“Miss Finch will not be joining me, Benson. Ever,” Blake said softly. “And I’ve a favor to beg of you now. A task I have no right to ask of you. But it is of great importance to me.”
“Anything, Your Grace.”
“Miss Finch and Miss Forsyth are good friends, I understand,” Blake continued to Benson’s nod. “I wish ... I wish to know if there is anything she ever needs.” Blake faltered and began again. “I want her to be happy. Write me, Benson. If you ever think my help is required. I will trust your judgment with my son or daughter. And with her.”
“Of course, Your Grace. I would be honored to watch after her,” Benson said and stared hard at his employer. “If there is anything I’ve learned, it’s that patience is oft times required when we feel the least inclined to grant it. Patience and love. They will win out. You will see, sir.”
Blake Sanders clipped a formal bow to his valet. Benson’s head snapped to attention and returned the salutation.
* * * *
Fred and Benson shook hands with William and Blake. Fred guffawed and pulled William into his arms and slapped him loudly on the back. Blake didn’t mount the horse Fred had given him to ride to the train station just yet. He had one more detail to attend to. Near as hard as kissing Gertrude goodbye.
In the bunkhouse, Blake pulled a sleeping Luke Matson to his feet. Cookie lit a lamp and the hands in their red under drawers listened warily as Blake spoke.
“She loves you Matson. Not I. I will concede defeat on that point,” Blake hissed to the groggy man hanging in his grip. “But if I were ever to hear that she were unhappy. If I were ever to hear you’d disgraced her. If I were ever to hear you didn’t treat her as the priceless diamond that she is, I promise you, I will cross the ocean and tear your heart out of your chest.”
Matson nodded wide-eyed. Blake dropped him to the floor. Not a word was spoken as Blake Sanders, walked silently out of the bunkhouse. William stayed for a moment after his father passed him. He met the eye of every man there. Father and son rode into the dawn.
* * * *
She clutched a letter in her fist and her heart leaped in her throat. Blake’s neat script etched her name.
She laid it down carefully on her pillow as if it might shatter. As her heart surely was. Gert knew what the letter said without reading a word. He was gone.
Gert finally emerged from her room after mealtime. The letter tucked away in her pocket, unopened. She crept into the kitchen, hoping to make tea and hurry back to her upstairs. But Uncle Fred sat there holding a mug of coffee, apparently waiting for her to come in.
“Sanders and Will left before daybreak,” he said.
Gert nodded and headed to the stove to warm water. “I assumed he’d want to go as soon as possible.”
“Will said goodbye. He was right torn about not telling ya himself. Wanted to thank ya for the greatest time of his life.” Fred got no response from Gert. “Sanders wouldn’t wait.”
“He’s worried about Melinda.”
Fred leaned forward in his chair. “Ya think that’s why he tore outa here in the middle of the night?” Gert stirred her tea and Fred continued. “He left me a letter.”
Gert turned in a hurry. “What did it say?”
“Says he planned on depositing a whole big pile of money in Fletcher’s bank here in town. Sposed ta use it for you and the baby when ever ya want. Gave me his address too. Just in case I might need ta get in touch with him.”
Gert leaned on the sink, her massive middle weighing her down. “I never wanted his money.”
“Ya don’t have ta marry Luke Matson, Gert,” Fred said as he stood. “I’ll guard ya and with Sanders’
money....”
“This child will need a father. Luke’s kind and I think he cares about me.”
Fred spread his hands wide. “Why, Gert? Why are ya doing this? The baby’s father wants to marry ya.
And ya love him so much I’m plum tired of worrying about ya. Marry him Gert. A man goes to the pains of taking care of ya like this deserves better. Ya know he lifted Luke outa his bunk this morning with one hand. Threatened to come back and kill him ifn he ever heard Matson hurt ya.”
“I can’t,” Gert said as she withered into a chair.
“Tell me why, Gert? Just tell me why and I’ll leave off the questions,” Fred said as he sat down beside her to gather her hands in his.
Tears rolled down her face. She wiped them away. Fred waited as she swallowed and stared hard at the wall. “Ma begged me as she was dying to never marry a man like my Pa. Blake isn’t poor, he’d keep food on the table but he’d tire of me and move on.” She bowed her head and continued softly. “He’d have a mistress like he’s always done.” Gert lifted her tear stained face to her uncle. “He doesn’t love me.”
“What else did yer Ma say?”
“To marry a man who’d love me and be true. Never make the mistakes she had.” Gert’s hand came to her lips and her eyes wandered. “It killed her you know.”
“Consumption got yer mother, Gert. And I won’t believe for one second that Blake Sanders don’t love you. He might not have the words in him but a man’s actions count more and you know it.” Fred rubbed her hands softly. “Ya know I loved yer Aunt Mavis with all a my heart.” Gert nodded and smiled. Fred dropped his head with the admission. “I never told her till the night that she died.”
Gert shook her head in wonder. She had lived with the couple nearly all of her life. She knew Fred loved Mavis as surely as she knew she loved Blake. “All those years?” she asked.
Fred nodded and swallowed. “All them years.” He wiped a calloused hand across his eyes. “Ya know what my Mavis said when I told her? Said she knew all along. Said she knew I loved her and them words ya keep in yer heart don’t always need said. I go to her grave and tell her everyday though. Sure wish I’d said ‘em more when she lived.”
“I love you, Uncle Fred.”
“I know ya do, Missy. I love you, too.”
Gert pulled the letter from her pocket. “Blake left me this.”
“What’d it say?”
“I haven’t read it.” Gert turned the envelope over in her hand. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“Ready for what Gert?”
The day seemed to be made for confessions. “When I came back here, expecting, I had resigned myself to never seeing him again. Then he came,” Gert said softly. “And I let myself think, dream of what it would be like to marry him. Have a family.” She stared at the letter she held. “When I read this I’ll know in my heart my pirate has sailed. For good.”
“Listen to yourself, Gert. You all got yourself convinced you’ll never be happy. Convinced the man you want, never wanted you. And then going and telling him some fool nonsense about Luke Matson. That’s why Sanders left, Gert,” Fred said. “Don’t ya see? He loves you enough to let you be.”
“He’d have left anyway. Whether I married him or not,” Gert whispered.
Fred sat back on his chair and rubbed his hand the length of his face. “Ya don’t know....”
“Yes I do,” Gert shouted as she shoved back her chair and stood. Her hair flew wildly and tears poured down her face. She was near hysterical and could not control what she said. “My father left me. Told me he’d come back and never did. What does a twelve year old do to make their father hate them so much?”
Fred held his hand out to her. “Now, Missy. Settle down. You’re confusing the matter. Edgar Finch was the one wrong. Not you.”
But Gert was too far-gone in old pain to listen. “He told me that day. That day he brought me here,”
Gert whispered. “Told me I was just like Ma. Too tall already. Too tall and ugly to hold a man’s attentions for very long. That I’d convince a man somewhere along the line to get under my skirts. Then the poor fool’d have to marry me. Just what Ma did when Pa got drunk one time at a saloon.” Gert turned watery green eyes to her uncle. “I was twelve when he told me.”
“Ah, Gert.”
“And that’s exactly what happened. I knew when I woke up that night Blake had been drinking. He would’ve left if I hadn’t begged him to stay. I wanted him to love me so much, wanted at least to have a memory of love so badly I trapped him. Just like Ma did to Pa,” Gert whispered.
“You ain’t tall and ugly. That bastard done said all that to make his own self feel better. And I don’t think you trapped Sanders. I think ya wanted him and loved him already. But more important than all that is that your Brit came for you. Something your Pa never did. Cause he loves you. Same reason he left.”
Gert stared at Fred, bleary eyed. “He left because he loves me?”
Fred nodded. “Men folk are different than women, Gert. Women want to raise their children right and make ‘em a home to do it in. Want their man to love ‘em and their youngins’. Men just want their woman to be happy. Sanders proved to me he loves you when he rode out of here at dawn.”
Gert tilted her head and held back another flood of tears, teetering on the brink of hope. “Do you really think he left because he thought it would make me happy?”
“I know it, Gert. I know it.”
Gert glanced nervously about the room wondering if she’d allowed the specter of Edgar Finch’s own misery to taint every decision she’d ever made. Had she walked her life in a fog of unworthiness, too terrified to venture into the light? Had she allowed her father’s taunt to set her course even as she railed across the country trying to convince women to set their own path? She had. Someone cleared their throat in the room and Gert looked up.
“Excuse me, Miss Finch,” Benson said.
Mary Alice flew into the room smiling, behind him. “Gertrude! Benson is going to move to Chicago and open a clothing store. What do you think? I think he’ll do just fine.” She slipped her arm into the stoic servant’s crooked elbow and smiled up at him.
“A clothing store?” Gert said.
Mary Alice nodded. “Chicago’s booming and I know just the place for him to get started.”
“We will impose on your hospitality no longer, Miss Finch. Miss Forsyth and I are off to town to check the train schedule and then will travel to Chicago.” Benson said and smiled broadly. “But before we go, I’d like to make sure you have Miss Forsyth’s post number and that we may have yours.”
“I would like to keep in touch with you both,” Gert said and heaved herself from the chair to find pencil and paper.
Benson read her address and tucked the paper in his vest pocket. “I mustn’t lose this,” he said as he tapped his chest. “The Duke of Wexford has entrusted me to keep an eye on you and I will not fail.” His face sobered. “You must promise me, Miss Finch. If you are ever in need you shall write. I have a great debt to the Duke to fulfill. He was most insistent yesterday. Whatever would be needed to ensure the comfort and happiness of you and your child is to be met, post haste.”
“He said that?” Gert asked.
Benson nodded. “Most definitely. I’ve known the duke since he was in short pants. And I will say he asked this of me in a fashion I’d never seen.” Benson looked Gert in the eye. “His intensity and desperation were most obvious. He has entrusted to me the guardianship of a most valued commodity.”
“Sanders would feel that way about his child, Benson,” Gert said. “For all his blustering and faults, he loves his children.”
Benson shook his head and stepped to Gert, gathering her hand in his. “Oh, it wasn’t his child he was most concerned about.” He saw Gert’s head tilt in question and he smiled. “‘Twas you.”
Gert spent the rest of the day in a fog, helping Mary Alice prepare to leave. She battled her own demons and pulled Blake’s letter from her pocket six times. Her back was sore and her face a mess with red swollen eyes and nose. But she smiled until she finally sat in Mavis’ rocker by the window in her room.
Holding the letter, turning it over in the moonlight, stealing one more moment believing he loved her. She blew a deep breath and opened the envelope.
My Dearest Gertrude,
I have never been one to write poetry or find words for the deepest feelings in my heart. I do not believe I’ve ever had cause to. Until now. It is imperative to me that you understand my feelings. You have changed my life in ways I am sure you are unaware of. I have been too long lost in centuries of tradition and self-importance to understand the greatest gifts I’d been granted were all around me. Waiting for me to see them. I would have gone to my grave believing balls and society held a candle to my children. That my horses and homes could compare to what you’ve surrounded yourself with. Your family of cowhands and Uncle Fred. Your vast wilderness and sunsets. I only pray it is not too late for my children to understand how much I love them. I owe you a debt I am unable to repay.
I’ve found recently that there is much of my life to regret. Be assured that does not include one instant in your presence. From the moment I first kissed you, to the night that we made love to the second I saw your round stomach holding my child; I experienced a rightness I cannot begin to describe. I will cling to that rightness, to those memories until I go to the hereafter. My heart will forever be in your keeping.
You deserve every happiness this life has to offer. You are kind and bright and courageous and sometimes most endearingly contrary. You will make the most wonderful mother to my child. I fear though I will be envious always of my son or daughter. They will look in your eyes and see love. Hold your hand and feel love. Comfort you or be comforted and be loved. Having you each minute of the day to know that love does indeed exist. In your laughter, in your smile and in your touch.