the Baron, so in a sense you were his employee.”

  “The Baron?” Addy’s eyes widened. “You would dare to go to him? Alfred said he has a fearsome temper.”

  “Oh, yes, I would dare.” Liza thought of Pa, lying in the wagon and coughing. “In fact, I think we should go right now. Hopefully, Mr. Brown will be there, too. I think it’s time for both of them to find out that I have a fearsome temper, as well.”

  She started to get up, but Addy put her hand on her arm. “Wait. I need to know. Can you forgive me?”

  Liza hesitated, looking at the anxiety on the woman’s face. She had spent the past year trying to protect herself from getting hurt, to steel herself against Matthew leaving her just as her pa had. Using a wall of resentment to stop herself from getting hurt. It couldn’t be done. She was not going to travel down that road with Addy.

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “You were abandoned and in a desperate spot. I forgive you.”

  Addy tightened her grip on Liza’s arm, a brief squeeze, then let go. She let out her breath in a rush, looking relieved. Liza felt lighter herself, letting go of the dark thoughts, the last of the anger she had held onto all this time. The only thing driving her now was her determination to resolve this mess. If that meant going to the Baron, so be it.

  * * *

  As Matthew waited to board the steamboat, a man came out of the goods shed. He was deep in conversation with a gray-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard, who wore a captain’s uniform. They shook hands and then the captain turned toward the Multnomah. As the other man headed in Matthew’s direction, he recognized Doc Graham. “Doctor!”

  The doctor peered at him over his spectacles. “Ah, Dean.” He stopped upon taking a closer look at Matthew’s expression. “Is something the matter?”

  In a few terse words, Matthew explained about Liza’s father and Mr. Brown’s abortive attempt to burn down the barn. The doctor’s normally cherubic face looked positively grim by the time Matthew finished. “I suspected Mr. Brown was up to something, but I wasn’t sure. He wanted me to declare you mentally unfit, get you locked up, but there was no way he could prove anything of the sort. It galled him when the Baron seemed so impressed by your knowledge of the law and that Liza was so attached to you. I should have warned you more clearly that he was going to try something to get you out of the way. But I was afraid that he might harm my family. I was wrong to keep silent. Cowardice only encourages a bully.”

  “At least Mr. Brown seems to have cleared out of Oregon City. Probably panicked.”

  The doctor nodded. “The Baron would never put up with the embarrassment of one of his men being caught behaving like the lowest form of criminal. Is Mr. Fitzpatrick badly injured?”

  “Your wife didn’t seem to think so, but I know Liza would feel better if you could examine her father as soon as you can. Do you have transportation back to Oregon City?”

  “No, I was hoping I could catch a ride with one of the other passengers, but I was delayed with the captain and they’ve all gone on. I shall have to rely on Shanks’s mare,” he said a bit sadly.

  “It’s over a mile. A long walk when it’s starting to rain,” Matthew said. “You could do me a favor by returning Dawson’s gelding to him. I left the horse tied up outside the livery stables.”

  The doctor thanked him profusely, and Matthew watched him ride off. The passengers still had not gotten leave to board the steamboat. Apparently the captain had to load the mail and supplies for the upriver traffic before he would take on passengers.

  Ahead of Matthew, the little boy jiggled from side to side. His mother rebuked him, gently, and the boy settled down to sulk quietly by her side. Matthew grimaced. He could remember the frustration of always having to be a model of deportment when you were bursting with energy. Adults never could understand that. We
ll, except for his mother, and even she had expected him to act like a little adult at times. She had always seemed so tired, and just a bit sad, so he had tried hard to please her as best he could.

  Another memory had returned, it seemed. They were fitting back into his mind so easily that he hardly noticed the gaps—except for the past few months before he came here, and his flight from Liza at Fort Hall. Eventually, he would recover all his memories, he felt sure of it. There was nothing he could achieve by fretting, but this missing part of himself was one more brick in the wall of frustration that blocked him from achieving his goals.

  Every instinct he possessed was shouting at him to turn around and go back. There was no telling what Liza would do. She was brave enough to take on the Baron himself. He had seen how fierce she could be when her protective instincts were aroused.

  If she were going to go up against the Baron, she would need Matthew by her side. Where he belonged. Where he had no right to be. He had forfeited any claim when he made a commitment to another woman.

  The rain began to fall in earnest as the line of passengers finally shuffled forward up the dock. Crossing the plank to the boat felt like severing the last tie that held him to Liza. He clenched his hands into fists, but he kept moving forward, one foot in front of the other, until he stood on the deck.

  The other passengers hurried onto the sheltered portico of the main deck to get out of the rain, all except the little boy, who hung back to watch the sailors moving about on the deck, readying the steamboat for its departure. Matthew could see the smokestack far above beginning to belch black smoke as the men in the boiler room stoked the furnace. On deck, the sailors began to cast off the mooring ropes. One sailor tossed back the rope that moored the stern rope, behind the paddle box. The lower end of the boat began to swing free as the current tugged it into the middle of the river. The little boy, caught off balance as he stood by the bow, slipped on the rain-slick deck. Wildly, he waved his arms around in an attempt to regain his footing. Then, with a wail, he fell. His cry was abruptly cut off as he entered the water. His mother shrieked. The sailor cursed. From behind him, Matthew could hear the captain bellowing orders. But he paid no attention to any of this. He dived headfirst after the boy into the river.

  It was like diving into a coal cellar filled with ice water. He could not see, and the cold shocked through his system.

  He remembered.

  Coming into Oregon City just as evening was starting to fall. Asking for directions to where Liza was staying. The woman in the alley, calling for his help. The fight. Black water closing over his head. Panicking, flailing his arms and legs around.

  His outstretched hand made contact with an arm, then a small hand. He grabbed hold of it and held on tightly. But he did not know which way was up, what direction to swim toward the air his lungs were suddenly begging for. He was completely disoriented.

  Struggling until he found firm ground underfoot. Staggering up a dark street, blood in his eyes, heading toward a door with light behind it. Another woman, this one standing in the middle of a room with lantern light transforming her hair into a golden aureole around her. She seemed like an anchor, someone he could hold on to in this whirlpool of confusion. Instinctively he reached out to her just as the darkness claimed him again.

  His head broke the water. He gulped in air, raising the child’s head up above the surface. The boy was trying to sob and gasping for air at the same time. He clung to Matthew’s neck, half choking him. Matthew blinked water out of his eyes. Someone had thrown him a rope. He grabbed at it and was swiftly towed to the steamboat, where eager hands pulled him up onto the deck.

  The air on the deck was, if possible, even more freezing than the water. The breeze cut through Matthew’s sodden clothing like a thousand knives. The boy’s mother swooped down on her child, carrying him off to the warmer regions inside while babbling incoherent thanks to Matthew. Matthew wrapped his arms about himself, hugging himself in an attempt to get warm. He could not stop shaking. The captain threw a blanket over Matthew’s shoulders. “Well done,” he said, giving him a firm handshake. “Come inside the cabin, man. We need to get you warmed up.”

  “Thank you,” Matthew gasped. “But I don’t think I’ll need to make this trip after all. I need to get off this ship. Now. I have to go back.”

  At last, he could remember. He knew where he had been and what he had been doing all this past year—and what he hadn’t done. He could testify in court, if necessary, that he knew where he’d seen that woman before. And it hadn’t been at a wedding.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They couldn’t just let him leave, of course. First he had to be thanked by the half-hysterical mother, the captain and most of the passengers and crew. The captain backed the boat up to the dock long enough for Matthew to disembark, and he insisted that the goods shed superintendent see that Matthew got a change of clothes and some hot coffee. He had to admit that he needed both. It had stopped raining, for the moment, but he was still shaking from the effects of the cold water. The hot coffee was marvelously warming as he drank it. Nevertheless, he fretted over the delay. He had a sense that he didn’t have much time to waste. He had finally regained the missing pieces of his memory.

  He remembered that night in Fort Hall, when he had left Liza. She had been laughing when she made the remark about having six children, but that night he could not sleep. He’d taken a walk to try to sort things out in his own mind. All he could think of was the memory of his mother, worn down by work and worry into an early grave. He paced through the night, trying to think of a solution. What if something happened to him? Liza would be in the same position as his mother. And then he had come across the young men.

  They had been sitting around a campfire, eating a predawn breakfast of cold bread and salt pork, talking about how they were all going to strike it rich in the goldfields in California. Matthew had taken it for no more than the usual round of idle boasting at first. Then one of the men had taken a piece of paper out of an inner pocket and showed it to him. It turned out to be a much-folded page from a newspaper in Sacramento. “My cousin out in Hangtown sent it to me,” the man explained. He pointed to an etching of an enormous nugget of gold that had been found at Sutter’s Mill. “This fellow pulled five thousand dollars’ worth of gold right out of the ground,” the man had said, folding the newspaper carefully back up and tucking it away again. “His grandchildren’s grandchildren will be bragging about him a hundred years from now. That’s what’s waiting for me in California. Fame and fortune for anyone brave enough to grab for it.”

  Matthew had no use for fame, but with Liza wanting a passel of children, he might well need a fortune or two.

  The group of young men were leaving at first light to head out on the California trail. They wouldn’t wait for Matthew to take his leave of Liza. They were traveling on horseback, moving fast. He didn’t know when the next group heading for California would come by, but they would more than likely be a wagon train, drawn by slow and ponderous oxen. That was part of the appeal of this group; they would get to California weeks before any wagon train, probably even before Liza had arrived in Oregon. He could pick up his share of gold and be off to Oregon before she had time to miss him.

  It was crazy, a reckless adventure. But it could save Liza. There was no way he was going to watch his bride suffer through a lifetime of working herself into an early grave, the way his poor mother had done. He was not going to let that happen. The sky behind the eastern mountains had been growing perceptibly lighter. He could start to see the landscape around him, beyond the dying fire. The young men started packing up their belongings.

  Even from the distance of a year’s time, he remembered the absolute conviction he had felt that it was worth any sacrifice if he could save Liza from suffering. That was what had decided him. Without stopping to think, he had gone to speak to her.

  She was traveling with the R
eed family and slept by their wagon. The Reeds’ campfire had burned low, but even in the dim light he could see how peaceful she looked sleeping there. He did not have the heart to wake her.

  Gold for the taking, for any man determined enough to reach for it. He made his decision. He wouldn’t wake Liza to tell her he was leaving. The explanation would take time, and the men were already saddling up their horses. He would write her a note and leave it by her bedroll.

  He closed his eyes. That hurried note. He couldn’t remember the exact words he’d used, but he knew he had not explained himself adequately. There was no way to pour everything he wanted to say into a short note scribbled over a dying fire, but he had tried his best. Then he saddled up his horse and followed the men heading southwest toward California.

  Pulling himself out of his memories, Matthew shook his head. There were no horses available at the livery stables in Canemah. None. Matthew could not believe it. He had no choice but to walk. He set out along the road back to Oregon City, walking as fast as he could along the rutted track while avoiding the mud puddles. The wind brought another spattering of raindrops, and then more. Then it began to rain steadily. The raindrops beat a steady staccato percussion against the leaves of the big-leaf maples that lined the track. Matthew turned his collar up against the water, but he had no hat, not even that flimsy one Liza had made for him. Water saturated his hair and then ran down inside his collar, cold as charity.