She didn’t wait for his response, or to see him down the steps, but once she’d shut the front door, she moved to the side window to watch and make sure he left. Which he did, strolled along the walkway and then down the road to town as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Maybe he hadn’t.
They were all on her shoulders.
Chapter Six
By noon the next day, Sara had received over a dozen marriage proposals. Some from men she’d never met, and hoped never to see again. The responsibility of telling them she wasn’t interested in marriage had been lifted from her shoulders. Amelia had seen to that. Sara questioned whether she should be upset, or at least uncomfortable, but she wasn’t. Grateful was more what she felt, and that didn’t settle well, either. Being grateful to Crofton for anything was not what she wanted.
She didn’t want to be married, either. Elliott Cross had barely disappeared down the road when others had started walking up it. Amelia had handled the first knock after Elliott’s, which had flustered her to the point she’d called Crofton downstairs to make the suitor leave. He’d done so, and had done the same to several others after that, including the ones who’d started knocking upon the door shortly after the sun rose this morning.
Crofton was polite enough not to mention them at breakfast, but she had a feeling lunch would be different. He’d positioned himself on the front porch all morning, stopping would-be suitors before they had a chance to knock. Not wanting to know who they were or how many had made the trip to the house, Sara had closed herself in Winston’s office to focus on the contracts. That hadn’t happened. There was no opportunity to focus on anything with Amelia opening the door every few minutes to tell her Crofton had just shooed away another one. Elliott Cross’s words still echoed in her mind, too. Crofton’s arrival was suspicious, very suspicious.
Closing the leather-bound ledger that Winston had used to record each load of lumber sold to the railroad, Sara leaned back to look out the window. Puffs of steam rising into the air proved the mill was processing lumber just like it had last week, and the week before, and the week before that. Nothing had slowed, not even the day of the accident, or yesterday during the funeral. It was as if Winston was still here, but he wasn’t.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. If only he was still here, then none of this would be her problem. There would be no men knocking on the door, no Crofton sitting on the porch, no—
“Amelia asked me to remind you lunch is almost ready.”
Sara opened her eyes and stood. “I know. I was on my way.”
“Really?” Crofton said. “You looked like you were taking a nap.”
“I was not napping.” Pushing the chair up to the desk, she said, “I was resting my eyes.”
“Winston’s handwriting was that bad?”
“No.” She sighed. “I was grasping all I’d read.” It was a lie. The entries had been a blur, and her mind too full of other things to soak up what it should be absorbing. How was she going to assure his dream was kept alive if she couldn’t decipher what it would take to achieve it?
“I’ll help you go through it, if you’d like.”
That was the last thing she’d like. “Bugsley has already offered to help,” she said, exiting the office.
Walking beside her, Crofton asked, “Do you trust him?”
“Bugsley?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. He was Winston’s right-hand man.”
Crofton said no more as they walked into the dining room, but she read his silence as clearly as if he’d spoken. He didn’t like Bugsley any more than Amelia did, which considering how they felt about each other was easy to understand. If she was in an understanding mood, which she wasn’t.
They sat at the table much like they had the night before. With Crofton and Amelia on one side, her on the other. Once again, with a grin that could charm the hair off snakes, he complimented Amelia on her cooking, claiming it was far better than he remembered.
“I told you I’ve had practice,” Amelia said. “You’d never know by the looks of her, but there were days that Sara could have eaten you under the table.”
Snakes of course didn’t have hair, and his charm didn’t affect her, but the way he turned that grin in her direction, Sara felt a blush heating her cheeks.
He lifted a brow, which she tried hard to ignore. If possible, he looked even more like Winston when he did that, and that had her mind going back to Elliott, and the rest of Royalton. Winston had made it no secret that he’d had a son who had died back in Ohio. Besides what Elliott had pointed out, Crofton’s appearance could make some believe Winston had lied about his past. Elliott could even have created that story himself. Although he claimed otherwise, she was sure he’d made up a story or two in order to sell more papers.
“So...” she said slowly, trying to gather coherent thoughts, “when did you hear about Winston’s death? Were you already in town?”
He set his fork down and wiped his lips with his napkin before speaking. “The livery owner told me as soon as I arrived in town,” he said. “It was late, but he was still up, and several others were gathered at his place, talking. The accident had happened that day.”
She understood what they were talking about. The entire town had worried what would happen to the mill. Bugsley had put them at ease by announcing Winston would want things to continue just as they would if he’d been alive, which he would have. People had seemed to be satisfied with that, but they’d had to wonder how long things could go on as they always had. She certainly did.
“Come now,” Amelia said, “we don’t need sad thoughts surrounding our meal.” Turning to Crofton, she pointed out, “Your father never liked to talk business at the meal table, just like back in Ohio. Said meals were to be enjoyed.”
Crofton nodded and continued to eat, but Sara doubted he felt like eating any more than she did.
They’d no sooner taken their last mouthfuls, when a knock sounded on the door.
“I’m starting to hate that sound,” Amelia said.
Crofton was already standing, and Sara made no attempt to dissuade him. She didn’t want to face another suitor now any more than she had earlier.
When he returned a few moments later, with Bugsley, Sara found herself wishing he’d sent the man away as quickly as he had the others. That made her angry at herself. She’d never been cowardly, and now wasn’t the time to start. Finding resolve in that, she pushed away from the table.
“We can talk in the office,” she said.
Amelia’s tsk echoed in the room before she said, “We’ve just finished lunch, Mr. Morton, but there is plenty and it’s still warm if you are hungry.”
“No, thank you, though I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Long,” he answered. “I won’t keep Sara long.”
“See that you don’t. She’s already had an exhausting day.”
As Bugsley lifted both brows, Sara wanted to tsk herself. “No, I have not,” she said to Bugsley. “However, I do have several questions for you.”
Crofton watched the eye exchange between Amelia and Morton as closely as he had last night. He’d learned a lot from the would-be suitors showing up at the door, and had to wonder who was to blame for the rumors circulating Royalton. His money was on Morton.
There was more to it, though. Amelia didn’t like Morton, and in order for that to have happened, there had to be a good reason.
“Go,” Amelia hissed in his ear as soon as the other two left the room. “Follow them.”
Even though he would like to know what Morton and Sara would discuss, he wouldn’t stoop to eavesdropping. “There’s no reason for me to follow them.”
“Yes, there is,” she said. “I don’t trust him.”
“I’ve sensed that.” Crofton started gathering dishes off
the table.
“I’ll do that,” Amelia said. “You should be in that office with those two.”
“No,” he said, continuing to clear the table. “I should be right here helping you. I’ll have you know, I know my way around a kitchen. I’ve been doing my own cooking and cleaning, and laundry, for a long time now.”
She took the plates from his hands. “Why’d she finally tell you? Your mother, why did she tell you Winston wasn’t dead?”
He gathered more dishes. “She didn’t. I overheard them in the study.”
“Who?”
“Her and Thomas, her husband.” He’d never thought of Thomas Bennett as his stepfather, certainly not in the way Sara had Winston, but on that day, he’d been grateful for what the man had done. “I overheard Thomas telling Mother that I had the right to know, therefore I stepped into the room and asked what he was referring to.”
“Did she tell you why? Why she did it?”
“No.” He led the way to the kitchen. In truth his mother hadn’t been the one to say Winston hadn’t died all those years before, Thomas had, and when Crofton had asked her if that was true, she’d refused to answer. “She just said she’d done it for me.” His mother had shouted that out the door as he was leaving. That she’d done it for him, to save his life. Save him from dying in the wilderness his father had wanted to drag him into.
Dishes clanged as Amelia set them down on the cupboard. “It was not for you. It was for her. Everything that woman ever did was for herself. I suppose she got remarried as soon as you got to England.”
“No.” Crofton returned to the dining room for the rest of the lunch dishes. “I can’t say exactly when she married Thomas. I was at school.”
“School? She sent you off to boarding school?”
Amelia sounded about as appalled as he’d been when his mother first dropped him off at the Cheshire School for Boys, and in the years that followed. There had barely been a night when he hadn’t lain awake wishing his father was still alive and would come rescue him. He’d grown to hate America at that time, believing his father had died while traveling West, as his mother had told him. Later, it had become that same hatred that had put the yearn inside him to return to America, to fulfill his father’s dream of holding a bit of that untamed wilderness in the palm of his hand. Oddly enough, somewhere along the road, he’d forgotten that little tidbit.
“Yes, I was at boarding schools. Several of them,” he answered. “It was less than a week after graduation that I learned that Winston hadn’t died.”
“What did you do?”
Carrying the last few dishes into the kitchen, he answered, “I left. Came to America.” His answer sounded much simpler than it had been. He hadn’t had a pound to his name. Thomas had offered him money, but he’d refused. Stubborn and full of hate, he hadn’t wanted anything from anyone. Not for a long time. Still didn’t.
A bit of the animosity his memories were sprouting had him stating, “It appears Winston wasted no time in getting remarried.” All the while he’d been lying in a cold cot surrounded by identical cots holding other boys who did have fathers who came to get them regularly, Sara had been receiving all the love and attention he’d been wishing for.
“No, he didn’t,” Amelia said. “It took us a long time to get here. Trains didn’t go as far then as they do now. It was a long and grueling trip, which was why your father didn’t bring you with us. He would have though, if your mother would have allowed it. They’d argued about it. She’d refused to come West, or to let you, until there was a decent home for you to live in. That took time. We barely managed to get a cabin roughed in before the snow came. Besides a few that had come with us, your father had hired men along the way, and they worked all winter building the lumber mill. By spring it was running and he started building this house, just as he’d promised your mother. That’s when her letter arrived—stating the details of your death. Winston left right away for Ohio, on horseback. Nate and I stayed here, and your father returned that fall. I thought he’d lost his will to live. He was a broken man that winter. Real broken.”
Crofton hardened his insides against the pain that wanted to fill his chest.
“He didn’t stop, though,” Amelia went on. “Hardly slowed down, he just didn’t have the gusto he’d had before. Understandably. It had to have been two summers later, or more, it’s been so long now, I can’t remember, that he headed East again for meetings with the railroad. He was on his way back here when the train he was on was robbed and he was shot. That was in Kansas. The folks that came out to rescue the passengers didn’t think Winston would make the long trek back to town, so they dropped him off at the nearest farm. That was Sara’s place, well her mother’s, Suzanne. Suzanne’s husband had died the year before—dragged to death by a wild horse he was attempting to break. Your father claimed Suzanne had saved his life. Once he was up and about, he loaded both Suzanne and Sara up and hauled them home with him.”
A serene smile had settled upon Amelia’s face. “She was a good woman. Suzanne, that is, you’d have liked her, and she’d have liked you. She loved your father like no tomorrow, and he loved her back. They were just what the other needed. She was soft-spoken and gentle and kind, but most of all, she believed in him. With that kind of love and support, he couldn’t fail. And he didn’t.”
Crofton had buried his teeth in his bottom lip to keep from interrupting. He didn’t need to know what kind of woman his father had married. Didn’t want to know if they’d been happy, or in love or anything else.
With her hands in the dishwater, Amelia barely paused with the washing as she continued, “And of course he adored Sara from the moment he saw her. We all did.” She laughed. “She wasn’t like you. She barely made a peep, never asked for anything, but boy did that little girl aim to please. She’d haul in chunks of firewood so large her little arms would be trembling from the weight. But that never stopped her from going and fetching another one, without being asked, mind you.”
He did mind. Given the opportunity, he would have hauled in firewood, too, without being asked, and anything else he could have done just to have had one more day with his father.
“Which is why you should be in that room with her right now,” Amelia said. “All Sara knows is how to please people. She’s not as strong as she thinks she is, and Bugsley Morton knows that.”
Bringing his focus back to things that matter, Crofton asked, “Why do you dislike him so much?”
Amelia sighed and her hands stilled in the soapy water. Turning slowly, in order to look at him, bitterness filled her eyes when she said, “Because he got Nate killed.” Disgust wrinkled her face as she continued. “You gotta fight guns with guns, that’s what Bugsley told Winston when that silly railroad war was happening, and sure enough, Nate was the one to pay for it. With his life.” Sniffling, she shook her head. “He’ll convince Sara of something just as stupid, and you’ve gotta stop that. Winston wouldn’t want that girl getting hurt. He’d expect you to stop that from happening. You know that as much as I do.”
Although a part of him could sympathize with Amelia, Crofton shook his head. “I’m not here to fulfill what Winston would have wanted.” Knowing she’d argue that until time stopped, he turned and started for the door. “I’ll be back in time for supper.”
“Where are you going? You can’t leave with...”
He walked out of the kitchen and through the dining room, trying to tell his ears not to listen. He wasn’t here to save Sara from Bugsley Morton or any of the other men who came knocking upon the door. Why he’d taken up that role this morning was beyond him. He should have told the first one to go fetch the reverend, then maybe his thoughts could focus on Mel. If Bugsley had been the one to convince his father to draw guns during the railroad wars, he could have also convinced him to pull the southern line, and to stop Mel from protesting it.
; The one thing he’d never forgotten about his father was his passion. When Winston had wanted something, he’d become obsessed with it, and hadn’t let anything stand in his way. Crofton had that passion, too. He’d put it into ranching, and wasn’t about to let anyone stop him, either.
That thought was enough to change his direction. Instead of heading toward the front door, he walked past the sweeping staircase to the closed office door. Upon arrival, he knocked once before grasping the knob. Swinging the door open, he offered no apologies before stating, “Sara and I have an appointment.”
She didn’t respond, but Bugsley asked, “Where? With who?”
Although Crofton had claimed as much yesterday, he didn’t have a lawyer who would be arriving next week, didn’t even know one he could contact, but it was time he did.
“It’s a family matter,” he said.
“I’m handling—”
“You aren’t handling this,” Crofton interrupted before Bugsley could say more. Turning to Sara, he asked, “Do you need to change? There’s enough time while I hitch up the buggy.”
The glare in her eyes said far more than her lips ever could have, and the way she rose from the chair behind the desk, with her chin out and her back square, made him wonder if Amelia knew Sara as deeply as she thought she did.
“We can finish our conversation later, Bugsley,” she said, never turning her gaze onto the other man. “As Crofton said, he and I have an appointment.”
“Now, Sara, I just finished telling you—”
Snapping her gaze toward the other man, she said, “I heard what you told me. And I said we’ll finish this conversation later.”
Bugsley’s ears turned red enough to spark flames as he grabbed his hat off the desk. “I’ll return this evening.”
“Tomorrow would be better,” Crofton said.
With steam practically hissing from his head, Bugsley turned to Sara, who simply nodded. Crofton wasn’t exactly sure why that delighted him, but it did. They weren’t on the same side, him and her, probably never would be, but Morton didn’t need to know that.
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