Buch lesen: «Gold Rush Bride»

Chapter One

Tinderbox, California, 1849

Kate Dennington arrived too late.

Months aboard ship, a fortnight tromping across the steaming jungles of Panama. Riverboats, mule trains and enough miles on her feet to wear holes in her shoes.

And all of it for nothing.

She ground her teeth behind pursed lips and met the solicitor’s sympathetic gaze. “When did my father die?”

“Tuesday.” Mr. Vickery looked past her out the window to the graveyard across the road. A fresh mound of earth stared back at them.

Tuesday. She swiped at her eyes, but her hand came away dry, as always. No tears, girl. Bear up. She could hear her mother speak it in the Irish, even now, so many years after her death. Denningtons didn’t cry. Not ever.

“W-what day is today?”

She’d arrived in San Francisco nearly a week ago, ill from the rough steamship journey up the coast, and with barely enough funds left to make her way to the frontier mining town where her father, Liam Dennington, had hoped to make his fortune.

“Sunday.” The honeyed voice belonged to a well-dressed gentleman who pushed his way through the throng of miners and tradesmen who’d gathered in Dennington’s Grocery and Dry Goods the moment Kate had arrived.

Vickery stepped aside, as if in deference to him. “Um, this is Mr. Landerfelt—from Virginia. Eldridge Landerfelt. Head of the town council and proprietor of Landerfelt’s Mercantile and Mining Supply.”

Kate had seen it amidst the hodgepodge of tents, shanties and cabins that served as the center of mining trade for the densely forested area. Both the gentleman and his enterprise seemed far too rich for a town the likes of Tinderbox.

“Eldridge, this is Miss Den—”

“I know who she is,” Landerfelt drawled. He looked her over, as if he were sizing her up.

Kate arched a brow and looked back. His haughty stance reminded her of an upstart prizefighter she’d once seen in a makeshift boxing ring in a warehouse in Dublin, near the tenement she and her brothers called home.

She had known there would be trouble the moment she’d decided to answer her father’s summons herself. When Liam Dennington had taken ill, he’d sent for Kate’s younger brother, Michael. But the letter was six months getting to Ireland, and by then Michael was newly wed with a babe on the way.

She’d had no choice but to come herself. The twins, Patrick and Francis, at age twelve were too young, and Sean at fifteen too reckless. So she’d left the boys in the care of Michael and his bride, boarded the clipper to America and hadn’t looked back. The money for the passage she’d borrowed from disapproving relatives in County Kildare. What a waste.

Landerfelt frowned. “The question is, does Miss Dennington know the law?”

“What law?” She hadn’t been listening.”

Yes, well I was just getting to that.” Vickery handed her a creased parchment, its edges smudged with inky fingerprints. “Your father’s will. I wrote it for him not two days before he passed. He signed it at the bottom—just there.”

Kate swept her gaze across the spidery lettering. It might as well have been Greek. There’d been little time for reading growing up. She did recognize her father’s flamboyant signature, though it seemed not as bold as she remembered it. “Aye, that’s his hand.”

“He leaves it all to Michael, your brother.” Vickery shrugged. “That’s who he was expecting, you see, who we were all expecting.”

Landerfelt stepped closer, and Kate fought a natural instinct to back away. “But Mike Dennington’s not who’s come, and that changes everything.”

“Mr. Landerfelt’s right,” Vickery said. “The land, the store, the horse and the mule—it’s all in the will. By law it passes to the next of kin, should the primary beneficiary be…well, in this case, wholly unavailable.”

“So it’s all mine, then? The storefront, the goods, everything?” Kate scanned the rough-hewn timbers of the two-room cabin her father had built on land he’d won in a poker game. It certainly wasn’t much. A fortune, indeed. What on earth had he been thinking? She offered up a silent prayer for his foolish but well-meaning soul.

“Yours until tomorrow.” Landerfelt pulled a cigar stub out of his breast pocket and lit it.

Kate wrinkled her nose at the stench. “What do you mean, tomorrow?”

“You’re the lawyer,” Landerfelt said to Vickery. “Explain it to her.”

“Um, yes, well…” Vickery pulled a sheaf of papers out of his portfolio and promptly dropped them. They scattered across the floor. “Oh, sorry. I’ll just be a moment.”

Landerfelt rolled his eyes. “It’s the law, like I said. The property passes to you, and your father’s business, too. But you can’t keep it. Not in this town.”

“What do you mean I can’t keep it? Mr. Vickery said that—”

“Single women, especially immigrants, don’t own property. Not in Tinderbox.” Landerfelt flashed a nasty look at a Chinese girl peering through the store’s front window. “And they don’t own businesses, neither. It’s better for the town.”

“Oh, is it now?” Better for a certain competing store owner, Kate suspected. Landerfelt’s and Dennington’s were the only two supply stores she’d seen since leaving Sacramento City.

“It’s a fairly new law.” Vickery offered her the disorganized sheaf of papers he’d retrieved from the floor. Kate just stared at them. “Enacted by the town council just a few days ago, in fact.” He flashed a look at Landerfelt, who stood there gloating.

“But my father’s business, the store…I’ll need to run it to—” The gravity of her situation dawned.

She would have to make not only a living in this godforsaken place, but enough to pay her passage home and still make good the small fortune she’d borrowed from her mother’s sister.

They had all assumed her father would pay them back. His letter…the wealth he described…Kate’s gaze was drawn to the sparsely stocked shelves of the store and a battered old cash box that stood empty on the counter.

She would have to make the money. There was no other way. If she didn’t, her aunt would make certain Michael wouldn’t see a penny of his hard-earned wages. And him with a wife and babe to feed, not to mention the other lads.

“Not all trade is forbidden.” Landerfelt cocked a blond brow at her. “Certain types of enterprises are allowed.”

“You mean I can’t run my father’s store, but I might be allowed some other commerce?” She’d never heard of any law so ridiculous. No matter. Whatever she had to do to raise the funds, she’d do it, and go back to Ireland as soon as she might.

Landerfelt grinned. “Hell, yes. A certain kind of commerce, as you put it, would be damned welcome in Tinderbox.” He raked his eyes over her body. They lingered for a moment on her bosom. “If you get my drift.”

She was suddenly aware of all the eyes on her, of the hungry-looking faces of the miners crowded into the store. She had the distinct impression that food was not what they craved. She got Landerfelt’s drift all right.

Her blood boiled.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Landerfelt.”

He chuckled—a slow, almost syrupy laugh in keeping with his Virginian drawl.

“Till tomorrow, is it? To dispose of the cabin and the land? I assume I may keep the horse and the mule?” She’d sell them, in fact, along with everything else that wasn’t nailed down, to raise the funds to pay the debt and buy her passage home. With her father gone, there was no reason to stay.

“Five o’clock.” Landerfelt reached into a pocket and withdrew a finely tooled money pouch. “Unless, of course, you’d like to sell it all—lock, stock and barrel—right now.”

“To you?”

“That’s right.” He reached for her hand and she stiffened. The charming smile that oozed across his face made her want to slap him. All the same, she allowed him to spill the contents of the pouch into her open palm. A half-dozen ten-dollar gold pieces winked up at her.

“Oh dear.” Vickery’s eyes widened.

She did the calculations in her head, allowing for the unbelievable inflation that had occurred overnight, since word had spread that the streets of California were paved in gold. She couldn’t read, but she was keen with figures. Years of stretching pennies to feed her wayward father and four brothers had perfected her skill for transactions.

“You’re crazy, Landerfelt.”

Her sentiments exactly. Why the horse alone had to be worth that much.

Through the crowd, Kate’s gaze lit on the rough-looking frontiersman who’d spoken. She’d not noticed him earlier, and wondered when he’d come in. He lounged against a timber near the store’s entrance, arms folded across his chest as if he owned the place.

Kate felt her face flush hot as the man’s cool gaze washed over her. He wasn’t dressed like the others in flannel shirts and wool trousers. Fur and buckskin clothed him from head to toe, but not any kind of fur Kate had ever seen. Lord, he was a sight! Wild black hair that was unfashionably long, and even blacker eyes.

She forced her gaze back to the coins in her hand. Landerfelt’s offer would barely pay for her return to San Francisco and a room for the night, let alone her debt and the clipper passage home. No, she’d need better than a thousand dollars. More perhaps. With prices what they were, she could only guess.

She watched as the frontiersman pushed his way through the throng and stood looming behind Eldridge Landerfelt. He flashed his dark eyes at her, and she felt a bit of a rush inside. He was taller than she’d first thought, and had a dangerous look about him. A wicked-looking scar cut across his left cheek. She wondered how he’d got it. A knife fight, perhaps, or a run-in with a bear? In this wild place there was no telling.

He stared at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. She felt suddenly overwarm in the close quarters.

“It’s not enough and you know it,” he said.

Landerfelt faced him. “No? Then why don’t you give the little lady some of your money, Crockett. If you have any left, that is.”

A couple of miners snickered as a whispered buzz spread amongst them. Kate watched the cords on the frontiersman’s neck grow taut. His eyes grew even blacker, if that were possible, and his face was as hard as County Wicklow’s limestone cliffs.

“That’s my price,” Landerfelt said to her. He tapped his cigar ash on the counter next to them. “Take it or leave it.”

Kate glanced at the coins in her hand and at Landerfelt’s triumphant smirk. Aye, she was a woman alone in a foreign land, but no one played Kate Dennington for a fool. She knew nothing of prices or the value of land, but she was certain she could do better than the merchant’s paltry offering.

“Keep your coin,” she said, and slapped the golden eagles onto the counter.

Landerfelt’s jaw dropped, and he nearly lost his cigar.

“Ha!” The frontiersman, Crockett, smiled at her.

She noticed his teeth; they were white and straight. This close up, aside from his sun-bronzed skin and that wicked scar, he didn’t really look like the other transient men she’d seen on the last leg of her journey from Sutter’s Fort to Tinderbox. And she’d seen plenty. Hundreds of them, immigrants mostly, all flocking to the goldfields.

Crockett’s voice, his demeanor, they were…refined, almost. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was that made him different, but would stake her last farthing he wasn’t born to this life.

All at once the store erupted into a cacophony of shouts and tussles. The miners crowded forward, nearly pinning Kate to the counter behind her. What on earth—?

“How ’bout sellin’ me that last jar a peaches?” A squat miner with doughy cheeks pointed at the shelf behind the counter.

“I’ll take all them tin pans ya’ve got left,” another cried out.

A dozen others called out their orders for goods. Kate’s head spun. What was she to do? Landerfelt and Vickery were all but pushed aside as the miners crowded closer. She looked to her father’s solicitor for help. Vickery merely shrugged, and fought to keep from losing his spectacles and his overstuffed portfolio in the ruckus.

One thing was clear to her. It was still her store, until five o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Aye, she’d sell off the remaining goods and…She didn’t bother finishing the thought. In a flash she was behind the counter, reaching for that last jar of peaches.

“How much?” the miner said.

“How…much?” Lord, she had no idea. She’d only been in California a handful of days. The currency and coin were strange to her to begin with, and the prices of things seemed to increase by the hour.

The miner plunked a small leather bag onto the counter, and gestured to an odd-looking set of scales Kate had noticed when she’d first arrived. “I’ll take that sack of flour, too.” He opened the leather bag and sprinkled some glittering dust onto the scales. “How’s that?”

“How’s…what?” Apparently this ritual was supposed to mean something to her. Kate looked hard at the glittering pile and with a start realized what it was. “Oh. The gold, you mean?”

Of course! The man meant to pay her in gold dust. But how much should she charge? And how was she to value what he offered? Her hands grew sweaty and, without thinking, she wiped them on the skirt of her one good dress.

In a panic she looked up, directly into the black eyes of the only man in the room who’d had the nerve to question the dealings of her father’s competitor. The frontiersman, Crockett. She wondered why he’d come to her defense at all. What was she to him?

“Stand aside, miss.”

Before she could protest, he was across the counter, his hand on the scales. From a drawer hidden beneath the counter, he pulled a beat-up wooden box. Inside was a collection of a dozen or so metal cylinders, increasing in size from one tinier than her little fingertip, to one nearly as big as her palm. They looked heavy—brass, perhaps.

She watched, fascinated, as Crockett tried a couple of the smallest ones on the scale. She marveled at how quickly he got the side with the brass cylinder to balance perfectly with the side on which the miner had piled his gold.

“More,” Crockett said.

The dough-cheeked miner carefully tapped more dust out of his bag onto the scale.

“Enough.” Crockett pushed the peaches across the counter and gestured to the enormous bag of flour sitting next to him on the floor. “Three dollars for the peaches, and ten for the flour.”

“Thirteen dollars?” Kate was stunned. She calculated the exchange rate in her head. Why, that amount of money would have fed her and her brothers for a month!

“That’s right.” The edge of Crockett’s mouth twitched in a half grimace. “But don’t get excited. Dennington likely paid five in Sacramento City for the flour alone, and another five for delivery. God knows what he paid for those peaches.”

Kate realized Crockett was studying her. And he was standing far too close. Close enough for the fur trim of his jacket to brush her hand. She tried to step back but was hemmed in by more miners, clamoring to buy what remained of the store’s goods.

“But, the prices…how did you know what to—”

“Mei Li!” Crockett waved at the Chinese girl Kate had seen earlier standing in the doorway of the store.

The sprite ducked into the crowd, and Kate didn’t see her again until her head popped up on the other side of the counter. She wore a dazzling smile, and garments the likes of which Kate had never seen. “You wish me help?”

“Yes.” Crockett yanked a list out from under the counter and handed it to the girl. A price list, Kate surmised, though she couldn’t read it.

Both the girl and Crockett seemed to know more than Kate would have suspected about the operation of her father’s store. She’d remember to ask Mr. Vickery about it later.

“Miss Dennington could use some help.” Crockett looked at her again with those probing eyes.

She nodded, still wondering at the frontiersman’s motives but grateful for the assistance he’d provided her. In seconds, the Chinese girl filled the order of another miner and waved forward the next in line.

Landerfelt scowled from the corner where he and Mr. Vickery had been shoved. He cast the stub of his cigar to the floor and pushed his way out of the crowd onto the muddy wagon trail the locals called Main Street.

Crockett’s smile faded. His dark gaze followed Landerfelt out the door. Before Kate could thank him for his kindness, he pushed his way after him and was gone.

“Who on earth was that man?”

“That Will Crockett,” Mei Li said, and proceeded with the next transaction.

Kate watched him out the window. He stood rigid, hands fisted at his sides, outside Landerfelt’s storefront, as if he were waiting for something, for Landerfelt, perhaps. She’d felt the tension between them. “A frontiersman, is he?”

“Fur trader. Trapper.”

Kate could well believe it from his garments. Still, there was an air about him that smacked of drawing rooms and Sunday teas. Not that she knew anything about such things. The two-room tenement in Dublin she’d shared with her father and four brothers was a far cry from such a life.

“He lives here in Tinderbox?”

“No. Will Crockett go north. To Alaska. For beaver. Fox. Good fur there. His boat leave few days.”

“Really?” Perhaps he was a true frontiersman, after all.

“You keep store, yes?”

“W-what?” She hadn’t been listening. Her gaze was still fixed on Will Crockett. “Oh, the store. No, how can I? Mr. Vickery said it was the law. Single women can’t own a business.” Well, not any decent business, she recalled with a shudder. “No, I’ll have to sell it all. I’ll need the money to get home.”

And to make certain Michael and Sean didn’t end up in debtors’ prison. She wouldn’t put it past her mother’s sister. The only reason Kate was able to convince her to lend the money at all was the promise of weighty interest from the fortune her father was supposed to have made in California.

“No, you no sell,” Mei Li said. “No one buy for good price. They want gold, not store. You get cheated.”

The girl was right, and Landerfelt’s ridiculous offer was proof. Kate scanned the faces of the miners fighting over the few items remaining in the store. She read desperation in their grim expressions, gold lust in their eyes.

“You work store for money. Mei Li help.”

Kate shook her head. “No, it’s impossible. Mr. Vickery said—”

“I know, I know. No single women. No immigrants.” Mei Li rattled off something unintelligible under her breath—a Chinese curse, if Kate had to guess.

“Then the only answer is—”

“Easy answer.” Mei Li looked up from her work at the scales and smiled. “You marry.”

“What?” She nearly dropped the last pound of butter in Dennington’s Grocery and Dry Goods on the floor.

“Will Crockett good choice. He like you, too. I see it in eyes.”

Kate plopped onto the stool behind her and pushed her unruly auburn hair out of her face. The clamor of the miners faded as her gaze traveled out the window, snaked across the street and lit on the formidable figure clothed in buckskin and fur. The sky grew dark around him, and he seemed not to notice the light drizzle as he stared into the window of Landerfelt’s Mercantile and Mining Supply.

Will Crockett, indeed. Sweet Jesus, what an idea.