Bride of the High Country

by Kaki Warner

  A knowing smirk tugged at Rylander’s wide mouth. “Remarkably so,” he said. “In fact, I’d say her recovery was just short of miraculous.”

  “You knew,” she guessed.

  “Not at first. But later, when we went to her house.”

  She sat up, almost hitting her head on the bed frame above the couch. “You went to her house?”

  “We were concerned. We didn’t know what had happened to you.”

  “You weren’t rude to her, were you? She’s just a helpless old—”

  His snort cut her off. “Helpless? Hardly. She even had Doyle intimidated.”

  “Good.” As she sank back, a sudden longing clogged her throat. What she wouldn’t give for one of her guardian’s brusque hugs right now.

  “I still don’t know why you ran, Lucinda. If you didn’t want to marry Doyle, why didn’t you just tell him?”

  “It was a sudden decision. A combination of many things.” All coming together in that single awful moment in the alcove outside the ballroom at the Fifth Avenue. Horne’s voice. Finding out Doyle was a runner. The panic and confusion and utter devastation she had felt when everything she had believed—every cherished hope and dream—had all come tumbling down around her in an instant. “He never would have let me go willingly. And you know his temper and how he can be when things don’t go his way.”

  “He wouldn’t have harmed you.”

  She thought of Mrs. O’Reilly. “How can you be sure?”

  “I wouldn’t have let him.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “You’d have gone against him on my behalf?”

  He didn’t respond, but the answer was there in his eyes.

  It shocked her, sent her mind whirling. It made no sense, and she was too weary to deal with it right then. Rising, she crossed to the candle on the wall beside the mirror and blew it out. “I’m going to bed,” she announced without looking at him. “Good night.”

  She felt his gaze follow her as she made her way to the ladder at the foot of her bed. It was difficult to climb wearing the long, heavy robe, but she wasn’t about to take it off and let him see her clad only in her sleeping gown. Once she made it onto the bed, she dropped her slippers over the side, then struggled to pull the covers over the bunched robe without banging her head on the ceiling. But when she was finally settled, she saw that the candle bolted to the wall beside her couch was still burning.

  Muttering under her breath, she sat up.

  “I’ll get it.” Rylander rose and came over to blow it out, throwing the room into shadow, except for the one candle left burning beside his couch. He went to the window closest to his berth, shoved aside the drape and opened it.

  Immediately, the smell of coal smoke from the locomotive wafted into the compartment.

  She was about to remonstrate with him when he picked up the pitcher from the table and tossed what water remained out the window. He emptied the glasses, as well. Then he shut the window, pulled the drape closed, and carried the empty pitcher and glasses to the door.

  Curious to see what he was up to, she leaned up on one elbow and watched him set the pitcher upside down against the door, then stack the glasses on top of it. They clinked gently against each other with the motion of the train. When he was satisfied they were balanced just so, he straightened to find her watching him.

  “If the door opens, we’ll hear it,” he explained, walking back to his couch.

  “And then what?” She hadn’t noticed if he was wearing a gun.

  “Then I’ll take care of it.” Leaning over, he blew out the candle beside his berth. Instantly the compartment was plunged into darkness.

  She lay back down. The inky blackness seemed to magnify every sound, as if her sense of hearing was compensating for her lack of sight. Over the rhythmic clatter of the wheels, she tried to listen for movement so she would know where he was and what he was doing. She heard the rustle of cloth—was he undressing? Then a soft thump followed by another—his shoes? More rustling. Was the man stripping off everything? Unwelcome and shocking images filled her mind. She had seen naked men before. But she had never imagined Tait Rylander in that state. Yet now she couldn’t not picture his tall form and long limbs—

  A series of creaks from the ladder jerked her out of those lurid imaginings. Then a heavy whumping sound, followed by more groans and creaks, rustling and thumps. A heavy sigh, then silence.

  Sleep forgotten, she stared blankly up at where she imagined the ceiling to be. It felt more than strange to be lying in utter darkness, hearing another person—a male person—toss and turn not ten feet away. Intimate. Disturbing. She would never be able to—

  “You can take off your robe now, Miss Hamilton.”

  “W-What?”

  “I promise I won’t look.”

  She heard the amused condescension in his tone and it made her snappish. “I’m perfectly fine, thank you. And it’s Hathaway now.”

  “Very well. I bid you good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  It was absurd. Ridiculous. Mrs. Throckmorton would faint if she knew.

  She stared up into the inky blackness, her thoughts giving way to fear as it often did when darkness closed around her.

  “Mr. Rylander?” she called after a moment.

  A sigh. “What, Miss Hathaway.”

  “Please don’t take me back.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “With Doyle’s money. Ironic, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not his money. It’s mine. He gave it to me.” And she couldn’t survive without it. Hearing the edge of desperation in her voice, she fought for control before she humiliated herself by begging or bursting into tears.

  His stillness added weight to the blackness, made it hard to breathe. “He doesn’t care about me,” she said after a while. “He never really has. You know that.”

  Silence.

  “He would be much happier with someone else.”

  “Are you ever going to sleep?”

  “Please, Mr. Rylander.” This time she couldn’t keep the wobble from her voice. “Let me go.”

  The silence seemed to last forever before it finally ended on a deep sigh. He sounded weary. Defeated almost. “All right. After this thing with Smythe is settled, I’ll let you go.”

  She sat up, then flinched when her head bumped the ceiling. “Truly? You won’t take me back?”

  “Truly. Now go to sleep.”

  Tears clogged her throat. It was a moment before she could speak. “Thank you, Mr. Rylander.”

  “You’re welcome, Miss Hamilton. Good night.”

  “Hathaway. It’s Hathaway now, remember?”

  “Fine.”

  “But I’d rather you not tell Doyle—”

  “For the love of God, woman—”

  “Of course. You’re tired. We’ll talk more tomorrow.” Slumping back to the mattress, she smiled tearfully up at the ceiling. “Good night, Mr. Rylander.”

  “Jesus.”

  * * *

  The train made several brief water stops during the night. Each time, the absence of motion pulled her out of deep sleep, and she would awaken with a gasp, surrounded by a suffocating press of dark, silent nothingness, and for one terrifying moment she would think she was back in the closet at Mrs. Beale’s.

  Then she would hear the slow, steady breaths of the man in the other berth, and her throat would relax, and her heart would cease its furious rhythm, and she would lie back to wait for the train to start moving again.

  But finally the cycle ended when she awoke to open drapes and bright sunlight. Relieved that the interminable night was over, she looked around.

  Rylander was gone, his bed latched back up against the ceiling, no
sign of him left in the room. Hurrying in case he returned, she climbed out of her berth and straightened her twisted robe. She was brushing the tangles from her hair when she heard his voice outside in the hall.

  After making certain she was presentable and covered, she opened the door.

  He stepped past, holding a tray with two steaming cups and two napkin-covered plates. “We missed breakfast, but this should tide us over until we reach Harrisburg. After we tend our errands, I promise to take you to lunch. You prefer coffee, I believe?”

  Good morning to you, too. “Correct,” she answered, a bit surprised that he remembered. Moving to the tray he had set on the table by the window, she studied the selection of fruit and pastries, wondering how much of her money had been spent on the delicacies. “How late is it?” she asked, carrying her cup and a scone to the couch under her berth.

  “After ten. We’re due in Harrisburg in about an hour and a half. Give or take.” Picking up a piece of toast and his cup of black coffee, he took them to his own couch, where he sprawled with a sigh, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. His dusty shoes almost reached to her couch.

  She studied him as she ate. It was apparent he hadn’t had as restless a night as she had. The bristles were longer—had it truly been less than thirty-six hours since she had walked with him into the ballroom at the Fifth Avenue? Yet he looked much less haggard and rumpled this morning, although his shirt, from what she could see of it beneath the vest and coat, still looked as if he’d slept in it, which she fervently hoped he had.

  “I’m confused,” she said, brushing scone crumbs from her lap.

  “About what?”

  “I thought you were letting me go. Now you’re offering to take me to lunch.”

  He looked at her across the narrow room, his expression betraying nothing, his brow creased in a scowl—which she now recognized as thoughtful concentration, rather than anger. “Is there any chance you could reconcile with Doyle?” he asked.

  “None whatsoever.”

  He finished his toast, wiped his mouth, then said, “What about the railroad certificates? Do you intend to return them?”

  “Why? He gave them to me.”

  “He gave them to his wife.”

  Irritation mingled with guilt and made her voice sharp. “What do you suggest? That I send them back with you and flee penniless into the night?”

  “Sounds rather dramatic. And hardly penniless. Mrs. Throckmorton is—”

  “Her wealth is in trust. None of it will ever come to me.” She made an impatient gesture. “Just tell him you couldn’t find me. Tell him I’m dead.”

  “And when you try to sell the certificates?” He let the sentence hang.

  Setting the empty coffee cup on the ledge beside her couch, she crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the window.

  They were heading into the Appalachians now—or Alleghenies, as some called them—and fields were giving way to rolling hills dotted with stands of elm and alder and pine. The train had slowed as the locomotive pulled the grades, and she could tell by the difference in sound whenever they crossed over a culvert or trestle. She had never been this far west before, and at any other time would have enjoyed the scenery.

  It was several minutes before he spoke again. “Both Doyle and I are on the board of the Hudson and Erie. We would know immediately of a sale when the bank wired to confirm authenticity of the serial numbers on the certificates.”

  She knew that. Which was why she wasn’t selling the stocks, but borrowing against them . . . and at less than face value. That way, when she didn’t repay the loans, the banks could sell the certificates she had given them as surety at their true value and thus recover their money . . . assuming the market didn’t weaken. And by the time Doyle traced the serial numbers back to the banks, she would be miles away, using a new name, and completely untraceable. Did Rylander think she was as ignorant as Doyle seemed to?

  Apparently not. “But you’re too smart to leave a trail like that, aren’t you, Miss Hathaway?” He actually smiled as he said that. Like he was impressed.

  The man confused her at every turn.

  “So if you didn’t sell them,” he went on, “you must have taken out a loan using the certificates as collateral.”

  “Actually it was a line of credit.”

  “Ah. Thus buying yourself extra time. Clever. Which bank?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  His dark brows rose. “He’ll still find out. What then?”

  “Hopefully I’ll be long gone. Like you promised.” She gave him a look, daring him to contradict her.

  He didn’t. But he didn’t confirm that, either. “The lack of ethics doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

  Of course it bothered her. But the alternatives of being married to a runner or starving in the streets bothered her a great deal more. “Suppose I gave him back half the certificates?” she offered, just to get him to leave her alone. That would still leave her enough to make a new start.

  He shook his head. “That won’t work. He has to maintain possession of all the shares to control the vote.”

  “What vote?”

  “He’s hoping to take over the board of the Hudson and Erie by voting out the current chairman and putting himself in his place. Then he can push for a merger with his own line. But to get enough votes to accomplish that, he needs your shares and his.”

  “So he was hiding ownership by putting them in my name.”

  “Well . . . technically, I suppose—”

  “And giving the certificates to me,” she cut in as it all started to make sense, “was less a gift than an attempt to defraud the railroad.”

  She saw by his expression that she had caught him off guard. Surprise, a sudden wariness, perhaps even a spark of admiration showed in his face.

  Or perhaps not. The man was devilishly hard to read.

  “Not defraud,” he argued. “It might seem murky, but it’s not illegal. In fact, it happens all the time in business.”

  “Does it?” She smiled sweetly, feeling a lessening of the guilt that had been nagging at her. “And doesn’t that lack of ethics bother you, Mr. Rylander?”

  He had no answer for that.

  Now that she knew for certain Doyle had simply intended to use her and thought her too stupid to realize it, she felt immeasurably better about taking the certificates. “If giving me the certificates was not illegal,” she went on, “then my keeping them should not be illegal, either. He signed them over to me, after all. In front of witnesses. You may remind him of that when you return to New York without me.” She almost laughed at his expression.

  “Now if you will excuse me, Mr. Rylander.” Keeping a grip on the armrest—although when the train was climbing, as it was now, the rocking wasn’t nearly as pronounced—she rose from the couch. “I would like to get dressed. You’re taking me to lunch, I believe, as a good-bye treat.”

  He blinked up at her with an expression of such consternation it was hard to keep her face straight. “What about Smythe?” he asked.

  “A problem, to be sure. Which is why, when we’re in Harrisburg, I’d like for you to advise me on the purchase of a firearm.”

  “Good God.”

  “Does that mean you won’t?”

  “Have you ever fired a gun?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Then how hard can it be?”

  Instead of being insulted by the barbed remark, he burst into laughter.

  It shocked her, that unguarded response. And seeing the change it brought to his normally somber face made her smile back. How much more she might have liked this man had he revealed this approachable side of his nature sooner.

  “You’re a remarkable woman, Miss Ha
thaway.”

  Thinking the same thing about him but not about to admit it, she motioned toward the door. “If you don’t mind . . .”

  Still grinning, he rose. “Be quick about it. We’ll only be in Harrisburg an hour or so, and we have a lot to do.”

  Eight

  “Place hasn’t changed much,” Rylander observed as he helped Lucinda step from the train, his attention on the other departing passengers.

  She turned to follow his gaze, fear making it hard to breathe. But she saw no one who resembled Smythe, even though it had been fifteen years since she’d last seen him. Relieved, she stepped onto the platform. “You’ve been to Harrisburg before?”

  “In sixty-three. The town may have crept a little deeper into the corn fields in the last seven years, or stretched farther up and down the banks of the Susquehanna, and there’s definitely more smoke in the air from the foundries and gas works, but it’s still a pretty town.”

  Lucinda had to agree. Red brick buildings, lofty church spires, busy streets. Like many Pennsylvania towns, especially those with huge stores of coal nearby to fuel industry, it seemed to have prospered with the growth of the railroads.

  “Seems there will be a slight delay before departure,” Rylander told her as they walked toward the station. “George says we have at least two hours. Shall we walk? Or would you rather take a horsecar?”

  After being forced to stay in that small compartment to avoid Smythe, the idea of stretching her legs sounded heavenly to Lucinda. “Walk.” But as soon as the word left her mouth, she caught her toe on a nail protruding through the rough boards and she stumbled forward.

  Before she could fall, he dropped her valise—which she had refused to leave behind—and caught her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.” Laughing and embarrassed, she straightened, feeling clumsy and rather breathless for some reason. “Although I may have to learn to walk on solid ground again after battling the constant motion of a railcar for so long.”

  He tucked her arm through his, picked up her valise, and continued into the station. “Until you do, I’ll be here to catch you.”