Heart of Gold (9 page)

“Yes.” The answer was brittle and full of resentment. “We were to be married, but the Yankees killed him.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Adair. I’m sorry you’ve had to experience the same kind of pain that so many other women are feeling because of the war.” Alice reached over and touched the back of Shannon’s left hand. “We shall be friends, you and I.”

Shannon was not accomplished at hiding her emotions. Alice could see the struggle going on within the young woman. The goodness in her wanted to be kind and caring toward Alice. The hurt and anger wanted to refuse her offer of friendship. Alice even understood the feelings. She’d hated the Rebels for many months after she received word of Edward’s death. But hate changed nothing. At least nothing for the better. And so she’d given it up and surrendered her heartache to God.

Shannon’s father refused to hate Northerners. Even as the war raged around them, the fighting sometimes coming almost to their back door, still the good reverend had refused to hate. Even when they’d learned Benjamin had been buried with thousands of other Confederate soldiers, her father had maintained that God loved the Yankees and the Adairs must too.

Love them? Not hardly. They’d stolen her chance at happiness.

She would always hate them and pray for their defeat. How could any self-respecting Southerner do otherwise? And yet she was tempted to like Alice. If not for the war, would they have become friends?

“I’ve upset you,” Alice said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s all right.”

“The war shouldn’t matter between you and me. Two women who both know what it means to lose the men they love in battles far away from us.”

Alice was wrong. The war did matter between them. Shannon had wanted to marry Benjamin, had planned to marry him. She’d loved him. At least she’d thought so. Only sometimes her feelings for him seemed to have belonged to someone else. Without his photograph, would she remember what he’d looked like? She wasn’t sure she would, and she felt guilty for it.

She didn’t like feeling guilty.

Shannon rose from the chair. “I’m going to fix myself a cup of tea. Would you like one too?”

Alice looked up at her, her expression a combination of sorrow and weariness. “Thank you. No. I think I shall sleep again. Perhaps a little later.”

Shannon went to the window and closed the curtains, once again casting the bedroom into shadows. Then she left without another word. When she reached the kitchen, she stopped and made a slow turn. It was a wonderful room with an icebox and a stove that hardly looked used. Several windows let in plenty of light. Oh, how she could envy Alice Jackson such a kitchen.

Only Alice most likely would never prepare a meal in this room. Alice was dying.

Unexpected tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t want to feel sorry for Alice or for Alice’s son or her brother. And yet she did. Shannon knew something about losing one’s mother, knew what a hole it had left in her life—an empty space that nothing else seemed to fill. At least she had been sixteen. Todd was only nine, and he’d already lost his father. Now he was losing his mother too. The only family he would have left was the uncle he’d met for the first time last week.

“What’re you doin’?”

At the sound of Todd’s voice, Shannon quickly wiped away any trace of her tears. Then she turned. The boy stood in the doorway that led from the kitchen onto the veranda—a veranda that wrapped around three sides of this house on the hillside. Cheerily, she answered, “I was thinking what a lovely room this is.” It wasn’t truly a lie. She had thought that a short while ago.

“Just a room.” Todd held the pup named Nugget in his arms, and as he spoke he rubbed his chin against the puppy’s golden head. “How’s Ma feelin’? Can I go up to see her?”

Shannon forced a confident smile. “She seems stronger to me, but she’s sleeping now. I left her to rest while I came down to fix some tea.

Do you need something?”

The boy shook his head but came into the kitchen and sat on one of the chairs at the table in the center of the room. Shannon’s mother never would have allowed a dog in her kitchen, but Shannon suspected Alice Jackson wouldn’t mind.

“Why don’t I fix you some hot chocolate? You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

From the moment Matthew had been hired as a clerk for Wells, Fargo in San Francisco, his goal had been to become a driver. He’d worked his way from clerk to agent in a matter of weeks, and in a matter of months, he’d become an express messenger. In that capacity, he’d sat beside the stagecoach driver, armed with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, a breech-loading rifle, and a Colt revolver. It had been his responsibility to protect the important documents and express mail entrusted to him, not to mention the valuable minerals—called “treasure”—that were placed in the safe beneath the driver’s feet. He’d made numerous trips between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains in those early years, catching what sleep he could while the stage crossed sagebrush-covered plains or climbed rugged mountain passes.

But drivers were at the top of the staging hierarchy, and that’s where Matthew had wanted to be. At the top. He’d wanted to slip on those silk-lined buckskin gloves and lace three pairs of reins between his fingers. He’d wanted to snap the whip above the heads of the horses or mules and feel them give another measure of speed. Sure, drivers were exposed to all extremes of weather—rain, wind, snow, sleet, the dry heat of a summer’s sun and the icy cold of a winter’s night—but no more so than a poor fool messenger.

He’d finally gotten his chance to drive at the age of twenty-five, and that’s what he’d done for the last seven years.

One thing he’d learned from his many years driving stagecoach for the company—speed was addictive. At first he’d driven hard to keep on schedule. Sometimes he’d done it to avoid getting scalped. But after a while, he’d just craved the rush that came with the race from one location to another.

After ten days in Grand Coeur, Matthew missed that speed more than he’d thought possible. He found the work of an agent even more confining than he had eleven years before. He spent almost the entire day indoors, buying gold dust, drawing checks, receiving packages and preparing others to be sent out, serving as the telegraph operator, transferring bank funds. There were three of them in the office— Matthew, William, and Ray—and even so they could barely keep up with the demand for the company’s services. But he refused to complain. At least he could provide a home for his sister and her boy. He was thankful for that, despite wishing he was back on the driver’s seat of a stage.

Such were his thoughts when he arrived home that evening.

Opening the front door, he was met with delicious odors drifting toward him from the back of the house. Fried chicken, if he wasn’t mistaken. His stomach growled in anticipation.

He moved toward the kitchen.

Shannon stood at the stove with her back to him, an apron tied around her waist, taking pieces of chicken from the skillet and placing them on a platter. Todd sat at the table in the center of the room, the puppy on his lap.

“Uncle Matt!” the boy cried when he saw him. He slid from the chair and set Nugget on the floor. “I helped Miss Shannon make biscuits.”

“You did, huh?”

“Yup.”

Shannon turned to face him. There was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead and her face was flushed from the heat of the stove.

Oddly enough, it seemed to make her even prettier than he’d thought her before. Not that he wanted to notice that about her.

“Miss Adair, I never expected you to cook for us.” Although he was glad of it. His experience didn’t extend much further than warming a can of beans. His stomach growled again.

“I enjoy cooking on occasion,” Shannon said. “My father says my fried chicken is superb.”

“I’m sure it is.”

She carried the platter of chicken to the table and set it next to a plate stacked with biscuits. “I hope your sister will be enticed to eat a bit more than she did for lunch. She told me fried chicken is one of her favorites.”

Matthew wouldn’t have known that about Alice, of course. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask.

Shannon untied the apron and draped it over the back of a chair. “Mrs. Jackson slept a great deal of the day, but I think she might be a little stronger than she was yesterday. Her pain seems to have lessened and her breathing seems less labored.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Please see that she eats as much as she can. She needs to rebuild her strength, and she can’t do that if she only picks at her food.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Shannon nodded. “Then I shall go home. I’ll be here first thing in the morning.” She moved toward the front door.

Matthew turned and followed her. “Thank you, Miss Adair, for your help. Don’t know how I’d manage otherwise. I know a little about dressing wounds from gunshot and arrows and a thing or two about trying to save a man’s frostbitten fingers. But what’s wrong with Alice . . .” He shook his head, embarrassed by the helpless feeling that washed over him.

A look of sympathy flickered in her eyes, then was gone.

Just as well. He didn’t need her feeling sorry for him any more than he needed to be thinking she was attractive. All he needed was for her to use her nursing skills to care for his sister.

Night blanketed the town of Grand Coeur. Even the saloons had grown silent in this wee hour.

Alice leaned her shoulder against the wall and stared out the window into the inky darkness, her thoughts troubled. Her brother still wasn’t ready to talk about what he would do with his nephew once cancer sent Alice to heaven. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. It had taken many weeks for her to come to grips with the truth.

She was dying. Someone else would have to raise her son to manhood.

Despite the years they’d spent apart, she loved her brother and she understood him. She knew he yearned to be back driving a stagecoach, although he was careful not to say so. She knew he was already restless from a more sedentary way of life. How long could he stand working as an agent before boredom sent him back to what he loved best?

He needs a wife. He needs to marry a woman who will love Todd and take care of him when Matt is away
.

Pain pinched her heart. She hated the idea that Todd might learn to love someone else as his mother, that she might be replaced in her son’s heart. Would he forget her completely?

She shook her head, trying to drive away the thoughts. She couldn’t think of herself now. She had to think of what was best for her boy. And what was best was for him was to be with family, to be with his uncle.