by Jane Goodger
Genny felt her last chance slipping away. She knew once Mitch was gone, she would never get off this mountain. With her leg still wrapped and using crutches, she’d never be able to follow Mitch when he left. She’d never see her grandparents, never fulfill that promise.
“I could pay you.” It was her last strategy, but for the first time, Mitch seemed interested in what she was saying. His expression changed subtly, just enough to give her a small bit of hope that he might actually help her.
“My mother came from an important family, and when she traveled to America with my father, she brought some of her jewelry. She sold most of it, but I still have a ring and a brooch that my father said are worth something. I have no idea what, but surely it’s enough to pay you to escort me to New York so I can find a ship to take me home. I don’t expect you to accompany me across the ocean, just to New York.”
Mitch narrowed his eyes and worked his jaw as if chewing on her idea. “Where are these jewels?”
“In that chest,” she said, pointing to her mother’s sea chest, a camelback trunk of mahogany and rosewood inlay that held all she had left of her mother. “There are some letters, too, with my grandparents’ address. I can’t read them, though, because I never learned how to read cursive. I can only decipher some of what it says.”
“You can’t read?”
“I can read,” she said succinctly, earning a strange smile from him. “I simply cannot read cursive. I can read books. I read books all the time.” She pointed to her precious collection of books on a shelf on the opposite side of the room.
Mitch went to the chest and lifted the lid.
“The jewels are in a rosewood box. Yes, that’s it,” she said when he lifted the box out. The jewelry case was on top because she’d frequently take it out to stare at the ring and brooch her mother used to wear.
He opened it up and let out a low whistle, before looking at her with renewed interest. Inwardly, Genny felt a surge of triumph. Her father had always said that food was the way to a man’s heart, but maybe for this man, money was. He shut the case and placed it back in the box, and Genny felt a stab of disappointment. Perhaps she’d been wrong about him, and those jewels were not enough to entice him into bringing her to New York.
“That’s something to think about, and I’m sure they’re worth something,” he said, tapping the top of the case with his index finger, every tap bringing more hope. “But not enough for me to take weeks of my life and forgo my wages. Sorry, darlin’.” Just like that, hope was dashed.
She watched listlessly as he brought out a small bundle of letters tied together with a velvet ribbon. “Are these the letters?”
“Yes. The ones with the great wax blobs on them.” Genny looked away, no longer interested in what the letters said. Unless the letters contained a map to a secret treasure, they were worthless to her.
He took the first of them and immediately went to the last page. “Glastonbury,” he said, reading the signature.
“My grandfather. For some reason that’s not his name, though. His name is Patrick Danforth. Glastonbury is just a title.”
“Title?”
“My father told me he is a duke.”
Slowly, Mitch lowered the letter and raised his gaze to hers. “Your grandfather is a duke.”
“Yes, and my grandmother is a duchess. Apparently they’re quite important people in England. At least that’s what my father said. Papa told me they could help me. I really have no idea what it all means, their being a duke and duchess. I only know that my father was, as he put it, ‘a nothing’ while Mama was a lady. I used to say, ‘of course Mama’s a lady’ but he would just laugh and tell me Mama was a different sort of lady. We never really talked about it, but I do know it was important because that’s why we were in America in the first place.”
Mitch walked over to the table and sat down, laid the letters on the table, and looked at her. “Your grandfather is a duke.”
“Yes, as I said. Is that a good thing?”
He took a deep breath, then smiled brilliantly. “Looks like you have an escort to New York. Hell, I’ll take you all the way to England. What do you think about that? Can’t have you traveling alone, right?”
Genny couldn’t believe it. “Truly? That’s marvelous. When can we go?”
Mitch looked at her leg and frowned. “Not for a couple weeks yet. Not until you can put some weight on that leg without it hurting.” Genny opened her mouth to say she was already feeling fine, but he interrupted her. “And no lying.”
She didn’t care. She was going home.
Mitch figured he felt much like those old miners when they first stumbled upon gold in ’49. When he looked at Genny, all he saw was a nice pile of cash. Piles and piles of it. What would a duke give to the man who put aside his own time and safety to rescue the duke’s granddaughter from the wilds of America? Dukes were rich. Dukes could throw a couple of thousand dollars at him and not even feel a pinch. All his scrimping and saving over the years and here he’d gone and found a pot of gold right in the middle of Yosemite.
He made thirty dollars a week, a sum he was pretty proud of. In the last five years, he’d managed to save nearly five thousand dollars. He’d figured in another year or so he’d have enough money to go home and start his own photography studio. Equipment was expensive and so was rent, so he wanted a bit more cash in hand before heading east. And now he’d have it.
Mitch didn’t know much about diamonds or rubies, but he knew about gold, and those bits of jewelry were made of gold. That alone would give him enough money to pay for their trip back to New York, with maybe enough left over to get them on a steamship to England. He could picture it now, knocking on the door of a palatial home, producing their long lost granddaughter with a flourish. Why, yes, it was a terrible sacrifice for me, but nothing is too good for Miss Hayes. What? A reward? Why, I couldn’t. I have delivered your granddaughter because she asked. All right, then, if you insist, though I do believe ten thousand dollars is more than generous.
Perhaps ten thousand dollars was a bit optimistic, but what was that sum of money to a duke? A duke could sneeze out that sort of money.
Only one thing worried him. What if the old duke and duchess were so angry with their daughter for running off with Mr. Hayes that they refused to accept their granddaughter? Mitch took up the letters again.
“Will you read them to me?” Miss Hayes sat up, her eyes alight with excitement, and Mitch felt a small twinge of something in his gut that he didn’t like.
“Sure. The first one is dated eighteen fifty-four. Were you born here or in England?”
“In America. I was born the first year they were here.”
“That means you’re twenty or twenty-one.” She didn’t look it, but she must be, based on what he knew. Imagine, twenty years old and stuck out alone in this wilderness. What the hell had her father been thinking?
He began to read: “July twenty-third, eighteen fifty-four.
“Dearest daughter,
You have broken your mother’s heart with your rash decision to leave for America. Your letter was met with great joy and greater sorrow. It is a small death for us, for we fear we shall never see you again. I write this with deep regret over my words, and it is with solemn hope that I pray those will not be the last words you hear from me.
Dearest Mary, come home to us. It is not within my power to judge what you have done, so I leave that to God’s hand and His will.
Glastonbury.”
All the letters that followed held very much the same tone. They were filled with regret and yearning and couldn’t have been more perfect. The last of them, written about the time her mother must have died, beseeched their daughter to come home, to allow their granddaughter to live the life which she deserved, to be raised in the bosom of her family. Surrounded by pots of gold and bags of diamonds. Mitch was practically giddy.
As he read the last of the letters, he looked up, and immediately altered his expression
upon seeing Genny’s tear-filled eyes. They looked, hell, they looked purely beautiful, the color of leaves in spring when the sun is shining through them. Then she blinked the tears away and Mitch was slightly relieved that they turned a more ordinary green.
“I have to go home. Don’t you see?”
“Yes, I do. We’ll get you there. Don’t you worry about a thing. But you have to be able to walk; Millie can only carry you so far. It’s a good four days to Sacramento, and with your leg, maybe longer.”
“Sacramento?”
“Bit west of here. That’s where we get on the train. We’ll take it to Omaha, then on to Chicago and finally New York.” It would cost a pretty penny, likely two hundred dollars for the two of them, but Mitch figured the jewelry would more than pay for the trip. And if it didn’t, he could take money out of the bank in Omaha.
“How long will that take?”
“A lot quicker than if we walk, that’s for sure. Once we set foot on the train in Sacramento, we’ll be in New York in about a week. Maybe we can get one of those Pullman cars and travel first class.”
She looked a bit dismayed. “A week? I had no idea it was that quick.”
“Could be longer, depending on if you run into any trouble. The problem is that the train stops, you see? And every time it stops, you sit there for a while and wait for people to get on and people to get off. Cattle get in the way. Rails need fixing. Train needs more water. All kinds of things could slow you down.”
“How long does it take to get from New York to England?”
Mitch grinned. “That’s the easy part. Less than two weeks after we get to New York, you’ll be saying hello to your grandparents. Now we just have to get you healed and ready for our big trip.” And the prize at the end. It was all Mitch could do not to rub his hands together. Everything he’d hoped for was finally within reach.
Chapter 3
Somehow, and he wasn’t certain how it had happened, Mitch had created for himself a sort of living hell.
Mitch saw the beauty in things; it was one of his gifts as a photographer, to see things other people didn’t. And at this moment, he was face-to-face with something he’d never seen in his life: a pretty girl’s face bathed in the morning sunlight.
They’d left her cabin the day before, allowing her two weeks to heal and get used to her crutches. She could put some weight on the bad leg without any pain, so she hardly even used them now. He figured by the time they got to Sacramento, she’d be ready for a cane or maybe even able to walk about with that cast on.
It had been slow going before they hit some flat ground and a trail. She never complained; never said she was tired or hurting or hungry. But as the day got older, her face got a bit more flushed and her progress slowed. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he stopped to look for a nice place to settle in for the night.
“You need to tell me when you’re hurting,” he said, more harshly than he’d meant to, but he couldn’t stand knowing she was in pain. “It’ll do no good if you get hurt and then we have to wait for you to get better.”
“I do apologize, but I’m so anxious to get to England, I suppose my enthusiasm overrode my abilities.” She smiled as she leaned against Millie.
Fancy talk. “No need to apologize, just be smart about it.”
He looked up to see where the sun lay and figured it was only about three in the afternoon. Plenty of time to build a little camp and settle in. Tomorrow would be better because they’d left the roughest terrain behind and going would be easier for the girl.
The next morning, as Mitch let his eyes wander over her face while she slept, he had a terrible feeling in his gut. Call it his conscience, something Mitch hadn’t known he had, but he didn’t feel quite so good about playing the hero now as he had a few days back. She was so damned trusting, looking at him with those big green eyes, following him no matter where he said to go. Hell, he could be bringing her to a slave trader for all she knew. It was a wonder she’d survived alone for all those months.
They lay not a foot apart, her head resting on a blanket. They’d started off the night three feet apart, settled in by the fire, his back to her. But as the temperature dropped, she’d edged closer and closer until at some point in the dead of night, he’d felt her press against him. He knew she was half-asleep and cold and just wanted to get warm, but his body didn’t listen. He had a soft, feminine body pressing up against him and damn if it didn’t feel nice.
Now, he was looking at the soft downy hair on her cheek glowing in the early morning light, seeing beauty in every angle. Her eyelashes seemed uncommonly long, brown but tipped with a lighter color that fanned out beneath her eyes. Her brows, so expressive when she was awake, were soft crescents. Her lips. Hell, he shouldn’t be looking at her lips, not first thing in the morning when his johnson was saying a hearty hello, but he just couldn’t help himself. Her skin was sun kissed, even though she’d worn her father’s oversized hat, and her lips were soft and pink. He liked their shape, a little bow on top, fuller on the bottom, with a slight indent in the middle. He had the urge to lay a finger on that little indent but resisted.
She had a square chin with the faintest cleft that didn’t seem to go with the rest of her delicate features, but somehow did. He wondered if that was the one thing she’d inherited from her father. She had a nice face, he decided, wishing he could capture this kind of light and beauty in a photograph.
Millie let out a bray, as if protesting his perusal, and her eyes opened. Damn, he couldn’t breathe for about two seconds, his breath literally caught in his throat. The color of her eyes—green with shards of gold—was one of the prettiest things he’d ever seen in his life. The kind of beauty you want to hold in your hand and never let go.
It wasn’t until she smiled, open and completely innocent, that he started and pulled back, horrified by what he’d been thinking.
“’Bout time you woke up,” he said gruffly, sitting up, achingly aware that he was a man who’d just gone a little loopy over a pretty face.
“What time is it?”
“Past time to get on the trail. I’d like to be going in thirty minutes. Think you can do that?”
Genny sat up, every muscle in her body aching as if she’d been pummeled by some invisible giant. Her traveling companion was scowling at her, at Millie, at the sun, but for some reason it didn’t bother her. He was like one of those dogs that growled fiercely at you, then flopped down on its back and let you rub its tummy. Not that Genny would be rubbing Mitch’s tummy. Just the thought made her laugh out loud, which only made Mitch’s scowl deepen.
“I see you are not a morning person,” she said cheerfully. “My father wasn’t either. He would be a bear, stalking around the cabin, until he had his first cup of coffee. And he’d wait for me to make it because he said I always made it better than he did. It’s true. I did.” Genny felt a stab of sadness thinking about her father and how he would compliment her every morning on his cup of coffee. “Best cup of coffee this side of the Mississippi,” he’d say. And she never got tired of hearing it. It was just one of their little rituals that she missed so much. They’d had to leave the coffee grinder behind, of course, but she’d taken the time to grind some beans for their trip.
“I thought you English liked tea,” Mitch had said, a bemused look on his face as she’d ground the last of her beans.
Genny wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps I’ve never had a good cup of tea, but I much prefer coffee. I do hope they have coffee in England or I shall be quite vexed.”
Mitch had seemed amused by her taking the time to bring along coffee, but was apparently glad she had.
“I suppose I could wait for a cup of coffee,” he said, rubbing his beard. Genny wondered what he would look like without that full and rather luxurious beard. It was a slightly lighter color than his chocolate brown hair, the kind of beard you could imagine digging your fingers into, soft and a little wavy. He stood, unfolding his long body, and looked around their camp.
“Of course.”
Genny hobbled about the camp on one crutch, so used to it now it was almost like an extension of her body. In the two weeks since she’d broken her leg, she’d gotten plenty of practice walking about. Mitch, though never mean, had not coddled her. At the time, she’d felt a bit sorry for herself, but was now glad of it. She never would have been able to walk the trail had it not been for him insisting she get up and about as soon as she could.
But, Lord, her body ached this day. She stirred up the coals, glad to see there were enough cinders to heat up the water for the coffee, then stretched, letting out a groan as her muscles protested. She looked up and there was Mitch, frowning at her.
“You’re sore?”
She nodded. “A bit, but I daresay a few minutes on the trail and I’ll feel better. I might have overdone it yesterday. Perhaps we can take more breaks today.”
“Sure. Guess it doesn’t matter if it takes a bit longer to get there than I planned.”
It took three days longer than Mitch had guessed to get to Sacramento, but by the time they reached the city, Genny had abandoned her crutch and was limping along gamely. Mitch had cut off the top part of the hide just below her knee so she could be more mobile. Each day that had passed, she felt better and stronger and more excited than ever to go home to England. As they entered the city limits, Genny could hardly contain her excitement. One of the first matters of business was selling the jewelry. Though she hated the thought of parting with her mother’s things, she had promised, and what better use for them than helping to get her home? She hoped they were worth a great sum, enough to get her to England.
“One hundred dollars? Hell, the gold alone is worth more than that.” Mitch stared at the little man, who stared right back at him over his thick jeweler’s lenses.
