Broken Vows (2 page)

      
“Better the gown than you if those men catch us,” Rebekah replied tartly.

      
That moved her friend to hasty action. “Oh well, I shall just have to buy a new one if this gets torn, but how ever shall I explain to Mama about getting so mussed up?”

      
“You'll think of something. You always do,” Rebekah said, her thoughts already racing ahead, imagining and discarding plans to get a message to the Kilkenny Kid.

* * * *

      
In the arid isolation of western Nevada, whiskey cost more than water and only one death in a dozen was from natural causes. But in the river valleys of the Truckee, the Carson, and the Walker, the alkali wilderness bloomed. Amid the pungent tang of sage and spruce, the bawls of fat cattle were heard. Orchards lay heavy with pears and apples while patient farmers tilled the earth, harvesting wheat and corn, peas and potatoes. This verdancy of the western valleys owed less to the industry of agriculture than it did to the mining boom that created the demand for its produce, for between the Truckee and the Walker lay the richest cache of gold and silver ever known to man, the Comstock Lode, whose brief yet brilliant magnetism created the state of Nevada.

      
The glitter of the gold and silver camps was miles removed from the prosperous little cow town of Wellsville, north of the bustling railhead of Reno in the Truckee River Valley. Life moved at a more prosaic pace for a citizenry relatively untouched by the lure of overnight riches. The community had been built on the solid values of frugality and hard work, reinforced with rock-hard religious piety.

      
Rebekah did not feel the least bit pious while she waited for an assignation with a forbidden man. As she paced nervously across the bandstand in the park, she was not certain if she was afraid he would not come or that he would. It was nearly noon, the time she had set for the rendezvous in her note to him. She had bribed Zack Springer, a neighbor's boy from her Sunday school class, to deliver the message to the Irish fighter. Word had quickly spread about how the Kilkenny Kid had defeated Cy Wharton, and Zack's eyes had nearly popped from their sockets when she had made her request to the boy.

      
“You know the Kilkenny Kid? Wow!”

      
“No! That is, we've never met—been introduced.” Her fumbling explanations had gone downhill from there. She had simply thrust the note and a coin in the lad's grubby hand and sent him to the den of iniquity where the Irishman was staying.

      
Now, as she waited to see if the Kilkenny Kid would answer her summons, she marveled at the impulsive folly that had led her to this pass. Was it only yesterday morning that she and her best friend Celia Hunt had been shopping for hats? Well, Celia had been shopping. As usual, Rebekah had only been along to watch enviously.

      
“I still think I should take the pink. It would contrast with my hair,” Celia had said, smoothing a small, slightly plump hand over her auburn curls as she preened before a large mirror in the millinery shop, admiring the smart straw bonnet perched atop her head.

      
“It is lovely, but perhaps the yellow would be better,” Rebekah had replied, dubious about the combination of pink bonnet and red hair, even though her companion seemed oblivious of the clashing colors.

      
Shrugging her shoulders, Celia said, ‘‘Well, I shall solve the matter quite simply and take them both. Unless you would like the pink? You did seem taken with it.”

      
Rebekah shook her head. “No, really, you take it and the yellow, Celia.” She turned away and walked across the small, crowded shop. Honestly, there were times when it seemed her friend was as dense as the pines around Lake Tahoe. Rebekah’s father, Ephraim Sinclair, was the local Presbyterian minister, while Celia's father, Tyler Hunt, owned the town's largest mercantile. Celia's wardrobe contained all the latest fashions. Rebekah had to be content with plain, inexpensive clothes, often castoffs from her older sister Leah.

      
Celia was dressed in a beautiful blue silk suit with a smart bustle and fitted jacket. Rebekah wore an old green sprigged-muslin frock with a childishly rounded neckline and gathered skirt. How nice it would be to have beautiful things.
And how selfish of you to think only of yourself.
It seemed she was constantly upbraiding herself for the sins of covetousness and vanity. Her mother was right. She was indeed an iniquitous sinner.

      
There were so many less fortunate than she in the mining camps, not to mention right here in Wellsville. Why the poor Chinese who worked in town had only tents to live in and were humiliated and threatened every waking hour. Of course, her mother said that was their own fault for being heathens and rejecting God's word, but she couldn't feel that the Lord wanted anyone to live so meanly or to be treated in such an unchristian manner. Her father—gentle, scholarly Ephraim, impractical and unworldly—was the soul of kindness and was chiefly responsible for his younger daughter's concern for others, much as his wife Dorcas was responsible for Rebekah's overwrought sense of guilt.

      
Yet Rebekah occasionally had shocked both her parents; for beneath the layers of propriety beat the heart of a free spirit who secretly read her father's Greek mythologies, scandalous stuff to assault the eyes of a proper young lady, or indeed even the eyes of the bold adventuress who had slipped off with Celia when they were in pigtails to swim naked in the pond behind the Hunts' summer house. Her childish pranks and escapades had always met with stern retribution, sometimes in the form of Dorcas's canings and even more devastatingly when her beloved father admonished her with stricken bewilderment in his hazel-green eyes. In all of nearly eighteen years, Rebekah had felt like an outcast and never understood why.

      
“Oh, fiddle, Rebekah Beatrice Sinclair, you look as hangdog and pious as your sister Leah. Whatever has come over you? It must be the heat. I allow this is one of the hottest summers we've had since that day when we slipped out of old Miss Framinghan's Sunday school class and went skinny dipping.” Celia's round, cheerful face had split with a fond grin of remembrance as she clasped her friend's arm with genuine affection. “I suppose we're too old to do that again…”

      
Rebekah's mood had lightened at once. Bother the silly old hats she could not afford! A chuckle bubbled up inside her. “No, I don't think that muddy old pond would be so alluring now as it was when we were nine years old. Why not take a stroll up to Benton Street?”

      
Celia's big brown eyes had almost popped from their sockets! “Benton Street! Where all the saloons and fallen women are? Ooh, how absolutely delicious!”

      
“Well, we wouldn't have to go that far down the street—just sort of walk along the edge of the glitter district where no one would accost us.” Rebekah could see her mad impulse had taken hold of Celia, who clapped her hands in glee.

      
The two young women had walked well past the park, up Elm Street to where it intersected with Benton, when they saw the crowd. Then, Celia had suggested they view the fight from the balcony of the abandoned newspaper office…

      
Returning to the present, Rebekah looked around the deserted park and shook her head. Of all her escapades, this was indeed the most dangerous—and exciting! Would he come?

      
As he headed to the park, Rory reread the note again, wondering if he was a fool to venture out on such a wild goose chase.

      
“Mr. Kilkenny,” it had begun. He chuckled at the salutation once more, then continued to scan the page. Someone was going to drug his water bucket during the fight tonight.

      
If he wanted to know who, he should come to the bandstand in the town park at noon. Even before he rounded the thick copse of cedars at the edge of the park, he knew it was her. His blonde. She was wearing another simple dress, a demure pastel blue with a frilly high lace collar that looked like a recent addition. As the product of an orphanage himself, he recognized made-over clothing when he saw it.

      
He came up behind her silently as she paced. “Are you my golden guardian angel—or are you trying to make up for nearly getting my head knocked off yesterday?”

      
Rebekah whirled around with a sharp intake of breath. The bluest eyes she had ever seen stared out of that arrestingly beautiful, albeit a bit battered, face. He wore a blue shirt, open at the collar and unbuttoned indecently low to reveal a tuft of black chest hair. The soft fabric clung to his broad shoulders, and his denims hugged his long legs. He was grinning now and looked much younger than he had during the fight. She judged him to be no more than a year or two older than she. “You startled me, Mr. Kilkenny.”

      
“It's Madigan. Rory Madigan. The Kilkenny Kid is only a ring name,” he said, taking the bandstand's six steps in swift, long-legged strides.

      
When he stood before her, he looked much larger than he had from her vantage point on the porch the day before. He was at least six feet, probably a bit more, compared to her five-foot-five. In high-heeled shoes, Rebekah seldom had to crane her neck to meet a man face-to-face. She fought to regain control of her scattered wits. “I'm Rebekah Sinclair, Mr. Madigan, and I—”

      
Before she could go any further, he raised her hand and saluted it with a soft kiss. “Charmed, Miss Sinclair,” he murmured, delighted by the blush staining her cheeks. “You're the very loveliest fight fan I've ever seen,” he said, turning on what Sister Frances Rose O'Hanlon had always called his “gift of the blarney.”

      
She withdrew her hand swiftly. “I detest violence, Mr. Madigan. It's unchristian.” Lord, she had been crazy to come here! If her parents ever found out that she'd been seen with a common saloon brawler, the consequences did not even bear thinking on.

      
“Then, you must be my guardian angel. What's this about someone trying to rig the fight so I lose?” She was frightened to death, perhaps not just of his overtures.

      
She licked her lips with the tip of her tongue and swallowed. “I overheard Whitey Folson and Cal Slocum's brother Bart discussing it in the alley behind the
Self-Cocker
office when my friend and I were leaving after the fight.”

      
He crossed his arms over his chest and stroked his chin consideringly. “The Slocums I've met. Describe Folson to me.”

      
“Small and wiry with thinning sandy hair. He has a rather prominent nose that's been broken and a scar here.” She made a motion across her left cheek.

      
“Umm. Think I remember one such. I'm much obliged to you, Miss Sinclair. They didn't see you, did they?” Was she afraid of the bounders?

      
“Heavens, I hope no one there at that spectacle saw us!” Rebekah's voice nearly broke.

      
Rory threw back his head and laughed. “Whatever possessed a fine lady such as yourself to come to that part of town, much less to climb up and watch a fight when you purport to be such a foe of violence?”

      
“It was just a girlish lark—a very foolish mistake that I don't dare repeat.”

      
He looked at her face, now pale. Her green eyes were enormous, swimming with golden flecks. He reached out and touched her arm in reassurance. “I'll see no one hurts you, Miss Sinclair. Don't worry about Folson and Slocum.”

      
“It's not them...” She looked nervously around the deserted park.

      
His expression hardened. “Afraid of being seen with a dirty mickey, is that it, now?”

      
She looked up into his face, startled by his swift anger. Anger that masked hurt, she was suddenly certain. “No, no, that isn't it at all. No matter if you were the Prince of Wales, it isn't proper for me to be here unchaperoned. We've not even been properly introduced. My parents are very insistent on such things.” She sighed in frustration as his cool blue eyes studied her disbelievingly. “I'm afraid I've always been a grave disappointment to them. Nothing like my sister Leah.”

      
“Leah must be a paragon,” he said, a touch of the former amusement returning to his voice. “How old are you, Rebekah?” He liked the sound of her name on his tongue.

      
“I'll soon be eighteen, and I've not given you leave to use my Christian name.” But she loved the sound of it on his tongue. An unwilling smile curved her lips.

      
“I'll give you leave to call me Rory. It's only fair to reciprocate. I'll soon be twenty-one,” he added, answering her unspoken question.

      
“Why do you fight? It's so dangerous. And your face Her fingertips lightly grazed his bruised cheek before she could stop herself. Whatever had come over her? She was bewitched!

      
Rory clasped her hand before she could completely withdraw it. “He wouldn't have landed that punch if I hadn't been looking up at a golden-haired angel.”

      
“I'm hardly an angel,” she scoffed. “I do foolish, impetuous things. I'm reckless and selfish, and my mother tells me I'm altogether too forward for a minister's daughter.”

      
“Not like your sister Leah,” he said, nodding gravely. Then he winked. “Thank the saints above.”

      
A small frown marred her forehead. “You're Catholic, aren't you?” It sounded dreadfully accusatory.

      
“And you're a preacher's daughter.”

      
Somehow, his tone didn't sound nearly as serious as hers, the rogue. Rebekah had no experience with beaus other than the young men from church. Staid, proper, in awe of her father and perfectly boring. Rory was neither staid nor proper, and she very much doubted if he would be tongue-tied in front of Ephraim Sinclair. And he most certainly was not boring. But he was Catholic, she reminded herself. “My father is the Presbyterian minister for Wellsville and the whole valley. He even preaches and tends to his flock in the Comstock towns.”