An Unexpected Groom

by Nerys Leigh

  I can do this. For Jesse.

  She glanced back at Jo standing at the gate. Jo gave her an encouraging smile that didn’t encourage her at all. Then the door opened and Louisa’s stomach dropped to her feet.

  “Can I help you?” The woman at the door fixed Louisa with a suspicious look, sizing her up.

  “Uh, yes.” Louisa assumed her best fake smile, perfected from years of attending boring events to meet boring people. “Are you Mrs Fanshawe?”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “Might be.”

  “My name is Mrs Potterson...” Wait, that’s not right, is it? “...and I work for the bank. I wonder if I could have a few moments of your time.”

  The woman frowned. “I’ve never seen you in the bank.”

  “Uh, no, I’ve just started work there. For Mr Vernon. He would like to...”

  “That dress looks terrible on you. You in mourning or what?”

  So much for no one questioning a widow. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve just moved here, after the death of my husband. As I said, I’m working for Mr Vernon and...”

  Mrs Fanshawe opened her mouth to interrupt.

  “...he would like to know if his customers are happy with the service they’ve received at the bank,” Louisa said quickly. “So if you could just answer a few questions?”

  Mrs Fanshawe stepped back. “You’ll have to speak to my son. I don’t deal with money and such. And I don’t hold with a woman working neither, widow or no.”

  Before Louisa could say anything further, the door slammed in her face. She stared at the peeling paint for a few seconds before sticking her tongue out at it and turning away to return to Jo at the gate.

  Jo was grinning.

  “Why are you smiling?” Louisa said. “That was a disaster.”

  “But you were fantastic!” Jo took hold of her shoulders and rubbed them. “No one could have got anything out of that harpy, not even me. You’re a natural! Let’s go try the next one.” She was practically jumping up and down.

  “I’m so glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Louisa said, checking her list of addresses. “Next one’s this way.”

  The second person they visited was infinitely more pleasant than Mrs Fanshawe. Mr Weaver answered all her questions and confirmed he had taken out a loan. Sadly, however, it all correlated with the information she already had, and he even mentioned how helpful Mr Ransom had been. It wasn’t what she was hoping for.

  “Maybe there’s nothing to find,” she said to Jo as they walked away from Mr Weaver’s house.

  “Come on, we’ve only tried two. You can’t give up yet. How many are on that list?”

  “Twelve in the town. Another nine farther out.”

  “There you go. Ten more chances before we even have to get in my buggy.”

  Louisa suddenly realised she hadn’t let Jo do whatever she’d come into town for. “Wait, why are you here?”

  “Because I’m helping you?”

  “No, I mean you never said why you came to see me.”

  “Oh. I just came into town to pick up some supplies and thought I’d visit. Gabriel is at his placer mine for a few days.”

  She sounded happy about that. If Jesse was gone, for even a few days, Louisa would miss him desperately.

  “What’s a placer mine?”

  “Panning for gold, I think. I’m not clear on the specifics, or why he does it since he doesn’t seem to get very much out of it.”

  They walked a few more steps before Louisa spoke again. “Are you happy with him?”

  They walked even more steps before Jo answered. “Happy’s not the word I’d choose, but we’ve only been here a week. Takes longer than that to fall in love.” She glanced sideways at Louisa. “Unless you happen to have found a handsome accountant who makes you glow.”

  Louisa looked around them, partly to check no one was close enough to overhear their conversation and partly so she didn’t have to meet Jo’s eyes. “I-I’m not glowing. And, and Jesse and I are just friends. I don’t even know if I’m staying.”

  “Louisa, you’re glowing,” Jo stated. “Your eyes light up whenever you talk about him. And you’re different. I adore you, you know I do, but on the train you wouldn’t have said boo to a goose, much less do anything improper. Now look at you! Breaking into banks and lying like you were born to it. And you’re having fun. Don’t even try to deny it because I can see it all over your face. Jesse’s good for you. I don’t know how, but he’s drawn you out of your shell and you’re far happier for it.”

  Louisa was quiet for the remainder of the short walk to the third house on the list. Jo was right, she was happier than she ever remembered being, and there was no doubt it was at least partly thanks to Jesse. More than partly, if she was honest. Which would have made her decision whether or not to stay easy, if happiness was the only factor at play. But there was so much more to consider.

  “Are you all right?” Jo said as they reached their next target.

  Louisa stood tall, squared her shoulders, and said forcefully, “Yes!”

  “That’s the spirit,” Jo said, clapping her on the back carefully so she didn’t hit a pin. “Go get ’em.”

  It was a neat little house, with precisely planted flowerbeds in front of the porch and a spotless white picket fence. Louisa climbed the porch steps and knocked on the green painted door.

  The woman who answered looked to be in her forties, with smiling eyes and a sprinkling of white amongst dark hair in a tidy bun.

  “Good afternoon,” Louisa said. “Are you Mrs Mackey?”

  “I surely am,” she replied with a warm smile.

  Louisa liked her instantly which made her feel worse. She hated lying to people. “I’m from the Green Hill Creek Bank and I’m visiting a few valued customers to make sure we’re providing the service you need. Would you have a moment to answer a few questions?”

  Mrs Mackey’s bright smile remained in place. “Of course! Come on in.”

  “Oh no, thank you,” she said quickly, visions of being impaled on dozens of pins as she tried to sit swimming through her head. “It will only take a moment. I have quite a few people on my list to visit.” She flashed a quick view of the list of names and addresses, too fast for any of them to be read.

  Mrs Mackey’s smile hadn’t left her face. “Oh, I understand, dear. You go ahead and ask your questions.”

  “Thank you so much, that’s very kind of you.” Louisa touched her pencil to the paper she had for notes. “Are you happy with the service you’ve received from the bank?”

  Mrs Mackey nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes, very happy.”

  She made a note. “And have you found any staff you’ve dealt with to be friendly and polite?”

  “They’ve all been a delight.”

  Another note. “Now, I understand you and your husband recently took out a loan of eighty dollars. How did you find that process?”

  “Oh, very well done. We spoke to that lovely man, Mr Ransom. Mr Vernon’s assistant, although I expect you know that, you working for the bank and all.”

  Louisa carefully didn’t nod too eagerly.

  “He was so helpful, explaining everything to us. I can’t recommend him highly enough.”

  She forced a smile and wrote some more. “That’s wonderful to hear, Mrs Mackey. And you were able to borrow the full amount you needed?” She checked her list. “Eighty dollars was sufficient?”

  “Oh yes. That helped with fixing the roof and building a bigger stable for our Strawberry. That’s our horse. And improving the outhouse. And then there was the fee.”

  Louisa stopped writing. “Fee?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Louisa walked back to the road, keeping her pace normal until she heard Mrs Mackey close the door behind her then rushing to where Jo waited across the street.

  “How did it go?” Jo said. “You were there a while.”

  Louisa grabbed her hand, dragging her along the road and around a corner until they were out of sight of the house.
Then she threw her arms around her.

  “I found it! I found out what he’s doing!”

  “Ouch, pins.”

  Louisa let her go. “Sorry.” She laughed, clapping her hands together. “I can’t quite believe it! Thank you so much for helping.”

  “You’re most welcome. Just please don’t hug me again until you’re out of that dress.”

  Chapter 16

  Jesse was surprised to find Louisa waiting for him outside the bank when he finished work.

  He would have liked to think the wide smile on her face was because she was pleased to see him, but he got the feeling something else was going on as soon as she greeted him.

  “You look happy,” he said as they started towards his home.

  “Do I?” Her smile looked in danger of injuring her cheeks.

  He couldn’t help laughing. “Are you going to tell me now or torture me and make me wait until we get home?”

  She glanced around them. “I can’t tell you here.”

  He figured there were two possible reasons for her apparent joy, either she was going to tell him she was staying to marry him or she’d found out something about Ransom. He would have preferred it to be the former, but there was still another week to go until his probationary period was up.

  “Is it about the mystery we’ve been working on the past few days? Rhymes with awesome? Kind of.”

  She looked confused. “Rhymes with awesome?”

  “Okay, it doesn’t rhyme with awesome,” he conceded, “but you know what I mean.”

  “It’s only a ten minute walk to your house. I’ll tell you then.”

  It might as well have been ten hours. “I can’t wait that long!”

  She rolled her eyes. “Your ten-year-old sister has more patience than you. I’ll explain when we get there. How was your day?”

  “Frustrating. I wanted to shout at a certain someone the whole time. How was your day? Do anything interesting? Find out anything that could help with my day?”

  She laughed and didn’t answer. Oddly, it made him adore her even more. Being in love made no sense at all.

  When they finally reached his home Louisa made as if to go into the kitchen. “Would you like me to make you some coffee after your long day of frustration?”

  “Oh no,” he said, wheeling around her and herding her into the parlour. “No coffee or tea or cake or anything else until you’ve told me what I know you’ve been waiting to tell me the entire walk home.” He put on his best pleading expression. “Please?”

  To his relief, she didn’t take much persuading.

  “Well, I so badly wanted to help you find out what Mr Ransom is doing so I thought, since you didn’t find anything in the ledgers or loan agreements the only thing left to do was speak to the people who actually took out the loans. But I had no idea how to get them to talk to me.” She smiled. “And then Jo arrived.”

  “Jo?”

  “You know, my friend who married Gabriel Silversmith?”

  “Yes, I know who she is. But how did her arrival help?”

  She began to pace back and forth in front of him as she related her story. “Well, I have no idea how she knew to do all this, but she suggested I pretend to work for the bank and go to each of them saying I was checking on customer satisfaction. She gave me a fake name and a back story and everything. And I wore a black dress as if I was newly widowed. It was amazing!”

  Now he was worried. “Um, I’m not sure if that was such a good idea. I mean, if it got back to Vernon that someone was pretending to work for the bank...”

  She waved a hand. “Even if it did, no one would know who I am. None of them knew me and I had the fake name. It can’t be worse than breaking into the bank.”

  She had a point there.

  “And anyway, it worked!” she said, smiling widely. “I found out what Mr Ransom has been doing.”

  He stared at her in astonishment. “You did?”

  “We came here and got the names and addresses from the loan agreements. You should really get a better lock for your shed, by the way. Jo got it open in hardly any time at all. Anyway, we got the details for people who’d taken out a loan and the first two I talked to didn’t help at all, but then the third one, Mrs Mackey, she mentioned a fee and I hadn’t seen anything in the agreements about a fee.”

  “There’s no fee for taking out a loan,” he said. “All the profit for the bank comes from the interest they charge.”

  “That’s what I thought. At first she was horrified she’d even mentioned it. She thought she’d be getting Mr Ransom into trouble if she said anything else. But I managed to persuade her. I told her if charging a fee was a problem for people, Mr Vernon would want to know so he could change things. She was happy to tell me after that, as long as I promised to not specifically mention what Mr Ransom had done.”

  Jesse leaned forward in his chair, caught up in her tale. “And what had he done?”

  She came to a halt in front of him. “He told her and her husband there was a fee for taking out the loan, and when they said they couldn’t afford to pay it upfront he said he’d add it onto the loan, but to not tell anyone because he wasn’t supposed to do that. So it wasn’t written in the agreement and the loan was down as being eighty dollars. But what actually happened was Mr and Mrs Mackey only got seventy-three dollars.”

  “And Ransom pocketed the rest,” Jesse said, everything falling into place.

  “And he made it sound like he was doing them a favour that he’d get into trouble for if they told anyone, so of course they wouldn’t. Mrs Mackey thought he was wonderful. And that’s just one small loan. I spoke to seven more after that and asked specifically about the ‘fee’ and he’d done the same thing to five of them, with varying amounts depending on how much the loan was for.”

  Jesse slumped back in his chair. “And that’s just a few of the loans that have been granted in the past months. Who knows how long he’s been doing this for? It could have been years. He could have taken hundreds, even thousands.”

  “But now you can do something about it, now you know it’s happening.”

  He gazed up at her, awed. Every day she showed him more and more how amazing she was. “I never would have found this out without you.”

  She shrugged and lowered her eyes. “I just wanted to help. I don’t like seeing you worried.”

  His chest filled with elation. He loved this woman. This extraordinary, resourceful, brilliant woman who cared about him enough to do all she could simply to make him feel better.

  Leaning forward, he wrapped both hands around her waist and tugged her towards him, pulling her into his lap. It was a move he’d used plenty of times with Nancy and he was happy to find it worked just as well on Louisa. She landed with a yelp of surprise which turned to laughter.

  Cupping her cheek, he gazed into her eyes. “Thank you. You have no idea what this means to me, that you would do this.”

  She touched her fingertips to his face and gave him a lingering kiss that set his pulse racing.

  “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you,” she said when their lips parted. “You make me feel like I can do anything.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “All I’ve done is shown you how amazing you are. The rest is all you.”

  Wrapping her arms around him, she nuzzled her face into his neck. Nothing had ever felt better.

  More than ever he knew he had to convince her to stay, because he wouldn’t survive if she left.

  Chapter 17

  Jesse wheeled along Green Hill Creek’s main road, heading for the general store.

  What with not having to work, he’d always liked Saturdays. But he was getting a whole new level of appreciation for the last day of the week since it had become the one day he got to spend the entire time with Louisa.

  So far picnics had worked out extremely well for him so he was planning another for today. He needed just a couple more items for it to be perfect. This was going to be their
day, just the two of them enjoying their time together. Hopefully there’d be kissing involved. And, of course, he’d be doing all he could to show her how good their life would be if she stayed and married him.

  He figured he was doing well in that department. She still had doubts, he could tell, but every day they grew closer. And she seemed to be breaking away from her stifling upbringing. She was like a caged bird that had been set free and was learning to fly. Soon she’d be soaring with the sun shining on her wings, never to return to that cage again.

  He smiled at the metaphor. Before Louisa he would never have been thinking in such flowery terms. She was turning him into a poet, albeit a terrible one.

  His good mood evaporated abruptly when he saw Rotherford Ransom up ahead, standing outside the saloon. Jesse came to a halt, his anger rising at the sight of the man who was swindling so many good, hardworking people. Bad as he knew the idea was, he wanted to go up to him and demand Ransom tell him why he would do such a thing after having worked for so long at the bank. Had he been at it the entire seventeen years he’d been there? Surely he couldn’t have got away with it for that long. Although Jesse had worked there for four years and he’d only just found out, and that completely by accident. Had he missed it all that time?

  He wanted to go and ask him. Forcefully.

  But he couldn’t do anything until he’d told Vernon. He couldn’t tip Ransom off and give him the chance to cover his tracks. If there were any.

  He was about to cross to the other side of the road to avoid having to go anywhere near Ransom when he saw a man he hadn’t noticed before, standing in the shadows between the saloon and the building beside it. He leaned casually against the wall of the saloon, smoke from the cheroot hanging loosely from his lips curling up across his face. His clothes were good quality but unkempt, as if he’d been riding for a while. Or as if he just didn’t care what he looked like.

  The two men were standing a good ten feet apart, not looking at each other, and to the casual observer they had no connection. But as Jesse watched the man’s lips moved, then Ransom’s did the same, back and forth between them. A conversation was undoubtedly going on.