"What is she doing?" Stephen nodded his head toward the child rummaging around in the cold ashes of the prior night's fire. The hotel was a dismal one, and no one had come around this morning to relight the kindling.
"Told her she could look for a charcoal stick if she wanted. It keeps her happy." Bobby Fairweather sipped at his beer and ignored the greasy bacon that was his breakfast.
A few minutes later the child was happily ensconced at a table by the window, drawing on the back of an old wanted poster she'd found nailed to the wall. Somehow, she had managed to comb out the worst of the snarls in her curls, and she looked more like a fairy child than a human perched daintily at the edge of the splintery chair.
Stephen frowned and glanced worriedly out the window. He knew Janice couldn't follow him, but he still felt as if lightning would come down out of the sky to strike him dead.
He shoved that idiocy aside and verified the time with the slatternly woman who came to remove the plates. The train would be arriving soon. He gathered up his saddlebags and crossed the room to his daughter.
"Come on, kid, it's time to go." He glanced down at the paper. She didn't even look old enough to write, but he assumed she had to be. He didn't need to worry. She was sketching a man's face. At his command, she smiled, signed her name and the date with a flourish, and handed it to the woman who came to take away the milk she hadn't drunk.
"It's not very good, but I thought you might like it," she whispered shyly to the waitress.
The woman grunted, gave the man who hadn't tipped her an evil look, and shoved the paper into her apron pocket. Betsy gave her artwork a sad farewell look, then obediently followed the man who had dragged her away from home and family.
He'd said he was her father, but she knew he lied. She also knew Peter would come after her. She had more confidence in her brother-in-law than in this tight-fisted, surly man who ordered her about as if she hadn't a brain in her head.
While they waited for the train to pull into the station, she used her charcoal stick to sketch on a poster advertising the train schedule. Stephen didn't seem to care that she defaced public property. She checked the features of the man who accompanied him and went back to sketching.
* * *
"My horse hasn't turned up yet. He may have gone back up the mountain." Peter hoped he'd left enough fodder in the stable. The gelding was a damned good mount. "I'm going to rent the wagon."
Janice began gathering her few possessions around her. "We'll need more food. That trip took almost two days by stage." She took one of the chunks of rock from her pocket. "Will Henry be able to take payment with one of these?"
Peter shook his head in dismay and amazement. His wife was a never-ending source of surprise. "No wonder those skirts fell like a lump of lead last night. I just thought they were frozen. You mean you've been toting those rocks around on you?"
She looked at the lump in her hand and back to Peter. "This is the gold, isn't it? I couldn't carry a lot, but I thought..."
He took the rock and hefted it in his hand. "It's not been processed, but Henry might accept it. Townsend says it's pretty poor quality, but it's better than an IOU." He caught her hand as she reached for her wool mantle. "You're staying here."
She shook herself free and reached for the mantle again. "I am not. You try to leave without me and I'll shoot you myself."
Peter scowled and turned his back on her, heading for the store in the front of the building. He knew he was still feverish. His cough hadn't improved with the cold night on the floor. He felt like hell. He knew he would feel much better having Janice by his side on that lonesome journey out of the hills. She'd saved his life yesterday. Having her with him might improve his odds of surviving again. But they would decrease the odds of her survival by more than he meant to wager. She would stay here, where it was safe.
He bought supplies and some heavy blankets, made arrangements for the wagon and a horse, and went outside to check the weather. Janice was already in the wagon bed, overseeing the loading of his purchases.
Peter glared at her. She wasn't a large woman. He knew when he held her in his arms she was fragile and vulnerable, and he tried to take great care not to hurt her. But she could be a raging Valkyrie right now with thunderbolts and lightning at her fingertips for all he could tell. He knew he would either have to take her or tie her up.
"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded unnecessarily. He damn well knew what she was doing. He just didn't know how to talk her out of it.
"I'm going after Betsy. She's my sister." She didn't raise her voice, but she hadn't wasted her years as a schoolteacher. Her tone had all the authority necessary to carry her point.
"That's something we need to talk about," he said ominously, checking the traces on the animal he'd hired.
Behind him, he felt Janice grow still. He didn't mean to hurt her any more than she had been, but if he was going to find Betsy, he had to have the whole story. Men didn't generally ride to the top of a mountain to kidnap a ten-year-old girl for nothing.
She returned to her tasks in silence. Apparently she had accepted his threat as a trade: information for her accompaniment. Maybe that's what he had meant when he said it. He didn't know. He just knew he didn't mean to argue with her about this. That exterior of hers was so brittle, Peter feared it would break at the slightest touch, and he already knew too well how vulnerable she was beneath that facade. He'd like to remove the brittle shell, but not until he could better care for her.
The horse was ancient, but not yet doddering. It pulled the wagon at a steady pace through the frozen ruts of mud and snow that made up the road out of town. The woman beside him was as frozen as the mud. She scarcely said two words as they waved to Henry and Gladys and set off down the road. He could see her fingers clenched tightly in her lap and knew how close she was to shattering.
"Tell me, Janice. Who was he and why did he take Betsy?"
She jerked nervously. Peter wanted to hold her and tell her everything would be all right, but that was probably a lie. He fastened his gaze on the rough road and his attention on the reins.
"His name is Stephen Connor. I didn't see who was with him."
"It looked like Bobby Fairweather to me." Peter felt her turn and stare at him with surprise. He dared a quick look. Her face was as pale as the snow, and her eyes wider and grayer than the sky.
"Bobby? Why would Bobby be out here?" She frowned and turned her beautiful eyes to the road, although Peter didn't think she saw it. "Ellen said he'd left town after the baby was born."
She gnawed at her bottom lip. "Ellen said Stephen had talked to Bobby quite a bit. Stephen tried to spread nasty rumors about you." She looked back at him again. "Why would they be working together?"
"You tell me," he answered quietly. "I don't know either of them. Who is Stephen Connor?"
She went still then. He could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. Finally, when he thought he would have to drag it out of her, she answered, "He's Betsy's father."
In that moment Peter discovered suspicion wasn't the same thing as knowledge. She'd carried another man's child. The truth burned through him, making him feel hollow inside. And then he remembered Betsy's age and Janice's circumstances, and he verified the rest of the statement. "And you're her mother."
Janice nodded, not daring to look at him.
He scowled. "You couldn't have been more than a child yourself."
"I was fifteen."
He thought he might be sick. Fifteen. Five years older than Betsy. Knowing her innocence had been stolen at that age made him want to weep. Knowing she'd carried a child all alone at that age made him want to kill the scoundrel when he got hold of him. "The bastard," he growled, not even realizing he did so aloud.
"You can't blame Stephen entirely. It wasn't all his fault."
Peter smacked the reins to urge the horse faster. It didn't satisfy his desire to kill. "You were fifteen! It damned well was his fault. How old was he?"
"Twenty." Janice hugged her arms around herself and stared straight ahead. "But he thought I was older. I... I matured early. And I was the oldest, so I... I acted older too. I worked at the restaurant at the train station. I lied about my age. They thought I was eighteen."
Peter felt some of the rage seep out of him. He cast her a swift look and realized the truth of her words. He doubted if Janice had ever had a chance to be a child. She was a beautiful woman now. She must have made a stunning adolescent. He could see himself falling all over her if he'd met her back then. He grinned wryly.
"The bastard had good taste. I wish I'd known you then."
She gave him a startled look, then glanced hurriedly turned back to the road. "So you could have done the same thing? Thanks."
He sighed. "Give me a little credit, Jenny. I would have married you, not left you pregnant and alone. What happened?"
She shrugged. "It was only one night. I had to work that night and my parents trusted me to go straight home while they went to visit a friend for a holiday. Instead, I spent it with Stephen. We were in love, or so I thought." She sat silent for a minute. "I didn't like what he did to me. It wasn't the same..." She flushed and knit her fingers together.
Peter reached over to grasp them. "Boys don't know a whole lot. He wasn't much more than a boy. They don't even realize a woman should feel something too. Even men can be jerks." He remembered his first time with her. He'd been more than a jerk.
She clasped his gloved hand. "I know a lot more now than I did then. But what he did kept me frightened for years. We fought that night, and he didn't return for weeks. He came back after your father laid off all the railroad workers and he was out of a job. He just came to tell me he was leaving town to look for work."
"My father?" Peter searched for a ten-year-old memory. He wasn't in his father's confidence at that age. He'd never really had his father's confidence. They had argued continuously over his business practices. He couldn't remember the railroad situation. He shook his head. "All I know about my father's involvement in the railroads was his decision to sell most of his stock some years back."
Janice took a deep breath and nodded. "It's all right. I hated your entire family for a long time. I can see now that was foolish."
"No." Peter watched the sway of the horse's rear end and felt a kinship with that particular portion of the animal's anatomy. He tightened his mouth bitterly. "You had a right to hate us. We lived more than well off the money my father made from people like you. It took twenty-five years before I ever thought to question where it came from."
"You had nothing to do with Stephen leaving. He could have found another job, but he got in with a bunch who wanted to form some kind of union. They got into trouble, and he had to leave town. He could have found a job and sent for me. He didn't. I never heard from him again."
"Until yesterday?" Peter asked incredulously.
She stared at her hands. "Until a few weeks ago. Ellen had told me he'd been asking after me in Mineral Springs, but I just thought it was some kind of coincidence. But I warned Tyler not to tell him where I was. I didn't want him to know about Betsy. Betsy really thinks she's my sister. I couldn't ruin her life by letting her know she's illegitimate and that I'm a fallen woman."
Peter jerked the horse to a halt and turned and grabbed Janice's shoulders. He glared down into her frozen face. "You're not a fallen woman. Don't you ever dare call yourself that again. You're an absolutely remarkable woman, a woman who can fight adversity and win. There's not one woman in twenty who could have done what you have. I'm damned proud of you, and so is Betsy. There isn't anything anyone can say that can change the facts. You were a child, but you raised her better than most grown women could. She knows you love her. That's all that matters."
Janice's teeth were chattering, and he jerked her into his arms, holding her close against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his back, and he felt her dry sobs. She was breaking. Peter could feel her crumbling in his hands, and he didn't know what to do about it. He kissed her ear and pushed her shawl back to kiss her neck. The sobs lessened, and she rested her head against his shoulder, not fighting him but accepting.
"I didn't want you to hate me," she whispered.
He stroked her hair and held her close. He was growing accustomed to this business of fighting the virago and loving the vulnerable woman. He thought he might even love the virago. He smiled against her hair. "Hate is the absolute very last thing on my mind right now," he admitted. "When I first met you, I thought we were of the same age. I wanted you so much I dreamed about you at night. I thought you were experienced. I didn't care if you'd had lovers. I was glad, because that gave me a better chance. After that first night, I knew I was wrong, and the responsibility terrified me. I didn't know if I could teach you how good we could be together. I'm not very good at dealing with women."
She gave a muffled laugh against his coat. "You could have fooled me." She quieted, then reluctantly pulled from his arms. She studied the rugged lines of his face, the hollows and shadows put there by illness and worry, and she touched his unshaven cheek. "You're the best thing that has ever happened to me. Thank you."