“I never seen one come so fast,” prattled Esther, who generally tended the kitchen.
“Oh, God,” Steven fretted, pacing at the foot of the bed.
Emma felt another contraction closing in on her and clasped Jubal’s hands hard, determined not to scream again.
“She’s gonna tear,” Esther warned.
At this point, there was a ker-thump and Emma decided Steven had probably fainted, though she had neither the time nor the inclination to find out.
After that everything was a blur for Emma. She remembered little beyond blinding pain, hazy, shifting faces, and finally, relief and the furious squall of an infant.
“My baby,” she whispered, lying back. “My baby’s here.”
“It’s a fine girl,” Dr. Mayfield said. When had he arrived? Emma decided she didn’t care, and smiled wearily.
“Steven?”
“He’s not feeling too well right now,” the doctor explained. “Crumpled to the floor when I had to cut you.”
Emma laughed. Steven the outlaw, with his dreaded Colt .45. She’d never let him forget the occasion of his first child’s birth. “Let me see her,” she said.
The infant lay squirming on Emma’s sweat-soaked stomach, her tiny body covered with blood and a powdery substance, her arms and legs waving wildly in the air, her cries furious and indignant.
“Don’t worry,” she said, wriggling an impossibly tiny toe. “Your daddy will protect you with his forty-five.”
“Very funny,” said a weary voice at her side, as Steven sat on the edge of the bed, his face ghastly pale in the first light of a rainy dawn. “What’s her name?” he asked presently, looking down at his daughter. “Lily or Caroline?”
“Both,” Emma answered, and five days later Lily Caroline Fairfax was formally christened and a party was held in her honor.
As January passed into February, Emma thought constantly of her sisters. On the fourteenth a letter arrived from Big John Lenahan, back in Whitneyville. He enclosed a blue envelope addressed to Marshal Woodridge, saying Manuela had found it in Joellen’s room. He apologized for his daughter’s actions and said he’d have sent the message on sooner, but the housekeeper had found it only a few days before. He offered his own regards, as well as Chloe’s, and signed off.
Her heart beating fast, her hands trembling, Emma lifted the flap of the blue envelope. She was sitting in the sumptuous master suite that now belonged to her and Steven, their daughter sleeping peacefully in a cradle at her feet.
She pulled out a single page and unfolded it. Dear Marshal, the missive began, in a hand she knew was Lily’s even before she looked at the signature. It went on to tell how she was searching for her sisters, Miss Emma and Miss Caroline Chalmers.
Tears were slipping down Emma’s face as she kissed the paper, then lowered it to her lap. Lily. She’d been living in Spokane when she wrote the letter—Spokane! Emma had been there, in that very community, and never known her sister was near.
Steven came in an hour later and found Emma nursing his daughter and rereading the letter for perhaps the twentieth time.
“Lily,” she said, holding out the paper to indicate that she was talking about her sister, not their infant daughter. “Steven, I’ve found her. She lives—or lived—in Spokane. She mentions a man named Rupert Sommers.”
Smiling gently, Steven kissed Emma’s mouth, then the rounding of her bare breast, then the downy top of his daughter’s head. “I’ll send a wire right away,” he said, and left the room again.
When the baby was satisfied and sleeping again, Emma paced the sitting room, waiting. Through the windows she saw Steven returning, and from the set of his shoulders, she knew there wasn’t any news.
“We’ll have to wait for a response, Emma,” he told her gently, holding her close to reassure her.
“I can’t bear to wait,” she whispered, but Steven sat down in the very chair where she’d fed little Lily, and pulled Emma after him, settling her on his lap.
“Neither can I,” he answered, his fingers nimble as he opened the bodice she’d just closed. “Is it time yet?”
Emma chuckled warmly, for even in her most stressful moments she could find comfort in Steven’s lovemaking. “It’s time,” she replied, and closed her eyes in ecstasy when he took her nipple into his mouth, sucking the breast their child had just nursed from.
The first few days in Chicago exhausted, as well as disappointed, Emma. The old neighborhood where she had lived with Kathleen and her sisters was gone, replaced by smart brick townhouses, and attempts to find her mother’s attorney failed.
She took to going around to Kathleen’s fancy house—now all closed up—and ringing the bell. There was never any answer, but Emma persisted. Together she and Steven called on all the neighbors, too. They either refused to answer the bell entirely or else made it clear that they hadn’t known Kathleen.
One day, when Steven was meeting with some potential business associates, Emma left baby Lily with her Scottish nanny and took a carriage to Kathleen’s house. She couldn’t have explained the compelling instinct that urged her to go, nor could she have resisted it.
Reaching the house, she once again rang the bell. This time a charwoman answered, her hair tied back in a wispy bun, her dress of shabby calico. “Yes?” she said.
“My name is Emma Fairfax,” Emma said quickly, almost overcome at finally finding someone there. “Kathleen Harrington was my mother.”
The charwoan nodded, assessing Emma’s face and now-trim figure. “The redhaired one,” she said. “Well, you might as well come in,” she added after a moment. “There isn’t much to see since Mr. Harrington’s family came and collected most all of it, but you’re welcome to look around.”
Emma stepped inside. “Can you tell me about Mrs. Harrington?” she asked eagerly. “Did she leave any letters or papers?”
“Like I said,” replied the housemaid, “the Harringtons took most everything, ‘cepting the piano. I can’t tell you anything about her except that she surely did want to find you and make up for everything.”
Emma wandered into the parlor and sat down at the piano, her eyes burning with unshed tears. She ran her fingers over the keys, awkwardly at first, then with more finesse as a familiar tune came back to her.
She began to sing.
Three flowers bloomed in the meadow,
Heads bent in sweet repose,
The daisy, the lily, and the rose…
The words had barely left her mouth when a cold draft filled the room and Emma’s heart caught on a sound, or a feeling, she couldn’t be certain which.
She looked up and saw that a lovely woman with fair hair and enormous brown eyes was standing in the parlor doorway, staring at her as though stricken.
Emma’s fingers froze on the keys. “Lily,” she whispered.
Linda Lael MilleR is the New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including her bestsellers of romantic suspense, Don’t Look Now, Never Look Back, and One Last Look. There are more than 14 million copies of her books in print. Ms. Miller resides in Spokane, Washington.
Visit her website at
www.lindalaelmiller.com.
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