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

             
Matthew Longren and his brother, Hutch, had moved from Gold Hill to Virginia City to pursue their dream of a hotel and casino right on C Street.  It's what had originally lured Hutch Longren from Alturas, California, to the wilds of Virginia City, but the silver coming out of Mt. Davidson lured him to Gold Hill and the Silver Sky Mine he ran with Matthew.

             
And Matthew Longren could lure me out of a warm house on a cold day, simply with the promise of lunch.  He could warm my heart and make me hot under the collar, all in the same day.  All in the same 10 minutes, truth to tell.  A cad, a womanizer, a scoundrel, a ne'er do well, there wasn't a name my father hadn't called him and a few I wouldn't, or didn't often, repeat.  Tall, with ice blue eyes and black hair, with a beard that showed by three p.m. and broad shoulders, his forearms hard with muscle, his hands elegant and yet well used... He was beautiful.

             
And he knew it.

             
And he used it.  How often had I pulled my heart away from him, swearing off the Longren men, and gone back to my father's house in tears, only to have Matthew come again, with flowers and beautiful words, with hope and promises?

             
And lies.

             
Some lie he'd told had separated him from his brother, Hutch, in recent months.  Since summer, they'd been tense around each other, short and dangerously moody.  Since Maggie had come west to marry Hutch, truth to tell, which wasn't something I wanted to think about.  She was older than my 18 years, beautiful, with gold hair and green eyes and the fact that she'd fallen in love with Mr. Hutchinson Longren probably didn't mean anything to Matthew, not at first, not until he could take it seriously.

             
That was my supposition of what had come between them.  Though we were close again, with Matthew calling only on me—I thought—I hadn't asked him.  Matthew was lighthearted, too; lighthearted, my father says, never serious about anything.  Except his brother. 

             
And then The Faro Queen.

              The tracks led through an eerily empty city.  At best guess, I had to assume everyone was either inside out of the storm, a far more sensible plan than the one I was pursuing, or they were on C Street, watching the clean up after the fire.

             
Besides, I'd never paid attention to how many people ever used the alley behind the hotels. 

             
Around me, the day had taken on the spectral gray silence of high desert snowstorm.  When the wind blows just right, sound is muffled.  There's no sigh to the wind, no sound from the snow, and all other sounds are muffled.

             
Which is probably why I didn't hear him.  I concentrated on the footprints in the snow, afraid the new fall would cover them before—before what?  I couldn't have answered what I thought I was going to do if I caught up.  "Please, sir, would you wait here as I summon the Sheriff?"

             
In the end, it didn't matter.  The alley broke off at Carson Street, just a block before it intersected C Street.  The footsteps led toward some outbuildings behind the saloon on the corner.  I followed the footprints, no longer thinking clearly (had I been thinking clearly to begin with). 

             
And he stepped out from the back of the outbuilding.

             
He came at me from my right side, moving so fast that I didn't register what was happening until it was too late.  There was a moment when I caught my breath, the moment I should have been able to scream and didn't.  The moment was lost as I looked into eyes within a face swathed in scarves, a face I could almost recognize, almost identify.  I was still struggling for the name when he grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him.

             
Startled, struggling, I yanked my arm and his hand to me and bit hard into the back of his left hand.  That was when he swung the empty bottle in his other hand, bringing it down hard, catching me across the back of my skull, at shoulder level.

             
The bottle shattered, shards of glass falling into the new snow.  For just an instant, I had time to childishly think
That didn't do anything, you didn't do anything—
and then the world grayed around me, spun and vanished.

              I woke in a small, very cold, very hard room. The headache that woke me made the daylight jump uncertainly, shadows moving like animals.  Once I convinced my eyes to stay open, I turned my head gingerly, trying to make out where I was.

             
Dim light slanted through rough walls.  So did snowflakes.  Wherever I was, I lay on crates and wind and snow swirled through rough-cobbled boards.  Light danced.

             
My last memory had been of the bottle coming down at me, at my short victory at not falling, followed instantly by—falling, presumably.  I'd been behind a saloon on the corner of Carson and C Streets, south of The Faro Queen.  I guessed I still was, just now in one of the outbuildings I'd approached with caution, though apparently not cautiously enough.

             
I sat up, making a soft, involuntary sound.  If my attacker was still here, he'd know I was awake anyway.  Once sitting, my boots dangling off the crate I'd been left on, I could just make out the wooden crates, dirt floor and rough wood walls of the building.  From beyond the walls, I could hear the sound of the storm and a distant crow protesting something.  Nothing else but, by now, everyone else would be inside.  The day was growing both old and colder.  I could smell wood smoke, from The Faro Queen, I guessed.

             
I slid off the makeshift bed, stumbled a little and tried the door.  I couldn't see where there was any way for it to be locked, so it had to be blocked from the outside by something.  It wouldn't budge.

             
Panic set in.  Full blown, unreasoning.  Screaming, I pounded on the door, kicking it with my boots.  It didn't feel like there was enough air in the room, which was impossible, of course, it wasn't sealed tight in any way, but the clawing, crawling panic demanded I get out and the stench of charred wood turned my stomach.  

             
When the door didn't give, I moved fast through the room.  Meant for storage, it was small, cold and unfinished.  With the storm howling through the cracks in the walls, I could freeze to death easily; already my teeth had begun to chatter.  I moved to one of the bigger cracks in the wall, put one eye to it, and stared out.

             
From that vantage point, I could see the edge of the foothill in one direction, the back of the saloons in the other.  I was where I thought I was, just off the main street, close enough for rescue; far enough, and unexpected enough, to die under the very noses of the good people of Virginia City.

             
Stumbling back into the room, I caught my breath, tried to force myself to think this through, abandoned that idea and threw myself at the door.

             
It gave.  I tumbled out into the snow, one ankle twisting under me, one hip slamming hard into the frozen ground.  Above me, the slate gray sky spat fat snowflakes.  The air smelled like wood smoke.

             
I scrambled to my feet, turning in a complete circle.  There was no one anywhere near me, not pedestrians and not the man who had swung the bottle at me.  Shards of glass still poked out of the snow, not yet covered over with new snow.  I hadn't been unconscious for long, then.

             
Which meant whoever he was could still be near.  Again, the scarf-covered face floated at me in memory, familiar but unidentifiable.  It didn't matter; I only wanted to get away.  I could bring someone back with me, Matthew, if he'd listen, a Sheriff's deputy, and show them the broken lamp oil bottle, the outbuilding where there'd be something left behind to show I'd been there, if the reek of lamp oil on my collar and the broken glass in my hair and on the ground weren't enough.

             
Already moving toward the cross street, I stopped again—and stared. 

             
The door still swung open, moving slightly with nothing to stop it.  When it swung closed, I saw the char marks on the door.

             
"They're not fresh," I said aloud into the quiet afternoon.

             
But they were.  I'd been smelling the scorch from the fire ever since I'd awakened.  Whether it was the snow, the wind, or luck, the fire hadn't caught but whoever had locked me in the outbuilding had tried to set it on fire.

             
Carson Street, one block short of C Street, was deserted.  My heart pounded in time to my quick steps as my boots slithered in the snow.  I moved as fast as I dared, not wanting to fall, desperately not wanting to give whoever had hit me another chance.  There was no way to know for sure whoever he was had gone.

             
Except that he'd seemed unafraid of getting caught before and, because there was no one in the alley, had he seen me emerge and decided to stop me, he'd have had ample opportunity to do so already.  I was still moving slower than I wanted, disoriented and in pain.

             
Turning on to C Street, finally, there were lights and people.  Oil lamps lit the street and groups of people moved through the January night.  I passed the first of them without anyone saying anything, but slipped and caught myself against a horse tether before I'd gone very far.

             
"Are you alright?"  A hand caught my elbow, keeping me from falling. 

             
I recognized the voice and shied wildly before I stopped myself.  Caroline Brown, a friend from Gold Hill. 

             
"Chloe?"

             
I nodded, found my voice.  "Caroline.  I'm sorry.  I—" Stumbling over my words, I stopped, uncertain if I should tell anyone what had happened to me.  Gossip is one of the chief trades in places like Gold Hill and Virginia City. 

             
It would spread soon enough.  The Sheriff wasn't tight lipped, no more than anyone else.

             
"Chloe?" Caroline asked again. 

             
I used the horse tether and her arm to fully right myself, feet seeking less slick purchase on the snow covered wooden sidewalk.  I put up one hand to ask her to wait and saw my leather gloves were torn in places.

             
The cold caught me again at that.  Wind surged down the main street, swirling dried powdery snow into drifts.

             
"Someone hit me," I said.

             
Caroline's shocked hiss drew a couple of middle aged women passing. 

             
"Did you fall?" one of them asked.  She was brassy blonde, tall and of the type of weight that moves regally and ponderously, but her face looked kind.

             
Her friend, darker and elegantly dressed, wrinkled her nose.  "She smells of—"

             
"—Lamp oil," I said.  "Someone hit me with a bottle of it."

             
Caroline and the two women began talking at once, voices raised so that more women flocked to us, some of them bringing husbands and suitors until the men began joining the crowd.  My story started and stopped and was repeated over shoulders to those joining the crowd until I could hear the changes being made to it from where I stood.  I wanted to stop talking, just wanted—

             
"Matthew."

             
He pushed through the crowd, blue eyes squinting with concern, dark curls coated with melting snowflakes.  The snow was starting up harder again, the wind battering its way down the street.

             
"Step back," Matthew said.  "Give her some air."

             
The air was frigid.  It was the last thing I wanted.  I put my hands on his forearm as he reached for me.  The shivering had started up, cold wracking through me. 

             
"Can we go in?" I asked.  I nodded at the saloon we were closest to, not wanting to make the circuit of the street, all the way to the Queen.

             
"What happened?  Where were you?  I looked around and you were gone."

             
I waited for him to say something about the hotel or worse, about Violet, but he just watched me, concerned, and led me to a seat at one of the tables where ladies are permitted to sit.  From the bar, raucous laughter as the indomitable drank their way through the storm.

             
"I saw someone," I said.  "When the fire broke out, I ran around back."

             
Matthew frowned.  "Back of the Queen?  Why?"

             
"Because everyone else was going in the front."