Accidental Sweetheart

by Lisa Bingham

  That seemed to give the women pause.

  “Besides, we can’t chance Batchwell or Bottoms seeing us carrying their head Pinkerton through the streets. Bottoms may have been cooperative so far, but Batchwell would have a fit of apoplexy.”

  “She’s right, Miriam.”

  “Then what should we do?”

  Lydia’s brain scrambled for a logical solution—one where Gideon could be kept out of sight, but not be subject to more abuse.

  “Take him into the private dining room. I’ll see what I can find in the kitchen to tie him up.”

  She rushed into the preparation area, trying to close her ears to the thuds and scrapes as the Claussen twins each took an arm and began to drag Gideon across the length of the miners’ eating space, down the hall, then into the owners’ private dining room,

  For a moment, she gripped the counter, knowing in her heart of hearts that she’d just severed her relationship with Gideon. He would never forgive her for this—how could he? She’d flouted his authority and taken him prisoner. No man would ever forget such an assault to his pride.

  Her hands trembled violently as she reached for a pile of dish towels. Over and over again, she tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter. No affair of the heart was worth sacrificing the greater good. She had the opportunity to help dozens of families to remain together.

  But for the first time since becoming an ardent suffragist, she found herself thinking: At what price?

  For years, she’d insisted to herself that she was happy alone, that she didn’t need anything but her causes to make her life rich and fulfilled.

  But since coming to Bachelor Bottoms, chinks had begun to appear in the defenses she’d built around her heart. First, she’d seen the way that Sumner and Jonah Ramsey had fallen in love. Jonah had been so accepting of Sumner’s career—indeed, he’d supported it wholeheartedly. Lydia had never thought that such a thing could ever be possible. A man’s man supporting his wife’s interests outside the home.

  The second chink had occurred with Willow and Charles. From the moment Lydia had met her friend, Willow had been incredibly shy, almost fearful. But the moment she’d set eyes on the abandoned twins, there had been no obstacle she wouldn’t surmount for their well-being—even marrying a total stranger. And Charles...well, Charles had taught Lydia that a man could be kind and loving and devoted to his wife and children—qualities she’d only seen in her aunts—and still be fierce and protective. Her own father had certainly never displayed such tendencies. Clinton Tomlinson had bemoaned Lydia’s existence for as long as she could remember. If she hadn’t been so handy—as his servant and an unwitting accomplice to his crimes—he probably would have left her in the desert to starve.

  And then there was Gideon...

  She’d tried so hard to remain cool and objective in his presence. But somehow, he’d found a way around the fortress binding her heart. For a brief time, he’d made her feel...

  Special.

  Worthy.

  Whole.

  Lydia shook herself free from such thoughts. What she was experiencing was a momentary lapse, that was all. No doubt, her chaotic emotions were due to the trauma of the avalanche, three months spent sequestered in a mining camp, and Gideon’s ability to hold his own in a spirited debate.

  But even as she tried to pound that thought home, there was a part of her whispering that it wasn’t true. She’d begun to care for the man. Worry about him. Did he eat enough? Did he sleep enough? What caused that crease of worry to appear between his brow? And what wartime memories sent him striding toward the livery and galloping pell-mell out of the mining camp—as if the valley walls were about to close in and crash down upon him?

  The fact that a complicated man like that had taken her hand and walked her home, kissed her hand...

  “Lydia?”

  Miriam’s impatient voice called from the other room.

  “I’m coming!”

  Even then, she didn’t immediately move. A little voice whispered that she could end this, right now, before anyone else could be hurt.

  “Lydia!”

  Hugging the towels to her chest, Lydia rushed into the other room—only to find that Gideon was beginning to rouse and Myra and Miriam were attempting to hold him down.

  “Tie him up! Hurry!”

  “Lydia!”

  Dropping to her knees, she began to lash his feet together with a few knotted dish towels.

  “Put his arms behind his back, Myra!”

  The twins grappled to bring his wrists together and Lydia immobilized them as well. Then, mindful of the miners who might stop in the cook shack for a snack, they used one last dish towel to gag him.

  Finally, breathing hard, the women stood, just as Gideon’s eyes began to flicker.

  Miriam’s coronet of braids had come free and she began pinning them back into place. Her twin sank into one of the nearby chairs, panting.

  “I swear, if there weren’t so much at stake—if I didn’t love Rulon Dell so much my heart could explode—I’d walk out of the valley myself,” she gasped.

  Miriam reached to squeeze her sister’s hand, then turned to Lydia.

  “What now?”

  “Go into the other room. Keep an eye on things in the cook shack and keep everyone away from this room.” Lydia took a deep, fortifying breath, but it didn’t ease the gallop of her heart. “As soon as he wakes up, I’m going to try to talk to him. One last time.”

  The twins seemed skeptical, but they finally nodded and left the room, closing the door behind them.

  Lydia stood for several long moments, then sat in a chair, and then, unable to help herself, she sat on the floor next to Gideon, pulling his head onto her lap. Her fingers shook as she reached out to push back the hair tumbling over his brow. So soft. Silky. Fine. She gingerly stroked the rising goose egg, knowing he would have an awful headache.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, so softly, that he probably wouldn’t have heard her, even if he’d been awake. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  * * *

  Gideon fought against the blackness that smothered him with the weight of his memories. Panicking, he fought against them. But powerless against the onslaught of images that flashed through his mind like a cannon volley.

  The terror of battle.

  Blood.

  Pain.

  Then a desolation so complete that his spirit shrank against it.

  They’d brought him back to Andersonville.

  Immediately, he was awash with the foul stench of suffering and filth. An oppressive heat blanketed him, drawing him deeper and deeper into that world—until he wondered for a moment if everything he’d experienced in the last few years had been a fever dream.

  His sisters.

  The mountains.

  Aspen Valley.

  Had he imagined it all? Had his brain concocted the scenes so completely that he’d actually believed the war had ended and the next stage of his life had begun?

  But then, somewhere in his suffering, he felt a cool hand touch his brow and a softness beneath his head. Clinging to that solace, he forced himself to breathe...in...out. If he listened carefully, he thought that someone called to him. Could it be one of his sisters?

  Dear Lord in Heaven. Help me. Please help me.

  If he were still in Andersonville, if this had all been a figment of his imagination, he didn’t know that he could fight anymore. Not after he’d felt the first stirrings of hope.

  Hope.

  The thought brought to mind the face of a woman. Not one of his sisters. No, this woman was willowy and elegant, completely out of his sphere.

  Had he imagined her too? Had he imagined the way that she’d filled him with curiosity, then frustration, then a grudging admiration.

  And more, so much more.

 
He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d felt a stirring in his heart. Oh, he’d had his share of mad crushes when he’d been a young man, but this was different.

  Still maddening.

  But sweet. Like the soft rays of the sun in the morning.

  Or the first breath of spring.

  Somehow, without his being aware of it, she’d awakened the long-dormant recesses of his emotions, and he’d come to life. And just like the mountains around him, there were still a few stubborn patches of snow that remained, but underneath them, his spirit grew green.

  His eyes flickered, and he panted softly when he realized that he wasn’t in the cobbled-together lean-to of canvas and branches that he and his fellow cavalry officer had fashioned to protect themselves from the blazing Georgia sun.

  He was inside. In a place he knew. And hovering above him was that beautiful face.

  Gideon watched in consternation as her eyes brimmed with tears. A single drop fell from the dam of her lashes to land on his cheek.

  What on earth had happened to make her cry?

  Lydia never cried.

  Immediately, his brain seized on the name.

  Lydia.

  “Shh. You mustn’t talk or make a sound or the others will come to investigate.”

  Others.

  Gideon frowned. His thoughts remained muddled. Then he hissed when a bolt of pain shot from his head to sizzle down the length of his spine.

  “Shh.”

  He felt her fingers, cool and lithe against the nape of his neck. Then a wad of cloth lifted from his mouth and he could finally breathe again.

  “Wha—”

  He tried to lift a hand to the ache on his skull, but found that his wrists had been bound behind him. And his feet...

  Immediately, he struggled, trying to free himself, to sit up. Again, a wave of memories threatened to swamp him.

  He had to get free.

  He had to protect himself!

  “Shh. Shh! They mustn’t know you’re awake or they’ll come and escort you to the jail. I’ve put them off for now, but the twins will be back the minute they hear that you’re awake!”

  Gideon forced himself to lie still, even though every muscle in his body thrummed with panic.

  “What have you done?” he whispered, his throat hoarse.

  Again, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. It was supposed to be a peaceful protest—and it was working! We had enough men willing to sit out their shifts so Batchwell would realize it was in his best interest to negotiate a new set of rules.”

  Gideon tried to shake his head, but the action caused his brain to slosh against the enclosure of his skull, so he forced himself to become motionless again.

  “We’ve been through this before. He’ll never agree. He’d fire every man in the valley and start over again if he thought it would be the only way to save his precious mine.”

  Lydia adamantly shook her head. “No, don’t you see? If he fired everyone, it would take months to hire new workers. Maybe even a year. He’d never allow the mine to lay dormant like that. Especially now that the new tunnel has hit a seam of silver bigger than anything they’ve ever found before.”

  Even through the sickening throb of his head, Gideon realized that Lydia might have a point.

  “And we’re not asking for a complete overhaul of the rules. We only want one minor change. That married families be allowed to coexist here. Batchwell can keep his bachelors segregated. If they want to do their courting, they can do it in Ogden on their days off, as they’ve always done.”

  Gideon knew he must have a serious injury, because Lydia was starting to make sense.

  “Can you help me sit up?” he rasped. “The way my head is thumping, I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.”

  She immediately jumped to her feet and hooked one arm beneath his. Slowly, awkwardly, he was able to force himself into the seated position. Then, with some scooting and scuffling, he managed to rest his back against the wall.

  “Go on,” he said, even though he knew that allowing Lydia to talk was probably the last thing on earth that he should let happen. She could talk a man into...

  Changing his mind.

  She sank on the floor beside him, and the faint scent of lemons and gardenias washed over him.

  Gideon nearly smiled. Who knew that he could be so entranced by a woman’s perfume?

  “I’ll admit that when I first sat down with the women and helped to devise this plan, I was short-sighted.”

  Gideon snorted.

  Even Lydia had the grace to make a face.

  “You were right. I thought that gathering up half the men in the valley would be enough. I was so focused on what I felt was an injustice that needed to be rectified—families being able to live together—that I forgot to figure in the human element.”

  “Which is?”

  “I failed to appreciate the...personal investment that Mr. Batchwell has made in the mine. I regarded his involvement as little more than a businessman trying to protect his interests. I suppose I could claim that I didn’t know enough about his background to understand the depth of his commitment to this enterprise. But that wouldn’t be entirely true. I regarded this whole endeavor from a very selfish point of view. I wanted to leave my own mark on this community, undertake one great, monumental cause before I left the valley.”

  Head down, she seemed to study her interlocked fingers.

  “Now that you’ve told me a little more about Mr. Batchwell, I can understand his motives. I know what it’s like to have nothing—no food, no warm place to sleep.”

  She looked up then, meeting Gideon’s gaze with a bleakness that took his breath away.

  “No one to love you.”

  Gideon’s heart seemed to lurch sideways, then lodge in his throat.

  “How...”

  One of her shoulders lifted in a melancholy shrug.

  “My father is Clint Tomlinson, of the infamous Tommy Gang.”

  In an instant, the rock in his throat fell like a lead anvil into his stomach.

  No, no, no.

  Everyone in the territories knew about the Tommy Gang. Nearly a year before the war had begun, during Bloody Kansas, he and his infamous band of Border Ruffians had swept into the disputed states, terrorizing those suspected of abolitionist sympathies. They’d raided the homes of Free Staters, then robbed, looted and pillaged their way west. When the war broke out, the group seemed to vanish for a time. Rumor had it that Clinton Tomlinson and his men had enlisted in the Reb Army. But they hadn’t lasted long under the discipline of a regular unit. They’d soon deserted their posts and headed for the territories.

  “I thought the Tommy Gang was in prison.”

  Lydia’s mouth twisted. “They were. I helped put them there. For my testimony, I was told that all charges against me would be dropped. You see, my father used me as a lookout or insisted that I create a diversion. Sometimes, I simply held the reins of their mounts when they stormed a bank. At other times, I would be asked to approach someone as if I were lost, or open gates and scatter livestock. Through it all, my father terrified me with stories of what would happen to me if the gang were ever caught. When I finally found the courage to turn them in, I did it knowing that I would probably spend the rest of my life behind bars.”

  Gideon swallowed, trying to wrap his brain around the story he was being told. “The Tommy Gang went to jail in what...sixty-one? Sixty-two? You couldn’t have been more than—”

  “Twelve. I was twelve.” She shot him a smile that could have lit up the skies. “That’s when I went to live with my aunts. They were so good to me. They still are. They’re the ones who warned me that my father and his gang had escaped. The news was in those letters you gave to me.”

  Gideon’s pulse started to
knock out a heavy, insistent beat that drummed against the knot on his head.

  The Wanted poster.

  The Pinkerton who wasn’t a Pinkerton.

  An unknown threat to the storehouse of silver.

  “Lydia, you’ve got to turn me loose.”

  She seemed to consider his request, then shook her head. “I can’t. You see, in my selfishness, it wasn’t only Mr. Batchwell that I failed to consider. I also didn’t factor in the depth of emotions I would unlock within the women themselves. They’ve fallen in love, Gideon. I admit that I never really knew how...all-consuming love could be until...until lately. I never took into account the pain involved in being told that you couldn’t be near your sweetheart. It’s cruel, Gideon. Batchwell has to understand that fact, if nothing else. I think if he were to look at the problem, not from a business aspect, but from a human aspect, he could be made to understand things just a little better.”

  “Lydia, he’ll—”

  “No, wait. Hear me out. I understand how important it is for him to save face, to feel like he’s totally in charge of the situation. As you stated before, he needs a way to alter the rules without appearing weak. And I think I’ve come up with a solution.”

  She rose to her feet, kneading her hands together.

  “There’s a loophole to the rule. One that’s already being used.”

  Gideon’s brows creased in confusion.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Sumner and Jonah Ramsey. After they married, they moved to Jonah’s homestead, which is off company property. According to Sumner, Batchwell couldn’t fire Jonah because, technically, he’s obeying the rules as they are outlined.”

  “And how will that help the rest of the men?”

  She knelt so that they were eye to eye, and he could see the renewed passion reflected in her gaze.

  “Charles and Willow have been talking about going to the land office as soon as the pass opens. They intend to see if they can get the parcel next to Jonah’s property. From what he remembers, there are still several allotments that haven’t been claimed.”

  “So?”

  “With this new seam of silver, Batchwell’s going to need more men, correct?”