Silver Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #1) Page 11

  I slowed, and looked around myself. Across the street, a man had stopped hitching his horse to a wagon and was watching me with a scowl. A middle aged couple moving past him followed his gaze and looked away from me instantly.

  Caught between the desire to somehow go unnoticed and the need to know what was happening, I turned in a circle, taking in everyone near me on the street. For a brief, insane moment, I thought there were possibly men behind me, guns drawn, about to fight, but the sidewalk held only more pedestrians, all of them staring and talking.

  It's your imagination, I told myself. Of course, I hadn't spent much time in town as yet. People were just getting used to me. Probably knew who I was by now. But introductions would be nicer than stares and whispers.

  Moving into the grocers was a relief. The grocer's little round wife was behind the counter, finishing up with a customer before me. I waited my turn, then asked if she had ink as I'd run out. She pointed wordlessly and turned to the man behind me. A little chill chased down my neck. I fetched my ink, thinking of the last time I'd been in the shop, and when I was back to the counter, I offered up coins for the ink and asked, "How is your daughter?"

  "She fares well, thank you for asking, but she won't be using your services when the time comes. And in the future, miss, we would prefer it if you would take your trade somewhere else."

  I stepped back, confused. "Excuse me? I don't understand."

  Her glare almost stopped me from asking. "We need the Bradleighs in our town, missy. What you did was unforgivable."

  My mouth snapped shut. Surely this woman couldn't hold me responsible for the death of the Bradleigh's son? But turning slowly to observe the store, I saw more than one person hastily looking away from me. No one met my eyes. I thought again of everyone on the street, of being told people were talking and Hutch saying that people will always talk, so unconcerned.

  The red rage tried to rise again. I hadn't sold my services to the Bradleigh's household, I had been fetched by their servant, sent for by a family that wanted me to come. The child had been dead by the time I got there. The mother would have been dead before much longer had I not arrived. She would not have survived until the doctor was brought from Virginia City.

  I took my parcel and my change but did not move. The anger was strong. Too many people had judged me more stringently than they might judge the whores on C Street or the drunk miners who started fires in mines and caused cave-ins. This was going to be my home. I had wanted friendship. If that was impossible, at least I wanted truth.

  Leaning forward over the counter, I said clearly enough for all to hear: "The mother is alive for her other children because of me. My training was not at fault for their loss. My training was the reason for her life. The child was dead before I arrived. The mother is alive because I arrived. If you choose to slander me, Missus, I will take action. And rest certain, I will take my trade elsewhere."

  And left the store without losing to the tears that welled up in my eyes. The other shoppers watched me go.

  No one spoke.

  I didn't run home, but I wanted to. I forced myself to walk slowly, showing my pride every step of the journey until I could open the door to the house, let myself in, and lean against the door with the rest of the world sealed outside.

  I cried then. Because I couldn't help Hutch this way. Because I couldn't even create a life for us this way. Because I was lonely and wanted to go home and because I missed my mother and because people in this sad place I'd come to blamed me for the death of a child I'd have done anything to save.

  Hutch found me sitting at the table with the letters finished, in envelopes, addressed, neatly stacked. They were all lies. All of them said I was happy. They referred to the Barnetts and their child and to the doctor and his reticence, to Matthew and his trials, though I downplayed the shooting for fear Father would send Great Aunt Agnes to collect me and bring me back safely to Boston.

  I would not run back to Boston.

  Hutch was tired. There had been no good news at the mine, no new veins of silver, just digging throughout the day at the same dwindling supply and looking for more. I thought he missed Matthew and I feared he probably had heard the news but was in no mood to discuss it. At least let us have one night without him comforting me for some injury.

  In the morning, Mr. Toomly from the bank came to appraise the house. Hutch refused to let him in.

  "You can judge value when it's in the hands of the bank, or in the hands of that villain Seth. Until then, this is my house and my property and you are trespassing."

  When Mr. Toomly tried again, the man was nothing if not persistent, Hutch fetched his rifle from the closet and went out onto the porch with it.

  "I'll bring the Sheriff," Toomly sputtered from the bottom of the steps. He backed toward his carriage, which was almost as showy as the one belonging to the Bradleighs.

  "You do that," Hutch returned. "Even Bill Townsend isn't stupid enough to believe he can take action before the 30 days are up."

  Mr. Toomly left without further protest, and he did not return with the Sheriff. Hutch didn't leave for the mines, choosing not to leave me alone.

  We sat out on the back porch as the sunlight climbed toward it, staring into the garden. It felt as if we were living in a medieval castle, under siege. There weren't very many options we hadn't discussed the night before, from the sublime to the silly.

  There was one.

  "We could leave here," Hutch said.

  My response was immediate, and negative. This was his home. This was my home, or at least I wanted a chance for it to become so. His brother was here, or would be again, and Annie, and his nieces and nephew. He was established here, it was his home; how could he leave?

  Though, of course, I had ruined that.

  He took hold of my shoulders when I said that, and stared deep into my eyes. "You are never to say that again. A home that doesn't welcome you could never be my home now."

  And before I could properly absorb that, he continued.

  "And they're wrong. You did everything to save that child."

  "How do you know?" I asked. I was sitting next to him on the bench, and I didn't look away from the corn when I asked.

  "Because you said you did." Simple, forthright.

  I sighed.

  "My home is to be with you," Hutch said. "We could leave here. We could go to California. Or Arizona. We could go to Europe."

  "On what money?" I asked, dazed at the thought.

  "Your inheritance to the throne?" His voice was light.

  "Oh, that. I forget, sometimes."

  "Careless of you to forget your kingdom."

  "I've been busy," I said. "Hutch, what becomes of Annie and Matthew if we leave here?"

  He leaned back against the polished wood bench, his feet crossed at the ankles. For all his appearance of being relaxed, I didn't think he was. But I needed to know. I'd come between brothers who were close friends. I needed to know how much damage was still done, and how they would move past it.

  "What have I told you about my presupposing what Matthew will or will not do?"

  "That you try not to do it," I said. "But, he's your brother. And you love him. And I think he's your closest friend."

  He was silent for so long, I finally said his name again.

  In response, he said, "If we go, Matthew will come too."

  And much later, as we watched crows investigate the garden at the foot of the ragged scarecrow, he added, "I hope."

  The next day, Hutch returned to the Silver Sky and I found our household in need of various staples. With his blessing, I found the change and the list and set off for town, only to find doors closed to me, businesses unwilling to trade. Unless I wanted stiff whisky or admission into a whorehouse, I was bade take myself elsewhere.

  Which I did. I went back to the house and forced myself to learn to saddle a horse, then I tucked my skirts up out of my way, too furious to worry about fashion or custom, and road to Virginia C
ity.

  Where I promptly felt overwhelmed. It wasn't the size of Boston, but it was so very different from either Boston or Gold Hill, so many people and wagons, carriages and horses. Though, best of all, no one knew me. I found the food items we needed, at better prices, and thought perhaps the price of pride would weigh heavily on the shopkeeps in Gold Hill. When I had gathered what I needed from grocers, I left my packages in the wagon and went to the dressmaker's, looking for prices on the cloth I'd need to order for my wedding dress, the seed peals, the embroidery floss.

  "Is it your wedding?" the woman in the dressmaker's asked. She was my age, with red hair and dimples, and not the slightest idea who I was. It was a relief and a pleasure. I hadn't realized how much it bothered me, even over such a short period of time, that no one would talk to me, that they blamed me for the death of a child.

  "It is. I'm going to be making my dress, but I'd welcome any advice."

  Her eyes took on the feverish gleam of the truly obsessed and for the next quarter hour, she filled my ears and my head with details I couldn't possibly remember and suggestions for things I couldn't possibly accomplish, and accosted strangers to ask their opinion of fabrics, buttons, threads, and flosses.

  It was a lovely quarter hour, interrupted by a sudden shout from the doorway. I was standing, by then, in a clutch of women, from grandmothers to girls, all of them offering thoughts on one thing or another to do with my wedding, when a man appeared, sudden and loud, calling in.

  "Is Jennie here?"

  "She's gone for the day, visiting friends in Dayton," the shop keeper called back and then, "Oh, Lord, Frank, it isn't Caroline's time, is it?"

  Panic, as complete as that washing over the man named Jack, washed over me. I couldn't. Not after what had happened. Not just when I'd found a place where, however temporarily, I belonged. I bit my lip, ready to speak.

  "What about the doctor?" one of the women called. She was graying, older, already hustling toward the door.

  "I've called for him, he'll probably come but she wants a midwife, she's scared, it's her first," which everyone there, nodding, seemed to already know. "Thank you," he was already withdrawing from the doorway, "I'll go and find – "

  "I'm a midwife," I said. My voice sounded overly loud and overly calm and I was almost surprised to hear it.

  The women around me turned instantly. I expected scorn or censor, or that they would have heard of the blond midwife who had moved to Gold Hill. We weren't so far away, my notoriety could have spread.

  But all I found was hope in those faces, excitement in those women already mothers, a kind of awe in the younger women, and impatience in the grandmotherly sort.

  "Don't keep him waiting, girl. I'll hold your packages. After dark, come round back and ring the bell. I'll get them to you."

  I'd only bought some floss this day, and a roll of calico to make new curtains for Annie's kitchen but I didn't want to be hampered by the packages, and I didn't want to turn away from any offer of friendship. I thanked her, turned and ran toward the man in the doorway, who led the way to his buckboard.

  When we started down one of the precipitous streets of Virginia City, I thought once, almost startled at the thought, that no one knew where I was, and that, if in fact someone did know who I was, perhaps this man wasn't who he said he was, and we weren't going where he said we were.

  In the last few days, I'd learned to trust where I hadn't expected to, and learned far more when not to trust at all.

  But he fetched up in front of a modest home with bright wild flowers in the front behind a simple wooden gate. He saw me to the door, then hesitated, his face ashen.

  "You're her husband?" I asked. For all I knew he was brother, son, father. The pale greenish color of nausea made me guess husband. Men become so very uneasy in the face of life.

  "I have none of my usual equipment. Please come in with me and fetch what I need, and see your wife."

  He went even more green.

  I tried to smile but felt like kicking him. She was the one doing the work. Surely he could stand a moment in the room with her.

  "Just for a minute. To let her know you're here. Then after you fetch me the whisky to clean, you can take a glass of it out into the sun."

  The promise of whisky seemed to cheer him. I resolved to tell Hutch that when we started our family, I expected him to remain at the house as I delivered our offspring.

  Then realized simultaneously both that I had come to accept we would marry and would have a family, and that I had just outlined what likely was his worst fear.

  He would have to face that fear, almost definitely. Much as I would have to face mine.

  Caroline Drake was young and pretty. I hadn't paid much attention to her husband, except to notice the air of panic around him. She sat up in the bed, as if determined not to get into it and thus start something she wasn't certain she could finish.

  "I'm not ready for this," she told me. Her brown eyes were very wide.

  "You're more ready than you know," I said and turned to smile at her husband, who had brought the whisky, clean towels, and himself.

  "Frank," she said with relief. "You don't have to stay."

  "It's all right," Frank said, clearly lying, but he was making an effort. He handed me what I'd asked for, gave his wife a kiss on the cheek, and moved very quickly to the bedroom door. "I'll be right outside," he said, glancing at me to judge if he'd done enough.

  When I turned back to Kitty, her eyes were even wider. "How did you get him to do that?"

  "Guilt," I said. "And he loves you. Ready now?"

  She was. She had been. But alone and afraid. Now that her husband had visited her and a midwife come, she relaxed enough to let her laboring move along. It would have, without her permission, before much longer but relaxing helped.

  We talked away the time, about canning and books and her pet cat, who wanted nothing to do with what was going on in that room. I checked my watch periodically, hoping she would deliver before nightfall. Hutch would be worried to come and find me gone. Just before sunset, her daughter made her way into the world, an easy birth, far more so than I would have expected for a first time mother. I cleaned them both and wrapped the infant in swaddling and gave her to her mother before going to find her father who had taken my advice rather more to heart than necessary. Very relaxed, he was tearing up over mother and daughter when I took my leave, payment in my pockets and joy in my heart.

  The dress shop hadn't closed, though it was apt to do so with me in it if they didn't let me go before too much longer. I was introduced around, instantly forgetting so many names, but glad of the smiling faces and offers of friendship. At last, I took my parcels and made my way back to the buckboard and patient Scamp, and made my way back to Gold Hill.

  Riding back through our own town felt like riding out of summer and into a snow storm. There were still neighbors on the street, still shops open at the north end of town that I passed before turning and going up to the Longren house, and every step of the way there were people watching. Not so much whispering now, not so many people actually speaking, but a speculation, an awareness.

  I was home in time to prepare a simple supper and to put away my groceries, to start to draw the dress I hoped to sew for my own wedding, to plan for the future.

  And to think of the difference between where I had been, and where I had returned to.

  When Hutch got home, he wasn't alone. I heard voices in the drive and a chill passed through me before I recognized Hutch's voice. For a horrible instant, I had imagined the Sheriff, come to foreclose and evict 29 days early, or Mr. Bradleigh, come to avenge his son, or Mr. Seth, come to avenge his cousin. The afternoon's relief was borne away as the present came back to me.

  But the voices continued on to the barn and I went to the kitchen window to watch them pass by, and smiled with relief. Hutch, leading a horse with Annie perched on its back and Matthew leading his own horse. I watched for barely a breath, then turned back to
consider what I could do to extend dinner, to offer hospitality, and to manage not to break down in tears at the sight of friendly faces, and the sight of Hutch and Matthew turning such friendly faces to each other.

  By the time they came in from the barn, I had added to supper and was setting the table for guests. Hutch came in first, and crossed the kitchen to kiss my cheek. Matthew followed him, ducking his head in understated greeting. It was Annie who made a beeline to me, wrapped me in her arms, kissed both my cheeks, then took my hands in hers.

  "Is there anything cooking that may burn? If so, Hutch, see to it," and she was already hustling me into the sitting room, followed by protests from both men, which she shut off by simple expediency of shutting the connecting door.

  "My dear." Her blue eyes were warm. "I heard."

  My own eyes watered. I started to shake my head. I'd dealt with it so far, and intended to continue to fight, whatever I had to do to keep this from Hutch's door – but she didn't wait.

  "Mrs. Bradleigh married well. Her husband struck silver early and kept striking it and may still be striking it for all I've paid attention. They have more money than they have sense and although she may have station now, she did not always have it."

  I frowned. "What are you trying to tell me?"

  Annie took a breath and blinked, said slowly, "She's not – she didn't." She cleared her throat. "She never sold herself for money, but she had questionable morals and she was happy to let the men buy her a drink."

  "Alcohol?" I asked. From my perspective, for women it was better on the outside than on the inside.

  "Alcohol," she confirmed. "Since she married, she had two children who lived and since then, she has struggled to carry another child and have it live. She has failed, every time." I stood without meaning to, took several steps away from her, whirled and returned. "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying the woman can no longer carry a child to birth and if she does, the child is born dead. The doctor has attended her at least three times before this and she has been married half a dozen years. You should have been told. And those fools in town, they should know better."