Chasing the Sun (53 page)

Edwina had scars, too, although other than a few pale stripes across her back and fanny, they were of a more subtle kind, the kind that festered in the soul and left behind invisible wounds of doubt and guilt and distrust.

“Be that as it may,” Pru went on. “Races don’t mix. It’s against the laws of man and God, and you know it.”

“Here we go again.” Edwina hid a yawn behind her gloved hand. “If reason fails, bring out the Scriptures.”

“Edwina!”

“Well, really, Pru. If it’s true that white and black shouldn’t mix, you would be a drooling, cross-eyed hunchback with an extra ear. Instead, you’re beautiful.” She smiled prettily and batted her eyelashes. “Just like me.”

Pru snorted. “Except for the hair and nose.”

“Not as bad as the wart on my elbow,” Edwina chimed in. “And my less-than-ample bosom and—”

A soft, feminine chuckle interrupted Edwina’s self-deprecation. Glancing past Prudence, she saw the blond woman across the aisle smiling at them. Edwina had seen the smartly dressed young woman several times over the last days, nearly always seated with another young, attractive woman toward the rear of the coach. But today, after the train had stopped in Santa Lucia to fill the tender with water, both women had moved to the vacant bench across the aisle from Pru.

“Are you truly arguing about which of you is less attractive?” the woman asked, her green eyes dancing with amusement. Beautiful eyes, with a slight upward tilt at the outside corners that might have hinted at wide-eyed innocence if not for the hard knowledge behind the knowing smile. A Northerner, by her accent. Poor thing. No wonder she seemed jaded.

Before Edwina could respond to the comment, the other woman, seated in the window seat, looked over with a wide smile. Where the blonde had shone a worldly-wise weariness beneath her cool green eyes, this sandy-haired lady seemed without artifice. An ingenuous, dimpled smile complemented intense chocolate-brown eyes that sparkled with such life and intelligence Edwina couldn’t help but smile back. “You are both too beautiful by half,” the woman said in a clipped English accent. “Your bone structure is superb, both of you.”

Edwina wasn’t sure what to make of that. Usually, any compliments she received—mostly from men—involved her magnolia skin, which always sounded a bit sickly to her—or her glorious hair, which she thought was abysmally average, ranging from mouse brown to light brown, depending on how many lemons were available—and her soulful blue eyes, which were admittedly her best feature and the exact shade of the early-spring forget-me-nots that had bloomed along the garden wall back home.

How sad that they, and the wall, and all the handsome young men with their pretty compliments were gone forever.

“Excuse me for intruding.” The blond woman held out a hand encased in a finely sewn white kid glove. “I’m Lucinda Hathaway.”

“Edwina Ladoux ... Brodie.” Leaning past Pru to take the proffered hand, she noted the gold ear bobs, the fine fabric of the blonde’s traveling cloak, the shiny button-top boots planted protectively against an expensive leather valise stowed under her seat. Even though Edwina had supported herself and Pru as a seamstress—barely—and was skilled at refitting made-over dresses to look stylish, she couldn’t help but feel dowdy in comparison to this pretty woman. “Of the New York Hathaways?” The Kendall sisters had a Yankee cousin named Hathaway.

An odd look crossed the other woman’s face. She covered it with a smile that brought no warmth to her green eyes. “Perhaps.”

“Madeline Wallace,” her seatmate chimed in, with a waggle of her fingers in Edwina and Pru’s direction. She wore no gloves, and Edwina could see a thick signet ring on her left hand. “But I prefer Maddie.”

“You’re married?” Edwina was taken aback by the notion that a married woman would be traveling alone if she didn’t have to. Then realizing how rude that sounded, she quickly added, “I saw your ring.”

Maddie held up her hand, palm out. She studied the thick gold band for a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose I am married, although I haven’t heard from Angus in over three years. Perhaps he’s dead.” She showed a brief flash of distress at that startling announcement, then she let her hand fall back into her lap and smiled. “He’s Scottish,” she clarified, which clarified nothing. “A soldier. I couldn’t bear to stay another day with his family—they have low regard for the English, you know, and little hesitation in showing it—so I left.”

“Good girl,” Lucinda murmured.

“Left?” Edwina parroted, shocked by the notion of a woman simply heading off on her own to a foreign country just because she didn’t like living with her husband’s family.

“I’m an expeditionary photographer,” Maddie said, as if that explained everything, which it didn’t. “A London publisher is paying me to capture the American West from a woman’s perspective. Isn’t that grand?”

It was unbelievable. Edwina couldn’t imagine doing such a thing. It had taken all her courage to travel a thousand miles, much less cross an ocean to an unknown country. How daring. And terrifying. And admirable.

“And you?” Lucinda inquired, jarring Edwina back to the conversation. “Do you live in this area?”

Edwina blinked at her, wondering how to answer. “Yes. I mean, I plan to. That is to say, I will. Soon.”

“She’s traveling to meet her husband,” Pru piped up in an attempt to translate Edwina’s garbled response.

“How nice.” Lucinda’s voice carried a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

“Not really,” Edwina said.

Pru sighed.

“Oh?”

The two women across the aisle stared at her with brows raised and expectant expressions, so Edwina felt compelled to explain. “I’ve never met him, you see. We married in a proxy ceremony.”

A moment of awkward, if not stunned, silence. A pitying look came into Lucinda eyes, but Maddie clapped her hands in delight. “A mail-order bride! How perfect! How utterly Western! You shall be my first subject! Won’t that be delightful?”

Delightful in a ghoulish, horrifying way, Edwina thought, not sure she wanted her misery captured on tintype for all time.

THAT AFTERNOON, WHEN THE WAGON TRANSPORTING THE passengers rolled to a muddy stop outside the hotel, Edwina decided that if Heartbreak Creek was an example of divine intervention on her behalf, then God was either extremely angry with her, or He had a macabre sense of humor.

“Oh, my,” Maddie breathed, eyes sparkling with enthusiasm as she peered over the side rails. “I could take photographs here for a month.”

“If we live that long,” Lucinda muttered. Clutching her leather valise in one hand, and raising her skirts in the other—much to the glee of three reprobates grinning from the doorway of the Red Eye Saloon next door to the hotel—she gingerly stepped out of the wagon, onto the mounting block, then up onto the boardwalk. With a look of distaste, she dropped her skirts and looked around. “Two weeks. Here. Surely they’re jesting.”

Edwina climbed up onto the boardwalk beside her, followed by Maddie, then Prudence. Moving aside to make room for the other passengers clambering out of the wagon, the four women studied the town.

It was a dismal place.

Situated at the bottom of a steep-sided canyon, the town was a rat’s nest of unpainted plank-sided buildings, dilapidated tents, sheds, and lean-tos, all sandwiched between a flooded creek and a single muddy dunghill of a street. And the crowning glory, perched on the rocky hillside north of the wretched town, was a sprawling, manyscaffolded edifice that looked more like a monstrous spider poised to strike than a working mine. The entire town had a haphazard, unfinished feel to it, like a collection of random afterthoughts thrown together by a confused mind.

And yet, Edwina realized, if one looked beyond the eyesore of the mine, and the squalor and taint of decay that seemed to hang in the air like stale wood smoke, there was astounding beauty to be seen. Tall conifers rising a hundred feet. Stark cliffs sheened by cascading waterfalls that wound down the rocky slopes like frothy ribbons. High, white-capped peaks cutting a jagged edge against a cloudless blue sky. It was savage and mysterious, but it was also blessedly free of the ravages of war, and for that reason more than any other, Edwina liked it.

“I wonder what they mine?” Maddie asked, squinting up at the sprawling hillside monstrosity.

“Nothing lucrative,” Lucinda murmured, eyeing the ill-kempt, wide-eyed gawkers now spilling out of the saloon to get a better look at the ladies. “This place is one step from being a ghost town.”

“A ghost town!” Maddie fairly glowed with excitement. “Two weeks won’t be long enough to do this marvelous place justice.”

Lucinda rolled her eyes.

Prudence nudged Edwina’s arm and nodded to where the conductor was crossing names off a list as the other passengers filed into the hotel. “Let’s get settled.”

The Heartbreak Creek Hotel might have been—for a month or two, anyway—a thriving place. But years of neglect had reduced it to a bedraggled, rickety old dowager, barely clinging to the threadbare remnants of its brief glory. Sun-faded drapes, scuffed wainscoting against peeling wallpaper, once-lovely oil sconces now caked with soot and dust. Even the air that met them when they stepped through the open double doors smelled musty, laced with the lingering scents of stale cooking odors, tobacco smoke, and moldy carpets.

As they waited their turn before the conductor, Edwina scanned the lobby. Directly across from the entry doors was a high, paneled counter that showed remarkable, if grimy, workmanship, manned by a harried elderly clerk passing out brass keys as the passengers signed in. Beside the counter rose a steep staircase that led to a banistered mezzanine off which doors into the upstairs rooms opened. To the right of the entry, an archway opened into a dining area, now deserted in the mid-afternoon lull, while to the left stood a closed door, which led, judging by the tinkling piano music and loud voices, directly into the reprobate’s saloon.

“She with you?” a voice asked.

Turning, Edwina found the conductor frowning at her, his small, faded blue eyes flicking to Pru, who stood slightly behind her. Edwina read disapproval in his expression and felt her ire rise. “She is.”

The conductor’s lips thinned beneath his bushy gray mustache. “You’ll have to share a room. That all right by you?”

“Of course it’s all right.” Edwina started to add
and why wouldn’t it be, you pinhead?
when a sharp tug on the back of her coat choked off the angry retort. Pru hated scenes.

The conductor licked the tip of his stubby pencil and turned back to his list. “Names?”

“Edwina Ladoux ... Brodie. And this lovely lady with me,” ignoring her sister’s warning glare, Edwina swept a hand in her direction, “is my—” Another jerk almost pulled her backward. Before she could recover, Pru stepped forward to say, “Maid. Prudence Lincoln, sir.”

While Edwina gagged and coughed, Pru accepted their room assignment, nodded her thanks, and shoved Edwina on into the lobby, where the front desk clerk was directing passengers to their rooms.

“You almost choked me,” Edwina accused, rubbing her throat.

“Hush. People are looking,”

“At my vicious
maid
, no doubt.”

“Welcome, ladies.” Showing stained teeth—what few were left, anyway—in a broad smile, the hotel clerk, a grizzled old man with eyebrows as fat as white caterpillars, beckoned them forward. “Room number?”

Before Pru could answer, Lucinda stepped past them and up to the counter. “Room twenty.” Setting her valise on the floor, she gave Pru and Edwina an apologetic smile. “I told the conductor we would share. I hope you don’t mind. It’ll be safer,” she added in a whisper. Then without waiting for a response, she turned back to the slack-faced clerk, plucked the pen from its holder, dipped it in the inkwell, and smiled sweetly. “Where shall I sign?”

“Twenty?” The old man was clearly aghast. “But that—that’s the Presidential Suite!”

“So I’ve been told.”

“But you’re not the president.”

“Alas, no.” Turning the full force of those dazzling green eyes on the befuddled clerk, Lucinda leaned closer to whisper, “But Uncle insisted I take it if I ever came to Heartbreak Creek. Will that be a problem?”

“Goddamn.”

Apparently, that meant it wasn’t. After ordering a freckled boy to take fresh linens and water to “the big suite,” he reverently placed the key in Lucinda’s gloved hand and bowed them toward the stairs. “Last room at the end of the hall, ladies. The boy is setting it up now.”

As they headed toward the staircase, Edwina gave Lucinda a wondering look. “Are you really Grant’s niece?”

“Grant? Who said I was Grant’s niece?”

“But, I thought ... you mean you’re not?”

Lucinda laughed. “That old drunk?”

Not much of an answer, but apparently all Lucinda was willing to give. As they trooped up the stairs, Edwina mused that there were a lot of unanswered questions about Lucinda, not the least of which was what was in that valise that she guarded so protectively. Edwina sensed that, like her, Lucinda had been through hard times and devastating loss. But Lucinda had chosen to fight back, while Edwina had chosen to run.

But, really, what choice had she? Raised in the lap of luxury without a care beyond what to wear to the next ball, Edwina barely knew how to survive. Oh, certainly she had skills—dancing, flirting, performing parlor tricks like finding water with willow sticks or playing the piano blindfolded—but that hardly put food on the table. Other than her meager sewing income—which Pru augmented with sales from her tiny vegetable garden and the occasional household position that came her way—the only thing that had kept them going through the last hard years was hope. But after five years of the excesses of Reconstruction, that was gone, too, and now all she had left was her sister, a weed-choked cotton plantation sold for back taxes, her father’s watch, and a graveyard full of new markers.

What reason had she to stay? To slowly starve to death? To continue fighting off the advances of Cyrus McCready, the same carpetbagger who had taken her home and was now living in it with his wife and children? Or to become prey to scalawags and carpetbaggers and Klansmen who were supposed to be helping the battered South, but were rapidly destroying it?