The Promise Bride

by Gina Welborn

  He needed sleep before he made any more mistakes.

  But the agent didn’t make any comments or otherwise indicate he cared that Mac wanted to exchange the tickets. With methodical precision, the man behind the window wrote out three bills of sale to Chicago and counted out the change due.

  Mac pocketed the coins, said thank you, and pivoted to rejoin his charges.

  The Staneks were nowhere to be seen.

  He inhaled so fast, he choked on his own spit. Where were they? He paced his steps to the depot door. If they had moved to get out of the wind, he would look foolish—not to mention draw unwanted attention—rushing outside in a panic.

  The door resisted. Mac shoved it. A gust of wind caught the swinging wood and slammed it against the wood-slat exterior. He stepped outside and looked left and right while closing the door behind him to shut out nosy observers.

  Miss Stanek and her siblings weren’t on the platform.

  He jogged toward the baggage claim area in case he was wrong about the three bulging bags containing all their possessions. Yancey looked out her office window as he passed, smiling in greeting. Mac ignored her. He couldn’t see anything but Finn’s face, frozen for all time in horror. Couldn’t hear anything but the drums inside his ears beating in time with his heart.

  Were his eyes so bleary from lack of sleep that he’d missed seeing Finn’s killer?

  There was no unclaimed trunk, no attendant waiting to assist passengers, no trio of siblings.

  Mac worked his way around the depot, crossing in front this time as he scanned the street for Miss Stanek’s pink dress, but even though the streets were sparsely populated with townsfolk going about their Thursday morning business, he saw no sign of her.

  He turned the corner of the depot, hoping to find them there, bickering.

  A lone tree swayed in the breeze, its bare branches not yet ready for spring, its long shadows lacerating the ground with gnarled fingers.

  The Staneks were gone.

  Chapter Four

  Jackson Street and Sixth Avenue

  Emilia stopped in front of the narrow, two-story building wedged precariously between a bank and a red-bricked, partially constructed building at the top of the hill. Her legs trembled from the lengthy trek from the depot. She studied the law office, more to give herself time to catch her breath. Mr. Hale’s wooden building seemed to have received a recent whitewashing. Were the eight-foot shutters on either side of the arched windows for protection from wind? Or from vandals? Save for the shingle carved with the words HALE ADAMS, ATTORNEY AT LAW, the structure, with potted flowers and rocking chairs on the second-floor balcony, looked more like a home than a business.

  “Luci, you can wait with Roch in the parlor while I speak to Finn’s lawyer.” Emilia opened the door and a bell jingled. She waited for them to enter before closing the door.

  To the left of the foyer was a parlor, sparsely decorated with a Persian rug and blue-and-white curtains, both looking eerily similar to those Spiegel had imported last year from the Mediterranean. The room smelled of oil soap. From the floors? Emilia looked down. Rough-sawn planks were nailed down, like the ones Finn had described in his cabin. A telephone rang, and Emilia turned toward the sound. To the right of the parlor was a set of open double doors with a blond, studious-looking man standing on the threshold.

  Emilia pointed to his office. “I don’t mind waiting if you need to”—she lowered her shaking hand—“to, um, answer the call.”

  He drew his spectacles down to the tip of his nose and stared at her as if contemplating a mathematical equation. “How may I help you?” Like his expression, his tone held a decided lack of emotion.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Hale Adams.”

  The telephone continued to ring, and he continued to seem disinclined to answer it. “I am he.”

  While he wasn’t near in age to the elderly man she’d expected, she guessed he was several years older than she was.

  Emilia forced a smile to cover her inner nerves. “Sir, it seems there was some confusion at the depot. My husband, Phineas Collins—”

  His brown eyes lost their blank mien. “Miss Stanek? Emilia Stanek?”

  “Yes, I—”

  The telephone stopped ringing.

  “You two, sit.” He pointed to the parlor.

  To Emilia’s surprise, Roch quietly followed Luci to a button-tufted sofa centered on the rug and facing the foyer. Luci smiled contently. Roch leaned back, folded his arms across his chest, and closed his eyes, clearly without a care as to how his behavior would look to a man in a fancy three-piece suit worth more than Da earned in a year.

  A little snort of air came from Mr. Adams.

  Yet when Emilia met his gaze, the indiscernible expression was back.

  “Miss Stanek, this way,” he said gravely.

  Emilia followed him into his office. Books filled the wall of shelves behind his ornate mahogany desk. Where there weren’t books on the floor, there were stacks of files and a couple of unhung paintings half-wrapped in butcher paper. Two wooden Windsor armchairs sat in front of the desk. One, though, held a stack of unopened packages.

  Mr. Adams closed the doors. “Have a seat.”

  As he wove around stacks of books, Emilia removed her haversack from around her neck. She then took her place in the empty chair, bag in lap.

  Mr. Adams settled behind his desk. He pushed his spectacles back up his nose, then collected a pencil and a notepad. “Miss Stanek, please elaborate on what occurred at the depot.”

  The black cast-iron telephone on his desk rang again.

  Emilia waited for him to answer it. Never in her life had she seen such a fancy telephone, not even in the Speigel catalog.

  But he didn’t answer the call.

  His gaze leveled on hers. “Go on.”

  “When I was attempting to disembark the train, the county sheriff blocked my path. He said my husband is”—her throat tightened—“dead. Is this true?”

  He nodded. “Sheriff McCall found the body yesterday morning.”

  Emilia sucked in a breath. Finn couldn’t be dead. He’d sent Da a telegram four days ago. “What happened to him?”

  The telephone stopped ringing.

  Mr. Adams laid his pencil on the desk. “It looks as if he was murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Emilia stared at him, waiting for him to correct himself. To say something else besides murdered. He did nothing of the sort. He regarded her with a complete lack of guile, which she suspected was true to character. It was no wonder Finn had hired him. In one of his first letters, Finn had remarked that he preferred to be told the truth, even if it was unsettling.

  My dear Emilia, I have learned trust, once lost, is harder to regain than forgiveness is to give.

  She remembered his words because that had been the first time he’d call her his dear Emilia. The first of many. Until she became my love. And now she would never hear him speak his affection. Never hear him say—

  Emilia held herself still, blinking rapidly, waiting for the rush of emotion to abate. She released the breath she held. “Who, uh . . .” She cleared her throat. In a stronger voice, she asked, “Who killed him? Who could have any reason to kill him? Finn was an honorable man.”

  “The investigation is confidential and ongoing.”

  “Confidential and ongoing?”

  He nodded again. “Mac will find Finn’s killer. It may take time, but you can trust him to do his job. Finn was his friend.”

  Emilia turned her gaze to the window, to the bright afternoon light streaming in. When they’d buried Mama, it had been raining. It had rained all week.

  “Miss Stanek, there is nothing for you in Helena. You should go home.”

  Emilia clutched the haversack to her chest. Go home? She was never returning to Chicago. Helena was her home now. In three months Da would join them. She couldn’t leave. She had her siblings to care for, to keep safe. She had the ranch. She owed it to Finn to do right by him. She owed it
to him to make his ranch a success.

  She returned her gaze to Mr. Adams. “When will the funeral be?”

  “We buried him yesterday.”

  Already?

  At the prick of tears, Emilia blinked rapidly to rid herself of them before they fell. “Where is he buried? I should pay my respects.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I can’t?” she said suddenly. “Why can’t I?”

  “You can,” he corrected himself. “You shouldn’t.” He leaned forward, his elbows resting on the desk’s edge. “Miss Stanek, as Phineas Collins’s lawyer, I advise you not to file the power of attorney legalizing the marriage.”

  “But won’t that cause an issue for the judge who performed the proxy marriage, trusting that I’d bring this”—Emilia tapped her haversack, where she’d kept the power of attorney the entire journey—“with me to file when I arrived?”

  “My uncle is the judge who performed the ceremony. He’ll have no problem smoothing things over should anyone complain.” Hale smiled in a fatherly way. “Be wise and return to Chicago on the next available train.”

  “I don’t understand why you and the sheriff are so intent on me leaving.”

  For several moments he seemed lost in thought. Then his head shook, almost as if he were dislodging an argument. He looked at her intently. “Not only is the man you married by proxy dead, he was in debt.”

  “In debt? How much?”

  “One-hundred-seventy-nine dollars and thirteen cents.”

  Emilia collapsed against the spindles of her chair. It couldn’t be true. Finn had said the ranch was improving. He’d made arrangements to recoup the losses from the hard winter. He’d ordered alfalfa seed. He’d ordered fencing and a plow. He’d bought a bull and breeding cows.

  She blinked. Wait a second . . .

  He’d bought cows. And cows cost money. Seed and fencing did, too. She slowly nodded, everything making sense. It wasn’t the same as the way credit worked at Spiegel, but she understood why Finn had borrowed money to buy seed, fencing, a plow, and cows. It was an investment in the future. Their future.

  “Miss Stanek,” came the lawyer’s voice, drawing her attention. “Any beneficiaries of Phineas Collins’s estate will be liable for his debts. It is in your best interest to leave town before filing the power of attorney legalizing the proxy marriage. Until then, you have no obligation either legally or morally to the Circle C Ranch. Do you understand?”

  Debts she understood.

  That the man she’d married was dead she also understood.

  Were she to leave Helena before anyone discovered she was Finn’s beneficiary, she could escape his debts. She would also forfeit her claim to his ranch. She needed the ranch. Ever since reading A Lady’s Life on a Farm in Manitoba, she’d dreamed of life on the western frontier. She couldn’t give it up now, not when she was so close. Working the ranch would be hard, especially without Finn there to guide her—

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “I do.”

  “Good.” He shuffled through the papers on his desk. “You have about an hour before the next train arrives heading east. Your trunks should still be at the depot.”

  “We don’t have any trunks.”

  He looked up, his eyes wide. “Where are the rest of your belongings?”

  Emilia gave a sad shake of her head. He had no idea what it was like to live in a disease-infested tenement. To have one set of clothes for church, one for day wear, and one for work. To go to bed without dinner because there was no money even to buy a basket of moldy vegetables. To be buried with nothing but your name. He had no idea what it was like to yearn for more than the life he’d been born to. He had no idea.

  Finn knew. He understood her life, her fears, and her dreams.

  She understood him.

  Which was why she took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and said, “Sir, while working in Spiegel’s customer service department, I heard myriad excuses from people trying to wiggle out of their debts. I swore I never would. Paying off Finn’s debts is the right thing to do.” She eased forward in the chair. “If Finn hadn’t died, when were his creditors expecting payment?”

  Mr. Adams gave her a strange look. “In the fall, after the cattle go to market.”

  “As long as I plant the seed, put up the fencing, and care for the cattle, as Finn would have done, then his creditors will be paid.” She offered a bit of a smile. “All will be well, right?”

  “One likes to hope,” he muttered.

  “Then if you would be so kind as to—”

  The front door opened, then slammed closed, rattling the doors to the office.

  Emilia grimaced. It was him: Luci’s Mr. Romeo. It had to be. She never should have asked the sheriff for directions to Mr. Adams’s office. Nothing the man could say or do would entice her to leave Helena. Her family’s future was here. Her future was here.

  Sure enough, the double doors jerked open.

  The sheriff strolled in with the ease of a man used to doing what he wanted, when he wanted. His livid glare shifted from her to the armchair next to hers . . . or, more precisely, to the stack of packages taking residence. He stood next to the desk.

  “I have the tickets.” Said in a manner of one expecting applause to follow.

  A number of retorts danced on Emilia’s tongue. She studied Mr. Adams. While she hadn’t retained him as her counsel, something told her to let him speak on her behalf.

  He leaned back in his chair. Even though there was a mantel clock above the fireplace, he withdrew his pocket watch and checked the time. “She isn’t leaving.”

  The sheriff muttered something under his breath. He looked ready to tear someone’s head off. Or, to be more gentlemanly, toss that said someone on her backside into jail.

  Emilia eased to the side of the chair, putting as much additional space between them without being overtly rude as possible. “Mr. Adams, if you would be so kind as to provide a list of my husband’s debts and his creditors, I would be mighty appreciative. Once I explain the situation, I am sure they will be willing to wait for repayment.”

  “You can’t,” the sheriff ground out. He stepped forward and gripped the arms of her chair, his face inches from hers. “You have to go home.”

  Emilia said nothing. More than one Proverb warned against arguing with a fool.

  “Mac.” Mr. Adams’s quiet voice was filled with reproof and a bit of compassion.

  The sheriff jerked straight with a huff.

  Mr. Adams opened the folder on the center of his desk. “Here’s the list.” He withdrew a piece of paper and stood, offering it to her. “I advise you to inventory everything at the ranch.”

  The sheriff crossed his arms. It was enough of a response for Emilia to know his thoughts and feelings on the matter.

  She stood and took the paper. A list of businesses and numbers were typed in a column. “Thank you, for this and for all you did for Finn.”

  Mr. Adams gave a wistful smile. “When you are ready, I can assist with the sale of his estate.”

  Emilia slid the paper into her haversack. “Oh, I won’t be selling.”

  * * *

  Mac swiped his index finger under his nose. Did the woman have no sense at all? About self-preservation or business?

  Hale stood the moment Miss Irrational rose from the chair. “Miss Stanek, I don’t know where your determination to succeed here comes from, but let me assure you, my friends and I will assist you in any way we can.”

  Mac grunted his disagreement.

  “And Sheriff McCall”—Hale continued in his smooth, lawyerly tone though he cut a stern glance at Mac—“will escort you to City Hall before taking you out to Finn’s . . . to your ranch.”

  What did Hale think? That Mac was such a cad he’d leave the chit unprotected? He’d accompany her and her siblings. Keep them safe. But he didn’t have to be happy about it. Not when she was making a foolish mistake.

  Miss Stanek shot a glare at Mac. It laste
d a mere moment, but it struck him like a slap across the face. She feared him . . . or at least didn’t trust him. How could she? She’d only known him a few minutes. Trust required respect, and he hadn’t earned it yet. Hadn’t had the time for it. A tactical error he would have recognized if only he wasn’t so tired. So churned up inside over his friend’s death and the deep sense he was missing critical pieces of information—things right in front of him that he saw but couldn’t make fit because none of it made sense.

  “. . . excuse us, I’d like a word with my friend.” Hale’s voice penetrated Mac’s thoughts.

  “Of course.” Miss Stanek slid between her chair and Mac to escape the room while clutching that beat-up bag of hers like armor.

  Mac watched her shut the double doors behind her before he turned to Hale. “This is a mistake.”

  Hale nodded. “But it’s hers to make, and you can’t keep her from it.”

  How many times had the two of them rehashed this same argument, only with different names and situations?

  “Besides”—Hale tipped his head toward the double doors leading to his waiting area—“you have no idea what’s motivating her insistence on staying. We’ve been operating under the assumption she’d be better off going back to Chicago. What if it isn’t true?”

  “Anything is better than dead.”

  “Says the man who’s never tasted hunger.” At Mac’s glare, Hale raised his hands as though warding off further argument. “I know, neither have I, but it doesn’t invalidate my point. Have you looked at the three of them? Really looked? At their luggage? The threadbare hems, stitched spots, and small patches on their clothes? Or how their cheekbones and chins are too pronounced because their flesh is stretched tight with malnourishment?”

  Mac closed his eyes and rubbed at the headache pounding in his temples. Of course he’d noticed, but none of it changed his conviction that they were better off going home than living on a remote ranch with no one to protect them. “How’s a city girl going to run a ranch? Her brother looks like he’ll hop the next train without our help just to be anywhere but here, and the sister is about as hardy as a dandelion seed.” He huffed and opened his eyes again. “Trust me, this is a huge mistake.”