Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story) (9 page)

              They called the railroad Very Crooked and Terribly Rough, though, in reality, it was meant to be the Virginia City, Truckee and Reno line.  I agreed with the first name and resented the train's effect on Matthew, which was to make him find every conceivable way to lean out, look out and get out of it, examining from every angle as I tried not to clutch at his legs and worry he'd fall from it.

             
He was smitten.  I'd have preferred him to be smitten with his new wife.  At the beginning of the journey, I worried.  Then, I tried to match his interest.  Failing that, completely, I pulled out one of Maggie's mystery stories and read.

             
The rail trip wasn't long.  In truth, we were there quite quickly, though it took somewhat longer to pry Matthew away from the train.

             
I had not expected to be cast aside for another quite so soon.

             
That afternoon, we strolled along the Truckee River, ate a hearty dinner in a restaurant along the river's edge and retired, at last, to our room.

             
During that time, I heard about steam locomotives and railroads and trains, so much so, that when we sat in our room with the gentle evening air stirring the curtains and Virginia Street below us, I asked him why he owned a hotel and why, before that, he had owned a silver mine.

             
Matthew's eyes lit up, as if the question sparked something I hadn't expected, or perhaps he was just happy to share his enthusiasm.  He told me about the model train he'd had as a child, and about how he'd traveled from Alturas to Virginia City by train whenever and wherever possible.  He told me how they worked, which made no sense to me, and how fast they could travel and how beautiful and sleek they were.

             
"Almost," he added, his eyes losing their faraway stare, "as beautiful and sleek as my bride." 

             
There was no more talk of trains that night.

              My father had taken my mother and me to San Francisco once, when I was 14.  He had work to do in the city and we took a train down and stayed as he did the work.  The city was very different from Gold Hill, wild and rough and somehow cultured anyway.  Everything there seemed bigger, not just the number of people because, of course, the city itself was larger, but the buildings, the concert halls, the hotels.  The air hung thick, heavy and wet around us when we went out and, as it was spring, it was cool in the evenings but not still snowing as it had been at home.

             
I had never given much thought to where I lived.  Nevada was my home and I loved the vistas of rolling foothills and blue-distant mountains, loved the sprawl of sagebrush, the funny tall-eared jackrabbits, the crows and magpies and blue jays.  The trip, though, shook me out of my daily life and, on my return, my desert home and daily existence felt drear, dun and dull.

             
So, I questioned the feeling I had in Reno on our honeymoon.  Surely this time out of life to become acquainted with my new husband
as husband
was, as to be expected, special.  Everything was different.  I was different and so was Matthew and there were no daily chores to be done. Meals were prepared for us, linens cleaned, we simply enjoyed each day, visiting shops we didn't know and walking alongside the river.

             
The feeling that I didn't want to go back to Gold Hill could be nothing more than enjoying this special time with my new husband.  I knew that.

             
I just didn't believe it.  Being in Reno felt different.  Everyone we met was a stranger and—although that might grow exhausting, while I might, if we were to stay, miss my parents, Maggie, Hutch, Annie, Issy, everyone I knew and liked—there was also no chance of running into any of the Seths or Cynthia or Violet.  There was no animosity from anyone who thought Matthew and I might have been closer before we were married than we ought to have been and no one judging my new sister for her midwifery skills.

             
It was a new start.

             
"Let's go for a walk," Matthew said, interrupting my thoughts.

             
My thoughts turned to rather more indoor pursuits, but he held his hand out and I accepted.  We followed the river some distance from the hotel, enjoying the peaceful, warm April afternoon.  We stopped in a bakery and drank coffee and ate cake, then walked into the center of town, where the V&T Railroad arrived and departed.

             
We were looking at trains again.

             
Matthew walked along the train, noting parts of it that all looked the same to me—heavy, dark, and metal.  But I listened and asked questions and would have had no idea had he simply made up the answers, but answering me made him happy.

             
His answering me also attracted the interest of one of the engineers, who came over to nod deferentially to me and to invoke conversation with Matthew, which was peppered with phrases like
air-cooled hot steam engines
and
pounds of torque
and
estimates of speed
and
sparks and wheels and comparisons to coal
and so on.  I wandered away to pet some horses standing patiently tethered and waiting for their masters.  The day was bright and cool, with high clouds playing chase with the sun.  Children walked with their mothers, or ran screaming around them.  Gentlemen and cowboys mingled on the streets.  I saw as many men with rolled up shirt sleeves, corded forearms, and side arms on their hips as I did men in suits and hats.  The town was faster than Virginia City and, though I didn't know if it was larger, it was appealing to me with its different scents and unfamiliar faces.

             
Matthew returned to me after some time, his expression light but distracted.  We walked in silence for some time before returning to our room and changing for dinner.

             
Over the years, I'd watched my mother with my father, who tends to be taciturn and thoughtful.  Matthew was neither of those things but tonight he was, at least, distracted.  Throughout dinner, he looked out the restaurant window and, over coffee, he looked at the window and when he finally looked up at me, as if I'd just appeared out of nowhere, I probably startled him by laughing.

             
"What's so funny?"

             
I shook my head.  "If I have to tell you, it won't be."

             
The fact he let that stand was enough for me to expect what he had to say was serious. 

             
"I've been doing some thinking," he said, and though I could have laughed at the obviousness of that, I didn't.  "Chloe, your home is Gold Hill.  I know that."

             
"My home is with you," I said.

             
He smiled, but motioned for me to wait.  "You say that and I appreciate it.  But you have both your parents there and they don't have other children.  You have your friends and Annie, and it seems you've been becoming pretty close to Maggie."

             
I nodded.  I wanted to rush into speech.  I knew where he was going and I could have saved him a ton of worry.  But, the fact that he had taken the time to think it out and to do the worrying, that deserved listening.

             
The waiter brought us more coffee.  Outside, the early spring night had gone dark.  Two cowboys walked along the street, pistols on their belts, hats drawn low.  Beyond them were the rails.  We'd even eaten where we could see trains.  I'd have had to be blind not to understand.

             
I waited. 

             
"I followed Hutch out to Virginia City because the last thing I wanted was to go into cattle ranching like my Daddy.  Nothing wrong with it, but…"  He stopped, as if he hadn't thought through this part.

             
"You don't like cows?" I hazarded.  The coffee was thick and dark, like the night outside.

             
"That's as good as any answer."

             
There'd been no question.

             
"The mines.  I never liked the mines.  The money, hell yeah.  But going down in the earth?"  He looked around the restaurant as if someone was going to come up behind him and shove him down into a basement, or into an actual mine.  "You breathe a word of this to Hutch or Maggie and I'll sleep on the couch for a month, but, every time I went down there, I thought I was going to die."

             
I had no desire to tell anyone anything.  I grew up in Gold Hill.  I'd seen too many men die in the mines and in fires in mines and fires in towns that sprang up overnight and didn't always spring up as neatly and safely as they could.  I put my hand over Matthew's, where it lay fisted on the table.

             
"And the Faro Queen.  That was our dream.  Open a hotel.  That's why I went out there.  Always thought with the silver we'd make a go of it, make the mines work, then make the hotel work.  But Hutch got into the mine and, the more it did wrong to him, the more determined he was to make right.  Then, when Hutch's Ellie took ill, there just was no way the hotel could happen."

             
He stopped talking then, long enough that I moved my hand, patting his, and moved my head until he looked up and caught my eye. 

             
"I thought you loved The Queen?"

             
The frustration and doubt and trains all exploded out of him like a puff of steam from a locomotive.  "Do.  Did. I don't know."  He took his hand back and slapped the table with it.  The silver jumped.  Diners nearby glanced at us and away.  Outside on the street, two men raised their voices, arguing.  "It's the same thing every day.  It's wonderful, Chloe, it really is, and if that's where you want to stay, I'll stay.  I mean that."  He met my eyes, searching, and he meant every word.

             
I lowered my head, looking at him squarely.  "I know you mean that, Matthew.  But you mean you'll stay for me, not because you want to stay. And I need to understand.  You don't love the hotel?"

             
He took a deep breath, let it out slow.  "Love Hutch … Maggie … having finished the Queen, having got it open … having beat Jason Seth with the mine and with making a dream come true."

             
And by not marrying his sister
, I thought, a snide and unworthy thought I still rather enjoyed.

             
"But it's the same thing every day.  We did it.  It's open.  It worked."  He raised his hands.  "Yahoo.  But, Hutch.  Hutch, he loves it.  Loves serving drinks and overseeing dinners and Maggie's happy making up rooms and sewing curtains, sure isn't anything I ever thought that girl would be happy doing.  Even Annie's pitching in, decorating."  He gave me a look.  "You're not."

             
A light, happy giddiness hit me.  I wasn't, was I?  "I'm not.  That's not what I want to do.  I don't know what I want to do, Matthew; I just want to be with you.  The Faro Queen is a dream and you realized it."  I waited until he met my eyes again.  "Doesn't mean you can't have a new dream."

             
He nodded, once, very serious, and I saw him swallow before he started back into the same worries.  "If you think—"

             
"—I think it's my turn," I said and shook my head when he stared.  "Look, Matthew, I love Gold Hill.  I love Virginia City and the people there and everything else … and the Queen.  But, it's time for something new.  Every day we've been here, I've been thinking that and trying to understand if I just felt that way because this is special.  Because of us." He looked at me.  "Because it's our honeymoon."

             
"It's not?"

             
"It's not.  I mean, it is special because of that, but it's not everything I feel.  I want something new.  I want
somewhere
new.  I want to be with you and you want to be with the trains."

             
"And you," he grinned.

             
I smiled back at him.  "You're required to say that because of marriage vows."

             
"I'm required to say it because it's true.  Let's go back to the room and I'll prove it."

              There was nothing, then, but to enjoy the honeymoon and look at trains and ask questions and make decisions and head back to Gold Hill—to pack.                           

              "We will miss you," Maggie said over dinner.  The lot of us sat in the kitchen of The Faro Queen, to the annoyance of the cooks, but the dining room was full tonight and we wanted the time alone. 

             
"We'll come visit!" Sarah announced in the cheery way we'd all come to associate with her actual thought:
There could be men there
.  Sarah fell in love quite cheerfully about once a day, to Annie's dismay.  Though, of late, I'd seen Annie in the Queen's dining room spending considerable time seeing to the wants and needs of John Overton from the mine, and times when we all assembled together, as Matthew and I got closer to moving, she was more talkative and at the same time, more secretive.

             
Possibly Sarah wasn't the only one in love. 

             
"We will miss your invaluable help around the hotel," Hutch said dryly, as of late Matthew had spent more time peering at the V&T than in the hotel.

             
"I shall sell my shares," Hutch's brother said.

             
"I think not.  As long as you hold them, there's the chance I can force you back into servitude."  Hutch took a long drink of beer and winked at me.

             
"What will you do for the railroad, Uncle Matt?" Kitty asked.  I had a feeling that, despite being 14, what she actually meant was also
How many unmarried men will there be
?  But that was supposition.  Kitty still spent more time going up trees and being told to
come down from there
by her mother, who didn't really care if her freckled, frog-catching daughter climbed trees.  It was better than having her catch boys. 

             
"Creating it, in the beginning," Matthew said.  "The Nevada and Oregon Railroad was formed last year, but they've been trying to get the funding since."

             
"He'll be out there hammering spikes and moving rocks," Hutch said lightly, watching the horror on the girls' faces.

             
"He'll be buying engines, arranging for companies to use the line, contracting with cattle ranches for services, keeping the books on where the spikes are bought," I said, laying one hand on Matthew's shoulder.  "The man exaggerates as much as his brother does."

             
"It was a good tale," said the man in question.

             
When dinner was over and the men retired to the front porch to smoke cigars and pass the time with guests coming and going, the girls helped us clear and went off after their own pursuits, leaving Annie, Maggie and I.

             
"You're not sad to be going," Maggie said, picking up the thread of conversation that had started at dinner.  She was drying the dishes Annie washed and I was, largely, stashing them in the wrong places.

             
"I will miss you both, of course, and my family and friends.  But I think I probably feel as you and Hutch did when you moved here from Gold Hill.  I've had enough of being The Mayor's Daughter and Matthew Longren's Girl, the one people talked about.  I've had enough of people's talk and more than enough of—"

             
"Jason and Elizabeth Seth," we all said together. 

             
"I know Matthew will be away at times, riding the rails to their terminus, testing things and just because he's obviously smitten.  But, he's happy."

             
"So are you," Annie said, her hands submerged in the water as she felt for more silverware.

             
"So are you," I returned and she blushed, but admitted nothing.

             
Maggie was uncharacteristically quiet and, when I turned to her, she was frowning slightly, drying an already dry dish to a high shine.  When she caught my glance, she said, "Miss Gemma Parks has moved from Virginia City.  I heard her people went back to New York, though I don't know and it doesn't matter.  It means I'm the only midwife here and I had hoped…"  She stopped and put the dish down on the draining board rather than handing it to me.  "I had hoped, Chloe, that you might take an interest and that I might train you."

             
"But, you're here," I said, without thinking.  Beside me, Annie had gone quite still, waiting for something.  I glanced between them curiously.

             
"True.  And I had thought, as you're going, that I might teach Annie," She nodded at Annie, who was now not just still but very pale.  "But when I mentioned it, she looked like that.  It's all right, Annie, breathe.  Maybe Sarah will have an interest."

             
"But there's Doc Horton," I said, taking the dish she'd abandoned and stashing it in a likely cupboard.  "With you as midwife, what need is there for a second—" I broke off as a thought occurred.  Was the new midwife meant to be the second or only to stand in when the first—"Maggie?"

             
Beside me, Annie finally moved, turning to look from one of us to the other as Maggie's face opened in a smile of delight.

             
"Maggie!"

             
The three of us embraced, soapy dishwater draining from arms, towels flung and one dish smashing down on the wood floor of the kitchen.  For a couple of seconds, we all talked at once, voices breathless as we talked about when and names and who knew and who didn't, about midwives and Doc Horton and, yes, given the doc's much better handling of snakebite and gunshot than babies and ladies, a midwife was desirable, and about sewing clothes and knitting small things for the baby and it would be born around December, truly the cold season but a gift for the new year.

             
When we could hear ourselves think again, we sat at one of the scuffed work tables, the cooks and serving girls having cleared out long since.  There were sounds from the dining room, guests moving through, and from the casino, all past the kitchen door.  Where we sat, all was silent.  I was grateful Annie was the one to ask, "Have you told Hutch?"

             
Silence again, then, in the kitchen.  Maggie twisted her dress in both hands.  "I don't know how, given what happened before.  We want children. We've wanted to start a family.  And I want a midwife with me.  But given what happened to Ellie, and how hard that's been for him…" She faltered.  "I know he'll be happy.  I just don't know how to tell him."

             
"It's a good thing he's the sort to listen in doorways, then," Hutch said from behind us.

             
I saw Maggie's face, stricken, as she looked up, the fear in her eyes that she'd caused him some hurt.

             
Fear swiftly banished when he came into the kitchen in a rush, plucked her from the chair she was in and swung her in a circle, endangering dishes and glassware and Annie's ankles, laughing as he set her on her feet and drew her hard into his arms, kissing her forehead, nose and mouth.

             
Maggie laughed aloud, her arms going up around his neck, her face glowing.  "You're alright?"

             
The way he looked at her was difficult to witness and not for our eyes.  Annie and I stood, starting to silently move away, but I heard him before we reached the kitchen door.

             
"Ellie was my wife and my first love.  Ellie is my past.  You are my present, my future, and my always.  I love you, Margaret Lucas Longren."

              After that, there was nothing to be done but go and find Matthew and urge him, in an unseemly, unwifely fashion, to bid his fellows goodnight and accompany me, not to what was still, for now, our home, half an hour off in Gold Hill, but to one of the few unlet rooms in the Queen.  Only that was close enough.

             
Annie said she would collect her daughters and return to Gold Hill, but I wondered whether a certain mine superintendent perhaps had company that night.