It would be what it would be. “I understand that this is both the chance and challenge of a lifetime. That I’ve added a…nuance to the group that could not have been anticipated. But it must be faced head-on. And for your trouble, I will double your fee.”
The old bear stared back into Wallace’s eyes, calculating, considering. It didn’t take him long. He held out a hand to shake with Wallace. “We shall see it through,” Stuart said.
But Wallace had already known he had him.
Everyone could be bought. Everyone.
Cora
My father never knew I’d heard every word that he’d said to the guide and his nephew, laying bare my humiliating personal history, negotiating my inclusion in the group as if I were simply a difficult sack of goods to sell. His words had echoed over the finely polished wood floors, up the stairs, to the landing where I hovered, alternately entranced and horrified.
I sat down when he said that my name was Kensington on my birth certificate. I wondered over that. Was it true? I’d never seen the document with my own eyes, had always taken Mama’s word that she kept it safe in her box of papers. I put my head in my hands when he said he intended for me to be introduced everywhere as a Kensington. What did that mean for me? That I’d face ridicule, mocking, through the whole journey? The guides clearly felt I was a liability.
Spotting a maid coming up the stairs, I rose and scurried to my room, not wishing anyone to know that I’d been eavesdropping. And then I spent hours pacing my bedroom floor, wondering if I should have declined his invitation to come on this trip, even if it meant finding our own way to make it on the farm and care for Papa. Here in Butte, knowing a little more of him, I felt fairly certain he had traded upon our insecurities and fears to get what he wanted.
But could I do it? Face the world as the illegitimate child of Wallace Kensington? Without him by my side, protecting me, driving back those who challenged the notion—even as our guide and his nephew had just done in the dining room? What was I to do if someone dared to remark on it? Grin and bear it? I shook my head and rested my hand atop it.
Lord, please help me. Give me courage. Hope.
How I envied my sisters and brother. They’d never known anything but this house, this name, this existence. As much as I loved my parents…how could they have loved me, as well as lied to me, all those years? My siblings had never had such doubts. They always knew they were Kensingtons. I shook my head, hating Mr. Kensington, hating my mother’s weakness, hating Mama and Papa’s lies—even if they meant to protect me. I felt as if I’d fallen into a narrow hole and could not move, let alone begin to claw my way out.
It didn’t help that the June evening was uncommonly hot. This time of night, most of Montana cooled down, allowing sleep. But after tossing and turning for hours, I knew I’d never find my rest. My mind was in as many knots as my sheets.
I had to get out. Out of this house. For a walk, to clear my head. To pray.
I threw on my old brown dress and my tired, worn boots, wanting the comfortable, the known, weary of drowning in a sea of new. Only when I felt the last button at my neck, the familiar rub of the rough fabric against my skin, did I begin to breathe easier. After a moment’s hesitation, I dared to turn on my lamp. I listened intently, worried the light might draw a servant or my father. But no one came.
I moved to the dressing table, wound my hair into a knot on top of my head, and hastily pinned it in place, not even checking the mirror to find out how well I had done.
My mind was solely on my exit. Outside, in the air, I might catch a bit of a breeze, feel as if I could move freely, without being examined. I crept down the stairs, glad that the fine carpentry meant there were no creaking boards to betray my flight. At the bottom of the stairs, I looked one way and then the next. All the lights were out except for one by the front door. Were any servants even awake at this hour?
Feeling every hair rise along my neck, I pushed forward, not looking back until I’d unlocked the door and turned the knob. Then, with one last glance around the huge foyer and empty stair, I slipped out of the house, quietly closing the door behind me. I didn’t pause, but scurried down the steps and the walk, wincing over the creaking wrought-iron gate that betrayed my escape. But I moved through it as quickly as I could and then down the walk as if it were completely common for a young woman at two in the morning.
Oh, but the freedom! For the first time, I considered where I was. In the middle of one of Montana’s biggest cities. A shiver of daring rolled down my back. Even at this hour, I could hear touring cars and horses’ hooves a few streets over. The red-light district, I surmised, and turned in the opposite direction. I wasn’t such a bumpkin that I would allow myself to get caught in that sort of place. I made my way toward homes progressively much smaller and modest in scale than the Kensington mansion.
More like my own house, the only home I’d ever known. Now owned by Wallace Kensington. It made me feel dirty, as if Mama and I had betrayed my father by selling it. How long might I have lasted, trying to run the farm on my own? Mr. Kensington had been right that we were lucky to make it through the winter every year. Would we have been forced to sell before Christmas anyway?
I shook my head. It felt better to hold on to the anger. The resentment against the man listed on my birth certificate. At least my anger was mine. Something that Wallace Kensington could not take from me until I was ready to let it go.
The neighborhood felt welcoming, even in the darkness. Less frightening than the mansions, because these houses seemed like homes where I might see Mama, feel her welcome me in a hug. Mama, Mama, I thought, my heart twisting in a braid of anger and sorrow. She’d been weak, weary, primed for Wallace to strike when he’d shown up at the farm. And this invitation—an escape route from the farm, hope for Mama and Papa, a way out for me—had shaken us back to life, partially. Out of our own sense of paralysis.
I’ll give that to you, Mr. Kensington, I said silently, begrudgingly.
I climbed and climbed the steep street, liking the feel of the incline and the way my heart beat from the exertion rather than the constant fear I’d battled in the last days. At home, I’d spent hours hoeing the garden, hours milking, hours repairing shingles on the roof, hours chopping wood. Did the wealthy ever feel their hearts pound for anything but excitement?
I reached the end of the street and looked left and right. The neighborhood gave way to a poorer district to my left, but there were finer houses to my right. Above me, I could hear shouts and machinery—sounds of the mines, working around the clock. It was odd to be in a place that was not quiet come dark; it felt vaguely unsettling, off. I couldn’t imagine spending the night working deep inside a mine, then sleeping the day away. It seemed unhealthy, not ever having time beneath the sun. Not that anything in Butte felt healthy. The smelters’ smoke spewed into the air night and day, mixing with wood smoke from cooking stoves and becoming a cloying cloud that settled around the city, choking every living thing. Even now I didn’t feel I could take a deep breath, the odor acrid, vaguely metallic.
I longed for the wide, open plains, the swaying grasses and ripening grain of summer. The wind off the fields, smelling of nothing but earth. Roads with a few horse-drawn wagons rather than the noisy motor carriages and horse traffic clogging the streets…
So lost was I in thoughts of my home, I didn’t see them approaching me until it was too late to avoid them. Three men, one who’d clearly been drinking too much, staggering left and right, his companions laughing at him. I cut across the street, as if heading home, but one of the men moved to intercept me.
Fear made my every pore tingle. What was I doing? Out at such an hour? Even at the Normal School, we were not allowed out unchaperoned past sunset. It wasn’t proper. Moreover, it could be dangerous. I paused, wringing my hands in front of me, then dropped them, recognizing that the pose appeared weak.
“Hey there, miss,” the man said, pulling his hat from his head and giving me a broad smile
I could see even in the dark. “Aren’t you out a little late?”
“I am. But I’ll be home in just a moment.”
“May I see you to your door?” he asked without pause. He’d detected my lie. I heard the other two shuffling behind me.
“No need. I am well aware of the way.”
“Still,” he said, falling into step beside me, laughing over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t feel right, leaving a lady on her own in the wee hours of the morning.”
I hesitated over his emphatic use of lady. As if it were a joke. Exactly who did he think I was?
“Just got paid today,” he said with another smile in his voice. I didn’t dare look his way and kept walking. “Me and the boys, we’re in the mood to celebrate. Come out with us. We’ll treat you right.”
“No, thank you,” I said with every ounce of authority I could muster.
He looked at his companions, and the drunk one cackled with laughter. But then all three were looking beyond me.
I glanced over my shoulder and inwardly groaned, feeling like a small child caught stealing candy from the mercantile’s jars.
William McCabe.
“Is everything all right, Miss Kensington?” he asked, stepping up beside me.
I didn’t know if it was the invocation of the family name, or his presence, or both, that set the threesome back a step, then two.
“Everything is fine, Mr. McCabe,” I said. “These gentlemen were just heading home.”
The first man had his hat off now and was partially bowing as he backed away. “Beggin’ your pardon, miss. We had no idea. We…” He looked at his friends, and then they turned tail and ran, rounding the corner and disappearing into the dark.
I folded my arms and faced him. “Do you always have such an ill effect on strangers, Mr. McCabe?”
He let a slow smile spread across his face. “Only when one of my charges decides to take her morning constitutional at two in the morning.”
“Is that what I am? Your charge?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” I liked how his brown hair curled at the nape of his neck and around his ears. His quiet, confident manner. But I didn’t like that I was noticing such things now, when we were alone, in the dark.
I am his charge. I let the thought incense me. Just the latest of many humiliations.
“I am twenty years old, Mr. McCabe, not a toddler in need of a nanny,” I said.
I turned on my heel and began walking back to the house. He easily fell into step beside me. “No, you are clearly no toddler. But lovely young women are in need of an escort, especially at this time of night.”
My face burned with embarrassment over his praise—and my stupidity. I had no business going out alone. I knew that now. If he hadn’t arrived, might those men have tried something untoward?
I was suddenly trembling, my knees shaking.
“Take my arm, Miss Kensington.”
I edged away from him. “Don’t call me that.”
“What else am I to call you?” he asked. “Please. You’ve suffered a fright. Take my arm, and I’ll get you home straightaway.”
“No! Leave me be!” With that I took hold of my skirts and ran, feeling idiotic—truly like a toddler—but unable to stop myself. I could hear him behind me, keeping pace, could feel my hair pulling loose from my pins, but I couldn’t stop. Not until I was on our block.
“Miss Kensington,” he said, over my shoulder, as I dashed across the boulevard, urging me again to slow. “Miss Kensington!”
At last I slowed to a walk, pacing over the dead grass to the old oak where I’d first seen him, my hand on my head as I gasped for breath. Warm light streamed through a window above us, but no one seemed alarmed. There was no one peering out the windows, looking for us. I glanced at him in surprise.
He leaned down, hands on his knees, panting and staring at me.
“You…told no one?” I asked.
He shook his head and straightened, mouth still open as he fought to regain his breath. “You are a decent runner,” he said wryly. “Does your Normal School field a racing team?”
I ignored him. “Why did you not sound an alarm?” I asked.
His eyes searched mine. “You seemed…not yourself. I understood you were up to nothing nefarious—only needed some fresh air. Such at it is in this copper town. I merely sought to keep you in sight in case you needed aid.”
I sighed and turned, taking a few steps away, disgusted with myself. “Lucky for me.”
He remained silent.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “Thank you, Mr. McCabe.”
He nodded once, staring into my eyes.
“You will say nothing of this to Mr. Kensington?”
“Only if you promise not to venture out on your own again, without escort.”
I turned to face him. “Even in the light of day?” What sort of promise was this?
“Even in the light of day.” He paused, licked his lips, and then met my gaze again. “Miss Kensington—”
I bristled at the name. I was a Diehl. Always would be. “Cora,” I said, closing my eyes. “Please, call me Cora.”
“Only if you will call me Will.” He paused for a breath. “It must be difficult to learn something so foundational about yourself…”
I turned away, feeling the heat of a blush begin to climb my neck, not wanting him to see, though I doubted he could in the relative darkness.
“Regardless of the shock of such news,” he said gently, “you must take great care. As a Kensington, there are those who would consider you a means to their own ends. Not all would turn tail and run as those three back there did. And we shall be traveling to many places in which you might become…lost.”
As a Kensington. I considered his words. He spoke of danger—such as kidnapping. But there would be other risks ahead, risks that might seem more benign. Men who would entertain courting me just because of my name. Not because of my mind, or my perspective, or even my visage—but because of a potential connection to Wallace Kensington. I let out a humorless laugh.
“Something amuses you?” he asked.
“No. I don’t know why I’m laughing. There is truly very little I find amusing in any part of my life right now.”
He cocked his head in an endearingly caring manner, a curl of brown hair flopping over his temple and right eye. “For what it’s worth, you have a friend in me, Cora. The journey ahead—I’m praying that with each day you will find clarity and greater understanding of your identity. Not only as a Kensington. But as the woman you were created to be.”
I lifted my chin and considered him. I liked the way he spoke, and his quiet confidence, which reminded me a little of my papa. “Considering what is ahead, I could stand to have at least one friend, Will.”
He smiled gently and reached out his hand to shake mine, as if we were striking a deal.
“Thank you, Will,” I said. The shock of his warm skin against my cold hand made me immediately drop his, aware that we were both without gloves. But he reached out and held onto my other hand, not in a threatening manner, but in a way that told me he was waiting for me to meet his gaze. I looked up at him, my heart fluttering. He was a big man, quite a bit taller than I, with wide shoulders.
“You shall not go out again unescorted, Cora?” he asked softly.
“I shall not,” I said. “You have my word.”
“Good.”
I waited for him to release me. Why was he staring at me so intently? I shifted, uncomfortable. I hoped he wouldn’t try to—
“Then off with you, friend,” he said, turning away, making me think I had imagined a hint of romance between us. “It will not do if a servant finds us both sneaking out in the middle of the night. You shall get me dismissed.”
“Never,” I said softly, turning to do as he bade. I’d tell Mr. Kensington the whole wretched story before I would see Will and his uncle lose this opportunity to be our guides. I…needed him.
I glanced back at him as I c
limbed the front porch stairs, but he didn’t look my way. He stared up, up into the leaves again. I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered who William McCabe was, exactly. And if he had always wanted to be a Grand Tour guide, or if he had simply found himself thrust into this madness as I had.
CHAPTER 10
William
Cora was largely silent on the train trip north, seeming to ignore their conversation about the tour itinerary, yet her eyes alternately widened or narrowed as Will spoke of the sights they would see. They traveled in a fine private rail car with the name KENSINGTON emblazoned on its side—one of three, he’d been told—which would in time be transferred from the train in Kalispell to the one that would take their party east.
Mr. Kensington caught Will looking Cora’s way a couple of times. He held his gaze to let Will know he’d seen and then went on with their discussion. Will could feel his uncle’s scowl too. But he couldn’t help himself. He longed to talk to her, even for a moment, to ask her how she felt about meeting her siblings. He could see the small furrow between her delicate brows, the way she anxiously rubbed her gloved hands.
What would it be like to meet sisters and a brother for the first time as an adult? He himself had never had a brother or sister, so Will had never really known what a true sibling relationship was like. He’d only had glimpses of it on the three tours they’d made alongside the States’ most spoiled children. Mostly, when those trips were done, he departed eager to be alone. To bear no intrusions upon his quietude until he wished to seek others out—that was what he craved most.
Later in the morning, Cora went to rest in the sleeping section of Kensington’s private car, and her father took to reviewing a pile of papers at his desk in the far corner. Will’s uncle unfurled a newspaper, gesturing toward another, wanting Will to read. He liked Will current on recent news, ready to dialogue with their clients. Will scanned a few headlines, but when his uncle became absorbed in an article, he opted to stare out the window instead.
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