The Confidential Life of Eugenia Cooper (36 page)

“Kiss me again, Daniel, so I’ll have this memory to take back to New York.”

He tore his attention from the sky. Kiss her? He could do that all night and die a happy man.

Throwing care to the summer breeze, Daniel pulled her onto his lap, then leaned away so he could look at her. She was stunning. No more beautiful woman took a breath. Thick lashes swept high cheekbones that, in the moonlight, seemed dusted with silver. Even his Georgiana paled in comparison, though to be fair, hers was a much-faded memory.

And Charlotte loved them both.

Had he every ounce of the silver that could be hauled up from beneath the Leadville mountains, he’d not come close to the value of this woman. Or of his daughter and his good friends.

The revelation stunned him, and his hands began to shake.

“Daniel? Is something wrong?”

When he did not answer, she started to sit up.

“No,” he said through the lump in his throat. “Please stay there. The moonlight. You.”

She reached for him, placing both hands behind his neck and pulling him to her. “There are memories to be made, Daniel,” she said. “I’m not ready to leave you tonight.”

Nor was he ready to leave her. If ever he wished that marriage license had been real, the vows they made true, now was the time. He could have happily lived out the Song of Solomon right here under God’s stars.

But she’d told Tova and Elias that someone else held her heart. Another man would soon claim her.

All of her.

Daniel shuddered and nearly dropped her. Carefully, as if handling a precious and fragile thing, he settled her on the buggy cushion. Again those impossibly long lashes swept cheekbones sculpted by God.

He touched them, then cupped her cheeks, traced her jaw, found a tender spot on the back of her neck. “I could love you, Eugenia Flora Cooper.”

Gennie’s eyes flew open. “How do you know my full name?”

“I know more than you think,” he said, “and I could still love you.”

Her surprise gave way to impudence. “Well, I don’t know a thing about you, Daniel Beck, except perhaps that you’re a very secretive man.”

“I am? I hadn’t realized.” He paused to draw in a deep breath of her rose-scented skin. “I am entranced, Gennie,” he said softly. “Ask me anything.”

She touched the tip of his nose. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

“How did you come to live in Denver?” she asked. “Were you longing for a Wild West adventure too?”

He chuckled. “Hardly. Though I certainly found it. To tell this story, I must go to its beginning in England. The family lands in the shadow of Scafell Pike, to be exact.” He paused to rest on his elbow. “We’d profited from the deposits beneath the mountains for generations, but until I took the company and made it something, we’d barely gotten by. Two years, Gennie, and I had the Beck name where it should have been two generations ago.”

She said nothing, though he knew she listened intently.

“The Beck inheritance had finally come to mean something, though I cared less for it than I did the challenge of besting the land and bringing out what was hidden beneath it.” He closed his eyes and saw it all. “I had everything, all before I turned five and twenty.”

“It sounds wonderful,” she said.

“Oh, it was. She was.”

“Charlotte’s mother?”

Daniel opened his eyes. “Yes.”

To her credit, she said nothing, even though she surely wanted to know more. For a time, they remained in silence, with only the whisper of the wind through the aspens and junipers for company.

“Elias will tell you I saved his life,” Daniel said, “and I warrant I’ve plucked the old coot from more than one scrape over the years. But it is he whom I credit for the life I now live.”

Gennie smiled, and he longed to fit his lips to hers. But he’d embarked on this road, and stopping was not an option he’d take, lest he not return to it.

“I lost it all.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not right. I gave it all away. Willingly. Only Georgiana had value to me. The mines were not
yet mine, nor yet my brother’s, so my father was within his rights to deliver the ultimatum. What he did not expect was that I would choose Georgiana over him and his company. He thought her beneath me.” Daniel sat back, unable to believe he’d said these things. And yet there was so much more to tell. He skipped ahead, unwilling to stop, yet unable to give a full accounting of things he’d not contemplated in a decade.

“Elias was a man without a country. His Confederacy had fallen and his ship, the
Bernadette
, which had sought refuge in British waters, was taken. I too had lost everything. He found a vessel, signed us on as crew, and we sailed from England, never to return.”

“What happened next?”

Daniel shrugged. “A man with soldiering skills can always get by. The South was defeated, but not without need of men who could use their weapons. The West too.”

“What happened to Georgiana? Did she come with you?”

“Georgiana.” Funny how he remembered her as he last saw her on the doorstep of his father’s home and not as she was when she returned to him five years later. “No,” he said slowly, “she chose another.”

“But Charlotte, your marriage.”

He nodded, caught in the web of a memory he longed to forget. “I did marry her, though it proved my downfall. My father thought her common, and he was right, though only by birth and certainly not by character.” Or so he thought.

“I won’t ask anything further,” she whispered. “Some things are private between a husband and wife.”

Daniel smiled despite himself. “There are a substantial number of persons in Leadville who would argue that we are husband and wife.”

“Ah,” she said, “but what does God say? Is it not He who decides these things?”

Daniel remembered a mountain stream. A woman whose swollen belly would bear his brother’s child. A wedding that cost him everything except his pride. That, he had already given away.

There was so much more to the story. A brother’s betrayal. Two signatures on a document giving an innocent child both halves of an inheritance that would mean full control of the mines Daniel had returned to their glory. And a heart scarred by time and a woman, but healed by a Savior.

“Daniel?”

He looked down to see Gennie staring at him, felt her insistent tug on his neck. He knew she wanted a kiss, as did he. What he didn’t know—couldn’t be sure of—is whether this time the kiss would become more.

He gave in to the urge to kiss her but held at bay his want of more with her. “I fear we’ve come to the end of us, Gennie,” he said. “ To claim you as mine, I would have to steal you from another. This I now realize I cannot do.”

Mae found only pieces of rope and an open window in her basement.

“Time to ride again,” she said as she gladly retrieved her hidden buckskins and prepared to return to the trail that was her true home.

Turning the key in the lock, she left behind what would be the dream of most women, and disappeared into the sagebrush.

She didn’t get a full mile from home before she realized she’d been followed.

Charlotte had only just left for school when Gennie found herself alone in the big house. Elias and Tova were at the market, their trip together necessitated by a good-natured argument over the ingredients to some recipe.

With nothing to do but think on what happened—and what might have happened last night—Gennie went to the library to find something to read. A book on etiquette beckoned, and she pulled down the slim volume. This would make for good reading when Charlotte returned from school. With her departure looming, Gennie wanted to be sure she’d done as well as she could her job teaching Charlotte how to be a lady. She still marveled that the girl had taken to wearing dresses and enduring baths without screaming. Elias swore Gennie was a miracle worker, while Tova merely gave her silent approval.

A knock at the front door caused Gennie to set the book aside. She opened the latch and instantly regretted it.

The man who stood outside gave her a look that made her want to slam the door. “Is your mister about?”

She’d not say no. “He’s unavailable. Perhaps you would like to come back another time.”

“I’ll wait,” he said.

“Very well.” She opened the door a bit wider, then cursed herself for a fool when he took the gesture as an invitation and came in.

He walked with a slight limp, favoring the leg with a fraying patch on the knee. When he worried with his rolled-up shirt sleeve, she noted a jagged pink scar that ran nearly from elbow to wrist.

Gennie put him in the parlor, then excused herself to go into the kitchen. She’d seen where Tova had hidden her pistol, and she retrieved it now from behind the potato bin. Placing the weapon in her skirt, Gennie returned to the parlor to make small talk.

“I didn’t get your name,” she said to the man, lowering herself on the settee.

“I didn’t give it to you.”

His response startled her. “I’m Gennie,” she said.

“Yes,” he responded.

They sat for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the fellow made his excuses, then left without telling her his name. “Just tell him I’m an old friend.”

She found it odd and mentioned the incident to Tova when she returned.

“I’ll tell Elias and Isak to watch for him,” the housekeeper said. “And you will no longer open the door when left alone, yes?”

“Yes,” Gennie echoed. She gathered her volume on etiquette and climbed the stairs. If only the library carried books on the life of a woman torn between two worlds.

Then she realized she had that very book in her room—the latest episode of
Mae Winslow, Woman of the West.

She might have happily finished the dime novel, then perhaps done some mending on Charlotte’s wardrobe, a new skill she’d learned from Tova since returning from Leadville. The fact she could place thread in the eye of a needle, tie a knot, and accomplish something so rare as to let out a hem or take in a seam still made her smile. Perhaps Mama would cease her despair at the fact her daughter was hopeless at stitching. Embroidery could not be difficult to learn now that she’d mastered such skills.

Instead, while Charlotte practiced the pianoforte with her instructor, Gennie took pen and paper and prepared the text of a telegram to Hester Vanowen regarding the funds that must have gone missing. Someone in the Vanowen household was surely a thief, or perhaps it was that fellow down at the Western Union office. In either case, the monies were no longer needed as her visit neared its end.

As Charlotte continued her practicing, Gennie made her excuses to Tova and slipped out to take the streetcar downtown. Inside the Western Union office, she handed over the last of her funds, then watched the shifty-eyed fellow with care until the telegram was sent.

As she turned to leave, she almost ran over Elias Howe.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said as if he were greeting her at some social function instead of the telegraph office. “You on your way home?” When she nodded, he smiled. “Good, then we can ride together. Give me just a minute to send this to that Hiram fellow over in Leadville.”

The ride back was brief and quiet. Elias did not ask the nature of her visit, nor did Gennie offer an explanation.

“Tova tells me you had a visitor earlier today,” he said when they were almost home.

“A visitor?” She shook her head. “Oh, that strange man. Yes, he said he was a friend of Daniel’s.”

“Did he now?” Elias shrugged. “And he didn’t leave a name?”

“No. Do you find that odd?”

“It is,” Elias said. “Probably some fellow Daniel’s done business with or, more likely, one who’s been on the receiving end of his charity. In his line of work, it could be either.” He paused and seemed to consider it a moment. “Likely the latter,” he said as the buggy rolled up the drive. “That Daniel, he’s got a soft heart.”

“Yes,” Gennie said, “he does.”

Elias might have questioned her further, but Tova burst out of the back door, a dishtowel still in her hands. “Come and see who’s here, Elias,” she said. “You’ll never guess.”

Gennie followed the old soldier inside, then gasped at the familiar figure seated in the kitchen. “Sam?”