To forget her troubles, she slipped over to the heavy oak table where she kept a sketch pad hidden under a pile of dish towels. Looking out the window, she did a quick drawing of the mountain range. If only she could get back into those mountains and do some painting. Were maids in Colorado ever given a day off? She'd forgotten to ask how much money she'd be making after she paid off her Denver-to-Breckenridge ticket and the burro man's fee. Life was so difficult. And all because of Jack Cameron. She hoped he was marrying horrid Minna this very minute and would be wretched for the rest of his life.
Then Kristin fell to daydreaming over her sketch, imagining that she was a princess in a mountain kingdom and a prince came riding up on a white horse while she was doing a beautiful oil painting. He dismounted and fell in love immediately with both Kristin and her painting and offered a thousand dollars for the picture and a lifetime of happiness if she would accept his hand in marriage. Oddly enough, he looked like Jack Cameron. Kristin sighed. Even in her daydreams, she wasn't convincing as an independent woman.
"What's that peculiar smell?” Kat sniffed and turned toward the stew pot, shaking her head. “Burned again. Oh well, just so I don't have to do the cooking myself."
Kristin shoved her sketchbook under the dish towels and turned to smile at Kat, who was a wonderful mistress if you had to be a maid. “You are the nicest person."
"Why, thank you, dear,” said Kat. “Perhaps you'd like to join me at the women's suffrage torchlight parade."
"I don't know,” said Kristin. “I've never been a suffragette, although my Aunt Frieda is.” Kristin had finally written to her aunt to assure the lady that she was safe and eating regularly.
"Well, there's nothing more exciting than a torchlight parade. You'd better come."
Kristin sighed. Another evening when she would not be able to paint after her chores were done. Not that she had so far. She was always so tired that she fell into bed as soon as she could. One night she hadn't even managed to get her clothes off and had left her candle burning, only to be awakened and scolded by Phoebe, who had a great deal to say on the dangers of fire in frontier communities.
Kristin had been terribly embarrassed to be lectured by an eight-year-old child, who knew more about frontier life than she did.
Jack Cameron didn't get the reception he expected from the Macleods. Connor was friendly, but his wife acted as if the Camerons had stolen their fourth interest in the Chicago Girl mine. She wouldn't even invite Jack to their house, so he had to ascertain from other sources that Kristin was living there. Jack sent word to Pinkerton's that they could discontinue their search. Then he leased space on Main Street near the corner of Washington Avenue.
The store front had been a barber shop that lost half of its clientele because the barber, somewhat the worse for alcohol, shaved the lobe off a patron's ear. The other half of the clientele, who had been accustomed to taking their baths in the back room, scowled at Jack on the street because he wouldn't rent out the tub after he took over the lease. He hired a sign painter, and within several days a sign was raised over the door that said:
Cameron Investment Co.
A Branch of the Cameron Bank of Chicago
John Powell Cameron, President
Much to his astonishment, merchants and other citizens began to bring money in. “I am not a depository bank,” he tried to explain. They said, “Fine. Invest it.” Everyone had heard of his sixty-six-thousand-dollar profit on the Wapshot mine transaction and how Wapshot had been drunk ever since, much to the distress of the partners from New York. A canny Scot, was the word around town about Jack Cameron, and people wanted to profit from his good luck and good sense. Accordingly, Jack sent to Denver for a safe and hired a teller, who slept in the back room on a pallet beside the bathtub, armed with a double-barreled shotgun to protect the money.
In the meantime Jack was keeping a sharp eye out, hoping that Kat Macleod would leave town so he could rescue Kristin. He realized that he would have to curtail his Colorado operations long enough to take her home, but then he planned to return. He himself was living at the Denver Hotel and had gone hunting with the proprietor, Robert Foote, after which Jack ate the birds he had shot. This was life as it should be lived, he had decided exuberantly, his mouth full of some unidentified feathered creature that tasted wonderful, except for the buckshot.
Kristin tried to brush the flour off her apron, her dress, her face, and out of her hair as she hurried toward the front door where someone was pounding impatiently. She swung it open, about to give the visitor a piece of her mind; then she gasped in shock.
"Don't faint,” said Jack and caught her before she could do so. “I always seem to make an upsetting first impression upon you."
The sight of him, the protective touch of his hands on her arms flooded her with the happiness she had felt that night in the library. She had liked Jack Cameron better than any person, man or woman, she had ever met. And the man had used her happiness to seduce her. “Go away, or I'll call the sheriff."
"Now Kristin, I realize that this must have been a difficult and frightening time for you,” said Jack, edging in and closing the door behind him, “but you have to look at it as an adventure. How many girls from your circle in Chicago have had the new experiences, met the new people, seen the sights that you've seen, and come out of it unscathed?"
"Unscathed!” exclaimed Kristin. “I haven't been unscathed. Since you plied me with brandy and ruined me on my father's sofa—"
"I didn't ruin you,” Jack interrupted, laughing.
"I don't know how you can say that. And as for adventures, the whole experience has been one long disaster. Mrs. Palmer wasn't even in the country to launch my art career so that I could become a famous spinster artist."
"My dear girl, you'll never remain a spinster,” he protested, chuckling.
"I have to,” said Kristin. “What else can I do now? All my daydreams are squashed, and to think that I once considered you the handsome prince—"
"You did?” Jack looked pleased.
"—when you're really a follower of the devil."
He grinned. “That's just your innocence speaking."
"What innocence?” she muttered. “You think I've been having an adventure? The restaurant owner where I worked as a waitress tried to kiss me."
"A waitress?” Jack was horrified. “What's his name?"
"What difference does it make? I lost the job and had to leave Chicago. I didn't even have enough money to eat on the train to Denver. Some stranger offered to pay for my dinner, but of course it wouldn't have been proper to accept, so I didn't get any."
Jack felt conscience-stricken, remembering his own sumptuous meals on the train.
"Then I got off the train at some little town to buy food from a hawker, and it left without me, taking all my baggage on to Denver."
"So you were the blond girl in the dining car who got off in Southern Illinois?"
"How would you know that?” she asked suspiciously.
"I've been trying to find you ever since I discovered that you'd left."
"You followed me out here?” said Kristin, surprised and thrilled.
"Well, actually my father sent me about the Macleod gold mine, so I combined the errands—"
"Errands!"
"But I'd have come for you even if my father hadn't—"
Disappointed all over again because she hadn't been his main object, Kristin said, “You're no friend of mine. Only Mr. McFinn's my friend. He's the baggage man who saved my cases and gave me directions when I arrived in Denver, penniless."
"McFinn at the Union Depot? He said he never heard of you."
"Good! He knew a bounder when he saw one. And then I had to be a housemaid in Maeve Macleod's house, and she didn't like my cooking, or my ironing, neither of which, I'll have to admit, I knew how to do."
"Well, there you are,” said Jack. “This experience has taught you all the things you'll need to know to make someone a fine wife."
She glared at him. “No man who knew anything about me would marry me,” she said bitterly. “About twenty of them have proposed, all strangers."
"I'm glad you refused them,” said Jack. “You shouldn't marry anyone you don't know and who doesn't have the approval of your family."
"You had the approval of my family, and look how you treated me,” she snapped. “Because of you I ended up working as a housemaid for a woman who shipped me off to Breckenridge without even considering that I didn't want to go. And when I finally arrived, I had to hire a man to take my baggage here, and I didn't have any money to pay him, so I'll never get out of the Macleods’ debt. I'll be a household slave for the rest of my life."
"I'll pay them off and take you home,” Jack promised.
"No one wants me at home."
"Believe me, they'll take you back."
"No, they won't. And even if they did, they'd treat me worse than they ever did."
"Nonsense. You won't be there that long. With your looks and all your experience, as I said, you'll make someone a wonderful wife."
Kristin burst into tears, and Jack had a terrible, sinking sensation. Something much worse than anything she'd mentioned must have happened to her somewhere between Chicago and Breckenridge, something that really did make her unmarriageable. “What is it?” he asked, afraid to hear. “What's happened that you haven't told me?"
"It's the bread,” said Kristin, weeping harder.
"What bread?"
"I told you, I'm the housemaid. They expect me to make bread, and I just can't learn how. It won't rise, and it sticks all over the table when I try to roll it out for biscuits, and it tastes terrible when I cook it, so nobody will eat it, and—"
"I'm so sorry,” said Jack, “but you mustn't cry. I've come to—” He stopped talking as he looked into those tear-drenched blue eyes. “Good lord, I'd forgotten how beautiful you are.” And he kissed her.
Because of the shocking pleasure of that kiss, Kristin forgot about her dreadful experiences. Her breast tightened in anticipation of his touch. Horrified, she gave him a powerful shove as a little voice said, “Come quick, Liama. Some strange man is kissing our housemaid."
"Kissing isn't allowed,” said Sean Michael importantly. “You can argue with her. We heard all that from the back yard. And you can court her in the parlor on Sundays, but you can't kiss her, or Aunt Kat and Augustina, who is our stepmother, will be very angry."
"And nobody crosses Aunt Kat,” said Phoebe. “She can be ever so fearful if she gets put out."
"Then I'll try not to irritate her,” said Jack, who had been unnerved both by the kiss and then by the shove that Kristin gave him. Four children, three girls and a boy, were staring at him. Where had they come from?
"I'm Sean Michael,” said the boy. “And this is my sister Phoebe, and my half-sister Liama, and my cousin, Molly."
"I'm older than Liama. I should get introduced third, not fourth,” said Molly.
"I the baby,” said Liama.
"You vile seducer,” Kristin hissed. “Don't you ever touch me again."
Jack's mouth dropped open. Why was she calling him a vile seducer? One—no, two kisses—well, perhaps a few more than that, but they hardly merited such an accusation. She was acting as if they were characters in a melodrama, with Jack cast as the villain. Did Kristin really look at it that way? She did, of course, have cause to be angry with him since she'd ended up a Colorado housemaid instead of a Chicago heiress, but he'd come to rescue her. He was the hero in this story. “Kristin, I'm here to—"
"Go away,” said Kristin. She opened the door, gave him another push, and closed the door behind him. He could hear the children giggling inside.
"Don't you say a word about this,” came Kristin's voice through the wood, “or I'll never tell you another story."
"We won't,” cried Sean Michael.
"Don't you tell, Liama,” said Phoebe and Molly, “or we'll all pull your pigtails."
"And you'll never find out what happened to the handsome elk prince,” added Sean Michael.
Liama burst into tears, and Kristin said, “Oh, hush. Come into the kitchen. ‘Once upon a time there was a big, bad wolf—’”
"No, no,” cried four young voices. “The elk prince and princess."
"Oh. All right. The fairy godmother looked at those huge, ungainly horns on his head, and she said..."
Jack shook his own head in confusion and walked down the front steps. Here he had thought he was the hero, come to rescue her, and it seemed that she didn't look at it that way at all. And the children were right; their Aunt Kat was a formidable woman. Good lord, if Kristin had told her the whole story, it was going to make the partnership in the gold mine even more difficult.
Chapter Six
Kristin was upset over her conduct with Mr. Cameron. Admittedly she had pushed him away, but not nearly soon enough, and she certainly should not have enjoyed his kiss, which she had.
"So then what happened?” asked Molly. All the children sat in a circle listening to the bedtime story in the corridor parlor that linked the two houses. Across the room, Kat rocked in her rocking chair and Connor read a newspaper.
"Well, then the elk prince, who now had no horns at all because the fairy godmother had taken them away, was confronted in the forest by an evil elk knight who challenged him to a duel."
"Are there really elk knights and princes?” asked Sean Michael.
"Of course, there aren't,” said Kat. “Why don't you tell them a good, rousing saint's tale, Kristin?"
"Oh, Aunt Kat,” complained Phoebe, “you've already told us every saint's tale there ever was."
"Are there any St. Elks?” asked Molly, who had some of her mother's religious fervor.
"I don't know,” Kristin replied. “The sisters at St. Scholastica never mentioned any."
"You went to St. Scholastica?” asked Kat, amazed.
"Yes,” said Kristin.
"So did I."
"Did you know Sister Mary Joseph, the one who told us about marriage?” Relations between men and women had been on Kristin's mind since Jack's appearance.
"She must have been after my time,” said Kat. “Nobody told us about marriage when I was there."
Kristin mused on that interesting information. “Maybe that's why Sister Mary Joseph disappeared so suddenly. Maybe she wasn't supposed to tell us about marriage."
"What about the elk prince?” demanded Sean Michael. “I'll bet the evil elk knight, who still had his horns, killed the elk prince, and then the elk princess—"
"Hush, Sean Michael,” said Kat. “I don't know where you get that taste for violence, unless it's that you're male."
"I resent that,” said Connor. “You're the one who attacked Medford Fleming with his own gold nugget."
"Are you saying I wasn't within my rights to hit him?” asked Kat indignantly.
Kristin was always amazed at Macleod family stories. They made Ludovich's encounter with the skunk seem mundane.
Kristin couldn't stop thinking of Jack Cameron, his reappearance, his kiss, his claim that he had come to rescue and return her to her family in Chicago. Much good that would do; they didn't want her back. She dreamed of him at night and daydreamed about him as she did her chores, one result being that she left the meat for the evening meal out on the table and Connor's dog ate it. Everyone was angry except Kat, who said during the meatless dinner, “You seem rather blue, Kristin. What you need is a good cause to take your mind off whatever's bothering you. You should come along with me to the march for women's suffrage tonight."
"What does one wear to a suffrage march?” asked Kristin.
"Well, the night air will be nippy. Bring a cloak."
"Yes, but what sort of dress?"
Augustina had lent her wash dresses after she appeared for her first full day of work in an afternoon calling gown. “Good heavens,” Augustina had said, “didn't you bring anything but church clothes and art supplies?"
Without ex
plaining the whole humiliating situation, Kristin could hardly say that she had never expected to be a maid. So she was wearing made-over, out-of-style dresses, and a seamstress had had to be called in to do the alterations on those that had belonged to Augustina since Kristin didn't know how. The fees, which Kat had paid, were to come out of Kristin's salary. What with the railroad ticket, the burro rental, and the sewing charges, she'd never get her debts paid and actually collect her pay.
And the very worst was that Jack Cameron had seen her wearing one of those shabby dresses—and covered with flour. The gown was a faded purple-and-white print, flowers on stripes, very tasteless and old. She imagined Jack comparing the wash dress to the lilac gown she'd been wearing in the library the night he—well, anyway, he was probably wondering why he'd ever been attracted enough to bother seducing her.
Still, she thought, trying to cheer herself up, she could wear something decent to the torchlight parade and pretend she was still a lady of means. Feeling better, she went to her room and donned a smart dress and a beautiful gray felt hat with black wired ribbons rising in back and blue velvet flowers under the brim against her hair. “My goodness,” said Kat when Kristin reappeared. “Don't you look elegant? But you didn't really have to wear your best clothes, dear. You should save them for church and Sunday courting."
Kristin didn't correct Miss Kat because she didn't want to argue about Sunday courting. Instead she put on her gray cloak with its dark blue passementerie braid trim and walked with Kat to the Episcopal Church, where the converts to women's suffrage were assembling. There they lit the torches. “Here's yours, dear,” said Kat. Kristin juggled it awkwardly and set fire to the feathers on the hat of a Methodist lady, causing great consternation among the assembled suffragettes and a dreadful odor. Kat decided that Kristin should carry a sign rather than a torch. Then other problems plagued the ladies. As they marched down Lincoln Avenue, chanting “Women Should Vote” and other such slogans, miners began to drift out of the saloons, muttering and then shouting angry remarks. By the time they reached Main Street, one very rude fellow yelled, “Close down the saloons, will you?” and he scooped up a handful of mud from the street and flung it at the torch of the lady whose feathers had burned.
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