Gold Rush Bride

by Debra Lee Brown

  “Oh, of course you do, dear!”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  None of them did. How could they? They were here, free, in a world of their own making. And she was here with them, sipping wine in a fancy dress, while Michael and Sean slaved in a damp, Dublin storehouse for wages they’d have to split with their mother’s sister until Kate returned with the money to pay off their debt.

  “They should come here, to California,” Mrs. Vickery said. “To live here with you and Mr. Crockett. Why, when the store gets going, you could build another—”

  “It’s late.” Will drained his wine goblet and returned it to the table. “We’d best get back.”

  “Yes, you’re quite right.” Mr. Vickery scrambled for his pocket watch. “Oh, dear me, yes. Nine o’clock. Time for bed.”

  “No, don’t leave yet!” Mrs. Vickery wrapped her sausagelike fingers around Will’s wrist. “I haven’t told you the most interesting news of all.”

  Mr. Vickery’s spectacles slipped down his nose as he frowned at his wife. Under the table Kate felt the lawyer’s foot kick outward. Mrs. Vickery squealed.

  The exchange wasn’t lost on Will. “What news?” he said, gently extracting the woman’s fingers from his wrist.

  “You won’t believe it! There’s a new bank to be chartered in San Francisco. On Montgomery Street, right near the wharf.”

  Mr. Vickery kicked her again. Kate felt the whoosh of his boot under the table. Mrs. Vickery ignored him.

  “You’ll never guess the name of the banker. It’s the oddest coincidence.” Mrs. Vickery looked pointedly at Will. “They say he’s terribly rich. And he’s come all this way from…Philadelphia, I think, just to open a bank.”

  Will’s lips thinned. He rose from the table, crushing his linen napkin in his fists. Kate rose with him. Mrs. Vickery prattled on as Will strode to the door and retrieved Kate’s cloak. He handed it to her and she quickly put it on.

  “Thanks, Vickery,” Will said to the lawyer, who dogged their steps out onto the porch.

  Mrs. Vickery was still struggling to get up from the table, when Kate turned to wave goodbye.

  “Don’t you want to know the name of the banker?” she called after them.

  Kate turned to Will, but he’d already vanished into the night. She saw him pacing amidst the trees just below the cottage, waiting for her to join him for the walk back to town.

  Chapter Ten

  Philadelphia businessman Coldwell Crockett opens doors on San Francisco’s newest bank…

  Will ran a finger over the smudged print of the letter sheet Matt Robinson had begged off a mule team driver who’d passed through town at dawn.

  A single page printed on both sides, the letter sheet was the frontier’s answer to a newspaper. Passed from hand to hand, they were often months old by the time they arrived in Tinderbox. This one was dated a week ago.

  Will crushed the sheet into a ball and tossed it into the creek.

  “It’s true, then.” Matt wiped his brow with a gloved hand and settled on a nearby log. “Vickery’s wife was right.”

  Will jerked his ax free of the stump he’d been using to split firewood and continued hacking spindly branches off a downed madrone. “Makes no difference to me.”

  “No?”

  Will swung the ax with a vengeance and nearly took his own foot off as the blade shattered the madrone into pieces the size of matchsticks.

  “Could have fooled me.”

  He shot Matt a warning glance but knew it wouldn’t do any good. In a nagging contest with a score of seasoned biddies, Matt Robinson would win hands down.

  “He’s your father—and rich as Midas, ain’t he? Why not just ask him for the money?”

  Will checked his swing at the last second, the ax poised in midair.

  “Just a thought.” Matt shrugged.

  Will had thought about it, too. All night in fact. He’d lain awake on his bedroll in the store, listening to Kate’s erratic breathing, the sounds of her tossing and turning in a fitful sleep.

  Last night when Mrs. Vickery had asked her about her brothers, the pain he’d read in her eyes nearly undid him. At that moment he would have done anything to have sent her home, or anything to have kept her. He wasn’t sure which.

  He finished the stroke and cast the ax aside. “Stop thinking, Matt, and start loading wood onto the skid.”

  “Nope. You’re on your own there.” Matt rose and yawned. “Time I hightailed it back to the claim. Been in town too long.”

  “Town? Down at the Chinese camp, you mean.” He worried about Matt’s infatuation with Mei Li. Nothing good could come of it. Not in a place like Tinderbox.

  “Maybe.” Matt grinned. “You oughtta come back to the claim with me. Offer’s still open, you know.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Suit yourself. But your bride ain’t no closer to gettin’ home than she was when she got here. And you ain’t no closer to Alaska.”

  Will ignored the comment and backed the gelding up to the skid.

  “Where is she, anyway?”

  “Kate? Down the clearing at Flanagan’s church service. Hang on, boy.” Will clipped the gelding’s livery into place.

  “It ain’t a church service, it’s a mass.”

  “I know what it is.” He’d gone once or twice with Dennis Cleary when they were boys.

  “Them Irish Catholics sure got some strange customs.”

  “And the Chinese don’t?”

  Matt grinned. He mounted his horse and reined him east toward the claim he’d staked three weeks ago. “See ya, partner.”

  “Watch your back out there.”

  “Always do.” Matt dug his spurs into his mount’s side and disappeared up the hill into the trees.

  A half hour later Will was still loading the skid. And still no closer to a decision about what to do. Time was running out.

  A branch snapped on the hill below him. He whirled in the direction of the sound, his hand poised an inch from his holstered revolver.

  “It’s just me.”

  Recognizing Kate’s voice, he relaxed. She climbed the last few feet to where he was working, picking her way carefully around granite boulders and downed tree limbs.

  He had a sudden image of her in the midnight-blue gown, her breasts thrust high and half-bared, her waist nipped in, her hips lush and round. She’d been a vision. He’d had a hell of a time keeping himself from staring.

  Still, he preferred her this way, in her plain wool dress, her auburn hair loose, her cheeks flushed ripe as cherries from what she’d call a good stretch of the legs.

  “You shouldn’t be up here,” he said as he shucked a glove off and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  She stopped to catch her breath, surveying the skid, the gelding and the pile of split wood. “I can help.”

  Every day they spent together, Will felt the weight of his convictions lessening. Up until now, the only women he’d known well had been either fortune hunters or those so delicate they’d never survive the kind of life he intended to live. Sherrilyn had been both. Will swallowed hard, remembering. Kate Dennington was, perhaps, neither.

  And that scared the hell out of him.

  “I don’t need help,” he said, and jammed the glove back on his hand.

  “Everyone needs help at some time or other.”

  He eyed her, wondering what she meant. The gelding fidgeted, and the skid shifted on the hillside. Kate grabbed the bridle to still him.

  Watching her take in the scenery, absently stroking the gelding’s neck, breathing deep of the fresh air, Will could almost believe she belonged here, that she loved wild things and wild places as much as he did. That she was cut out for the kind of life he meant to lead.

  But last night in the dark on the way to Vickery’s cottage, when a man sprang at her from the brush, Will’s breath had seized up in his chest. It didn’t matter that it was only Floyd Canter three sheets to the wind and harml
ess as a flea. It could just as easily have been one of the Packetts or some other unsavory character intent on doing her harm.

  Will ground his teeth remembering that split second of panic when he wasn’t sure if he could reach her in time, and if he did, if he’d be able to protect her.

  “That man Mrs. Vickery mentioned last night,” Kate said, wrenching him from his thoughts. “The banker.”

  Will’s gloved hand froze on a length of firewood. “What about him?”

  “He’s from your home, isn’t he? Philadelphia.”

  “What of it?”

  Kate shrugged. “I just wondered if you knew him. You seemed…agitated when Mrs. Vickery brought it up.”

  “No. I was just ready to leave.”

  “Ah.”

  He knew she didn’t believe him, but he let the lie stand.

  “You never speak of your family.”

  “No reason to mention them.” He positioned the last armload of firewood onto the skid and looked around for the rope he’d brought to tie it down with.

  “Here,” she said, retrieving it from behind a stump. “Tell me about them.”

  “Who?”

  “Your family.”

  Why did she care? What did it matter? Her prodding irritated him. “My mother’s dead. I was an only child. There’s nothing more to tell.”

  He tossed the rope over the skid. To his surprise, Kate caught it with one hand. She secured the load as if she was used to such things, using knots any seaman or teamster would be proud of.

  “And your…father?” she said.

  His gaze flew to hers.

  “Are you very much like him?”

  Her expression was open, her eyes wide. It was likely an innocent question. But maybe not. He reminded himself that his first wife had mastered just such a look when it suited her purpose.

  It dawned on him that Kate might have known all along Coldwell Crockett was his father. Maybe she’d seen his bank when she passed through San Francisco three weeks ago. Maybe she’d even met him.

  He recalled their conversation the night she’d asked him to marry her. He’d asked her why. Why him? It must be you, she’d said. You and no other.

  A dozen possibilities occurred to him. All of them made his gut twist. She stood beside the gelding, eyes wide, her face flushed and innocent, waiting for his answer.

  “No,” he said tersely. “We’re nothing alike.”

  He snatched the gelding’s reins out of her hand and mounted. Kate seemed mildly surprised when he didn’t immediately offer her a hand up.

  “I…I’ll walk back,” she said.

  “You do that.” Will dug his heels into the gelding’s side. As he maneuvered the skid down the hill, he could feel her eyes on him.

  He never looked back. He wasn’t even tempted.

  The man was completely unpredictable.

  One minute he’d dog her every step, refusing to let her out of his sight unescorted. And in the next breath he’d vanish as if he didn’t give a whit about her.

  Kate started down the hill, following the path the skid had carved in the damp earth, pondering the events of last night and this morning.

  Clearly, any mention of Will’s past irritated him. Her first week in Tinderbox, Mr. Vickery had told her it was rumored his father was someone influential, a politician or a wealthy banker.

  A Philadelphia banker.

  Newly arrived in San Francisco.

  It seems Mrs. Vickery had hit the nail on the head. Kate’s own instincts and what she’d witnessed of Will’s behavior confirmed in her mind the truth of it.

  Yet she couldn’t imagine what circumstances would drive a banker’s son west with his new bride to take up a life as a fur trapper.

  No. Will had been adamant. We’re nothing alike.

  Unless there had been some falling-out between father and son. Such things weren’t uncommon. Her own brother Michael had not been on the best of terms with their father when Liam Dennington had sailed for America. Michael accused him of abandoning them, but Kate hadn’t seen it that way at all.

  Kate had understood her father’s dream of a better life for them all. But not Michael. He was the practical one. More like their mother. Cautious, and disapproving of anything risky.

  As she tromped down the hill in Will’s wake, Kate wondered what Michael was doing now, this very minute. She liked to think of him home with his wife and child, sitting down to Sunday dinner with her brothers. A dinner as fine as the meal she’d had last night.

  Now there was a fantasy. Sunday or no, she knew Michael—and Sean, too—would be working. Likely for next to nothing. There would be no Sunday dinner. Not tonight, not next week or next month. Not until she returned with coin enough to reimburse her mother’s sister the loan.

  Kate’s fists balled so tight her nails dug into her palms.

  Dragging her from her thoughts, Will’s voice, calm and sure, carried through the trees below. She saw him as she approached the creek behind the cabin, talking to the gelding as he shooed him into the corral he’d built last week.

  Will didn’t see her, and began unloading firewood from the skid onto the back porch. On impulse Kate paused in the shadow of a pine and watched.

  He dropped his suspenders and peeled off his shirt. To her surprise he wore nothing underneath. Her gaze traveled the chiseled lines of his darkly furred chest, and fixed on the hardened muscles of his back and arms as he hefted load after load from the skid. She’d felt those arms around her, and had a dizzying recollection of his strength and heat.

  Will Crockett was a hardworking man, and an honest one. He’d done everything she’d asked of him, and more, without complaint. She knew he didn’t have to. Nor was he obliged to stay with her, beyond the fact that he’d given his word.

  But he had.

  And it shocked her to realize it wasn’t gratitude she felt twisting her stomach into knots. It was something else. Something she’d felt yesterday when he kissed her, and again last night when his gaze had washed over her body in heated waves. She couldn’t name the feeling. It was something raw, visceral, beyond admiration or desire.

  Without warning, Will looked up from the skid and caught her staring. Their gazes locked, and all at once Kate knew what the feeling was.

  In the chill gray hour before dawn, Kate woke to the sounds of boot scuffs, creaking floorboards and the squeak of the back door opening and closing again.

  Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she sat up in bed and shivered. The fire in the potbellied stove had gone out in the night, and it was cold as a tomb in the cabin.

  She could hear Will moving around on the back porch. Swiveling out of bed, she grabbed her shawl from the nearby chair and touched a toe to the cold floor. Lord, it was ice!

  What on earth was Will doing up so early?

  Kate tiptoed to the window, lifted the drape and peered out. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw him, standing just inside the corral saddling her father’s gelding.

  There was no telling what he was up to. He’d hardly spoken to her since yesterday morn when she’d met him on the hillside to offer him help with the firewood.

  Her questions about his family—his father, in particular—had angered him. He’d spent all of yesterday afternoon in silence, finishing small tasks around the cabin and store, fixing odd things that were damaged or broken.

  Will closed the corral gate and led the gelding to the back porch, where his bedroll and a loaded saddlebag sat waiting. The edge of a tin gold-pan poked out of the top. A shovel and a short sledgehammer she recognized from the store’s inventory were already tied across the gelding’s rump.

  With a shock she realized he was leaving.

  Not bothering to dress, Kate tossed the shawl over her shoulders and stepped barefoot onto the icy porch. The chill air breached her thin shift in an instant.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  Will cast her an apathetic glance as he grabbed the rest of his gear from the
porch and secured it to the gelding’s livery. “East. To work a claim.”

  “What claim?” He’d not said anything to her about a claim. She stepped to the edge of the porch, pulling her shawl tighter.

  “Robinson’s. It’s not far. A half-day’s ride at most.”

  “But when did you—”

  “Yesterday.” He mounted the horse and adjusted his gear.

  Kate could hardly believe it. Will had never tried to hide his bare tolerance for the droves of men who’d come to California lusting for gold.

  “You told me nothing of this,” she said.

  “I’m telling you now.”

  His manner was cool, the tone of his voice just short of antagonistic. Almost as if he wanted her to pick a fight with him.

  “Why?” she said, willing him to look her in the eye. “Was it because of something I said yesterday on the hill. Or Mrs. Vickery’s—”

  “It has nothing to do with that.” At last, he fixed his eyes on hers. They were cold. Dead. She’d never seen him like this before.

  “I know we haven’t made near the money we’d hoped, and that time’s running out for you.”

  She did the calculations in her head. His ship was due to leave in just over a fortnight. Three weeks at most. She’d have to be gone by then, too, or she’d not make it out till spring.

  “This’ll be quicker. I’ll work the claim with Matt. Get enough gold to get us out. That’s what you want, right? To go home?”

  “Aye.” She nodded but knew in her heart it was a lie. Were it not for her brothers, were it not for the debt, she’d never go back. Not now.

  “I won’t be gone long. A few days. A week at most.”

  She recalled the conversation they’d had the night he’d cooked the hare. He didn’t want a wife. Or a family. That was made clear to her on numerous occasions, even if he hadn’t said it in so many words.

  “Cheng’s sons are in town for a while. Railroad construction’s on hold.”

  “Aye, I met one of them the day before yesterday. The eldest, I think.”

  “Cheng’ll keep an eye on you while I’m gone. He’ll send one of the boys ’round at night to sleep here on the porch.”