Gold Rush Bride

by Debra Lee Brown

  “It was as much my fault as his.” She shot Michael a sheepish glance, and he returned it with a scowl. “Besides, it’s better this way—Will leaving, I mean.”

  “Why? If you love the man, Kate, how could it possibly be better?”

  She turned away from him again and tried to think of an explanation that didn’t make her look like the fool she felt.

  “Good God, you mean he doesn’t want you? The son of a—”

  “Stop it,” she said. “You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’s been through, what it was like between us and—”

  “Aye, well, he’d best be on that ship then, lest I get my hands on him. I swear to God, Kate—”

  A blast of footfalls clattered on the floorboards outside the room. Michael stopped in midsentence and they both looked expectantly at the door.

  A moment later it burst open and Sean crashed, breathless, across the threshold. “It’s bloody marvelous here! You won’t believe the things I saw!”

  “Didn’t I tell you to watch your mouth.” Kate thumped the ever-wayward youth affectionately on the back of the head as he collapsed onto the bed with the baby. The wee thing woke and instantly started to wail.

  “Oh, now look what you’ve done, you lummox.” Michael flung an annoyed look in Sean’s direction, then plucked the baby from the bed.

  While Michael was busy checking to see if his son was wet, Kate grabbed the chance she’d been waiting for all morning. “Sean, come here.” She crooked her finger at him and moved as far out of Michael’s earshot as she could get.

  “I know that look, Katie darlin’,” Sean said, and grinned. He bounded from the bed and joined her at the window. “You’ll be wanting something from me—a favor. Am I right?”

  He knew her too well. And she knew him. Sean had none of Michael’s scruples—and, at fifteen, little of his elder brother’s sense of caution, either—which was why Kate feared to charge him with this particular task. But he was smart as a whip and he loved her, and would do as she asked without question.

  Kate fished around in her pocket until her hand closed over what she sought, then slipped it covertly into Sean’s waiting hand. “Now, here’s what I want you to do…”

  Someone had crushed his skull.

  Will planted his hands firmly on the bar and pushed himself upward until his face rose a couple of inches from its rough and stinking surface. His head pounded a Miwok drumbeat, and he felt every rhythmic blow down to his toes.

  “Coffee?” a familiar voice said somewhere at the edge of his awareness.

  Will cracked an eye and, once he was able to focus, saw his flattened money pouch, the painted miniature of Kate beside it, an empty bottle and the short, balding Irishman who’d happily sold it to him. The room was only spinning a little, now.

  “Yeah,” he rasped, his throat raw from imported whiskey. “Coffee would be…good.”

  The bartender leaned over until his red, doughy face was an inch from Will’s. “Well, laddie, if we had any coffee—and we don’t, mind you—but if we did, I’d be happy to sell you a dram for a fair price.”

  The rough collection of men jammed up to the bar on both sides of Will erupted into laughter that slammed into his already throbbing head like a brick. The stench of whiskey and sweat and tobacco drove his gut to a slow roll.

  “Forget it,” Will said, and continued to push until he was sitting upright on the hogshead he’d used as stool for the last—hell, he had no idea how long he’d been here.

  Squinting toward the door, he saw the endless crush of miners and merchants and immigrants moving like cattle down the street. Cold autumn sunlight streamed into the bar. He guessed it to be afternoon, or thereabouts.

  Will drew himself up, blinking his eyes in a poor attempt to clear his head, paying no mind to the long, skinny arm reaching over his shoulder. A second later he snapped to full attention as the white, freckled hand attached to it closed over the painted miniature of Kate resting on the bar.

  Before he knew what he was doing, Will had the would-be thief bent backward over the bar in a death grip.

  The bartender shot him a hard look. “He’s just a lad. Have a care, man.”

  Will blinked some more, his eyes at last focusing on the young face staring up him and the devilish-looking smile that went along with it.

  “Will Crockett, is it?” the boy, who Will guessed at sixteen or so, said matter-of-factly, as if he was in no danger at all of having the life wrung out of him.

  “What if I am?”

  The youth’s blue eyes, which seemed familiar to him in a way he couldn’t quite grasp, flicked to Will’s stranglehold on his neck.

  Hmph, must be the whiskey.

  Will shrugged off the odd feeling of recognition, and in response shot a glance to the youth’s hand that was still curled around the miniature of Kate.

  For a moment it was a battle of wills to see who would relent first. Finally the boy gave in and let the miniature slide from his palm to the bar.

  Will let him up.

  As if the incident hadn’t occurred, the youth said brightly, “Delivery for you, sir.”

  Will ignored him, pocketing the miniature and the money bag, which was nearly empty. Will swore under his breath.

  “I’ll just leave it for you, right here, sir.” The youth plucked an envelope from his pocket, slapped it onto the bar and slid it neatly under Will’s hand. He waited, likely to see if Will was going to open it.

  Will didn’t. He already knew from the crisp engraving on the front who it was from. Crockett Bank, Montgomery Street, San Francisco.

  When the youth turned to leave, the bartender called out to him. “Newly arrived?”

  “Aye.”

  “You’ll be wantin’ a job then.”

  The youth grinned, and again Will had the strangest feeling he’d seen him somewhere before. The bartender waved him close. “Well, here’s what I’ve got in mind, lad…”

  Will fingered the envelope, the conversation between the bartender and the boy sliding to the edge of his awareness. He wondered what was in it, and how the hell his father had found him. Glancing at the open doorway, he half expected to see Coldwell Crockett’s grave features staring back at him. All that was there was the blur of the crowd outside.

  “Aye, well,” the youth went on, “with my da newly dead and all, and with the four of us boys just arrivin’—well, I don’t think my sister would think much of the idea.”

  “Well, the job’s here if you want it, lad.”

  The cacophony of bar talk and laughter and the street sounds outside melted into a dull, throbbing roar in Will’s head as he opened the envelope.

  His heart stopped. “How in the hell…?” A steamship ticket slipped from the fine, watermarked paper onto the bar.

  Orion, departing for Sitka, December first. Tomorrow. His own name, Mr. William Crockett, stared back at him in the space where the shipping agent had neatly penned the passenger’s identity.

  Will sat there, stunned, just staring at it, his whiskey-fogged mind racing over the details of the conversation he’d had last night with his father. How could he have known? It was…impossible.

  Not bothering to acknowledge the bartender’s jovial farewell, Will burst into the street, the steamship ticket in hand, and winced against the assault of blinding sunlight.

  By the time he reached his father’s bank a half-dozen blocks away, his head was clear and his blood near boiling. Ignoring the smartly dressed clerks behind the counter, Will vaulted over the polished mahogany barrier and stormed into the bank’s back room.

  His father looked up from his desk, startled by the intrusion. “It’s all right,” he called to one of the clerks, who’d already slid a late-model pistol out from under the counter and was striding toward Will. “He’s my…son.”

  Will shot a murderous glance at the clerk, his head throbbing, his heart pumping to the beat. He didn’t wait for the clerk to back down, but simply dismissed him by slamming the
interior door.

  “Something’s wrong,” his father said, rising. “What is it?”

  “You know damned well what it is.” Will flung the ticket across the desk. “Why’d you do it? And how the hell did you know?”

  His first suspicion was that his father had had him followed and watched, had somehow learned about Kate, had wormed out of her God knows what.

  His father glanced at the ticket and frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But now that you’re here—” He came around the desk and stood before him.

  Will felt the blood rage hot to his face, his temples throbbing so intensely now he thought his head would explode. “Trying to run my life again, aren’t you? Well not this time, Father.”

  “We need to talk, Will. Sit down.” He gestured to the same chair Will had ignored last night.

  “No.”

  “All right. Let’s get this out standing up, then. I know you blame me for what happened between you and Sherrilyn.”

  Will let out a derisive sound.

  “I didn’t know, Will. I tried to tell you before you left Philadelphia, but you wouldn’t listen. I want you to listen to me now.”

  “Why should I?”

  Something happened, then, between them that Will wasn’t prepared for. His father’s dark eyes warmed, his face twisting into a desperate union of pain and defeat. Will had never seen him like this. Not ever.

  “Because I’m your father,” he said gently. “And because, despite what you think of me, what I’m to blame for and what I’m not…I love you, and always have.”

  Not once in the whole of Will’s life had his father ever made such an open and raw declaration to him. Will remembered him not as a cold man—for that would have called for emotion—but merely a cool one, distant, self-absorbed, focused on power and money, barely cognizant of his wife or his son.

  To his own surprise, Will found himself taking the seat his father had offered. And he listened, and he learned. He recalled, too, Kate’s unguarded sentiments about her own father.

  He did what he thought was best for us, that’s all. He was my father, and I forgave him. It’s as simple as that.

  Was it?

  Will ground his teeth, reflecting on the void of years he’d spent drifting after Sherrilyn’s death. Running was perhaps a better word for it. Running from the unbearable idea that perhaps he, though wronged, was the one who’d made the biggest and most costly mistake of all.

  Rather than face that, he’d clung to his distrust of women, his hatred of his father and men he’d thought just like him—Landerfelt, for one.

  Kate had been right about that, and other things.

  He’d allowed that hate to burn unchecked inside him, he’d fueled it at every opportunity, had used it to keep him warm at night. To dull his need for intimacy, for love, for the kind of life he’d always wanted but was convinced after Sherrilyn’s death he didn’t deserve.

  “It was all her doing, then,” he said quietly, letting his father’s words sink in. “Sherrilyn proposed the match to you, not the other way around.”

  “Yes, but I was all too ready to agree. I needed the deal with Browning, was desperate for it. So desperate I didn’t stop to wonder what her motives might be. I…thought she’d be good for you. You were so restless, Will, so unhappy.” His father paused and willed him to his gaze. “I didn’t know about the…others. Not until after you’d already left.”

  He meant Sherrilyn’s other lovers.

  Will sucked in a breath, his mind still a bit muddled from drink. “I didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she’d died.”

  His father’s face went ash-white.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” Will could tell just by looking at him that he hadn’t. Shaking his head, he marveled at his own stupidity. “Of course you didn’t.”

  He paused for a moment and watched some new understanding breach his father’s hard-edged features.

  “For months after she died I tormented myself with the question of whether or not the child was mine. I guess we’ll never know and, in the end, it doesn’t really matter, does it? She died, and an innocent child with her.

  “I’m to blame. I dragged her West against her will, to places so remote, so rugged, she didn’t have a chance once she took sick.”

  “We’re all to blame, Will.”

  Will rose from the chair and walked to the barred window.

  “Don’t you think we’ve paid enough for our sins, you and I?” His father’s voice was soft.

  Maybe they had, maybe they hadn’t. Maybe it wasn’t even possible. Will glanced at the steamship ticket lying on the mahogany desk, and after a long moment he picked it up.

  Was this what he really wanted? Or was Sitka just another place to run to? He folded the ticket carefully and slipped it into his pocket. The sharp edges of what he knew to be silver filigree brushed the tips of his fingers.

  Slowly he drew the painted miniature from his pocket and let his gaze wash over the proud features and bright blue eyes of the woman who was his wife.

  A woman who’d offered him her love in spite of his self-loathing. Who’d unknowingly taught him that freedom begins not on a ship bound for Sitka, or anywhere, but in one’s own heart.

  “I’ve seen her,” his father said, smiling at Kate’s painted image. “Last night, right here, watching you through that very window.”

  “You mean…she was here? She saw us? And the money change hands?”

  “Yes, I believe she did. Who is she?”

  A series of short, low horn blasts drew Will’s attention to the street outside. The sun had dipped low in the sky. Dusk came early this time of year. In an hour it would be dark.

  “What’s that?” He strained his ears, trying to hear.

  “The last call,” his father said.

  “Last call for what?”

  “The tide’s about to turn.”

  With a shock it dawned on him. He looked at Kate’s image, eyes wide, gripping the miniature so tight it cut his hand. “Christ,” he breathed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s no time—I’ll explain later.” Will ripped the bank’s interior door wide, and knocked over a startled clerk as he vaulted over the mahogany counter and shot into the street.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  He was too late.

  Will splashed into the icy water of the bay, shouting, frantically waving his arms at the dinghy that was already halfway back to shore after having delivered the last load of passengers to the Dublin-bound clipper before she sailed.

  He couldn’t risk waiting. He swam for it, not bothering to remove his jacket or boots. When he reached the dinghy, two oarsmen pulled him, gasping, into the boat.

  “T-take me out there,” he wheezed, and spat a mouthful of seawater over the side.

  “Sorry, sir, it’s too late. She’s ready to cast—”

  “Do it!” Will shouted, and ripped the Colt from his belt.

  “Whatever you say.” The oarsmen exchanged wide-eyed looks and rowed as he held the gun on them.

  Will holstered the Colt and swung himself onto the rope ladder the second the dinghy scraped up against the clipper’s oiled side. The crew had just begun to unfurl the sails when the captain called them off.

  “What the devil do you mean by—”

  In one fluid motion Will vaulted over the top rail and a second later twisted the fine navy lapels of the captain’s jacket into his fists. “Where is she?”

  “Who? Ah, Crockett. I didn’t recognize you soaked to the skin like a river rat.”

  “My wife, where can I find her?” He let go of the captain’s jacket and quickly scanned the shocked faces of the passengers crowded onto the deck eyeing his dripping clothes.

  “Mrs. Crockett’s not aboard. Didn’t you—”

  “What do you mean she’s not on board?” He grabbed the captain by the arm, but this time two crewman stepped between them. “Where the hell is she? I paid
you extra to—”

  “Yes, all right. You can have your money back. The clerk down on the wharf told me early this afternoon.”

  “Told you what?” Will’s head pounded more with fear now, than the remnants of too much whiskey. Where the hell was she if she wasn’t here?

  “She exchanged her ticket.”

  “Exchanged it? For what?”

  All at once, in a blinding flash of understanding, his head was clear. Everything was clear.

  Will ripped the soggy steamship ticket from his pocket and stared at the bleeding ink. Kate had exchanged her own ticket for the one he held, dripping, in his hand. But why?

  She’d wanted to go home as much as he’d wanted to get away. That’s why she’d married him in the first place. Her brothers were waiting, she’d said. They were counting on her to come home and—

  The words of the blue-eyed boy who’d delivered Will’s ticket to the saloon came crashing back on him in a perfect Irish brogue.

  What with my da newly dead and with the four of us boys just arrivin’—well, I don’t think my sister would think much of the idea.

  Sister!

  That’s why the boy’s eyes had seemed so familiar to him. Will’s head whipped around toward the other Irish clipper—the Marta Marie—that rocked gently at anchor in the bay.

  He’d watched, unknowing, with his own eyes, Kate’s whole family come ashore—the young man with his wife and child, twins around about twelve years old and the gangly whippersnapper who’d delivered the ticket to the saloon.

  Will ripped the painted miniature from his pocket and stared at those bright blue Dennington eyes. That’s how the boy had known him—by the miniature propped beside him on the bar. Sean. That was his name. He remembered all their names, and all the stories Kate had told him about their life together.

  Had she known all along they were coming? No, no he didn’t think so. If she had, she would have told him. He knew from her changed behavior this past week that she’d rather have cut out her own heart than have been a burden to him.

  A hundred unanswered questions whirled unchecked in his head.

  “If you’re sailing you’ll have to pay,” the captain said, shocking him out of his stupor.