Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story) (6 page)

             
My mother turned an eagle eye on me.

             
"I'm well," I said quickly.  "There was a fire at Mr. Longren's hotel and it took some time to get it sorted out.  By the time the fire was out, the snow was too thick to travel and, after that, it was dark.  I took a room for the night," and, judging by my parents' matching scowls, thought to add, "Mrs. Longren can vouch for me."

             
Both parents turned their expressions to Maggie, who has borne up under neighborly scrutiny, eviction and foreclosure notices, midwifery and tragic births, but not, apparently, to the combined might of the Anders. 

             
Before she could answer, Matthew said, "You need to tell them everything."

             
I turned to him, wondering if he had gone mad, and he nodded at me but addressed them.  We still stood in the snowy, frosty morning, my feet freezing, my hands not that warm in my shredded gloves.

             
"There was a fire at the hotel," Matthew said.  "Miss Anders and I were across the street, having lunch, when the fire started.  My brother and I both ran to our hotel, and Miss Anders"—he gave me a look worthy of my father—"ran behind the hotel."

             
My father glowered.  "Why?"

             
"Because I thought there might be sparks or flames.  I wanted to be certain there was no fire behind the hotel that could catch and spread before the wagons arrived.  At that point, it was contained.  There was nothing on the side and I could see everything around me and move easily in every direction."  When that logical explanation, which had the benefit of being true, didn't sway him, I added, "I had to do something.  I couldn't just watch." 
You raised me to think for myself,
I added silently but wisely didn't note aloud.

             
I had apparently said just enough.  My father nodded and turned his attention back to Matthew. 

             
This is where it gets tricky.

             
"She saw someone come out of the hotel and run."

             
He had gone no further before both my mother and my father were staring at me again.  Matthew seemed disinclined to go any further with the tale, as if, having gotten me into it this far, he was content to abandon me.

             
"I went to find the Sheriff or Matthew but"—
but Matthew was talking to Violet Hastings —
"but couldn't find either.  So I…" 
In for a penny, in for a pound. 
"I followed his tracks."

             
That didn't end well.  We continued to stand in the snow as Mr. Flannigan's rooster next door kept announcing the dawn now long past, and my feet froze and my parents asked the same questions over and over.  My mother felt it would be inappropriate to examine my skull in the presence of gentlemen and because I was loathe to go inside with her, that indignity was at least spared me.

             
Some time had passed before accusations and defenses stopped.  It was a most inauspicious time for any other announcements, but Matthew was determined. 

             
Telling my family about the attack would keep them safe.  I wasn't sure Matthew's timing of the next bit of news would have the same effect for him. 

             
He'd abandoned me to my fate.  I waited to determine what to do about his.

             
"Mayor Anders, you've known my family and me for many years.  We've been neighbors since Hutchinson and I moved here and Annie and her family followed.  I've courted Chloe for several years."

             
My mother had started to smile.  That was a surprise.  My father looked confused, which wasn't a surprise.  He'd talked to Matthew so infrequently that any speech at all from Matt would surprise him.  Mr. Flannigan had finally decided perhaps this wasn't his business and moved off to struggle with the lead to his horse.

             
"I am asking for your blessing, sir, and your daughter's hand in marriage."

             
I'm not sure what my father expected, or even what I did.  He didn't say anything right away, and then he smiled, shook Matthew's hand, said, "You have my blessing," and, for the first time since I had been a very small girl, he kissed me on the cheek.  Then, after looking at me as critically as he might look at a misbehaving civil servant, he turned to Matthew again and said, "I wish you luck, son."

             
Which was the first indication that he considered me more difficult than he considered Matthew.

             
Matthew had enough sense not to laugh. 

              My mother made biscuits and cooked bacon and fried eggs, refusing help of any kind from any of us, then sending me to set the dining table.  We said grace and, immediately after, the conversation came round to my behavior on the previous day.  I did not fare well in the conversation.

             
It was a long breakfast.  Toward the end of it, my mother and Maggie and I started talking about my dress, which caused the menfolk to up and quit the table and actually improved the conversation.

             
That may have been her intent.  When we were clearing and Maggie had stepped away for a moment, my mother took me aside briefly in the kitchen, looked at me sternly and said, "You have a good head on your shoulders.  Use it."  Then, she embraced me again and went back to the dishes.

             
I chose to accept the compliment part of her statement.

              By nine a.m., the Longrens had headed back to Virginia City to work on the hotel, leaving me to ponder questions of dresses and headaches and weddings and Matthew, and to keep my mind from flitting to Violet Hastings or whoever had tried to burn the Queen.  There was no way of knowing now who it had been; hitting me over the head had effectively removed the image of the face from my memory.  When I tried to call up the image, it moved fluidly from person to person, anyone I might possibly know and suspect filling in the mysterious face.

             
I performed my chores by rote, feeding chickens, helping with the cleaning and beginning to plan supper for when my father returned from his office.  If I finished everything in time, perhaps I'd go round to Annie's shop and talk about dresses some more. 

             
Midday, I walked to the grocer's to pick up flour, sugar and coffee for my mother.  After, I'd go by Issy's and threaten not to tell her my news if she didn't promise to keep it to herself.  I couldn't
not
tell Issy. 

             
At the grocer's, Mrs. Peters bustled about, smiling and friendly as she had ever been.  She never seemed to notice I had cooled toward her since she had made trouble for Maggie when Maggie first came to Gold Hill.  It wasn't overt, my behavior, but I didn't feel free and friendly toward her now.                                                       

             
The grocer's was busy, women buying necessities and a few window shopping, either because their fortunes had changed for the worse and there was nothing else or because their fortunes had changed for the better but there still weren't that many stores in Gold Hill.  Greetings were exchanged with a handful of neighbors and one girl from school who was now, of course, married.  Cynthia and I had been friends once but, as we grew up, her attention focused on fashion and frivolities and when, one day, I pointed out that by the time a fashion made it to Gold Hill it was anything but the
latest fashion
anymore, she took umbrage.  We argued, she accused me of not being a real girl and, though I tried afterward, we never made up after that fight.

             
  I longed to tell her about the engagement, but Annie didn't know yet, nor her daughters, Sarah and Kitty, and so I endured the cloying, gleeful pity from Cynthia and went about my shopping only after I found a good half dozen events from my own unmarried life that sounded better, I hoped, than all of her events combined.

             
When I left the store, I didn't think I'd won that particular battle. 

             
My arms full of parcels, head full of both resentment and pleasure at the fact that when she did find out, Cynthia would realize Matthew and I had already been engaged when she and I had spoken, I went out onto the street, moving between standing buckboards and wagons and horses and men waiting on the womenfolk.  The streets were slick with ice, snow compacted down by wagons and starting to refreeze and slush as the snow melted off in patches.  Picking my way across the street, making for the druggist's before returning home, I heard someone call my name and paused, turning to look behind me.             

             
A hand caught me then, hard between the shoulder blades, a force that knocked the air from me even as it sent me flying into the street.

             
The carriage came out of nowhere, moving faster than most do in town.  One of the horses whinnied and reared, as startled by me as I was by it. I dropped most of what I was holding, hands stupidly going up around my face as my body froze, not taking a step in any direction.

             
The hand that grabbed me by the collar of my coat and yanked me back came just as much from nowhere.  When I'd started to cross the street, there'd been no one particularly near me on the sidewalk on the east side of the street—everyone had been standing just off there, blocking my view with their wagons and horses and selves.

             
I twisted and kicked, surprised into almost as much panic as the horses had caused.  The hand dragged me backward and deposited me neatly on the sidewalk as a voice said, "You're alright, missy," in a way that didn't convince me at all.

             
The instant he released me, I turned to see who'd grabbed me.  He was a stranger, an older gentleman but strong, looked like he'd probably worked in the mines and likely didn't any more.  His clothes were old but clean, rather like the man himself. 

             
My breath was still coming too fast for me to make much sense.  Behind me, I could hear the carriage had rattled to a stop and now someone was calling from it, demanding "See that she's alright, get me out of here," which, apparently, were contradictory messages to the driver, who took some time to make his way over to me.

             
"Missus, are you alright?"

             
My first coherent thought since the hand had sent me flying into the street was that too many people had asked me that question too many times in the past two days.

             
The man was a servant, one of the Comstock Lode family's retainers.  He'd done nothing wrong, except heading through town too quickly, and likely that wasn't his decision but the bidding of the woman who even now peered at me from the carriage.

             
Violet Hastings' mother. 

             
That gave me pause, but there was no way Violet could have known I'd be leaving the grocer at that hour, or even going in the first place unless she'd broken into our home and stolen enough coffee and sugar to make my mother send me for them, and that thought was farther than even my imagination could stretch.

             
Mrs. Hastings wasn't getting out of the carriage though, to see if I was harmed.  She was waiting for a reply from her driver and I gave it to him, a bit shortly, perhaps, that I had sustained no injury though my parcels were trampled.  He glanced into the carriage.  I followed his gaze, in time to see her motion him into the shop, where reparations were made, my parcels replaced in short order, though not before the driver had taken his leave of me, climbed back onto the box of the black carriage and rumbled off. 

             
I saw inside the carriage as it rolled away.  Violet Hastings' mother.  And Violet.  I could have sworn her mother was alone at first. 

             
"You sure you're not harmed?" the man who'd pulled me back out of harm's way asked.  I'd forgotten about him.  Now, I assured him I was fine and asked if he could use anything, a cup of coffee somewhere or lunch.  It was his turn to assure me he was fine, he was caretaker for one of the ranches in the area, just in town to visit his daughter, who'd had a baby of late, and if I was alright, he'd be on his way.

             
And I was on mine, deep in thought. 

             
That it was Violet's mother wasn't that strange, was it?  The Hastings family had money, I'd always known that and, though I'd gone to school with Violet, she was a year behind me, we'd never been friends, and less so once she began seeing Matthew even though she knew he and I had been stepping out.  The entire town knew we'd been together and, whether it was on and off or not, leaving him be during the "off" periods would have been appreciated.

             
He'd gone to Violet for advice, though.  Or rather, Violet had gone to Matthew, looking for a chance to start up again, to see him, and, instead of greeting her with open arms, he'd told her he was going to ask me to marry him and asked her for advice.

             
That would make a good many girls angry, especially those willing to go after a fellow who was seeing someone else. 

             
I didn't like Violet.  That didn't mean she'd—

             
The thought broke off right there.  I stopped walking, standing at the edge of the shops where the houses started and continued up the hill to the north.

             
I didn't like Violet.  I never had.  She was porcelain pretty, with red lips and black hair, and she knew she was beautiful.  She used it, stealing suitors.  She'd taken Matthew more than once, a union her family couldn't possibly have approved, even after the Longren boys showed evidence again of having money. 

             
This time, when she came back, when she thought she'd play her wiles on Matthew again, he'd outfoxed her, had proven he couldn't be strayed and that he was going to marry me.

             
He’d asked her for advice.

             
I was lucky she hadn't recommended to him he shoot me in the foot as a way of plighting troth, or give me a rattlesnake as a gift.

             
Though Matthew wasn't that gullible.  And if she came round now?

             
That got me walking again.  If she came round once we were engaged and then married, and Matthew was unfaithful, then there'd have been nothing for me to hold on to in the first place.

             
But if she tried to kill me, or have me killed, that was something quite different.  And if she'd tried to burn down The Faro Queen because—

             
Because?  Because it was Matthew's dream, just as I was—Matthew's future. 

             
It made sense.  Not great sense.  I certainly wasn't going to ask Matthew about it and I wasn't about to admit to either my mother or my father that something else had befallen me. They'd trap me in the house until my wedding, and possibly thereafter as well.

             
I'd talk to Issy, but Issy would talk to
everyone
and, if I wanted that, I could do it myself.  That wasn't safe.  I had to figure out what had happened and who had done it.  I couldn't talk to Issy. 

             
Maggie, though.  Maggie would listen.

             
Now all I had to do was get to Virginia City without anyone trying to keep me safe—or do the opposite.

              Matthew and I had made no plans for the next day.  He had work to do on the hotel and I had chores around the house.  I didn't expect him in Gold Hill, so I needed to get myself to Virginia City.

             
After breakfast, after cleaning the kitchen and after my father had gone to his office, I asked my mother if there was anything she needed and told her I was going to Virginia City.  I expected an argument—after all, I was proposing to drive the wagon two miles through the snow—but she just looked thoughtful, said she supposed I wanted to see my young man, and that she'd go with me.

             
"Go with me?"

             
"I've shopping to do I can't do here," she said, with a wave of her hand.  "As long as you're somewhere like the hotel, I don't suppose you need a chaperone every moment."

             
I hadn't thought of that.  Matthew and I had frequently gone unchaperoned in the past.  Why he'd be considered more dangerous now we were engaged was a good question.

             
The day was January crisp, the especially dry days that happen in Nevada when there's been a snow and the temperature has become very cold.  We covered our legs with lap robes and I borrowed a pair of my mother's gloves, grateful she didn't ask what had happened to mine.  Reminding her of my adventures the day before would mean the end of my journey before I set out.

             
Once on the road, there was nothing to do and more than half an hour to do it in.  Snow sparkled on the sides of the road, though the center was frozen mud.  The wagon jounced along, bouncing over ruts and making our teeth click together.  We were halfway there when my mother suddenly said, "Your father was quite the wild one when we were younger."

             
I recollected the reins that surprise had made me drop.  "Father?" I ventured.

             
She gave me a wicked smile.  "Oh, yes.  He had girlfriends in every corner of San Francisco.  No money, no prospects, and no one would ever have thought he'd turn out to be a mayor of anything."  She looked at me again, smiling, half reminiscent, half still wicked.  "Even a place like Gold Hill."

             
"What happened?"

             
"I did," she said simply.  "Just as you will happen to Matthew."  When I began to interrupt, she held her hands up to stop me then dropped them onto my forearm.  "I know what you've been through with him.  You were quite right every time you left him.  It's probably why he's with you now."

             
That gave me something to think about and nearly half a mile passed before I hesitantly asked, "Because I was the one who left him?"  He had to love me for more than that.

             
She shook her head promptly.  "Because you respected both of you enough to wait until he did as well."

             
And that I could live with.

              Virginia City was quiet, without many women on the streets.  Wagons were tethered and men slushed along the sidewalks. 

             
Sounds of construction came from inside the hotel.  My mother came with me, long enough to see Maggie again briefly, the two of them comparing some recipe or another and Maggie accompanying my mother and Hutch for an impromptu tour.  I saw Matthew from a distance, but waited until my mother had gone to run her errands before seeking him out.

             
The workmen had disappeared into the casino area, the sound of hammers and sawing echoing out of there.  I'd last seen Matthew near the kitchen and I promptly headed that way.  Rounding the corner from the hotel lobby, a hand darted out and caught my arm, swinging me into a half circle.  I started to shout, then stopped when Matthew's mouth closed over mine.

He kissed me again and again, warm and sweet. 
             

My arms went up around his neck and his went around my waist and, when we traded places, he pressed me up against the wall, his body long and lean against mine.  He wore denim today and a flannel shirt rolled up his forearms because he'd been working.  When I pressed my face into the crook of his neck, he smelled like wood and a little like the remains of the charred timbers.

              "How's your—"

             
"—Don't ask me how my head is," I said. 

             
"Father?" Matthew finished the sentence.

             
"Very funny."

             
But there was something I wanted to tell him.  I'd come to talk to Maggie, to get a clear head and some logic on everything that had happened.  But Matthew actually knew Violet, even if I didn't want to admit that.

             
I'd ask him.  When he stopped kissing me.

              We sat in the kitchen where Maggie and I had the night before.  Maggie had gone somewhere with Hutch; the workmen were distant, their hammering and swearing faint. Matthew started to tell me about the renovation, about the fire damage and then about Sheriff Gannon, who wanted to talk to me again for a description of my assailant.

             
I closed my eyes briefly.  The image of the bottle coming down hadn't faded at all.  It stood out stark, clear and still frightening.  The face, hidden behind a scarf, tantalizingly almost recognizable, was fading in and out of memory.  

             
"Hutch thinks it might have been the old owner of the Queen."

             
I blinked across the table at him.  "Why on earth?"

             
Matthew nodded as if I'd proved a point for him.  "That's what I said.  Mr. George got everything he wanted.  We paid more than we'd wanted to and he made out like a bandit.  He's somewhere in California, where there's no snow now and we're here with a half burnt hotel."

             
"It is not half burnt," I said.  "If Mr. George hadn't wanted to sell, he wouldn't have, would he?" 

             
Matthew shrugged.  From somewhere in the hotel, a carpenter banged something he hadn't meant to and yelled.