by Jill Gregory
When The Heart Beckons
By Jill Gregory
Smashwords edition published August 2011
Copyright 2011 © Jill Gregory
Cover Art by Marsha Canham
eBook Formatted by A Thirsty Mind
First published by Dell Publishing, 1995. All rights reserved. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Jill Gregory.
To my beautiful daughter, Rachel,
who enriches my life
with her wonderful spirit,
her wit and intelligence,
her dreams, and her laughter.
Honey, this one’s for you!
With love forever and always.
Prologue
Something strange quivered in the sultry southern air.
The stoop-shouldered peddler felt it prickle his skin as he drove his horse and cart along the rolling, violet-laced hills outside of Richmond. The peddler’s name was Jonah E. Banks and he had traveled this particular shaded and lovely road many times before, but there was something in the air today, something clinging to the hemlock leaves, whispering among the lush grass and blue lobelia, something which made him swallow hard and peer over his shoulder with an uneasy grimace. It was a sadness, a sense of loss. A heartrending melancholy which made the skin on his burly forearms prickle. Jonah coughed nervously and glanced sideways through baggy, faded blue eyes, peering through the trees at the abandoned, white-columned house nestled well back from the road.
Something moved across the crumbling stone porch and his heart skipped a beat. A shadow—no, a woman—he thought in astonishment. A slim woman with flowing crystal hair, a woman whose pale gown of indeterminate color floated about her in shimmery splendor. No, no, it was only a shadow after all, a trick of the sunlight, Jonah realized. He blinked and stared again. But the lovely vision of shining femininity was gone, and only the dazzling flicker of sunbeams remained.
Your imagination is playing tricks on you, the peddler told himself. Briskly, he snapped the reins. He had business to conduct in the city, and beyond. There was no time to waste imagining ghosts flitting through the woods or skulking about old deserted houses. He had wares to sell and miles yet to travel. First he would traverse the South and then the grand untamed West. Work to do and supper to eat and riches to seek.
The peddler disappeared around a bend in the road. The moment the clip-clop of his horse’s hooves ceased, the warm honey-scented air on the hillside began to hum with echoes of old tunes and voices.
* * *
Savannah Brannigan tapped her toe and stared at the path that Jonah E. Banks had traveled.
Then she moved slowly forward down the porch steps and around to the back of the house, drifting across the weed-strewn lawn, toward the stand of red cedars which clustered like brave sentries beside the tiny meandering brook. This was the place she had loved, the place where in years past she had come to think and wonder and pray.
Where was the brooch? Savannah glanced around helplessly, searching for guidance. She hadn’t lost it in Richmond at all, but in St. Louis, the day of the fire. But still ... something told her it was nearby.
Her movements were graceful flickers among the green-gold leaves, as light and quick as fairy wings. Her spying days were long over, her days on earth as a human woman a remnant of the past. She was only spirit now, spirit and soul, yet there was about her such a strength of purpose that her airy passing actually rustled the leaves upon the spring-clad trees.
It had been exactly one year since her passing. Her daughter was now ten years old. She stared at the house where Annabel had been born, where she, Savannah, had lived throughout the war and had planned each of her spying missions for the Union, and as her spirit floated around it, she remembered everything she had done and had been forced to do, the good and the bad.
She bent her head. When she gazed upward she was no longer in Richmond, but in another place, miles and miles away.
St. Louis, the place Annabel now called home.
Gertie, Gertie is my daughter happy? she silently beseeched her aunt, who opened the kitchen door at the moment and emerged from the three-story brick mansion with a shopping basket tucked beneath her plump arm.
Gertie glanced up, her kind, dimpled face wearing an expression of odd sharpness as she glanced about, then she shrugged her rounded shoulders and proceeded down the walk.
Savannah swept through the house, drifting among the fine large rooms with their grand furnishings, gliding past gold-framed paintings which hung upon mahogany-paneled walls. She passed beneath intricately corniced ceilings and magnificent crystal chandeliers. She saw the beauty and the splendor. But she sensed tragedy and sadness beneath the magnificence. Fear smote her as she wondered what effect the dark history of this house would have upon her daughter.
Annabel. Where was Annabel?
She heard laughter, and in the garden she saw her girl, with hair the color of cinnamon, playing tag among the flowers and fountains with a boy only a little older, perhaps twelve or thirteen. They darted through the garden, laughing, shrieking, and then Annabel, glancing over her shoulder, distracted perhaps by the odd sensation of gentle fingers brushing her cheek when no one was there, tripped suddenly upon a loose stone in the pathway and fell headlong into a large marble cat. It toppled over, and the cat’s head broke with a crack and shattered onto the stone.
Savannah drifted beneath an elm to watch as at that moment a man emerged from French doors and glared at the two children standing guiltily among the flowers.
“If you have nothing better to do with your time than make noise and break valuable statuary, Brett, I can certainly find something of more usefulness for you to turn your attention to. Haven’t you any studies to complete?”
“I’ve finished everything for the day, sir.”
“Then come inside and sit in the library until I’ve time to go over your studies with you. I won’t have you romping about like a heathen.”
“But, sir,” Annabel chirped up, her little face flushed as bright as the poppies growing in their neat beds, and her hands clenched nervously together as she stepped forward. “It was my fault—”
The boy shoved her neatly aside, stepping quickly between her and the massive, frowning, gray-haired man in the doorway. “I apologize for breaking the statue, Father,” Brett declared. “Annabel didn’t want to play in the garden at all—she wanted to walk to the park, but I insisted on the game.”
“Next time you’d best use a little sense and an ounce of care,” the man barked. He waved his hand impatiently. “Quickly, boy, I don’t have all day to stand here in the hot sun. There’s work to do, and until you learn to behave yourself like a serious and proper young gentleman you can sit in the library and think about the kind of conduct that becomes a young man of your station and your name. If you want to make something of yourself in this world, Brett McCallum—and to keep ahold of this empire I’ve built for you—you’ll need to make proper use of your time, and not squander it on stupid games and reckless behavior.”
Savannah watched as her little girl cast the boy a worried look, no less anxious for the adoration in her eyes.
“But the game was my idea, Brett,” she whispered furiously. “You shouldn’t be t
he one who is punished.”
“Quiet.” He softened the order with a light tug on her braid, then grinned at her, and with a quick jaunty wave, strode forward to where his father stood glaring.
Together they disappeared into the great, silent house and Annabel was left alone in the sunshine.
She stooped to gather up the pieces of marble in her skirt, then suddenly straightened, and all the pieces tumbled out again.
“Who’s there?” The little girl glanced around uncertainly. Her face grew still and alert. “I know someone is out here.”
Savannah wanted to reach out to her. “My precious daughter!” she cried silently with all of her heart and soul, but as Annabel watched and listened, still as a statue herself, Savannah felt herself being pulled inexorably toward the stables west of the garden, drawn farther and farther from the baffled little girl she’d left behind.
The stables. Savannah felt a creeping horror descend upon her as she found herself before the long building. She stared at it, as dreadful images writhed all around her. Time spun, blended, whirred together like grains of sand shaken in a bottle. In the past ... or perhaps the future ... an evil deed had happened here ... to an evil man ... begetting an even greater evil ...
It will touch Annabel.
The ice-cold knowledge came to her on a gust of late afternoon wind, and suddenly the sun vanished and the trees shook and gray rain plummeted from the sky.
Then she was drifting, floating, flying, her spirit caught in the wind which blew away the spring sunshine, and she was on a high mountain ledge in wild beautiful country where horses roamed free, looking down at an oval valley where a boy—no, a strapping young man—labored near a meadow stream. He was building a cabin, heedless of the light rain falling all about him.
The brooch ...
Savannah searched the tall mountains, north, south, east, and west, as sagebrush tumbled down the slopes of the valley and distant thunder echoed through the gray and purple mountains. She had come in search of the brooch, the brooch that Ned had given to her as a wedding present, the brooch that should have passed on to Annabel. She could not rest until it was restored to her daughter. But her wanderings had only led her to this high rocky place and to the young man below building the cabin.
She looked down at him and shivered.
He wore a black shirt, pants, and boots, with a gray leather vest and a belt adorned with hammered silver. And two guns in a leather holster.
A blue scarf was knotted loosely around his neck. He was tall, handsome, and strong, Savannah noted, with dark hair that reached to the edge of his collar, hawklike features, and long-lashed black eyes set in a lean quiet face. But a bleak emptiness echoed out from his heart. And she knew all at once that he was a lost soul. His spirit was as hard and relentless as the surrounding mountains and she did not understand why her search had brought her to him and to this wild, pine-scented place.
Savannah. It is time. Come back to me now.
Ned’s spirit called to her and as always she returned to him. Yet as she left the rain and the thunder and the timeless mountains behind, soaring through the thin white air above the aged pines and spruce trees, the restlessness still tormented her soul and she knew one thing.
Annabel was not safe from the evil and would not be safe until the brooch had been returned ... returned to Annabel, to its rightful owner and its rightful place ...
And the handsome young man would somehow play a part ...
* * *
The dark-haired cowboy in the valley paused with the ax raised above his head. He lowered the blade and turned. Was that a woman sobbing? He wiped the rain from his eyes with the back of his hand and scanned the high gray peaks from where the sound had seemed to come.
No, how would a woman come to be here in the fierce treacherous brakes of the Mogollons? It was only the wind and the rain playing tricks on him.
He shrugged and turned back to his work, ignoring the rain and the eerie moaning wind, which sounded so desolate, so pitifully lost and sad. He was alone, which was exactly as he wanted it—alone with his thoughts and his memories and his bitterness—and with his father’s ugly secret.
There was no woman, no sobbing—only the rough, lonesome Arizona wind sweeping down from the pine-scented rim.
A woman. He smiled sardonically to himself. It was not his destiny to share this valley, this cabin, or this life with a woman, any woman, he told himself as he hefted the ax again. He was too ornery, too mean and cursed with stubbornness and pride ever to bring a woman anything but long-term misery. Yes, he’d felt a longing to belong to someone. To come home to someone. But that was not to be. His fate was that of a wanderer, a hired gun, a man unattached to anyone or anything but his own instincts for survival.
This cabin was the only place he would ever remotely consider anything like a home. He had left his real home behind for good. But when he occasionally tired of riding and tracking and killing, when he yearned for escape from his name and his reputation and his enemies, even for a short spell, it would be here for him. Hidden. Quiet. Peaceful.
He stopped and listened. Gone. The sobbing sounds he’d thought he heard were no more.
A woman. Here, in the brakes. The idea of it was loco.
The rain ceased, and across the meadow his horse whickered. He pushed the jagged edges of loneliness away and concentrated his energies on constructing a good, solid cabin. He was content, he told himself. Perfectly content. There was peace in solitude, in the raw wild beauty of this secluded valley, and in the knowledge that he was the only one there.
Chapter 1
St. Louis
“Go ahead—do it,” Annabel Brannigan urged herself silently as pale gray fingers of dusk brushed the city streets beyond the window. “Don’t think about it anymore—just march in there and ask him.”
Yet still she hesitated, lingering beside her spotless cherrywood desk in the outer office of the Stevenson Detective Agency, the amber glow from the kerosene lamp casting golden shadows across her face. The fear of failure clamped around Annabel’s heart like a vise, and her pert, usually lively, countenance, which men had been known to think uncommonly beautiful, was masked now in doubt. Annabel’s long fingers unconsciously smoothed the folds of her brown serge skirt as she fixed her gaze on her employer’s closed door. While the city noises hummed outside the third-story window and a dog barked importantly somewhere down the street, the brass clock on the mantel of the neat but shabby office ticked off the seconds, and Annabel waged a battle within herself.
Coward. Just do it. Annabel’s gray-green eyes darkened as she steeled herself for the moment to come. It was unlike her to hesitate over any task, whether pleasant or unpleasant, but so much weighed upon the result of what she was about to do that she couldn’t quite bring herself to begin. She was going to ask Mr. Everett Stevenson the most important question of her life. And if she failed to persuade him to say “yes” ...
You won’t fail.
She straightened her shoulders, tightened her spine, and strode briskly across the floral-carpeted outer office toward his private sanctum.
Before she’d moved four steps, the door opened and Mr. Stevenson himself glared out at her. He looked like a tough, barrel-chested pirate with his thick neck and jowls, shaggy black hair sprinkled with gray, and stony dark eyes which glowered out ferociously from beneath furry brows. A rapier intelligence gleamed in that fierce, seamed face of fifty-odd years, an intelligence as intimidating as his quick and blunt temper, yet unlike most of his other employees, Annabel had never been alarmed by his curt speech or blistering bursts of temper. She had grown up in the household of a man far more demanding and austere: compared to Ross McCallum, Everett Stevenson was as patient and mild-mannered as a Sunday-school teacher. But tonight she felt a quiver of anxiety as he fixed her with his familiar scowling stare and his voice boomed across the tiny room.
“What’s this—you still here?”
“Yes, Mr. Stevenson, I—”
“I see the other one is gone,” he barked.
“Maggie, sir ... yes, she left a few moments ago ...”
“Well, then,” Everett Stevenson demanded, “why are you still hanging about? Late finishing up, eh?”
“I’m not, sir. I—”
“That letter to Mr. Doyle of the M and R Railroad!” he bellowed.
“It’s finished, sir.” Annabel responded promptly.
“The contracts for the Adler factories investigation!”
“Finished, sir.”
“The response to Bakersville on that theft inquiry ...”
“Posted this morning, sir.”
“The summaries of the Rockson case!”
“Filed, sir.”
“And the memo to all our operatives regarding the new payment schedules and bonuses?”
“Finished, sir.”
Stevenson threw her an incredulous glance and raked a hand through his shaggy hair. “Well, then, why in blazes are you still here, Miss Brannigan?” he roared. “Go home!”
Everett Stevenson II shook his head, stomped back into his cramped and paper-littered office, and slammed the door.
Annabel squared her slim shoulders. She gave her head a shake, loosening not a wisp of her businesslike, tightly coiled chignon. Now or never, she told herself furiously. Don’t be such a yellow belly.
But what if he won’t agree?
Consternation caught at her with the thought, but she pushed it away. Think about Brett and Mr. McCallum, she instructed herself, and took a deep breath. Brett! Her heartbeat quickened as an image of Brett McCallum’s heartbreakingly handsome face flashed in her mind. Even after all these years, her feelings for him were as strong as ever. The thought that he was in pain, in trouble, that he was alone and on the run in a strange land filled her with anguish.
And Annabel knew one thing. She had to help him. And that meant she had to persuade Everett Stevenson to her point of view.
This morning she had found the McCallum file on the worktable beside the filing drawers. It had been a shock seeing that all-too-familiar name here in this office. And when she’d learned that Ross McCallum had hired the Stevenson Agency—and why—she’d had to sit down and choke back the anxiety that coursed through her.