Heiress

by Susan May Warren

  She ignored the distress on Amelia’s face and found her voice. “Bailey’s Beach, please.”

  He nodded then helped her back into the landau.

  The landau jerked, and she caught herself on the handle inside the door. They pulled along the marina, and Lewis turned.

  His dark gaze fell upon the carriage. Jinx drew back, shaking.

  It didn’t matter what Foster suspected. She had a child now—his child, for all he knew. A child she would love and who would grow up to be strong and healthy. A son of Worth.

  The sun’s full attention bathed Bailey’s Beach as her coachman helped her down at the entrance into the hands of the Bailey’s porter, a footman in gold livery. He knew her by sight, of course, and let her enter the grounds.

  If she wanted to dispel any rumors kindled from Bennett and Elise’s debacle last night, she needed to make an appropriate appearance at Bailey’s Beach.

  It would be her last before she took to bed rest.

  Amelia had said nothing and now acted as if they had intended, all along, to bathe. She set to work securing the bathing machine, and Jinx waited in the shade until the four-wheeled, donkey-drawn carriage was erected. When she entered, she found a pitcher of orange juice and a basket of fruit waiting.

  Amelia would serve as her dipper, and she helped her change into her bathing costume. Jinx even donned the required rubber-soled bathing boots, lacing them up the leg.

  “Ready, ma’am?” Amelia asked, her voice strangely cool.

  Jinx nodded and they sat as their attendant drew the carriage toward the sea. She heard the waves scraping the shore and looked out the front as the donkey waded into the waves until the water reached the level of the wheels. Then the attendant unyoked him and drew the animal around to the front.

  The attendant drew down the awning in front to afford her privacy, then Amelia helped her into the water.

  Jinx stepped down, dipping one covered foot, then the other, into the surf. The water swelled around her, lifting her skirt, but even as she waded deeper, the wool kept the freshness of it from her skin.

  The cover of the bathing machine obscured the view of the ocean, but Jinx imagined it, stretching out beyond her enclave, an immense blue, waves free to roam from shore to shore. And somewhere in that expanse, Bennett had sailed away from her.

  She wet her hands, drew the water to her face. Oh, to dive in. She longed for the chilly lick upon her legs, the mortar of sand between her toes, the salt in her mouth.

  To let the sea baptize her.

  Instead, her costume weighed upon her, tossed her off balance in the rile of the waves. She lurched forward and Amelia caught her.

  “Careful, Mrs. Worth, you don’t want to fall.”

  Jinx let Amelia steady her, dug her rubber-booted feet into the sand, then took a long breath, staring down at the darkness swilling around her knees, at the dark, tented puddle of sea that belonged to her. “I won’t fall.” No, not ever again.

  SECTION THREE

  Esme

  SILVER CITY, MONTANA

  1903

  Chapter 11

  The Butte Press had scooped her again.

  Esme sat at the long, polished oak bar of the former Trammers Saloon-turned-headquarters for the Copper Valley Times, her hands still black with ink from her single-plate printing press, and read the Butte sixteen-page weekly cover to cover.

  The Butte paper had covered the recent vigilante hanging of two highway robbers on the road between Virginia City and Butte, the mining accidents from the Copper Valley mine just outside Silver City, an unsolved murder of a gambler found in the alley behind the Nickel, and the recent looting of Annie Doyle’s homestead. All articles found in her own eight-page Copper Valley Times.

  But the Butte paper also had headlines from Washington, New York, and San Francisco. She hadn’t known about President Theodore Roosevelt’s upcoming visit. No, that she found on page one, above the fold, and read it three times, hating Ellis Carter for every ounce of backdoor, underhanded shenanigans that allowed the Copper King-Newspaper Baron-Senator to trickle down information to his staff at the Butte Press.

  She needed an insider in the halls of Washington, or even the state seat in Helena if she wanted to compete with the Press’s circulation.

  And, with their advertising power.

  She propped her chin on her hand and flipped through the paper again, counting the ads, the space. Paid-for space comprised half the paper. No wonder Carter could afford the mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York when he wasn’t in Washington, or paying off senators in Helena.

  And, as if to grind salt into her wounds, there, on the back page, a quarter-page ad from Adelaide’s Mercantile, just three doors down from Esme’s office, advertising a shipment of Heinz 57. As if any of the immigrant workers down at the Silverthread mine could relate to an advertisement of a showy high society woman and her daughter admiring their housekeeper’s recent purchase.

  The advertisement just reeked of Carter’s grimy fingers creeping toward her little town, greenbacks in one hand, a copper collar in the other.

  “Miss Essie, I thought you went home.” Hudson came from the back room—which used to hold the kegs of beer, the bottles of whiskey back when Silver City boomed, years before copper was discovered in the defunct silver mines. Then, miners and gamblers, and even highway robbers bellied up to the long bar, staring at their grizzled mugs and bloodshot eyes in the mirror, hoping for substance before heading back out into the lawless and unorganized territory of southern Montana.

  Esme had rolled into town ten years too late for the silver boom, but in time to acquire the saloon for the price of one of her pearl earrings. She’d purchased the linotype machine, the printing press, and the opportunity to prove her father wrong with the other.

  Hudson came with the place. Once a miner, he bore the years of frustration in his baggy eyes, the bow of his back, and knobby worn hands. He had long ago lost his dwindling silver claim to a pair of jumpers who paid off the sheriff’s vigilante crew of bone-breakers for protection. Esme had peeled him off her front steps, where, like a dog, he’d returned as if lost.

  She’d finally offered him a job—in return for sobriety. He kept his promise on Sundays through Thursdays.

  But the man could fix anything, especially a broken vise or elevator bar, and defended her as if she might be his own daughter.

  “I can’t help it, Hud. I have to read the Press.”

  “Put it down. You know it ain’t nothing but gossip.”

  “Only page four is gossip. The rest is the same news we print. Except this.” She turned the paper to the front page, flipped it onto the counter. Pointed to the article. “President Roosevelt is coming to town.”

  Hudson, wearing a pair of overalls that betrayed the night’s scurry to put their five-hundred circulation paper to bed, leaned over and read the article. “I voted for the reverend.” He pushed the paper back to her. “Don’t get upset now, Miss Essie. Folks around here don’t care about no president coming to visit.”

  “Of course they do, Hud. It’s the closest thing we have to royalty. Back in New York, there’d be balls and dinners and parades—”

  “There ain’t none of that here.”

  Indeed. The last party she’d attended had been a social at the Copper Valley mining camp. If one didn’t count, of course, the many wakes she’d attended, mostly out of courtesy, as a member of the press. Eulogies never seemed as lively as when told by a man with a glass of whiskey in his grip.

  It seemed, however, everyone loved a good obit, and she hated the fact that a mine catastrophe meant a run into the black for her paper.

  She wanted the hard news. Something that caused a rush on the paper. Something that put her in the big leagues.

  Something her father might somehow see, read first sentence to last. Let himself realize that he’d been wrong.

  Maybe even ask her to return.

  She got up, wiping her grimy hands on her wool pants,
hazarding a glance in the tarnished mirror. She’d streaked ink along her jaw.

  Hud seemed to be reading her mind because from behind her, he handed over a handkerchief. It seemed clean and she did her best to wipe off the residue of her profession. “If I could just get an interview with the president, imagine how many copies we could sell. We could print double runs, maybe get ourselves some scratch money to pay for a folding machine.”

  Not to mention newsprint and ink. And someday she should tally up how much she owed Ruby for her photographs. And bookkeeping. And compositing.

  She handed back the handkerchief, ready to crawl under the counter and sleep for a week.

  No wonder her father obsessed about Pulitzer’s World. No wonder he’d been so desperate to sell Esme off for a final grasp at their fortune.

  She might have sold herself if she knew just how much a newspaper could consume a man—or woman’s soul. Her paper had become her child.

  Her husband.

  Her family.

  The Copper Valley Times just might be her very heartbeat.

  “Arty and his brother are out back, ready to start filling in the newsstands,” Hud said.

  “Perfect. Will you run a bundle out to the camp?”

  He pocketed his handkerchief. “If you promise to get some shut-eye. And don’t bother tellin’ me that you aren’t exhausted—you look like you spent a week huddled up with a bottle of whiskey.”

  “I don’t drink, Hud, you know that. But thanks for the honesty.”

  Hud winked at her, tease in his expression, and headed into the pressroom. Or file library. Or loading dock. Sometimes, when scrutinizing her two-room operation, and laying it beside her father’s glorious Chronicle Building with the angelic clock…well, she’d left divine providence long behind in New York when she traveled out west, in search of some elusive independence that had nearly starved her that first year.

  She’d survived however. Barely, but with enough to keep herself and Hud fed. Enough to hire Ruby. And someday she’d file for a homestead claim, build a house, and move out of the room upstairs, next to Ruby’s.

  The bell above the door jangled and like clockwork, Agnes O’Shaunessy billowed in, her red hair braided under a wide-brimmed hat, ostrich feathers tufted at the crown. She had tucked herself into a Sears & Roebuck day dress as if she fancied herself a lady, despite the mud-caked cowboy boots. Now she slapped a list down on the bar. “I got a fresh crop of catalog women needing husbands.”

  Esme reached under the bar, pulled out a manila envelope, pressed a copy of her folded Times into it. “Agnes, we’ve been through this. The Copper Valley Times is not a social page. I am not going to advertise your mail-order brides like they were parasols, or Heinz 57 ketchup.”

  “Parasols?”

  “I’m not selling your women for you.”

  Agnes’s mouth dropped. “I’ll have you know I screen every single one of these men who come calling. And I hardly make any profit off my troubles. But the fact is, these women have come out west to secure themselves a happily ever after, and there are plenty of lonely men here needing a good wife.”

  Esme sealed the envelope. “They need someone to get the soot and grime off their pants is what they need. And tell them to shave. And maybe even get a haircut. They can get that from Cats Alley. Thank you, but I’m not in the business of selling women to the highest bidder in search of a wife. They’ll only shackle her to a life of poverty, fear, and an early death.”

  “They need someone to come home to after a day twelve hundred feet under the earth, smelling the stench of hell and facing the grim reaper with only a hardhat, a lamp, and a hammer is what.”

  Esme looked up at the tremor in Agnes’s voice, drew in a long breath. Agnes looked away fast, pressed manicured nails under her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Agnes. That came out wrong.” Two years after Agnes’s husband’s accident, and the wounds on her expression seemed as fresh as when Esme watched the company men lower her Clancy into the earth. Lines of grief whittled into Agnes’s face made her seem decades instead of only two years older than Esme.

  Only, perhaps that’s exactly how Esme had appeared when she’d arrived in Silver City. Lined. Desperate, and more than a little ready to take on the world and make sure she never got hurt again.

  “I just don’t abide arranged marriages, is all,” Esme finally said, trying for an explanation.

  Agnes drew a long breath. “I think you don’t abide love. Look at you, a single girl, out here for the past five years—”

  “Seven, Agnes. I’ve been here seven years.”

  “Long enough to find yourself a husband, maybe have a few children.”

  Esme came around the counter, wishing away, for a moment, her finishing school lessons. She wanted to snap back at Agnes—Maybe I don’t get a second chance at love. Maybe I had my opportunity and lost it.

  But none of those words emerged. Instead, she smiled. Esme tried to soften her voice, add compassion to it. “I know you believe you are helping these girls, and perhaps I have judged you too quickly. But as long as I’m the owner, and the editor of the Copper Valley Times, I cannot print your advertisement.”

  Agnes grabbed up the list. “Fine. You may write fancy articles, Miss Essie Stewart, but you haven’t a clue how to run a business. See you at the church social on Sunday.”

  She turned and marched out, rattling the pane of glass behind her, the gold COPPER VALLEY TIMES etching on the door obscuring her exit.

  “You know, Agnes has a good heart. She’s matched half the men in town—or at least, the good ones.” Ruby came down the stairs. Dressed in a split skirt and shirtwaist and with her hair in two long braids, she looked as fresh and bright as the day she marched into Esme’s office and begged for work.

  She needed a job before she got married off to a man twice her age. Or worse. But what choices did an orphan girl have out here in the unforgiving West? Until that moment, when Esme had seen her quick, wounded smile, Ruby considered her only commodities her long chestnut hair, golden brown eyes, and the fact she knew every miner that worked the Silverthread Mine. Which meant she also knew how to sniff out a story.

  Esme had dropped a camera in her hand and put her to work.

  “Agnes O’Shaunessy is running nothing more than a glorified brothel. Or a mercantile where the women are merchandise.”

  “Agnes is a good God-fearing woman who specializes in matters of the heart. Nothing but conversation and parlor games are permitted. Believe me, before Agnes took it over, the O’Donnells had a very different purpose for the place. You should give her credit for cleaning up the town.”

  “Right alongside Sheriff Toole.”

  Ruby picked up the envelope, studied the address on the front. Shook her head. “Take it from me, the 3-7-77 vigilante squad put the fear into the highway robbers. Whether the sheriff’s at the heart of the vigilantes or not, they’ve made the ride from Butte to Silver City survivable.” She held up the envelope. “When are you going to stop sending these?”

  Esme took it from her hand. “Go find me a big story for next week’s paper. I need something that will sell ads.”

  “The Copper Camp is having their annual miners’ dance in a few weeks. I’m sure I could come up with a list of women needing dates. Or perhaps a recipe or two.”

  “Ruby, please—I need news. I’m not running a gossip magazine here. If I hope to compete with the Butte Press, I need to scoop them with something hard-hitting.”

  “We’re not the New York Chronicle,” Ruby said softly.

  Esme drew in a breath. Caught a glimpse of herself in the tarnished mirror, recognizing the blue eyes, the wisps of blond hair pulled back with a lanyard. The rest of her—from the men’s pants to the boots—seemed like something she’d only read about in one of her dime novels.

  She picked up the envelope, grabbed her hat, something bequeathed to her from under the dusty bar, and headed for the post office. “No, we’re not the Chronicle.” Sh
e stopped at the door, her hand on the brass handle, staring at her inverted freshly painted lettering. “But with the right story, we could be.”

  * * * * *

  Sometimes, like now, Esme could hardly believe she lived on the edge of the frontier, in a country where she hid a pearl-handle revolver in her desk, where she rode a horse—not sidesaddle—and where she’d become a woman she’d dreamed up in the back of her Fifth Avenue mind.

  But Silver City was most definitely not Fifth Avenue. Corralled in a thumbprint alpine valley, edged on all sides by a rough-hewn scattering of foothills, pinched and drawn forth around the edges like one of Cook’s Christmas pies, and liberally dolloped with sage, mountain grasses, and groves of pine, Silver City served up all manner of Wild West legend.

  From gunslingers to Forty-niners to catalog girls to card-sharking black legs to Bible-thumping converters, they all found their way to Butte—and when the big city wrung them out, they crawled twenty-six miles west, over the ridge to Silver City.

  Esme had taken one look at Butte, with its arsenic- and sulfur-poisoned skies blackened by the two dozen smelter stacks burning ore—courtesy of the Anaconda and Amalgamated mine companies, the sea of wooden shanty towns from Dublin Gulch to Chinatown, the row of brothels on Venus Alley, and enough saloons and breweries to slack the thirst of all New York, and decided to stay aboard the Northern Pacific Railroad.

  Besides, she’d already circled Silver City on her railroad map, charmed by the way the words slid off her tongue. Silver City.

  Then, she watched the plains of South Dakota turn from golden expanse of undulating ocean to ragged black hills to rolling prairies gullied out with furrows and rivulets of land and grassy buttes hacked off as if a giant shovel descended from the heavens, to finally the glorious rumble of white-painted mountains to the south and west. Halfway through Montana seemed exactly the right measurement to disembark and begin her Calamity Jane life.