Loralee looked at Michael. "Thanks for all of this. The clothes, the luggage, all of it."
"I think Zach more than earned it, Loralee." He gave her a quick hug and then stepped back, pulling Cara with him. "You know you have a home here any time you want it."
She nodded, afraid to try and say anything else. They meant so much to her. She'd never had real family before. Except Mary. Everything always came back to Mary.
She turned to face Patrick. His look was guarded, as if he had already put distance between them. She tried not to feel hurt. After all, they were just friends. It was best if they got on with their own lives and forgot about each other. She just hadn't expected it to happen so soon.
"It's time." He held out his arm and she placed a hand on his elbow. Just like a real lady. A respectable lady.
They stopped at the train steps and stood for a moment simply looking at each other. She tried to memorize each little detail of his face. The way his hair fell forward into his eyes. The way his mouth curled a little higher on one side than the other.
The whistle blew a warning, and Patrick lifted her up to the bottom step. This was it then. Time for goodbye. He kissed her once, hard, and then turned away, walking back to Cara and Michael. Back to where he belonged.
She sighed and stepped into the train. A new life awaited her in Virginia. A better life. Best to close doors and move on. She'd managed just fine without Patrick Macpherson. And she'd just have to keep right on doing it. Squaring her shoulders, she settled into the high-backed velvet seat.
But, Lordy, it was going to be hard.
Patrick stood stone-faced watching a few last minute passengers scurry to board the train. This was it. She was really going. Up until this minute he'd kept the hope that she'd change her mind. He should have told her how he felt. Should have stood up for himself and his feelings.
"You okay?"
He looked down into the worried eyes of his sister-in-law. "Yes. No. Hell, I don't know. I guess I thought maybe she'd stay."
"She can't, Patrick."
"Why the hell not?" His eyes moved back to the train.
"Because here she'd never be anything but a whore. And she deserves a whole lot more than that."
"I know." He said the words with conviction. That was the one thing he was certain of. Loralee deserved the world. It was just that somewhere deep inside, he'd hoped he'd be the one to give it to her. But that was impossible. She belonged in Virginia and he belonged here—at Clune.
In a way, he envied Loralee. She was getting a clean slate—a chance to start over. The events of the past few days had changed him forever, forced him to face himself, to grow up. He stared at the train. It taunted him. Just a few short steps and he could find his own way, be whoever he wanted to be, but that would mean turning his back on his responsibilities, and he couldn't—wouldn't— do that.
"You've got to live your own life, Patrick." Michael's words were uncannily accurate, as if he'd read his mind. They stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the train.
"But my life is here, with you."
"Only if you want it to be, Patrick. You'll always belong here, but that doesn't mean you have to stay."
"But I…" he trailed off, still looking at the train. He wanted to go, needed to go, but he also needed his brother. Or did he? Maybe he was falling right back into the same old patterns, Michael taking the lead. He turned to look at his brother. Their eyes met and held—a lifetime of emotions reflected there.
"Go." There was finality in his brother's voice—and freedom.
The train began to inch forward.
"Hurry." Cara's soft plea roused him to action.
Patrick ran across the platform toward the moving cars and leapt for the steps, grabbing the handrail, swinging up onto the train. Balanced precariously on the top step, he turned for a last look. They stood together, waving, arms looped around each other. Michael and Cara. Patrick smiled. His brother would be all right. Owen was dead. The evil that had been a part of their lives for so long was gone. Vanquished.
It was a time for new beginnings.
He raised his hand in final farewell, and then turned to go into the railcar, one life behind him, and another about to start.
Cara stepped back, looking at the painting with a critical eye. Not bad. Maybe a little more gray in the mountains. She bit her bottom lip, looking from subject to easel, then back again. The ranch lay spread out below her. The bright summer sun outlining each building with streaks of white. Wildflowers ran rampant, up here on the bluff, and down in the meadow below. Monet would have had a field day.
She smiled, tucking an impudent strand of hair behind her ear, her mind focusing back on the painting. A wooden cross provided a focal point for the picture. It occupied the left corner of the canvas, looking as if it, too, was viewing the valley below. Duncan Macpherson surveying his kingdom.
Her gaze moved to the real marker, trying to gauge accuracy. Perhaps a little darker shadow or more red…
Jack's bridle jingled as he munched wildflowers. He was worse than a goat. If they ever needed anything mowed, he was certainly the horse for the job. As if aware of her thoughts, he raised his shaggy head, ears twitching, listening to a sound only he could hear. Cara followed the line of his sight. A lone rider appeared, making his way across the bluff.
Cara reached for her rifle, but stopped when the old horse whinnied a welcome. A second later she recognized the silhouette.
Michael.
Shading her eyes with one hand, she watched her husband approach. He sat easily in the saddle, his dark hair blowing in the breeze. They'd been married almost a month now and still just the sight of him sent her heart pounding.
"I thought I'd find you here." He smiled down at her, the warmth radiating outward, making her knees turn to jelly. "Can I see?" He swung down from the saddle and walked toward the painting.
"It isn't finished, yet." She followed him, her critical eye already finding fault with the painting.
Michael stood back, arms crossed, studying the canvas. She held her breath, staring at the crimson roses climbing the weather worn cross, hoping that he would like what he saw, understand what she had been trying to portray.
"The roses," he pointed to the flowers twining around the pine, "they're my mother, aren't they? She's found him again. In death, if not in life, she's finally come home."
Cara slipped her arms around his waist and leaned her head against the broad expanse of his shoulder. "I'm the one who's finally come home."
"No regrets?" His eyes held more than the question.
She smiled up at him. "None at all. I belong here, Michael, with you. And nothing could make me happier."
"Not even painting?" He nodded at the canvas.
She turned to face him, her gaze locking on his. "Not even that."
He smiled slowly, then bent his head, his lips taking possession of hers, his hands stroking the contours of her hips and back. The painting was forgotten as he lifted her into his arms and laid her carefully on a bed of wildflowers, his need for her etched across his face.
With skillful hands, he stroked her body, buttons yielding to a master touch. Naked, she smiled and opened herself to him, knowing she already belonged to him body and soul. Braced on his arms, their bodies joined, he looked down at her, his heart reflected in the cobalt of his eyes. "I love you, Cara Macpherson."
"No more than I love you," she whispered in answer.
And there on the mountain, among flowers and grasses, rocks and pines, they made love. The only witnesses, a white wooden cross and a wild red rose.
Epilogue
Silverthread, Colorado—Present Day
"This is amazing." Margaret Wagner stood in front of the painting, her eyes riveted on the canvas in front of her. "Is it for sale?" She pulled away from the powerful brushstrokes to focus her attention on the vivacious blonde who ran the gallery.
"No." Carrie Macpherson came to stand beside her. "That one belongs to me. My
great-great grandmother painted it."
"You're kidding?" Margaret frowned, her gaze returning to haunting imagery of the dilapidated mine, stark against the wild beauty of the mountains. "When?"
"In 1891. The mine belonged to her father-in-law—my great-great-great grandfather." Carrie smiled, her green eyes lighting with the gesture. "The money they made was used to build my family's ranch."
"Well it's fabulous. If it were for sale, I'd buy it in an instant."
"You're not the first one to say that, but I'm afraid I could never part with it. It's a legacy of sorts."
Margaret nodded, fighting against disappointment. "There's just something about it that calls to me. It's almost as if there's a secret there—a story embedded somehow in paint and brushwork."
"There's always a story, isn't there? At the end of the day that's what gives life meaning." Carrie's gaze met hers, her face inscrutable, and Margaret had the distinct feeling that the gallery owner was talking about more than just the painting.
"Do you have more of her work?"
"Some. Not nearly as many as I'd like."
"I'm only asking because I saw a similar painting in New York once. It was the most marvelous thing I'd ever seen. And this," she gestured to the painting, "is almost identical in style."
It was Carrie's turn to nod. "I've had other people mistake her painting for modern ones."
"Well I can see why. There's certainly a timeless quality about them. Something almost magical." Margaret sighed. "Anyway, I guess I'm destined to see but never own. The other painting wasn't for sale either. I looked for more work by the artist, but never found any. I suppose she just stopped painting."
"Maybe." Carrie said, smiling up at her great-great grandmother's canvas. "Or perhaps she simply had other promises to keep."
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Check out these books by Dee Davis:
Time Travel:
Time After Time Series:
Everything in its Time
Cottage in the Mist
Wild Highland Rose
The Promise
Romantic Suspense:
Last Chance Series:
Endgame
Enigma
Exposure
Escape
Liar's Game Series:
Lethal Intent
Eye of the Storm
Chain Reaction
Still of the Night
A-Tac Series:
Dark Deceptions
Dangerous Desires
Desperate Deeds
Daring
Deep Disclosure
Deadly Dance
Double Danger
Dire Distraction
Random Heroes Collection:
After Twilight
Just Breath
Dark of the Night
Midnight Rain
Dancing in the Dark
Paranormal:
Devil May Care Series:
Hell Fire
Hell Fury
Women's Fiction:
The Matchmaker Chronicles:
A Match Made on Madison
Set Up in SoHo
Copyright
NATIVE GOLD
Glynnis Campbell
This book is a love letter to my home town of Paradise, California,
which was sadly destroyed by the Camp Fire of 2018
This work is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Glynnis Campbell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Book cover art by Richard Campbell
For the good people of Paradise
from the
Gold Nugget Queen of 1975
Acknowledgments
Thanks to
Evangeline Lilly and Nathaniel Arcand,
Khris Pierson and the four Campbell brothers,
Ma Joan for introducing me to Dame Shirley,
Pa Campbell for sharing the joys of research,
Mom for driving me to obscure museums
and overgrown cemeteries,
Geraldine Allen, one of the last Koyongk’awi,
for her inspiration,
Anthony Salzarullo, Koyongk’awi of the heart,
for his generosity of spirit,
Sue Epperson, for sharing her treasures,
Sonia Johnson of the Colman Memorial Museum,
Betty Davis of the Butte County Pioneer Memorial Museum,
the helpful docents of the Gold Nugget Museum,
Huell Howser, for loving California like I do,
and Rich, for showing me the waterfall
Prologue
AUTUMN 1850, NEW YORK
"Ladies and gentlemen, if you please!" Ambrose Hardwicke clapped his hands, earning the attention of the American nobility packed into his glittering ballroom.
Mattie creased the rose satin of her too-tight gown with her nail-bitten fingers. This was her moment.
It wasn’t the first time her uncle had paraded her before the cream of New York society. Ambrose never forgot his duties to his five charges—the four daughters who were his by blood, and seventeen-year-old Mathilda, who’d been thrust upon him as an orphan two years ago. Chief among those duties was seeing that his girls married well.
To marry well, Ambrose said, one had to possess Quality. Something Mattie apparently lacked. Something Ambrose worked hard to instill in her.
His four daughters, blessed with their mother’s beauty and poise, would grace the arm of any man he chose for them.
Mathilda, however, didn’t have their porcelain skin, pale gold tresses, or angelic features.
Some of her flaws were a matter of birth. Some of them she owed to her affection for the sun and her aversion to bonnets. Her complexion bordered on tawny. Her brown hair was streaked with lighter strands of a most contrary color, which were in startling contrast to her bright green eyes. And to everyone’s horror, she had a sprinkling of tiny freckles across her nose that no amount of powder could hide.
But worse than her appearance, according to Uncle Ambrose, was her temperament. She didn’t have her cousins’ gentle manner. She tended to speak before she was spoken to. And often, what came out of her mouth wasn’t suited to polite society.
So Ambrose had decided that wayward Mattie must be marketed by merit of what he regarded as her only gift—her talent for painting.
"If I may have your attention!" he bellowed.
Mattie chewed at her lower lip. Aunt Emily smiled tightly, sending her a chiding glare. Proper ladies didn’t fidget. None of her cousins, currently lined up in graceful ascending height beside their mother, ever moved a muscle that wasn’t absolutely essential. Even now, the sisters seemed to float above the hubbub of the evening unperturbed, like thistledown atop a swirling eddy.
Not Mattie. She was wound as tig
ht as a clock spring.
It didn’t matter that Uncle Ambrose hosted these galas at least twice a season and that they always included a viewing of Mathilda’s latest work.
Tonight was different. Tonight she’d show the audience a masterpiece. Tonight she’d bare her soul.
This painting was the best she’d ever done. The image had emerged upon the canvas in a rush of passion, like a fevered outpouring from her heart. It seemed like she’d painted it with her own blood and tears.
A thrill of improper excitement coursed through her as she thought about what sat upon the easel beneath the velvet drape. This was no muted, delicate watercolor of the countryside. This painting would take their breath away. It would open their eyes, the way her eyes had been opened by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—Millais, Rossetti, and Hunt—whose work she’d seen in London last year.
Just thinking of how those young artists had brazenly challenged the Royal Academy made her heart race.
They followed no rules but those of nature. Gone were the stifling standards of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Dead were the outdated concepts of the Renaissance.
Art was no longer slave to man, but expression to truth—a truth Mattie was about to reveal to the guests, who were silent now except for soft murmurs and the rustle of silk skirts.
"My niece informs me," Ambrose announced, smoothing one waxed tip of his gray mustache, "that she has abandoned landscapes this time in favor of a portrait."
A few polite ahs and approving nods were sent her way.
"She has chosen to paint, from recollection, her dearly departed parents—my brother, Lawrence, and his wife, Mary."
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