Heart on the Line (Ladies of Harper's Station Book #2) Page 9

  Amos sat unmoving in his chair, trying to absorb all that Miss Mallory had told him during the last thirty minutes. Her father had been murdered right before her eyes. He couldn’t even fathom such a thing. To see someone you loved gunned down in the street . . . Amos couldn’t stop himself from thinking of his mother, his sister. His fingers balled into a fist. He clenched his jaw and jerked his gaze toward the window, searching for control, for perspective.

  What kind of courage must it have taken for her to start a new life alone? No family, no friends she could turn to without putting their lives at risk. All while the sword of Damocles—or Haversham, in this case—hung over her head.

  He’d admired Miss G’s warmth and quick wit over the telegraph line, but the depth of character that the flesh-and-blood woman embodied was nothing short of remarkable.

  A movement across the room brought his head around as his hostess made her way back into the office. She’d gone to fetch a shawl to combat the cool air coming through the open door, but that wasn’t all she’d retrieved. She clutched a stack of folded papers tied with a wide length of red ribbon. The letters her father had uncovered.

  “I gave you plenty of time to make a run for it,” she said, a hint of a smile playing with the corners of her mouth. “Even left the door open for you.” Her eyes twinkled, and his pulse responded like the tail of a puppy who’d just caught sight of his favorite person, surging from calm to vigorous thumping in a single heartbeat.

  He adored this side of her. Lighthearted and playful even in the midst of harsh trial. She hadn’t acted this way with the marshal or even with Emma Shaw, at least not that he’d seen, a fact that pleased him more than it probably should. He wanted to believe he was the only one to draw out this part of her nature, that she reserved it for him alone. Because this was the woman who’d captured his interest on the telegraph, a woman of subtle humor and indomitable spirit. A woman he could imagine spending his evenings with for the rest of his life.

  He got to his feet when she entered the room, determined to prove himself a gentleman despite his less than fastidious exterior. “I considered escaping,” he teased in return as she took her seat in the blue-striped chair, “but a second trip on Stranton’s mule was a higher price than I was willing to pay.” He affected an exaggerated shiver. “Nope, you’re stuck with me. At least until the order of bicycles arrives.”

  He settled back into his chair, his gaze moving from his companion’s face to the stack of letters she held. As he watched, she extended the papers toward him. He caught her eye, a silent question passing between them. She nodded.

  “I thought you might like to read them. There are less than a dozen, so it shouldn’t take long. I wasn’t able to find anything helpful to the situation at hand, but perhaps you’ll catch something I missed.”

  He accepted the letters and laid them in his lap. Reaching for the ribbon, his mind raced with possibilities. He’d always loved a good puzzle, yet this was no intellectual exercise. People’s lives were at stake. Grace’s life was at stake.

  Amos glanced up. “These are the letters Tremont Haversham’s first wife wrote him during their courtship?”

  Miss Mallory’s brown gaze ran over him slow and deep, like chocolate icing melting over a still-warm cake. And he was definitely warm, even with the cool evening breeze blowing through the office door. He probably would be for a while, after that heated stare. Of course, she wasn’t evaluating him as a suitor. Her eyes didn’t flash with sudden attraction or desire. They searched and evaluated him with cautious hope, looking for signs that he would be able to help, that he could offer a new perspective or fresh insight that might lead to a solution.

  Help me help her, Lord. He desperately wanted to be Grace’s hero, but more than that, he wanted her to be safe. However that came about.

  “Her name was Deborah Linfield,” Grace explained, her soft voice floating through the room like a gentle summer breeze. “The tale I’ve heard is that they met by chance late one afternoon in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. Haversham and some friends were out riding, and Deborah was walking home after a long day at the dressmaker’s shop. She was an expert in beadwork, highly sought for her talent with a needle, and paid well for her skill. Perhaps too well, for that day, after receiving her wages, she was attacked, the thief waiting for her in a copse of trees before snatching her reticule.

  “The story goes that she put up a fight, screaming and clawing at the man until he pulled a knife and cut the purse free of her wrist. Tremont heard the commotion, took in the scene, and rode the thief to ground. He returned the lady’s purse and saw her safely home. They were instantly smitten and began a courtship that culminated in marriage less than a year later. Tremont’s parents did not approve, since Deborah lacked the family pedigree necessary to fit into their exalted circles, but Tremont didn’t care. He married her anyway, and the dress she wore to her wedding made the papers, the beadwork so intricate that she outshone all other society brides that season.”

  Amos scanned the first letter’s flowing, feminine script. The prose was rife with effusive gratitude and hero worship for the man who had come to her rescue. A small twinge of envy pricked his hide. “Sounds like quite the romantic tale.”

  “When Haversham moved to Denver, the gossip about him ran rampant. Girls sighed over his tragic history—the man who loved so deeply that he defied his family to be with the woman he loved, only to lose her in childbirth. The fact that his second wife considered Colorado a primitive wilderness filled with primitive people did nothing to enamor her to the women of Denver. They loved Tremont but resented Chaucer as the child of the pretentious shrew who thought herself above them. Chaucer knows that if Deborah’s child is indeed alive, the people of Denver will rally behind her.”

  Amos unfolded the second letter and ran his fingers along the page. “Perhaps Deborah mentions a friend in one of these letters, someone she might have trusted with the care of her child.”

  Grace gathered her shawl more closely around her. “I looked, but I didn’t find any mention of people beyond her employer at the dress shop and one or two of her fellow seamstresses, none of whom sounded like intimate acquaintances. She didn’t mention any towns or cities from her past, either, nor family members. From all accounts she’d been orphaned at a young age and then apprenticed to an embroiderer, where she’d learned her trade. But even if she had family, I don’t think the child would be with them.”

  Amos looked up from the letter. “Oh?”

  “Deborah was in the Havershams’ home when the baby came. Tremont was gone on business and had not wanted her to be alone so far along in her pregnancy, though he intended to be home before the baby was born. But she went into labor two weeks early. The Havershams summoned a physician, but the man was unable to save Tremont’s wife. He signed a death certificate for both Deborah and her unnamed daughter. With Tremont absent, only the doctor and Tremont’s mother bore witness to the birth. If Mrs. Haversham wanted to rid her son of all traces of an unsuitable wife, she could have bribed the physician to forge the death certificate and dispose of the child. What’s one more anonymous babe left on the steps of a church?”

  Amos’s stomach clenched in anger at the coldhearted picture Miss Mallory painted. Could someone truly be so cruel as to abandon a newborn and compound their own child’s grief simply to restore their place in society? “So Tremont never saw his child?” He barely got the words past the disgust clogging his throat.

  Miss Mallory met his gaze, her own eyes shimmering. “Only her grave.”

  Amos cleared his throat and straightened in his chair. “Didn’t you say the missing Pinkerton report was dated 1892? What made Tremont question his daughter’s death and seek out the Pinkertons so many years later?”

  “I don’t know for sure.” She dropped her attention to her lap, and her fingers fiddled with the fringe on the edge of her shawl. “I remember the Denver papers speculating on the extra trips he made home around that time, the goss
ip mill grinding away over whether he was reconciling with his estranged wife. Then there was an obituary notice stating that his mother had passed, and the gossip ground to a halt.” Slowly, Grace lifted her head, her gaze latching onto his. “Perhaps the guilt became too heavy for the aging woman, and she confessed her crime on her deathbed, seeking absolution from the son she’d wronged.”

  Amos whistled softly. “That would fit.”

  “It’s pure conjecture,” Grace said as she resumed twirling the shawl fringe around her finger. “I have no proof. But after nine months of agonizing over the pieces of this puzzle, this is the only configuration that makes any sense.”

  Her finger suddenly stopped twisting, and a new tension seeped into the air around them. She leaned forward in her chair. Amos instinctively stretched to meet her.

  “If you’re willing to stay, I’d like you to help me find the missing documents, Amos.”

  His name on her lips sped his pulse, but it was the plea in her eyes that captured his heart.

  “They exist. They have to. My father wouldn’t have risked his life without solid evidence. Yet in nine months of wrestling with this conundrum, I’m no closer to uncovering the Pinkerton report or the amended will. I need you to find what I missed.”

  Amos dropped the letter still loosely clasped in his right hand and reached across the space between them to cover her fingers. They were chilled, whether from the air or the distressing nature of the situation, he couldn’t know. What he did know was that he wanted to warm them, to banish all cold and fear from her life.

  “I’m here, Grace.” He gripped her hand and rubbed his thumb in gentle strokes over her knuckles. “And I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”

  11

  Two days after the town meeting, Helen fit the handle of a large basket over her right arm and crossed through the farmhouse kitchen on her way outside. Katie and a couple of the new girls sat at the table, peeling potatoes and yakking about the latest news from town. News that centered on the most recent male interloper.

  He was already causing havoc. Not that Helen had expected anything less. Men always stirred up trouble. But bicycles? According to Katie, Emma had convinced Tori to order five of the crazy things just because Mr. Bledsoe said he preferred them to horses.

  Helen’s stride lengthened in agitation as she left the farm behind. Wheels over horses. That right there proved the fellow was off his rocker. Who wanted to push a pair of wheels to get from place to place if a horse would do the moving for you? Besides, a horse was smart enough to stop at the edge of a cliff. A speeding velocipede would take you right over. Henrietta Chandler and her bloomers could take lessons from some crackpot wheelman if she chose, but Helen would keep her feet firmly planted on the ground, thank you very much.

  The walk to the pecan grove took a good twenty minutes, and by the time Helen reached the first trees, she’d walked out much of her frustration. It was hard to stay focused on negativity when God had blessed her with such a glorious day.

  She glanced at the sky, where a handful of puffy white clouds swam lazily across the bright blue expanse. So peaceful. Perhaps even happy. Helen didn’t really know what happiness felt like. To her, it was simply the absence of pain. Yet when she looked at a sky like this one, something inside her whispered that there could be more. There could be joy that led to dancing, to laughter, to a place where fear could not penetrate.

  Others understood it. Katie was always giggling and smiling and urging Helen to stop being so gloomy. But Katie had learned how to laugh as a child. She’d played and danced and sung songs with a mother who’d called her princess. Helen had learned how to hide. She’d placated and ducked and taken blows without making a sound from a father who’d called her worthless.

  Setting her basket on the ground beneath the first tree, Helen pulled her work gloves from where she’d tucked them into the waistband of her skirt. The first time she’d gathered pecans, her fingers had been stained for weeks, and no amount of scrubbing would remove the dark brown tint from her skin. Now she made a point to wear gloves along with her oldest, darkest dress, an ugly black thing she’d worn to her father’s funeral three years ago. She saved it for the dirtiest of chores. Mucking stalls, cleaning the chicken coop, gathering pecans. It seemed fitting to drag the dress she’d been assigned to wear out of respect for her dead father through manure and grime. His soul had been a cesspit.

  But the day was too pretty to let ugly memories intrude. Helen directed her attention to the task of gathering pecans as she lowered herself to the ground and crawled through the leaves and debris. Shaking a handful of nuts together, she listened for the solid sound that indicated a husk full of meat. She discarded the lighter ones, flinging them away from the tree, and tossed the good ones into her basket. She did the same with her thoughts. Each time a thought of her father rose to instill anger or bitterness in her soul, she mentally flung it away and clung instead to a blessing.

  Blessings like the sunshine and blue sky. The birds singing in the treetop above her head. The breeze that cooled her while she toiled. Betty and the girls at the farm. A bedroom with a lock on the door. Even that thief of a squirrel running around the base of the tree, stealing the nuts she was there to harvest.

  “Get out of here, you!” She tossed a cracked pecan husk at the bushy-tailed rodent, a smile creasing her face as the rascal easily dodged her poor throw. In a flash, the squirrel jabbed a nut into his mouth, turned, and sprinted up the tree. His little claws scraped against the bark as he made his escape.

  He was a marvel, moving so fast Helen could barely keep track of him. He leapt from trunk to branch to higher branch with such confidence and grace. That must be what freedom was like—jumping through life without worry or fear.

  I want to trust you that completely, her heart prayed, for she knew she didn’t. She was a clinger, not a leaper. Once she found a safe branch, she grabbed on and held tight with every ounce of strength she had, terrified that if she let go, she’d plummet back to where she’d come from. She wanted to leap forward in faith, but her claws were too embedded. Something would have to shake her loose. And that prospect terrified her.

  Her basket half full, Helen stood, stretched out her lower back, then moved to the next tree. A large cluster of nuts lay amid the dirt and leaves to the right of the trunk, so she started there. She’d just set the basket down when an odd sound caught her attention. She straightened and tilted her head toward the noise. It was low, more of a rumble than anything.

  Helen strained her ears, mentally filtering out the rustling leaves and bird chatter. Holding her breath, she poured all her effort into listening.

  There! She heard it again. A growly moan.

  Cautiously, she moved out from under the overhanging tree branches and scanned the area. Had an animal been hurt? Nature was so barbaric—predators targeting the weak, packs abandoning their injured. It was despicable. Yet animals in pain were unpredictable. Some were even dangerous. She should take precautions.

  Wishing she’d brought her rifle along, she settled for a sturdy tree branch that fit comfortably in her hands, and walked as stealthily as she could through the fallen leaves and hollowed-out pecan husks.

  “Where are you?” she muttered under her breath when the sound faded away. It had come from somewhere to the west, she was sure. But where?

  She crept forward, her gaze scanning the prairie grass in a wide arc in front of her. There. A section of flattened grass to her right. Near the path that led to the old line cabin she liked to visit when she needed a place to be alone for a while. She adjusted her grip on the branch and hefted it a little higher over her shoulder. Then she set her chin and strode forward.

  Reddish-brown smears stained the flattened grass. Blood. A lot of it. The animal must be incapacitated, dragging itself away from whatever had caused it harm.

  Helen’s heart panged in sympathy. She understood the instinct to escape, to hide and lick wounds. Judging by the width of t
he trail, the animal was big. Maybe a coyote or a wild pig. Both of which had large teeth and fierce temperaments. Helen slowed her approach. Perhaps she should just leave it alone.

  Another moan, weaker this time, reached her ears. She steeled her spine. No creature deserved to suffer. Not even a coyote.

  She pressed on a few more steps then faltered to a halt. This was no coyote. Unless they’d taken to wearing men’s trousers.

  Helen shook her head, every sympathetic impulse inside her hardening to stone. Was this some kind of divine joke? If so, she wasn’t laughing.

  “I’m not doing it,” she grumbled, peering from the corners of her eyes to the blue sky that had looked so inviting mere moments ago but now felt like it was bearing down upon her with ominous intent. “You can’t make me.”

  The pressure didn’t relent. In fact, it grew heavier, pushing on her heart until her pulse throbbed in her veins.

  It wasn’t fair. He was asking too much.

  She glanced from side to side, praying for someone else to be within shouting distance. Anyone. Even the marshal or the freighter. Shoot, she’d even take that bicycle-riding, spectacle-wearing newcomer that Grace seemed to favor.

  But no one was around. Only her.

  And the unconscious man slowly dying from a nasty gunshot wound to his leg.

  12

  Grace clutched the books to her chest, her grip tight enough to cramp the muscles in her fingers. Only about fifty steps separated the bank from the telegraph office, but she couldn’t escape the feeling of being exposed. These two books represented hundreds of thousands of dollars. More than that—they represented the price of her father’s life. She hadn’t removed them from the bank since she’d first entrusted them to Emma and her fireproof safe a month after arriving in Harper’s Station.

  Perspiration dampened Grace’s hairline as she walked with her head down, gaze focused on any loose stone or bump in the road that could cause her to stumble. The tickle of a sweat droplet running down her temple made her grimace, but thankfully a cool autumn breeze blew against her face, evaporating the evidence of her nervousness.