A Bride at Last (2 page)

He rolled his shoulders. No sense getting ahead of himself. He’d come to confess his sins and ask for forgiveness—that’s all he really wanted. If she forgave him, then he’d worry about what to do next.

He swallowed, grabbed his bags, and forced his feet up one stair at a time.

The grimy window beside the front door obscured his view inside, so after two knocks and no answer, he tried the doorknob. Open. Stepping inside, a shiver stole over him, despite the relief the cloying heat gave his body. He crossed to the desk in the back of the room but couldn’t find a bell, and nobody lurked in the dimly lit interior.

Overhead, a baby cried and footsteps squeaked on warped boards, both sounds muffled by kitchen clanging noises coming from somewhere down the hallway.

“Hello?” Should he pound on something or search for the proprietor? He set down his bag and pulled off his scarf. He raised his voice. “Is anyone available to help me?”

A ruddy-faced woman with a stained apron and gray hair
falling from an untidy bun stepped out of a door near the back of the hallway. “Whaddya want?”

“I’m here to visit Lucinda Jonesey. Do I—”

“There’s no dallying with any of my guests. I don’t run a—”

“No, ma’am.” He cleared his throat. His face flamed hotter than the stifling room. “She’s my wife.”

“Lucinda who?” She lowered one brow, turning her head a bit to give him an unconvinced glare.

“Jonesey.”

“Then you got the wrong place.”

He glanced at the letter in his hand. “Is this 402 Morning Glory? She was here a month ago.”

“All I’ve got is a Lucinda Riverton.”

Riverton? She was using her maiden name? “That’s her.”

“She ain’t got no husband.” The lady took a menacing step forward, brandishing her wooden spoon.

“Not for the last ten years, no—at least we haven’t lived together.” Not as if
he’d
been the reason for that. “I promise if she’s not the right Lucinda, I won’t stay. Even if she is the right one, I’m not sure I’ll be here long.”

“Second floor, last door on the right.” She waved her dough-covered spoon at a dark stairwell. “If I hear screaming, I’ll thrash you.”

He worked hard not to smile at the image of the round, flour-covered lady charging at him with a spoon. “That won’t happen. She asked me to come.”

Now, as for yelling? That might be a different matter. . . .

“Fine.” She turned and charged toward the door she’d left earlier. “Myrtle! If those potatoes aren’t done peeled, I’ll whip you within an inch of your life!”

Did this woman threaten everyone with a beating, or did she actually do it?

No voice responded from the back. Perhaps this Myrtle
person knew the proprietress’s threat was idle or she kept quiet to avoid confrontation.

Nothing but the sound of sliding pots and clanging bowls sounded from the back, so he grabbed his bag and headed to the stairs.

Carefully testing his weight on the splintered boards, Silas pushed himself upward, his heart pounding harder with each step closer to his wife.

Nearing the last door, he pulled off his hat and stuffed it deep into the pocket of his heavy coat. He cleared his throat and knocked on the door, which gave way under his fist. Something fluttered inside, but no one bid him enter nor asked his name.

“Hello?” Would he even recognize his wife? Ten years could certainly change anybody’s looks, disposition . . . wants. “Lucy?”

He looked behind him to make sure this indeed was the last door. If she wasn’t inside, where should he wait? Would his estranged wife view his entering her empty room as an invasion?

He pushed the door, and his eyes lighted upon the bed where his wife lay, her blond curls as long and sensuous as they’d been during the seven months he’d known her.

But the rest of her? Tightness captured his chest, and he took a shuffling step over to lean against the metal pipe footboard. He dropped his carpetbag and reached out to jiggle her foot. “Lucy?”

Her eyes remained closed. Could he have come all this way to miss her? He’d only wanted to ask for forgiveness. She didn’t have to actually give it.

He slipped around the corner of the bed and reached for her hand. Limp and pale but not exactly cold. Perhaps her slack jaw was from deep sleep.

He felt her forehead, then placed his hand against her breastbone. No heartbeat, no rise and fall of her chest. He blew out
a breath, and his shoulders slumped as he carefully sat down on the dirty mattress.

Why hadn’t he written his apology last month when her letter first arrived? Why hadn’t God allowed him to ask for forgiveness? He barely knew the woman he’d spent a few hours with each night for seven months after a long day of homesteading. Six years he’d wasted hating her for leaving him irrevocably alone, and the last four years he’d lived in agony waiting for a chance to—

“She’s not there.”

He startled and shot off the bed. The woman who’d smacked into him in the alley sat in a rickety chair with her arm around the urchin he’d sidestepped in an effort to avoid being run into.

Had they been racing to Lucy’s side at the announcement of her death? He glanced around but saw no one else in the room. He swallowed against the stone lodged in his throat and blinked against the warmth hazing his eyes. “How long has she been dead?”

The woman’s escaped dark auburn locks were wild about her face, her cheeks pink from either crying or her brisk run. “My guess would be no more than fifteen minutes.”

“Your guess?” He turned to face his wife’s motionless, emaciated form. “Was no one with her?”

“No, we found her this way, though death wasn’t completely unexpected.” She stood and shoved the boy behind her. “And you are?”

“Her husband.” He cocked his head at her sudden defensive posturing. “And you?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Miss Dawson.”

Which meant nothing to him. “A friend of Lucy’s?”

“Yes.”

That’s all she was going to say?

She stepped forward. “Why are you here?”

He pulled on his collar.
Yes, why am I here, Lord? Why now?
He’d spent over ten years alone when his mother had abandoned him at the orphanage, seven months a semicontent but delusional groom, and ten more years as an estranged husband.

And now he was alone again.

“I suppose the Lord wanted me to know of her passing.” Not the greatest comfort, being that he was completely abandoned once again, but it was something. “She’d written for help.” And she’d definitely needed it. How long had she suffered? Her haggard face indicated a lengthy illness.

“Why didn’t you come for her earlier?”

He returned the woman’s glare. If her eyes weren’t scrunched with accusation and her lips curled with scorn, she’d be heaps prettier. “I suppose you fault me for the month I took to get here? I live in Salt Flatts, Kansas. I couldn’t leave my homestead unattended without ruining everything I’ve worked for. I got somebody to take care of my property as soon as I could, and yet I still . . . missed her.”

He’d been walking outside for half an hour.

Was Miss Dawson right? Had he missed apologizing to his wife by fifteen minutes because he’d dragged his feet attempting to settle his nerves?

And why must this strange lady look at him so? What right had she to be mad at him? “Besides being named Miss Dawson, who are you?”

She took one step back, but her chin tilted higher. “So you’re not here for any other reason?”

“Do you find evading questions amusing?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I need to know.”

“Why must I inform you?” He set his jaw. He’d told her Lucy was his wife, yet Miss Dawson hadn’t bothered to offer condolences, just a biting glare.

Her son leaned over to peer at him from behind her, and
Silas sighed. He couldn’t chide the boy’s mother in front of him. Nor should they be arguing beside a dead woman’s bed. He swallowed his pride, something he’d become good at these last ten years, and shrugged. “I came here for no other reason than my wife asked me to.” He held out his open hand indicating the door. “Why don’t we talk outside?”

He led the way out, holding the door open for the mother and son to follow.

Turning around in the middle of the hallway, Miss Dawson returned to glaring. “Did she say
why
she wanted you to come?”

“I’m assuming now it’s because she was sick.” He glanced back into the room, noting the blood-speckled handkerchiefs, the tonics on the washstand, the disheveled cot below the window. Who slept there? “Was she not alone?”

“Someone had to care for her. She was dying of consumption. Penniless. Unloved. Beaten down by the life you tossed her into.”

He straightened. “I tossed her into?”

“Do you deny sending her away?”

“I do.” Why did this woman he’d just met think so poorly of him? “I don’t know what she told you, but I never asked her to leave. I wouldn’t have. She’s all I have in the world.” He swallowed hard. “Or had, anyway.”

Miss Dawson relaxed, and he frowned. Why would his becoming a widower calm her? Her countenance hadn’t struck him as unkind. In fact, she was rather attractive. Maybe not like Lucy—her looks had enamored him from the moment she’d sent him her photograph—but this Miss Dawson’s face was pleasing enough.

Well, more than pleasing if he were honest, with her pert nose and softly colored lips. Less than an hour ago, she’d flown past him in a sea of petticoats, hardly slowed by a jarring hit to the shoulder and a near tumble. She didn’t look strong, considering
her soft feminine form, but her straight back, tilted chin, and peppery words would make any man cautious.

“Well, Mr. . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name.”

“Jonesey. Silas Jonesey.”

“Ah. Jonesey.” She smiled even more. “Mr. Jonesey, I’m sorry if I caused any offense. I wasn’t certain you were—”

“Then you’re not my real father?”

Miss Dawson stiffened, and the boy came out from behind her.

Silas licked his lips, watching the color drain from Miss Dawson. “I thought he was yours?”

“He is.” She glared at the boy and gave him a quick shake of her head. The silencing gesture only made the boy cross his arms.

Silas glanced at Miss Dawson’s fingers. No ring. Not that a lack thereof meant anything if they were as poor as they looked. He took a glance at the two of them again. Besides dark-colored hair, there wasn’t much resemblance—and the boy’s hair had no hint of red. Miss Dawson couldn’t be much more than twenty-five maybe, and the boy had to be . . . around nine.

Nine.

If the boy had blond curls, he’d have looked exactly like Lucy must have at that age.

Silas put a hand to his neck and tightened his abdominal muscles against the slurry in his stomach. “I have a son?”

Chapter 2

“If you have to ask whether or not you have a son, I think that answers your question.” Kate glared at Anthony to shush the boy—he’d never been good at keeping his mouth shut, but he’d been awfully quiet while Silas had held his dead wife’s hand and called her Lucy as if he cared.

But a man who only showed up at his wife’s deathbed couldn’t care. And if Lucinda had meant this man when she’d told Anthony she’d written his father, he would’ve known the boy was his.

Mr. Jonesey’s eyes flashed fire. “I wouldn’t have known if she deliberately kept the information from me.”

Had that blaze of anger in his pupils driven Lucinda away? She’d said he kicked her out . . . which he’d denied.

But with Lucinda dead, he could say anything he wanted to.

“Maybe there’s a reason you don’t know about the boy.” Kate glared back at Silas, with his big muscles and scruffy face. She hadn’t expected him to be so good looking, not after the way Lucinda described her husband from Kansas as a dirt-poor farmer. She’d need to keep from letting his attractive features make her forget what kind of man he really was.

The muscle under Mr. Jonesey’s eye twitched as he held her
gaze. Suddenly his posture softened and he turned to Anthony. “How old are you, son?”

As though calling Anthony
son
proved anything. She tried maneuvering Anthony behind her, but he wouldn’t budge.

“Nine almost ten.”

Silas stared blankly, likely calculating the plausibility of his fatherhood.

Anthony crossed his arms. “And I’m not going anywhere with you.”

That’s right, he wasn’t going anywhere if she could help it. But he shouldn’t sass an elder, even if what he said was true. She steered Anthony to the stairwell. “Why don’t you go downstairs and see if Mrs. Grindall has dinner ready?”

“I don’t feel like eating.” His slumped shoulders and red eyes tore at her, but she needed to talk with Mr. Jonesey alone.

“I know you don’t, sweetie. Maybe you can find a cookie?”

He shrugged but turned toward the dim stairwell.

“We should talk while Anthony eats.” But no matter what Mr. Jonesey said, she’d not change her mind—the boy wasn’t going anywhere with him.

“Should we not fetch someone for . . .” He gestured toward Lucinda’s open door but then let his hand drop. The hopeless gesture might have indicated heartbreak, except he’d abandoned his wife for a decade.

“I asked Mr. Sandwood down the hall to find the undertaker so Anthony could have some time to grieve.” Yet she’d just sent the boy to eat alone . . . she wasn’t starting her parenting off on a stellar foot. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Jonesey.” Though he probably didn’t view it as much of one. She positively ached to kick him in the shins on Lucinda’s behalf.

He moved to lean against the rough wooden wall and looked up at the shadowy ceiling with a glint of wonderment in his eyes. “A son.”

“Now, wait a minute.” She held out an accusatory finger, which did nothing to gain his attention.

A man shouldn’t look all . . . gushy like that. Especially not the kind of man Lucinda described.

She’d not let an innocent-looking expression cause her to let some stranger claim the child she’d grown to love as her own. Silas Jonesey might be just as bad as Richard. “You’ve no proof he’s yours.”

“Doesn’t matter to me.” He shook his head. “I’d take him anyway.”