by Tess LeSue
“And where am I going to live?” Calla asked.
“With the pastor, I assume. Once he gets up the nerve to actually talk to you.”
All of Emma’s plans were just about in place. She figured Tom would ramble into town sometime around late fall. By then, she needed to be established. That was part of the plan. For that to happen, she needed those damn townspeople to stop being so stuck-up and to come and buy a pastry or two.
It was Georgiana Slater who finally broke the drought. It was Sunday after church, and Emma and Anna were sitting on the porch, finishing a pot of tea and waiting for the crowds to pass. Emma was hoping one of these days the smell of fresh pastry and hot coffee would draw someone other than Dell Pritchard or Josh Masters, who were het up by the idea that she and Calla used to be whores. They tended to trail Calla back from church and follow her inside, flirting madly as she tied her apron on and stood behind the counter, waiting for customers who never came. Calla didn’t pay them no mind. She’d got firm ideas in her head about that preacher.
“He’s just adorable,” she sighed, when they saw him skittering by every day, blushing bright red at just the sight of Seline’s place.
Emma didn’t see the appeal of him herself, but she was glad to see Calla moving on from that mess down in Mexico. And if she had to set her cap for someone, a bashful preacher seemed like a safe enough choice. The poor preacher had to pass their place on just about a daily basis, and you could see it pained him no end.
Emma liked to torture him. “Pastor Sparrow!” she’d call out cheerfully, whenever she saw his bent head and pink ears. “You remember what I said: preachers get free coffee in our establishment. I’ll throw in a cinnamon roll for your first visit too.” He ran along like a little old rabbit. It was actually kind of sweet.
“If you boys are going to hang around like flies round a pigpen, you can buy a bag of pastries each,” Emma called inside as Dell and Josh traipsed after Calla on this particular Sunday. They’d been open for months and had done next to no business. She sure did hate to see her baking go to waste. There was only so much pastry the four of them could eat themselves.
“How was the service, honey?” she asked Winnie, as the girl plodded up the stairs. Winnie liked to go along with Calla on Sundays. She liked the stories and the singing, and seeing the other children. Not that they played with her, the little beasts. But Winnie did keep trying. The kid had grit.
“The preacher was telling about Abraham and Sarah and their maid. Hagar isn’t a very pretty name.”
“No, it sure ain’t,” Emma agreed, passing Winnie a custard tart. The girl shook her head. That’s what things had come to, Emma thought in disgust. The kid had been eating leftovers for so long that now she couldn’t even stomach the fresh stuff.
From the street, they heard the sound of a braying horse. Only it wasn’t a horse. It was a little girl, decked out in her Sunday best. She had a clump of friends who giggled behind their hands.
“What in hell is wrong with that child?” Emma asked.
“Nothing,” Winnie mumbled.
The girl whinnied again, and the other children squealed with glee. Oh hell. Emma got to her feet, and the children ran off laughing.
“Susannah Bee Blunt, you get here this instant!”
It was the first time Emma had seen Georgiana since she’d got to town. Matt’s wife had just delivered a baby when Emma had arrived and hadn’t been into town all summer.
Emma watched, amused, as Georgiana marched down the street. She looked like a queen. A little one, but fierce. Susannah had stopped dead and was watching her mother approach with a look of pure dread.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing, torturing that child?”
Georgiana hadn’t changed a lick, Emma thought. She was still the perfect little lady, dressed to demure perfection in deep blue. Her bell skirt was enormous, and she glided along without it swinging in the slightest. But all that class hid a spark that Emma admired.
“She wasn’t one of them,” Emma called down from the porch. She hadn’t even realized Susannah was there. The girl was across the way with a knot of older girls, casting glances at the boys slouching over at the general store. Susannah looked absolutely mortified that the boys were watching her being dressed down by her mother in the middle of Main Street.
Georgiana wasn’t mollified. “You get here right now and apologize,” she said imperiously.
Susannah flushed. “But I didn’t do anything!”
“You certainly didn’t do anything to stop it, did you? And after all Seline did for us on the trail.”
Well, she’d certainly changed her tune. Georgiana had been scandalized by Seline on the trail. She wouldn’t even eat the food Emma cooked. But then, she’d been half-mad with grief at the time, and jealous to boot. Which was ridiculous, as Matt had never so much as looked twice at Emma. But there was no accounting for jealousy. Some people got bit hard by it.
“Get up there and apologize to Seline and her girl.”
“Emma,” Emma corrected. “My name’s Emma. Seline was the whore.”
Georgiana blinked at the baldness of her statement. But then she remembered who she was talking to and gave an imperceptible shrug. Emma saw Matt coming to see what the trouble was, baby in arms and the boys trailing behind.
“I’m very sorry,” Susannah muttered, shamefaced, after climbing the porch stairs to stand beside Winnie. “I should have spoken up for you.”
Winnie had gone pink. Emma couldn’t tell if she was equally mortified, or pleased.
“And you will next time,” Georgiana insisted.
“And I will next time,” Susannah repeated. She swallowed hard. “I really am very sorry.” She sounded absolutely genuine. And when she looked at Emma, her cornflower blue eyes were swimming with tears. “I’m sorry, Seline.”
“It’s Emma, honey, and I know you are.” Susannah had always been a sweet girl, and Emma had a soft spot for her. And she was just about Winnie’s age, so this might work out very well indeed. “Here, why don’t you take these to your friends?” She held out the plate of custard tarts.
Susannah looked to her mother for approval.
“You can take them, but you can also take—Winnie, is it?—you can take Winnie with you and introduce her to your friends. If those little ones are going to be horrid to her, you older girls can take her under your wing. She’s your responsibility, you hear?”
“Yes, Mama.” Susannah took the custard tarts, and Winnie, and headed back to her friends.
Winnie looked back over her shoulder with wide excited eyes, and Emma winked at her.
“I’d like to pay you for the tarts,” Georgiana said. Ignoring the horrified looks of the townspeople clustering by the general store, she climbed the porch steps. “I hear you’ve had a hellish reception?”
“It’s not the worst I’ve ever had.” Emma grinned. “But it’s close.”
“Are we stopping for coffee?” Matt called up from the street.
“Indeed we are,” Georgiana said, loud enough for the whole street to hear. “And tarts too. Seline is the best baker this side of the country.”
“Emma,” she corrected cheerfully. This was going better than she could have imagined.
“Sorry. I’m just so used to you as Seline.”
“You’ll get used to me as Emma.”
“I’ve been meaning to come,” she said, “but the baby had colic, and I swear I haven’t slept for months! It was just impossible.”
Emma felt something loosen inside her as Matt and Georgiana and the children settled in on the porch for a visit. She could feel all the eyes watching her as she and Anna served them coffee and pastries. She practically heard them gasp when Georgiana let her cuddle the baby. Not that she had him long before Anna stole him.
“Another boy,” Matt said, “but at least it’s
not twins.”
Emma laughed.
“Do you sell your bread too?” Georgiana asked.
“Of course.”
“We’ll take a dozen loaves, if you have that many. You won’t believe how much bread those boys can eat. Let alone Matt. In fact, make it a standing order. We’ll come by every Sunday and collect.”
“Can we get tarts every Sunday too?” Phin called over from where he and his twin were doing backflips off the porch railing.
Georgiana told them off for it, but Emma didn’t mind. Railings could be repainted. She liked her porch lively.
“Matt told me you were the one who made the pie for our honeymoon,” Georgiana said abruptly. “That you were the one to organize everything: the picnic, the tent, the flowers, the blackberry wine.”
Emma rolled her eyes at Matt. “You were supposed to take credit it for it, you dunce.”
He shrugged. He had his arm around the back of Georgiana’s chair and looked about as relaxed and content as a man could look.
“I never thanked you for it,” Georgiana said. “That moment brought me back after Wilby . . .” she trailed off.
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“I do and I shall.” Georgiana smiled at her. “And I also want to ask you for the recipe for the pie.”
“That you shall never have.” Emma laughed. “But you can buy one.”
“Make it a standing order too. We’ll take one every Sunday.”
When they finally left, they were weighed down with bread and pastries, tarts and cupcakes, and even a fat pork pie for supper. Emma waved cheerfully as they rattled by in their wagon.
“We’ll see you next week!” Georgiana called.
“That,” Emma announced with satisfaction, “is the beginning of our good times, my friends.”
* * *
• • •
SHE FOUND SHE was looking forward to seeing Georgiana again the following week. But she didn’t even have to wait a week. Emma was out at her farmhouse the next day, bossing Dell and Josh around, when she saw a wagon rattling up the dusty path. She’d been standing at the upstairs window when she saw them coming. Two bonnets. Women. Coming to visit her. In her gut, she knew who it was. Her plan was working! She dashed down the unfinished stairs, past Josh, who was trying to finish them, and out onto the porch to watch her guests approach.
She straightened her dress. She didn’t want to make a poor showing in front of Luke’s wife.
But when she saw who was sitting in the wagon next to Georgiana, her mouth popped open in astonishment. “I know you!” She racked her brain to think how she knew the woman. She was a looker. She had big gray eyes and a stubborn little cleft chin.
She gave Emma a look of pure, unadulterated dislike.
For some reason, Emma kept thinking of whorehouses. How did she know the woman? Surely, she wasn’t a whore . . .
“I don’t think you’ve met before.” Georgiana was frowning at her. She glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Emma, this is Luke’s wife, Alex. I thought the first time you met should be somewhere private, and not in the theater of the Main Street. That didn’t seem fair to either of you.”
“We have met,” the woman said shortly.
And just like that, Emma knew how she knew her. “You’re Dolly’s cousin!” She’d only met the woman once, in the whorehouse in Independence, but she remembered how furious she’d been. “I think I tried to rip your hair out . . .”
“You did,” Luke’s wife said flatly.
Emma tried to remember the details. “You were giving him a freebie—it boiled my blood.” She laughed. “He was supposed to meet me, and I was enraged to find you giving it away.” It was such a long time ago. It felt like it had happened to a different person.
“I most certainly was not,” Mrs. Luke said coldly. “You made an assumption.”
“Based on the fact that you were in your underwear and you were kissing him.” It was all coming back to her now. Oh, how jealous she’d been. It seemed ridiculous now.
“I’m only here because Georgiana all but kidnapped me,” Mrs. Luke said through gritted teeth.
Georgiana cleared her throat. “Is that Dell Pritchard up there?” She was looking up at the upstairs window.
“Yep,” Emma said. “He and Josh are helping me finish the place. I want to be in by winter, if I can.” She had plans for winter, plans that needed privacy.
“It might be best not to have ears listening to this conversation,” Georgiana suggested tactfully. “Perhaps you could come for a drive?”
“Sure.” This was exactly what she wanted: a chance to soften up the last holdout in the Slater family. In order to do that, she’d have to stop needling her and play nice.
“Josh,” Emma called into the house, “I’m just heading out for a bit.” She paused, taking in the stony set of Mrs. Luke’s features. “I might be gone awhile.”
She climbed up into the wagon tray behind the bench, where she had a view of Mrs. Luke’s set shoulders.
“We can’t be gone long, as the babies are back at the house waiting for us,” Georgiana said nervously.
“Babies?”
“Alex and Luke just had another little girl. Born three days before our Henry.”
That explained why she hadn’t seen Mrs. Luke all summer either, then.
“Congratulations,” Emma said cheerfully. She was about the only cheerful one in the wagon. That, she hoped, would change. She had a plan to soften Mrs. Luke up. And it was right simple. She was going to tell the truth. It all its raw, unvarnished glory. It was novel for her, but she wasn’t shy to try new things. She was going to tell these ladies about her childhood, her whoredom, her lost babies, her need for kindness when she got fooled into thinking she loved Luke, and most of all, about how she’d earned herself a new life. She had her own money, her own plans, her own little makeshift family. And she’d fallen like a sack of rocks for their brother-in-law.
This time, she wasn’t going to disguise anything. She was going to strip herself naked in the only way she never had before. She was going to show them who she really was.
And if Mrs. Luke didn’t thaw then, she probably never would.
That would be unpleasant, but Emma had lived through unpleasantness before. And nothing, especially not something as trivial as a bit of unpleasantness, was going to stop her from getting what she wanted. And what she wanted was Tom Slater.
32
SHE WASN’T IN Magdalena. Tom didn’t know what he expected—that she was pining away for him in an adobe hut?—but he was stunned to find her gone. He’d been fixated on Magdalena all spring. He’d pictured riding in and sweeping her up and taking her home. Wherever she wanted home to be.
But she wasn’t there. The only thing he swept up was a face full of dust when the devil winds blew.
He went to Frisco next, expecting to find her there. But again, there was no trace. There was plenty of gossip about the hunt for Deathrider: rumors he’d been killed in a dozen different ways—but no proof. And there was gossip about a certain redheaded whore, running loose with the Plague of the West. In those stories, he wasn’t dead at all, and the two of them, the outlaw and the whore, were leading the hunters a merry chase across the west. Was it true? Had Deathrider been the one she cared for all along? Or was she only gallivanting about with him because Tom had left her? If he hadn’t left her, would she care about Deathrider at all?
He thought the last months had been hell, but as he rode out of Frisco, he began to realize that he barely knew what suffering was. What if he never saw her again?
He was an idiot. Worse than an idiot. Why had he waited so long? Why had he left her in the first place?
So he’d been hurt. So what? That woman had been through hurts worse than he could imagine. And she hadn’t run off. Not like he had.
<
br /> It had been the worst year of Tom’s life. And he’d had bad years before, so he knew what he was talking about. But now that he knew she was gone from his life, all the color seemed to leach out of the world. He plodded north, headed for another winter alone, feeling like the last man on earth.
He paused on the trail outside Utopia. He didn’t know if he had it in him to winter in either of his brothers’ houses. He couldn’t face the happy chaos of children and families; he couldn’t face being the odd one out for one more year. Maybe it was time to board somewhere in town instead. Luke and Matt might not like it, but they’d understand. He could visit. And then retreat to a quiet room inside a quiet boardinghouse, where he could be alone with his thoughts, with his memories. Where his glumness wouldn’t impinge on anyone else.
Yes, he decided. That would be for the best. And maybe, if this winter was as wretched as the last, he might think about moving south permanently. Somewhere where he could see the sea.
He rode through the fringes of the winter forest, the fallen leaves soggy under his horse’s hooves. Everything was charcoal, gray and brown, as drab as he felt. Main Street was churned-up mud. Until the snow came, everything was ugly and cold. A bitter wind blew, rattling the windows. Tom saw the church spire at the end of the street, and it occurred to him he could stay with Alex’s brother, Stephen. He had a little whitewashed house next to the church, and there was only him in the place. He had plenty of spare space, and he was a quiet sort. He wasn’t likely to bother Tom out of his glumness.
Goddamn, he thought, as he slowly trekked down Main Street. What in hell had Harlan done to his store? It was pink. But then he got closer, and he realized that it wasn’t Harlan’s anymore. His mind went blank. He couldn’t quite register what he was seeing. He stopped his horse.
Seline’s.
The sign rattled in the bitter winter wind.
A feeling so enormous, so overwhelming, rose up in him. His throat felt tight. His eyes burned and prickled. It couldn’t be.
But he knew it was. There was all the pink, for a start. And then there was the yeasty smell of hot bread seeping out. And that sign.
