At last they pulled into a farmyard and stopped between a large barn and a snug log house. A moment later, the door opened, and the shotgun rider said cheerfully, “All snug and sound, folks.”
Millie accepted his hand and stepped down into the chilly twilight air of a mountain valley.
“What happened?” demanded the passenger who disembarked behind her.
“Saw a few Injuns,” the man replied. “There’s been some trouble through here lately, and we didn’t want to take any chances. Hard on the horses, but here we are.”
A man came from the house and shouted, “You boys are early.”
The driver went over to talk to him. Millie assumed he was the station agent. She made her way around the house in search of the “necessary.” When she came back, the driver met her near the steps.
“Not going on tonight, ma’am. You might as well get some supper and see if they’ve got a bed for you.”
Merrileigh Stone sat in the tiny chamber she optimistically referred as the morning room, working on her needlepoint. This house, set in an unfashionable quarter of London, wasn’t large enough or grand enough to hold too many rooms for the master and mistress to lounge about in, but one needed a place to carry out the humdrum business of life without worry about mussing the rooms visitors might see.
Smaller and less formal than the drawing room, this parlor took the abuse of the family and saved the more elegant furnishings of the other room for company. Merrileigh preferred to conduct most of her daily business here. Another advantage of the morning room—it allowed her a view of the hall if she positioned her chair just so and left the door open. Through the aperture, she could see anyone going in or out of her husband’s study across the passageway.
This morning the objects of her attention were her husband, Randolph Stone, and a young man of slight build and plain mien, his only remarkable feature a shock of wavy blond hair that many a maiden would envy.
He was dressed nearly as well as Randolph. His suit might not be of as nice material, or as flawlessly tailored, but it was fashioned of sturdy fabric and quite stylish. The young man would pass as suitably dressed in nearly any group of London men, though he obviously didn’t belong to the class known as “gentlemen.” A professional man with a good position.
After a scant twenty minutes closeted with the young man in his study, Randolph saw the visitor out and then came to the morning room. As happened too often these days, Randolph was unable to keep a scowl from his face. Sometimes Merrileigh didn’t think he even tried, though she found it most unattractive.
She looked up from her needlepoint. “What is it, my dear?”
“Nothing of consequence.”
“Wasn’t that Mr. Conrad’s man?”
“Yes. Iverson. I don’t like him.”
“That is neither here nor there. What did he say?” Merrileigh set her needlework aside, rose, and gave the bell pull a tug.
Randolph sighed and slouched into a chair. “My cousin David is returning to England.”
Merrileigh clenched her teeth. They’d feared this turn of events for some time. “Rather brazen of him, after all this time.”
“I couldn’t say,” Randolph drawled. He stifled a yawn, as though bored to death with the topic, but his wife knew better.
“Why shouldn’t you say?” She rounded on him and glowered at his lazy form. “If you only cared a bit more, Randolph, we might be living at Stoneford this very minute.”
“I don’t see how. So long as David’s alive, we shall never have that estate.” He squinted at her with a bitter air. “You must let go of the bone, Merry. There was a short time when we thought we might have a chance, but I know now I shall never be Earl of Stoneford.”
“And why shouldn’t you? For years we thought the man was dead. If that were true, you’d have stepped in when Richard died. You were ready to do that. You were here. And where was your cousin?”
“Off shooting buffalo and chasing Indians, I expect. Something like that.”
“Yes, and I say—”
Merrileigh broke off as the maid entered, bearing a tea tray. She resumed her seat and waited until the maid had unloaded the tray and left them. The mistress lifted the teapot—a charming porcelain pot decorated with violets, but she wished she could replace it with a Doulton tea set. Perhaps one day. She poured two cups full and doctored one to Randolph’s taste.
“Here you are.” She held out the cup, and he came to get it from her, then resumed his seat.
Merrileigh reached for the second teacup. “As I was about to say, David has done nothing—absolutely nothing—to entitle him to claim his father’s title and fortune.”
“Other than be born the earl’s son,” Randolph said drily. Merrileigh ignored that. “You, on the other hand, have remained close at hand, ready to serve at an instant’s notice.”
Randolph gave her a wry smile. “Unfortunately, that instant never came, and I was never called to do my duty.”
Her lip curled, and she took up the sugar scissors. She needed something to sweeten her day.
“I had resigned myself to never knowing one way or the other whether David was alive,” Randolph mused. “The sting was fading.”
“Yes, and you were set to live out your days a tragic figure.” She stirred the sugar into her tea. “Mr. Stone, you know my feelings on the subject.”
He frowned at her. “Really, my dear, your suggestion that we take some action—well, it was out of the question. You knew we had no money to search for David, and to what end? To confirm that I would never be earl?”
“Or to confirm his death, in which case you would be. To me, that is worth risking a lot.”
“But we didn’t have a lot. You knew the limits of my income when we married.”
Indeed, she had, but her parents had encouraged the match anyway.
“And when Anne so gallantly decided to brave the frontier, the savages, the bison, and all the rest of it…” He shrugged and sipped his tea.
“Yes, you were content to let the late earl’s daughter do the work.”
“Why not?” Randolph sat straighter and eyed the tea table critically. “I say, do we have any biscuits?”
“Only these shortbread wafers.”
“I detest those bland things.”
“Then find a way to increase the household budget.”
He scowled at her, and Merrileigh scowled back. Both knew they were fortunate to have a cook, a parlor maid, a house maid, and a footman. Merrileigh had hoped that by now they would have increased their income and Randolph would have loosened the purse strings a bit. Unfortunately, that hadn’t happened. The few timid investments he’d tried had lost value.
“Perhaps if Albert’s school wasn’t so costly…”
Randolph let out what sounded like a snarl. “You know we can’t afford a live-in tutor. We’ve been all around that several times. There’s not room in the house for one, anyway, let alone enough money for his salary.”
Merrileigh said quickly, “Yes, I know, my dear. I was merely wishing.”
Albert would, in a few short years, be ready for university if they decided to send him. Merrileigh didn’t think they’d be able to afford that either, but Randolph was adamant that the boy needed to be prepared to earn a living. She wouldn’t bring it up now—she was in no mood for another argument. But personally, she thought the money would be better spent to buy him a commission in the Royal Navy. Once he became a ship’s officer, the Queen would pay for his upkeep. And now that the war in the Crimea was over, even an army commission might not be too bad.
Randolph shrugged. “Maybe by autumn we’ll be invited to a house party at Stoneford. It will be good to see the old house opened again. I wonder how the shooting will be.”
Merrileigh’s hand trembled as she raised her cup to her lips. How could he be so accepting and unambitious? Randolph seemed to have given up all hopes of having prospects. So long as friends invited him to house parties in the country now and
then and received him at their card parties and balls in town, he didn’t care. But she cared.
One of Merrileigh’s greatest humiliations was the inability to reciprocate the invitations they received. How long would their friends keep hosting them when she and Randolph had no country house to invite them to visit? Even a simple dinner party was difficult in the cramped, unfashionable townhouse.
If she’d only known when she married him how little prestige she would have, she might have refused Randolph’s suit. Of course, she’d been on the upper edge of what was called “the marriageable age” at the time, and her father had bade her consider that Randolph Stone might be her last chance. She was not homely—some considered her fairly pretty, she knew. But without a fortune, she was low on the list for suitors. Randolph’s proposal had perhaps saved her from disgrace and ridicule. As Mrs. Stone, she could secure her place in society.
But she’d soon found that Randolph, though received in polite society, had little of the popularity David and his brothers had enjoyed. It seemed the Stone name carried little cachet without money. Time to have another talk with her brother.
CHAPTER 8
Millie’s journey to Fort Laramie took weeks longer than she’d expected. Stalled in Idaho while the cavalry dealt with the Shoshone and Bannock, she eventually met a small band of civilians heading eastward. With a small military escort, they traveled to the Loring Cantonment, from where a lieutenant was about to embark for Fort Laramie with an escort for emigrant trains.
“We’ll need to travel fast,” Lieutenant Fenley told the men of the party. “We have to get through the Shoshone territory quick, and the Sioux aren’t happy either. We’ve had word of them gathering and letting off steam.”
“There’ll be a lot of wagon trains coming through,” said John Collins, whose family had had enough of the West.
“It will be our job to see that they make it safely through to Oregon,” Fenley replied. “Our company will join the first westbound emigrant train we meet and escort them through Indian country. Then we’ll go back for the next one.”
“You won’t go all the way to Fort Laramie, then?” asked another of the drivers, a freighter heading for Missouri to purchase supplies for merchants on the Columbia.
“Only if we don’t meet a wagon train coming through,” Fenley said. “It’s early yet, but you never know.”
Millie negotiated a place for her valise in Collins’s wagon, and they set out the next day. Millie helped Collins’s wife cook, much to the lady’s relief. The couple had three young children, and it was all Mrs. Collins could do to keep them away from the fire, let alone cook over it.
Millie’s skill was soon rumored throughout the company, and since most of those traveling were men—only one other woman besides Millie and Mrs. Collins had joined them—she was soon able to make an arrangement with several gentlemen. They provided the supplies, and Millie cooked for them whenever the wagons stopped. The Collins family gave her their protection and a place to sleep at night near their wagon. Her other clients paid cash.
Rather than going to Salt Lake, as Millie had originally expected to do, they headed more directly to Fort Laramie and took the Sublette Road, bypassing Fort Bridger as well. Millie had turned down two marriage proposals by the time they reached the Platte River. She didn’t want to marry a soldier she barely knew, who’d be off most of the year guarding settlers and dodging Indian arrows.
They found that stagecoaches were traveling regularly along the Platte, with mail for the Mormon settlements. Millie had enough money to procure passage on one of their eastbound coaches. At last she left the Collins family and the military escort behind and ventured on in the stagecoach, which would travel day and night until they arrived at Fort Laramie.
This was hard, Millie thought. She hadn’t planned to spend the whole of the spring traveling and then begin a new life. But she needed this. Needed to forget the past—her life with Sam, and before that her short and stormy marriage to James Evans. And she needed to let go of her memories of David Stone and the hopes he’d inspired in her. She’d almost succeeded in quelling her unfulfilled dreams until she met him again on the stagecoach.
She’d have to focus on the future. Find a new place for herself. Because David was out of the picture and out of her life.
David surveyed the small enclave at Schwartzburg, thankful to have gotten this far. He remembered the place from his westward journey. It was run by a shrewd German at the time, but Anne and her friend Elise had told how the men on their wagon train had exposed Schwartz’s criminal activity and handed him over to the cavalry. They’d left a young man in charge of the station. Anne and the wagon master had asked him to check on the fellow and send them a note telling them how things were going at Schwartzburg.
Pretty well, from what David could see. The corrals were full of healthy-looking livestock. An emigrant train was camped a mile west of the trading post, and a dozen or more travelers had ridden or walked back to deal with the trader.
Inside the post, a tall, handsome young man stood behind the counter.
“Help you, sir?” he called as David walked in.
David ambled over to the counter. “Are you Georg Heinz?”
“Ja.”
David smiled and held out his hand. “Greetings from Mr. Rob Whistler, the wagon master who set you up here.”
The young man frowned for a moment. His eyes narrowed as though he was putting together what David had said, and then a smile broke over his face. “Ja. Herr Whistler.”
Another man, older and a bit stooped, with gray-sprinkled hair, lumbered over carrying a burlap sack. He set it on the counter and looked up at David.
“Georg’s English is getting better, sir, but if there’s anything you need help with…”
“You’re working here with him?” David asked.
“That’s right. My name’s John Kelly.” The storekeeper shook David’s hand. “Georg took me on a couple of years back. My wife and I thought we’d stay a few months while we got over the grippe and got our strength back, but we like it here, and Georg asked us to stay on.”
David nodded. “I’m glad it worked out for all of you.”
“You’re an Englisher?” Kelly asked.
“That’s right.”
Georg’s eyes widened. “You are the one?”
“What one?” David asked.
“The one Herr Schwartz said was buried out back?”
David laughed. “I’ve heard that story from my niece. I’m him all right. But as you can see, I’m still alive.”
“That is good, sir.”
“Yes,” David said. “Very good. Can I write a note and send it on the next westbound? Mr. Whistler and my niece wish to know how you’re faring, young man.”
“I do well,” Georg said.
Kelly nodded. “He’s a good lad. A good businessman, too, and an honest one. He’s put by a good nest egg and hopes to get himself a wife one day.”
David just had time to write his letter and post it before the stage driver blew a blast on his horn. Although the stage was uncomfortable and crowded, it rolled steadily eastward, carrying David closer to England with each revolution of the wheels. He had even met a few interesting people during the last two weeks. One, a man with an interest in a New York rail line, had visions of taking the railroads west. Another fellow traveler was a government man who’d been sent to Utah to try to negotiate with Brigham Young over the accommodation of federal troops there. He gave the opinion that there would be a war with Young’s followers before the year was out, which set all the passengers on edge and sparked a debate that lasted nearly three hundred miles.
But the best thing about the stagecoach, in David’s opinion, was simple: It was now free of Millie Evans.
Merrileigh hated to part with even four pence to go out visiting, but the cost of an occasional hackney to bear her across town was far less than keeping a horse and carriage—even if she and Randolph had had ample room at their m
odest establishment, which they didn’t.
She must have a serious conversation with her brother, Peregrin Walmore. Rather than wait for him to come around to the house, she decided to descend on him. Peregrin hadn’t the means to maintain his own house in London, but he shared a rented house with two other young men. His annual income was enough for a minor gentleman to live frugally, but Peregrin shared Merrileigh’s tastes, and therefore could not live frugally.
An amiable fellow of one and thirty, he supplemented his income by gambling and trading horses. Unfortunately, sometimes his trades and his card games went sour, leaving him frequently out of pocket. If his modest fortune had not been tightly tied up, she had no doubt he’d have blown through it long ago. As it was, he lived large each time he received his allowance and cadged off his friends for the rest of the quarter.
Though Peregrin’s interest in the Stone family’s fortune was peripheral at best, Merrileigh hoped she could convince him to become her ally. This investment might be more lucrative for him in the long run than the faro table at Tattersall’s.
Peregrin knew how much his sister had hoped the death of Richard Stone, the seventh Earl of Stoneford, would bring the title to Randolph. None of that would have been possible if Richard had fathered a son. Or for that matter, if either of his brothers, John and David, had had sons. The three brothers had flagrantly shirked their duty, so far as Merrileigh was concerned. Richard had one girl, Anne, but neither of the other brothers had married or produced an heir, to her knowledge.
Their cousin Randolph, however, had outdone them all, producing Albert as well as a daughter, Francine. Merrileigh considered she’d done her duty well—though a second boy wouldn’t have been unwelcome. Still, her husband had a sturdy heir. If only Albert were old enough to help her now.
But Peregrin would have to do. Even though the young man was perhaps not the paragon of virtue and fine character that one could wish for, her brother was certainly capable when he was sober.
THE Prairie DREAMS Trilogy Page 70
