She hustled off just as a man strode up the road. Sarah squinted at him. It wasn’t Daniel, who hadn’t sent a telegram, even though he’d likely arrived in Chicago by now. Hastily, she reminded herself not to think about him, lest she cry for certain.
The man spotted her staring and he waved his hat, the sunlight reflecting off his balding head.
Sarah frowned. What could he want?
“Miss Tha . . . oh, very sorry, Miss Whittier. Slip of the tongue.” The reporter grinned, making an elaborate bow before tapping his hat back on. “An unhappy day for you, I suppose.”
“Do you intend to write an article about my grief, Mr. Jackson? I would have thought you’d exhausted any curiosity about me.”
“Now, now, can’t a man simply be interested in checking that you’re recovering from your injuries?” He nudged her arm. “I do wonder what the next occupants would think if they knew about all the gunplay in this charming house. Hope you’ve cleaned up the blood.”
“Thank you, we have.” The secretary still bore a chink from a gunshot, though.
“They’ve set a hearing for Frank Burke in a couple of weeks, by the way. Seems they’ve composed a lengthy list of crimes, beyond your little burglary and shooting. Receiving stolen goods. A pile of unpaid bills to some rough customers. A fistfight here or there. A theft up on Russian Hill.” The reporter contemplated the house as Emma carried what had to be the final box onto the porch. “Don’t expect there’ll be any trouble convicting him. He’ll be locked up for a good while.”
“Thank you for letting me know.” In the end, there might be justice for Anne.
He flashed a larger grin and bowed again. He was the most ridiculous fellow. “I hear—I have good sources, Miss Whittier—he hasn’t stopped ranting about those nuggets, though. Insists that some Irishman he knows wouldn’t have lied to him about Mr. Cady wanting to hide some gold. He also claims his woman would have discovered the location from you if she’d had a little more time.”
Sarah peered at him. “I don’t understand. Do you mean that Anne Cavendish was helping Frank Burke in some way?”
“Seems so, Miss Whittier. She was feeding him all sorts of information, like the fact that your benefactor had been to the Black Hills and struck it rich with his partner. Information Mr. Burke was happy to share with me in exchange for a few silver coins.” Jackson puffed out his chest. “Didn’t take much looking on my part to find out the name of that partner and where he lived. And that you were connected to him. Which led to a much more interesting tale than the stories about a stash of gold in your house.”
“Daniel Cady didn’t tell you about my family in Los Angeles.” Jackson guffawed. “That killjoy? He went on about honor and not writing about you.” He shrugged. “I ignored him.”
She’d been horribly wrong about Daniel and misled by Anne. Sarah had trusted her, never imagining one of her girls might be a potential thief. She’d warned Sarah to be careful, though, more than once. But she’d been too afraid of Frank to confess her role. Poor Anne.
“I should tell you, Mr. Jackson, that there was some hidden gold,” she said, noticing how his eyes lit at the possibility of a fresh tidbit of news. “One lone nugget small enough to fit into a thimble. Not much of a treasure to warrant all the gossip it stirred or your interest in Josiah Cady and me.”
The reporter pressed a palm to his chest. “You have my deepest regrets for any trouble I might have caused you,” he said, failing to sound sincere. “However, it’s not too late to tell your side of the story about your escapade in Los Angeles.”
“Edouard Marchand stole from my uncle and I didn’t help him. That’s all of the story you need to know.”
“If you ever change your mind—”
“I won’t.” She was sick to death of gold and the greed it bred in men’s hearts, what that greed persuaded them to do. “I won’t because I don’t want to think about Edouard Marchand or Frank Burke or gold nuggets ever again.”
“They’re out in the garden.” Mirabeth Gray motioned for Daniel to come into the house, shutting the door behind him. As he passed her, he caught a whiff of her rose-oil perfume and recalled another woman whose hair smelled of roses. “They’ll be so happy you’re home.”
“And I’m glad to be back.” Even though Chicago no longer felt as much like home as it used to, not when his heart lay elsewhere. “You’re looking well, Mirabeth.”
She smiled and brushed a hand over the swell of her abdomen hidden by her checked cotton gown. “I’m glad to have an excuse not to wear a corset for a few months.” She gestured down the hall toward the kitchen. “Would you like some tea or lemonade? A bite of something to eat?”
“I hate to impose on your hospitality for too long, especially after taking care of the girls for all these months.”
“Pooh. They’re no bother at all.” She shushed him with a flick of her fine-boned hands.
“But it’s time they go. As soon as they can pack their things, I’ll get them out of here.”
“No rushing off, Daniel Cady. I insist you stay for dinner.” Mirabeth said, grabbing his wrist as if he might escape right then if she didn’t hold on to him. “Michael will be furious with me if I let you leave without feeding you. Besides, we want to hear about your trip.” Her warm eyes softened. “I’m sorry about your father, by the way.”
“I am too. I didn’t get a chance to . . .” Daniel inhaled to loosen the tightness in his throat. “I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye to him, and I wish I had.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “That’s a change.”
“It’s a long story, Mirabeth.” Somewhere between San Francisco and Chicago, he’d forgiven Josiah for being a dreamer. He believed he’d even be able to forgive his grandfather for being a cold, hard man. Forgive, Daniel. Forgive. His mother had been right and he, so wrong. The only person he’d hurt with his resentment and anger had been himself.
And Sarah.
He smiled at Mirabeth. “A long and boring story. But I’ll stay for a meal and tell you about the Wild West, if you insist, and about a few of the folks I met out there.”
She tilted her head, examining him. “I’d love to hear about all of it. And about who it is who’s taken the hurt from your eyes.”
His smile broadened; they’d known each other a long time. “Mirabeth, you tell that husband of yours that he’s a lucky man.”
“I do often, Daniel,” she teased. “Let me fetch the girls.” After affectionately squeezing his hand, she swept off to the back of the house.
He heard the rear door open and her call for his sisters. In seconds, feet pounded up the steps and two twin girls, shrieking happily, hurtled down the hall.
“Daniel! You’re home!” they yelled simultaneously, launching themselves into his arms, a pile of ruffled dresses and dark hair. His heart swelled with love.
“I’m home, girls.” Almost all the way home.
Her belongings relocated to a rented room near the center of town, Sarah went back to the Nob Hill house, tired and aching, to collect her bag and say farewell to the neighbors.
Ah Mong was seated on the porch when she arrived, his arms folded inside his sleeves. Right then, he looked like such a young and lost boy, and she wanted to hug him close, ruffle the blue-black hair always tightly knotted in a braid. But she needed more comforting than her neighbor’s Chinese servant did.
“They have taken everything away?” he asked.
“They’ve taken everything that was mine.” She lifted her bustle and plopped onto the porch next to him, her skirts billowing around her. Sarah stared at the street, watched a cart clip-clop up the road, a pair of children giggle as they tossed a ball. “I am going to miss this place desperately.”
“I am sorry you must go, Miss Sarah.”
“I’m not going far. The room I’ve rented is just a few blocks from the shop.” Its proximity not very important, if customers didn’t come and they couldn’t pay the rent for long.
“But you
will not be here,” he contended. “For me to protect like Mr. Josiah asked.”
“Oh, Ah Mong.” She embraced him then, the silk of his tunic whispering against her sleeves. He squirmed when she held on too long. “I’ll be safe enough where I’m going. Mr. Josiah would be satisfied that you’d done your duty.”
The boy didn’t appear convinced.
Sarah stood, brushing down the creases in her skirt, and smiled at him. “I’ll send Mrs. McGinnis out with some lemonade, if there’s any left and the glasses haven’t all been stored away.”
Inside the house, the furniture had been covered in sheets, the clocks allowed to wind down, the curtains drawn. Rufus’s chair had been cleaned of fur and moved from the second floor landing. She hated to see it gone. She wandered into the parlor, feeling as empty as the echoing space, stripped of the paintings and the rug that had covered the table. Had it been only three weeks ago that the girls had gathered in this room and gossiped over the newly arrived Daniel Cady, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead?
The tears she’d held back all day slid down her cheeks.
“Miss Sarah.” At the doorway to the parlor, Mrs. McGinnis’s voice was gentle. “I’ve brought your portmanteau downstairs and thought you might want this.”
She held out Josiah’s small Bible, the one that had been secured in the box with the letters from his wife.
“It’s Mr. Cady’s, by right,” said Sarah, wiping her face.
“Didna think he would have much use for a Bible. The heartless creature.”
“Being heartless,” Sarah responded, “I would have thought you’d say he has a greater use for it, not less.”
“Och.” The housekeeper fisted her hips. “He’d need to come back in order to claim the book, now wouldn’t he?”
I shall be back, you know . . .
Sarah took it from her. “Maybe he’ll surprise us,” said Sarah, not permitting melancholy to color her voice.
Mrs. McGinnis looked skeptical. “Mr. Josiah would have preferred you keep it, Miss Sarah. You canna leave here with nothing of his.”
“I have his portrait,” she pointed out.
“That’s nae what I mean, lass.”
Sarah considered the book in her hands, small enough to fit within the span of her fingers, the tooled-leather cover supple and soft. She rubbed a thumb against the gilt-edged pages.
“A memento, then,” she said. A memento of the man who’d loved her as dearly as any father ever loved a daughter. “Is there lemonade left? I promised Ah Mong some.”
“Certainly there is, Miss Sarah.” Mrs. McGinnis left to fetch a glass for the boy.
Sarah flipped back a corner of the cloth covering the parlor settee and perched on the edge. She started to leaf through the Bible and a scrap of paper fell out. Retrieving it, she saw that it was a pencil sketch she’d done of Josiah smoking a cigar by the garden cherub statue.
She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “Josiah, why did you save this? It wasn’t even any good!”
He had tucked it inside a chapter of Matthew, using the sketch to keep his place. Some of the verses had been underlined—No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Across time, he was still speaking to her.
Have faith. Trust that God will take care of you.
Sarah firmed her grip on the Bible and gazed out the window, at the shadows lengthening between the houses and the trees rustling in the breeze. She could try again to have faith and trust in God. Her mother would tell her to try again.
God’s mercy endures forever, Sarah Jane. It reaches from the highest heights to the deepest depths, and you are not beyond its grasp.
Try again.
She had nothing to lose.
Except hopelessness.
Twenty-Nine
Two months later
“It will take several passes through the press before the inked stone is ready to give up an image onto the paper, Phoebe,” said Sarah. She observed the girl as she cranked the handle that slid the carriage beneath the press head, running the scraper over the leather tympan covering the lithograph stone and the test paper, her mouth fixed in a frown. “The entire process requires patience.”
Phoebe blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and looked over. “I try to grab patience, Miss Sarah, but it escapes me.”
Sarah smiled. Phoebe had come so far since she’d taken over the work once meant for Anne; she was more talented and far more patient than she gave herself credit for. “You are almost there, and I know Mrs. Linforth will be pleased with the final print.”
“She would be more pleased if Anne had done it.”
“Anne is too content in Seattle to come back here and save you, Phoebe,” Sarah teased.
After more words of encouragement, Sarah stepped around the partition separating the lithograph area from the main shop, looked around her, and felt satisfaction. The first-floor space was much smaller than the shop they’d had on Sansome and not a corner location, but this one was thirty dollars a month cheaper and good enough for Pacific Custom Design Studio. At Sarah’s request, Mr. Pomroy had helped them locate a less expensive location and had generously negotiated the favorable lease rate. Also, contrary to his worst fears, the news story about her past in Los Angeles hadn’t chased away customers. In fact, Sarah thought, the bad press had had the opposite effect. Folks were either very forgiving or insatiably curious about the “notorious Miss Whittier.” And once they were inside the shop, anyone could see the quality of the work on display.
Sweeping fingertips across her Rêve d’Or brooch and wishing her mother could be there to share her satisfaction, Sarah strolled through the new shop. She straightened a watercolor of the Seal Rocks she’d recently finished and hung on the wall, buffed away a miniscule smudge on one of the glass cases. Turned her attention to the girls. Cora was touching up a border of flowers on a hand-painted plate. Minnie was helping a customer review possible designs for an advertising poster and Emma, Sarah knew, was working on the accounts in her compact room at the back.
She was blessed. More blessed than she would have dreamed just two months ago. They had trusted in God and managed to find a way. Survival had required that she sell every painting and miniature she could, and she’d also needed to take on a few art students who weren’t deterred by the scandal. With the help of Mr. Samuelson’s loan and the girls’ generous offers of reduced pay—Sarah had insisted they accept some money, and soon she’d be able to increase their salaries to the amount she’d originally promised—they had definitely found a way.
The shop bell rang and Lottie swept through the opening, a sudden wind catching the robin’s-egg-blue feathers in her coordinating hat. The color was high in her cheeks and she looked, if possible, even lovelier than she had before she’d been sent to St. Helena. She’d been allowed to return to San Francisco after the Lawsons had repeatedly asked after her, finally dropping a strong hint that their very eligible son was missing her company. Mrs. Samuelson, informed by Mr. Samuelson via telegram of this development, had put Lottie on the next train home.
“You will never believe what I discovered about the auction, Sarah,” she said, making a quick perusal of Cora’s artwork and complimenting the girl.
“You didn’t leave Gabriel outside, did you?” asked Sarah, searching through the large shop windows for the angular features of Lottie’s beau, but two easels displaying watercolors obscured her view of the sidewalk.
“He dropped me off. He had business to attend at the shipping office and could not come in.” Her eyes we
re bright with the thought of him. “I shall see him at supper tonight.”
Sarah felt the briefest twinge of envy over Lottie’s happiness. She was content with her life as it was, however, and wanted only the best for Daniel. He’d sent a solitary telegram three weeks after he’d left San Francisco saying he was in Chicago with his sisters and that was all. No words of affection. No more promises of return.
“I was hoping to see Gabriel,” Sarah said, focusing on matters that were under her control, “in order to thank him for kindly recommending our services to his sister-in-law. She has commissioned a lovely set of invitations—”
“Sarah!” Lottie sounded impatient. “I apologize for interrupting, but do you not want to hear what I learned about the house auction and why it never took place?”
Sarah folded her arms and tilted her head. “What did you learn, Miss Samuelson, that is so urgent for me to know?”
“The auction was not halted because there was some issue with the deed, as we had surmised,” she answered, pausing dramatically. “It never occurred because Mr. Cady contacted the real estate agent and told him to cancel it!”
“Why would he do that?”
Lottie’s brows perked and her eyes took on the most mischievous gleam. “Perhaps you should go outside and ask him.”
Sarah’s breath stuttered and she didn’t dare move for fear the moment and Lottie’s words would prove to be an illusion and the least motion would shatter them. He is here.
“Oh!” gasped Cora, exchanging looks with Minnie.
Sarah hadn’t realized the girls had been listening. Thank goodness the customer had left and not been witness to Sarah’s befuddlement.
Minnie grinned at her. “Hurry up, Miss Sarah, before he gets away!”
Sarah fumbled with the strings of her apron, yanking it off and tossing it aside. “If he’s come all the way from Chicago, Minnie, he’s not going to get away.” He had come all the way from Chicago.
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