The Bride Wore Blue (28 page)

I
da scrubbed a plate clean and handed it to Nell for drying. Thankfully, the men had dominated the table and parlor conversations. They’d talked about everything from the unseasonably cool summer to last week’s sermon, from the current value of ore to the patient count at the hospital. Ida and her sisters had quietly picked at their food. Even Miss Hattie only interjected an occasional comment. Baby Hope had been the most vocal, fussing until Kat lulled her to sleep in the rocking cradle next to the kitchen table.

Their silence had carried over into the cleanup. Ida reached for another dirty plate. All she could do was pray and try to keep busy.

She’d just handed Nell the plate when the telephone’s raspy bell sounded and stilled their activity. Ida met Miss Hattie’s wide-eyed gaze.

“It could be news of Vivian, dear,” Miss Hattie said. “I’ll let you get it.”

Her heart racing, Ida dried her hands and picked up the cone.

“Hello?”

“I have the police department on the line for Reverend Tucker Raines.”

“This is his wife, Ida Raines.”

A man’s voice cut in. “Mrs. Raines, this is Lieutenant Thayer.”

“Yes. Have you found my sister?” Nell, Kat, and Miss Hattie gathered around her. Ida did her best to maintain her composure as she listened to the latest information. “Yes, thank you.”

Ida set the cone in the hook and faced the others.

Kat furrowed her brow. “They haven’t found her?”

“She may be on Ute Mountain. That’s where Carter and the police officers spotted two of the three men wanted for the robberies. The officers went after the men and just returned to town with them.” Ida drew in a deep breath and blinked back tears. “Carter pursued a girl running away from them. She was wearing a red dress.”

“It can’t be Vivian out there.” Nell set the plate on the cupboard. “She wouldn’t run from Deputy Alwyn.”

Kat crossed her arms. “We don’t really know what Viv would or wouldn’t do. She lied to all of us about working at the hotel. She left Ida on the boardwalk and strolled through the hotel door just like she belonged there.” Her face flushed. “If Viv could work at a sporting house, she could run from the law.”

And get tangled up with outlaws.

Any way Ida looked at it, she’d failed as a big sister.

As darkness hovered, Carter added more sticks to the stack on his arm. The same arm that had cradled Vivian Sinclair’s matted head an hour ago on the mountainside.

He was fairly certain Walt and Stanley had captured the other two outlaws, but Leon was probably still on the loose. No telling what he’d
do if he knew Vivian had escaped and his cousin and son were locked up in the city jail.

Carter looked over his shoulder at the entrance to the abandoned mine where he’d left Vivian. The young woman he’d bought pie for at the Third Street Café. The one he’d nearly kissed in Miss Hattie’s kitchen.

The one who’d worked in a sporting house for an infamous madam, who was now dead.

He added another handful of kindling to his bundle. To think he’d hesitated to move past friendship with Vivian because he didn’t want to subject her to his job. He’d even considered giving up his life as a lawman for her. He’d told himself he needed to be patient, that she was young and naive.

He’d been the naive one, her fool.

Groaning, Carter started back to their shelter for the night and to the girl who had broken his heart. How could he have been so blind? So wrong? He knew her family. He’d seen her laughing with her sisters and heard her cooing at baby Hope. Miss Hattie adored Vivian. She’d blushed that day on the bench when he told her Tuesday mornings were reserved for the
other women
to shop in town.

Vivian wasn’t the kind of girl he’d expect to find in a brothel or entangled with outlaws. Wasn’t the kind of girl he’d always blamed for his father’s death.

A grayness had settled on the trees and the mouth of the abandoned mine. Temperatures dropped below a waning crescent moon. Carter needed to build a fire before they both froze to death.

The two candles he’d lit inside the mine flickered but offered enough light for him to see that the rocks he’d piled in the center of the
room had been stacked into a fire ring. He set down the armful of kindling and looked at Vivian. She sat on the ground, looking small in his large jacket. Her tattered skirt formed a tent over her raised knees.

“Thank you.” He wanted to say her name but couldn’t.

She didn’t look at him. “It’s the least I can do after all you’re doing for me.”

“Making camp in a dirty, abandoned mineshaft?”

She sniffled and swiped at the tears spilling down her soiled cheeks. “This is much better than last night. I was camped in the open, tied to a saddle with a rifle pointed at me. At least in here I don’t have to worry about mountain lions.” Her eyes widened, and she glanced at the tunnel. “Do I?”

“I checked. There’s nothing in there.” The image of the rope burns on her wrists resurfaced and twisted his insides. Questions buzzed him like pesky flies as he pulled a match from his saddlebags. “Did he, uh, bother you?” He wanted to scold himself for caring. Tried to make himself believe she was a prostitute and it didn’t matter, that she may have offered herself freely.

She pressed the collar of his jacket to her neck. “No. None of them did. The Lord protected me, even though I didn’t deserve it.”

He lit a match and touched it to the moss under the kindling. “Do you think Leon killed Pearl?”

“No.” She shook her head. “When he saw me in Pearl’s room, he blamed me for her death. Said he loved her. He bought her the gown she wore to the party.”

That answered the question about where money from the robberies was going—to impress Pearl DeVere. “Why did you go to Pearl’s room when you did last night? ”

“To tell her I’d made a mistake.” Her voice quivered, and so did his insides.

“What kind of mistake?”

“Taking the job there.” She met his gaze. “I couldn’t do that kind of work.”

“Prostitute yourself? ”

Vivian jerked as if he’d slapped her. But he was the one who’d been slapped, and he felt the sting to his core.

The fire crackled a few feet from Vivian. She felt safe here with Carter. He’d pulled several clean handkerchiefs from his saddlebags and given her a damp cloth to wash her face. She didn’t expect to feel clean ever again, but at least she’d been able to remove one layer of grime and clean the scrapes on her cheek and elbow.

Now she sat wrapped in Carter’s bedroll, nibbling on a biscuit. He crouched on the other side of the fire with nothing more than his jacket to keep him warm. With his back against a rock wall, he met her gaze. She didn’t look away this time, and neither did he. She had so much she wanted to say to him. But where could she begin?

Carter broke the silence. “I’m sorry I flung you over my shoulder. That I was so blunt. I shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

He was apologizing? He’d given up his jacket for her, his bedroll. Even given up searching for the others, leaving it to the police officers he’d brought along.

He filled a tin mug with boiled coffee and handed it to her.

“Thank you.” She wrapped her hands around the warm cup.

“Seeing you—well, it took me by surprise.”

Another wave of shame rolled over her. “You saved me from those men. I never would’ve made it back up that ravine on my own. Thank you.”

He ate the last of his biscuit and gulped coffee, then poked at a burning log with a stick.

“I can’t excuse my recent behavior, but …” How could she explain something that mystified her?

He lifted the stick from the fire. They both watched as a tendril of smoke floated up from its glowing tip.

Vivian cared for this man. Probably had since her first night in town when he’d stood at the Raines’s hearth, soaking wet, sympathizing with her. He cared for her too. She’d seen it in his eyes between bites of pie at the Third Street Café and in Hattie’s kitchen when she’d told him she was fine. He’d seen through the lie and taken her hands in his.

But that was just one lie of many. She’d be a fool to believe his affection for her hadn’t completely burned out or drifted out of reach.

“I never meant to hurt anyone.” She laced her fingers over the blanket just below her neck. Her eyes began to pool with tears, the shame leaking out onto her cheeks. “I never wanted to hurt
you
.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose the way she’d seen him do on the train. “How could this happen? You are an intelligent, beautiful young lady. Loved by many.” He added the last log to the fire. “Why would you even consider working at a place like that?”

“I’m not the innocent you and my sisters think I am.”

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but didn’t.

“I never liked being the baby in the family. My mother died when I was just a girl. My father moved to Paris, leaving me in Aunt Alma’s care. My sisters all moved across the country. My aunt had a business to
run. I was suddenly relatively independent.” Ignoring the irony of her statement, Vivian lifted the candle Carter had given her off the ground and held the wick to the fire until it began to glow. “I made mistakes in Maine.”

“We all make mistakes, but they don’t drive us to—”

“Prostitute ourselves?” Even if he couldn’t forgive her, she wanted Carter to know the truth. “I had a beau, and I thought we would wed when I finished my schooling.” She drew in a deep breath. “We shouldn’t have been in his house alone that day, but we were. And in a moment of passion, I let him go too far.”

Carter’s shoulders sagged. She wanted to believe he was disappointed for her, but how could he be anything but disappointed by her?

“You were right.” Tears again brimmed her lids. “I’m not the girl you know. Or thought you knew.”

Looking past her, he brushed his hair back from his face. What was he thinking? Perhaps it was best that she didn’t know. Otherwise, she may not be able to continue, and she needed to tell him the whole story. Regardless of the outcome.

“It happened more than once, and I didn’t tell anyone.” She couldn’t look at him. “I didn’t want to come to Cripple Creek, didn’t want to face my sisters, but I couldn’t stay in Portland either. I wanted to go to Paris with my father and throw myself into designing clothes, but he vehemently opposed that idea.”

“But you seemed to like Cripple Creek. I’ve seen you with your sisters.”

“I thought I could make a fresh start here.”

“Until the morning I saw you on the bench in town.”

“I’d just been fired from the telephone company. Three girls who worked for Pearl came out of the millinery, and I met Opal. I told her I
wasn’t working, and she told me about an opening for a daytime hostess at the Homestead House.”

“Since you were out on a Tuesday morning, she assumed you were a
working girl
without a job.”

“Yes. Then you came along and told me about the job at the newspaper. You know what happened there, that I had to quit.”

He nodded.

“I owed Miss Hattie for my room. I needed a job. I asked all over town.”

“Your sisters wouldn’t help?”