Marry Me (31 page)

“They would know,” said Wentworth. “Gold and silver lodes are hard to come by.”

Cole shrugged. “I’m not familiar with their operation. The only time I was at one of the active mines was when I was called out after an accident.”

“Ezra Reilly.”

“That’s right.”

“You did real well by him. I heard it from Wyatt and Will.”

“It depends on your perspective, I suppose. I wanted to save his hand.”

“I imagine Ezra feels the same. Still, that doesn’t mean you didn’t give your best.”

Cole smiled faintly. “You’re kind to say so.”

Both men fell silent. Raymona Preston was singing at the piano, her slim shoulder listing against Ed Kennedy’s brawny one. Her lilting voice carried to the back of the room. When Cole looked over at the judge, his eyes were closed. Cole thought it would be a mistake to suppose the older man was sleeping, and he was proved right when Wentworth suddenly spoke.

“I understand that Runt Abbot’s living with you,” he said quietly. “Did I hear right? You took her in as a housekeeper?”

“Yes, it’s true. She prefers Rhyne now.”

“Does she? That’s something. Her mother’d be pleased, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Cole felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “You knew Miss Abbot’s mother?”

“Miss Abbot?” The judge smiled faintly and kept his eyes closed. Raymona’s tender melody washed over him. “Guess I never thought there’d come a day when that would be Runt’s appellation. Took me quite a spell to reconcile what I was hearing with what I thought I knew, but then I’ve spent half my life listening to lawyers so I sorted through it eventually.” He raised his glass, sipped. “You asked me about her mother, though, didn’t you? Delia Abbot was the first woman I saw when I came to Reidsville. I wasn’t a judge then, just a lawyer looking to take on a few cases, and I stopped in the Miner Key. The stage wasn’t much back then–Rudy’s made it bigger since the old days–but I don’t think I really noticed.”

He held up one hand and made a pinching motion with his thumb and index finger. “In the blink of an eye, the world got that small because all I could see in it was Delia Abbot. She was Lady Macbeth that night. It was the first time I understood what poor Macbeth faced. I’d have killed for her, too.”

Cole wasn’t sure if the judge was talking about Lady Macbeth or Delia Abbot. “You said she’d be pleased. You knew her maiden name was Rhyne?”

“I did. I knew how she spelled it, too. But I don’t suppose that matters. Runt was always … well, he was Runt.” He opened his eyes and looked sideways at Cole. “I saw her once. Miss Abbot, I mean. She was carrying a basket of laundered clothes from the Porter place. That no-account Beatty boy pointed her out, but for me that was merely a confirmation. What struck me was how much she looked like Delia. I’d never seen any resemblance before. The small terror that was Runt Abbot never put me in mind of anyone but Judah. I guess that made her every bit the actress that her mother was.”

“Did you ever see Miss Abbot on stage?”

“No. I was never in town when she performed. That’s the nature of traveling the circuit. There’re things you’re bound to miss somewhere.”

“Miss Abbot doesn’t know very much about her mother,” said Cole. “I suspect she’d appreciate hearing what you could tell her.”

“Oh, I don’t know that I have anything to say that she hasn’t heard.”

“No one’s ever mentioned that you were in love with Delia Abbot.”

Elijah Wentworth chuckled. “Me and just about every other young buck. Judah couldn’t beat us off with his stick.”

“He carried it then?” “He always carried it.”

“Tell me about him. What do you remember?”

The judge rolled his tumbler between his palms. “I didn’t know him well. No one did as far as I could tell. He lived in town then, but he kept to himself. Delia and the two boys stayed close. I had the impression that Judah insisted on it. You have to understand that I fell in love with Delia the moment I saw her. It was already too late for me by the time I learned she was married, which, I believe, was before she ended her soliloquy.” “You were struck hard.”

“Felled like a giant oak. There was no hope of picking myself back up after that. I could only lumber along.” He grinned, satisfied with his pun even while Cole groaned softly. “Forgive me. I can’t always restrain myself.” He held up his drink, stopping Cole from directing him to the point. “I know. You were asking about Judah. Because he was so private, there’s nothing I know about him for a fact that didn’t come from Delia. She told me once that Judah tried his hand at a number of things before he arrived at performing. They met in Philadelphia. Both of them were employed in the same household. If she told me the family’s name, I don’t recall it now. I take it they had some social standing. It was important to her that I knew that, though I don’t know why.”

“There’s social standing in being the employee of a prominent family,” Cole said. “At least among others in the same set of circumstances. She was trying to tell you that she and Judah came from that world.”

“She was a lady’s maid to the daughter, and he was a cook.”

“Those are desired positions. Important ones. Do you know what happened?”

“I know he didn’t work there very long. A few months, I think. It’s hard to remember. There was some kind of todo and he left. I always assumed it was his temperament. It’s said about cooks, isn’t it? They’re temperamental.”

“I’ve heard it said about actors as well.”

Wentworth nodded. “Perhaps that’s what attracted Judah to those crafts. Delia left the family soon after Judah. He was ten years her senior and about as reliable as a broken watch, but God help her, she loved him. She was too young to know her own mind, just fourteen herself when she married him, but it happens like that sometimes. He labored on the railroad for a while, took odd jobs that came up, and tried his hand at cooking now and again as they moved west. He was a self-educated man. Read everything he could get his hands on, Delia told me. He collected books the way some people collect lint. She admired that about him, but I believe it cost her as time went on.”

“How so?”

“She had an idea of who he was that didn’t quite fit the facts.”

“Did he abuse her?” “I never saw a mark.”

Cole recognized that it wasn’t precisely an answer to his question, but he let it pass. He could sense the judge becoming more reticent, even cagey, with his remarks. “How did they come to Reidsville?”

“Mining. Judah fell in with a few men who did some prospecting, and the way I heard it is that they just arrived one day and settled in. This was a couple of years before the war began. As far as I know, Judah never tried to join up. The fellows that brought him to town did, though, and they’re long gone now.”

“I had the impression that Judah and Delia had been performing before they arrived.”

“They were, but it didn’t put much money in their pockets. That’s how Judah came to be a miner.” The judge finished his drink and raised it to get Susan’s attention. “That didn’t last long. Once he worked out an arrangement with Rudy’s father at the saloon, he gave up going to the mines. They did all right. All that reading came in handy. He wrote some of his own plays from the books he had, and the people here never tired of the classics.”

Susan bounced over and refilled his glass. “I think you’re going to need an escort to the Commodore tonight,

Judge.”

“Don’t you sass, Susan. I guess I can find my way over there just fine.”

She hugged the cut-glass decanter to her bosom after Cole refused another round. “If you say so, but I’m plainly skeptical.”

He laughed and sent her on her way, then he turned slightly and touched his glass to Cole’s. “To reminiscences.”

“After two bourbons, I would have said ‘to memories.’ “ “Three,” the judge corrected him. “I had one when I came in. This is number four.” “Then I am triply impressed.”

Wentworth stared at his glass, his eyebrows slightly arched. “Actually, so am I.”

Cole gave him a moment to pick up the thread of their conversation.

“Judah was talented,” the judge said. “At least he seemed so to me. I can tell you, though, without fear of contradiction from those that remember, that the real draw to the saloon on those evenings was Delia. The whiskey and Rudy’s father’s special brew ran a close second and third.” “Did Judah know?”

“I think he did. The applause told the story. He received his due from the crowd. The boys, too. They were maybe eight and ten when I saw them perform–nothing then like the hellions they became after Delia passed. As I said, they were all well received. But Delia? At the end of her performances it took minutes for the dust to settle. The miners could whoop it up. Stomp their feet. Drum their glasses against the tables. Clapping was about the quietest thing they did. Yes, I think Judah knew very well how everyone felt about his wife.”

“Did that have anything to do with why he moved out of town?”

“I can’t say.”

Cole watched the judge turn the tumbler in his hand.
Can’t
or
won’t,
he wanted to ask. “Does anyone know?” “What’s Runt say?”

“Miss Abbot says Judah never really talked about it.” Wentworth made a sound at the back of his throat that might have been surprise or merely thoughtfulness. Cole went on. “She only knows the house where she used to live because her brothers showed her. If they knew why Judah packed up the family and moved to his valley, they never said.”

“Then maybe it’s only Judah that can answer that question.”

“I’m going out to see him when the weather breaks,” said Cole, watching the judge closely. “I just might ask him.”

“You do that,” Wentworth said, eyeing him shrewdly. “And watch your back. If I didn’t impress upon you that Judah guards his privacy, then it’s a good thing I sit behind the bench and no longer have to argue in front of it.”

“Wyatt’s coming with me.”

“Then tell him I said to watch
his
back. Judah’s never cared much for the law.” “Or lawyers?”

“Or lawyers,” he said. “That makes Wyatt doubly unwelcome.”

Cole was sure the judge knew he hadn’t been referring to Wyatt. He let it pass. Sometimes not driving home a point made one. He finished his drink. “I’d like you to come to dinner some evening this week. How long will you be in town?”

“Sadly, this is my last night. I’m boarding the Admiral in the morning, which is why you find me here tonight. I have a trial to preside over in Clear Creek County the day after that.”

“Well, perhaps the next time you’re in town, you’ll let me know. The invitation stands.” “Thank you.”

Cole stood, setting down his empty glass. “There’s just one more thing I’d like to ask you.” Elijah looked up inquiringly. “Yes?” “Do you know of any women lawyers?”

“So,” Cole said, linking his arm with Whitley’s as they walked home from church, “the judge told me about Myra Bradwell. She and her husband, who was also an attorney, helped Mrs. Lincoln with her petition to be removed from the asylum where her son put her.”

“Really?” Whitley asked. “Did you hear that, Rhyne?

There
are
women arguing for money.”

To Cole’s way of thinking it was a perfect evolutionary adaptation, but he hadn’t reached his thirtieth year by actually saying things like that out loud. He waited to hear Rhyne’s response. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her murmur something that Whitley heard but that he missed.

“It’s a considerable challenge, Whitley,” he said. “Most of the women that his honor named came to his attention because of the suits they filed to be permitted to join the bar and practice law on their own. Mrs. Bradwell was denied that right in Illinois.”

“But why?”

He noticed that Rhyne was staring straight ahead, but he suspected she was attending to the conversation. “I invited the judge to dine with us some evening when he’s returned to town to take questions like that. I warned you’d make him answer for every slight, but that he shouldn’t take it personally. I was relieved to learn he has three sisters and understood my warning.”

Whitley nudged him with her elbow. “He’s going to think I have no manners.”

“I think you have no manners. He’s going to think you’re charming.”

She beamed. “It will be very nice to have company. Don’t you think so, Rhyne? We can have cream of pea soup and broiled mutton, and I can make graham pudding or perhaps scalloped apples. Do you think the judge will like my scalloped apples? Cole always compliments me for them.”

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Rhyne said. “We don’t know when he’s coming, or even if he will.”

“I think he will. Don’t you, Cole? It was a sincere invitation, wasn’t it? You did not merely say it in passing.”

“It was sincere,” he said, “but Rhyne’s correct. You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

“That’s what planning is, isn’t it?”

Rhyne and Cole exchanged amused glances, then Rhyne remembered that she was trying to avoid Cole and looked quickly away.

Whitley missed that brief communication and continued discussing the menu and the reasons for planning it now. Cole and Rhyne let her go and made all the right murmurs at the appropriate times, but the glance they shared left them each unsettled and lacking any plan of their own to put it to rights.

“You’re certain, Doctor?” Rachel Cooper sat on the edge of the examining table and regarded Cole Monroe anxiously. Her legs dangled over the side until Cole moved a footstool under them.

“I’m certain,” he said, scribbling some notes in his log.

“How far along am I?”

He smiled. “You probably know that better than I do, but from what you’ve told me and what I could learn from the examination of your cervix, I’d say you are just shy of four months. Does that sound about right to you?”

She nodded, still afraid to hope. She laid her palms flat against her midriff. “Will I carry it until the end?”

Cole hesitated. “I know what you want me to say, Rachel, but I can’t predict what will happen. I can only tell you that there’s no reason for me to suspect you’ll have any trouble. You’re fit and healthy. Rickets is the scourge of a woman’s bones and her ability to bear children. That’s not a problem for you. Barring trauma or disease, I believe you’ll be fine.”