The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3)

by Lena Goldfinch

  “Continue on without me, even if I don’t get back before the train pulls away. I’ll catch up with you somehow.”

  “Come back,” she signed. The businessman was looking their way. She didn’t dare sign any more.

  “I’m sure I will,” Jem said, but his expression revealed he wasn’t as sure as he sounded.

  Annie tried to imagine continuing on without him. Tried to imagine taking care of Gabe and Mae alone.

  Please come back.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Jem stepped down from the car, intent on making certain the way was clear for them to get Gabe off the train. He glanced first one way—up toward the depot—and then the other. Seeing no sign of Creed, he strode toward the head of the train. He could see the hotel with its vacancy sign. It was so close. Just a matter of stepping off the platform, then crossing the street.

  The train whistle sang out. He had minutes to spare.

  He was about to jog back to the caboose, when a man emerged from the depot and tugged down the brim of his black Stetson. Creed. Larger than life. As mean-looking as ever.

  Here in Littleton.

  Creed strode toward Jem, half the length of the boardwalk between them. His long leather duster opened with every stride, exposing the gun belt around his thigh.

  All the air sucked out of Jem’s chest. His glasses took that precise moment to inch their way down his nose. He didn’t need the aggravation right now. He slid them into place. Kept his gaze forward. Just walk.

  Sweat beaded on his brow. Not that he feared for his own safety. He could defend himself. He had a gun weighing down his medical bag, and he could fight. Just a couple of days ago, he’d held Creed by the throat. Could’ve easily killed the man. But Annie had been right there. Her presence and his own conscience had been the only things stopping him. Though his capacity for violence wasn’t something Jem liked about himself, he was fully prepared to defend himself and those he loved if he needed to. It was as simple as that.

  As Creed approached, Jem’s thoughts sped forward. He thought of Mae first, being a father. And Annie. His wife. And, of course, Gabe. Gabe didn’t deserve what had happened to him. He deserved to get away, to start a new life.

  Jem’s boot heels thudded against the boardwalk. He gripped the handles of his black medical bag. He could swing it right in Creed’s face if he needed to. This one held the cash. The other was still on the train. Had he made the wrong choice? He’d thought Gabe might need the salve. But he should have left Annie some money to hold.

  Why hadn’t he?

  If she needed to go off alone with Gabe and Mae—if he had to waylay Creed, for instance—she’d need cash. She could hardly do anything without it.

  Lord, he wasn’t meant for intrigue. Had never trained for this. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

  Creed came abreast of him and paused. “Have we met?” He stared intently into Jem’s face.

  “Never had the pleasure,” Jem mumbled, tipping his bowler and not slowing a single beat. His words were true enough. They’d “met” several times, but Jem had never experienced a moment of pleasure knowing this man.

  Jem continued on by. He did his best not to stare at the train’s caboose just ahead of him, at the window where he knew Annie was looking out with a concerned expression. He caught sight of her anyway. He simply ducked his head and marched past, as if that had been his intention all along.

  Creed’s footfalls stilled behind him. Jem sensed him standing there, watching. Speculating. Jem didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare slow his pace. He just kept going.

  * * *

  Annie held her breath at the second sounding of the train whistle. Out her window, thick clouds of black smoke filled the air, billowing upwards into the sky.

  And Jem still hadn’t returned. Where was he? What were they supposed to do?

  She held on to Gabe as best as she could as the train let out a hiss and jerked forward. Mae climbed into her lap, concerned. “Where’s Daddy?” she whispered.

  Annie peered out the window, hoping. Please.

  Her gaze was captured by a black bag being dropped over the back rail of the caboose. She saw a flash of gray, a man jogging behind the rolling train, keeping pace with them. He vaulted over the metal railing and landed lightly on the rear deck. With seeming unconcern, he straightened his smart frockcoat and bent to recover the black bag from the deck at his feet. He entered the car just as casually as if he’d simply been standing on deck for a breath of air and had come in because the smoke had gotten thick.

  Annie gaped at him.

  He was here.

  He must have been waiting on the backside of the tracks, opposite the depot and the boardwalk. Behind the train, away from Creed’s searching eyes. Away from her eyes too, as it turned out.

  She surrendered her place beside Gabe to Jem, gathering Mae into her arms and switching to the facing seat. Jem set his bag down and slid it against the wall of the car.

  Annie peered out the window as the depot rolled past. There was no sign of Creed.

  She couldn’t sign with Mae in her arms, so she let out one small grunt. Creed?

  Before Annie could set Mae down, the little girl hopped off her lap and crowded in close to Jem. She reached up to place one hand on his cheek, seemingly entranced by his smooth skin.

  “Daddy, where were you?” she asked. “We missed you.”

  “You did?” Jem asked, his tone falsely jovial. He waggled his eyebrows at her and covered her much smaller hand with his. His more serious gaze met Annie’s. “Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  With her arms freed, Annie signed, “What happened?”

  Jem took Mae on his knee for a moment and let her lean her head way back against his chest. During all this, he managed to keep a steadying arm on poor Gabe, who was dozing now, thankfully.

  “I don’t think he recognized me,” Jem said, “but I didn’t want to take any chances. So I ducked behind the train.”

  “I thought you—” Annie started to sign, all her pent-up worry rushing forward.

  “Well, I’m here now.” Jem gave Mae a little squeeze, his mouth curving into a grin that reminded Annie of their days in the classroom back at the school for the deaf and mute. He really was an appealing rascal at times. No matter that she’d been terrified for several long minutes thinking she was going to have to continue without him.

  “What now?” she signed primly, then folded her hands on her lap.

  “Annie, I’m back now.” He evidently read through her calm expression to the distress underneath.

  She nodded, her face crumpling for one moment, then she quickly turned to look out the window, not wanting Mae to see. She fiddled with the top button of her suit coat, then unbuttoned it, and the next one. She needed to breathe.

  “I don’t like the idea of going straight to Gabe’s uncle’s place,” Jem said. “Creed’s either coming from there or he’s headed there. We have no way of knowing which. He could be on the train right now.”

  Annie widened her eyes at him.

  “If he’s here he’s in first class,” Jem said, as if that solved any problem. As if Creed couldn’t move from car to car, searching. Jem likely knew that too but didn’t want her to worry.

  She glanced at Gabe, wondering if he’d heard Jem’s words. His expression didn’t change one whit, so perhaps he hadn’t.

  “Denver’s the next stop,” Jem said. “I’d really like to get Gabe to a hotel, the closest one we can find to the depot. We’ll hole up for the night, get a bed for him so he can lie on his stomach and get some rest. Some good rest,” he amended, looking at Gabe’s slack face.

  Annie settled back in her seat. She tried to hide it but was afraid Jem was all too aware that her gaze was fixed on the connecting door at the front of the caboose, just waiting for Creed to walk through at any moment.

  FORTY-SIX

  In Denver, Annie waited on the train while Jem checked the depot platform for any sign of Creed. He made
sure they were the last ones off, and then hailed a hackney cab to take them to the closest hotel.

  Tall buildings crowded in around Annie as they rode down the street. Delivery wagons and buggies trundled past, horse hooves clopping on the pavement. A horse-drawn streetcar passed by them, nearly close enough to scrape the sidewalls. There were people everywhere. Soaring telegraph wires lined the sidewalk. A dirt-brown mongrel ran loose, barking and nipping at businessmen in black suits and ties. The tremendous noise of it all beat against Annie’s ears. A stench defying description filled her nose, along with a gritty haze of dust and smoke that seemed to clog the air.

  Once the hackney dropped them at the hotel, Annie’s heart raced as she and Jem supported Gabe between them. He was awake, but unsteady on his feet. Jem took most of Gabe’s weight and carried his bags under one arm. Annie carried her heavy carpetbag slung over her elbow, the handles digging painfully into the inside of her arm. All the while, she clung to Mae’s tiny hand, afraid the girl would be bustled into the busy street by the press of pedestrians. By the time they had Gabe settled on his stomach on a hotel bed, Annie was spent and wished she could collapse in her bed too.

  Jem had secured two rooms on the third floor, both little more than four walls with a connecting door. Theirs had a four-poster bed and a cot for Mae. But they all gathered in Gabe’s slightly smaller room, which had matching furnishings: a modest pine wardrobe, washstand, dressing screen, a wooden armchair, and a single bedside table with a gas hurricane lamp set on it.

  Jem immediately gave Gabe a dose of laudanum to dull his pain. Once the medicine began to take effect, he gently stripped off the shirt plastered to Gabe’s skin. As Jem worked to free Gabe, Annie busied Mae with some drawing materials she’d packed in the bottom of her carpetbag. Then she helped Jem apply cool cloths to take out the heat that had built up in Gabe’s wound. Together they washed his poor ruined skin with soapy water—as Jem had been taught in school, he said—dried it carefully, and applied an oily salve.

  Afterwards, Jem brought up food for them all from the hotel kitchen. Annie lifted a spoonful of beef broth to Gabe’s lips. He hadn’t eaten anything since they’d left Castle Ranch. He pressed his lips closed and shut his eyes, ignoring her. He lay face down on the hotel bed, with his head turned to one side. She imagined he would’ve turned away from her if he’d had the strength.

  He just wanted to rest. Maybe slip into oblivion. She didn’t begrudge him that desire, but he needed to eat or he’d just get weaker and weaker. Jem had said so. And Annie had no intention of being the one responsible for Gabe wasting away.

  She slapped the flat of her hand on the bedside table, making the china bowl clatter against the wood, spilling a bit of broth. Her palm stung.

  Gabe’s eyes popped open.

  “Eat,” she signed using the spoon. It wasn’t a request but a demand.

  He obediently lifted his head, just enough for her to be able to give him a spoonful. He swallowed, and a look of surprised appreciation crossed his pale features.

  “See, it’s good,” Annie signed, smiling at him. “Now eat some more.”

  “She says to eat up,” Jem spoke up behind her, adding his own note of command.

  Annie spooned more broth into Gabe’s mouth. He didn’t finish the whole bowl, and he fell into an exhausted sleep soon afterwards, but she’d gotten him to eat. She set the bowl and spoon out in the hallway with a sense of accomplishment.

  It was a long night though. Annie and Jem took turns watching over Gabe, who thrashed from fitful sleep. Jem gave him something more for the pain, and Annie sat up with him, smoothing hair off his fevered brow until he finally drifted off to sleep.

  All the while, sleep tugged at Annie, trying to drag her down in its insistent grasp—had since they’d arrived. But as soon as she crawled into the bed beside Jem, her thoughts refused to settle. She kept thinking about Creed and wondering if he’d been on their train. Even now, she was plagued with the notion that he stood just outside their door. She told herself over and over that she was being silly—how would he find them?—but the impression wouldn’t go away.

  Jem was awake too, she sensed, and aware of her presence. She laid her head on his shoulder and stared up at the ceiling, wondering how long it would be until morning. Wondering just what she was to him. He never once moved or said anything. His eyes may have been closed, but his breathing seemed too shallow for sleep.

  * * *

  There was a scrape at Gabe’s hotel door in the night. The latch lifting.

  Gabe struggled up from a deep sleep, still half-drugged from his last dose of laudanum. Annie must have closed the drapes earlier. His room was nearly pitch black.

  The door creaked open on its hinges, letting in a cool waft of air.

  Light slanted in from the hallway lamps. A figure stood in the doorway. A man.

  Gabe’s heart jammed in his throat. All the hairs on his neck stood on end.

  “Jem?” he asked. Even though he knew something was wrong. Jem wouldn’t come in through the door that opened to the hallway. He’d enter through the connecting door.

  The figure stepped across the threshold, nudging the door closed with his boot. With him came the sour scent of wine.

  “It’s y-you, isn’t it?” Gabe whispered.

  “Get up and get dressed,” his father’s voice ordered.

  He was here. In the hotel. Steps away.

  “I’m n-not going with you.”

  “Yes, you are.” The floor creaked under his father. Closer. “I said, ‘Get up.’”

  He didn’t ask how Gabe was. Never said sorry that he’d burned him. Not that Gabe truly expected him to. It was always like this after. Pretending nothing had happened.

  “How did you get in here?” Gabe asked, stalling.

  His father—not much more than a darker shape against the dark wall—held up an object. Then he tossed it toward the bedside table. A clink, then a slide. Another clink-clink. A key hitting the tabletop and bouncing to the floor.

  “Where’d you get a k-key?” Gabe wondered how he could alert Jem. Surely their talking was making enough noise to wake his friends in the other room? Gabe thought of Annie and Mae and his mind swam. He’d do anything to make sure no one got hurt.

  “I have my ways.”

  Meaning he’d stolen it. Or bribed a hotel employee. Either way, he was here. In Gabe’s room.

  “How’d you find me?” Gabe asked loudly, aiming his voice toward the connecting door, which stood slightly ajar.

  “Does it matter, Gabe?” His voice was flat, bored.

  “I want to know.”

  “Had Kirby watching the Castle place.” The major named one of his most trusted ranch hands, a man who’d served with him in the war. “He brought word that a wagon left the property early—before dawn. From there it was just a matter of following your tracks.”

  He likely meant literal wheel tracks in the dirt, as well as asking around town if anyone had seen a boy matching Gabe’s description traveling with a man and woman, possibly a child. It was probably why he’d been prowling the boardwalk at the train stop in Littleton. And it was probably how he’d tracked them to this hotel.

  It was just what his father would do.

  Gabe swallowed. His throat was painfully tight. “Jem saw you at the Littleton depot.”

  His father inhaled sharply. “That face. I thought it looked familiar.”

  “But you didn’t know it was him?”

  Silence.

  Seconds later, cold metal pressed into the small of Gabe’s back. A gun. Against the bottom edge of his burn. Waves of heat licked up his spine. Lighting up the edges of his vision in red. His teeth clenched uncontrollably. He grabbed the sheet in his fist, determined not to cry out.

  “Let’s go.” The major yanked at Gabe’s arm.

  Gabe gathered all his strength and pushed him away. Somehow he managed roll off the bed and stand, wobbling on his feet. Cold sweat beaded his upper lip. He was shaki
ng so hard he thought his knees might buckle. He didn’t know how, but he’d protect himself. He wasn’t about to let his father lay another hand on him.

  Never again.

  His father lurched forward. Gabe’s vision blurred. He struck out blindly, landing a glancing blow to his father’s face.

  “I don’t w-want to hurt you. But I will,” Gabe warned. His knuckles stung, but he readied his fists again.

  His father moved in the darkness, away from the bed. “You’ll hurt me?” His voice came from the direction of the window. The curtains parted and he stood there, illuminated by the street gaslights, wiping a thin trickle of blood from his mouth. He stared down at it with a frown. As if he couldn’t believe it, but the proof was right there on his fingertips.

  Through the gap of the connecting door Gabe saw Jem approaching, a shadow of a man, signaling something to Annie. She flew across the wood floor, silent on her bare feet. Not much more than a flash of white nightgown. Headed toward Mae’s cot in the corner.

  Gabe held his breath, certain his father would alert to her quick movement, but the major’s gaze remained fixed on Gabe.

  Jem edged the door open and cocked the hammer of his gun—a distinctive metallic click in the stillness of the night. He leveled the barrel at the major. “I think you better leave, Creed.”

  Gabe’s father glanced over at Jem without the slightest show of alarm, as if he’d known all along that he’d come. That he’d be armed.

  Gabe fumbled and lit his hurricane lamp. Light flared into the room. Lit up his father, standing there, a six-shooter in his hand.

  “Drop your gun,” Jem ordered. “Slow and easy. And kick it over here.” He gestured to his own feet.

  “You wouldn’t dare fire a shot in here.” The major’s lips curled.

  “Don’t tempt me.” Jem’s aim never wavered.

  The major faced off with him, not budging in the slightest. Gabe knew from experience his father wasn’t one to back down from a fight, especially one where he was armed.

  “Get out. Now,” Jem said, “Or I’ll shout this place down—get security. Tell them you broke into my rooms. Armed. They won’t like that.”