Author's Muse (Sweet Town Clean Historical Western Romance Book 12)

by Sarah Christian

  “That doesn’t explain how you went from marrying a good looking rich fella to running away from him just a few years later. Nor how you came to secretly be Jamison Ross and writing books.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. It had been one way she could preserve her sanity. One method of earning money that wouldn’t raise suspicion. She had been raised by hard working, middle-class parents and knew that without funds, she had limited choices. It was imperative she stash a nest egg. “I started writing to make some money I could put away. My own money, you see, so that when the time came I could leave.”

  He nodded and pushed his glass away, seemingly having had enough. “Were you ever happy with him?”

  Had she been? Perhaps the first few days, possibly the first month. But as soon as she had fallen pregnant, he had changed. “When I told him I was expecting Erik,” she felt her cheeks grow warm at discussing such intimate details with this man, “he was so angry. He had been out...” She paused. Dare she admit this shameful secret, that her own husband had found her lacking? Without knowing it, Theo wouldn’t understand what happened next, so she looked at him directly, deciding the best way through the quagmire of this ugly, muddy, episode was a straight path. She forged ahead. “He’d been out, with his mistress du jour. I confronted him, and told him I was increasing, and that I would no longer tolerate his antics. He beat me.” She watched Theo’s face change from interest and sympathy to horror and anger. “That was the first time.”

  Therese was on the other side of the room and Belle waved at her. “Could I please have a cup of tea? Something relaxing.”

  Therese nodded and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  Theo barely ground out his next question. “The first time?”

  Oh yes, there had been other times. Many other times. But the worst was what he did when she was further into her pregnancy and awkward with the weight of the child within. “When I was about a month from when I expected Erik to arrive, Paul was angry about something. I don’t even remember what. He knocked me about and I lost my balance on the stairs, tumbling all the way to the bottom. The baby arrived that night, tiny and weak. He blamed me. That was when I knew I had to go. I started my first book while I was recovering from childbirth, and finished it and started another, before my laying in was even over.”

  “How did you hide it from him? After Maeve was born I spent every second with Violet and the baby.”

  Belle waited until Therese set a small cup and saucer in front of her before answering. “He blamed me that Erik arrived early and wasn’t robust or fat like other babies born to his colleagues. And he disagreed that I should nurse him around the clock, even sleeping with him curled against the warmth of my chest. He avoided me, the nursery, our child, all of it. For the first time since we married I had complete privacy, and I loved it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Theo tried to wrap his mind around how a man could be so detestable to his own wife. Perhaps whoever had killed Paul had known of Belle’s situation. If ever there was an argument for justifiable homicide, this was it.

  He knew enough about how the world worked to know that her choices would have been limited. The police wouldn’t have helped her, and would most likely have turned her back over to her husband for punishment had she gone to them with her story of abuse.

  Even her family and friends would probably have advised her to stay in her marriage. If Paul had wanted, he could have kept Erik and sent her away, since a child belonged to its father, not the mother. Divorce wasn’t unheard of, especially in Wisconsin where many Chicagoans went to erase a bad marriage, but the women usually ended up homeless, childless, and penniless.

  Yes, as he thought of it, Paul’s death solved a great many difficulties. Unfortunately, that fact would serve to implicate Belle even further. She may have an airtight alibi, but a good prosecutor would argue that an accomplice followed her directions and killed him at her command.

  He watched her daintily sip at the tea Therese had brought. Could she have masterminded the murder? As quickly as the thought occurred to him, he abolished it. He was certain she had nothing to do with her husband’s death.

  She cleared her throat and looked at him shyly. “I’m sorry for sharing such unpleasant details of my life. Tell me about your wife. I’m sure it’s a much happier story.”

  He smiled. Funny how the hurt wasn’t quite as keen as it had been. He could think of Violet without the panicky sinking feeling he’d lived with for years. “She was a good person,” he began. He felt like he needed to establish that, though he hoped she wouldn’t feel defensive after disclosing she had been married to a monster. “We were very happy together. I’d known her since I was a boy and we were best friends.”

  “How did she die?”

  “It was a tragedy, one of those absurd things you think can’t be real. She was walking down the street, shopping, pushing Maeve in the pram. Her mother and sisters were with her.” He waited for the nightmare feeling to return but it didn’t. It just seemed like a sad story now. Belle reached out with both her hands and grasped his, misunderstanding that reason for his hesitation. “There had been rain earlier in the day so to avoid being splashed by the carriages going by, she was walking nearest the buildings, away from the street.”

  Sometimes he tried to imagine what it had been like for her. He wondered if she realized what had happened, for even a moment, a split-second in time. He shook off the thought. “The police said the rain had probably loosened the mortar from the bricks in the building. For some unexplained reason, one fell from the top story, a great height, and hit her on the head. They told me, as if it would be comfort, that she died instantly, even before her body landed on the walk.”

  “How horrific,” Belle cried, squeezing his hands.

  He looked down at where there fingers were intwined. “For a long time, selfishly, I hoped she thought of me before she passed away, a sort of psychic good bye if you will. But now, yes, it is a comfort to think that her death was instantaneous.” He looked up at Belle’s face. “I loved her very much and was always only gentle and kind to her, even when she aggravated me. I can’t understand how Paul could have been so awful to you.”

  “Let’s not talk of these sad memories.” Tear drops glistened and hung on the very tips of her lashes. He marveled that she had empathy for his loss but not for her own.

  “I agree. Let’s not. Just one last thing,” he said as he stood. “Not all men are monsters. I hope someday you’ll find a man worthy of you and will be loved the same way I loved Violet: completely, gently, and kindly.” He tugged on her hands until she stood before him.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, and kissed his cheek.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  For a moment Belle was uncertain where she was. She opened her eyes and saw ruffled white curtains across a tall narrow window. The filtered light streaming in indicated it was early morning. Suddenly, in a rush, the events of the day before flooded her mind, disjointed and disturbing. She rolled over and looked at Erik’s tousled hair on the pillow next to hers. Small snores rippled across his lips in tiny puffs of air. As much as she wanted to kiss his dear face, she knew that once he woke she’d have no privacy.

  Carefully she slid from the bed and opened one of her carpet bags. Thankfully, when she’d packed to leave the other day, she’d put her stationery box at the bottom of this case. She sat on the floor and pulled the box out, spreading its contents around her, organizing the papers and pages into stacks.

  As she had hoped, many of her notes for the book she’d been writing were there. She hoped she’d be able to begin again, though the idea of it, duplicating the story, was daunting. Her hand cramped at even the thought of all the writing she would have to do over again.

  There were also several of the most recent letters she and Theo had exchanged. She opened one, from shortly before she left Chicago.

  “My dear man Jamison,” he began. Belle smiled. She knew enough abou
t Theo now to know that he had counted her alter ego amongst his friends, even though they had never met. He probably felt betrayed, finding out she was the man he had been writing to. Had he ever said anything that he could be embarrassed of now? She read further.

  They had each gotten in the habit of quoting the parts of the other’s letter that they were responding to. It made it much easier to understand.

  “You ask if I found the description of the St. James Episcopal Cathedral accurate. I have never been in that esteemed church, and am more likely to be found in the more humble and homely houses of worship in my own neighborhood. Though even that might be asking a bit much of me.”

  She grinned. Yes, she imagined he skipped services more often than he attended.

  “But to address your description, I bow to your greater knowledge of such holy edifices.”

  Skimming the pages she found another favorite passage. The thin paper had been wet, wrinkling it as it dried, causing the ink to smear. He wrote, “Please forgive the terrible condition of this letter. I was drinking a cup of tea and my assistant Clara came in and bumped me. I can’t really get angry at her. She’s the boss’s daughter, after all.”

  Now that Belle had met Theo, she could imagine his expressions and the meanings behind the words so much clearer. She ran her hand over the page, smoothing the paper. Further down, another passage caught her eye. “It would be much easier if you would agree to meet in person. We could settle some of these decisions forthwith.”

  How she had worried over that, afraid that his patience would be tried to such a degree that he would drop her writing contract. It was imperative that she maintain her career as an author and yet she yearned to meet him, find out if he looked anything like what her imagination conjured.

  She slowly folded the papers and slid them back into their envelopes. In some ways he was more attractive and dear than she had thought him to be. His shoulders were broader, and he was much more fit. He was younger, and more handsome. Maybe she’d imagined him as a craggy older man as a way to protect her heart, because clearly her affections for him ran deep.

  Perhaps, she thought as she tucked the letters back into her stationery box, she had been falling in love with him over the past three years. Had she been losing her heart to a man who could frustrate her by insisting she change a passage that she felt had merit, or make her laugh when he described the scenes that played out upon the streets of Chicago, and especially when he batted words back and forth with her, exchanging verbal punches?

  She closed the case with a snap of its latch. That was silly. You can’t fall in love with someone you’ve never met. Besides, Theo had thought she was a man all this time. Certainly his letters didn’t include the sorts of flowery phrases and romantic insinuations that caused women to swoon. Not that she had ever been the swooning type. Not by far.

  She stood and went to the window. It looked out across the street where she could see the smithy, and the bell tower of the church beyond it on the next street. What was she doing here in this tiny town, she asked herself. Her home was Chicago, not Sweet Town in Dakota Territory. She hoped Paul’s murder was solved soon so that she could make decisions about what she should do next.

  Erik stirred in the bed and she realized she was running out of time to herself. Quickly she began her morning ablution, dressing in a smoky gown from her luggage. As she brushed her hair she thought about her manuscript again. Losing it was a huge blow. She would have to duplicate it, though she knew some things that she had particularly liked would be lost forever, unable to be reincarnated from her memory. It was so hard to imagine it gone, just like that. Only yesterday morning Clara had been leafing through it and at Theo’s insistence had set it down on the table. She could still see him carefully pushing it away from their breakfast dishes to protect it from spills.

  After the fire, when they came in, the dishes had still been there. How could it have simply vanished? There didn’t appear to be any ashes to indicate it had burned. No sodden papers strewn about. It was gone.

  She supposed it might seem odd to someone else that she was so torn up over the loss of her latest book and obviously not too terribly upset that her husband had died. In her mind, her book had more kindness, more value, more life itself, than Paul had.

  “Mommy,” Erik whimpered.

  “Yes, my darling?” she turned toward him where he was now sitting up in amongst the hills and valleys of the rumpled bedding. He rubbed his eyes as he yawned.

  “Do we have to move again?”

  She looked back out the window, wind carrying little eddies of sand along the Main Street. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A large mug of steaming coffee, liberally laced with cream, sat at Theo’s elbow. “Sit still, Maeve. Why are you cringing so?” He held a comb in one hand.

  “Papa, Miss Bader pulled my hair and even though I know you won’t I can’t help it. My hair remembers and is frightened.” Maeve was sitting on a fat pillow on top of a chair in front of the dresser. He’d positioned her so she could watch in the mirror as her hair was being fixed.

  While what his daughter had said was sweet and funny, her underlying reason was not. He knew Clara had been making Maeve’s braids too tight. Here was the proof. “I won’t allow her to fix your hair ever again. I’m terribly sorry.” He began gently picking out the snarls in her hair.

  “Even though Erik is just a small boy, he told me the sheriff made him a deputy and he promised to arrest Miss Bader.”

  “Arrest her?” Theo laughed out loud. He separated her long smooth fall of hair into three parts.

  “Yes,” Maeve said earnestly. “For being mean.”

  “Shall we forget about her for the time being?” He wet the comb in a bowl of water and smoothed some flyaway hairs.

  “Why? Has she gone away? I hope so. I don’t know why she even wanted to come with us to Dakota Territory. She’s complained the entire way.”

  Out of the mouths of babes, Theo thought as he put his finger on Maeve’s chin and turned her head a little to the left so he could straighten an errant strand of hair. “As far as I know she hasn’t left, though she made herself pretty scarce yesterday.”

  “I’m glad. I really don’t care for her, Papa. But I do like Erik’s mommy. She’s quite nice.”

  Every morning was the same. Theo and Maeve had conversations while he did her hair and she shared her observations. It helped him start off the day with a smile. “I like her, too.” He began folding the strands over each other, forming the braid. “Do you know that I knew Mrs. Lindholm before we came here?”

  “Did you? How could that be? You never had her round to our house. Does she live in Chicago also?”

  “She does. We were friends though we only sent letters to one another.”

  Maeve giggled. “That’s funny. How could you play then? When I play with my friends we bring our dollies. Even when I play with Erik we play with his toys. He’s such a little boy, I really can’t expect him to play my sorts of games.”

  Theo glanced up at the mirror in front of them. Her heart-shaped face was open and inquisitive as she caught his eye in the reflection. “We played word games, I suppose.” He thought back to some of his and Belle’s correspondence. Discussions that went on for weeks over passages in her books were interspersed with small tidbits of philosophy and preferences in food or weather. He knew, for instance, that she loved the wind in Chicago, loved watching leaves dancing through the air and ladies holding onto their hats as they walked along Rush Street. He was aware of her preference for her tea with cream and sugar and toast with marmalade, as opposed to his own predilection for coffee and cinnamon rolls.

  “Papa, do you like her?”

  “I said I did,” he smiled, tying a bow in a ribbon at the very end of Maeve’s braid.

  “I mean do you like her a lot.”

  “I suppose I do,” he began putting the dresser top to rights, straightening up bows and pins
. He picked up the mug and took a nosy slurp of the dark liquid. He did like her. She was beautiful, in a compact, curvy sort of way. She wore her clothes with flair, which impressed him, and he imagined that back home she carried a parasol as many ladies did. He enjoyed watching her face as she worked through some new idea, or listened intently to what he had to say, her concentration clear and focused. Yes, of course he liked her and he was sorry that it was inevitable that their relationship would change. Even if they went back to a correspondence, he would know it was she he was writing to, and she would know that he was not nearly as stuffy or educated as he tried to act.

  He sighed. They still had the matter of a murder to solve so that they all could return to Chicago.

  Maeve’s voice interrupted his thoughts just as he took another drink of coffee. “Will she be my new mother?”

  He inhaled the fluid and began coughing, tears flowing down his cheeks. Maeve slapped him on the back as she had seen him do to her, and though it didn’t help his choking, it warmed his heart. The disruption couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. It effectively distracted her so that he didn’t have to answer, but for one moment, before he had started choking, he had been flooded with a wonderful warm sense of rightness at the thought of being with Belle.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Moo. Moo. I’m a buffalo.” Erik butted the bar of soap he’d decided to use as a toy against Belle’s arm.

  She looked up from her notes with a sigh and checked the light from the window, where it appeared to be mid-morning. Likely long past time for breakfast. “Darling, I’m not sure if the sound buffalo make is called moo. I think those are only domesticated cattle. Would you like to get something to eat?”