Heartbreak Creek (5 page)

“What happened to him?” Maddie asked.

“Gangrene.” Edwina didn’t want to think of those last horrid weeks—day after day watching him waste away—the suffering, the stench, the awful emptiness in his eyes. “It near broke my heart.”

Pru snapped the wrinkles out of a skirt with such vigor it sounded like the crack of a whip in the small room. “You only married that poor boy because he was your friend,” she reminded Edwina. “He had no one else to wave him off to war, and you felt sorry for him.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have married him, Pru. But I loved him.” Tears welled up—for herself, for Shelly, for all the lost dreams. “Why did everything have to change? I wish that wretched war had never happened.”

Pru paused in her packing to look at her.

“Except for the slavery thing,” Edwina amended with a halfhearted wave of one hand. “Naturally I wanted that to stop.”

“We English ended that nasty practice years ago, thank heavens.”

“After,” Lucinda pointed out to the Englishwoman, “you introduced that nasty practice here.”

“No matter how it ended,” Pru cut in, “on behalf of freed slaves everywhere, I just thank the Lord it’s over.”

“On behalf of Yankees everywhere,” Lucinda quipped, “you’re welcome.”

“Ha!” Sitting up, Edwina glared at her sister, still piqued by her callous, if true, remarks about Shelly. “You were never a slave, Pru, and don’t pretend you were.”

“My mother was.”

“And our father was a slave to her.” Edwina saw her sister’s face tighten and knew she’d misspoken. Despite their friendship with Lucinda and Maddie, Pru still insisted they not discuss their shared father. Anger seeping away, Edwina put her hand on her sister’s arm. “Please, Pru, let’s not get into that again. The war’s been over for five years. There’s even a man of color in the Congress. Can’t we finally put slavery to rest?”

“Half color. And Mr. Revels was never a slave.” Pausing in her folding, Pru looked at the far wall, her expression troubled. “I try. But then I see all those bewildered Negroes wandering through the towns we pass, and I get angry all over again. They can’t read or write, Edwina. They have no training to start new lives. Someone should help them—do something.”

Edwina studied her sister, feeling that pang of sympathy warring with her impatience. Freed slaves weren’t the only ones left bereft and bewildered. The South had been utterly destroyed. Thousands upon thousands had died. What more could be done to right that terrible wrong? Kill thousands more? “Here’s an idea, then,” she suggested. “Let’s go back to Rose Hill, dig up my grandfather’s bones, and stomp the stuffings out of them. Will that make you feel better?”

Pru bit back a smile and resumed packing. “It might.”

“Sounds a bit drastic,” Maddie called. “Even the Scots don’t dig up their dead.”

Flopping back again, Edwina watched lacy cobwebs on the stained ceiling swing to and fro in a gentle draft, and felt such a sense of despair it seemed to clog her throat. “I just want to put it all behind me,” she said in a wobbly voice. “All that pain and death and destruction. I don’t want to think about all those new graves. Is that so wrong? To want to start over?”

“No, love. It isn’t.” Sinking onto the edge of the bed beside her, Pru reached out and patted Edwina’s hand. “I’m just not sure marrying a man you never met is the way to go about it.”

“I agree,” Lucinda called. “Men will always break your heart.”

“Sad, but true,” Maddie put in. “And if you do marry a stranger, sometimes getting to know him better will only lead to impossible hopes and expectations they are unable or unwilling to fulfill.”

“Well, what choice did I have?” Edwina complained, sitting up again. “A Klansman or a carpetbagger. It seems all the men were either married, so defeated they couldn’t go on, or so angry they wouldn’t let the killing end. I can’t live like that any longer. I won’t.”

Pru resumed packing. “Eldridge Blankenship was unmarried, and was neither Klansman nor carpetbagger. He would have made a fine husband.”

“Or a beaver,” Edwina argued, earning a laugh from Lucinda. “Did you see those teeth? Besides, he wanted children.”

Another subject they hadn’t broached with their new friends, so Pru didn’t respond.

But Maddie’s curiosity was aroused. Tipping her head to study Edwina through the open door, she asked, “You don’t want children?”

Edwina shrugged.

“How do you plan to stop them from coming?”

“There are ways,” Lucinda said before Edwina had to admit she was hoping to talk her groom into abstinence. “A man named Charles Goodyear has invented a rubber sheath that fits over—”

“Lucinda Hathaway!” Prudence gave her a look that would have done her name proud. “I cannot believe you would discuss such a thing!”

“We’re none of us virgins,” Lucinda pointed out. “Including you, I’d guess, since you’re experienced enough to know what I’m talking about.”

Surprised, Edwina turned to her sister, expecting an immediate denial. But Pru didn’t meet her gaze, although her caramel-colored skin did seem to darken a bit.

“Fits over what?” Maddie persisted.

Lucinda rolled her eyes. “For someone with an arts background you have a somewhat limited imagination, don’t you, dear?”

“I’m a photographer, not a—my word! You’re talking about French letters, aren’t you? They’re made of
rubber
? I thought they were made of linen or silk or animal intestines.”

“Intestines? Good Lord. You Scots truly are backward.”

“I’m English, Lucinda, as well you know.”

“Be that as it may, rubber sheaths have been around for at least a decade. Apparently neither you nor your
Scottish
husband has ever used one.”

“There was no need.”

“No need? You mean you didn’t—”

“Of course we did,” Maddie cut. “Many times. Often in the same day. But contraception wasn’t an issue. I wanted children. Very much.”

Edwina gaped at her two friends, amazed that they could so blithely discuss such taboo subjects as consummation and conception. They seemed so confident and assured. So experienced. “I wish I could be more like you two,” she said wistfully. “Say whatever you want. Travel where and when the mood strikes. Follow your dreams wherever they take you, instead of just being someone’s wife.”

“Oh, being a wife isn’t so bad,” Maddie allowed. “I rather liked it. Until he dumped me on his family and left. Ghastly man, that earl.”

“Earl?” Lucinda sounded shocked. “You were married to an earl?”

“His father is the earl. Angus is only third in line, which was why he was in the military, of course.”

“Edwina, you wouldn’t last two minutes on your own,” Pru said, responding to her earlier remark. “You can’t even cook.”

“Who cooks?” Maddie said airily. “I’m sure your new husband will be delighted with you, Edwina, whether you can cook or not. Angus didn’t seem to mind that I couldn’t cook. But then we rarely left the bedroom. When he bothered to come see me, that is.”

 

 

The next morning at ten minutes after eight o’clock, Edwina stepped out of the Heartbreak Creek Hotel into such bright, glaring sunlight it made her head pound even worse than it had throughout the night. Raising a hand to shade her eyes, she looked around, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the horse droppings in the street and the stale reek of whiskey and tobacco smoke drifting out of the open door of the Red Eye Saloon next door.

Other than the distant thudding of machinery up at the mine, the town seemed deader than it had when they’d arrived the previous day—no gawkers peering through the greasy windows of the saloon, no wagons lumbering down the muddy street, and no unsmiling man resembling that tiny tintype waiting outside the hotel.

“So where is he?” she groused, squinting down the boardwalk. “It’s after eight. He should be here by now.” After spending a nearsleepless night dreading this meeting, she now found herself churning with impatience for it to be over. Rather like the terrified anticipation felons facing a firing squad must feel. “It’s rude to keep a lady waiting. A
wife
waiting.”

A sharp breeze, crisp with spring’s promise even though snow still capped the peaks above the mine, cut through Edwina’s thin coat and made her shiver. Beside her, Pru patted and smoothed and checked her buttons with annoying predictability.

“Stop fidgeting, Pru,” she snapped. “It’s giving me a headache.”

“Poor dear.”

The lack of sympathy in Pru’s tone fueled Edwina’s pique. “And another thing.” She met her sister’s bland look with a warning glare. “If you refer to yourself as my maid again I will cause such a ruckus it’ll make your hair curl.”

“My hair is already curled.”

“I mean it, Prudence.”

“In a bad mood, are we?”

Realizing she was sounding like a petulant child, Edwina let go a deep sigh and along with it, most of her anger. “I wish Maddie and Lucinda were here. Maybe I can hire on as Maddie’s photography assistant. Or as Lucinda’s personal seamstress. I should have thought to ask.”

“No matter. You’re married.” Pru straightened her bonnet after a sudden gust almost snatched it from her head. “And we decided to let them sleep, remember? Besides, we said our good-byes last night.”

“I know. But still . . .” Edwina would have liked having them there for support. Maddie’s eternal good cheer might have kept her spirits up, even as Lucinda’s innate pragmatism would have reminded her that she’d made her choice and had best get on with it. “This waiting is fraying my nerves.”

Blinking back the sting of tears, she stared down at her tightly clasped hands. Thank God she had insisted on the two-month waiting period so they could get to know each other before doing . . .
that
. Perhaps she should extend it to three. Yes, three would do nicely. That way, if he didn’t work out, she would have time to come up with another plan before he insisted on exercising his husbandly duties. Her skin prickled at the thought.

“I don’t think you’ll have to wait much longer.”

Edwina looked up to see her sister staring fixedly past her shoulder. “Is it him?”

“He,” Pru corrected absently. “And yes, I think so.”

When Edwina started to turn, Pru grabbed her arm. “Don’t look. You’ll appear too anxious.”

She
was
anxious. She was tired, anxious, and terrified. “Well?” she prodded impatiently. “What does he look like? Is he presentable? Clean, at least? I never trust those tintypes.”

“He’s . . . ah . . . presentable. And bigger.”

Edwina resisted the urge to burst into nervous giggles. “I should hope so. That tintype is smaller than my watch.”

This was insane. The whole idea was insane. What was she thinking to marry a complete stranger, some backwoods mountainman rancher type?

“What is he doing?” she asked, trying to keep the quaver from her voice. “Has he seen us? Is he coming this way? Is my bonnet straight?”

“Stop fussing,” Pru hissed. “He’s talking to someone. No, wait. Now he’s walking toward us. Compose yourself.”

Edwina told herself not to look, but found her head turning anyway. A quick glance, then she faced forward again, a sense of relief coursing through her. A well-dressed man, wearing a smart bowler hat and finely tailored suit. She’d only had a glimpse, but he had seemed presentable. Older than she’d expected, perhaps. And rounder, and a bit hairier with that flaring mustache, but presentable, nonetheless. A benign man. Easily managed. She let out a deep exhale.
Thank you, Lord
. “He’ll do,” she whispered to Pru with a happy grin. “He won’t be any trouble at all.”

Her sister reared back to gape at her. “You’re jesting.”

“No, truly, Pru.” She patted her sister’s gloved hand in reassurance. “I have a good feeling about this. As soon as I convince him to shave off that silly mustache he’ll be quite the thing.”

“Mustache?” Pru started to laugh. “Oh, dear.”

Edwina’s smile faded. “Oh, dear, what?” She tensed as footfalls approached from behind.

A deep voice said, “Morning, ma’am,” and the man in the tailored suit and bowler hat stepped around them and on down the boardwalk.

Edwina’s shoulders slumped. “Drat. Where the dickens is he?”

Then she saw Pru’s head tilt up, then higher still, and suddenly she felt an ominous presence behind her. It was all she could do to turn slowly, and then all she could do not to shriek out loud.

He was huge, bristly-jawed, scowling, and not presentable at all. He didn’t even do them the courtesy of removing his dusty Stetson when addressing her, and—
merciful heavens
—was that a gun in his belt?

“Edwina Ladoux Brodie?” he asked in a deep voice every bit as welcoming as his stern features.

“Gwaugh,” Edwina garbled, caught between “Good God” and “What?”

The man’s dark gaze flicked between the sisters, paused briefly on Pru’s scarred wrist, then settled on Edwina. “Is one of you Ed—”

“Yes!” Edwina managed, having finally found her voice. “I’m her—she—Edwina Ladoux, that is. Brodie.” She lifted a shaky hand toward Pru. “And this is my—”

“Traveling companion,” Pru cut in, with a nod of her head. “Prudence Lincoln.”

The man frowned at Pru for a moment, then swung his attention back to Edwina. It was oppressive, the way he looked at her. Intrusive and rude.

Realizing she had twisted the strings of her reticule so tightly around her wrist that her fingers had gone numb, Edwina didn’t offer her hand but simply stood there, her heart drumming so hard she thought she might faint.

Surely this great hulking lump wasn’t her husband. He looked nothing like the tintype. Well, perhaps a bit. But only because both men had dark hair and eyes, and neither seemed capable of smiling.