Maybe because it had been such a rough week. The long ride from Boston, all that money had been a constant point of stress. It had almost been a relief to hand it over…
Margrett was out of the bed before it registered that she was fully awake. She glanced around rapidly, trying to sort out where she was. The room looked familiar, and with a groan, everything fell into place. She was in a guest room in the house she’d thought she’d purchased. He must have carried her here from the parlor… no… a vague memory played on her mind. The front door. He’d carried her back up again and lay her out on the bed.
She’d spent the night alone in a strange man’s house.
She hugged herself with the thought. Anything might have happened. A man like that could take liberties with impunity. If he’d wanted to. Margrett took a breath and thought for a moment. Perhaps he doesn’t want to? The irony of it made her head spin. Certainly, she did not wish to be maligned while asleep, but was it too much to ask to be so lovely that no man could resist her? Especially this one.
I truly am a feather-brain.
She concentrated on preparing herself for the day. Thankfully there was a mirror over the wash basin, albeit a small one and not much good for thorough ablations. She smoothed her skirts and adjusted the front of her dress, then yanked her sleeves down savagely to get them to lie right again but her hair posed a serious problem. Without pins, there was no way to pull it back up on top of her head. Finally, in frustration she plaited the whole mess of it, letting the long cord trail down her back, tied with a bit of ribbon stolen from her underclothing, though the thought of using the scrap of fabric caused her cheeks to burn with mortification.
He won’t know from whence you procured the ribbon. It is only until you can retrieve your hairpins.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and slipped into the hallway. The house was deserted. She walked cautiously to the master bedroom and lay her ear on the door. She could hear him snoring through the door.
Backing up, she went down the stairs as fast as she could, pausing for a moment after one step groaned under her weight. When no further sounds came from upstairs, she continued down the steps and out the door.
It was still early morning; dew made everything slick under her feet and under her touch. There were two women across the road who looked at her and whispered to one another. Margrett stood straight, holding her head high as she walked down the street. There was nothing she could say, though she knew she made quite a picture wandering about bare-headed with her hair in a childish braid.
And I’m supposed to be here to educate them on propriety.
The main street was only a short walk away, proving that the house would have worked just fine for what she’d intended. It took her a minute to realize there would be no Betterment office, annex, classroom or otherwise. She’d be going home in absolute disgrace shortly. It was an unpleasant thought, one she’d been avoiding since she woke up, but even should the authorities help, how could she possibly stay? Surely in a town this size, the story of her downfall would be the talk of it.
With dragging feet, she found the Sheriff’s office, just past the general store and across from some kind of land office, whatever that meant. She hesitated on the sidewalk for a long time before realizing that the telling wasn’t going to get any easier no matter how long she delayed in telling it. With a sigh, she opened the door and walked in.
Thankfully it was fairly obvious who she was supposed to see. A single man resided behind the desk, absolutely intent on his newspaper. What she saw of him, from the top of his cowboy hat to his tanned thick and capable hands looked so much like what she’d pictured out of her dime novels, that she almost felt at home. The battle-scarred desk, the single cell in the back of the building complete with sleeping prisoner snoring under a tattered blanket…all of it could have come from the pages of a book. Feeling somewhat more confident she marched right up to the man’s desk and cleared her throat, fully expecting him to lower his newspaper to talk.
A foolish assumption as it turned out.
“Excuse me?”
The paper never so much as wavered. Margrett found herself reading the front page, as it was presented to her, giving long drawn out details over something called ‘water rights’ that seemed rather silly, as if rain wasn’t free for the using once it fell from the sky.
“I am Miss Margrett Childs. I’ve come to see you about a rather important matter.”
The paper rattled a little. It took Margrett a minute to realize that the man was drinking coffee somewhere behind the thin pages. She watched the top of his hat bob as he drank.
And continued to ignore her.
Margrett counted to ten, then doubled it for good measure. Finally, fed up with being ignored, she brought her hand down on the newspaper, top to bottom, leaving it as so much torn litter in the man’s hands. The man launched to his feet, one hand fumbling for the gun at his side, only just stopping short of drawing on her. In that instant, Margrett understood just how close she’d come to getting shot and wondered when she would ever get her impetuosity in hand.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I would like to report a crime.”
She spoke clearly, chin up, not letting the fact that she’d nearly been killed daunt her in the slightest, even if her heart was racing within the confines of her corset.
The Sheriff, for surely only he would wear such a prominent star affixed to his leather vest, gave her a surly look, ignoring her pointedly as he rose and poured himself another mug of coffee.
She noticed he didn’t offer her the same, though additional mugs resided on the shelf over the cookstove in the corner.
He grunted his name, something she couldn’t quite catch and waved one hand at her, indicating the chair opposite the desk. She sat gingerly and launched into the story of Mr. Harmen and Mr. Jackson and found herself blushing furiously when the man started laughing.
“You mean to tell me that you carried that much cash all the way from Boston and then ended up giving it away to the first man that told you a lie?” He said it with tears streaming out of his eyes. She heard the snickering of someone else and realized belatedly that there was no one else in the building except the prisoner locked up in a cell, who had woken up and apparently found the whole thing absolutely the funniest thing he’d ever heard in his life.
“And then they stole your clothes?” The Sheriff guffawed and slapped his leg. “Can’t be too hard to spot then, two men in women’s dresses!”
The prisoner kept right on thinking it was hilarious, up until she quelled him with her best glare. Even then he sniggered as the details unfolded.
“Mr…” Margrett realized belatedly that she was unaware of his name. “Sheriff,” she started over, “I want these men arrested, and I want my items, and my money returned to me.”
The man chuckled and righted his chair with a thump from where he’d had it balanced on two legs against the wall. “Lady,” he said slowly, with a certain amount of compassion, but sounding more like her father with every passing minute. “Listen to me. A man you never met, using a name I’ve never heard of sweet talked you out of a fortune, and sold you another man’s house.” He waggled his finger at her, “and I’m not so sure this Baker fellow wasn’t a part of all this, he’s a newcomer here just like you… Then this fellow’s friend I’ve never heard of steals your luggage, and you want me to, what? Wave my gun around ‘till someone fesses up?” He tipped his chair back again, and this time folded his hands over his belly. “What is it you want me to do?”
“I…” Margrett was at a loss. What else could she have wanted? Justice? Revenge? A second chance? Somehow to reverse the clock and not make the same idiotic mistake all over again maybe… “I need that money back, sir,” she said quietly, “I need my…my personal items.”
“Give me someone to shoot at Miss… ah, Childs was it? And I’ll shoot. But I’m not stringing up the whole town on the odds that I might hit the right person who…” He look
ed at her sternly. “…might very well have skedaddled on the same damn train that brought you here.” He sighed at her expression. “Now, I tell you what I will do. I’ll send some info on down the line, see if anyone sees two men matching your description. That’s about as much as I can do, though.”
With that, it was very clear that this interview was at a close.
Chapter 8
Nathan looked out the window to the rising sun. He’d gotten used to sleeping late, a by-product of long nights playing cards, but he was also a very light sleeper, a by-product of winning at cards against sore losers.
He’d heard her door close; it woke him from a sound sleep. He wore the nightshirt Alice favored him in. Damn stupid thing; he always felt like he was wearing a dress, but Alice was fond of the way he looked in them and bought them for him often.
He imagined he looked wraithlike now, a lone ghost standing at the window, clinging to the shadows as the morning sun burned away the night. He felt that way sometimes. Old before his time, a lone figure in white haunting a large, empty house. All he needed were chains to drag behind him.
He’d seen her as she left the house. She walked nervously, skittish as a colt, trying to be oh so quiet. He told himself he was making sure she hadn’t stolen anything, but he knew it for a lie. She’d already taken something from him. A tenuous peace of mind perhaps. The complacency that came of living too long in grief.
Since Alice’s death, Nathan had nearly convinced himself that he was fine alone, that he could handle being without her. He’d thought that part of him had died with her and now this woman, this Bostonian, had come into his life and proved him a self-delusional fool.
He watched as she ran into a couple of the old biddies that liked to patrol early in the morning, checking dirty laundry on the lines, no doubt, to fuel their gossip. They twitted and acted shocked with each other when they saw Margrett come out of his house. The woman would be marked now, tried and convicted of being young and pretty in the court of old women.
He shook his head. Might as well get dressed, not going to get back to sleep this late in the morning.
He pulled on his clothes, splashing his face with water from the bowl on the dresser. When he was dressed and his boots properly stomped into, he dumped the water out the side window and grabbed the pitcher to head downstairs.
He stopped the instant he turned around. That trunk was still pulled out, half in the center of the room. He stared at it, thinking it would be better put away, rather than left out awkwardly like that. He set the pitcher back on the washstand, reached for and unfastened the lid.
Margrett had wrapped the picture of Alice in several layers of cloth. That she’d been anxious that it not be damaged surprised him. A kind gesture to someone she never expected to see—and certainly not someone she ever meant to interact with.
Alice looked up at him, her characteristic half-grin coming through the flat image, though time had already faded it. He stroked her cheek with his thumb and remembered what it was like to touch her, to feel the heat of her skin and the warmth of her breath.
I’m forgetting what it was like to hold her.
It was that Easterner’s fault. Margrett had fit in his arms as if made for him, her head coming to rest just there on his shoulder in a way that Alice never had. But then Alice had been a tall, lean thing, while Margrett was all curves.
Curves he never should have noticed.
He dropped onto the bed, still holding the picture. His heart beat painfully in his chest. He shouldn’t forget her. He shouldn’t be thinking of another woman in his arms. It felt like a betrayal.
“I swore I would never feel like this again, my dear,” he said to the image. “I certainly didn’t think I would be able.”
He closed his eyes. Dratted dust. Making them water like that. He spent a long time sitting there, waiting for the excruciating pain that never came. Somewhere…somehow…this meeting with this silly woman had changed something. Had left him…different than he’d been before.
Was it possible that he was maybe…moving on?
He wouldn’t have thought it possible. His shoulders shook with sobs, not of sorrow so much as regret. Letting Alice go was…long overdue. He’d been holding onto a ghost and a handful of memories.
Margrett was so incredibly, amazingly alive.
Where did that leave him?
The damn dust was irritating his sinuses. His eyes filled with tears to wash away the burning of it. They dripped down his cheeks and into his mustache, but he ignored them to concentrate on Alice. He stared blearily at the picture. Alice smiled back. Flat. Distant. Gone.
“Would you mind, old girl, if I did live again?”
The words came out in a rush. What would she say if she were here now? Would she be angry? It was a question he hadn’t asked before. One he’d never dared think.
If it were me, I wouldn’t have minded. The last thing I’d want would be for Alice to live the rest of her life rattling around a big empty house all alone.
He swallowed hard.
Yeah. Like I am.
Damn.
He could almost hear Alice’s laughter. She’d call him an idiot for acting this way. He’d known that for a long time now. She’d have wanted him to move on.
“So…what now? I won’t ever forget you, but for the first time since you left… I think I might be able, someday, to love someone again. I don’t want to upset you though.”
She smiled, her eyes in the picture merry and bright.
He swallowed and put the picture on the dresser where it belonged, then sat back and stared at it, unsure. Finally, he stood, picking up the pitcher from the washstand, and went to start his day.
Downstairs, he filled the pitcher from the pump, filled the coffee pot with water and grounds, and stoked a fire. While the flames heated the stove top, he walked the pitcher back up to the bedroom and set it in the empty bowl for the next morning’s use. He turned to leave but hesitated at the door. He looked at Alice again, seeing the half-smile, the twinkle in her eyes.
She’d been a good woman.
But it was time to let her go.
He took a deep breath and picked the picture up. With shaking hands, he opened the chest and laid the daguerreotype back into the trunk and closed the lid.
“I don’t suppose I will ever stop loving you, Alice,” he said finally. “But…I think I might be able to have room in my heart for…someone else.”
For some reason, that ridiculous suffragette came to mind.
He shook his head, to banish the image. Margrett was gone, headed back out east by now.
The thought didn’t give him as much satisfaction as he thought it would.
He glanced at the trunk and could swear he heard laughter.
Shaking his head, he shut the door of the bedroom and headed downstairs to rescue his coffee before it boiled over.
Chapter 9
Margrett stood in front of the sheriff’s office and surveyed the downtown area. There were indeed several hotels nearby, though which ones were safe for a woman alone she couldn’t have said. One of them was decidedly not. That particular “hotel” was situated atop a saloon called The Pines, and the women who stood drinking coffee at the windows were by and large… not fully dressed. They stood in corsets and leggings, both recovering from and advertising for, the nighttime activities that were obviously hosted there.
She shuddered and fingered the few bills she had to her name as she left the Sheriff’s office, squelching her nervousness with a proud lift of her chin. She paused on the boardwalk, unsure where to go and watched as a thin young man walked down the street leading a horse. It took her a moment to realize that the young man was, in fact, a young woman in breeches and boots and a man’s shirt. Margrett surmised that her hair was bundled up under the hat she wore.
Margrett didn’t realize she was staring until the woman turned a corner and a splash startled her. One of the women in The Pines had emptied a chamber pot into the st
reet, narrowly missing a dandy who was walking into the saloon. He cursed her in a fluent stream of words that would make a sailor blush. The woman laughed and made an obscene gesture as he cursed her out.
I know that man…
Margrett’s breath caught in her throat, and her knees felt weak. It was most assuredly Mr. Jackson, much better dressed than he was at the station, but most decidedly it was him. He countered the…woman’s…gestures with a few of his own and continued on into the bar, ignoring the derisive laughter that followed him. Margrett couldn’t hear him, but his tone was plain as he paused in the doorway. He was shouting orders.
She looked back at the sheriff’s office and again at the saloon. Her mind was in a whirl, and her body seemed to be waiting for a decision. Apparently, her legs had waited long enough and simply began to cross the street, whether she would or not.
She was at the entrance to the saloon when it occurred to her that she was about to enter such a place. It was certainly no fit place for a lady. Years of conditioned training had led her to turn up her nose at establishments that served spirits. For a lady of her breeding to willingly enter such a place…what would her father say? It simply wasn’t done…
On the other hand, she’d just been seen at all hours of the morning coming from an unmarried gentleman’s house, so her reputation was on shaky ground as it was.
She took a deep breath, placed a hand over her heart to try and calm it, and pushed past the swinging door.
It wasn’t the den of iniquity she’d thought. Here her dime novels failed her, as there was no raucous music at this hour, no licentious behavior at all. In fact, the room was bright and open and even cheerful. There were several large round tables, chairs, even a few couches along the walls. The roof was a high one, a railing ran around the inside of the upper floor where the rooms for ‘rent’ would be.
“What can I do you for?” the bartender asked. He was still wiping down the bar and setting up. “We’re not open yet,” he added, “but if there’s something you want, just ask.”
The Gamble Page 4
