by Cat Cahill
“I need to leave Crest Stone before someone comes for me.” She brushed nonexistent crumbs from his tablecloth. “I’ve informed Mrs. Ruby that I wish my family not to find me.”
Her face looked as if it hadn’t smiled since before those people she knew from Boston had arrived here. Thomas wished he could take all of that away from her. He wished he could make her smile all the time. But none of what she said explained why she’d been so cold toward him.
“I see,” he said, although he didn’t at all. “Why didn’t you confide in me?”
She closed her eyes for a split second, dragging in a breath before opening them again. “This is my business to handle, Mr. Drexel.”
It was as if she’d taken his heart and thrown it into his face. A thousand different feelings raged inside him, but instead of acknowledging any of them, he said, “I’m going back to Barrett Mountain. I wanted you to know.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s far too dangerous.”
“I have no other choice. I’ll stay low. All I need to do is search the area and then speak to a few folks.”
She still looked petrified—for him. A tiny sliver of hope worked its way back into Thomas’s heart.
“I have to do this,” he said. “It’s the only chance I have at clearing my name. I’ll leave tomorrow, first thing in the morning. I would have gone sooner, but I wanted to see you first.” He hoped those words implied everything he meant.
Caroline took a tiny step backward. She was doing exactly as he’d done these past several months. Hiding. Running. Refusing to face a problem.
“I don’t think you should leave,” he said. “I . . .” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask you if you’d wait for me. Here.”
“I have no choice.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“You do.” Thomas’s voice rose. He forced himself to lower it. “You encouraged me to do what I needed to prove my innocence. Well, now it’s your turn.”
“My turn to do what exactly?” She glanced at her other tables, ever the head waitress. The woman he knew was in there, inside this scared, cold person who stood beside him now.
“You’re running away to hide again. If you ever want to be free of your family, you need to face them and tell them that.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said, her face even paler than usual.
“Of course it isn’t. Just as choosing to return to the last place I should be isn’t simple either. But if I can do that, you can tell your family what you really want.”
“You don’t understand.” She cast her eyes to the richly carpeted floor.
“No, I don’t.” It came out frustrated. “You’re more courageous than you know, Caroline. You need to step forward and embrace that.”
He could see her swallow, and he hoped—he almost prayed—she’d agree.
“I must attend to my other tables.” She smoothed her pristine apron. “Thomas—Mr. Drexel—I ask you please not to follow me to California. I . . . I do not wish to see you again.”
With a swish of her skirts, she was gone, leaving Thomas stunned with a cooling bowl of stew and a heart that felt covered in frost.
He’d been wrong about her. He threw his napkin on the table, fished a few bills from his pocket to join the napkin, and left. He refused to chase after a woman who didn’t truly love him. If she did, she’d send word to her family admitting where she was and telling them she refused to marry the man they’d chosen. And then if her father came here, Thomas would stand by her side and set him straight. Instead, she was going to run, to leave Thomas behind. She wasn’t at all who he’d thought she was. And if that was the case, then good riddance.
Perhaps Caroline had just done him the biggest favor of his life.
Chapter Twenty-four
“You’re leaving?” Penny’s incredulous voice announced Caroline’s decision to the entire dormitory.
“But why?” Millie asked, from where she and Dora stood near the door to their friends’ room.
Caroline sighed. “It’s not immediate. Mrs. Ruby said it could take up to two weeks.”
“You didn’t answer Millie’s question,” Dora said in her soft voice.
“I . . . I need a change.” Caroline forced a smile at her friends. But it was too much. She sunk down onto her bed with her face in her hands. All she could think of was Thomas’s face when she’d told him not to follow her. She couldn’t have hurt him more if she’d shot him. And now her friends . . . In her rush to ask Mrs. Ruby for a transfer before her family could find her, Caroline hadn’t even thought of them. What kind of friend was she?
Penny spoke in hushed tones to the other two girls, and then the door shut. Caroline felt her sit on the bed. Neither of them said a word for a few minutes until Caroline finally looked up.
“I had to do it,” she said, her eyes wet with unshed tears.
Penny tilted her head. “Because of Mr. Drexel? Did he hurt you? I warned him—”
“No! No, he did nothing.” Nothing except be there for her every single time she needed him. “Wait, you spoke with him?”
Guilt flitted across Penny’s face. “I’m sorry. I wanted to ensure he wasn’t a rake. I told him he’d regret it if he hurt you in any way.”
Caroline smiled and swiped a tear from her face. “You’re the best friend I ever could have asked for.”
“Then why in the world are you leaving?” Penny leaned forward, bracing herself with a hand against the bed. “We were having such fun together here, with Dora and all the other girls. Think of the adventures we’ll never have now!”
Caroline twisted her apron. “It’s my family,” she said quietly.
“Did they ask you to return? How did they find you?”
The cotton bunched and wrinkled under Caroline’s hands. She’d told her friends only the very simplest details of why she’d left home.
“Caroline?” Penny laid a hand on her arm.
“There was a couple in the dining room about a week ago. Friends of my family. They recognized me. I’m certain they wired my father before they left. It won’t be long until . . . someone comes looking for me.”
“So let them!” Penny declared. “You’ll just tell your father that you prefer to remain here, and you refuse to marry that old man back in Boston. I’ll stand with you, if you need me. I’m sure any of the other girls will too. And Mrs. Ruby! She can’t be happy she’s losing her head waitress so soon.”
Caroline shook her head. “I can’t.”
“You can too. You’re braver than you think.”
Those words—nearly an echo of what Thomas said to her just a couple of hours ago—nearly knocked the breath from Caroline. In truth, if that was all there was to it, she might be able to do such a thing.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I can’t be found.”
Penny’s eyes crinkled as she took in the look on Caroline’s face. “Would your father hurt you?”
“No.” Not my father, she thought. It wouldn’t be just her feeling that wrath, but Thomas too. And that, she could never live with. “But I need to leave. Soon.”
“I wish you’d tell me more,” Penny said.
The heaviness of it all engulfed Caroline like a bucket of water overturned on her head. She’d done the right thing last spring, that was one thing of which she was certain. She’d had no other choice—no real one. But it was her burden to bear, and she wouldn’t force the consequences of her decision onto anyone else. It weighed her down, and the last thing she felt like doing was talking about it anymore.
“I’m tired.” Caroline jumped up and began undressing for bed.
Penny sat for a moment on the bed, as if she were waiting for more. When it was clear Caroline wasn’t offering any further explanation, Penny gave a great sigh and stood. They prepared for bed in silence.
But after they’d doused the lamp and Penny’s breathing softened into a regular rhythm, Caroline lay still, wide awake. Every time she closed her eyes, Thomas’s hurt face
appeared. She’d done what she needed to, she reminded herself. It would hurt him far less to lose her now than it would to find out she was far more indebted to that monster of a man in Boston than she’d told him. And that his life would be in danger if that same man found out about her feelings for Thomas.
But as unable as she was to promise him her heart, she’d meant every word she’d said to him before today.
It was for the best, she tried to tell herself. He’d asked her to wait for him. Her heart had nearly shattered on the spot. She wanted so badly to say yes. But what if he was unable to clear his name? What if he returned to Barrett Mountain and was arrested on the spot? It was better for her to remain alone, where she would always have her work with the Gilbert Company.
She repeated those thoughts to herself over and over, but still, the doubt crept in.
Was she doing the right thing?
As sleep started to filter in around the edges of her consciousness, a sharp rap on the door made her sit upright in bed.
“Who is that?” Penny asked, her voice tinged with sleep.
“Girls?” Mrs. Ruby’s voice called from outside their door. “I’m sorry to wake you, but there is an urgent visitor here for Caroline.”
Caroline’s heart hammered. An urgent visitor could mean only one person.
The last man she ever wanted to lay eyes on again.
Chapter Twenty-five
The mining encampment a few miles east of Crest Stone seemed a good enough place to lose himself, but Thomas couldn’t even mange to do that correctly. He folded the hand he was dealt and left the table, out of money and still wondering exactly how he’d manage to fall for someone like Caroline.
At least he’d gathered the courage to search for a way to clear his name. He had that much to thank her for. He leaned against the bar—which wasn’t but a plank over stacks of stones. The saloon itself was a rickety building, one of the few among a town of canvasses and tents. Between the hastily constructed wooden plats that made up the walls, a man could see lamps flickering along the dirt road outside.
The bartender poured Thomas a whiskey he suspected was heavily watered down. He didn’t drink much, and although now seemed the perfect time to pick up such a habit, he couldn’t gather the taste for it. Instead, he cupped the glass and stared into the amber liquid as if it might have all the answers to his problems. First, how he was going to get into the Barrett Mountain camp without being recognized. Second, whether all this effort would be worthwhile. And third, whether he’d ever be able to erase the mark Caroline left on his soul.
A woman laughed from across the room, drawing Thomas’s eyes up from his full glass. Her hair was the same shade of ripened wheat as Caroline’s, but the similarities ended there. This woman was dolled up in rouge, ringlets, and ruffled skirts that Thomas suspected would look less grand in daylight than they did in the flickering lamplight and shadows of the saloon.
Caroline had worn real finery at one point in her life. She’d also probably done her hair in ringlets and played the coquette. He tried to picture her like that, acting as his mother might have. It made the hurt ease a little. At least until the memory of her happy face at their cabin picnic, or the light in her eyes when she suggested he might be able to find proof of his innocence, surfaced. Then, the pain flooded in anew.
It made no sense. How could that woman be the same as the one who’d snubbed him today? The one who may as well have been dressed in her Boston frippery, trilling out laughter to the richest man at the party and unable to speak her mind to her own family. These two versions of her didn’t match, and he couldn’t wrap his mind around it.
Does it matter? Would she have waited for you anyway? He was better off alone. Once he got the law off his back, he’d be free to save money and open his own store somewhere. It could be anywhere he wanted. He’d find some new town, just starting out, and establish himself as a proprietor. A pillar of the community, Caroline had said.
Thomas let out an angry sigh. It seemed she snuck into every thought he had. The things she’d said, the way she’d looked at him through her lashes, the blush on her cheeks when he’d teased her, the soft warmth of her skin. He wouldn’t have even remembered he wanted to run a store until she’d asked him.
He pushed the full glass back onto the bar with a little more force than was necessary. The whiskey sloshed out a bit, but Thomas was already headed to the door. He’d been wasting time sitting here and bemoaning his situation. Instead, he’d return to the hotel, pack, and inform McFarland of his plans first thing in the morning.
And then he’d be off to pursue his innocence before Rayburn could find him. If he was lucky, he might even be able to outrun his memories of Caroline.
Chapter Twenty-six
Caroline’s hands shook as she dressed. Penny had asked approximately two hundred questions, all of which Caroline refused to answer, and so now, Penny sat stubbornly on her bed, refusing to sleep until Caroline returned from this midnight meeting.
Her fingers fumbled on the buttons of her nicest dress, a soft pink silk edged in small pleats. She feared what Mrs. Ruby thought she knew. There was no possibility of the strict woman allowing a visit from an unrelated male to the women’s dormitory at any time, and particularly not at this unconscionable hour. If her visitor told Mrs. Ruby they were married, however . . . Caroline put a hand to her chest as bile seared her throat. She closed her eyes for a moment and wished she’d already received her transfer.
You’re more courageous than you know. Thomas’s words—and later, Penny’s—echoed through her head. She knew she had courage inside her somewhere. Not many women of her station would have the gall to leave home without a word, board a train alone, and traverse the country, only to emerge in the most godforsaken place where she was then expected to work as she’d never done in her life.
But yet, she’d done just that.
And although pride was a sin, Caroline was proud of what she’d accomplished. She stretched her fingers out until they stopped shaking, then stood up as tall as she could and glanced into the small glass on the dressing table.
“Caroline?” Penny said as Caroline reached for the doorknob. “I’m here if you need me.”
Caroline wanted nothing more than to run back and wrap her arms around her friend. But if she did that, she’d lose every ounce of courage she’d gathered to face what she must. “Thank you. You don’t know how much that means to me.” And with that, she left to face her fate.
Mrs. Ruby was waiting for her in the hallway. “He said it was urgent, or else I would have made him wait until a more proper time.”
“It’s quite all right,” Caroline murmured. She felt as if she were marching to her own funeral as she walked with Mrs. Ruby toward the parlor the girls used near the second-floor landing. The door was open, and Mrs. Ruby paused to let Caroline go inside.
She drew a deep breath, even as she was struck by the fiercest longing to turn on her heels and run right back to her room.
Inside, a tall man with neatly combed strawberry blond hair, a once-impeccable suit that was now creased and dotted with specks of dirt, and an air of impatience rose from one of the chairs when she entered.
“Quentin?” Caroline grasped the doorframe to steady herself. “I— I didn’t expect you.”
Her older brother raised his perfectly groomed eyebrows. “No, I suppose you didn’t. How have you been, sister?”
“I am well, thank you. And you?” The formality of the moment was about to strangle Caroline. Perhaps she really was of the West now.
“I’ve been better. I’ve had very little sleep since leaving Boston, and the driver and wagon I hired for this last leg of the journey were less than desirable.”
“Why didn’t you take the train?” It wasn’t what she wanted to ask him, but it allowed her time to compose herself. Of course, she wasn’t happy her brother had found her, but it was better than the man she had been expecting.
“Blasted thing only runs tw
ice a day.” Upon seeing the surprised look on her face, he added, “I apologize. The lack of gentility around here must be affecting me.”
“The Crest Stone Hotel is quite civilized,” she informed him.
“I’m certain it is,” he said, although the tone of his voice said otherwise. He paced the room, stopping to examine a clock on the mantel of the fireplace, which still held embers from earlier in the evening. “We were all happy to receive the telegram from Mr. and Mrs. Flynn. Mother cried upon learning you were safe.”
Guilt shot through Caroline in a way it hadn’t since she’d left. “Mother cried?”
Quentin gave a short laugh. “Hard to believe, I know.” He crossed the room and took up her hand. “We were all overjoyed to learn where you were.”
Caroline stared at his gloved hands covering hers. “I am sorry for any worry I caused you or the family. But I’m not at all sorry I left.”
Her brother breathed out heavily. “It was quite a dramatic response to your engagement.”
Even the mere word made Caroline feel as if she were slowly sinking. She forced herself to breathe. This could be much worse, after all. Her brother could be reasoned with. She looked up at him. “I never asked to be married.”
“I don’t understand. Don’t you wish to have your own family? Your own household?”
“Not with that man.” Her words were raw, and she wished, more than anything, for Quentin to understand.
“Mr. Wiltshire?” He tilted his head as if he’d heard her incorrectly. “Father pulled many a string to make that match happen. You couldn’t ask for a more prominent family or a more established business to be marrying into. You’d want for nothing.”
“Quentin.” Caroline placed her free hand on top of her brother’s. “Surely you’ve heard the rumors.”
“Ridiculous. The man has been unlucky.”