Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story)

by Rose, Amelia

  I had no desire to tell anyone anything. I grew up in Gold Hill. I'd seen too many men die in the mines and in fires in mines and fires in towns that sprang up overnight and didn't always spring up as neatly and safely as they could. I put my hand over Matthew's, where it lay fisted on the table.

  "And the Faro Queen. That was our dream. Open a hotel. That's why I went out there. Always thought with the silver we'd make a go of it, make the mines work, then make the hotel work. But Hutch got into the mine and, the more it did wrong to him, the more determined he was to make right. Then, when Hutch's Ellie took ill, there just was no way the hotel could happen."

  He stopped talking then, long enough that I moved my hand, patting his, and moved my head until he looked up and caught my eye.

  "I thought you loved The Queen?"

  The frustration and doubt and trains all exploded out of him like a puff of steam from a locomotive. "Do. Did. I don't know." He took his hand back and slapped the table with it. The silver jumped. Diners nearby glanced at us and away. Outside on the street, two men raised their voices, arguing. "It's the same thing every day. It's wonderful, Chloe, it really is, and if that's where you want to stay, I'll stay. I mean that." He met my eyes, searching, and he meant every word.

  I lowered my head, looking at him squarely. "I know you mean that, Matthew. But you mean you'll stay for me, not because you want to stay. And I need to understand. You don't love the hotel?"

  He took a deep breath, let it out slow. "Love Hutch … Maggie … having finished the Queen, having got it open … having beat Jason Seth with the mine and with making a dream come true."

  And by not marrying his sister, I thought, a snide and unworthy thought I still rather enjoyed.

  "But it's the same thing every day. We did it. It's open. It worked." He raised his hands. "Yahoo. But, Hutch. Hutch, he loves it. Loves serving drinks and overseeing dinners and Maggie's happy making up rooms and sewing curtains, sure isn't anything I ever thought that girl would be happy doing. Even Annie's pitching in, decorating." He gave me a look. "You're not."

  A light, happy giddiness hit me. I wasn't, was I? "I'm not. That's not what I want to do. I don't know what I want to do, Matthew; I just want to be with you. The Faro Queen is a dream and you realized it." I waited until he met my eyes again. "Doesn't mean you can't have a new dream."

  He nodded, once, very serious, and I saw him swallow before he started back into the same worries. "If you think—"

  "—I think it's my turn," I said and shook my head when he stared. "Look, Matthew, I love Gold Hill. I love Virginia City and the people there and everything else … and the Queen. But, it's time for something new. Every day we've been here, I've been thinking that and trying to understand if I just felt that way because this is special. Because of us." He looked at me. "Because it's our honeymoon."

  "It's not?"

  "It's not. I mean, it is special because of that, but it's not everything I feel. I want something new. I want somewhere new. I want to be with you and you want to be with the trains."

  "And you," he grinned.

  I smiled back at him. "You're required to say that because of marriage vows."

  "I'm required to say it because it's true. Let's go back to the room and I'll prove it."

  There was nothing, then, but to enjoy the honeymoon and look at trains and ask questions and make decisions and head back to Gold Hill—to pack.

  Chapter 10

  "We will miss you," Maggie said over dinner. The lot of us sat in the kitchen of The Faro Queen, to the annoyance of the cooks, but the dining room was full tonight and we wanted the time alone.

  "We'll come visit!" Sarah announced in the cheery way we'd all come to associate with her actual thought: There could be men there. Sarah fell in love quite cheerfully about once a day, to Annie's dismay. Though, of late, I'd seen Annie in the Queen's dining room spending considerable time seeing to the wants and needs of John Overton from the mine, and times when we all assembled together, as Matthew and I got closer to moving, she was more talkative and at the same time, more secretive.

  Possibly Sarah wasn't the only one in love.

  "We will miss your invaluable help around the hotel," Hutch said dryly, as of late Matthew had spent more time peering at the V&T than in the hotel.

  "I shall sell my shares," Hutch's brother said.

  "I think not. As long as you hold them, there's the chance I can force you back into servitude." Hutch took a long drink of beer and winked at me.

  "What will you do for the railroad, Uncle Matt?" Kitty asked. I had a feeling that, despite being 14, what she actually meant was also How many unmarried men will there be? But that was supposition. Kitty still spent more time going up trees and being told to come down from there by her mother, who didn't really care if her freckled, frog-catching daughter climbed trees. It was better than having her catch boys.

  "Creating it, in the beginning," Matthew said. "The Nevada and Oregon Railroad was formed last year, but they've been trying to get the funding since."

  "He'll be out there hammering spikes and moving rocks," Hutch said lightly, watching the horror on the girls' faces.

  "He'll be buying engines, arranging for companies to use the line, contracting with cattle ranches for services, keeping the books on where the spikes are bought," I said, laying one hand on Matthew's shoulder. "The man exaggerates as much as his brother does."

  "It was a good tale," said the man in question.

  When dinner was over and the men retired to the front porch to smoke cigars and pass the time with guests coming and going, the girls helped us clear and went off after their own pursuits, leaving Annie, Maggie and I.

  "You're not sad to be going," Maggie said, picking up the thread of conversation that had started at dinner. She was drying the dishes Annie washed and I was, largely, stashing them in the wrong places.

  "I will miss you both, of course, and my family and friends. But I think I probably feel as you and Hutch did when you moved here from Gold Hill. I've had enough of being The Mayor's Daughter and Matthew Longren's Girl, the one people talked about. I've had enough of people's talk and more than enough of—"

  "Jason and Elizabeth Seth," we all said together.

  "I know Matthew will be away at times, riding the rails to their terminus, testing things and just because he's obviously smitten. But, he's happy."

  "So are you," Annie said, her hands submerged in the water as she felt for more silverware.

  "So are you," I returned and she blushed, but admitted nothing.

  Maggie was uncharacteristically quiet and, when I turned to her, she was frowning slightly, drying an already dry dish to a high shine. When she caught my glance, she said, "Miss Gemma Parks has moved from Virginia City. I heard her people went back to New York, though I don't know and it doesn't matter. It means I'm the only midwife here and I had hoped…" She stopped and put the dish down on the draining board rather than handing it to me. "I had hoped, Chloe, that you might take an interest and that I might train you."

  "But, you're here," I said, without thinking. Beside me, Annie had gone quite still, waiting for something. I glanced between them curiously.

  "True. And I had thought, as you're going, that I might teach Annie," She nodded at Annie, who was now not just still but very pale. "But when I mentioned it, she looked like that. It's all right, Annie, breathe. Maybe Sarah will have an interest."

  "But there's Doc Horton," I said, taking the dish she'd abandoned and stashing it in a likely cupboard. "With you as midwife, what need is there for a second—" I broke off as a thought occurred. Was the new midwife meant to be the second or only to stand in when the first—"Maggie?"

  Beside me, Annie finally moved, turning to look from one of us to the other as Maggie's face opened in a smile of delight.

  "Maggie!"

  The three of us embraced, soapy dishwater draining from arms, towels flung and one dish smashing down on the wood floor of the kitchen. For a couple of s
econds, we all talked at once, voices breathless as we talked about when and names and who knew and who didn't, about midwives and Doc Horton and, yes, given the doc's much better handling of snakebite and gunshot than babies and ladies, a midwife was desirable, and about sewing clothes and knitting small things for the baby and it would be born around December, truly the cold season but a gift for the new year.

  When we could hear ourselves think again, we sat at one of the scuffed work tables, the cooks and serving girls having cleared out long since. There were sounds from the dining room, guests moving through, and from the casino, all past the kitchen door. Where we sat, all was silent. I was grateful Annie was the one to ask, "Have you told Hutch?"

  Silence again, then, in the kitchen. Maggie twisted her dress in both hands. "I don't know how, given what happened before. We want children. We've wanted to start a family. And I want a midwife with me. But given what happened to Ellie, and how hard that's been for him…" She faltered. "I know he'll be happy. I just don't know how to tell him."

  "It's a good thing he's the sort to listen in doorways, then," Hutch said from behind us.

  I saw Maggie's face, stricken, as she looked up, the fear in her eyes that she'd caused him some hurt.

  Fear swiftly banished when he came into the kitchen in a rush, plucked her from the chair she was in and swung her in a circle, endangering dishes and glassware and Annie's ankles, laughing as he set her on her feet and drew her hard into his arms, kissing her forehead, nose and mouth.

  Maggie laughed aloud, her arms going up around his neck, her face glowing. "You're alright?"

  The way he looked at her was difficult to witness and not for our eyes. Annie and I stood, starting to silently move away, but I heard him before we reached the kitchen door.

  "Ellie was my wife and my first love. Ellie is my past. You are my present, my future, and my always. I love you, Margaret Lucas Longren."

  After that, there was nothing to be done but go and find Matthew and urge him, in an unseemly, unwifely fashion, to bid his fellows goodnight and accompany me, not to what was still, for now, our home, half an hour off in Gold Hill, but to one of the few unlet rooms in the Queen. Only that was close enough.

  Annie said she would collect her daughters and return to Gold Hill, but I wondered whether a certain mine superintendent perhaps had company that night.

  Chapter 11: Steel Heart

  It was called the Narrow, Crooked & Ornery Railroad, at least once it got started. The first stake was pounded into the ground in Reno on May 28, 1881. It was the Nevada, California, & Oregon Railroad and it was going to run through the three states, from Reno into California along the Columbia River heading up to The Dalles in Oregon, serving the cattle ranches, hauling supplies and hauling herds.

  The engineer who talked Matthew into it bought into the fledgling railroad when it formed in 1880, still the Nevada & Oregon. He knew full well nothing had come of it by the following spring but he led Matthew into it and Matthew went willingly.

  It got us out of Gold Hill.

  The house was on Lake Street. Small and neat, with a garden in the back that I found an unexpected affinity for and roses in the front that grew just because they loved the soil. On our first day there, I met Jenny Lynn Day on one side and Mavis Elliott on the other.

  Their husbands both worked for the new railroad and they were fast friends, our house standing between theirs, which automatically brought me into the circle, as did their children, running between houses through my front yard. We had a tiny, whitewashed fence up around our front yard that seemed almost a challenge rather than a deterrent to the boys. If either family had a girl, I hadn't seen her but there were a herd of boys.

  The first two weeks in Reno were sweet. It was early May, the desert summer heat just starting. The flower garden bloomed, the vegetable garden was planted and the apple trees were covered in pink and white blooms. I was learning the city, unpacking in the modest house, cleaning, trying, very hard, to learn to cook before I starved Matthew.

  "Intent of the railroad's to serve the cattle ranches," Mavis said. We were sewing in the late afternoon as a number of the boys from both their families rampaged across the yards. Earlier, I'd watched a clutch of cowboys drive four head of cattle through the neighborhood. We were on the edges of Reno, still at the far end nearest Virginia City, unwilling to be quite as far away maybe, though Matthew hadn't said. Maybe the house was simply what we could afford, or maybe he didn't want to be farther in. Dust rose under the hooves of the horses and the dark tanned men tilted their hats as they rode past. "They're not going to make it if they can't stop arguing amongst themselves."

  "Matthew says the same thing," I replied, slowly. The heat of the day made me sleepy. I longed to take off the long sleeved dress I wore and go wading in a creek somewhere nearby, the way the boys could.

  Matthew actually said quite a bit about the new railroad. He'd been hired to oversee much of the building, the procurement of goods and services, the hiring of workers and the buying of locomotives and equipment. I thought what he probably really wanted to do was drive the trains, the sage-scented wind whipping through his dark curls, his blue eyes squinting as he looked down miles of track for whatever came next. But first, there needed to be miles of track and somewhere for the trains to go and some purpose for the trains to go there. Cattle ranching was the purpose and, once the trains were built, he promised he'd take me to Alturas, somewhere on the California length of the line, to meet the family I'd married into, his two younger brothers and his parents on their ranch.

  In the meantime, there was the building—and the frustration and the tempers raised, the men gathered to make the venture go, whose patience, daily, was exhausted. Fights broke out over money, over ownership, over responsibility and the lack thereof.

  The board meetings he went to when the workday ended sounded entertaining, if frightening, and when he went off to work in the mornings, I saw him off with a qualm.

  "Sam says the railroad's never going to get built," Mavis said. Her needle dipped in and out of the fabric easily and neatly. My row of stitches looked like a cat had walked across it and left footprints, or maybe a quail had left those curious three-toed marks.

  I let the sewing drop to my lap. I'd worked on my wedding dress with Annie and Maggie but it had been a labor of love, something I'd done because Matthew would see me in the dress, because I wanted to be beautiful for him. This was a tablecloth, something meant to cover a heavy wood table that was serviceable on its own. Maybe someday we'd have visitors over, other than Mavis and Sam and Jenny and Richard, but that was some time away and, in truth, my mother had given me damask cloths when we married and I had my grandmother's china and my own silver and I didn't think what I was doing to this piece of linen was improving it in any way that would make it an attractive, or even necessary, cover for our dining table.

  Matthew was going daily to the railroad, most days he was gone, and when there were meetings in Carson City, he took another line and rode the rails, sometimes staying the night, coming home with his cheeks sunburned, his hair wild and his eyes happy.

  I missed him, missed having him in our bed overnight, missed sleeping beside him, his heat sufficient that I would hardly need quilts in the winter and felt he might burn me come summer.

  More than that, I thought and found myself standing without having meant to get up.

  "Is something wrong?" Mavis asked. She'd set aside her own work and taken a sip of lemonade. She looked cool, her dark hair pulled back, her dress not clinging to her as mine was to me. She managed the sewing, the cooking, the children, even the producing of children, I suspected, all of it with the aplomb of a natural wife and woman.

  I was failing at every one of those things. Maggie was pregnant. Annie, letters from Maggie reported, was almost definitely in love, though Annie's letters continued to tell of the antics of Gold Hill and Virginia City residents and Hutch and Maggie and suppositions of what her other brother was get
ting up to, many of which were eerily correct. Annie did know Matthew and his propensity for trouble. A couple of times he had come back from railroad board meetings with a black eye or a split lip. He said he gave as good as he got. He wore denim trousers and cowboy boots, work shirts rolled to mid-biceps, and he was dustier than his accountant-type position would account for. He loved the trains, loved what he was doing, didn't even mind the administrative work.

  He hadn't, so far, said a word to me about my obvious shortcomings. He didn't need to. I was daily numbering them for myself. I still couldn't cook, though my kitchen was clean and well stocked. I couldn't sew, not well, and didn't understand the point anyway. I kept house but it wasn't like there was a herd of small Longrens making that difficult. I wasn't a teacher and didn't think I wanted to be and even if nursing had attracted me, most nurses were young, unmarried women, which I wasn't, or older, widowed, which I clearly had no desire to be. Maggie hadn't taught me midwifery and I wasn't sure I was cut out for it.

  If I'd told the truth, if there'd been anyone for me to tell the truth to, I'd have said what interested me the most were Matthew's tales—the trains, the journeying, not just to Carson City and back, not just to test an engine, but going somewhere. Maybe to San Francisco, maybe all the way across the country to Maggie's Boston, maybe to Alturas, maybe on a ship, to Europe…

  Mavis had asked me if something was wrong. Annie, I could have told. Maggie, I would have already told. Issy would have known without my having to tell her. I liked Mavis and Jenny both, but they were new friends. We had no history. And they didn't have a list of shortcomings they were daily finding items to add to.

  "Sometimes, I'm restless," I said. I was standing at the edge of the small front porch, where several geraniums gave off an overheated stink. They'd never been my favorite flower and I couldn't think what they were doing there.