Midnight Lover

by Barbara Bretton

  Caroline, accustomed to privacy, had complained bitterly, rejecting each and every lady's maid her father paraded before her until the day Abigail O'Brien—small, feisty, and fiercely loyal—walked into Caroline's life and decided to stay.

  Abigail glanced toward the Saratoga trunk at the foot of the bad.

  "'Tis a sad duty, going through a loved one's possessions," Abigail said slowly. "I would have been glad to help you, Miss Caroline."

  Caroline, clad in a light wrapper of pale turquoise wool, sat up and rested her back against a pile of down pillows. Her heavy black dress lay crumpled at the foot of the bed and she watched as it slithered to the floor.

  "Don't bother, Abby," she sad as the girl bent to retrieve it. "It could not wrinkle if it wanted to." She forced a smile. "Emily would not allow it."

  Abby picked up the dress anyway and draped it carefully across the chaise longue near the window. "And now it wouldn't be Mrs. Addison who would be ironing it if it did, would it, miss?"

  "You realize you're incorrigible, don't you, Abby?"

  "If that means I speak my mind, then yes I am." Abby fussed with the arrangement of enameled Battersea boxes on the nightstand, brushing off imaginary flecks of dust with the tip of her index finger. "Was it difficult, Miss Caroline?" She gestured toward the trunk. "If you would be wantin' me to dispose of any of Mr. Bennett's things, I'd—"

  "I haven't even opened it yet, Abby."

  Abby sank down on the edge of the bed. "You haven't opened it?"

  "Afraid not."

  "Is it you're feeling poorly then? Your time of the month perhaps?"

  Caroline made a face and pushed her heavy blonde hair off her forehead. "Nothing like that, Abby." She took a deep breath. "Thomas asked me to marry him."

  "Praise be to all the saints! The man might be a bit slow at things, but I knew he would be gettin' around to it soon! Oh, but the excitement when—" She stopped abruptly and stared at Caroline. "You said no, didn't you?"

  "I didn't say no. Not yet anyway." Caroline sat up straighter against the pillows. "Don't look at me that way, Abigail! It's impertinent."

  "And how should I be lookin' at a woman who is determined to ruin her own life?"

  Caroline swung her legs out of the bed and stood up. "If I marry Thomas Addison, I'll be ruining two lives: mine and his."

  "I've seen the way Mr. Addison looks at you, Miss Caroline. I doubt if he'd be thinkin' you'd ruin his life."

  "Fine," Caroline conceded, pacing the length of the bedroom, "but I would certainly be ruining mine."

  Abby made a show of looking at the opulent velvet bedhangings, the gleaming pine furniture, the Oriental rug shimmering with luminous color. "If this be ruinin' your life, it's ready I am to take your place."

  "If I thought we could manage that trick, Abby, I'd take you up on your offer."

  The young maid motioned toward her own petite frame. "I'd be needin' a pair of stilts and some of Madame Oberdorfer's Bosom Pads, but I'm willin'."

  Caroline tugged at the sash on her wrapper and quickened her pacing. Just talking about marriage made her feel as if the silk-covered walls of that bedroom were shrinking inward, drawing themselves around her like the whalebone corsets Emily Addison swore were the sign of the wellbred young woman.

  "Marriage isn't all rose petals and fancy gowns, Abigail," she said. She'd seen enough of her father's many marriages to understand how true a statement that was.

  Abby, eldest of eleven children and as practical as she was loyal, nodded her head. "'Tis true," she said, "but the way I see it, Otis the only choice you have."

  "And what, pray tell, does that mean?"

  "I would be thinking you know exactly what it means."

  Caroline stopped, hands on her hips. "I do not," she said, trying to cow Abigail with a look. "I need you to tell me."

  Abigail O'Brien, however, was made of sterner stuff than that and she didn't blink beneath Caroline's imperious stare. "You're a spinster, Miss Caroline, and spinsters don't often get a chance at someone as young and handsome as Mr. Addison."

  "A spinster!" Caroline didn't know whether to laugh or throw a slipper at her outspoken employee. "Don't be absurd!"

  "You're a spinster," Abby repeated. "Be as pigheaded as you like, Miss Caroline, but the fact is that a twenty-three year old unmarried woman is a spinster."

  "I'm twenty-two."

  "You're twenty-three," Abby said. "You were twenty-three in November."

  Caroline did some quick arithmetic. "Twenty-three," she murmured. Two years shy of the quarter-century mark. When Aaron was her age, he had a three-year-old daughter and was well on his way toward his second marriage.

  She lifted her head slightly and snatched a quick glimpse of herself in the mirror. While her golden hair hadn't suddenly turned to silver or her bosoms collapsed around her slender waist the specter of spinsterhood was definitely hovering around her.

  "Oh, you're beautiful enough," Abby continued, "I'll be grantin' you that. But the fact remains you're five years past prime marrying age and with no dowry and no position and no home to call your own, it seems to me that Mr. Addison's offer is something to—"

  "Oh, blast Mr. Addison's offer!" Caroline stormed across the room and picked up her hairbrush, drawing it through her hair with quick, violent strokes. "I don't want to hear about Mr. Addison's offer." She caught the girl's eye in the mirror. "Tell me honestly, Abby: Do you really believe Emily Addison would welcome me with open arms?"

  Abby adjusted the apron of her uniform. "She seems to be very fond of you."

  Caroline drew the brush through her waist-length hair. "She was more fond of my father."

  "All the more reason to be charitable to the daughter," Abby said without much conviction. "Mr. Addison is the apple of her eye. If he loves you, she would never refuse him."

  "Ah, yes," said Caroline. "I can see us now, twenty years hence. Thomas will still be fussing over Emily, making sure her glass of Madeira is full. He'll be a doddering old man at forty-five, full of crotchets and quirks before his time."

  Abby laughed out loud. "You must have kissed the Blarney Stone a time or two, miss, to spin a tale like that."

  "Tell me I'm wrong then, Abby." She turned, brush in hand, and waited. Abby looked down at her booted feet and adjusted a lace. Caroline's voice grew softer. "Abby, can you tell me I'm wrong?"

  "No, Miss Caroline, I can't be tellin' you you're wrong, but I can tell you we don't all get everything we want in this world. You're too much like your father, God rest his soul. Always lookin' for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow." Abby got up and walked across the room to where Caroline stood near the dressing table. "There's not pot of gold, Miss Caroline. Sometimes there's not even a rainbow."

  "I cannot stay here," Caroline said, slapping the back of her silver hairbrush against her palm for emphasis. "If I marry Thomas, I'll end up locked away in this house like one of Emily's fusty old antique clocks. They'll dust me off for company but the rest of the time I'll be relegated to my room to do needlework and grow old."

  "Then what will you do if you don't marry?" Abby persisted.

  "I can find a position somewhere."

  "A position!" Abby's freckled nose wrinkled. "And doing what, Miss? They don't pay young ladies for having fine table manners."

  The jab at her crazy-quilt education hit home but Caroline refused to acknowledge it before her sharp-eyed maid. "You said yourself I sew a fine seam, Abby. I could take in work."

  "You're too slow at it, Miss. You couldn't keep yourself in tea with what you'd be makin'."

  "Perhaps I'll become a lady's maid," she said, unable to resist striking back. "Certainly it doesn't take great skill."

  Abby didn't rise to the bait. "You'd be findin' out quickly enough," she said with a grin. "'Tis more to this than meets the eye."

  Caroline sank down on the bed, brush still clasped between her hands. "So what you are saying is that I am good for nothing useful."

  "I
never said that, Miss Caroline. What I said is it's harder to earn a livin' than you think."

  "So tell me then, Abby, what can I do? What on this great earth of ours am I capable of doing?"

  "You'd make a good and capable wife."

  Caroline raised the brush as if to throw it at Abby but the young woman stared her down. "You infuriate me sometimes, Abby."

  "Truth hurts the first time, don't it."

  "I refuse to marry Thomas Addison."

  "Then you should be thinkin' about the future, Miss Caroline, for it will be here before you know it."

  "I could always go west. I've read there are many opportunities out there for women." The original idea to head toward Nevada had been Caroline's and not Aaron's at all.

  "Hah! And you'd be knowin' what those opportunities are." Abby crossed herself. "Fancy ladies all painted and rouged, drunken cowboys—what on earth would you be thinkin' of, Miss Caroline?"

  Caroline jumped back off the bed and hurried over to the battered Saratoga trunk. "I don't know what I'm thinking of, Abby," she said as she flung the lid open. "All I know is there has to be something more for me than what I have now." Maybe somewhere new and raw she'd be able to rise above her circumstances and not always be at the mercy of the whimsical charity of others.

  Abby circled the trunk as if it contained live rattlesnakes. "What did going west get your poor father, God rest his soul? Dead, that's what, Miss. Dead and buried in his grave and nothing left behind for his daughter. It's evil out there, Miss Caroline, and I won't have you going—"

  Caroline's shriek stopped Abby cold. "My God, Abby! Look!" She waived a creased piece of paper in the air! "He owned it! He really owned it!" While a Harvard law school graduate might have winced at that scrawled and crossed-out document, to Caroline it was as beautiful as the Magna Carta and as valuable as the Constitution.

  Abby peered over Caroline's shoulder as she stared at her ticket out. There was no doubt about it: the Crazy Arrow Saloon, a three-floor dwelling on the south side of Main Street belonged to one Aaron Edward Bennett, free and clear.

  And, as the only living issue of Aaron Edward Bennett, Caroline Bennett was now the new owner.

  "Don't you see, Abby?" she said, grabbing the young woman and dancing around the room. "This is my inheritance! I'll go to Silver Spur and—"

  Abby stopped short and Caroline tumbled into the chaise longue by the window. "You won't be goin' nowhere, Miss Caroline. You may own the Crazy Arrow but it won't be makin' a difference."

  "You're daft, Abby! You've read the paper. Saloons are big business in the West. Why, all I'll have to do is hire a good bartender and I'll be rolling in money. We can even—"

  "And how do you get there, Miss Caroline?"

  What on earth was the matter with Abigail tonight? She seemed to see problems at every turn. "Same as Aaron did, I suppose. Take the train to St. Louis then the stagecoach west."

  "And how would you be payin' for the stagecoach, miss?"

  "Why, with—" Caroline stopped. "Do you think I could pawn my hairbrush?" she asked wryly. "Maybe that could get us as far as new York City."

  "'Twas a good idea you had," Abby said, obviously relieved now that the danger was past, "but it just wasn't God's will."

  Caroline reached into the trunk and pulled out a fountain pen and a silk tie. "Don't go telling me about God's will, Abby. Is it God's will that I shrivel up and die in Boston?" She got on her knees and thrust her hand into the farthest corner of the trunk. "I cannot believe God wants me to spend my life as Mrs. Thomas Wentworth Addison II."

  Once again Abby's slender fingers flew as she made the sign of the cross. "You should be payin' more heed to what you say, miss. God has a way of lettin' us know when we've gone too far."

  "Yes," Caroline grunted as she tried to extract a heavy velvet drawstring pouch. "He sends fire and earthquakes and pestilence." The pouch had the most irregular feel to it, almost as if it contained enough coins to feed a family of eight for a year. But what a ridiculous thought! Aaron was always one step ahead of the bill collector.

  "Blasphemous," Abby said. "I know it be your sorrow talkin', Miss Caroline, but—"

  Abby went on but Caroline was no longer listening. The velvet pouch rested in her lap. One glance inside had told her everything she needed to know.

  "Abby," she interrupted, "short of a divine visit, what would it take to convince you that I should go to Silver Spur?"

  "I don't know," Abby said, looking highly suspicious.

  Caroline did her best to keep a straight face. "What would you say if I found enough money to take me to Nevada and back five times over? Would that convince you?"

  "If ever you find that much money, miss, you let me know and I'll be packin' your bags so fast that you'll—"

  "Look, Abby!" Caroline opened the pouch and let the gold coins spill out at her feet. "Money!"

  Abby stared at the gold, clearly beyond coherent speech.

  A small piece of paper caught Caroline's eye. The strange handwriting on it sprawled across the page and, despite the inventive spelling, the meaning was clear. For the first and last time in his life, Aaron Bennett had done right by his daughter. He'd left two hundred dollars in gold coins specifically earmarked for "... the future well-being of Miss Carolyn Luisa Bennett of Boston, Mass...." and some kind person in Silver Spur had seen fit to send it on.

  "Well, Miss O'Brien?" Caroline asked as she let the coins sift through her fingers. "What do you say now?"

  Abby finally looked away from the shimmering mountain of money and shrugged her shoulders. "Well, Miss Caroline," she said, a smile beginning to spread across her face. "I'd say I'd better start packin'."

  Aaron had provided the pot of gold but now it was up to Caroline to find the rainbow.

  Chapter 3

  Silver Spur

  June 1876

  For half an hour, Jesse had been listening to Harry Calhoun rattle the rafters of the Golden Dragon. The old man had shouted and cursed and filled the men with tales of horror and slavery until he had almost everyone in that room ready to bear arms against the enemy. Short of bringing General Custer back from the dead to lead them into battle, Jesse didn't know what the old coot could do to stir his audience up any more than they already were.

  "What I'm tellin' you, men, is we got to stick together." Harry was so fired up he sprayed saliva on the first three rows of the audience. "These addlebrained petticoats can swoop down on Silver Spur all they want, but they can't make us marry unless we're willin to marry and I say we ain't willin'!"

  The men crammed into that smoke-filled, whiskey-soaked room with its red velvet drapes and gold chandeliers exploded into whistle and cheers that drowned out Harry's words.

  Jesse lit another cheroot and tilted his chair back against the wall while Old Tom, the crazy prospector, cleaned his nails with the point of his pick axe.

  Damn fools had themselves all worked up just because a couple stagecoaches packed full of spinsters with marriage on their minds had arrived in Silver Spur and those spinsters had managed to corral a few old timers who'd been down in the mines so long that a hot meal and a clean house sounded better than freedom.

  Sam Markham, his bartender at the King of Hearts, ambled over and leaned his narrow butt against the ledge of the window next to Jesse's chair.

  "So, what do you think?" Sam asked "That Calhoun sure can stir 'em up, can't he?"

  Jesse grunted. "The whiskey they guzzled had them pretty stirred up before Harry started talking at them."

  "You ain't takin' this thing serious enough, Jesse. Women comin' into Silver Spur is gonna change things and I don't mean for the better." He waited for an answer but Jesse wasn't about to give him one—not after Sam made him sit through this hogwash.

  Sam's eyes narrowed like he was looking into the midday sun.

  "Quit scowling at me, Sam. You're the one who wanted me to come to this thing." Sam's expression grew more fierce and Jesse tipped his hat over his fore
head and made a show of closing his eyes. "You don't scare me."

  "Maybe I don't scare you, but all them women comin' to town ought to."

  "The day I'm scared of something that weighs less than Billy Hansen's mutt is the day you can drag me kickin' and screamin' up to Cemetery Hill."

  "You won't be feelin' so all-fired cocky when your gambling halls and Jade's cathouse go out of business."

  Jesse opened one eye. "You been hittin' Carlos's tequila again, Sam?"

  Sam refused to be cowed. "For a smart man, you're mighty stupid, Jesse. Once the marryin' starts up, there ain't going to be much call for saloons or the Golden Dragon."

  "Then you don't know much about marriage, Sam, because there's nothin' like taking those vows to send a man out looking for a bottle and a willing woman."

  Sam tossed his half-smoked cigar into the spittoon by the door, barely missing Jesse. "Good thing you got better aim than half the cowboys in town, Markham. I'd hate to have to shoot my best bartender."

  "Make jokes all you want, Jesse. I ain't gonna fight you. You own half the goddamned town as it is."

  Jesse raised one hand to stop him. "I own the whole goddamned town and don't you forget it."

  Sam caught on to Jesse's meaning real quick. "Ain't none of us gonna forget it. You're the most powerful man in Silver Spur and that's why the League needs you, Jesse. Without you it don't stand a chance."

  "League? What League?"

  Sam glanced away and Jesse followed his gaze back to the lectern to the right of the full-length portrait of Jade wearing nothing more than a feather boa and a diamond ring. Old Harry Calhoun, Big Red and Three-Toed Morton stood there watching them right back.

  "Ain't you been listenin' to nothin' we got to say, Jesse?" Sam's voice was low and urgent. "The Single Men's Protection League. We're bandin' together to make sure Silver Spur don't become another one of those sissified towns like Chicago or New York."

  If everyone else in the town hadn't been so likkered up and ready to shoot, Jesse would have thrown his head back and let out with the biggest belly laugh this side of the Mississippi