Heartbreak Creek

by Kaki Warner

  “Married?”

  “To Declan Brodie. He seems a nice enough man.” Seeing that her sister was about to start yelling, Edwina dumped the contents of her reticule on the bed and riffled through the papers and vouchers until she found the tattered newspaper clipping. “Here,” she said, handing it to Pru. “Read for yourself.”

  Edwina already knew the words by heart:

  Honest, hard-working widower, age thirty-three, seeks sturdy English-speaking woman to help with mountain ranch and four children. Drinkers, whores, and gamblers need not apply.

  Such a romantic.

  And one with rather low standards, she thought. Yet she qualified—except for the “sturdy” part. Since she had lost so much worry weight over the last months, her once “willowy” figure now had all the appeal of a flagpole.

  “You actually responded to this?” Pru’s voice was starting to rise again. “An advertisement in a common newspaper?”

  “It’s not common,” Edwina defended. “It’s the Matrimonial News. And it’s famous. Everybody has heard of it.”

  “I haven’t.”

  Edwina waved that aside. “And he wrote a very nice letter back.” Digging again through the papers on the bed, she came up with a crumpled envelope, which she handed to her sister. “A rather nice assessment, I think.”

  “As well it should be,” Pru snapped when she saw the signature. “Since the man wrote it himself.”

  “Not that one. The one from the traveling circuit judge.”

  Another terse appraisal that Edwina knew by heart:

  Mr. Brodie is a man of strong determination who is well respected and tall.

  Tall?

  “And he also sent this.” She held up a tiny tintype of an unsmiling, clean-shaven, dark-haired man in a dark coat and banded collarless shirt.

  Pru studied the tintype, then handed it back along with the letters of recommendation. “I just wish you’d talked to me first,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Edwina recognized the pose and braced for a scolding.

  “Why would you do such a thing, Edwina? I know it was hard losing Rose Hill, but—”

  “It isn’t just Rose Hill, Pru. It’s . . .” Edwina spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “It’s everything. That man spitting on you, the vile things that Yankee upstart said to me, those horrid men in Crappo Town who are terrorizing everyone. This isn’t home anymore. Everything has changed. And if there’s nothing left for us here, why should we stay?”

  “We? You’re dragging me into this?”

  “You’re my sister. Did you think I would leave you behind?”

  “Well . . . I . . .”

  “They have mountains, Pru. Huge mountains! And all kinds of things we’ve never seen. And look!” Edwina bent to pull from beneath the bed the book that had arrived only yesterday. Beaming, she held it out. “Knowing what a glutton for information you are, and how curious you would be about our new home, I had this sent all the way from a New Orleans bookstore.” And it had cost her dearly, but seeing the smile on her sister’s face convinced Edwina it was worth every penny.

  “Our new home?”

  “Our new home. Mr. Brodie has a place for you in his household, too.” Or he would, as soon as Edwina talked him into it.

  Pru laughed and rolled her eyes. “He’d better. Since his new bride doesn’t know a thing about cooking or tending children.”

  One

  COLORADO, APRIL 1870

  Twenty-seven days after signing over her childhood home to the Bayou Bank & Trust of Sycamore Parish, Edwina Ladoux stared bleakly out the soot-streaked window at her shoulder.

  Just a few more miles. An hour, at most. And they would finally arrive in Heartbreak Creek and begin the exciting new life awaiting them.

  The thought filled her with absolute terror.

  Not that she wanted to put off this meeting forever. Or could. The signed proxy papers were in her carpetbag, all nice and tidy and legal. She had spent the man’s money and had used the train tickets he had sent. She was obligated. Married. A wife again.

  Thank heavens she had had the foresight to insist upon a two-month waiting period before actual consummation took place—God, how she dreaded going through that again—so for now, anyway, her husband couldn’t force his attentions on her. Her husband.

  It was madness. Ridiculous. The very idea that Edwina Whitney Ladoux, once the reigning belle of Sycamore Parish, should be reduced to marrying a complete stranger—a man who apparently was so hard-pressed he had to advertise for a wife in a newspaper—was ludicrous. Absurd.

  Yet here she was, so terrified at the thought of having a husband again, her stomach felt like it was stuffed with hot nails.

  Especially when the train began to slow. She clutched at Pru’s arm. “Are we there? So soon?”

  “Soon? It’s been almost three weeks, Edwina. I, for one, am ready for this journey to end.”

  “Maybe something has happened.” Edwina peered out the window toward the front of the slowing train, but saw nothing untoward. “We just stopped to put water in the tender, so it can’t be that. Perhaps there’s been a rockslide. Or a tree has fallen across the tracks.”

  She hoped so. She hoped it was something so catastrophic she could delay the meeting looming ahead of her for weeks. Months. Forever.

  “Second thoughts, Edwina?”

  Of course she had second thoughts. Hundreds of them. Thousands. What had seemed like a viable solution back when penury was panting in her face now seemed like the most foolish thing she had ever done. Not that she would ever admit such a thing to her sister after tearing her from the only home she had ever known and dragging her halfway across the country. It was too late, anyway. Edwina had given her word and had signed her name. There was no stopping it now.

  Unless she died. Or the train fell into the ravine. But that seemed a bit drastic. “Maybe it’s another herd of buffalo.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.” Beside her, Pru fussed with the front of her traveling cloak, then checked the tilt of her black horsehair bonnet. “They rarely range this high into the mountains.”

  Ever neat, Pru was. Sometimes such excessive attention to detail drove the imp in Edwina to do or say something to mess up that perfect order. But not today.

  Today—assuming a host of guardian angels didn’t swoop down to rescue them—they would arrive at the small depot five miles south of Heartbreak Creek, where her husband would be waiting. With his four children. Arms outstretched to welcome his bride.

  The thought almost made her vomit.

  “I suppose it could be a herd of bighorn sheep,” Pru mused. “Or elk. The book said both are common in mountainous terrain.”

  Oh, who cares? Biting back her mounting apprehension, Edwina stared stoically out the window. She wished she could be more like her sister, eagerly devouring each new tidbit of information, delighting in every long-winded description of the fauna and flora of the Rocky Mountains, as if this journey was some grand adventure rather than an act of pure desperation.

  But then, Pru wasn’t the one who would soon have a strange man coming at her with consummation in mind.

  Edwina shuddered. In sudden panic, she reached over and gave her sister’s hand a hard squeeze. “Thank you for coming with me, Pru. I couldn’t have come without you.”

  “And I couldn’t have stayed without you.”

  With a sigh, Edwina tipped her head against the cool glass and studied the small canyon below with its fast-moving stream and toppled boulders and deep, dark forests pushing right up to the edge of the churning water. Back home, the bayous and rivers were sluggish and warm and brown, shaded by sycamores, stately cypress, and moss-draped oaks. By now, the redbuds and dogwoods would be blooming and the magnolia buds would be fattening for their annual summer display of fragrant, showy blossoms.

  A sudden, intense swell of homesickness almost choked her.

  Gone. All of it. Forever.

  The clackety-clack of
the slowing train wheels gave way to the screech of brakes. Finally the train shuddered to a full stop. Passengers twisted in their seats, trying to see past the vapor from the smokestack that coiled around the windows like lost clouds.

  The door at the front of the passenger coach swung open, and the conductor stepped inside. Stopping in the aisle between the two long rows of bench seats, he hooked his thumbs into his vest pockets and studied the expectant faces turned his way, his lips pursed beneath a bushy gray mustache that looped around his red-veined cheeks to join equally bushy muttonchop sideburns. He didn’t look happy.

  “There’s a problem, folks,” he announced. “Three miles up, a washout took out the Damnation Creek trestle.”

  The passengers moved restively. “What does that mean?” one asked.

  “Means we’ll be stuck for a while.”

  Edwina perked up. A while? How long was “a while”?

  Raising his hands to quiet the angry muttering, the conductor explained. “They’re sending wagons to carry you around the washout to Heartbreak Creek. The railroad will put you up there until the trestle is repaired.”

  “How long?” a man called out.

  “A week. Maybe two.”

  Immediately, more voices rose. The conductor had to shout to continue, but Edwina scarcely heard a word. With something akin to giddiness, she turned to Pru. “We’re saved, praise the Lord.”

  “A reprieve only.” When Edwina started to say something more, Pru shushed her and leaned forward to attend the conductor’s words.

  But Edwina was feeling too euphoric to heed more than a word or phrase here and there—“hotel . . . meals . . . don’t drink the water.” To her, it all meant the same thing. A delay. A blessed reprieve. She wouldn’t be meeting her new husband in Heartbreak Creek today as expected.

  Thank you, Lord.

  The conductor concluded his announcements and left, promising the wagons would arrive within an hour or so.

  Pru fidgeted and sighed. “At least they’ll be covering the cost of our accommodations in Heartbreak Creek until the tracks are repaired.” She shot Edwina a look. “Stop grinning. And what makes you think your new husband won’t travel the extra distance around the washout and be there waiting?”

  “Oh, Sister, pray he doesn’t.”

  Pru’s elbow poked her ribs. “Hush,” she warned in a low voice. “You must stop referring to me as your sister.”

  Edwina almost snorted. Prudence was more than her sister. She was her lifelong best friend, her confidant, the one who gave her courage when everything seemed so bleak. “You are my sister,” she argued, rubbing her bruised side.

  “Half sister. And to call attention to that fact is unseemly and casts your father in a poor light.”

  “Our father.”

  Pru pressed her full lips in a tight line, a clear indication she was losing patience. “Must you be so obstinate? If you’re trying to make a new start, Edwina, why carry old baggage along?”

  “Old baggage?” Edwina gave her a look of haughty disbelief. “Even though you’re twenty-seven and an entire year older than me, Sister, I have never considered you ‘baggage.’ ”

  Waving that aside, Pru went on in the same low voice. “There is no need to bandy it about that your father—”

  “Our father. Who adored your mother. As well he should.” Edwina was growing weary of this endless argument. Back home, Pru’s parentage had been common knowledge. Everyone at Rose Hill had loved Ester, who had taken on the role of Edwina’s mammy as soon as it had become apparent that Pricilla Whitney was incapable of caring for her own child. Had he been able, Charles Whitney would have gladly married Pru’s mother; as it was, he had been utterly devoted to her until the night the Yankees had swept through Sycamore Parish, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

  In truth, Edwina had loved Pru’s mother more than her own.

  Her gaze dropped to the fine, pale web of scars marring the brown skin that showed between the cuff and glove on Pru’s right wrist. Other scars, hidden by the long sleeve of her gray bombazine, stretched up her right arm and halfway across her chest and back. Burn scars, given to her by Edwina’s mother when Pru had tried to protect her little sister.

  Edwina had scars, too, although other than a few pale stripes across her back, they were of a more subtle kind, the kind that festered in the soul and left behind invisible wounds of doubt and guilt and distrust.

  She owed Pru her sanity, if not her life. And she loved her for it.

  “Be that as it may,” Pru went on, regaining Edwina’s attention. “Races don’t mix. It’s against the laws of man and God, and you know it.”

  “Here we go again.” Edwina faked a yawn behind her gloved hand. “If reason fails, bring out the Scriptures.”

  “Edwina!”

  “Well, really, Pru. If it’s true that white and black shouldn’t mix, you would be a drooling, crossed-eyed hunchback with an extra ear. Instead you’re beautiful.”

  Pru snorted. “Except for the hair and nose.”

  “Not as bad as the wart on my elbow,” Edwina chimed in. “And my less-than-ample bosom and—”

  A soft, feminine chuckle interrupted Edwina’s self-deprecation. Looking past Pru, she saw the blond lady across the aisle was smiling at them. Edwina had seen the smartly dressed young woman several times over the last days, nearly always seated with another young, attractive lady toward the rear of the coach. But today, after the train had stopped in Santa Lucia to fill the tender with water, both women had moved to the vacant bench across the aisle from Pru.

  “Are you truly arguing about which of you is less attractive?” the woman asked, her green eyes dancing with amusement. Beautiful eyes, with a slight upward tilt at the outside corners that might have hinted at wide-eyed innocence if not for the hard knowledge behind the knowing smile. A Yankee, by her accent. Poor thing. No wonder she seemed jaded.

  Before Edwina could respond to the comment, the other woman, seated next to the window, looked over with a wide smile. Where the blond had shown a worldly-wise weariness beneath her cool green eyes, this auburn-haired lady seemed without artifice. An ingenuous, dimpled smile complemented intense chocolate brown eyes that sparkled with such life and intelligence Edwina couldn’t help but smile back. “You are both too beautiful by half,” the woman said in a clipped English accent. “Your bone structure is superb, both of you. And I assure you, I would know.”

  Edwina wasn’t sure what to make of that. Usually, any compliments she received—mostly from men—involved her magnolia skin, which always sounded a bit sickly to her—or her glorious hair, which she thought was abysmally average, ranging from mouse brown to light brown, depending on how many lemons were available—and her soulful blue eyes, which were admittedly her best feature and the exact shade of the early spring forget-me-nots that had bloomed along the garden wall back home.

  How sad that they, and the wall, and all the handsome young men with their pretty compliments were gone forever.

  “Excuse me for intruding.” The blond woman held out a hand encased in a finely sewn white kid glove. “I’m Lucinda Hathaway.”

  “Edwina Ladoux . . . Brodie.” Leaning past Pru to take the proffered hand, she noted the gold ear bobs, the fine fabric of the blond’s traveling cloak, the shiny button-top boots planted protectively against an expensive leather valise stowed under her seat. Even though Edwina had supported herself and Pru as a seamstress—barely—and was skilled at refitting made-over dresses to look stylish, she couldn’t help but feel dowdy in comparison to this pretty woman. “And this is, Prudence, my—”

  “Traveling companion,” Pru cut in, ignoring Edwina’s sharp look. “So pleased to meet you.”

  “Madeline Wallace, but I prefer Maddie,” the auburn-haired woman chimed in with a wave in Edwina’s and Pru’s direction. She wore no gloves, and a thick signet ring was visible on her left hand.

  “You’re married?” Edwina was taken aback by the notion that a married
woman would be traveling alone if she didn’t have to. Then realizing how rude that sounded, she quickly added, “I saw your ring.”

  Maddie held up her hand, palm out. She studied the thick gold band for a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose I am married, although I haven’t heard from Angus in over three years. Perhaps he’s dead.” A brief flash of distress at that startling announcement, then she let her hand fall back into her lap and smiled. “He’s Scottish,” she clarified, which clarified nothing. “A soldier. I couldn’t bear to stay another day with his family—they have low regard for the English, you know, and little hesitation in showing it—so I left.”

  “Good girl,” Lucinda murmured.

  “Left?” Edwina parroted, shocked by the notion of a woman simply heading off on her own to a foreign country just because she didn’t like living with her husband’s family.

  “I’m an expeditionary photographer. A tintypist, really, specializing in cartes de visite.” Maddie smiled as if that explained everything, which it didn’t. “The Illustrated London News is paying me to capture the American West from a woman’s perspective. Isn’t that grand?”

  It was unbelievable. A female photographer? Edwina couldn’t imagine such a thing. It had taken all her courage to travel a thousand miles, yet this tiny woman had taken on a man’s occupation and crossed an ocean to an unknown country. How daring. And terrifying. And admirable.

  “And you?” Lucinda inquired, jarring Edwina back to the conversation. “Do you live in this area?”

  Edwina blinked at her, wondering how to answer. “Yes. I mean, I plan to. That is to say, I will. Soon.”

  “She’s traveling to meet her husband,” Pru piped up in an attempt to translate Edwina’s garbled response.

  “How nice.” Lucinda’s voice carried a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

  “Not really.”

  “Oh, dear,” Pru murmured.