Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story) (5 page)

             
I didn't either.  He'd shot the man I loved, for seeing his sister. 

             
"Someone told me the Sheriff said Mr. Seth was at the mine."  The day was getting long.  I'd had too many conversations on the same topics.

             
"That could be his men, loyalty to a paycheck—"

             
I laid one hand over hers, where they twisted on the table.  "It wasn't him.  The person who hit me was slighter.  I thought of him, too, but he has a redhead's coloring.  It wasn't him.  Maggie, it's alright."

             
She nodded, unconvinced.  And she was right.  It wasn't alright.  There had been workers in The Faro Queen when she caught fire, men who could have been injured or killed.  The hotel was the dream of both brothers and the livelihood of both our families, Maggie's and my own imminent union. 

             
Whoever had set fire to the hotel and hit me was still out there.  He could come back.  He could come back as we slept, or when we were away from the hotel.  He could find any one of us when we were alone.

             
"I'm trying to remember, Maggie.  Truly.  And I will.  I just need to sleep on it."  As if I would sleep.  The excitement rose again, making me anxious to see Matthew.  He might be sleeping in the lobby even now.  I could rise, leave the kitchen and, instead of taking a back stair and returning to my room, I could go into the lobby and—

             
Watch him sleep?  Wake him?  Take him back upstairs with me, when he showed more sense of propriety than I had?

             
The smile that kept threatening my lips was wholly inappropriate.  Maggie, distracted, didn't see.  She stood, taking the cups with her, and began stacking dishes on the kitchen board.  "We should try to sleep."

             
"Will you wait up for Hutch?" I asked, longing to have someone to wait up for. 

             
"I heard him come in minutes ago," she said, and put an arm around me to guide me out of the kitchen by the back stairs.  And so I did not go into the lobby, or check to see if Matthew slept on a couch there.  Of course, he could have taken a room.  Of course, he might not yet have returned.

             
I would have to learn to trust him.  In time.

             
I woke late the next morning, my breath steaming into the ice cold room.  Sunlight glittered off the new snow, sending etched shadows of skeletal trees across the ceiling.  The outside world was painfully bright, the world beyond the quilts painfully cold.  I lay contemplating the chances of staying where I was until spring, but knew my father would come looking and little would persuade him to smile upon my nuptials if I refused to leave the bed.

             
Washing in icy water woke me unpleasantly.  I dressed hurriedly, the same gown and boots and scuffed gloves I'd had the day before.  The same aches and pains, as well; today, I felt it the keener, the tender spot on my scalp, the abraded hands, the bruises I hadn't felt on the previous day.

             
Nothing for it, though, but to dress and go down into the hotel, looking for breakfast or for a wagon home.

             
Or for Matthew.  He was waiting for me in the kitchen, his smile quirky.

             
He asked me something when I came into the room.  Something about sleep, or my head, or what I meant to do that day.  I didn't understand him.  Just the sight of him started my heart pounding, my breath coming short.  I felt as I had when I was a child and the church service on Christmas Eve was so very long and the ride home even longer, when I knew my parents had piled presents under the tree and I wanted to get home and open them, have them open what I'd made for them, wanted to see and experience and taste and touch, wanted the next day to arrive so we could have the Christmas feast I worked on with my mother and grandmother.  Matthew was Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, anticipation and impatience together.

             
I could hardly have heard his questions over all of that.

             
"Are you alright?" he asked.

              "I think I'd best get home before my father sends the Sheriff looking for me," I said as lightly as I could.  "We don't want him to lynch the groom before we wed."

             
Matthew smiled.  "He'll know you had a chaperone.  How long did you and Margaret talk last night?"

             
"You heard us?"  He could have come into the kitchen.  I could have been with him.

             
He just smiled and then smiled past me, as Maggie came into the room, Hutch following closely.  Maggie's blonde hair was piled on top of her head today, a soft heavy bun with blonde curls escaping.  She wore a heavy dress that managed to look beautiful on her despite its utilitarian attempts to keep out the cold.

             
Hutch wore traces of snow, as if he'd been outside looking for something, maybe assessing any damage to the outside of the hotel.  Six years older than Matthew, otherwise, he looked almost identical—he had the same thick, nearly black hair, ice blue eyes, dark beard showing even when he was cleanly shaved.  He was taller than Matthew, not by much but by enough that I knew it rankled Matt.  He had the same corded muscle in his arms, the same broad shoulders, the same mischievous grin, though on Matthew, it meant actual trouble most often.

             
Matthew stepped to my side as they both entered and took my hand, a gesture that, by itself might not have sparked interest.  Perhaps I was glowing again.  Perhaps there was something almost serious in Matthew's manner.  Whatever it was, both Maggie and Hutch stopped and looked at both of us and I realized suddenly how early it was.  We stood in the lobby of The Faro Queen and workmen were only just beginning to arrive, coming through the back doors from the sound of it and dropping things.

             
Suddenly, the world seemed very much with me, the sounds of people on the street, the muffled clop of horses' hooves on the snow-covered ground, the workmen calling to each other.  Somewhere, distant crows called.  My heart pounded.  Delight swept through me.

             
"Matthew," Hutch said, oblivious as only men can be at such times.  "Later today, we need to inventory the charred wood and see if we can't sell it for scrap, then—"

             
"—Hutch," Maggie said, her eyes moving rapidly between my face and Matthew's.  She put a hand on her husband's arm.  "Hush," she said.

             
Hutch looked at her in surprise, confused, then looked at us, blinking as if seeking an explanation for his wife's behavior, then looking again at us.

             
I risked a glance at Matthew.  He was grinning. 

             
No point telling them now
, I almost said. 
Cat's out of the bag
.

             
"I've asked Miss Chloe Anders to be my wife," Matthew said.  "And she has accepted me."

             
Hutch's face lit in a smile, and Maggie, who obviously had figured it out before either of us told her—possibly before either of us had figured it out—stepped forward and embraced me, then, unreservedly, for the first time since I'd known her, Matthew, and then me again.

             
"We'll be sisters," she said.  "You've never had one and I miss mine and I already feel you are one and I can't wait.  Shall we ask Annie to find a dress or do you want to make it?"

             
"Why is the dress always the first thing?" Hutch asked, before he turned to Matthew, shaking his hand and slapping him rigorously on the back.  "It's about time, Matt, and congratulations.  I'm happy for you and you, Miss Anders, woe betide you!"

             
I smiled at Hutch and hugged his wife again.  "I do know the task I've undertaken."

             
"Task!" Matthew said.

             
"And yet, you enter into the contract," Hutch wondered.

             
"Annie has a new shipment of fabric in," Maggie said, taking my arm as if to steer me away into a corner where we could discuss dresses.  I was unwilling to let go of Matthew's hand.

             
"Dresses again," Hutch said.

             
"As I recall," Maggie told him, "When I came here, you kept asking me if I could sew myself a dress."

             
"For fear you'd run back to Boston else," he replied.  "Such reprobates in the family."

             
"Aww, she doesn't think that of you anymore," Matthew said, and squeezed my hand.

             
From the far side of the lobby, where the Faro tables would be, a hideous squealing sound began as workers pried charred timbers from the wall.  Maggie squinted and put her hands to her ears and my head began to ache, nothing like it had the day before but sufficient to make me welcome the idea of quitting the Queen and heading back to Gold Hill.

             
"Will you ask for her hand from her father?" Hutch asked as the four of us made our way to the slick, snow-covered boards in front of the hotel.

             
"Today," Matthew said, his eyes on me.

             
"Perhaps we should find Sheriff Gannon, then," Hutch said.  "And ask him to guard you."

             
"I dare say Father will be glad to be rid of me," I said and swallowed down the last of what I was going to say.  Maggie had been 23 when she came to Gold Hill to marry Hutch.  No reason to pretend that, at 18, I feared becoming an old maid. 

             
Besides, no matter what lighthearted things we may say, facing my father was worrisome, and there were still the events of the day before.  The man who started the fire was still out there and if he was someone angry with Matthew for some previous indiscretion, our announcement mayn't be enough to make him content.

             
I would remain vigilant and close to Matthew.  A thought that didn't distress me.

              The journey back to Gold Hill, two or three miles over switchback dirt roads of questionable construction in the summer, was both improved and made worse by the fact of January.  Snow had blanketed the sage brush, a counterpane smoothed inexpertly over a feather bed.  The sage emerged in silver gray fronds from the crystalline white.  Shadows in the early morning sunlight were harsh, sharp edged and distinct.  The road between Virginia City and Gold Hill had already been traveled by wagons and coaches and riders on horseback as the workday began, the snow muddied in places and barren ground showing through.  In places, snow had melted and formed again as ice, dragging down fronds of sage, creating miniature cathedrals that sparkled in the sunlight and seemed composed of flying buttresses and impossible architectures.  Black and white magpies swooped through the frosty air, searching for prey that wisely wasn't budging from its warrens, possibly until summer came back to the desert.  Crows flew higher overhead, finding the warmest currents of air so they could spread their wings and soar.  Once, we saw a winter white cotton tail rabbit shoot across the snow and about midway on our journey, we heard coyotes.

             
Maggie and Hutch rode behind us on a buckboard, their voices a soft murmur like a creek in late summer, except those times Maggie would point something out to Hutch and her laugh would ring across the muffled silence.  Matthew drove the wagon, uncharacteristically silent, enough that I knew he was concerned about my father's reaction and once, as we came around one of the last foothills before the town, he leaned closer to me and said quietly, "I would have your father's blessing on our union but if that's not to be?"

             
I turned so my lips brushed his ear as I responded.  "I will marry you anyway, Matthew Longren.  You'd best know; now you've asked me, you're contracted."  My tone was light.  The closer we came to home, the more he worried and the lighter I felt, the events of the last day melting away.

             
"You'll hold me to it, then?"  He matched my tone.  His eyes still looked worried.

             
Father's not an ogre
, I wanted to say, but where his daughter was concerned, that wasn't true.  "I will seek you in any country where you care to hide, sir," I said.

             
I expected him to laugh or to return some challenging essay, but Matthew swallowed and took my hand in his, and said nothing more until we reached my home.

              My father was outside when we reached the house, saddling his horse, one of our neighbors with him, an officious man with a gingery mustache and a tendency to mind everyone's business as well as his own.  They stopped in their preparations when the four of us rode into the dooryard, their faces expressing surprise and concern mixed with relief, my father's white eyebrows, bushy and severely lowered over pale eyes.  Before anyone said anything, the door opened and my mother hurried out, wiping floury hands on a dish cloth.

             
"Chloe Virginia Anders," she said, her tone mixed relief, concern and fury.

             
"You have forgotten which of the parents to truly fear, sir," I said in a low voice to Matthew, but he simply blanched and jumped from the wagon, helping me down instantly as Maggie and Hutch brought their wagon up beside us.

             
My mother reached me about the time my feet hit the snow.  She looked uncertain whether to shake me or embrace me, and settled for a bit of both—a brief shake that turned into an embrace.

             
"Chloe Virginia Anders," she said again, holding me at arm's length and appraising.

             
Chloe Virginia Anders Longren
, I thought.  "Mother, I'm sorry, everything is fine.  Matthew took me to lunch," I started.

             
"That was yesterday," my father said.  He and Mr. Flannigan had tied off the horses and come over to us.  Maggie and Hutch, I noted, were hanging back, sort of shuffling around their buckboard as if something needed their attention.

             
Such cowardly behavior.  I'd pay them back somehow.

             
"There needs to be a good explanation where you were since yesterday," my father said.  He was strong and tall, even taller than Matthew, and currently terrifying in aspect.

             
Matthew started to stammer.  Whatever he'd meant to say, by way of asking for my hand or announcing our engagement or any other thing, went out of his head.  "Sir," he started and floundered to a halt, clearly not having any idea where to go next.

             
"There's been some excitement, Mayor Anders," Hutch said smoothly, and unexpectedly, as he came up behind us. 

             
I'm going to have to tell that whole story again
, I thought, and then felt myself turn as white as Matthew had.  For the first time, it occurred to me I'd have to explain to my father that I'd gone haring off after the person I thought had set fire to The Faro Queen, and I was abruptly as terrified of my father as anyone else present.  Matthew wouldn't have to worry about asking for my hand in marriage, as Mayor Anders would no doubt inter me in my room.