“How much?” Nellie asked.
Big Jim gave her a nasty grin. “You were always a favorite at my place. It’d take you a while to earn what you owe, considering Ernest’s debt, and everything I spent trying to get you back. But there’s a game in town, and I’m willing to let you go if I can get my stake. One thousand dollars.”
Looking around the room, and having had the financial discussion with Luke, Nellie knew that even if they sold everything they owned, it wouldn’t come close to that amount. Surely Ernest hadn’t lost that much money gambling. Their old house hadn’t been worth that much, either. But Nellie remembered watching them beat a man for not paying on time, then telling him it would be double when he brought the money for the next deadline. Interest, they called it.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
He laughed. “I was definitely crazy to accept Ernest’s wagers, that’s for sure. But I am perfectly sane in telling you that I will recoup my losses.”
Big Jim stuck out a finger and wiped a spot where the stew had landed, then licked it.
“Too salty. I can’t keep you as a cook, but I’m sure we’ll find another bed for you to use working upstairs. The men liked you.”
Nellie closed her eyes. How a man could enjoy hurting a woman and making her cry, she didn’t know. But that life—she simply couldn’t go back to it.
The front door opened, and Ruby and Amos came running in.
“Nellie! Look what we did!”
Amos held up a package, then stopped. Ruby opened her mouth but didn’t say anything.
“Ah,” Big Jim said. “The rest of the children.”
He walked up to Ruby, a grin filling his face. “You must be Ruby. Such a charming letter you sent to Nellie’s sister, begging for her to take Nellie away. If it hadn’t been for you, we would have never found her. I’ll have to send you a finder’s fee once I get what’s rightfully mine. Don’t you worry, you pretty thing. Nellie will be out of your hair soon enough.”
Ruby shrank back, terror in her eyes as she looked from Big Jim to Nellie.
Nellie’s stomach ached. Everything she’d done to keep Big Jim and his men from finding her, and all it took was a resentful little girl to ruin it all. Ruby hadn’t known what she was doing, but it didn’t matter. The damage had been done.
“Please leave,” Nellie said, trying to keep her voice firm. “You have no quarrel with these people. You’ve caused enough harm.”
Big Jim turned and looked at her. “You have three days. I’ll have my money, or I’ll have payment in some other way. Even if it means taking you and the children. I’m not sure you’re worth a thousand dollars anymore.”
“But that’s Christmas,” Nellie said. “Can’t it wait until after the holiday? For the children?”
He gave her a look of the same deep disgust he’d given her while she was with him and his men. “Do I look like I care about someone else’s brats? Unless they can make me money, that is.”
As if to prove his point, Big Jim walked over to their Christmas tree, picked it up and tossed it across the room.
“I’m sure it will be a merrier Christmas for them without you. Get me my money or else.”
Big Jim strode out of the house, looking more confident than a lowlife like him deserved to be.
The children were all crying, and as Nellie looked around the room, she couldn’t help but do the same. Their supper was ruined, and when Big Jim had thrown it, bits of stew had landed on all their decorations, effectively destroying them. Everything the family had worked so hard for was now worthless.
“Who was that man?” Ruby asked, coming alongside Nellie and wrapping her arms around her.
Amos joined in, and though the weight of his arms on her body was meant to comfort her, it only made the growing desperation eating at her insides worse.
What if Big Jim had hurt the children?
What would he do when he came back?
“He’s a very bad man,” Nellie said, taking a deep breath to steady herself.
The front door opened, and Luke stepped in.
“What happened?”
The children ran to him, and Nellie set Maeve down so she could join her siblings.
“A very bad man was here,” Amos said.
“And it’s all my fault,” Ruby added.
Nellie meant to say something, but as she opened her mouth, the only thing that came out was a very large sob. Everything she’d worked for, everything she wanted in life, had been so close to her grasp and was now being taken away.
They didn’t have the money. And Nellie wouldn’t ask that of Luke even if they did, not when he had the children to provide for.
“No,” Nellie said, finding her voice as a strange sense of calm overcame her. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have come here and put you all in danger.”
* * *
Luke stared at the mess in his home. He’d sent Amos to the Fitzgeralds’ for help. Myrna had taken Nellie into Nellie’s room, and the two women were holed up there. Seamus had taken one look at the inside of the house and gone for the sheriff. The children couldn’t tell him anything about what happened, other than the fact that a very bad man had been there and he wanted a thousand dollars by Christmas or he’d take Nellie away.
He’d tried asking Nellie for more details, but she only shook her head slowly, tears running down her cheeks.
A thousand dollars.
What had this man been thinking, demanding that much money? True, the house and land were worth quite a bit, given that land prices in Leadville were climbing with every ounce of silver coming out of the mines. But that sum was too dear for their tiny place.
The front door opened, and Will Lawson, one of the town deputies, entered with Seamus. The last time Will was in this house was to tell Luke that his wife had been killed. Luke took a deep breath as he tried to push away the memory.
Will shook his head as he looked around the room. “Whoever this man was, he meant business. Where’s your wife?”
“In the other room. She won’t talk to me. Just keeps crying.”
“Probably in shock.” Will gestured toward the bedroom door. “May I?”
“Of course.”
Will knocked on the bedroom door. “Mrs. Jeffries? Nellie? May I call you Nellie?”
Luke couldn’t hear her response, but she must have answered in the affirmative.
“Nellie, I need you to come out and talk to us. Give us information about the man who was here so we can catch him before he hurts anyone else.”
The gentle way Will spoke to Nellie made Luke wish he had the same skill. It seemed like everything Luke said to Nellie came out wrong. No wonder Will had a reputation for being such a great lawman.
Nellie finally emerged from the room, her face red and splotchy from crying. “The man was Big Jim Jones,” she said quietly. “My late husband sold me to him as payment on a gambling debt he owed. I ran away. Big Jim came here to bring me back.”
She spoke so simply, so matter-of-fact, that Luke had a hard time understanding the words. “What do you mean he sold you? You can’t sell a human being.”
The sadness in Nellie’s eyes as she looked up at him nearly broke his heart. “Of course you can. Maybe people don’t talk about it, or pretend they don’t see it, but it happens every day.”
She pointed out the window. “You think all those women in houses of ill repute on State Street are there by choice? Maybe some, but most of them don’t go into that life willingly.”
Luke stared at her for a moment. “You mean to say that you were one of those women?”
Surely not. He must have misunderstood her meaning. But as the silence grew, the truth kicked him in the stomach.
“So you would...”
He couldn’t even say
the words. Luke took a deep breath. Nellie didn’t seem anything like those women.
“You told me you were a widow.”
“I was.” Fire flashed in Nellie’s eyes, the first sign of life he’d seen in her since he’d come home. “A couple weeks before my husband died, he turned me over to Big Jim as payment on his debt. I didn’t go willingly.”
Myrna put her arm around Nellie and whispered something in her ear. Luke should have been doing that. But as he looked around the room, all he could think about was how his family could have been harmed.
How had he allowed himself to be taken in by a woman with such dangerous connections?
“I’m so sorry,” Will said to Nellie, guiding her to one of the chairs that Seamus had righted. “My wife works in the church’s ministry to those women, and we’ve met several who’d been forced into that profession by a father, a husband or sometimes a man who’d kidnapped her. I’m glad you found a way to get free. I can assure you that we will do everything we can to keep you safe.”
Luke stared at Will. “I don’t understand.”
He knew the church had ministries to down-and-out people, including those women, but Luke never knew that some of those women lived that lifestyle against their will. Nor could he imagine Nellie doing anything she didn’t want to do. None of this made sense.
“Nellie’s plight isn’t uncommon. It’s not talked about much in polite society, which is why I appreciate all the work Pastor Lassiter does. So many of the less fortunate in our society are in that position not by choice, but by circumstance.”
The Fitzgeralds murmured their agreement. They, too, often helped in the church’s ministries and probably were aware of what Will was saying. But it didn’t make it easier for Luke, knowing the danger his family had been in.
Tears streamed down Nellie’s cheeks. “I tried to go to the authorities, but they didn’t believe me. Said I should return to my husband or father, and then one of Big Jim’s men showed up claiming to be my father, and they made me go with him. The next time I ran away, I went to my sister’s. But they burned her barn down and said her house would be next if she didn’t hand me over. Mabel didn’t want me to go, but I couldn’t let her family lose their home.”
Luke had to admit it was a heartbreaking story. Part of him felt sympathy for Nellie, but as he looked around the room that had been destroyed by Big Jim, he mostly felt rage.
“So you would endanger my family instead? My children?”
The children were upstairs in the loft, and Luke wished the walls weren’t so thin. They could probably hear every word. Amos and Maeve wouldn’t understand. But Ruby, who’d already lost so much, would.
It was one more reason for her to be angry with Nellie.
His children shouldn’t have to know that such evil existed in this world. He and Diana had done everything they could to protect them from the darker side of Leadville. Which was part of why they’d remained in this cabin, tucked away in one of the few decent neighborhoods in town.
Yet trouble had still come to their door, thanks to Nellie.
“I did everything to protect them,” Nellie said, standing. “Before I ran away the last time, I made it seem like I hated my sister. I lied and said that she threw me out, so they wouldn’t have any reason to cause her more trouble. And when I finally got away, I laid so many false trails that I thought for sure they’d never find me.”
More tears started to stream down her face as her body shook. “I did everything I knew to do.”
“But it wasn’t enough!” Luke shouted. “I’ve already lost a wife, and now you put my children at risk?”
“Stop!” Ruby’s voice echoed from the loft entrance, then she scrambled down the ladder.
“I did it,” Ruby said. “It’s my fault the men came. That letter, the one I asked you to get back? I found Nellie’s sister’s address in her journal and I wrote her a letter, begging her to take Nellie back because she was so awful and we hated her so much.”
Watching his daughter cry tore at Luke’s heart. No child should have to endure so much pain. Especially when Ruby had nothing to do with any of this.
Ruby shook her head. “I didn’t mean it. I was mad, and when I realized how terrible it was, I tried to take the letter back, but you said it wasn’t possible.”
Then Ruby looked at him with accusation. “If you’d gotten the letter back like I asked, the man would have never found Nellie. He said so. Even told me I would get a reward for helping him find Nellie.” Her words came out in breathless catches, the sobs stealing the air from her lungs.
Ruby turned to Nellie. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know it would bring bad people here. You said nice things about your sister, so I thought that even though I was sending you away, it was to a good place.”
As much as Ruby wanted to take the blame, this was not her fault. The blame lay squarely on Nellie’s shoulders, for her sins of omission.
Nellie held a hand out to Ruby, but Luke held his daughter back. This was not the time for Nellie to be making amends with his daughter, but to be answering to him for endangering Ruby.
“Ruby, you go back upstairs and stay with your brother and sister. They need you.”
The little girl still shuddered from her tears. “But everything’s going to be fine, right? The bad man isn’t going to take Nellie away, right?”
Luke didn’t have the answers to her questions, mostly because he had no idea if anything was ever going to be fine again. How could the rug continually be pulled out from underneath him like this?
“Please go upstairs,” Luke said again, and he noticed that Nellie nodded at Ruby in encouragement.
The Fitzgeralds looked at one another like they were nervous he was going to ask them to leave, too, but it was better for them to hear what was happening firsthand, rather than speculation later.
Once Ruby had gone upstairs, Luke brought his attention back to Nellie. “You should have told me. If you hadn’t been so secretive about your past, we could have—”
“What would you have done?” Nellie wiped at the tears in her eyes. “I saw the disgust in your eyes when you realized the things I must have done with other men. And yes, I did them. At first I cried the entire time. But then I learned that if I cooperated, I didn’t get so many beatings. It’s what we all did to survive. Only people like you don’t understand that, so you sit in judgment because somehow you’re better than me for not being so stupid as to marry the wrong sort of man.”
Nellie shook her head slowly. “I guess I’m pretty dumb, because I did it twice.”
The look she gave him nearly broke his heart in two. Which was crazy, because she was the one who’d deceived him. So why did it bother him so much that she was upset for suffering the consequences of her actions? Actions that could destroy them all?
“I honestly thought you were the sort of man who judged a person by their character, and I’d hoped that over the past few weeks, I’ve shown you who I am. But now that you know about my past, you treat me with the same disdain as the society ladies who snicker behind their fans about women of that profession.”
How was it that she’d been the one to do wrong, and yet the accusations were being leveled at him?
“That’s not fair,” Luke said. “You deceived me. You put my family in danger. Those aren’t the actions of a woman of good character.”
Nellie nodded slowly. “Perhaps you’re right. I should have been more forthcoming about my past. I apologize for the inconvenience to your family.”
Then she turned to Will, who’d been scribbling in his notebook. “I know you mean well, but these men are dangerous, and you can’t stop them. I won’t put Luke and his family in harm’s way. If you can give me a safe place to sleep tonight, tomorrow I’ll see about finding Big Jim and going with him. If I leave w
illingly, no harm will come to anyone.”
“No,” Will said flatly. “We have experience in these matters. You go with Big Jim and you’ll be dead within a couple of years, if he lets you live that long. And he’ll go on doing the same thing to countless other women. He needs to go to jail, where he can’t hurt anyone else.”
“I agree,” Myrna said as she put her arm around Nellie. “You’ve done nothing wrong, and you don’t deserve to spend the rest of your life suffering for someone else’s mistakes.”
Seamus went to the other side of Nellie and copied his wife’s gesture. “Anyone can see that those things you had to do were to survive, they aren’t who you are. We will stand by you, give you a home if you need it and do whatever else it takes to keep you safe. You will not return to that life.”
The sadness on Nellie’s face made Luke want to cry, as well. “No. I’ve done enough damage, thinking I could outsmart these men. My sister lost her barn, and probably her livelihood. I can’t cause Luke or the children any more pain.”
She gave Myrna what Luke recognized as being the smile she used when she was trying to make the best of an impossible situation, like when Ruby had been difficult for her. “I love you all too much to put any of you in danger, as well. It’s best I go with Will, and in the morning, I’ll do what I need to do to keep my family safe.”
Nellie sat back down in the chair, then lifted her foot and started unlacing her boots. “I’ll need a few moments to pack my things.”
Looking up at Luke, she said, “I won’t take anything bought with your money. I’m sure these boots will fetch a decent price because folks buy used boots all the time. That’s how I got mine. I am truly sorry for any pain I’ve caused you, and I know I can never make up for it, but I hope someday you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.”
The memory of discovering her old, worn, too-big boots shamed him. She’d taken nothing from him, sacrificed herself for his children, and here she was, doing it again.
“Keep the boots,” Luke said. “You deserve to have warm and dry feet.”
She deserved a lot more than a pair of boots, and she hadn’t deserved his harsh treatment. He’d spoken rashly in a moment of anger at seeing what could have happened to his family. Nellie would have never intentionally endangered his children. How could he have forgotten the way she so lovingly cared for his family?
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