She offered Vickery a seat on the wide window box and pulled up a stool beside him. She encouraged him to go on with his tale.
“Right. Well, yes, she died of cholera. Not six months after Crockett brought her West.”
“So he’s from the East then. New York?”
“Philadelphia.”
“Ah.” Kate hadn’t a clue where that was. The only place she knew of in the eastern part of America was New York.
“Sherrilyn Rogers Browning was her name. They say she was a beauty.”
“Really.” Absently Kate smoothed her well-worn dress and tucked a tendril of frazzled hair back into place.
“With a taste for luxury and fine things.”
“And yet she wed a fur trapper?” That was too farfetched to believe.
“Well, yes, I guess she did.”
“Just how do you know this, Mr. Vickery? Did Crockett tell you?”
“Oh, my, no. He’s not the kind of man who talks about his family.”
Kate hadn’t gotten to know him well enough to either agree or disagree.
“Matt Robinson told me.”
“Ah, the infamous Matt Robinson.” She smiled, recalling his swashbuckling behavior of the day before. “He’s quite the colorful character.”
“Oh, quite.” Vickery leaned in close, as if he were about to tell her something of great import. “Rumor has it Crockett’s the son of a very wealthy man. Someone important—in politics or banking maybe—back East. No one really knows.”
Six months at sea packed aboard a ship with immigrants of every imaginable background and social status, Kate had gotten quite good at picking up languages and at judging people’s circumstances from their speech.
More than once she’d detected a sort of refinement in Crockett’s voice and manner, though he seemed to bend over backward to cover it up, obliterate it. He worked hard at being something he was not. Why?
Kate rose from the stool and gazed out the window at the clear autumn sky. It didn’t really matter, did it? Will Crockett was gone for good, and so much the better. He was right, after all. She had what she wanted. Why, then, did she feel so despondent?
After Mr. Vickery said goodbye and tottered off down the street, Kate turned back to the window and stared blankly after him, her thoughts consumed by what she’d learned of Will Crockett.
Trailing a finger across her lips, she recalled their kiss. It had been her first. She was twenty-two and had never been kissed. Not until yesterday morn when Will Crockett made her his wife. He wasn’t really her husband, she reminded herself. It was purely a business arrangement. It’s not as if he’d left her. He’d planned to leave all along.
She glanced up the street and, to her surprise, saw the portly priest turned miner who’d married them the day before. Father Flanagan, newly arrived in Tinderbox to make his fortune. A fortune he’d use to build a church, a parish, here on the frontier.
Crossing herself, Kate offered up a silent plea for God to forgive her sin. Sweet Jesus, she’d actually married him! In the church. No matter that it was out in the open, under the clear blue sky. She’d said the vows before a priest, before God.
It was a real marriage, despite the fact that Will Crockett was on his way to Alaska, and that soon she, too, would take to ship and sail for home.
Will stood on the levee in Sacramento City in the shadow of the Golden Eagle and resisted the urge to draw the miniature out of his pocket. Why the hell he’d bought it, he didn’t know.
The painted image of Kate Dennington surely hadn’t changed in the ten minutes since he’d last looked at it. All the same, the keepsake was in his hand before he knew it, her blue eyes and proud Irish features staring up at him.
“You’re an idiot, Crockett.” He jammed it back into his pocket as the men huddled around him on the levee waiting to board the riverboat turned to stare. Shrugging, he swore silently under his breath.
He’d been hard on Kate yesterday, and regretted his bad behavior. He’d been angry, not at her so much as himself. He was attracted to her, and that was the problem.
The way she’d pushed through that crowd of men and come to Mei Li’s defense yesterday morning in town had surprised the hell out of him. The woman had grit. He admired that, along with those blue eyes of hers.
Absently his hand moved to the pocket housing the miniature. At the last minute he fisted it at his side and mouthed a silent curse.
Kate Dennington wasn’t his concern. So why did he have second thoughts about leaving her? She was a woman alone in a town full of ruffians and gold diggers. So what? From what he’d seen of her, she was damned capable of taking care of herself.
Besides, he had plans. And those plans didn’t include a woman in them. Women were trouble. Sherrilyn had taught him that little lesson. Kate Dennington was trouble, too. That chaste kiss of hers proved it. How long had she practiced it, and with whom? She was good, all right. Very, very good.
He would live the life he wanted, the life he’d imagined while shut up for days on end in the private schools his father had insisted he attend. California was spoiled for him now, by the gold and the greed.
But Alaska…now she was something a man could build a life around. Untamed, unspoiled. The adventure of a lifetime. His gaze focused again, and he realized with a start it was fixed on Kate Dennington’s blue eyes.
That damned miniature must have jumped out of his pocket and into his hand! He gripped it until the silvered edges cut into his palm.
It was no kind of life for a wife, or children. Not his, or anyone’s. Something dark and bitter balled in his gut as an image of Sherrilyn, her face white in death, her lips blue, crashed into his consciousness.
Will jammed the miniature back into his pocket and eyed the restless crowd. Where in hell was that livery hand? It was an hour past the appointed time the man said he’d meet him. He’d offered a fair price for Dennington’s gelding, and Will needed every cent he could get his hands on to buy that working passage and make a new start.
The steamer headed north sailed day after tomorrow from San Francisco, right on schedule, so a riverboat stevedore had told him. The Golden Eagle was boarding passengers now for the day-and-a-half trip downriver to the port.
Will was out of time. “Damn.” He turned and calmed Dennington’s horse, who grew more agitated as the crowd on the levee began to board.
He’d bribed that same stevedore to sneak him on the second before the riverboat pushed off. He could be caught, but that was a chance he was willing to take. The bribe had been less than the fare by half.
Will scanned the faces of the men crowded around him, desperate to find that livery hand. It was a damned fair price, so where the hell—
“Leon told him once the husband was gone—some trapper or other—they was gonna burn her out.”
Will froze as his gaze fixed on the rough-looking miner who’d spoken.
“No kiddin’?” The greasy-haired man beside him laughed. “Well, hell, wouldn’t be hard to do. They don’t call it Tinderbox for nothin’. One match and the whole town’d go up.”
Will dropped the gelding’s reins and put a gloved hand on the miner’s shoulder.
“Hey, mister, wait yer turn.”
Will spun him around to face him, and the miner went for his knife. “We’re all in line, here.”
Will reached for his gun. Son of a—he’d forgotten he’d lost it to Landerfelt.