“I would have done what you asked, Daniel, fetch you the keys. Anything to help you…even if you’d left Walker Creek and I never saw you again. I don’t know why I got so upset—”
“I think I know,” he broke in gently, drawing even closer to her. He saw her chin trembling, too, her eyes welling with emotion that so matched the rampant beating of his heart. “If your feelings for me are even half of mine for you, Pearl McMaster, then I’m blessed, though I believe you deserve better—”
“You deserve better,” she breathed, a tear spilling down her cheek. “There are so many lovely young women in town that would be proud to walk beside you while I…I’m not whole, Daniel!”
She tried to free her hand from his, but he pulled her within the shelter of his arms, her cane dropping to the floor.
“I’m not whole, either, and I can only pray that someday I’ll forgive myself for what happened to my sister. I’ve despised myself for so long, but with you by my side, I’ve found a chance for happiness. I love you, Pearl. Do you hear me? I love you!”
She stared up at him in wonder, even as he lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers, the softness of her mouth the most healing touch he’d ever known.
The most healing touch Pearl had ever known, Daniel holding her so tightly while he kissed her that she had no fear of falling.
No fear any longer that she’d never be loved.
No fear at all, her heart full to bursting.
“I love you, Daniel,” she breathed against his lips, winding her arms around his neck. “Love you…”
She couldn’t say how long they stood there holding each other, for everything had fallen away around them.
It was just her and Daniel, not broken anymore, the two of them making a perfect whole.
Only the clock on the mantel chiming the half hour made them draw apart, though Daniel still held her within the crook of his arm as he led her to a nearby settee. “Here, let’s sit down.”
As soon as she was settled, he went to pick up her cane and brought it to her, and then sat down beside her to draw her once more into his embrace.
Her heart beat so fast at how he looked at her…as if he couldn’t believe what had just transpired between them. She could hardly believe it, either, and she shook her head, smiling.
“You were so quiet at supper, I had no idea what you might be thinking,” he murmured, kissing her cheek. “Maybe if you’d gifted me with that smile at supper, I wouldn’t have feared all was lost.”
“Oh, Daniel, I was lost! I could hardly eat, could hardly talk—”
“I noticed.”
She blushed, never having felt so safe and secure as she did within his arms. “I wasn’t sure what to think…or what might occur tonight, but it’s just as Anita said might happen—oh, dear, I don’t even know if you believe in guardian angels.”
“Guardian angels?”
Pearl studied his handsome face for a moment, but she didn’t see anything in his expression that made her think she shouldn’t tell him what had happened earlier that day. She nodded, but he must have sensed her reluctance when he drew her closer.
“You can always tell me what’s on your heart, Pearl, and I’ll always do the same with you. I believe in God, so why wouldn’t I believe in guardian angels? Andreas told me his sisters have all seen a little old woman they call Tante Kari—”
“Yes, that’s exactly who I saw today!” Pearl blurted out, unable to hold back any longer. “My grandmother had gone into the back of the shop and I was crying—and suddenly there she was! She spoke so kindly to me and told me to never lose hope, and to never feel that I was alone. I felt such peace, just like when Mariah came to me during the tornado. My leg had been crushed, but she told me everything would be all right—and she was there today, too!”
“Did you say Mariah?”
Daniel had grown so still beside her, his eyes darkened with emotion as she nodded and rushed on.
“Tante Kari said Mariah hadn’t been a guardian angel for very long and had asked her to speak to me so I might feel better—and there she was, standing right outside the door and just as I remembered her! Long golden hair, a pale blue dress—”
“Oh, God.”
Daniel’s arms had fallen away from her and he sat there as if made of stone, his expression stricken.
“Daniel? What’s wrong? Oh, no, I shouldn’t have gone on and on—but if not for Mariah, I wouldn’t have survived that terrible day. Then Anita reminded me that Tante Kari had helped to bring Seth and Kari together, and Joshua and Anita, and that she and Mariah might be helping to bring us together—”
“She was my sister, Pearl. Mariah was my sister.”
He’d spoken so softly, his deep voice a whisper, that Pearl wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly until she saw the tears glistening in his eyes.
“Your sister, Daniel?”
He nodded, sighing so raggedly that her heart went out to him and she reached out to clasp his hand.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have rushed on so…”
He swallowed hard, his hand trembling in hers as he met her eyes. “She was buried in her favorite blue dress, her infant son in her arms. Was he there, too?”
He looked at her with such pain etching his face that it seemed to have aged him, but she could only shake her head.
“He’s in heaven, Daniel. Surely she doesn’t leave him for very long…but she did to give me hope when I thought I was dying. She gave me hope today just to see her again, and she smiled so kindly at me—”
“Just like she did to me in a dream the night before I first saw you. She told me someone very special would need my help outside the bank just past noon—and I thought I was going mad. Yet I told Andreas I needed to go, not knowing why…and it was you, Pearl.”
She felt her own eyes welling as he drew her into his arms again to hold her close, so close that she felt his heart beating beneath her hand splayed upon his chest.
So close that she had only to tilt her head and his lips found hers, his kiss achingly tender and yet impassioned all at once, stealing her breath away.
Only when the sound of footsteps came down the hall did he release her, squeezing her hand as he rose to stand beside the settee.
He still held her hand when Pearl’s grandparents entered the drawing room, Margaret bearing a silver tray with tea and cookies and placing it on a nearby table. When she straightened, she glanced from Pearl’s flushed face to Daniel’s strong fingers laced with hers, a knowing smile breaking across her face as she glanced at Michael.
“It appears our granddaughter has an escort for the Christmas ball…and perhaps to the altar as well.”
“She does, indeed,” Daniel stated, leaning down to press a kiss to Pearl’s cheek. “With her family’s blessing, of course.”
“Granted!” came Michael’s quick reply as he grinned from ear to ear and turned to his beaming wife to kiss her, too.
Chapter 9
“You’re going to break a lot of hearts tonight, Daniel,” Andreas said with a wry smile. “I’ve never seen anything like the excitement stirred up by the news you’d be staying on in Walker Creek as our new physician. All the young ladies tilting their bonnets toward me suddenly had other plans in mind, though that part was a relief.”
Daniel smiled back at his former employer, the strapping eighteen-year-old as handsome as they came with his blond good looks and impressive physique.
Both of them were tall, but Andreas had him beat in height by several inches and in weight by forty pounds, all solid muscle honed from working as a blacksmith. If his Viking ancestors had looked anything like him, no wonder heroic sagas had been written about their exploits.
Daniel couldn’t imagine any young woman opting for him instead, especially with Andreas’s familial ties to Caleb Walker, but none of that mattered to him anyway.
This evening he would officially announce his engagement to the only woman he wanted, his keenness mount
ing to see Pearl again. Already the spacious dining room in the Frederick Hotel that had been converted into a Christmas-decorated ballroom was filling with guests, but she and her grandparents were yet to arrive.
“You’re too young to sound so world-weary,” Daniel said with a sideways glance at Andreas, though in truth he didn’t look exactly happy to be there. “I’m sure you’ll see at least one damsel tonight who’s caught your eye.”
“Not at the ball,” Andreas said cryptically, but then he gestured to the entranceway. “Caleb and Lily have arrived.”
Daniel nodded and accompanied Andreas to greet them, the richest and most influential man in Walker Creek appearing as larger than life with his graying temples and expertly tailored suit as when he’d first met him a week ago.
“Andreas! Daniel!” Caleb’s voice boomed across the ballroom as he extended his hand to pump Daniel’s vigorously. “You remember my wife, Lily.”
Remember her? No one could forget a woman of such incomparable beauty and accomplishment, the warm sincerity shining in the famed actress’s eyes reminding Daniel of Pearl.
“Dr. Grant, my husband and I are so pleased you’re joining Charles’s medical practice. You couldn’t have been more highly recommended.”
Daniel nodded his thanks, recalling all too well Dr. Davis’s brush with death that had made him realize he was meant to become a physician again.
Meant to stop running.
Meant to build a life in Walker Creek with the woman he loved.
“Has your fiancée arrived yet, Dr. Grant? I’m longing to meet her.”
Daniel started, which made Lily laugh while Caleb drew her close and kissed her cheek as if the sound delighted him.
“Such wonderful news travels fast, especially when one’s friends are named Anita and Ingrid. I believe they stopped by the McMasters’ home yesterday morning—well, you can imagine they guessed at once the reason behind your bride-to-be’s happiness. Pearl. Such a beautiful name.”
“It is beautiful,” Daniel agreed, glancing around the ballroom to see many a downcast look in his direction from mothers and daughters alike.
“I told you so,” Andreas quipped, following his gaze. “A good thing the music is starting up to drown out all the wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
Again Lily laughed as the chamber orchestra struck up a waltz, Caleb offering his arm to her.
“Do you remember our first dance not so long ago, my love?”
Lily nodded, sweeping up the train of her shimmering blue satin dress to accompany him to the middle of the room where other couples soon joined them.
Andreas, meanwhile, turned to leave the ballroom, but Daniel caught his arm.
“You’re leaving?”
“I need some fresh air. I’ll come back in, though, to let you know when Pearl arrives. Fair enough?”
Puzzled by Andreas’s subdued mood, Daniel could only guess that the young lady Andreas had hoped to see wouldn’t be present that evening, for whatever reason.
“If you want some company—”
“No, I’m fine.”
With that, Andreas left him while Daniel turned back to the room.
He wished Pearl and Margaret were there to see their handiwork swirling and twirling on the dance floor in a colorful array of silk, satin, and velvet. He had no idea what might be keeping them.
He had offered on Thursday night to pick them up in the carriage Caleb had provided him, but Michael had said he’d drive his two lassies to the hotel in their buggy as soon as they were dressed and ready. Now Daniel wondered with a sinking feeling if Pearl might have become too tired from the past few days’ excitement to attend the ball.
He didn’t have to be a physician to know she was more fragile than most. His burning intent upon their marriage was to do everything he could to help her become stronger and as freed from pain as possible. No wedding date had yet been set, but he wanted to become her husband as soon as everything could be arranged.
He had already sent a telegram to a former professor at Vanderbilt University to ask him where the best prosthesis for an above-the-knee amputee could be obtained, the peg leg Pearl wore the source of much of her discomfort. Might that be why she and her grandparents were delayed?
Growing uneasy, Daniel left the ballroom to join Andreas for some fresh air himself.
As he made his way through the high-ceilinged foyer crowded with townspeople heading for the ballroom, including young ladies who cast him reproachful glances, he still didn’t see Pearl.
He did see Andreas outside on the hotel’s front porch greeting Anita, Seth and Kari, and Joshua and Ingrid, who must have just arrived, and Andreas glanced in his direction. Daniel nodded at him and was almost to the double doors leading outside when he felt a sudden sharp tug on his dress coat. He wheeled around to find Franklin Hobbs, one of the two teenagers who had tormented Pearl, standing right behind him.
“Dr. Grant, you need to come with me!”
The boy spoke in barely a whisper as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear, his disheveled appearance and an ugly purple bruise on his right cheek filling Daniel with concern.
“What is it, Franklin?”
“I’ll tell you outside. Please, we have to go now!”
Daniel nodded, but to his surprise Franklin didn’t head for the front doors. Instead he dodged around people as he hastened toward the back of the hotel.
Daniel followed him reluctantly, wondering what could be so urgent that the boy, clearly not dressed for the festivities, might want with him.
His guard had gone up, too, as he recalled all too well the last time he’d seen Franklin, wide-eyed and pale and standing off to one side while his father, Jedidiah, and his men had dragged Daniel kicking and fighting from the jailhouse.
Franklin was running now, past the bustling kitchen and then through a back door that Daniel guessed led into an alley behind the hotel. Wishing he’d alerted Andreas first, to have an ally to watch his back, he ducked outside to find the boy waiting for him with two lathered horses.
“Franklin, what in blazes—”
“I told him not to do it, but he’s been drinking since sunup and wouldn’t listen!” the boy cut him off frantically. “He hit me and yelled that I better ride like hell and bring you back quick or he’d set their house afire and nobody would be the wiser.”
“Whose house?” Daniel demanded even as a terrible intuition gripped him, Franklin starting to sob uncontrollably.
“T-the McMasters!”
Daniel wrenched the reins out of the stricken boy’s hand and vaulted onto the nearest horse, the blood thundering in his ears.
He wheeled the animal around and kicked him into a gallop, oblivious to Franklin hauling himself onto the other horse and riding after him.
Oblivious to Andreas bursting through the back door and shouting his name.
All he could think of was Pearl—God help him, Pearl!
“Blast that boy, where the devil is he?”
Pearl swallowed hard and didn’t dare move from the settee as she watched Jedidiah Hobbs reeling drunkenly in the drawing room, waving his revolver.
Her poor grandfather had tried to reason with him the moment the enraged man burst through the front door, only to be struck in the head with the barrel of the gun. Michael lay in the hallway as still as a stone while her grandmother knelt beside him, weeping silently. Pearl didn’t know if he still lived or was dead, Margaret not daring to say a word, either.
Pearl had never felt such terror, no, not even during the height of the tornado when the roof came crashing down upon her.
She sat frozen in her beautiful dress, unable to weep, unable hardly to breathe as Jedidiah careened one way and then the other, knocking over tables, books tumbling to the floor, a crystal brandy decanter and glasses shattering against the flagstones in front of the fireplace. Then he stopped to stare blearily at her, swaying in place as he pointed his revolver at her head.
“You’re to blame, you
one-legged wench! You sent that no-account drifter running after my boy—the both of you should be shot! First Grant as soon as he comes through that door and then you’re next for trying to help him escape—a hanging offense, or didn’t you know that?”
She said nothing, too terrified to speak, and clearly Jedidiah didn’t expect an answer as he staggered to the window and shoved aside the drapery.
“That boy’s going to get a lickin’ he’ll never forget if he doesn’t get here quick,” he seemed to mutter to himself, and then he rounded once more upon Pearl. “If you think I’ll pay for taking justice into my own hands, think again! There won’t be anything left after I burn this place to the ground for anyone to know it was me. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes just like the Good Book says—”
“Your son will know.”
The words were out before Pearl even realized she’d said them, Jedidiah’s face growing mottled with rage. He took a heavy step toward her and then another, as if his legs were leaden, and once again pointed his revolver at her while she closed her eyes tightly to pray.
“Never lose hope, Pearl,” came a voice like the lightest of whispers in her ear, and then another soft voice echoing, “Never lose hope!” Though gripped by horror, she suddenly felt peace descending upon her that seemed to sweep all of the madness away.
She thanked God for His blessings and mercy.
She thanked God for the man who’d come like a miracle into her life and she prayed humbly for his protection.
She heard two more heavy steps and could smell the liquor on Jedidiah’s breath, which told her that he stood over her though she no longer felt any fear. Only a calm stillness as she heard the thundering of hooves outside and horses whinnying, and then footsteps pounding across the front porch and heading for the front door.
Jedidiah’s blistering curse rent the air. She opened her eyes to see him pivot, staggering wildly and pointing his gun in the direction of the hallway as someone kicked in the door.
Daniel, my love. Daniel!
Pearl swung her cane before she even realized she held it and struck Jedidiah in the back of his knees. He collapsed with a startled scream, cracking his head on the flagstones as his gun went flying.
Pearl: Sweet Western Historical Romance (Walker Creek Brides Book 4) Page 7
