by Kaki Warner
“Do you, Miss Ever Cheerful? How odd.” Grinning, Lucinda took the other chair. But seeing the stricken expression on Edwina’s face, her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s here,” she burst out, shaking the note in a tight fist as if she had whoever “he” was by the scruff of his neck. “And he expects me to meet him outside the hotel tomorrow morning. Tomorrow!”
Maddie turned to Lucinda. “I’m assuming she means her husband-by-proxy.”
Edwina had told them about her mail-order husband, Declan Brodie, and his four children, and her growing reservations about marrying a stranger. Maddie had tried to reassure her by explaining that arranged marriages were not uncommon in Britain. “Although mine wasn’t, of course. Ours was a love match.”
“And see how well that turned out,” Lucinda had remarked, adding, “Married or not, men are as steadfast as a loose woman’s virtue.”
“What should I do?” Edwina asked now in a quavering voice.
“Run,” Lucinda advised.
“Meet him,” Maddie countered. “He deserves at least that.”
“Pack,” Prudence said flatly. Moving to the wardrobe in their bedroom, she pulled out her carpetbag from beneath the bed and began folding garments inside.
Watching her, Lucinda realized that after their departure tomorrow, she might never see either woman again. The notion saddened her more than she would have thought. Sharing their company for this short while had been a novel and delightful experience. The prospect of losing Maddie’s companionship at some point in the future was even more depressing.
Edwina smoothed out the note and studied it again. “Perhaps he just wants to talk. Pay his respects. Perhaps he doesn’t intend to actually leave tomorrow.” She looked hopefully at Lucinda and Maddie. “That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?”
Lucinda shrugged.
“What does he say exactly?” Maddie asked.
“‘Eight o’clock in the morning outside the hotel. Brodie.’”
“Chatty fellow, isn’t he?” Lucinda said drily.
“Twelve hours. That’s all I have left.”
“It could be a grand adventure,” Maddie consoled. “This marriage might be all you’ve ever dreamed.”
To sweet Maddie, every cloud was woven with golden threads and sprinkled with diamonds. Lucinda wondered how much of it was a front to mask her disappointment in her own lonely situation. “Surely you don’t believe that, Maddie,” she challenged, unable to let it pass. “Have you ever seen a truly happy couple?”
“Angus and I might have been, had he ever stayed around long enough for us to get to know one another.”
“Or you might have been utterly miserable. Three letters and one visit in six years. The man should be shot.”
“Maybe he was. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t written.” Maddie sent Lucinda a worried look. “Surely I would have been notified if he had been, don’t you think? I wouldn’t want him to be dead.”
Edwina wandered into the bedroom and plopped down on the bed beside the valise Prudence was packing. “Why is he in such a hurry?” she complained. “He could have waited a few more days.”
With a deep sigh, she flopped back across the ratty counterpane. “Such haste is unseemly. I’m not a cow to be herded around. I’m a gently bred lady.”
“You’re a nitwit,” Prudence muttered. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Nonetheless, I deserve better. I had better.”
“You’ve been married before?” Maddie called.
“And she’s doing it a second time?” Lucinda muttered.
“We married just as the war broke out,” Edwina said, staring up at the stained ceiling. “Shelley was such a sweet boy. And so handsome in his sword and sash.”
“One does get pulled in by the uniform,” Maddie mused. “Angus is with the Tenth Hussars. Assuming he’s still alive. What happened to your Shelley?”
“He marched off the day after our wedding, only to return four months later, minus a leg and dying of a hideous infection. It near broke my heart.” Her voice cracked. “Oh, why did everything have to change? I wish that wretched war had never happened.”
Prudence paused in her packing to look at her.
“Except for the slavery thing,” Edwina amended with a halfhearted wave of one hand. “Naturally I wanted that to stop.”
“We English ended that nasty practice years ago, thank heavens,” Maddie said.
“After,” Lucinda pointed out, “you introduced that nasty practice here.”
“No matter how it ended,” Prudence cut in, “on behalf of freed slaves everywhere, I just thank the Lord it’s over.”
“On behalf of Yankees everywhere,” Lucinda quipped, “you’re welcome.”
“Ha!” Sitting up, Edwina glared at her traveling companion. “You were never a slave, Pru, and don’t pretend you were.”
“My mother was.”
“And our father was a slave to her.”
Our? Lucinda saw the warning look pass between the two women and finally understood. They were half sisters, sharing the same father. That explained the strong bond between them.
“Please, Pru,” Edwina said, wearily. “Let’s not get into that again. The war’s been over for five years. There’s even a man of color in Congress. Can’t we finally put slavery to rest?”
“Half color. And Mr. Revels was never a slave.” Pausing in her folding, Pru looked at the far wall, her expression troubled. “I try. But then I see all those bewildered Africans wandering through the towns we pass, and I get angry all over again. They can’t read or write, Edwina, and some barely speak English. They have no training to start new lives. Someone should help them—do something to right that terrible wrong.”
Edwina flopped back again. Lucinda hoped the lacy cobwebs on the stained ceiling that swung to and fro over her face weren’t inhabited. “I just want to put it all behind me,” the southerner said in a wobbly voice. “All that pain and death. I don’t want to think about all those new graves. Is that so wrong? To want to leave the past behind and start over?”
Wasn’t that what they were all trying to do? Lucinda wondered. Maddie, deserting her neglectful Scottish soldier to start a new life; Edwina and Pru, fleeing the destruction of their entire way of life; herself, trying to escape her aborted marriage and memories of her dalliance with Tait?
Escape? Who was she trying to fool? Tait still hovered in the back of her mind. He haunted her nights and plagued her days. She would never be able to leave the memories of him behind.
“No, love, it isn’t.” Sinking onto the edge of the bed, Prudence patted Edwina’s hand. “I’m just not sure marrying a man you never met is the way to go about it.”
“Well, what choice did I have?” Edwina complained, sitting up again. “A Klansman or a carpetbagger. It seems all the men I knew were either married, so defeated they couldn’t go on, or so angry they couldn’t let the killing end. I can’t live like that any longer. I won’t.”
Prudence rose and resumed packing. “Eldridge Blankenship was unmarried and was neither Klansman nor carpetbagger. He would have made a fine husband.”
“Or a beaver,” Edwina argued. “Did you see those teeth? Besides, he wanted children.”
Maddie tipped her head to study Edwina through the open door. “You don’t want children?”
Edwina shrugged.
Lucinda had a sudden image of Tait struggling with the preventative. All those muscles, all that athleticism and intelligence, defeated by a little piece of rubber. She had to smile, even as something shifted deep inside her at the memory. How could he just walk away without even giving her a chance to explain?
“How do you plan to stop them from coming?” Maddie asked.
Angry with where her thoughts had taken her, Luc
inda gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, there are ways. A man named Charles Goodyear has invented a rubber sheath that fits over—”
“Lucinda Hathaway!” Prudence gave her a look that would have done her name proud. “I cannot believe you would discuss such a thing!”
“Fits over what?” Maddie asked. Then her eyes went round. “My word! You’re talking about French letters, aren’t you? They’re made of rubber? I thought they were made of linen or silk or animal intestines.”
“Intestines? Good Lord. You Scots truly are backward.”
“I’m English, Lucinda, as well you know.”
“Be that as it may, rubber sheaths have been around for at least a decade.” In fact, she still had an unopened packet that Tait had left on the train. She wasn’t sure why she’d kept it. “Apparently neither you nor your Scottish husband ever used one.”
“There was no need.”
“No need? You mean you didn’t—”
“Of course we did,” Maddie cut in. “Many times. In the same day, in fact. But prevention wasn’t an issue. I wanted children very much.”
“You two astound me.”
Lucinda looked over to see Edwina peering wistfully through the bedroom doorway. “Why?”
“You say whatever you want. Travel where and when the mood strikes you. Follow your dreams wherever they take you. Instead of just being someone’s wife.”
“Oh, being a wife isn’t so bad,” Maddie allowed. “I rather liked it. Until he abandoned me to his family and left, of course. Ghastly man, that earl.”
“Earl?” Edwina sounded shocked. “You’re married to an earl?”
“His father is the earl. Angus is only third in line, which is why he is in the military, of course.”
“Edwina, you wouldn’t last two minutes on your own,” Prudence said, responding to her earlier remark. “You can’t even cook.”
“Who cooks?” Maddie said airily. “I’m sure your new husband will be delighted with you, Edwina, whether you can cook or not.”
Lucinda smiled sadly, her mind slipping back into rose-scented memories even as a bittersweet pain wrapped around her heart. Would Tait have cared that she couldn’t cook? Would he have expected her to fit into the perfect wifely mold, as Doyle had? Or would he have welcomed her insights and ideas?
Sadly, she would never know.
* * *
“I shall miss them,” Maddie said later that night as she and Lucinda prepared for bed.
They had already said their good-byes to Edwina and Prudence, and even Lucinda was battling a feeling of loss. How odd that after going most of her life without close friends, she would become so quickly attached to these women she barely knew. “We’re supposed to be stranded here for at least two weeks. Perhaps they’ll come back to town during that time.”
“Why would they bother? As you said, this place is a ghost town.”
Lucinda moved to stand at the window that overlooked the dirt road behind the hotel. A full moon highlighted a sheen of seeping water on the canyon wall behind the creek and gave a pale, angular shape to the canvas awning outside the Chinese laundry. Except for light spilling through the rear window of the Red Eye Saloon next door and lamplight in the office of the livery several buildings down, the town looked deserted. Yet the plinking of an untuned piano drifted in pine-scented air that was blessedly free of coal smoke and rotting garbage, and every now and then she could hear the call of a night bird. Not since Ireland had she seen a night so quiet. There was a peaceful feeling to it.
“It’s too bad,” she mused. “This could be a pretty little town if somehow it could be made prosperous again.”
“It certainly has character,” Maddie agreed, coming to stand beside her at the window. “Everywhere I look, something of interest catches my eye. I hope we stay long enough to order more supplies. I would hate to miss such a wonderful photographic opportunity.”
“I suppose we don’t have to leave when the trestle is rebuilt,” Lucinda said, surprising herself almost as much as she seemed to have surprised Maddie. But why not stay awhile? She needed a place to stay—hide, really—until she found out if Smythe was still trailing her, and no one—certainly not Doyle and his Pinkertons—would ever think to look in a place this far away from civilization. And for some unfathomable reason, she actually liked this dismal little town. If she were given to whimsy, she might even think it needed her.
Or, perhaps she needed it. An interesting thought.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Lucinda shrugged. “It’s not as if we have anywhere else to go just now, so why not stay as long as we want? You can have your supplies sent here, and meanwhile, when Edwina and Prudence come to town for supplies as surely they must, we can find out how Edwina’s arranged marriage is going, and if Prudence has been able to teach her to cook, and what the children are like. I certainly don’t have any pressing reason to keep heading west at the moment. In fact, I’d enjoy a rest from that bouncing train. How about you?”
Maddie didn’t even give it a thought. “I adore the idea. Let’s do it!”
“Excellent. We’ll tell Edwina and Pru in the morning.”
But they overslept, and when Lucinda saw the other bedroom was empty, she thought they were too late. Then she noted the traveling cases stacked inside the sitting room door waiting for Billy, the bellboy, to carry them down, and realized her friends hadn’t yet left. “Wake up,” she said to Maddie as she quickly changed out of her night clothes. “They’re still here. If we hurry, we’ll be able to see them before they go.”
They were just about to rush out the door when Prudence came in, trailed by Billy. “He’s here,” she said with a breathless grin. “And oh my goodness. Edwina is in for it now.”
“What does that mean?” Maddie asked, tossing a shawl around her shoulders.
“You’ll see.”
A moment later, they trooped down the stairs to find Edwina leaning across the front desk, whispering to the clerk, Yancey. Other than a big man skulking in the open double doorway, the lobby was empty.
Lucinda studied him, thinking he looked a little like the man in the tintype Edwina had shown them last night, insomuch as both men had dark hair and eyes, and neither seemed capable of smiling. But instead of wearing a banded drover shirt and a dark coat like in the tiny photograph, this man wore a battered sheepskin jacket over an unbleached work shirt and worn denims, and a three-day growth of dark beard on his scowling, square-jawed face.
“Is that her husband?” Maddie whispered.
“God help her if it is.”
He stalked forward, spared them barely a glance, and said to Edwina, “You ready? The washout and a busted wheel have already cost me an extra day. I need to get back. Now.” Picking up the valises, he turned toward the door.
Edwina’s lips pinched tight.
“We’re right behind you, sir,” Prudence answered, shoving Edwina forward.
“You poor thing,” Lucinda muttered, falling into step behind them.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Maddie whispered. “I think your husband is rather handsome, Edwina. And big, like Angus.”
“He’s not my husband.”
Pru stopped pushing. “He’s not?”
Edwina giggled. “That’s Big Bob.” She drew out the name, adding a flourish, like a barker at a county fair announcing the prize hog. “At least, that’s what Yancey called him. I assume he’s been sent to fetch us.” Seeing Pru’s frown, she quickly added, “But don’t fret. The clerk said he was once a sheriff, so we’ll be fine. I think.” Turning, she gave hugs to Maddie and Lucinda. “I shall miss you,” she said, blinking hard.
“Me, too,” Lucinda murmured, quickly pulling back, always uncomfortable with emotional displays.
“But not for long,” Maddie announced. “Since we’re
staying. We decided last night.”
“Staying? Here? In Heartbreak Creek?”
“Only for a while,” Lucinda warned, even though she couldn’t help but smile at the befuddled expressions on their friends’ faces.
“But why?” Edwina asked.
“Why not?” Maddie grinned and looked around, her eyes alight with excitement. “This is the perfect place to start my photographic expedition. The real West. And besides, I have to order more supplies and it might be a month before they reach me. And this way, if Luce and I stay together, rather than traveling on alone, we’ll both be safer.”
“And also,” Lucinda added, with a nod toward the tall figure heading down the boardwalk, “if this foolish proxy marriage of yours doesn’t work out, we’ll be close by to spirit you away.”
Fourteen
As had become his habit soon after returning to Manhattan, Tait called on Mrs. Throckmorton several times a week. He told himself it was because he enjoyed her lively company and acerbic remarks. Plus, he often dined there, and Mrs. Throckmorton set a fine table. But in truth, his main reason for stopping by so often was because the old lady was his only link to Lucinda and it was his hope that when Lucinda finally gave her guardian a way to communicate with her, he might be able to establish a correspondence with the woman he had so wrongly accused.
His foul behavior preyed heavily on him. He had overreacted badly. Probably because his feelings that night had been a confusing mix of guilt and lust and something he still couldn’t define. He remembered awakening to the rose-perfumed dawn, wondering what he should do now and how he should settle this with Doyle, and how he could have lost so much of himself to a woman about whom he knew so little. Such indecisiveness was abhorrent to him, and in that moment of confusion, he had lashed out at her rather than at himself. He had to tell her that and try to mend the damage he had done.
But first he had to find out where she was.
“You took your time getting here,” Mrs. Throckmorton complained when she entered the front receiving room on a bright afternoon during the second week in May. Then seeing Tait’s look of confusion, she gave a huff of exasperation. “You didn’t receive my message, did you? I vow I’ll cast that Pringle out on the street. You hear that, Pringle?”