Good Guy Heroes Boxed Set

by Julie Ortolon

  *

  TANSY AND ASTER’S double ceremony in the park was simple but touching despite the dreary mid-October day. Faith stood among family and friends who sheltered themselves beneath umbrellas, but anyone walking through the park was welcome to watch the couples take their vows.

  Intermittent wind gusts tugged the red and gold leaves off the maple trees and carried them through the air like small vessels. Faith wanted to sail away like the leaves and go back to the warmer, happy days of summer when she and Duke spent their days laughing and their nights making love; but she stood in the cold wind, shivering beside her distant husband. He hadn’t left her, but would be leaving for Mayville after the ceremony. He said he’d return in a week. Maybe he wouldn’t be so angry then. Maybe he would miss her. Maybe someday he would forgive her and welcome her back into his arms. Because he hadn’t touched her since the night he learned about the brothel, and she was losing hope.

  She didn’t blame him for being upset, especially on behalf of his family. Faith hadn’t considered that she would be putting his family in jeopardy when she married him. All she’d thought about was giving Cora and Adam security—and herself a respectable life with a man she cared about.

  She hadn’t counted on Dahlia killing a man, or her aunts having affairs in the greenhouse. She’d begun to believe that it was kinder not to tell Duke, that her past might not matter at all unless he learned the truth. Now it was all that mattered.

  “You have a leaf in your hair, Mama.”

  Cora was happily perched in her daddy’s arms. Despite Duke’s anger with Faith, and his earlier harshness with Adam, he’d been loving and affectionate with the child. He’d admitted to Adam he’d been too hasty in judging, but there was a rift between the two that worried her. Adam needed Duke more than ever, and she blamed herself for the distance between them. Duke was disappointed in her, not in Adam.

  They walked home together after the ceremony, but instead of joining the small gathering in their parlor, Duke packed a bag, changed his clothes, and strapped on his gun belt.

  Faith followed him outside onto the porch where he shrugged on his coat. He would walk to Radford and Evelyn’s livery to rent a horse for his trip. “How long will you be gone?” she asked.

  “A week or so.”

  She nodded, not wanting him to leave with this chasm between them, but having no idea how to bridge it.

  “Sam Wade will know how to reach me if you need anything.”

  Again, she nodded. “I’m sorry, Duke. I wanted so much for us…” she whispered, too choked by her emotions to go on.

  He sighed and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “So did I.”

  She caught his hand and pressed it to her face, missing him desperately. “I’ll do anything to make you happy again.”

  He embraced her and gave her a hug, the first affection he’d shown her in a week. “I don’t hate you, and I’m not even sure I blame you for anything. I’m just… I need to sort this out.”

  She lifted her face, aching for his kiss. “Will you do that while you’re gone?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Try real hard. For Cora and Adam. For us.”

  He lowered his head and kissed her, and the day seemed to fill with sunshine. Faith clutched his wide shoulders, returning his kiss with passion, hoping he would find forgiveness on his journey and a reason to return and reclaim the joy in their marriage.

  He backed out of her embrace. “I’ve got to go.” He grabbed his bag and descended the steps. “Wire if you need anything,” he said, but he walked away without looking back.

  *

  EIGHT DAYS LATER, Faith raked leaves into a big pile, assailed by doubts and worries. Where was he? Why hadn’t Duke wired to let her know when he’d be returning home?

  In the yard, Cora crawled through the leaves searching for Adam. When Adam lunged out of the pile, she shrieked with glee. They played all afternoon, raking the leaves into a pile then scattering them across the lawn, before raking them up again.

  Faith went inside to make supper, but she could hear Adam’s roars and Cora’s shrieks of laughter. They were happy sounds. They were happy children. She’d done the right thing for them. Maybe not for Duke or for herself, but she had made the right decision for Adam and Cora. Surely Duke would see that her choice was the only choice, right or wrong, good or bad. Maybe he would realize that there was no right or wrong involved, that she’d based her decision on what was useful, and perhaps then he could forgive her. Maybe then he would find his way back to being the tender man she married.

  Cora’s scream, and Adam’s yell, pierced Faith’s thoughts so violently she dropped the potato she was peeling and ran for the door.

  The instant she stepped outside, her insides turned liquid, drenching her in fear. Cold gray eyes stared down at her, like a bird of prey stalking its next meal. Judge Stone sat on a big, prancing horse, holding Cora, who was as limp as a wilted flower.

  “Hello, Faith.”

  She would never forget those predatory eyes or that gritty, commanding voice.

  “What have you done to her?” she asked, her fear for Cora so acute she could barely breathe. The child’s eyes were closed as if she was sleeping, but she wasn’t sleeping. Had the judge knocked her out?

  “Nothing to damage her.”

  “I’ll do anything you ask, just… let her go.”

  “Too late to negotiate, Mrs. Grayson. Now that your husband owns the brothel, my business is with him. You can thank him for sending me this letter. It helped me find you.” The judge tossed the folded parchment at her feet. “Tell him to bring the deed to the brothel and meet me in Syracuse. If he tries any tricks, his esteemed family will pay for his arrogance.”

  He kicked the horse and bolted from the yard.

  “No! Wait!” Faith leapt forward, but the horse raced down the street. “We don’t have the deed!” she yelled.

  Panic exploded in her chest and she raced after the judge and Cora, but Stone turned the horse onto Eagle Street and disappeared. Faith slammed to a stop at the edge of her yard. She couldn’t scream for help. And that manipulative crook had known that when he rode up as bold as brass and took Cora. Faith couldn’t tell anyone who he was or what happened without putting herself, and Duke and his family and their own children, at risk.

  But she needed help.

  She had to get Cora back.

  Her heart pounded and she wrung her hands, feeling useless and frantic and…if it took until her last breath, she’d find Stone and kill him for this. She’d slip foxglove or aconite into his food. No longer would she let him threaten her and her family or put Duke’s family at risk. No longer would she live looking over her shoulder for that greedy parasite.

  Leaves rustled and the sound of Adam’s groan terrified her. She rushed across the yard and fell to her knees beside him.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, not daring to touch him.

  He curled forward then rolled to his knees. His face was pinched and he clutched his chest, gulping as if he couldn’t get air.

  “Just point to where you’re hurt.”

  He shook his head then sucked in a gulp of air. Then another. Then he began to sob. “I tried to stop him.” He groaned and rocked on his knees. “He kicked me in the chest.”

  “Oh, honey.” Faith pulled him into her arms, terrified and furious and sick to her soul. The children she was trying to protect were in more danger than ever.

  Somehow, she would make Stone pay for this.

  The neighbor lady stepped onto her porch and peered in their direction. “I heard a scream. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Brooks.” Faith kept her chin down so the woman wouldn’t notice her wet cheeks. “My brother just took a hard spill in the leaves, but everything’s fine.”

  “All right then.” To Faith’s relief, the woman went back inside.

  Adam pulled away and struggled to his feet. “I got to get help.”

  “Wait.” She
put her hand on his shoulder. “We need to get a message to Duke without letting anyone know what happened.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  *

  DUKE ROAD HIS weary mount out of Westfield, tired but certain he would win the election next week. Every township and village he’d visited had shown their support, and his undersheriff and deputies stood solidly behind him. But of all the trips he’d made on sheriff’s business, none had ever been so tedious or unfulfilling.

  Where was his sense of purpose?

  Where was the conviction he always felt during these visits? Where was the man who wouldn’t compromise his integrity? Or his badge?

  He was losing his moral compass. Decisions that used to be black and white were all tangled up with Faith’s idea of useful or not useful. Nothing was clear anymore. Laws felt too harsh, and rules seemed too rigid in judging some cases fairly. Like Dahlia’s situation. Duke had seen her aim the gun and pull the trigger. But there was truth in what she said: Levens would have killed Dahlia without a second thought, and he would have come back to kill Anna the first chance he got. It was so mixed up in Duke’s head, he couldn’t think about it without tying his gut in a knot.

  Eight days of traveling had taken its toll on his shoulder and his mind. All he wanted was a good soak in the bathhouse and a few hours alone with Faith.

  He missed her. He’d left too much unsaid between them because he’d been shocked into a state of outrage he’d never before known. From the minute he met Faith, each step that should have taken him due north had been a few degrees off course. Now, without true direction, he couldn’t navigate his way through the day, much less his life.

  Everything was in shambles with his brothers because of his lack of attention. He’d strayed off course with them as well.

  The thunder of horse hooves racing up behind him made Duke reach for his gun. He was traveling alone, moving through towns like a drifter, crossing paths with all sorts of characters. If anything happened to him out here before he could apologize to his brothers for putting their reputations at risk, and offer Faith the forgiveness she sought, they would never know how deeply he regretted his actions.

  He slowed his mare and drew his revolver.

  “Sheriff Grayson!” He turned to see a man on horseback waving his arm. “A message for you!” he shouted.

  Duke holstered his revolver and reined in his horse. There was trouble, but not from the man stopping beside him.

  “Sam Wade said we’d find you heading out of Westfield.”

  Duke had wired Wade shortly before leaving to tell him he was heading home, but the wire was from Faith.

  Cora missing.

  Hurry!

  Missing? All Duke could think about was the creek running high and hard from two weeks of heavy rain.

  “Any return message, Sheriff?”

  “No.” With a tug on the reins, Duke wheeled his horse away, and kicked the big mare into a run. It didn’t matter how or where or why his daughter was missing, it only mattered that she was.

  His heart pounded with each mile he covered. The mare was sleek and fit, and Duke wanted to push her harder and faster, to eat up the miles between him and home. But he reined in his panic and alternated the mare’s pace between a trot and a gallop.

  Each minute that ticked by drove his anxiety higher, and when an hour passed, his chest was so tight it hurt. Another twenty minutes saw him trotting past the Common and down Water Street. When he finally dismounted in his front yard, he was praying Cora had been found and was safe in the house with Faith.

  But Faith met him in the foyer, her face ashen. “Judge Stone took Cora.”

  Stone? “The man listed in your mother’s guestbook?” The man Duke had sent a letter to? “Do you know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would he take Cora?”

  “Because you sent him a letter! You told him where to find us!”

  She was acting crazy, and it was making him crazy. “What are you talking about? Why would my letter make Stone come and take Cora?”

  “Because he’s Cora’s father.”

  As if a boulder struck his chest, Duke’s breath whooshed out and he stumbled back a step. “How can that be?” Stone had visited Rose. Faith said she didn’t work upstairs. Nothing was making sense. “Did you and Stone… You said you were a widow”

  The desolate look in her eyes scared him. “I’m not a widow,” she whispered.

  Duke stood perfectly still, his world crumbling around him.

  “The judge was my mother’s guest. And Cora was my mother’s last child.”

  His mind spun with the horrifying reality of their situation. If the judge was Cora’s father then he was entitled to take his child. Duke couldn’t do anything legally to get back the little girl who’d stolen his heart.

  Worse yet, he himself had sent the letter that brought the man to their doorstep. He wouldn’t have sent the letter if Faith had told him about Stone. “How could you let me marry you without telling me this?”

  “How could I tell you something like this?”

  “How could you not?” he countered, pierced by another betrayal, this one unforgivable. “You lied about everything, Faith.”

  “What would you have done in my place?”

  “I would have… I don’t know.” He scraped his hair out of his eyes. “I wouldn’t have lied.”

  “Of course not,” she said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “It’s easy to be honorable when your belly is full, when you have a family to lean on, when you’re a man who can fight your own battles. But no one helps a whore or her children. My mother made me ring a bell to get her attention! And I could only ring it if I had an emergency!” He expected tears, but she faced him with cold resolve. “When you live in a brothel, nothing is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Right or wrong don’t exist. The only way I got through each day was to choose what was useful and ignore the rest. I’m asking for your compassion, not your approval.”

  “I’m your husband. You should have trusted me.”

  “I couldn’t! Did you hear a word of what I just said?”

  “I heard you, Faith. You don’t trust me. Cora isn’t your daughter. And you aren’t a widow. So… why weren’t you a virgin?” he asked, his heart bleeding.

  “Because I was a fool. I believed Jarvis loved me, and that he was going to marry me.”

  “Who is Jarvis?”

  “He was a guest at the brothel. When he saw me and learned I didn’t work upstairs, he hired me to give him massages.”

  Duke ground his teeth. He was going to stand in the foyer until he learned every sordid detail once and for all. “No more lies, Faith. No more secrets. Tell me all of it.”

  She lifted bleak, swollen eyes. “Jarvis was the son of a wealthy planter from Kentucky. He stopped at the brothel each time he passed through Syracuse.”

  So she’d never been married. Another lie. It hardly mattered at this point.

  “Jarvis bought a small house for us and gave me money to furnish it while he was away. He said he would return in two weeks to move me in. I thought we were getting married, so I gave in and… but after… when my mother found us, she made Jarvis confess the truth. He wanted a mistress, not a wife.”

  Duke could imagine how manipulated and hurt she felt, because he was experiencing that same painful betrayal. Everything he’d believed about Faith was in ashes. She wasn’t a grieving widow from Saratoga. She’d grown up in a brothel in Syracuse and massaged men’s bodies for money.

  But the worst blow of all was that Cora wasn’t legally Faith’s daughter. It made him sick and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this the night I found out about the brothel?”

  “Because the truth was too unbearable for you to hear all at once. And I was trying to protect Cora.”

  “Keeping secrets didn’t protect her! That judge has every legal right to keep our daughter!” In hopeless rage, he slammed his fist ag
ainst the wall.

  Her chin shot up and her eyes flashed with anger. “Well, he can’t have her! I’m going to Syracuse to get her. And I’ll bleed, beg, or kill to get her back.”

  “How, Faith? He’s legally entitled to his child.”

  “He doesn’t want her. He wants the brothel. He caused my mother’s death trying to get it.”

  Duke’s blood ran cold knowing Cora was in that man’s hands. Maybe Duke had no legal right to the girl, but when he’d married Faith, he’d bound his heart to the precious, precocious youth and vowed to protect her. That vow had brought him joy, a sweetness and light that he had never known. Like Faith, he would go anywhere, and do anything to find Cora and bring her back.

  “Where’s Adam?” he asked, his decision made completely and irrevocably.

  “Next door with Dahlia.”

  “I’ll take him to Boyd’s house where he’ll be safe. Pack a bag for us. When I get back, we’re going to Syracuse.”

  *

  DUKE LEFT ADAM with Boyd then sent a telegram to Steven Cuvier, hoping the man knew something about Stone or Faith’s mother that would help them. But when Duke reached his office, his brisk manner deserted him. Despair settled in his gut, slowly hardening into a solid, unbreakable resolve.

  He climbed the steps of the Academy building, aching to the bone from eight days of traveling. All he’d wanted was to get home, but now he wished he’d taken more time to thank each of his deputies for their service. They were good men, and he was honored to work with them.

  But his life as sheriff was over.

  He crossed the hall, unlocked his door, and entered his office. Everything was painfully familiar—the heavy oak desk, the rickety chair, the old metal safe—but no longer his. Another man would soon rest his elbows on the scarred desktop. Another man would carry the keys to the safe. Another man would wear the badge that Duke had worn with pride for eight years.

  He’d known the day would come when he stepped down of his own accord, or when the vote supported another man. At each election he was prepared to pass the position to a man who could do the job. But he’d never imagined giving up his badge because he wasn’t fit to wear it.