by Rue Allyn
Kiera sat back on her bench, leaning against Ev. His arm circled her shoulders. “Well that’s one less complication we need to worry about.”
Edith and Dutch looked from Kiera to Ev and back.
“Are there other complications?” asked Edith. “We need to leave for Boston with all possible speed. Grandfather is gravely ill — in a coma — due to a carriage accident. Mae and I were searching his desk for money to pay the doctor and I came across information about you being in San Francisco. He’d hired Pinkertons to follow you and never told us. What Mae doesn’t know is that I found a copy of his will. He’s leaving his entire estate to the Boston Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals unless one of us has a child in the next two years.”
“That’s absurd, and horrifying, and just like Grandfather.”
“If he’s in a coma, what’s the hurry in returning?” asked Ev.
“Edith left Boston at the end of June. It’s nearly August,” responded Dutch. “Some patients remain in comas for years, and some die quickly. No one knows if Carlton Alden will die or wake up.”
“I want to get back to Boston before either event can happen. We need to have that will changed, and the best chance of doing that is while Grandfather is alive but unable to oppose us. However, our only hope of success is to have all three of us present and united in the effort.”
“I understand the urgency now, but there is a small problem,” Kiera looked at Ev.
He saw a plea for understanding in her expression; a plea that had him worried she’d refuse his proposal. He wanted her to be his wife, but whatever her decision, he’d support her. He squeezed her shoulder and nodded.
She smiled. “Ev’s asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted.”
Edith’s mouth thinned. “You can’t just go marrying the first stranger you meet. Dying or not, Grandfather will never change his will if we both defy his choices for us.”
Dutch laughed. “Didn’t realize I was a gesture of defiance.”
Edith cast him a fulminating glance. “You know better. However, I won’t have that old man … ”
Ev saw that Kiera would have intervened before Edith’s temper lit off, but Trahern enveloped the elder sister in a tight embrace and kissed her to silence.
Edith’ face was bright red when Dutch finally released her.
“Ev isn’t exactly a stranger, and I don’t need Grandfather’s money.”
“You don’t?”
“No, she doesn’t,” interjected Ev. “She happens to own a sizable chunk of Wyoming Territory, a chunk that sits smack on top of a gold field.”
“You own a gold mine?”
“No mine yet, just placer gold, but enough to settle my sisters there in comfort and security and restore the town that a fire in Smoke Valley destroyed.”
Edith laughed out loud. “That’s hilarious. Wait until Mae finds out? You will come with us to Boston, won’t you?”
“We’d be happy to, as soon as Ev can get someone to take over his marshal’s duties here.” She looked at Ev, who nodded agreement.
“That’s wonderful. However, as for moving to this Smoke Valley of yours,” Dutch cleared his throat and looked at Edith. “We’ve got ties to San Francisco, Edith. We can’t just up and move to Wyoming.”
She studied him. “We can work that out later. Right now we have to arrange a wedding.”
“It’s already arranged.”
All eyes turned on Ev.
He looked at Kiera. “Just in case you said yes when I proposed, I had Muh’Weda ride to Fort Sanders and bring the Colonel back here to perform the ceremony this morning.”
Kiera kissed him. “I do love you, Evrett Quinn. Let’s go get married.”
About the Author
Author of historical, contemporary, and erotic romances, Rue Allyn fell in love with happily ever after the day she heard her first story. She is deliriously married to her sweetheart of many years and loves to hear from readers about their favorite books and real life adventures. Learn more about Rue at http://RueAllyn.com.
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One Day’s Loving
Book 3 of the Wildfire Love series
Rue Allyn
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.crimsonromance.com
Copyright © 2013 by Rue Allyn
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-6719-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6719-3
eISBN 10: 1-4405-6720-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6720-9
Cover art © istock.com/miljko and istock.com/nicolamargaret and 123rf.com/Chee-Onn Leong
To Sally Charnley for your inspiring life plus your stories about Boston and Concord.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to acknowledge the significant contribution of several people. First I wish to thank the entire editorial staff at Crimson Romance. Their skill and insight have made One Day’s Loving a much better book. I also wish to acknowledge the contribution of my readers. Your support and encouragement mean the world to me. I sincerely wish I might thank each and every one of you personally.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
Boston Massachusetts, Late June 1870
“I regret, Mr. Van Wynde, I cannot accept your proposal. You will understand that with my grandfather’s passing last week I could not entertain any offer of marriage.”
Persephone Mae Alden of the Boston Aldens stared wide-eyed at the man kneeling before her on the floor of the manse’s formal parlor. Thanks to her parsimonious grandfather’s belief that women were sin personified, she had never entered the social scene. Nonetheless, skepticism came easily after living, since childhood, with the cruelest hypocrite on earth—almost as easily as the knowledge that the way to survival lay in dissembling and avoidance. Never, never, risk telling a man exactly what you think—it wasn’t safe.
Still on his knees, Charles Otto Van Wynde, III looked up, calf-eyed, at Mae. “Had I not wished to give you my support during this sad time, I would never have spoken. Please tell me I may hope for a different answer in the future.”
Mae was torn between the urge to giggle and the need to flee. Until today, she had never met Mr. Van Wynde, though she’d read of him and his nine sisters in the social columns of the Daily Advertiser. Despite his Brahmin name, Mr. Van Wynde had no money to speak of. The inappropriate timing of his offer had much more to do with obtaining the support of her grandfather’s fortune for his unmarried siblings than with any inclination to offer her solace. Mae wished for Edith and Kiera. With her older sisters’ help,
she might have avoided this encounter. But Kiera had run off to San Francisco. Then newspaper reports of a murderer matching Kiera’s description hit the Boston streets, so Edith left to find Kiera and bring her home. Mae had promised to lie to protect their whereabouts while Grandfather remained in a coma. That he would die just five days after Edith’s departure was bad luck.
Like it or not, Mae was on her own.
“Please get up, kind sir. I cannot bear to look down upon one as considerate as you.” To name him considerate was to push dissembling to its limits. Heavens, the will had not even been read before Van Wynde came knocking on her door, offering condolences and heart in the same money-seeking breath. Mae told herself she was doing him a favor. She doubted very much that Grandfather would leave more than a pittance to any of his three granddaughters.
Van Wynde straightened his spare form, bringing his oddly round face to eye level with her. “Can I say anything to change your mind?”
“Your request honors me. However, I do not wish to mislead you. My heart is given elsewhere.” She would not tell him her heart was given firmly to the principle that marriage was a trap to keep women in servitude to men. Such a statement would only encourage him to try to prove otherwise and lead to embarrassment for them both. She had no desire to prolong this absurd encounter and suffer unwanted attentions simply to assuage his male pride.
“Then I will wish you happy and say farewell.” The young man bowed and departed.
Mae sank into a chair. That had been the second proposal in as many days with the funeral only three days before. She was to appear at the offices of Collins & Collins, Attorneys at Law tomorrow for the reading of the will. Two weeks after, it would clear probate and become public record. Pray heaven she would not have to endure any other pleas to marry before then.
Soon, everyone would know she had little or no inheritance. She could sink into the safe obscurity of poverty to await the doom Grandfather dictated in his last will and testament. Whatever he ordered would be a cruel, thoughtless attempt to punish her and her two older sisters for the crime of being born female.
• • •
Light seeped under the porte cochere of the manse the following soggy afternoon, as Mae moved from the door to the Alden town carriage. Grandfather was too stingy to pay to have a coachman on staff, so the hired driver handed her into the vehicle.
“Please hurry,” she told him. “This rain has made the unpaved streets a morass, and I’ve no wish to be late.”
“Yes, miss.” The man’s voice had the quality of pebbles crunching under boot heels. He tugged at the brim of his hat then laid her umbrella on the rear-facing bench before closing the door.
Seconds later, the carriage set off with a jerk that sent her sinking into the unaccustomed comfort of the deeply cushioned seat—before the funeral, she had always walked if she needed to go anywhere. Grandfather had believed indulgence was a sin for everyone but himself. He and he alone had earned the Alden fortune through shrewd investments and ruthless business economies. Comfort was his earthly reward, and his alone, for his ability to buy and sell with an eye to making a profit. He’d given little thought to the workers on whose backs he’d built his empire and even less to the granddaughters he despised.
Now Grandfather was dead, and Mae could experience some of the luxuries denied her. But for how long? She’d been surprised when a note from attorney James W. Collins V had informed her that she and her sisters were included in the will. Given the ferocity of Grandfather’s misogyny, she’d expected to be tossed to the street with nothing but the clothing on her back.
She was due at the attorney’s office by one o’clock. Mr. Collins—James as she thought of him privately—was a busy man and shouldn’t be kept kicking his heels. So busy the few times he’d come to the manse on business in his father’s place, they’d exchanged only the smallest courtesies. Now that his client had passed on, Mr. Collins would have little inclination to humor a graceless dab of a woman. His insistence that the reading take place in his office merely indicated he thought her insignificant.
She didn’t mind, she told herself. She’d be spending a long hour in the presence of a man she admired, perhaps too much. Unlike Mr. VanWynde, James was a striking example of a Boston Brahmin. Tall, square of jaw, broad of shoulder, with long legs and narrow—heavens she’d been raised better than to think of a man’s physique, let alone the span of his hips.
If she must daydream inappropriately, better to dream of his fine, glossy, black hair and the humor she’d always imagined in his shining, hazel eyes. She dared not ponder the texture of his fingers. She had no idea if his fingers were rough or smooth. She’d never had the temerity to approach him or offer her hand in hope his palm would clasp hers for a few moments.
There she went, letting her mind lead her astray. Thoughts of James’s hands should be forbidden because that led to fantasies of where he might place those fingers. Safer by far to think of his voice, deep and musical, or the enchanting aroma that lay beneath the sandalwood of his cologne. What might it be like to wake to such a scent every…
Obviously she could not be trusted to think of James at all without imagining the most improper events. Impatient with herself, Mae glanced at the watch fob pinned at her waist.
The timepiece showed five minutes before one o’clock. What in the world was taking so long? They’d been moving at a spanking speed despite the mud and mire in the streets.
Did the coachman know the way to Collins & Collins’s offices? She pushed aside the curtain and looked out the window. The rain sheeted down so hard she could make out no landmarks.
Fearing to be late and anger James, she leaned forward and slid back the small door that would allow her to talk directly to the driver. He was already speaking, which was odd, since she did not have an outrider. About to ask with whom he spoke, she finally realized what he was saying. Her words froze in her throat.
“What do we do with the Alden woman when we get to the ship?” asked an unfamiliar nasal twang.
“I told you,” answered the gravel-voiced driver. “We put a bag over her head and carry her aboard. The captain’ll pay us for her. Then we go back to the Burying Ground and wait for the ransom to be delivered.”
“Don’t you think they’ll put the coppers on us for not giving her back once we got our piece of old man Alden’s fortune?” queried Twang. “Nice of him to pop off when he did. From what I hear, he never would have paid a penny for his granddaughter. Bet that lawyer will be more generous.”
“He’d better be. Either way, they’ll have the coppers on us. But we’ll be away before they can figure out where we’re going. We’ll stay a step ahead of the law, and soon we’ll be in Cuba smoking cigars and living the high life.” Gravel laughed.
Mae clapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from crying an alarm then quietly shut the small door. She was being abducted.
In all her twenty one years she’d never been so frightened. She had to escape before they reached their destination but how? For the past sixteen years of her life, she’d run and hid at the first sign of trouble. Where could she run, and how could she hide in the middle of a Boston downpour with no idea where in the city she was? She couldn’t just wait to be sold into some terrible fate.
Kiera would go on the offensive—attack her abductors, counting on surprise to even the odds. With more guile and often more sense, Edith would jump from the carriage and run.
Mae could smell the bay mixing with the rain, indecision carrying her closer to doom. If she was to escape, she had to act. She unlatched the door of the carriage closest to the boardwalk, poising herself to jump. When driver began to guide the horses around a corner, she leapt, landing in the mud with a breath-stealing thud. The carriage door banged shut.
“What the—” shouted Gravel. “She’s getting away! Go after her while I get this coach turned around.”
Mae sucked in air, then rose, gathered her muddy skirts, and ran as fast as she could.
She had to find a hiding place. She dodged around the corner of the nearest building.
Footsteps pounded on the boardwalk, passed the building where she sheltered, and then faded in the distance.
Heart racing, she found herself in an alley with fences and high gates on either side. She ran to the first gate. It was unlocked; God bless luck. She wrenched the portal open, slid through, and latched it securely behind her. Looking around she saw large crates and huge barrels—tuns, some with lids askew—that from the look and smell of them once contained wine or whiskey.
“Did you check down this alley?” shouted Gravel.
“Didn’t see it,” stated Twang. “Why would she go down there anyway?”
“Fool. She’d want to hide. Go look for her. I’ll check the alley across the street.”
Will the gate keep my pursuer out? Maybe he’ll climb over? Indecision became panic.
Moving quickly and quietly, she forced open the loose cover on one of the huge kegs. The fumes were awful, but it was empty, with enough room for her to squeeze inside, bustle and all.
The process was awkward; nonetheless, she managed to pull the lid shut moments before scraping sounded outside near the gate. A thud followed, and Twang cursed. “If I get my hands on that bitch, she’ll wish she’d never been born. It’s her fault I tore me good pants climbing that gate.”
He continued to curse as he stomped around the yard banging on crates and barrels. He hit the tun where Mae hid, and she smothered a yelp.
“Ain’t a hollow piece in the place. Too bad I can’t take a keg with me. I could use a drink.”
The scraping sound came again, followed by a more distant thud.
“Well?” Gravel questioned.
“She ain’t in there or any of the other yards in this alley.”
“Damn. We need that ransom. We don’t get out of Boston tonight, we’re dead meat. We owe too much money to the bookies.”
