Silver Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #1) (2 page)

             
There was Hutch Longren, the man I'd come to marry. 

             
"Miss Lucas?  You'd best get back into the wagon."  He stood, holding his hand out to me, this stranger I'd come to marry, and my heart raced and my breath went thin.  But his eyes were soft, his hand held out with patience, and I had watched him calm the horses, never swearing, never shouting.

             
I took his hand and stepped back into the wagon.

              Gold Hill was only a few miles outside of Virginia City through the sage and canyons.  If not for the storm, we'd likely have seen other people who would soon be my neighbors.  The road was well traveled, as Virginia City itself was rowdy, loud, and home to the miners, shopkeeps, and tavern owners, where Gold Hill, tucked under the mines, was home to some 8,000 people.

             
Gold Hill had its own mining concerns, like Virginia City, which was better known across the nation, even as far as Boston.  But the mines were playing out as the years advanced and the end of the war between the states had seen a drop in silver prices.  I knew I shouldn't expect the neat brickwork of my family home.

             
Neither of us spoke much on that ride.  The horses, now calmed, were exhausted, shuffling in the traces as they dragged the wagon.  After my initial excitement of arrival and after the events of the afternoon, I felt much the same and the further we drove together, the less I could think to say to the stranger beside me.

             
I'd almost fallen into reverie – or more honestly, sadness and homesickness – when he said softly from beside me, "Look up, Miss Lucas.  We are almost home."

             
He'd done well during the silver strike.  I knew that, of course, as I knew that most of the money was gone, first to Ellie Longren's illness and then to daily life as the mine he'd owned with his brother produced less and less. 

             
The house, though, was neat and clean, whitewashed and surrounded by a low picket fence that twined with bright blue flowers and sunny sweet pea. 

             
There was a great deal of land, several acres to my untrained eye, and a garden behind the house, because I could see the tops of corn showing their heads.  As we approached from one side, I could see the barn out back and the neatly tended and rock-lined dirt path that led back up to the house.  More horses stood in the pasture, which was shaded by apple trees. 

             
The day was now hot and windless.  The storm had been a brief squall and blown over after blowing us from Virginia City to Gold Hill, an inauspicious welcome if I was looking for a quiet life.

             
In truth, I wasn't sure what I was looking for.  My father would never have pressed this marriage on me, although he wanted his daughters set for life (and possibly out from underfoot).  My father's fortunes hadn't favored him since my mother passed.  I needed somewhere to go.

             
I had come without notions of romance, as befit a woman verging on old maid, unmarried at 23 and coming to an untamed land with no dowry.

             
This was to be a marriage of convenience. 

             
I was not willing to admit to myself that upon first sight of Mr. Longren, I'd begun to harbor secret hopes.  I wasn't even going to admit it to myself.

             
He was waiting for me to say something.  We still sat on the wagon seat, the reins loose in his hands.  His dark hair had dried into a mess of curls and I wanted to reach over and straighten them out, but the thought itself reminded me he was a stranger.

             
"You haven't spoken," he said.

             
Which was unfair.  Neither had he. 

             
"It's bigger than I expected," I said, and then thought that paltry praise.  I hadn't come seeking a fortune.  "It's beautiful." 

             
My voice came out softer than I expected, and I glanced at Mr. Longren and saw a softening in his eyes.  I'd pleased him, which pleased me. 

              We stepped out of the brilliant day into the sitting room, which looked as if no one used it and likely hadn't since Mr. Longren's wife had passed.  It was elegant and though covered in Nevada dust, otherwise starkly clean.  His wife's taste had included delicate crystal vases and lace table covers.  One delicate china tea pot was displayed on a sofa table.  The room unnerved me.  I had come into another woman's house to be wife to another woman's husband and could not fathom how I would compare with her memory.

             
Mr. Longren disappeared down a narrow hallway, my trunk on his shoulder as if it weighted nothing.  Briefly, I remembered his muscles outlined by the soaking, clinging shirt as he worked the wagon wheel back on the road between Virginia City and Gold Hill, and I shivered, then coughed to cover it and forced myself to step completely into the house, swinging the door shut behind me.

             
I had no idea what to expect.  My life for the last four weeks had revolved around getting to this place and meeting this man who I was to marry.  I had sometimes wondered what my life would become once I'd arrived but, with very little to base conjecture on, had mostly considered the journey.

             
He came back down the hallway.  "I thought you would follow me."

             
I blushed.  I was acting like a foolish child, but I had spent little time alone with a man.  In Boston, propriety meant there were chaperones.  Things were different in the West.

             
I followed him to the room he'd prepared or, more likely, a neighbor had seen to.  It was clean and neat, and clearly not his.  The dresser gleamed, neatly waxed, and the bed was covered in a lacy spread with pillows heaped high.  Canary yellow curtains moved in the afternoon breeze. 

             
It was my room, and clearly mine alone in this clean, unknown house.  I had no idea how to broach the question of how long it would be mine and only mine, or even when we would wed.  I stood at the threshold, thinking only now that he had not carried me into the house, but he had, in fact, preceded me, giving me view of his shoulders and strong back but little in the way of a husband greeting a wife.

             
And I swallowed hard, burying the thought.  It wouldn't do to forget my place. 

             
He was watching me, a curious half smile that made me stumble into speech, thanking him and admiring the room, sure I was nearly out of words when we heard horses racing up to the house, heard hard, loud voices calling and footsteps across the wooden porch.  Someone banged hard on the door, calling "Hutch?  You there?"

             
The screen door rattled, and the inside door banged too.  I tried to step back into the hall or farther into the room, either way, just to get out of his way, and Mr. Longren brushed past me in my indecision.  One hand brushed my arm as he passed and I shivered, then turned to follow him.

             
Two men stood just inside the sitting room, filling it to nearly overflowing with their size.  Broad shoulders, tan shirts rolled to mid-arm, their shirts wet with sweat.  They were dusty and hot and they wore their hats until I entered behind Mr. Longren.

             
"Ma'am," one said, but the other merely passed his eyes over me and said, "Hutch, you need to come."  He was already turning, hat going to head, hand out to catch the door and shove it open.

             
"John," my husband said.  "I've just come from retrieving Miss Lucas from the railway. I'd prefer – "

             
"It's bad, Hutch," the other man said.  Pale eyes, graying hair, he wore wire rimmed spectacles and still held his hat against his chest. 

             
Mr. Longren looked past the man he'd called John, his tanned face suddenly going pale.  "Where's Matthew?"

             
"At the mine," John said.  The screen door banged behind him as he headed for his horse.

             
Mr. Longren turned his attention to the man he'd called John.  Muscles moved in his jaw.

             
"He's alive, Mr. Longren.  Shot.  You need to come."

             
Hutch swore, reached for his hat, and he was already in motion when he called back to me, "Make yourself at home.  Look around.  I have to – "

             
I reached for him.  Matthew was his little brother, younger by several years, who'd followed Hutch Longren out to the silver strike.  My mother had read me letters from Mr. Longren about Matthew, about his temper, his humors, and his hard drinking and hard living.

             
Hutch Longren loved his brother.

             
"I'm coming," I said, fumbling for the hat that had been lost on the road, realizing I needed nothing else and had nothing else.  My kit wouldn't arrive for another week at least, sent from Boston to follow me up.  I had no instruments but myself and whatever may be at the mine.

             
"That's no place for a lady, ma'am," John said from the porch.

             
"Stay here, Margaret," Hutch said, using my name for the first time, and following hard on John's heels, "Is the doc there?"

             
"Accident at the Chollar mine.  He'll come when he can, we need to move Matthew, get him back here or to his house, we – "

             
The screen door slammed behind me.  Hutch looked over his shoulder even as he moved fast for the spare horse the two men had brought with them.  "Go inside.  I'll be back."

             
"I'm coming with you," I said, and for a minute, couldn't think how.  There were three horses in the front of the house and three men mounting them.  I'd ridden, of course, but in Boston, with the modern streetcars and carriages, it wasn't often.  I didn't know how to saddle a horse, where to find a saddle, or even how to ride the way they rode out here.  And the horses in the corral were strangers as much as Mr. Longren.

             
"Stay.  Here."  He sounded angry, was already astride a huge, red beast, and wheeling away from me to ride.  The other men dug their heels into the horses' sides.

             
I raised my voice, shouting to be heard.  He couldn't leave me here.  "I'm a midwife," I shouted.  "I can help."  I didn't know Matthew, but Mr. Longren's letters had brought him alive. Young, impetuous.  Important, to Hutch.

             
Just the slightest pause.  I saw his shoulders sink from their high defensive hold.  He didn't want to take me.  But, this was for Matthew.

             
Later, I'd wonder if Hutch Longren had been as nervous as I had been at our initial meeting, nervous enough to almost welcome any excuse to get some time away.  Later, I'd wonder how wise I'd been to insist on following, and what would have happened if I couldn't have helped Matthew. 

             
But that was later.  All I knew was someone was hurt and I had to help.

             
Longren stopped the horse, turned back to me, and held his hand out.  It would be the fastest way and I wouldn't have to try to ride.  I ran to him, silently cursing the tight skirt that bound my legs.  Easier by far, Virginia, for railway and wagon riding, but the horse was another matter. 

             
He pulled me up across his lap and didn't wait any longer.  We followed the other two horses, riding hard.                           

              The three men rode hard, galloping out of Gold Hill, heading northeast away from both Gold Hill and Virginia City, toward the mountains and the silver.  Wind tangled my hair, covering my face and eyes, getting into my dry mouth.  The heat of the day wrapped around me like Mr. Longren's arms.  My back brushed against his chest with every jolt of the horse over the rocky ground. 

             
My heart pounded.  I was afraid I wouldn't be able to help, afraid of what that would mean for Matthew Longren, and what it would mean for the man I was meant to marry.  I'd attended a gun shot only once before, in Boston, when a banker cleaning his pistol had discharged it in an elegant home on Charles Street and the doctors were busy with a breech birth and the hospital was too far away.  I'd succeeded then.  I had to succeed now.

             
Despite the situation, I was aware of the strong arms circling me, one hand holding me against him, the other holding the reins.  A delicious sense of inappropriate pleasure coursed through me. I tried to deny it, and failed.

             
We passed a clutch of people on the street.  Little girls skipping rope stopped and stared. A woman wearing a bonnet looked up, frankly disapproving.  She pulled her parcels closer and stepped off the road.  I was making an impression I hadn't intended.  I bit my lip and went back to worrying about Matthew Longren.

             
It took only minutes to ride to the mine.  Nothing but a rough wood entrance, the name painted above the entrance: Silver Sky.

             
The sight of it made me tense.  The sky above, anything but silver, was vast blue and open, seeming to go on forever. The land led up to it, wide and rocky, dotted with sage.  The pinion pines covered the slopes above the mine.  But the mine entrance itself was a midnight black hole, an opening into nothing.

             
I regretted my impetuous move in joining the men. I wasn't certain I had the courage to go into that black maw, even if I was needed.  I didn't want to think about Mr. Longren going daily into that Stygian blackness.

             
And maybe there was no need for me to descend.  Outside the mine, in a small clearing dotted with equipment, machines, wagons and horses, stood a crowd of men, some shirtless, some with rolled up sleeves. They were rough looking and filthy, few with hats.  They circled a figure on the ground and looked back over their shoulders as we drew near.

             
I had a moment's relief, I would not have to go into that dark to tend the charge I'd made my own, and a moment's revulsion at my cowardice.

             
Then the horses stopped and I slid down before Mr. Longren could assist me.  Tucking my skirts out of the way with both hands, I ran across the ground between us without waiting.

Several of the men detached from the crowd, putting up hands to ward me off.

              "Whoa, miss, you don't want to see this."

             
"Lady, wait."

             
"Stay back!"

             
The last man reached for me, his hands finding purchase on my arms.  I batted him away and heard him swear.  His fingers tightened for an instant before I heard Hutch Longren shout, "Ben, let her go!"  He released me instantly and I shouldered through the others, no thought of propriety.

             
Matthew Longren lay in the circle of men, his face stark white with pain, his teeth gritted.  He was propped up against what looked like a bedroll and that against a small wood fence, both hands clenched around his thigh, where filthy rags made a tourniquet.  His trousers were soaked through and stained dark with blood but the wound had stopped pumping blood if it had.

             
He was lucky, if anyone having been shot could be called lucky, and given what I'd heard in letters of his temper and his tendency to bully the worst choices, I thought lucky was apt. The bullet had caught him in the fleshy part of his thigh, missing bone as far as I could see, and missing the arteries that ran there.

             
I knelt in the dirt without thinking, without introducing myself or even speaking.  I wanted to see the wound, wanted to get my hands on something to clean it with, as my mother had taught me.

             
"I need a knife," I said to the men around me, and they shifted and made querulous sounds.  Men are never good at suddenly taking orders from a woman.  When no knife was forthcoming, I looked up at the roughest of them, an enormous dark haired man with a mustache of absurd size, and said, "Sir, your knife."  I held out my hand.

             
On the ground, my patient scrambled backward a bit.  "Who are you?"  And then, more to the point, "What are you going to do with that knife?"

             
I met his eyes then, about the time a much too large knife slapped into my hand, and I smiled as reassuringly as I could, which likely wasn't very.  "I'm your sister-in-law," I said, and watched bright blue eyes go wide, and I felt something, even in that instant, that I couldn't afford to feel, a twist of the heart I was determined to ignore.

             
Same hair, same generous mouth as his brother, same dark skin, and strangely blue eyes.  But younger, closer to my age, and just now, he needed me.

             
I blinked and looked away from him, forcing myself to my work, which made him scramble again, his leg starting to bleed anew from injudicious movement. The men behind him stopped his retreat