Sandra looked up at him from beneath dark, dense lashes. “Watch out for her, Caleb. If the men of Fort Deveraux have the wrong idea about Lily, so do the women—and they’ll tear her apart if they get the chance.”
Caleb frowned. “What are you saying?”
“It isn’t just those bawds down on Suds Row that Lily has to look out for. Did it escape your notice that the ‘good’ women at my party snubbed her in that ever-so-gracious way they have? They don’t like her, Caleb, and they won’t miss an opportunity to let her know it.”
“Gertrude likes Lily,” Caleb maintained.
“That will take her only so far. She’s prettier by half than any girl on the post, and now she’s got that infernal laundry business going. Lily’s proud, Caleb, and that’s her weakness. They’ll relegate her to Suds Row if they can.”
Caleb resisted an urge to go back to Fort Deveraux, snatch Lily up, and take her with him to Spokane. If she was at his side, no one would hurt her—he’d see to that. “Women,” he muttered furiously.
Sandra patted his arm in silent sympathy.
When Lily reached the general store with her letters in hand to mail, she got a surprise. There was an envelope waiting for her, forwarded many times. It bore a Chicago return address, and the handwriting was vaguely familiar to Lily.
Her heart lurched. The letter was from Caroline … or Emma … it had to be. Fingers trembling, she tore open the envelope.
A piece of paper wafted to the ground, and Sergeant Killoran, the storekeeper-postmaster, recovered it for her. “You look a little peaky,” he said, ushering her to a chair and pressing her into it. “You’d best sit for a spell.”
Lily’s throat closed as she read the letter enclosed, and her eyes burned with unshed tears. The message had been written not by either of her sisters, but by Kathleen Chalmers Harrington—her mother.
Shock made it impossible to concentrate on the contents of the letter, and Lily finally let it rest in her lap while she struggled to regain her composure.
“You’d better have a sip of this,” Sergeant Killoran said kindly, handing her a cup.
She took one sip of brandy, then another.
“Bad news?” the sergeant asked.
Lily shook her head, then nodded, then tried again to read the letter through. The years had been good to her, Kathleen wrote, but there hadn’t been a day when she hadn’t regretted sending her children away. She had spent years searching for them after being divinely delivered from her penchant for the demon rum, but until she’d hired a good detective agency she’d had no luck.
Now Kathleen sincerely hoped that “her beautiful girls” would forgive her and come home to her bosom, since she didn’t expect to live much longer.
Lily put down the letter and looked at the bit of paper Sergeant Killoran had recovered from the floor for her. It was a bank dra for seven hundred and fifty dollars, and it bore Kathleen’s own signature.
Seven hundred and fifty dollars! It was a fortune.
Lily swallowed hard as she gazed disbelievingly at the money. With this she could make all her dreams come true—or, at least, most of them. There was, of course, a conflicting urge to fling the money back in her mother’s face.
She took another sip of the brandy and read the letter through again. She remembered life in Chicago, how often she’d been hungry and frightened there. She remembered the soldier swatting Kathleen on the bottom, and the way their two shadows had intertwined behind the canvas Curtain. She crumpled her mother’s letter into a ball, walked across the room to the stove, and tossed it in with the envelope.
She left the general store in something of a daze, absently fanning herself with the bank draft that would buy lumber and seed and pay the Pinkerton man … if she didn’t decide to return it.
Lily was nearly home when she realized that if her mother had managed to track her down, she might have found Emma and Caroline, too. Kathleen Harrington could be the only person on earth who knew where her sisters were.
Her heart pounding in her throat, Lily whirled and ran back to the store. Without a word to any of the clucking ladies looking at the new display of yard goods she yanked open the stove door. To her relief, the handle was cold. There was no fire within.
She retrieved the letter and envelope.
“I saw her myself,” one of the women was saying. “She was sitting right there in that chair, drinking brandy like a man.”
Lily didn’t even try to identify her critic. She refolded the letter neatly and tucked it back inside the envelope along with the bank draft. Then, with her chin held high, she walked out of the general store and hurried home.
Sitting at her table, she read the letter again and again, for her mind was in such a state of confusion that it was difficult to understand the simple, straightforward words.
Finally she got out her paper and pen and ink again and started a letter of her own.
“Dear Mama,” it began.
Lily tore the paper to shreds before the ink was dry. Kathleen Chalmers Harrington might think she could win her youngest daughter back with a few airy lines, but she was wrong.
“My dear Mrs. Harrington,” Lily wrote. Finding that she could live with that salutation, she went on writing. She informed her mother that, although she regretted the fact, she couldn’t get away from her “interests” in the west. She lifted her head again as she thought about the bank draft. Then, her hand shaking with excitement even though she knew it might be weeks or even months before she received an answer, Lily inquired as to the whereabouts of her sisters.
She recomposed the letter four times before she was satisfied. Then, after hiding the bank draft under the flyleaf of Typhoon Sally, she set out for the general store again. Where money was concerned, Lily was torn between pride and practicality.
Sergeant Killoran looked at her with friendly concern before weighing r letter and taking the postage money she held out. “Is everything all right now, Miss Lily?”
For the first time in thirteen years Lily had real hope of finding Emma and Caroline. “Yes,” she answered. “Everything is wonderful.” She thought of the seven hundred and fifty dollars at home in her book and smiled. Practicality had come out the winner. “Everything is perfect.”
On Saturday morning, when the stagecoach arrived, Lily was waiting for it, her ticket in hand, her valise sitting beside her on the wooden sidewalk.
The handsome driver greeted her with a grin and a tip of his dusty hat. “My name is Sam Hargrave, in case I’ve neglected to offer it,” he said.
Lily smiled at his boldness. She was a woman of means now, and that meant she could be generous. “Will we be leaving soon?” she asked.
Sam nodded and settled his hat on his head again. “Yes, ma’am. Soon as I’ve given these horses some food and water and let them rest for half an hour or so, we’ll be on the road.”
“Thank you,” Lily said. She was turning to go back inside the store to wait when a familiar female voice hailed her. She lifted her yellow bonnet back onto her head so that her eyes were shaded from the bright sunshine, and she saw Gertrude Tibbet approaching.
“You’re not leaving us, are you?” Mrs. Tibbet asked, taking both Lily’s hands in hers. The worried expression in the woman’s eyes warmed Lily’s heart.
She shook her head. “I’ll be back on next Saturday’s stage,” she said. “I’ve got some business to attend to in Spokane, that’s all.”
Mrs. Tibbet did not look reassured. “Is there anything wrong, my dear? If there is, John and I could surely be of assistance—”
“Everything is fine,” Lily broke in gently. “I’ve come into a small … inheritance, and I want to deposit it in a bank and order implements for my farm.”
The older woman shook her head from side to side in gentle amusement and squeezed Lily’s hands. “Just as long as you’re coming back. By the way, my dear, your friend Velvet is working out very well. She’s the best housekeeper I’ve ever had—so eager to please.�
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Lily was delighted.
“I’m even thinking of taking her home to Fox Chapel with us when John retires. Provided she hasn’t married a soldier and deserted us by then, of course.”
The mention of Fox Chapel reminded Lily of Caleb, and the smile faded from her face. She wondered whether he even remembered telling her to wait at his house for his arrival home. It wasn’t likely that he did. Anyway, Lily knew she was going to be much better off once she’d forgotten him.
Mrs. Tibbet gave her a farewell kiss on the cheek, said something Lily didn’t catch because her mind had been wandering, and then disappeared into the general store. Two ladies Lily recognized from church walked by, and she smiled at them.
They glared at her and swept their skirts aside, and Lily felt as thgh she’d been slapped. She climbed inside the stagecoach to wait, her cheeks flaming. Her first thought was that they knew about her interludes with Major Halliday, but she dismissed that idea soon enough. It was her laundry business and the presumption that she was a woman of loose principles that had caused them to snub her.
Lily wanted to run after the women and tell them that she’d never taken money from a man for anything but washing his clothes, but her pride wouldn’t allow that. She sat very still inside the coach, her handbag in her lap, and waited for Mr. Hargrave to announce that they were leaving.
A heavy woman accompanied by an adolescent girl climbed into the coach and settled across from Lily with such energy that the whole vehicle shook.
“Hello,” said the girl, smiling at Lily.
Before Lily could return the greeting the young lady’s mother reached out and slapped her daughter soundly on the hand. “Don’t you speak to that woman again, Alvinia Baker!”
Lily’s mouth tightened. It promised to be a long trip.
Chapter
11
Even though Caleb had known in the core of his being that Lily would not be waiting in his house when he returned from Spokane, he was disappointed not to find her there. As he walked through the dusty rooms where the furniture looked misshapen under coverings of cloth he imagined the changes Lily’s presence would have wrought in the place.
It was cold and dank in that house, but Lily would have had fires burning on both the hearths and in the kitchen stove. The rooms were dark and smelled musty, but if Lily had been there, the good scents of bread baking and of woman would have been in the air, and the windows would have glowed with light.
Caleb sighed. He was getting pretty fanciful these days, he thought to himself. The plain, unvarnished reality was that while Lily might surrender her body to him—her own needs drove her to do that—she had no intention of surrendering her dreams.
After a few more minutes of solitude Caleb left the house he’d moved out of after his parting from Sandra and returned to his buggy. His horse was tired, so he drove slowly toward Lily’s cottage.
He knew the moment he rounded the corner that something was different—and wrong. When he reached the gate he realized that the place was as empty as the house he’d just left.
Caleb strode up the walk and knocked at the front door all the same. When there was no answer he went around back. No laundry hung on the clotheslines, and there was no fire burning under the wash kettle. He tried the door only to find it soundly locked.
Exasperated—and more than a little worried—Caleb left his horse and buggy at the gate and walked down to the Tibbet house. A plain woman wearing a mobcap and a blue percale dress answered his knock.
“Yes, sir?”
Caleb asked for Gertrude and was admitted. He found his friend seated in her parlor, happily stitch a sampler.
“Where’s Lily?” he asked without preamble.
Gertrude smiled. “Sit down, Caleb, and calm yourself. She hasn’t gone to the ends of the earth. I presume Sandra boarded her train without incident?”
Hat in hand, Caleb took a seat on the settee and nodded impatiently. “She’ll be in Pennsylvania by the end of the week.”
“I envy her in some ways,” Gertrude said with a sigh.
Caleb could barely sit still. “About Lily,” he prompted.
Gertrude didn’t look up from her embroidery. “She’s gone to Spokane to buy nails and seed and such as that. Came into some kind of windfall. She got on this morning’s stage and left.”
Caleb was on the edge of the settee. “For Tylerville?”
“For Spokane,” Gertrude repeated.
“What kind of windfall?” Caleb pressed.
Mrs. Tibbet shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, dear. She only told me that she’d come into some money and meant to buy things for her farm.”
Caleb swore under his breath and got to his feet. He had so much to say to Lily, and presents to give her, and here she’d taken off on some wild goose chase. She really meant to move to that damned farm, the stubborn little chit.
“Lily will be home next Saturday, Caleb,” Gertrude said in a tone that was probably meant to be both stern and soothing. “And all your fretting and swearing won’t bring her back a moment sooner.”
Caleb wasn’t sure of many things at that moment, but he did know he couldn’t wait a full week to see Lily again. He took out his pocket watch, the one Joss had given him on his twelfth birthday, and flipped open the case. He’d passed the stage on his way out from Tylerville, and he knew he could catch it if he rode a fast horse.
After a rather abrupt good-bye to Mrs. Tibbet he strode out of the house and back down the street to where he’d left his horse and buggy. His own gelding was too weary for him to ride, so he drove to the stables.
Twenty minutes later he was in pursuit of the stagecoach. Fifteen minutes after that he was walking back toward Fort Deveraux. His borrowed horse had thrown a shoe.
The stop in Tylerville was a brief one, but Lily had a piece of pie in the hotel dining room where she’d worked before going to Fort Deveraux and chatted with Charlie for a while. To her relief, the unfriendly woman and her daughter were nowhere around when she returned to the stage. In fact, it looked as though she would have the vehicle entirely to herself until, at almost the last moment, a lovely auburn-haired lady arrived. She had a great deal of baggage, and she ordered Sam Hargrave around until it had all been secured in a fashion she approved of.
When she took a seat across from Lily she smiled wanly and said, “Hello.”
This was certainly an improvement over her ill treatment at the hands of that Fort Deveraux woman. “Hello,” Lily responded warmly. “My name is Lily Chalmers.”
“Miss or Missus?”
“Miss, but please call me Lily.”
“Of course I will. I’m Bianca Parrish, Lily, and I’m very glad to meet you. Tell me, what’s your destination?”
Lily smiled, liking Bianca instantly for her dancing blue eyes and friendly face. “I’m traveling to Spokane. And you?”
Sadness flickered in Bianca’s eyes for just the briefest moment. “San Francisco,” she said after a short hesitation. “I’m afraid things didn’t work out very well for me here.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily told her sincerely.
Bianca shrugged her elegant shoulders and intensified her smile. “Don’t be. I’m going to be married when I get home, and I’m sure I’ll be happy enough.”
Privately, Lily thought Bianca shouldn’t get married if she was no more excited about it than that, but she didn’t say so. After all, the woman was a stranger to her. “Did you have a business here?” she asked, just to make conversation.
The stage jerked into motion, and Bianca put one hand on her feathered hat to keep it in place. She was wearing a dress of green silk and carrying a handbag that matched precisely. “You might say that. I was waiting for a man to marry me—I hope this doesn’t shock you, Lily, but it’s such a relief to speak frankly—and he came to me and said he’d found someone else.”
Again Lily was filled with sympathy. “That’s terrible.”
“Luckily, there’s a man in San Francisco wh
o’s been waiting for me for years. I wired him that I’d come home if he still wanted me, and he replied that he’d be waiting.”
Lily thought it strange that an attractive, intelligent woman like Bianca should take such care that she had another man to go to, but again she kept her thoughts to herself. She was just glad to have company during the trip. “San Francisco must be a wonderful city,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
Bianca nodded and glanced out the window at the countryside. There were a great many pine trees towering on either side of the road. “I guess one place is about the same as another,” she said with a little sigh. Her smile was determinedly brighter when she met Lily’s eyes again. “Tell me, what are you planning to do in Spokane?”
Lily explained that she meant to buy equipment for her farm, but she said nothing about hiring the Pinkerton agent to search for her sisters. Bianca was still too much of a stranger for Lily to share so delicate a hope.
The miles between Tylerville and Spokane passed quickly, and the growing city was visible in the distance when suddenly there were shouts and the stagecoach came to a sudden stop.
Lily heard Sam Hargrave swear up in the box of the coach, and for one terrible moment she thought they’d been set upon by bandits. She was completely shocked when Caleb wrenched open the stage door.
“You’ve changed your mind,” Bianca said softly.
Lily’s gaze shifted from Caleb to Bianca and back again. Even with his face shrouded by the shadow of his hat brim Lily could see that Caleb had gone a little pale.
“No,” he answered flatly.
“Damn it, Major,” Sam complained from the box, “I got a schedule to keep!”
“Hold on,” Caleb said distractedly. “Lily, I’ve got to talk to you.”
An awful suspicion was forming in Lily’s mind. Bianca had been talking about a man she’d hoped to marry, and when she saw Caleb, she’d said, “You’ve changed your mind.”
Lily and the Major Page 17