Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story) (3 page)

             
Matthew looked faintly surprised.

             
"Someone came out the back door," I said.  "I wanted to see if there were sparks, make sure nothing was going to catch before the fire wagons finished up front.  A man came out"—
familiar, so familiar, but I didn't get a good look at his face—
"I don't know who he was."  I rubbed my head.  The headache hadn't retreated even an inch.  "Could someone get me a glass of water?"

             
One of the older women detached herself from the group, which had followed us inside. 

             
"You recognized him?" Matthew persisted.

             
I squinted, rubbed my face with my shredded gloves.  "Yes.  But I don't know who it was."  I gave him a helpless look.

             
He just looked confused in response.

              "You know.  When you know you've seen someone before but can't place them?"

             
He nodded, as if he didn't really know, but was urging me to continue. 

             
"I followed him when he ran."

             
"You
what
?" Matthew's eyes went wide.  Several people in the group ringing us pressed forward.  I heard someone say, "Go get the Sheriff, he's still at the Queen," and someone else muttered something about fires but mostly, they watched, Caroline still sitting quite close to me at the small table in the restaurant part of the saloon.

             
"I followed him.  Matthew, it was daylight, people were on the street, and I saw someone run with a bottle of lamp oil—"

             
"—Is that what I smell?"  He instantly began tugging at my coat, pulling it from me.  I allowed him to take it because it was easier than fighting and because inside the saloon was faintly warmer than outside.

             
"You could have been hurt," Caroline said, mostly for something to say, I thought.

             
I smiled ruefully.  "I was."  The brassy blonde woman came back with a glass of water and I told the rest of my story until the part where I saw the charring on the door of the outbuilding.

             
"Matthew?"

             
But he was already out the door, running, and the men from the group following him.  I stood, too fast, caught myself on Caroline's proffered arm and swayed. 

             
"Sit," several female voices said.

             
"I have to catch him."  He'd been shot once this year already, a thought that curled through my mind as if it meant something more than fear that Matthew was going off half-cocked, then I was trying to run, girls' hands reaching to hold me back, women voicing concerns, the few men who hadn't followed him now following me.

             
I passed Maggie in the doorway.

             
"Chloe?"

             
"Come on!" I said and ran, slipping on the sidewalk, scrambling for the corner of C and Carson Streets. 

             
Matthew was there, in the snow, just crossing Carson Street, headed further up the alley formed by the backs of shops and the bank of hillside.

             
"Matthew!"

             
"Go back inside!"

             
I wanted to.  He'd done something with my wrap and outside the temperature was dropping.  Snow was falling heavier.  He'd never find the tracks now.

             
But whoever had hit me, if he hadn't already left the area, was dangerous.

             
"I'm not going until you do."

             
"Chloe."  His voice was exasperated.             

             
Other voices were chiming in, men examining the door to the outbuilding and finding it marked by flame, exactly as I'd said, girls exclaiming and clutching at me, Matthew raising his voice in irritation.

             
"What's going on here?" 

             
The voice that cut through the other voices was that of Sheriff Rick Gannon.  Dark haired, thick chested, and, at the moment, looking angry, he wore a sheepskin coat and carried his sidearm as if he thought he might want to arrest all of us.

             
Excited voices started filling him in on the story, which grew with the telling.  I'd not have thought it could become more thrilling.

             
Thrilling, apparently, to those who'd not lived it.  I thought about heading back to The Faro Queen, finding a coat and then finding the wagon Matthew had brought me in and getting myself back to Gold Hill.  The chills were racing through me again and no one seemed to care about my side of the story, which really was the only side of the story there was.

             
"I'm so cold," I told Maggie, leaning into her.  She wasn't much warmer—she'd been wearing a shawl when I brushed past her heading after Matthew.

             
Maggie put an arm around me and cast a look at the men surrounding the building.  Most of the women had gone back inside some hotel or other by now, wherever women were welcomed (and a few probably into the saloons, whether or not unescorted women were allowed—there's something about a storm coupled with an emergency that makes all the rules unimportant.)

             
I made it as far as the back of the closest hotel before they noticed and then at least Sheriff Gannon wrapped his coat around my shoulders, which caused Matthew to instantly remove it, drape it around Maggie and wrap me in his own coat.  Then, I repeated my story, standing in the snow, staring at the building where I'd been trapped, where someone had set the wood on fire and left me trapped inside.

             
This time, the trembling refused to stop.  I ignored questions, told the story, got to the end, suggested they look for tracks if there were any and headed resolutely back to The Faro Queen.  I heard most of the voices start up again behind me.  I'd just made the sidewalk when Matthew bounded up beside me, making me jump.

             
"I'll walk you back and Maggie and Hutch can run you home."

             
"I'm sure Mayor Anders will understand if you escort Chloe home this time," Maggie said.

             
"I'm not going home," I said.  I linked my arm with Maggie's, dragging her with me.  "I'm going to the Queen.  I want to see what happened."

             
I didn't miss the look Maggie and Matthew exchanged.  I simply chose to ignore it.

              The damage wasn't extensive.  Carpenters were still replacing walls damaged by the fire in 1875 and some of the timber that had caught this time was the same wood that had burned the last.  No rugs had been laid down yet and very little of the marble that would mark the entrances to the hotel had cracked; most of it wasn't in place yet.

             
Matthew's brother, Hutch, stood across the hotel, talking with workers.  When he saw us come in, he frowned, said something to the men with him and came over to us.

             
I thought,
I'm going to have to tell the story again
, and started to feel very tired. 

             
"What happened?" Hutch asked.  "Maggie?"

             
"Fine.  It's Chloe," she said.

             
Hutch instantly turned to me.  I blinked at him.  This was his hotel, much as it was Matthew's.  He deserved to know what had happened.

             
So I told the story again while, outside, the January winds whipped snow into the streets and alleyways of Virginia City, covering over the tracks of whoever had set fire to The Faro Queen.

              Matthew left partway through the story.  I figured he'd gone to talk to Sheriff Gannon and to return his coat, which Maggie had worn into the hotel.  Hutch straddled a straight back chair in front of the davenport where I'd ended up in the lobby of the Queen, where Faro tables would eventually stand and drinks would be served and, likely, I wouldn't be able to stay anymore.  For now, it was rough workmen swearing and excusing themselves and the stench of fire that was turning my stomach.  It was Maggie's fretting and going to find me tea somewhere and Hutch asking me questions.  That Matthew might go to get more information or see if anything had been found out made sense to me.  I was ready to go do something along those lines myself.

             
But, he hadn't.  Hutch, rising to pace, strayed near the door, which was open to the elements because people kept passing through it with charred wood, and, through it, I saw Matthew on the sidewalk, head bowed in deep conversation with Violet.

             
The sickness gripped me tighter.  I had thought, finally,
our
time had come. 

             
"Are you feeling ill?" Maggie asked as she descended on me with another cup of tea.

             
I made myself look away from the door.  I didn't want her to see.  The rooms in the hotel were ready to rent out; it was the rest of the hotel that wasn't open yet.

             
"Could I take a room tonight?"  If they weren't filled, I wouldn't be taking away any of the hotel's profits.

             
"What about your father?" Hutch asked and, at any other time, I'd have answered something like, "He's at home and doesn't need a room"
or "He's the Mayor of Gold Hill; he can rent his own room." 

             
Evening shadows were falling long.  Days in January are short.  With the full moon out, shining off the fresh snow, the night was bright but frigid.  I had no desire to let Matthew drive me home.

             
Or anywhere else, for that matter.

             
"Father knows I came to Virginia City for lunch.  He'll expect we stopped at the Queen.  And I doubt he'll fault me for not coming through the snow."

             
Matthew, he'd fault.  Matthew was going to be his son by marriage and he wasn't going to be happy about it.  But that was Matthew's problem and the marriage still moot.

              Maggie arranged for a hot bath in the room I'd taken and offered to stay with me.  She and Hutch were staying in the hotel, had been as soon as they could get out of Gold Hill, which had been less than welcoming for Maggie.

             
"Do you know where Matthew went?"  Getting out of the warm water made me realize how much I hurt.  Laying on the crates in the cold had left me stiff and sore.

             
"Talking to the Sheriff, I expect," Maggie said.  She sat at the window, looking out over C Street, biting her lip.

             
"Maggie, I'm sorry."

             
"You're the one—"

             
"—I'm the one who followed someone on my own.  But this is your hotel."

             
"As much as it's yours.  It's really the Longren brothers'."

             
So, did I ask?  About Matthew.  About Matthew and Violet.  About whether Matthew was now still talking with the Sheriff as the sun disappeared and night came on.  After I'd seen him on the street with her again.

             
I didn't.  The ache of it was too great.  And when Maggie said she'd best be getting along to find Hutch his dinner and did I want to come down or would they send a tray up, I didn't protest but only asked for whatever they were having. 

             
"I'm sure Matthew is finding out everything he can about what happened to you," she said, standing at the door.  Her eyes were full of guilt.

             
You don't think that at all
, I wanted to say. 
What do you know?  About why Violet is here?

             
But I didn't ask.  After she left, I wrapped the quilt from the bed around myself and sat on the davenport and watched the moonlight on the snow.  There were people in the street still—Virginia City is far busier than Gold Hill at night, with Piper's Opera House open and a Shakespeare play being put on, with places to eat and drink, with shops open even after the sun went down—but none of those people were Matthew.

             
Where are you?
I thought at him.

             
And with whom?

             
In July 1880, Maggie Lucas came to Gold Hill to marry Hutch Longren.  They'd never met and, to hear Maggie tell it, she was sure about Mr. Longren from the beginning, from the first time she saw him, but not quite sure about Nevada.  She'd come from Boston and the desert, the people and the Comstock Lode were all so very different.  In Boston, where her father grieved for her mother and her sisters tried to look after a house her father rattled around in, there were telephones and cable cars, brick buildings and opera houses and young men who courted her to no avail.

             
In Gold Hill, there was sage brush and a garden and a community that wasn't sure what to make of the midwife from Back East.  There was Hutch's first wife, her memory intimidating Maggie, and there was Matthew, who was meant to be nothing more than her brother by marriage.

             
Just one kiss.  She'd told me and he'd told me, separately.  They were usually separate, only together if I was there or Hutch was.  One kiss, because they'd wanted to get it out of the way, make sure there was nothing between them before Maggie married Hutch.

             
Only Hutch had found out.  Hutch had found
them
, specifically, in the garden where Matthew had fallen, the gunshot wound he'd sustained in his leg making him weak, his lack of common sense making him weaker.  When he'd fallen, he'd caught hold of Maggie and taken her down with him. And then, instead of getting up right away...

             
I paced the room, sadness building as night closed in.  By the time Maggie had come to Nevada, Matthew and I had been stepping out since I was 16, a little more than two years.  My friends were busily getting married and I was busily getting jilted.  I left him more times than I cared to count as he made time with a school teacher who came and went in the course of a winter, with Violet Hastings, whose parents rivaled the Mackays in wealth and who didn't lose their fortune when the mines started to play out.  I'd left him again just before Maggie came to town, when Jason Seth was on the rampage because Matthew had been seeing his sister, Elizabeth Seth.  Elizabeth Seth was a rival.  Tall and strong, with auburn hair, she was utterly beautiful.  But every time Matthew strayed from me, he came back.  Every time, he apologized.  Every time, he left the other girl.  Every time.  Except with Elizabeth Seth.  Because that time, when he came back to me, she came along too.

             
Not invited, of course.  She came crying and clinging, threatening and sobbing, and it didn't end, not completely, because Matthew was flattered by her hysterics.  It didn't completely end between them until Jason Seth shot Matthew.

             
Men rarely feel the same about a girl after her brother shoots them.

             
And then there was Violet. 

             
Pacing.  Violet was the problem tonight, but Elizabeth kept coming to mind.  Elizabeth, and her brother, Jason Seth.  He'd shot Matthew once because of Elizabeth.  Now that Matthew was with me again, could he have tried to burn The Faro Queen and kill me?

             
Only, it wasn't his face I'd seen.  I was sure of it.  Jason Seth had red hair and a heavier build than the man who'd hit me.  But he'd already shot Matthew and bought out the Longren brothers' interest in the Silver Sky Mine.  He'd tried to foreclose on Hutch's house but investments their parents had made had saved the house and Matthew had bought Hutch's house when Hutch and Maggie moved to Virginia City.

             
Bought it for us.

             
If there was going to be an us.

             
I paced away from the window.  Moonlight and fallen snow meant it was still nearly bright as day out there.  The snowfall had stopped and now tracks remained in the street where horses, people and wagons had passed.  There were still men on the streets, a few with women on their arms.  It was early yet, not quite gone on nine, and truly, I was too restless to sleep despite, or because of, the events of the day.  My head still ached miserably, though, and my heart was beginning to as well.

             
In the hallway outside the room I'd taken, a grandfather clock struck the hour.  Not gone on nine yet?  It was seven.  Maggie and Hutch probably hadn't eaten yet.  She'd only left a little while ago. 

             
Abruptly, I threw off the quilt and turned down the lamp, found the key to my room and checked my appearance in the glass. I didn't want to be alone anymore.  I'd go join them.  If they'd eaten, maybe they'd loan me use of the kitchen.  I'd make eggs, one of the few things I could safely create in a kitchen.  Or chicken.  Or maybe something I could chop viciously with a sharp knife.  I just didn't want to be alone with my thoughts anymore.  Wherever Matthew was, he'd have a shock when he came back.  I'd get answers or end it again.  Again.  Maybe this time for good.  I saw Hutch and Maggie together.  They were happy, they worked together, they stayed together, even after Maggie's work as a midwife dragged back all Hutch's memories of his first wife dying in child bed, they'd found each other.

             
Matthew.  Matthew was firecrackers and lightning and wildfires—and too many nights like this one.

             
Maybe he was out asking questions of the Sheriff.  Maybe he was looking for tracks that likely had been snowed under.  I absolutely wouldn't worry that something had happened to him, there'd been too many days and nights worrying about that, only to have him turn up again, bad penny safe and sound.

             
I yanked the door to the room open.

             
And fell into his arms.

             
"Whoa, girl," Matthew said.  He caught my arms and set me neatly back on my feet.

             
"Let go of me," I snapped.  But, of course, he already had.

             
"It's me, Chlo."  As if I'd mistake him for anybody else.

             
"I know it's you."  I looked past him into the hall.  "You and who else?"

             
Matthew closed his eyes briefly.  "From the sound of it, you already know."

             
I did.  I'd seen him.  Him and Violet.  But hearing it, without any attempts at denial, somehow, that was worse.

             
I slapped him.  I'd never done anything like that in my life and, had I ever expected to, I'd have thought it would have been for lying, not for telling me the truth.

             
"How could you?  And why?  Why, after everything that we've been through, after—"

             
"Chloe, it's not what you think."  He had one hand up to his cheek and his eyes were watering.

             
"Of course not.  Of course it isn't.  It never is, is it, Matthew Longren?  Did you think you'd just wait until I fell for you again and—"

             
"—You're talking about Violet."  He kept his voice level.  That just made me angrier.

             
Down the hall, someone opened a door and stuck his head out.  I hadn't known any of the other rooms were occupied.  The hotel wasn't finished, though maybe the carpenters were staying.  Whoever he was, he took one look at us and retreated.

             
"Of course I'm talking about Violet.  Of course it
is
Violet.  And, of course you—"

             
"—Needed her advice," Matthew said.  He met my eyes, looking far too rational.  "Didn't go looking for her, but a fire brings people out and…"

             
I almost hit him again, my hand flying up of its own accord.  Instead, I jerked back, appetite gone, the desire to see any member of the Longren clan long gone.  Grabbing the door, I swung it, hard.

             
He caught it easily and, when I stepped forward, belligerent, furious, he caught me easily, too, lifting me with his hands just above my elbows, swinging me far too easily off the floor and back into the room, as if we danced some complicated dance.  I caught my breath as he shut the door behind himself, locked it, and pocketed the key.

             
"Give me that!"  I was angry enough to climb out the window except for the snow; angry enough to head back to Gold Hill on foot if that was the only way I could get there tonight.

             
"Chloe, listen to me."

             
He looked serious, calm and determined.  I backed away again, terrified suddenly of what he was going to tell me, the end of the years of advance and retreat.  The end of the dream I'd had.  That, someday, I'd be a Longren woman.  That I'd marry Matt.  That he'd love only me.

             
"Get out."

             
"Sure," he said, agreeable.  Not leaving. 

             
I stomped past him to the door, my boots ringing on the hardwood floors.  "Give me the key."

             
He met my eyes, looking almost as angry as I was.  I held my hand out.  He considered, reached into his pocket, pulled out the key.

             
I took it without saying anything, wrapped my fingers around it, looked away from him and turned back to the door.  The key in the lock, the doorknob spun, I pulled the door open a couple of inches.

             
Matthew's hand came over my shoulder, flat against the door, slamming it shut.  I turned fast and his other hand came up on the other side of my head, boxing me in.  I started to duck out from under his grasp, but he lowered his head and caught my mouth with his.

             
It started as fight but Matthew's mouth was hot, his lips winter-rough, his breath sweet, no trace of whisky.  Partway into the kiss, he reached down one hand and cupped my cheek.  Without thinking, I pressed my head into his palm, pressed my mouth harder against his. 

             
His other hand went away from the door, away from me, leaving one side of me suddenly cold and wanting him back.  I opened my eyes and pulled back, looking into his face.

             
Looking into the tiny circle of twisted metal he held up in front of me. 

             
I stared.  "What is that?"

             
Matthew grinned, looking a great deal like he must have when he was a little boy growing up, driving his older siblings crazy, tagging after Hutch, making Annie despair.

             
"Barbed wire."

             
That was about right.  I couldn't quite stop staring at it.  "Why?"

             
"Because I don't have a thimble.  Silly, of course.  Annie must have dozens at her dress shop.  But I didn't want to tell Annie before I told you."

             
My breath caught.  The day had been long, too full of events.  It was not every day someone tried to kill me.

             
It was not every day Matthew Longren proposed.

             
"Matthew?"

             
"Miss Chloe Anders, will you marry me?"

              He was going to have to ask my father and Gold Hill's Mayor wasn't going to be happy.  He was going to have to get past my mother, far more ferocious than my father, though she'd always thought eventually Matthew would come around.

             
I'd marry him, even if they said no.

              Meeting his eyes, looking again at the ring, a twisted band of metal, something taken from the garden at the house he'd bought from Hutch, maybe.  Because he didn't want to tell Annie before he told me, he hadn't asked for a thimble.

             
Told
me?

             
But the smile was taking over my face.  "Matthew Longren, I will marry you."

             
The barbed wire ring went flying.  I heard it hit the floor and roll.  He grabbed me around the waist, spun me in a circle that made my head start aching again, cheered so loudly, someone somewhere down the hall called to us to stop, spun me until we were dizzy and let me drop down the length of his body, mine pressed against his, my arms coming down around his neck, his hands pressing up my back, pulling me tight against him.

             
"I love you, Miss Chloe Anders."

             
"I love you, Mr. Matthew Longren."

             
Outside, the moonlight flared bright again as clouds shredded across the sky.  The curtains were open.  I closed them without conscious thought, leaning across the davenport to pull them together.  When I turned back, Matthew was there, close enough to catch me up in his arms and press tight against me.  Our mouths came together again, his hands pulled me tight.  I fumbled, dizzy, reached for the sofa under the window and we both sank down to it, Matthew pressing me back against it, our arms around each other, mouths connecting, breath coming fast and then his mouth moved, his lips trailed hot across my jaw, into my hair.  He breathed my name, traced the lines of my face with his fingers and all the while, I was pressing my fingers into his hair, pulling his mouth back to mine, saying his name, trying to remember the anger and hurt of only an hour ago, less. We were moving so fast; he'd asked me to marry him.