Her Wyoming Man (19 page)

Light streamed from inside the room Ella had used previously, creating a lopsided rectangle on the wooden floor. He glanced in and stopped in his tracks.

Backing up, he walked in and took inventory of each bare surface, then opened drawers and finally the armoire.

Nothing. The room sat as empty as when she’d first arrived.

Ella was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Four

H
e doubled-checked to be sure—though he couldn’t have overlooked the amount of clothing she owned—but no, none of her belongings had been moved to his room.

She’d packed them.

With a jolt of alarm, he charged out of his room and took the stairs two at a time, then searched the bottom floor. Grace and Robby were playing on the back porch, while Charlotte peeled potatoes.

“Where is everyone?” he asked the woman.

“I took Christopher to school. Mrs. Shippen has gone to the market.”

“And my wife?” he demanded.

“Mrs. Lantry left quite early,” she told him.

“How did she get all of her belongings out without my knowledge?”

“They were picked up yesterday,” she explained.

“By whom?”

“I don’t know, sir. My guess is Pete Driscoll.”

She was gone. Had Ella boarded a train that morning? What was she thinking and planning? Nathan greeted Grace and Robby with a brief kiss, before hurrying back through the house. He grabbed his hat from the rack near the front door and half ran the distance to Main Street, where he entered the livery.

Pete sat on a barrel, cleaning a harness, smoke from a pipe curling around his head. An orange-striped cat rubbed its arched back against his pant leg.

“Pete!”

“Mornin’, Mr. Lantry. Need a driver today?”

“Not presently,” he replied. “Did you haul my wife’s trunks yesterday?”

“Yes, sir. Mrs. Lantry had a passel o’ stuff she needed moved. The Parker lad helped me. Has a strong back, he does.”

“Where did you take her things? To the train station?”

“No, sir. The hotel. Third floor, as luck would have it.”

The hotel? Nathan turned and shot out the door, heading for the brick building down the street. A carriage was parked at the curb, and a man helped a woman down to the boardwalk. Nathan dodged around them to enter the building.

He didn’t recognize the fellow at the front desk, but the man knew him by name. “Good morning, Mr. Lantry. How may I help you?”

“Which room is my wife in?”

He checked his ledger and looked up. “Three-twelve.”

Nathan turned toward the stairs, but the man’s voice halted him. “But she’s not there.”

Nathan turned back. Was he too late? He rested a palm on the counter and raised his eyebrows in impatience.

“She’s in the dining room,” the man explained, gesturing to a wide hallway that led away from the lobby. “Back there.”

“Thank you.” Nathan remembered to take off his hat and carried it as he jogged along the carpeted hallway, the sounds of clanking dishes and tinkling silverware growing louder as he approached.

Half a dozen tables were filled with couples and families, but at one near a side window, Ella sat alone.

His heart kicked in his chest at the sight of her.

At his approach, she glanced up in surprise, and let her tea cup clank against its saucer. “Nathan!”

He stood awkwardly beside the table for only a moment, and then slid onto the chair across from her. “What are you doing here?”

Her cheeks were bright pink, and she didn’t meet his gaze, but studied the handle of a butter knife as though it fascinated her. “I sent a letter of apology to the territorial board of directors. I apologized for my deceit and requested they absolve you from any knowledge or responsibility. I asked them to consider that you had no knowledge of where I’d come from—or where any of the girls had come from for that matter—just as none of the town council knew. You shouldn’t be looked upon unfavorably when they consider placing their support behind you in the election, and I told them so.”

She raised her regretful blue gaze to his. “It’s my greatest wish that they will place the blame where it lies, and not upon your shoulders. I couldn’t bear to be the reason you weren’t considered as a candidate.”

“What about last night?” he asked. “Did that mean nothing to you?”

“It meant everything to me,” she replied. “You and your children mean everything to me. Because of that I don’t want to cause them hurt, nor do I want to stand in the way of your career.”

“If you don’t want to hurt us, then don’t leave. I’d be only half a man if I didn’t ask your forgiveness and beg you to stay.”

“What on earth have you done that begs my forgiveness?” she asked. “I’m the one who deceived you.”

“I was so concerned with being in control.” He reached for her hand. “I let pride get in the way of love and forgiveness. I was embarrassed that people in town knew I’d been duped, but that was so superficial. I really don’t care what people think of me…or of you for that matter. I care what
you
think of me, and I pray you don’t think I’m selfish or prideful.”

“Of course not. You’re kind and generous.”

“That’s what you said about your gentleman friend,” he pointed out. “And I was jealous.”

“He
was
kind,” she answered. “And I appreciated that. But I never loved him.” Her chin quivered. “I love you, Nathan.”

“And I love you, Ella. Say you’ll stay here and be my wife for as long as we live.”

“But your position. I would be an encumbrance.”

“I’ll withdraw my name from consideration. Being the governor would be a shallow victory if it meant being without you.”

“You’re talking about giving up your career.”

“I’m also the city attorney,” he said, “and I haven’t broken my contract. Besides I have any number of interests that can see me through. I own a furniture store and a lumberyard. I can refocus my interests in the blink of an eye.”

“You own a furniture store?”

He nodded.

“Was it the one where I shopped?”

He shook his head.

She covered her lips with her fingers. “Oh, my.”

“The fact that you bought furniture elsewhere for our home pointed out that we need to stay abreast of the items women would like to see in stock. You shopped at the other place because of availability.”

“And quality.”

“Noted,” he said with a wry nod. “Perhaps you’ll help select stock in the future.”

Hearing him speak of the future gave Ella hope, but filled her with regret at the same time. She didn’t want to be the reason Nathan missed out on any of his dreams. She understood the true nature of people, and no matter how much she improved or changed, the difference would never be enough to make all of them forgive. And they could never forget.

Nathan reached for her other hand, taking her trembling cold fingers into his warm steady grasp. “You never had anyone to love you or look out for you,” he said in a gruff low voice. “You have been all alone in this world, doing the best you knew how. You never had an example of family, and you never had a choice but to do what was expected of you.

“You have a choice today, Ella. I will never hold you where you don’t want to be, and I won’t try to manipulate your feelings. If you choose to stay in Sweetwater and be my wife, I want it to be because you love me and for no other reason than because you want to be here.”

Tears blurred her vision, and she blinked them away, but she shook her head. “I don’t deserve your love.”

Nathan glanced aside, as though noting what the diners were doing. Ella looked, too, but the nearby tables were empty and no one at any other table was paying any attention to them. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said when he looked back. “You deserve to be loved as much as anyone else. You deserve love as much as you believe Grace deserves love and attention,” he said, as though he knew those words would reach her heart.

“You deserve a family and a fresh start,” he assured her.

“But everyone knows…”

“Ella,” he said sternly and leveled his intense gaze. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else knows or thinks. I would give up my career if need be, but it won’t be necessary. I would move away if it meant we’d be together.”

Her eyes prickled with tears.

“You can’t change your past. None of us can. But we can build a future. Together.”

The knowledge that he loved her and wanted her filled her heart and soothed aches that had been open wounds for as long as she could remember. Nathan couldn’t change her past, but knowing him—loving him, being his wife—would change her future, and she loved the sound of that promise.

“What do you say?” he asked, his eyes alight with hope. “Will you stay and be my wife?”

There was nothing she wanted more. “Yes,” she answered. “I will.”

At the next meeting of the territorial board of directors, Nathan was asked to wait in the corridor outside the boardroom at city hall while a discussion ensued. He’d already resolved that any decision would sit well with him. He had other avenues if politics weren’t in his future.

The heavy oak door opened. “Will you join us, please?” Carl Lawrence asked and stepped aside for Nathan to enter.

Nathan couldn’t tell by the expressions of the dozen men what their verdict had been, but he seated himself in preparation.

Tall silver-haired Mayor Simpson of Sweetwater took the floor as the spokesperson. “Nathan,” he began. “The council considers itself largely responsible for the recent unfortunate misunderstanding.”

Nathan glanced at the faces around the table.

“It was this very council, after all, that came up with the plan to send for women, particularly in the hope that a wife would improve your family image. We had good intentions.” The mayor glanced at his fellow business men, who nodded in agreement.

“Several of our friends and neighbors have married because of that plan, yourself included.”

Nathan glanced at Henry Thomas, who had married Rita. Henry met his gaze without looking away.

“This wasn’t a difficult decision,” the mayor continued. “We’re of a mind that these women traveled here to start over. The frontier is about starting over,” he added, and Nathan thought about what Paul had told him about his own father. Few people didn’t have something in their past they wanted to forget.

“In conversation with the townspeople and business owners, even with Reverend Kane, we believe these women’s true pasts won’t be mentioned again—and the knowledge about where they came from will definitely not pass outside Sweetwater’s city limits.

“Nathan, you are our choice for governor of the Territory of Wyoming.”

Nathan let his gaze travel from face to face, seeing agreement, approval and friendship. “Thank you,” he said. “I was prepared to turn my interests in another direction, to be honest. But since you’ve chosen me for this job—and I have your trust and support—I will be proud to represent the people of the territory.”

A brief business meeting followed, during which Nathan impatiently participated, but couldn’t wait to get home and let Ella know the news.

Dressed in a cornflower-blue skirt and a white pinstriped shirtwaist, she met him on the front porch. Her blue eyes were bright with questions.

“I’m the candidate,” he told her. And then he explained how the board had decided never to speak of where Ella or any of the other women had come from. Sweetwater would erase that information. The women who’d come from Dodge would be accepted the same as everyone else from this time forward.

“Someday the children might hear of it,” Ella said.

“And if so, they’ll understand acceptance, and forgiveness and love as a way of life,” he told her.

She took his hand and led him to a padded wicker love seat that hadn’t been on the porch before.

“Where did this come from?” he asked.

She urged him to sit and snuggled beside him. “They’re carrying them at your store now. There’s a whole selection of porch furniture.” He chuckled.

The screen opened and Grace joined them, leading Robby by the hand. “Don’t cry, Robby,” Grace said. “Momma will hold you and kiss your finger.”

He held his index finger up to Ella. Tears shone in his round eyes. “Kiss.”

Ella shot Nathan a look of surprise. Grace had spoken to her little brother! She reached to pull him onto her lap, kissed his finger and snuggled him.

Nathan pulled Grace onto his knees. “So, Miss Grace. You talk to your doll and you talk to Robby. Does that mean you’re going to be talking to us now?”

She gave him a bashful look from the corner of her eye and nodded.

“What will you say when you talk to us?” he asked.

She stuck a finger in her mouth and shrugged.

“Maybe she’ll ask for liver and onions for supper,” Ella suggested.

Grace shook her head and grimaced around her finger.

“Maybe she’ll ask if she can help Charlotte clean the ashes out of the stove,” Nathan said.

Grace rolled her eyes and giggled, pulling her finger away. “No, I will not.”

Nathan grinned. “What will you say, then?” he asked.

“I will say I want to pway the piano wiff Momma.”

Nathan hugged her and kissed her cheek. Ella and Robby hugged her, too.

The screen opened again and Christopher joined them. “What’s everybody looking so happy about?”

“We’re just happy to be a family,” Nathan told him.

“Let’s go play the piano,” Ella said with a smile.

The younger children jumped down and headed for the door, joined by their older brother. Nathan caught Ella’s hand and held her back for a kiss. “Thank you.”

“For what?” she asked, skimming her hand along his jaw and looking into his eyes.

“For marrying me.”

“It was my pleasure, Mr. Lantry. Thank you for loving me.”

“That was
my
pleasure,” he assured her.

“Are you kissing
again?
” Christopher called.

The couple entered the house, and in moments the flawless notes of a Bach concerto floated on the summer air, joined by the discordant rasps of a harmonica and the gleeful sound of laughter.