A Fella for Frances
Donna K. Weaver
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Chapter 1: Hiding with the Billionaire
Chapter 1: A Change of Plans
About the Author
Books by Donna K. Weaver
Acknowledgments
Copyright
1
“Do that again Nick, and I’ll shoot you,” Frances Lancaster growled as she made a face at the mud he’d splattered on the hem of her ankle-high split skirt. She’d worn it instead of trousers expressly because she didn’t want to get muddy again today.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said with his own growl.
“This January thaw is a nightmare. That’s one thing I miss about Indianapolis—its paved streets.” Frances shook out her skirt. Sometimes it seemed God was punishing her for wishing all women in the new century wore pants like the men. “If it doesn’t freeze hard and snow again soon, I hate to think of what a mess the mud will make of Luke’s wedding.”
Nick Reynolds gave a snort. “A mess? The mess is going to be all the highfalutin’ guests from England who are coming for the wedding.”
The only thing either of them was sure of was how crazy her brother was about the high-society lady he was going to marry in a few weeks. Checking on the fabric for Judith’s gown was one of their reasons for coming into town.
“And we get to deal with this mud all over again in the spring?” Frances asked.
“That’s what they tell me.” They’d finally reached the boardwalk, and Nick gave a sigh of relief. “This is my first Wyoming winter too, remember.”
“We should have just tied the horses instead of leaving them at the livery.”
“I’m not sure that would have worked.” He glanced up and down the street. “Lilac City’s roads are wider than most small towns I’ve passed through. I wonder how much it would cost to pave them. Since the Spindletop gusher, they’ve been trying out new ways to use oil for all kinds of things, including asphalt.”
“Hey there, Frances, Nick.” The deputy sheriff extended his hand to the young man.
“Hello, Charles,” she said to her brother-in-law. “We were just talking about how they should asphalt these roads.”
“They may have to with more people talking about buying those new automobiles. Doc was just saying he wants one, and you can imagine him trying to drive it in all that mud. But he needs to do something since getting more women in town has meant more marriages and then babies.” Charles grinned. He and Frances’s sister were expecting their first child some time in June, and their other sister was increasing too.
Frances exchanged a glance with Nick, but his expression was thoughtful rather than humorous. Was he fretting about his trip to Texas for his kid sister’s wedding in a couple of weeks? Frances hated to admit it, but she wasn’t looking forward to his absence either. Since the day she’d arrived in Lilac City last spring, her brother had put Nick in charge of watching over her. The cowhand from Texas had become a dear friend.
“What brings you two into town?” Charles asked.
“Iodine.” Frances scraped the last of the mud from her boot on the boardwalk as she watched the nervous behavior of the saloon owner across the street. “Luke wants us to look into some coal tar too in case he needs it.”
“Mud makes it tough on the cattle,” Nick added.
“I don’t envy you,” Charles said. “At least it’s keeping everyone busy, even if only cleaning up.”
“Maybe not busy enough.” Frances met her brother-in-law’s gaze and made a subtle gesture toward the saloon owner. “Looks like old Billy is up to something again.”
“What’s that?” Nick asked, looking the way she was gesturing.
“Idiot.” She smacked Nick’s arm. “You have to be more subtle. Sherlock Holmes would never do that.”
“Sorry,” Nick mumbled, his ears under his Stetson turning red.
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Charles said, watching the older man. “Old Billy knows I’m watching him now, so he might decide not to do something stupid.”
“Besides sell rotgut?” Nick asked.
From his expression, Frances guessed he spoke from experience. She found herself a little impressed he might have done such a thing, but it disappointed her too that he’d go into a saloon. Though that might be a little unfair. A lot of her brother’s cowhands liked to frequent the place, and she considered them her friends. Few of them were churchgoers like Nick, though. Him sitting in church every Sunday listening to a sermon didn’t match the image of him carousing in a saloon.
Had he gone a little crazy when he first got to Lilac City, completely free to choose for himself without worrying about his father or brothers and sisters and their spouses always watching over him? Frances understood the feeling, since she was the youngest. It’d helped a little when she and her sisters had fled to Wyoming. They weren’t trying to force Frances to play the part of a proper lady anymore. Except on Sundays.
“You’ve drunk his booze?” she asked.
“Only once, not long after I got here.” Nick crinkled his face in disgust. “If I wanted to kill myself, there’d surely have to be a more pleasant ways to go about it.”
“I hear that stuff’s enough to drop a man dead,” Charles said with a chuckle.
A memory from her dream the previous night hit Frances, and the corners of her vision blurred. Once again, she helplessly watched her father rise from the dining table and collapse. She clenched her fists and willed herself not to cry out, grateful for once for the lump in her throat. Uncle William would pay.
Two weeks ago, she’d made the connection between a visit from him and the subsequent fading of her father’s health. Her uncle had wanted something from his brother who’d refused to give it to him. The conclusion had been simple for her: Uncle William had gotten someone to poison Father.
When she’d told Nick, he’d agreed with her but said there was no way to prove it. Well, Frances meant to do just that. Now, while she drifted to sleep each night, she went over her memories of the weeks prior to her father’s collapse. She knew, eventually, she’d remember something important or make a connection that she’d missed.
Last night she’d dreamed again of her father handing her a letter of acceptance to a new music school in New York. The image of the letter kept flashing through her mind; she’d read it so many times it was imprinted on her memory. What was she supposed to remember?
Frances closed her eyes, forcing her taut muscles to relax. She held the image in her mind and allowed her mind’s eye to flow where it wanted. It drifted to the bottom of the second page. The letter he’d submitted with her application. Her mind went to her father’s signature. Why—
Another memory hit her, this one from the train ride to Wyoming when she and her two sisters had fled Indianapolis and the marriages their uncle had meant to force them into. For probably the hundredth time, the three of them had been commiserating how their father had left them in the care of his heartless brother. Their Aunt Hortense, though estranged from her brothers because of her marriage, would have been a better choice.
Frances popped open her eyes and blurted, “The will!”
The two men stopped whatever they’d been talking about and stared at her.
“What?” Nick asked.
“The will,” Frances repeated. She looked at Charles. “Is there any chance the people at the court would let your father take a photograph of my father’s will?”
He considered for a second before asking, “I imagine there are many pages in the document. What are you thinking?”
“It’s never made sense to any of us why Father would put anything in his will about Uncle William, much less make him the executor and give him custody of us.” Frances couldn’t keep her feet still, waiting for them to understand. “What if Father didn’t?”
“But I thought wills had to be probated in a court,” Nick said.
“Exactly. What if Uncle William bribed Father’s attorney to make changes to the will?” Her words now came out in a rush. “What if the signature is a forgery?”
Charles shook his head.
“How would we go about proving it?” Nick’s confidence in her conclusion let Frances unclench her hands, even as he said, “Your uncle’s had access to your father’s papers for nine months. Lancaster would be a fool not to have destroyed anything that didn’t support his claims.”
“What are you talking about? Tell me,” Charles demanded, all lawman now.
Frances glanced around them. She didn’t want to tell the world about her dream. Besides making her sound crazy, they’d all discovered the hard way how long Uncle William’s reach could be, even though he still lived in Indianapolis.
“How about we go to the sheriff’s office?” Nick suggested. “It’d mean crossing that dang muddy pit of a road though.”
“The hotel would be better.” Charles took each of them by the elbow. “Luke mentioned the two of you made some pretty good deductions about those animal attacks last month but kept them to yourselves. That needs to stop.”
“Don’t even try to tow me down the street like I’m a criminal,” Frances said, pulling loose from her brother-in-law’s grasp and turning to glare at him.
“Ain’t no one in Lilac City going to think you’re a criminal, Frances.” Nick grinned. “A wild woman, yes, but don’t you be worrying about that. Folks in Wyoming tend to take well to ladies with spunk.”
“I’m sorry.” Charles had dropped his hands. “We still need to talk. I just wish your brother were here. I wonder if I should bring in the sheriff.”
Frances exchanged glances with Nick who gave her an encouraging nod at the hotel. She headed down the boardwalk toward it. He was usually the only one she’d share her deductions with. He didn’t act like he thought she was crazy. At least if he did, he kept it to himself. It’d actually been him and his love of the Sherlock Holmes stories which had helped Frances to fine tune her deductions. She thought she’d gotten good at it.
Fortunately, the lunch crowd was done, so Charles was able to find them a table off to the side.
“You had lunch yet?” he asked, holding out a chair for Frances.
“Yes.” She purposefully chose a seat for herself and sat in it. She ignored the glance he exchanged with Nick.
“Just coffee for us,” Charles told the waitress.
“I’ll have hot chocolate.” Frances had learned to like the sweeter drink after her future sister-in-law, Judith, had first suggested it be served at the Lucky L Ranch.
“Do you have to be contrary about everything, Frances?” Charles asked when the waitress had gone.
“It ain’t contrary when you didn’t bother to ask her what she wanted to drink.” Nick just shrugged at the deputy’s scowl.
Nick’s kid sister had made a comment about it once a few years back, when one of their older brothers had ordered for her. She’d insisted he could eat it because she wanted something else. That had been before Nick had been put in charge of Frances Lancaster. Having listened to her talk his ear off about how men always presumed to know things about women had been an eye-opener for him. Especially when he’d seen it in action.
The deputy heaved out a breath. “I wish Luke were here.”
“You said that already. Luke’s gone to the Circle B to meet with Judith and her brother about the wedding plans.” Frances lowered her voice. “Besides, I’m not that hard to work with.”
Nick’s instincts were always to come to Frances’s defense, but one of the things he’d had to learn was to keep his mouth shut. Most of the time. She didn’t appreciate a champion because she said it gave the impression she needed one. Though, every once in a while, she did. Learning to tell the difference between the two was something he was getting better at, but he’d learned to read a situation well before speaking.
“So,” Charles said when his coffee arrived, “tell me why you want me to have photographs taken of your father’s will.”
Nick straightened. He’d been dying to know what had come to Frances out on the street. She did that sometimes, mulling things over in her mind and suddenly reaching a conclusion. That was one of the reasons why she tended not to share her thoughts with the family. They really did seem to come out of nowhere, but he’d spent almost every waking moment of the last nine months in her company. He thought he’d gotten to know her well. And to read her expressions.
“I had a dream—” at the look on Charles’ face, Frances cut off what she’d been about to say.
“Dang it, Merrick,” Nick said, leaning forward. “She’s right smart, so don’t you dare shut her down.” He realized he’d spoken and snapped shut his mouth. Leaning back in his seat, he chanced a sidelong glance at her.
Frances was staring at him, her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t look like she was going to pitch her cup of hot chocolate in his face. He folded his arms and nodded toward Charles, indicating she should continue. She watched Nick for a couple more seconds before looking at her brother-in-law.
“Do you want to hear what I have to say, or are you just going to scoff?” she asked, her voice much calmer than it would have been last spring when she and her sisters had first arrived. “Because I have better things to do than cast my pearls before swine, as Judith is fond of saying.”
Charles chuckled, his shoulders relaxing. “Luke is going to have an interesting life with both you and Judith living in his house. You two ladies are a lot more alike than I think either one of you is willing to admit.”
“Tell us about that dream of yours,” Nick said, leaning forward again before the conversation could wander off the topic. “I, for one, am dying to find out what you’ve reasoned out.”
“I had a dream on Christmas Eve which reminded me of some things that happened a couple of weeks before my father died,” she said, staring into her cup. “That’s how my mind works. I’ve read up on it, and it’s called my subconscious. We see and hear things, and our brains file them away. We might never think about them again, unless something happens to bring them up. You know Luke got me a Steinway for Christmas. I didn’t think about it at the time, but it must have reminded my subconscious of the night my father died.”
At Charles’ confused expression, Nick added, “That was also when her father gave her a certificate of acceptance to a prestigious new school of music in New York.”
“I can tell my own story,” she muttered.
“Then do it.” Nick gave her boot under the table a soft kick. “The suspense is killing me.”
Frances didn’t look at Nick, but the corner of her mouth twitched. Then she straightened, all humor gone.
“It got me to thinking about how quickly my father’s health declined. He’d been in great condition for a man in his fifties. Two weeks later, he was dead—and my dream reminded me of something that had happened two weeks before.”
Charles was leaning forward now, interested. “Something to do with your uncle?”
She nodded. “I overheard them having an argument. It was odd enough having Uncle William there at all. I don’t think he’d been to our house in years. But he was demanding my father give him something. I couldn’t hear what, bu
t it was the very next day my father started getting sick.”
The deputy leaned back in his chair, tilting his head with a frown. “That’s a coincidence.”
“Maybe.” Nick held up his cup so the waitress could refill it. “But maybe not, considering how hard Lancaster’s worked to get his hands on the sisters.”
“Even so, you can’t arrest a man on such a flimsy accusation. Believe me. I wish I could. Anything to give Maude some peace of mind.” Charles looked at Frances. “She’s worried sick your uncle is going to come after you as the only remaining unmarried sister.”
“I almost wish he’d try.” Her expression was the one she wore whenever she threatened to shoot someone.
Nick’s gut tightened. William Lancaster had spent the last nine months making various attempts to bring his nieces back to Indianapolis, all using the excuse he was the executor of his brother’s will and had responsibility for the sisters. Their half-brother Luke had challenged it in court, but there’d been no ruling yet. Not that it mattered for the two older sisters since Maude had married Charles, and Doris had married Judith’s brother, Marshall Breckinridge. Still, as far as they knew, their uncle was determined to get his hands on one of the girls. That left Frances. This had to end.
“Will you see if your father can get permission to take pictures of the will?” Nick asked. Frances sent him a quick grin that made Nick’s heart leap into his throat. If she ever guessed the power she had over him, he’d never have a moment’s peace. Though, if she’d ever come to feel the same way about him, it might not be a bad thing.
“It only has to be the page where he signed,” she added.
“If it’ll give you peace of mind, I will.” Charles drained his cup. “I doubt it’ll prove anything though. You’d need something he signed to compare the signatures.”
A Fella for Frances Page 1
