by Kaki Warner
“Seventy-three. He was only seventy-three, and quite vigorous for his age. Is that Edwina and Pru?” Maddie asked as Agnes charged down the hall toward two women coming through the lobby doors.
Ash recognized the rounded, fair-haired woman as Sheriff Brodie’s wife and the dark-skinned woman as the one under the Cheyenne Dog Soldier’s protection. Reinforcements. The pounding in his head rose to a deafening thud.
“When I saw your wagon go by,” Miss Hathaway said, nodding to the two women staring curiously at them from the lobby, “I sent word to Declan at the sheriff’s office. I thought we could dine together and hear all about your trip. And poor Mr. Satterwhite, of course.”
“I should like that.” Calling to her friends, Maddie went to greet them, leaving Ash standing in the hall with the blond Yankee.
She slanted a glance up at him. “Of course, you’re welcome too, Mr.…Ashby, was it?”
“Lord Ashby.” That cool smile dinna fool Ash—he knew an adversary when he saw one. But despite her prickly ways, he liked the wee Yankee, recognizing in her a backbone as unbendable as his own. It was clear, too, that she was verra protective of Maddie, and like most soldiers, Ash valued loyalty above all else…even if it got in his way. But what he needed most right now was a wash, a bottle, then blessed quiet while he waited for the liquor to take effect and the pounding to stop. “Perhaps another time.”
Mistakenly reading his refusal as a reluctance to intrude on a female gathering, she said, “I’ve asked Sheriff Brodie and Thomas Redstone to join us as well, so you needn’t fear being overrun by ladies.”
“As fearful—and intriguing—as such a fate might be, I must decline.” Shifting the heavy saddlebags slung over his shoulder, he glanced at the closed door into the washroom. “However, if I might trouble you for a bottle of your finest and use of your washroom…” He let the sentence hang on a hopeful note.
Her gaze flicked over his rumpled clothing, still stained with mud from his battle with the wheel that morning. “Of course. You’ll find hot water on the stove and drying cloths in the cabinet. Please don’t use them on your dog. If you need your clothing laundered, put them in the burlap bag on the hook behind the door and Billy will take it down to the Chinese laundry later. I’ll send Yancey with the bottle.” She started away, then turned back. “Will you be needing a room, as well?”
“Best check with my—with Madeline.”
It was obvious the response confused her, but rather than get into it in the hallway, Ash reached past her to open the washroom door. “Come, Tricks.”
Yancey brought the bottle, collected his money, then left. Ash had just settled into the tub when the door latch rattled. He watched the door slowly creak open an inch. Then two.
He was about to reach for the pistol he had set on the stool by the tub—another old soldier’s habit—but then saw that Tricks, lapping up water that had sloshed out of the wooden tub when he’d sat down, showed no alarm. So Ash left the gun where it was and waited.
A freckled face peered around the edge of the partially open door.
Ash was a bit disappointed. He’d hoped it might be Maddie.
“Hidy, sir,” Billy said, goggling at the wolfhound that probably outweighed him by a stone.
“Afternoon, Billy.”
“Got any laundry you want me to take?”
“So I do. There on the hook.”
“Oh. Okay.” Opening the door just wide enough to reach around, the boy yanked the burlap bag off the hook, then jerked back as if expecting Tricks to lunge.
Tricks continued to lick the floor.
“If you want, sir, I’ll watch your dog while you’re in the dining room.”
Ash bit back a smile at the reluctant offer. “Would that be your idea or Miss Hathaway’s, I’m wondering?”
“Miss Hathaway’s. But Mrs. Wallace said it would be all right and your dog wouldn’t hurt me.”
“She’s right. Tricks wouldna hurt you. Especially if you took him out back and gave him a plate of scraps.”
“Oh. Okay. Out back?”
Reaching over to the pile of coins he’d left on the stool beside the pistol, Ash retrieved one and tossed it to the boy, who snatched it from the air with practiced efficiency. “He’s partial to beef.”
“Oh. Okay.” The door creaked open a little wider. “Come, Tricks.”
The wolfhound yawned and sat on Ash’s boot.
“Perhaps it would be best, lad, if you brought the scraps in here.”
A look of relief came over the freckled face. “Yes, sir. Do you want some, too? Food, I mean?”
Ash picked up the bottle he’d set on the floor beside the tub. “I have all I need right here, lad.”
When Ash left the washroom nearly an hour later, his tongue was pleasantly numb, his side no longer hurt, and the ache in his temples had settled to a dull pounding like the crashing of waves against a distant shore. The rhythmic churn of it reminded him of the shipboard crossing and made him slightly nauseated.
Or maybe that was the spinning in his head.
Or the alcohol.
He probably should have eaten.
But he was clean, Tricks was fed and no longer gave him hungry looks, and if he could just find a warm, dry place to stretch out, he would probably make it through the night.
He put a hand against the wall to steady it and looked around, trying to remember where he was.
The hotel. Heartbreak Creek.
Voices and the smell of food drifted down the hall from the dining room, adding to the disquiet of his stomach. He wondered if the Hathaway woman had assigned him a room. He dinna want to go into the dining room where all her friends were gathered and ask. He dinna want to answer questions or be gawped at or watch his wife turn away and pretend she wasna wed to him. Bugger that. He just wanted to find a quiet, dark place to wait out the pain.
Executing a slow, careful about-face, he paused to wait for the spinning to stop, then carefully opened the back door.
Cold air slapped him in the face. He blinked, wondering if his eyesight had failed him completely, then realized it was night. Tiny pellets of icy snow peppered his face as he titled back his head. Bracing a hand against the door frame, he drew in great draughts of air.
The pounding eased. His vision cleared somewhat and his stomach settled. Shoving wet hair out of his eyes, he pulled the door closed, righted his balance, then stepped off the rocking stoop and headed down the street, Tricks at his side.
Faithful, loyal Tricks.
He wouldna turn away from him. Not ever.
Ten
From the window of the dining room, Maddie watched Ash step out onto the back stoop. For a moment he paused in the light from the hallway behind him, his face raised up to the sky, his head and shoulders haloed by tiny sparkling snowflakes. He looked big and ominous in the slanting light…and slightly off balance as he shut the door and stepped into the street. Then she lost him in the swirl of snow.
Where was he going? Why hadn’t he joined them?
She sat back, staring into the darkness beyond the window as sound rose and fell around her, blending into a meaningless drone of voices and laughter, the clatter of tableware on china, the clink of glasses. Sounds that bespoke merriment, the enjoyment of a meal shared with dear friends.
Then why did she feel so disconnected from it? It was as if she had stepped into another room and was watching from afar.
“Was the news he brought so bad?” Edwina asked at Maddie’s side.
Pulling her gaze from the window, Maddie realized conversation at their table had stopped and all faces were turned her way.
Dear, beloved faces.
Edwina and Declan, their improbable mail-order marriage turning into something more than either expected. Patient Prudence, still struggling to come to terms with her abduction by Lone Tree, yet taking time to share her learning with displaced ex-slaves and itinerant railroad workers. Thomas Redstone, the Cheyenne
Dog Soldier who stayed staunchly by Pru’s side, waiting for her to realize she loved him as much as he loved her. And dear, cynical Lucinda, with her valise of purloined railroad shares, and her confused feelings about the man she had left at the altar.
This was her family now.
This was where her future lay.
How did Ash fit into that?
“What’s wrong?” Edwina’s hand fell over Maddie’s where it rested on the table beside her plate. “I declare you look like a two-headed turkey at a turkey shoot. Has that elusive Scotsman upset you?”
Ash wasn’t elusive. Far from it. It seemed every time Maddie turned around, he was there—in her sight, in her mind—intrusive, intriguing, inescapable.
But was he not part of her family, too?
Maddie glanced around the dining room and saw that most of the tables had emptied. Only a handful of diners remained at the two tables along the far wall, and they seemed too engrossed in their own conversations to take note of theirs.
Dreading the storm she was about to unleash, she turned back to the expectant faces watching her. “That elusive Scotsman is my husband.”
For a moment, silence. Then Lucinda threw her napkin onto the table. “That wretch lied to me! He said his name was Ashby. Lord Ashby.”
“It is.”
“I thought Angus Wallace was your husband?”
“He is.” Seeing the questions coming, Maddie raised a staying hand. “But he recently came into the title of Viscount Ashby, and it’s customary to address peers by their titles rather than their given names.”
“Oh, my goodness gracious.” Pru’s smile lit up her strikingly beautiful face. “I suppose that makes you a viscountess, does it not?”
“A viscountess?” Edwina clapped her hands and laughed. “Well, if that isn’t the most exciting thing. Our Maddie a real English lady. Should we curtsy, do you think?”
Lucinda’s smile was more sardonic than gleeful. “Are we now to call you Lady Ashby?”
Edwina started to add another quip when Declan reached over and gently rested his hand on the back of her neck. Immediately her entire attention turned to him. If she’d been a cat, she would have arched her back. Maddie found it endearing the power the sheriff held over his feisty, southern wife—or rather, the power the feisty southern wife granted to him.
“Why is he here, Maddie?” Declan asked.
“To take me back to Scotland.”
This time the sheriff couldn’t hold back his wife’s outburst. Other raised voices joined Edwina’s, drawing glances from the other diners. But the protests soon played out, and when they did, Declan continued in his calm, reasonable way. “Do you want to go back?”
“No. Perhaps. I don’t know.” She gave a helpless shrug. “It’s complicated.”
“But I don’t want you to leave,” Edwina protested.
“She will not go.” Pushing his empty plate aside, Thomas Redstone folded his forearms on the table.
Usually when he was in town and acting as Declan’s temporary deputy, he dressed in his “whitewashed” attire—meaning trousers rather than leggings, a collarless work shirt and blue army jacket in place of breechcloth and war shirt, and instead of a topknot with an eagle feather, his long black hair and narrow temple braids pulled back and tied with a strip of leather. But Edwina had mentioned earlier that Thomas had just returned from another of his mysterious forays into the mountains and had not taken time to stop by his room in the Brodies’ carriage house to change out of his Indian garb. He looked quite fearsome. Ash would have loved it.
Regarding Maddie through eyes as black as chips of basalt, Thomas said in his flat, solemn voice, “Unless it is what Madeline Wallace wants, he will not take her away.”
Maddie translated that to mean Ash wouldn’t be permitted to take her if she didn’t want to go. Thomas would make certain of it.
She smiled her gratitude to the Indian warrior.
He didn’t smile back but gravely nodded his dark head, which brought a sway to the eagle feather in his topknot.
A strange man, Thomas Redstone. One quarter white, three quarters Cheyenne, he straddled two cultures but seemed to belong to neither. He had gained the respect of his people by suffering the ordeal of the Cheyenne sun dance ceremony, then had gone on to earn a place with the Dog Soldiers because of his courage as a warrior. But through adversity and tragedy, he had forged a stronger bond with Declan, and when the tribes had been slowly driven from Colorado Territory, Thomas had stayed behind. Now he watched over his new tribe in Heartbreak Creek.
And Maddie loved him for it.
She loved them all. The thought of leaving these people and this place forever brought such a constriction to her throat she could scarcely breathe. And if she had to give up her photography, too…she simply wouldn’t survive it. “Ash would never force me to go back,” she said and hoped it was true. “But it’s either go to Scotland or petition for a divorce. Because Ash is now a peer, that would require an act of Parliament, which could take years.”
“Then why doesn’t he stay here?” Edwina asked.
“He can’t. As heir, he has duties to the earldom and the lands that go with it.” She looked down at the signet ring that had caused the worst of her blisters. Yet she still wore it. In fact, through all the years, she had never taken it off, thinking in some silly superstitious way that if she did, harm might befall the man who had given it to her. “Ash has ever been a creature bound by duty.”
Edwina slapped a hand so hard on the table her glass wobbled. “Well, I don’t give a fig. He treated you shabbily by not writing or coming to see you, and for that, he certainly doesn’t deserve a second chance.”
“He had reason.”
“Such as?”
Unwilling to belittle her husband by revealing his affliction and the reason he didn’t write, Maddie said instead, “He was injured, for one thing. And still suffers because of it.”
Shame heated her cheeks when she realized she hadn’t even asked him how he fared after his battle to mount the wagon wheel earlier that morning. Perhaps he had hurt his side and that’s why he hadn’t joined them.
Or perhaps he hadn’t felt welcome.
Blast. Now she would have to hunt him down and see what was wrong. She’d get no sleep otherwise.
“I had set aside a room for his use,” Lucinda said, her green eyes cutting sharply into Maddie. “As well as your usual one. But the big suite is available, if you’d prefer that.”
Maddie shifted in the chair as all eyes fastened on her. She knew her answer would determine how they would treat her husband…as an accepted part of the Heartbreak Creek family, or as an interloper to be shunned.
She sighed. Well, the big suite did have two bedrooms separated by a small sitting area, and she and her husband had just spent a day and a night in closer proximity than that. Masking her unease behind a smile, she nodded. “The big suite will do nicely.”
“I’ll have Yancey freshen the rooms and get your keys when we finish here.”
The gathering broke up soon after. Before dispersing, Edwina invited them to a late Sunday dinner at the Brodie house the next day. “We saw Pastor Rickman outside the mercantile. Apparently Fred Driscoll told him about Mr. Satterwhite, and he wants to hold a short memorial service for him after services. I thought we would eat at two. And be sure to bring along Lord Ashby or Angus Wallace or whatever he’s called,” she told Maddie. “I have some questions for the fellow.”
“Oh, dear,” Prudence murmured.
“Now, Ed,” Declan seconded as he helped his pregnant wife from her chair. “Don’t you start anything.”
“Oh, hush. As if I would.” Edwina narrowed her blue eyes at her overgrown husband. “But aren’t you just the littlest, teensiest, weensiest bit curious why he did what he did? It near broke her heart.”
“I can hear you,” Maddie chided. “I’m standing right here.”
“I don’t know what he did, or care why he
did it,” Declan said flatly. “Now come along.”
Edwina rolled her eyes. “Men.”
As the other four filed out, Maddie turned to Lucinda. “She’s gotten so big. Will she be up to the trip to Denver, do you think?”
“Edwina will do what Edwina will do. The only one who could stop her is Declan. And he wants her to come along, since he worries like a mother hen whenever she’s out of his sight.”
An incongruous image, Maddie thought, considering Declan’s size and unflappable nature.
“I doubt I’ll be able to attend dinner tomorrow.” Lucinda motioned for a kitchen worker to come clear the table. “And don’t give me that look, Maddie. It’s not because I think your husband is a cad for treating you the way he did—injured or not. But I have to ready my presentation for Denver. Now that the Denver Pacific has completed the main line from Cheyenne, they might be seeking a southern route across the Rockies, rather than relying solely on the Transcontinental. This will be our best chance to convince them to come through Heartbreak Creek Canyon.”
Maddie knew Lucinda had high hopes of using the railroads to further rejuvenate the town she was working so hard to revive. The issue of the town’s foul water still had to be resolved, but with the mine out of production and the water cannon no longer pouring dissolved chemicals into the water table, Lucinda was convinced it would only be a matter of time until the water became less harmful to the railroad tenders and locomotives.
Maddie wasn’t so sure. Judging by the brown teeth of some of the longtime local inhabitants, the water might have been unsuitable even before silver was discovered on the hillside above the town.
But she couldn’t worry about that right now. She had a husband to track down, a marriage to settle, and her own preparations to make before the trip to Denver. With so many people converging from so many walks of life, it would be a photographer’s mother lode.
“Ash intends to accompany us,” she told Lucinda as they walked toward the lobby. “He thinks I need protection.”
“Perhaps he’s right.” Lucinda paused at the front desk to get a key for Maddie and to tell Yancey to move Maddie’s things to the big suite. “Hopefully with Grant in office,” she continued, “there will be no more vetoes. But Teller and Evans are still feuding about who should be the second US Senator, and tempers are running high. If this attempt to gain statehood fails, there could be violence. We might need every protector we can get.”
