The two men who had been loitering in the livery—shopping, as it were—finally left. Jack took that as his cue. “Mademoiselle Girard, I wish you all the best in your endeavors, and if you would allow me to be plainspoken with you, ma’am . . .”
What light her expression held slowly receded. “You are refusing my offer, Monsieur Brennan?”
Such innocence. Part of him felt concern for her, and yet, he reminded himself, she was not his concern. “Yes, ma’am, I am,” he said quietly. “And I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least try to persuade you to stay away from the mining camps. You referred to them as neighboring communities . . . they’re nothing of the sort. They’re rough and crude— and tend to draw men who match that description. I don’t know your reasons for wanting to go, but I can tell you that those camps are no place for females, much less a young woman like you.”
“Yet you go to these places.” Honest query filled her voice. Not a hint of sarcasm lingered.
“It’s different for me, ma’am. It’s my job to carry freight to the miners. Plus, I’m a man.”
The tiniest smile touched her mouth. “If I were to be a man, monsieur, would you allow me to accompany you?”
“Don’t even let that thought take root, Mademoiselle Girard. If there’s one thing you could never be mistaken for, it’s a man.” This young woman was feminine through and through, but he detected a determined will that wouldn’t be easily swayed. Perhaps he’d assigned her to the wrong camp earlier.
Her smile was brief. “How will you manage without a conveyance?”
Again, not a hint of gloating tainted her voice. “I haven’t figured that out yet, ma’am. But I will.”
“If I offered you more money, would you be persua—”
“I told you before, there are many reasons I won’t agree to do this. And money doesn’t figure into any of them.” He’d already guessed from her clothes and the way she conducted herself that she came from wealth. Probably had a rich father somewhere who doled out double eagles to his daughter like they were raindrops in Oregon. The man hadn’t done her any favors. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but my answer is still no. I can’t state it any plainer than that.”
She slowly bowed her head. “There is no need for you to restate it, monsieur. I understand the meaning of that word quite well.”
Jack couldn’t see her expression, only the way her hands were knotted at her waistline. He intended to be the first to leave, but when she skirted around him, he let her go. He watched her as she walked away.
The crowd of shoppers cramming the street parted at her approach, as though a silent trumpet had blown, announcing the passage of royalty. She seemed oblivious to it, and he couldn’t help but wonder if everything in her life had come so easily.
He waited. Giving her a good lead felt like the right thing to do. She wouldn’t want to see him again anytime soon.
“You surprised me, Brennan. I expected you to take her up on that offer.”
Jack turned at the sound of Sampson’s voice. As he watched the old man pick up a saddle and stow it on a bench against the wall, he wrestled with what had just happened, unable to reconcile it. “Then you underestimated me, sir.”
“And I don’t customarily do that with people.”
Jack weighed his next question before asking. “Is it your custom to try and manipulate people into doing your bidding, instead?”
Sampson paused for a second, showing no offense. “No, but I’m not above tryin’ to give God a hand when I see something that needs to be done. Especially when I know it’s the right thing to do.” He picked up a horseshoe and a pair of tongs and carried them to the forge.
Jack followed. “You really think sending me and that young woman trekking all over the Rockies—alone—is the right thing to do? Do you have any idea what mining towns are like? Or what position you’d be placing Mademoiselle Girard in, not to mention what burden of responsibility you’d be saddling me with?”
“I know exactly what burden you’d be saddled with, Mr. Brennan, and I’d gladly strap it on your back right now, if I could!” Jake Sampson shoved the horseshoe into the bed of red-hot coals, sending sparks shooting upward.
Jack had learned long ago that when faced with someone’s anger, patient silence served him well. Deciphering the feelings behind the anger went much faster if he wasn’t so busy reacting to it.
“She’s bound and determined to get up to those camps, Brennan.” Sampson laid the tongs aside. “And if she gets hooked up with the wrong kind of man—or men—it won’t end up good. We both know that.”
“Then you need to find some way to convince her not to go.”
Jake Sampson’s unexpected laughter was brief and humorless. “I’ve got about as much chance of doin’ that as I have of wadin’ out in Fountain Creek and comin’ up with pockets full of gold.” He eased down on an upturned crate and gestured toward an old chair in the corner.
Jack hesitated, then dragged the chair over and straddled it.
“She wandered in here yesterday sayin’ she needed a driver and a . . . carriage.” Sampson pronounced the word as Mademoiselle Girard might have, and it drew a smile from Jack. “As if I’ve got those just sittin’ around. She’s traveled a long way from home to get here, Brennan, and convincin’ her to just turn around and sashay on back to Paris isn’t gonna be easy. Not when she’s come in search of her father.”
That got Jack’s attention. “Her father?”
“She says he came through here back in the fall of ’50. He was a trapper. Said she was just a wee thing when he left her and her mother behind. I’m afraid there’s only heartache in store for the child, even if she does find him, though chances of that happening are next to nothing. I tried to tell her, but somebody’s filled her pretty little head with the notion that if she finds the man who helped bring her into this world, she’ll find her father. But those two things don’t always go hand in hand.”
A shadow crossed Sampson’s face and Jack couldn’t help but wonder what lay beneath it. Yet one thing was painfully clear to him— he’d been mistaken about Mademoiselle Girard, at least in part. And he regretted his hasty judgments. But even if he’d had this information beforehand, it wouldn’t have changed his final decision. He still stood by it, however much he sympathized with her. And he agreed with Sampson that finding her father would be next to impossible.
When men wanted to disappear, they chose this territory with good reason.
“I’ve known my share of Frenchmen through the years.” Sampson’s focus extended beyond the confines of the livery doors. “A good lot, most of ’em. They sent money back home to their families. Just tried to make a livin’ like everyone else. Once the fur market went bust, most of the trappers around here crowded into the streams with the rest of us, lookin’ for gold. Most never found so much as a nugget for their trouble.”
The jostle of passing buggies and wagons along with indistinct bits of conversation floated toward them through the open doors of the livery. Jack studied the man across from him, sensing there was more to him than he’d originally credited.
Jack leaned forward, resting his arms on the spindled back of the chair. “So did you ever find any gold, Mr. Sampson?”
A long moment passed. Then a gradual smile ghosted Jake Sampson’s face, and Jack wondered if he’d been given his answer.
The old man kept his attention trained ahead. “You know the trick to pannin’, don’t you, Brennan? It’s knowing when to stop. Greed’s a powerful adversary. If you give her a foothold, she’ll take back everything she’s given, and then some. Learning to be content is hard. But not learning . . . sometimes that’s even harder.”
Jack looked around the livery—a modest business to say the least. He didn’t know what to believe about whether Sampson found gold, but his gut told him the man was telling the truth. Jack smiled to himself, imagining what motivation the man might have for being rich and yet living like he wasn’t. Sampson might be a bit odd—even ecc
entric—but he seemed harmless enough.
“You still have my down payment for that wagon, sir, but I want you to keep it,” he added quickly. He stood and carried the chair back to the corner. “I want you to build me another one just like it, as soon as possible. And this time, there’ll be no confusion about who owns it.” He waited for Sampson’s acknowledgment, then turned to go.
“She’s lost her mother too,” Sampson said quietly behind him. Jack paused in the doorway.
“Mademoiselle Girard got real teary when she told me, so I figure it wasn’t too long ago. Maybe that’s the reason she left home when she did. Figured she didn’t have anything left to lose, or maybe nothing left to stay for.”
Bowing his head, Jack slowly exhaled. “Manipulation is a cheap form of cowardice, Mr. Sampson. I don’t respond well to it.”
“If I would’ve asked you outright, would you have said yes?” Jack looked back, and shook his head.
“Mr. Brennan, you’re the only man I know who I trust to do this.”
“With all respect, Mr. Sampson, you don’t know me.”
“I know Bertram Colby. And I know that if you’ve earned that man’s good opinion, you’re finer than most. You can argue this point with me all day long, but you’ve already proven to me you’re the right man.”
“And just how do you figure that, sir?”
Sampson rose from the crate and took a step forward. “Because after everything she offered you, you still said no.”
CHAPTER | TEN
LATER THAT EVENING, Véronique stood a safe distance from the open window in her room and watched the sun swath the mountains in a cloak of crimson and gold. How small and insignificant she felt in comparison. And how isolated and alone.
Examining her melancholy, she easily traced its root—Monsieur Brennan’s refusal of her offer earlier that day. She still couldn’t believe it—even after the offer of more money, he’d remained firm.
Though she hadn’t seen him at the hotel again, she assumed that he was a guest, or at least had been, based on his having left his shirt in the washroom. She tried to think of something else she could propose that might persuade him to reconsider. But the somber finality lining his expression earlier told her that her efforts would be wasted.
The hollowness stemming from his rebuff was not easily set aside. How foolish she’d been to pin her hopes so quickly on one man. Surely God had not brought her all this way only to leave her now, but it was beginning to feel as though He’d done just that.
A cool evening breeze rustled the curtains.
Billows of whitish-gray clouds stretched across the western horizon, one atop the other. Wave upon fluffy wave crested, reflecting the last vestiges of light until the sky resembled an ocean churning to meet the shore. Deep within her subconscious, she remembered the rocking motion of the ship that had ferried her across the Atlantic, so far from home. Véronique closed her eyes and recalled the tangy brine of the ocean. She could almost taste the salt spray on her lips and feel the unsettling queasiness in her stomach from the constant pitching and swaying.
She blinked to dispel that last unpleasant memory.
How were Lord and Lady Descantes faring? Were they still in this country? Were their girls practicing the English they’d learned while under her tutelage? She picked up the vellum-bound book on the table beside her—Le Comte de Monte Cristo—and turned it in her hands, recalling how much Lord and Lady Descantes’ daughters had relished the tale.
As fond as she was of the story by Alexandre Dumas, it held no appeal this evening. She placed the book back on the table.
Men’s voices drifted in from outside in the hallway.
She paused, listening. Then startled at the knock on her door.
Opening it, she found Monsieur Baird waiting on the other side, and heard the door to the room opposite hers in the hallway latch closed.
“Good evening, Miss Girard.” Monsieur Baird stood a good distance back from the entryway. “I’ve come to retrieve your dinner tray, if you’re finished.”
Glad for the company, however brief, she nodded. “Oui, I am. Merci. And may I send my compliments to your chef?” She retrieved the tray and handed it to him. “The meals I have enjoyed in your hotel have been the most palatable I have experienced while in your country.”
His expression warmed. “I’ll be sure and pass those kind words along to my wife. She’ll smile at hearing them, ma’am. Thank you.”
Another thought sprang to mind. “I also wish to compliment you on your hotel staff, Monsieur Baird. Miss Carlson is a most exceptional employee, especially for one so youthful.”
“Why yes, ma’am, she is. And we’re happy to have her.” Monsieur Baird glanced at the tray. “This’ll save her a trip up those stairs again tonight, which is always a good thing this late in the day.”
Véronique was surprised to hear the girl was still working at this hour. “The stairs are a challenge for her?” She phrased it more like a question and less like the truth she already knew, not wanting to cast a disparaging light on the girl.
He nodded. “More so in recent days, but you’d never know it from Lilly’s attitude. She just plugs right along, never complains about anything. She’s always been that way. Which makes me hurt all the more when I think of what’s ahead of her.” He blinked. Looking away, he cleared his throat. “But she’s as fine as they come. So’s her family. Well . . . I’ll say good-night, ma’am. Hope you rest well.”
“Bonsoir, Monsieur Baird, and I wish you the same.” Véronique closed the door and leaned against it, wondering about the proprietor’s comment about Lilly’s future and if it had to do with the brace on her leg. Had Lilly been born with the impediment? Or was it the result of a recent accident? The girl compensated for it extremely well, which in Véronique’s mind ruled out a more recent occurrence.
She crossed to the armoire and withdrew her nightgown. She’d spent the afternoon unpacking, a task that had busied her thoughts for a short time at least. The modest armoire didn’t accommodate half of her dresses, and the rest lay arranged over a wingback chair, awaiting a proper brushing. After pulling the floral curtains framing the open bay window closed, she undressed.
The silk of her nightgown provided scant warmth. She crawled between the cool sheets and pulled the quilt up over her body. Though the room was not extremely chilly, she shivered. Tired but not ready for sleep, she reached for John Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. The pages fell open at the exact spot she sought.
Her gaze went to the underlined portion. “‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” ’
She paused and reread the sentence again, silently. Slipping past the window, aided by night’s quiet, the distant gurgling of what she assumed to be Fountain Creek serenaded the silence.
After a moment, she continued. “‘If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” ’
Reading Donne’s familiar prose, being reminded that he considered no person truly isolated, or ever completely alone, helped ease the aloneness she felt. And she wondered . . . Did Donne have the slightest knowledge that the words he’d breathed life into so long ago would continue on long after his own heart had beat its last? She liked to think that he did.
“Mademoiselle Girard, I am honored that you would entrust me with your safety, but this arrangement is simply unsuitable, for more reasons than I care to number. . . .”
The words from earlier that day pushed their way into her thoughts with frustrating clarity, as did the memory of Monsieur Brennan’s determined attitude. If only she could think of something that might sway his opinion. On further thought, Monsieur Brennan did not strike her as the type of man who could be easily swayed.
&nbs
p; She placed the book on the bed table and, with a soft breath, blew out the oil lamp, then curled onto her side. But for a sliver of moonglow cast across the foot of the bed, darkness bathed the room.
She drew up her legs, wishing for a fire in the darkened hearth, or at least for the bed warmer she’d always found tucked between her sheets in the Marchand household on chilly nights. She cradled an arm beneath her pillow. The bed warmer had always been present when needed, so she’d never questioned how it had gotten there.
But who had warmed the coals for her bed all those years?
As she assisted Francette Marchand in preparing for bed, her own adjoining chamber had been made ready. Servants’ faces came to mind but none of their names, of course. They had been house servants, after all, not a companion to a family member, as she had been.
Shivering, Véronique pressed her face deeper into her pillow, surprised at the knot forming in her throat, and at the unexpected desire to convey her appreciation to whomever had faithfully seen her bed warmed for so many years, without a slightest word of thanks from her.
————
“Sure, I’ve got a wagon you might be interested in, Mr. Brennan. It’s in the back of the barn there. Haven’t used it in a while myself, but you’re welcome to look at it.”
Jack followed the rancher inside the barn, mindful to shorten his stride in deference to the older gentleman’s arthritic gait.
Following the fiasco at the livery with Mademoiselle Girard yesterday, he’d spent the previous afternoon scouring Willow Springs for another suitable wagon. And this morning had him following his last possible lead. But from the barn’s state of disrepair, Jack was none too hopeful. If this didn’t pan out, he owed Hochstetler a visit at the mercantile—and that was one visit he did not want to make.
Starks led the way down a hay-strewn aisle that was flanked on either side by empty, low-ceilinged stalls. Sunlight grew dim the farther back they went and the air more stale, thick with dust and the tang of days-old manure.
Remembered Page 10
