The Rose Legacy (31 page)

Reluctantly, she took his hand and stood, trying unsuccessfully to retrieve her fingers.

He tucked them into the crook of his arm and held her to his side. “I’m thankful to find you alone at last. And I must say I’m dismayed by your injury.”

“Others are much worse.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “It was a grisly business finding the wounded and less fortunate. You can’t imagine my concern when your name was added to the list of missing.” He led her back along the creek.

From the corner of her eye, Carina saw Quillan examining the wagon. It must be his own, though the tongue was gone and the wheels demolished. The irony was not lost on her, though she took no pleasure in it. He glanced over only briefly as they passed, but Mr. Beck noticed.

“It was Quillan who found you, wasn’t it?”

Her pulse jumped at the accusation in his tone. Did Mr. Beck suspect the pact she had made with Quillan Shepard?

“Mae sent him to look.” She sounded defensive, insecure. She was not skilled in deception.

Yet he visibly relaxed. “Mae? Well, that explains it. She was concerned when I told her you rode out. I thought you must be somewhere near.” He stopped and covered the fingers he held in his arm with his other palm. “I would have dropped everything and searched for you, had I known.”

Would you?
Carina met his eyes and saw through his earnest façade. If there were true concern for her, it was second to what he felt for himself. His honeyed words failed to convince.

“And if I’d known she meant to send Quillan Shepard, I would have stopped her.”

That she believed. “Then I would be in the mine shaft still.”

He looked startled by the thought. “I only meant it must have been terrifying for you to be alone … with someone capable of atrocities.”

“It was terrifying to be alone.”

“Yes, of course.” His tone chilled.

She waved her hand. “And we have no proof of atrocities.” What gave her the boldness to speak so?

Berkley Beck frowned. “No. But it’s come to my attention that William Evans was a customer in the bank Quillan Shepard robbed.”

Carina stopped short. “He robbed a bank?”

“He and a partner, Shane Dennison. I saw the warrants myself.” He paused. “I believe Evans was holding it over him.”

Blackmail. That was a motive. And the method of Evans’ death … Carina looked away. It was
ridicolo
. What could she believe?

“You’re tired.”

“Yes.” Let him think that.

“I’ll see you back to Mae’s.”

“Thank you.” She walked beside him in silence, reluctant to face the evening that would come. Was she choosing the wrong side? Was Quillan Shepard not the more likely of the two to be involved in foul play? How could she know? And why had she ever gotten involved?

Quillan watched Carina pass by with Beck. She looked especially small next to Beck’s lanky height, her arm tucked close to his side. An intimate stroll, their heads turning in conversation. He’d caught only a glimpse from her, but she didn’t look put out by Beck’s attention.

He frowned. Why should that bother him? He had more important concerns. Yet the annoyance wouldn’t pass. He rested his hands on the wagon. It had been a trying day until he’d located his freight wagon, battered to be sure, but salvageable. Better than Carina’s had been.

He frowned again. What had that to do with anything? Why did every thought have to come back to her? He’d spent a restless night under the stars in a canvas bedroll, and his dreams had wrapped around her again and again. It was time to get his head back to business.

Once he got the wagon repaired, he would hardly be able to make the trips for supplies fast enough to satisfy the demands. There would be more business than he and the others could handle, which would jack the prices. And that was good, as he had much to recover. He scowled at the muddy ground where his tent had stood.

If he could figure exactly where, he’d dig like a miner for his stash. But that was ridiculous, of course. Likely his savings were washed down the gulch and on their way to Mexico. And then he realized many others were in that same position. The ones who needed the most would have nothing to pay for it. He sighed. Well, it couldn’t be helped. He’d have to wait for profit.

He stretched his back and thanked the men who had helped haul the wagon. The afternoon sun was overly warm and he needed a drink. Rubbing a hand over his face, he made for the nearest pump and worked the lever until water gushed. He splashed his face and neck, then cupped his hands and drank.

Looking up, he saw Alan Tavish beside him. The salvage of livery parts and pieces had kept Alan and those helping him busy. Quillan had worked with a fervor to recover everything he could for Alan, and he’d help raise the walls again when the salvage was completed. A livery was necessary to his business. And Alan was a good friend.

“Aye, and it’s yer own wagon ye’ve trundled up this time.”

“A little the worse for wear.”

“But not beyond repair.”

“No.” Quillan took off his hat and shook back his hair. “Though where I’ll find a wagon tongue …”

“Find you a straight, strong pine, lad.”

Quillan laughed. “It may come to that.” He shook his head, looking over the landscape. The mud was cracked and turning to dust. Everywhere were heaps of rubble, some left by the flood, others gathered and deposited purposely.

But Crystal would survive. There was an air of determination, and men worked together today who had been at rifle point over a claim dispute before the flood. Nothing like catastrophe to draw a town together, he thought. Then Alan ruined it.

“Don’t know that ye’ve heard, but there’s ugly talk about.” Quillan turned. “What ugly talk?”

“Concernin’ yerself.”

Quillan formed his features into nonchalance. “Something I should care about?”

“Hearkenin’ can’t hurt.”

“Let’s have it, then.”

Alan rubbed his left shoulder joint. “Concernin’ the manner of Will’s death, some are drawin’ the string to that other. There’s some as think ye’ve kept overmuch to yerself.”

“So?”

“ ’Tis queer to some ye won’t drink and wench. ’Tis queerer ye don’t play the cards. But the worst of it is their knowin’ ye’re Wolf’s own son.”

Quillan frowned. “I guess it was bound to come to light.”

“There’s some sayin’ right out ye should be strung up before the madness takes ye again.”

Quillan’s throat tightened more with anger than fear. “We know which ones they are.”

“Aye.”

“What do you think?”

“T’wouldn’t hurt to bide awhile somewhere …”

“Hide, you mean?”

“Nay. But once yer wagon …”

“Once my wagon is operational, I’ll be hauling supplies badly needed. Half of Crystal is without necessities. By the way, how’s the boy?”

Alan smiled. “Springin’ back with all the grace of youth.” He was clearly relieved his stableboy had suffered no worse than bruises and a few cuts. Quillan’s warning had given him time to drop the shovel and help release the horses. Then Alan had lost him when the water hit, fearing for his recovery.

“Quillan …” Alan gripped his forearm.

Quillan laid a hand over Alan’s. “Don’t worry for me, my friend. Just keep your ears open.”

Alan’s throat worked, then he nodded. “Aye.”

“Daddy, you’re not goin’ to believe this.”

From his perch on Mae’s newly erected porch, Cain gazed up to his son. “What is it, boy? Cuz I’d believe about anything after Tuesday.”

D.C. straddled a stool across from him and shook the hair from his eyes. “Your mine—the Boundless? The tunnel’s all closed up, filled in, and covered over.” The boy sounded halfway jubilant.

“That ain’t remarkable, seein’s we just had a flood,” Cain said flippantly. “I’ll dig it out again.”

“That’s just it, Daddy. Remember I told you there’s no ore worth beans in there?”

“That’s what you say, but—”

“Listen to me, Daddy. I’m telling you, just alongside it there’s a patch of ground opened up that looks to me like silver bearing lead ore with gold leaf.” D.C. held out a chunk of black rock that brought Cain’s heart to his throat.

The old thrumming he’d felt once before just from raising a pan of nuggets from a creek spilled through him and softened his throat. “Is it on my claim?”

D.C. nodded. “It sure is.”

Cain felt the grin take over his face.
Oh, Lord Jehovah, in the midst of this devastation, you have seen fit to multiply my loaves. Let it be enough to keep my boy beside me in my failing years. And Quillan, too, if it ain’t askin’ too much
. “Son, you just run along and show that rock to Quillan.”

From his stump, Cain watched his son skip down the hill toward the creek. He knew well enough the look he’d seen in D.C.’s eyes. Some might call it greed. Cain called it hope.

T
WENTY-THREE

My heart is a blind guide. Why did I follow?

—Rose

C
ARINA GLANCED UP
when Èmie plopped down at the kitchen table. The look on Èmie’s face was a curious blend of desperation and boredom, but Carina didn’t ask. She had learned that Èmie was more forthcoming when she could do so in her own time.

Èmie stuck out her lower lip and blew the breath up her face to the damp hair on her forehead. “I’m worn out. Working the baths was tedious, but at least I didn’t have to talk from sunup to sundown. If I say another word I’ll scream.”

Carina measured out the flour and salt into Mae’s yellow crockery bowl. “Talk is good. Language is what separates us from the animals. My papa used to tell me so when we studied English together. He said we must communicate to rise above the dumb creatures.”

Èmie sighed. “Right now I envy the dumb creatures.”

One-handed, Carina cracked an egg into the well she’d made in the flour. “The injured men don’t know what to do with themselves. They can’t work and they can’t drink or gamble.” She waved the eggshells. “They must talk.”

Èmie looked at her sidelong. “You seem … different.”

Carina raised the bottle of olive oil. “How different?”

“I don’t know. More … accepting. I saw you this morning with the Italian women. The way you held the old grandmother whose son was lost—it just didn’t seem like you.”

Carina frowned. It hurt to hear it. Was she so
trista
, so wicked, a simple act of kindness was a thing to notice and remember? Had she been so self-important? So wrapped up in her own woes she closed her heart to others?

That had never been her way. Always she was the one to tend the injured bird, the scraped knee of a small cousin, the wounded pride of one or another of her brothers. Papa had named her his
infermiera
and called for her help with his more difficult patients. She could soothe them when others failed and calm the despairing with a gentle touch, a soft word.

Yet here was Èmie holding the glass to her face. She had come to Crystal with her eyes darkened, full of her own heartache and the anger that went with it. It had shown as haughtiness and disdain.

Èmie touched her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Carina drizzled the oil into the well with the egg, a dessert spoon’s worth, only she couldn’t measure it properly with her arm in the sling. “You haven’t. You spoke the truth. In Italy the lines are drawn more sharply. My papa is a landlord, and they are peasants. Here in America, I sometimes forget things are different. We are all pilgrims.”

Èmie smiled, her teeth slightly protruding. “I like the way you talk. It’s kind of poetic.”

“I’m not poetic. Flavio told me too many times I lack the tortured spirit.”

“Flavio? Is he one of your brothers?”

Carina blanched. She did not want to discuss him with Èmie. She had already bared too much to Quillan Shepard. She waved a hand. “He is my cousin.”
Distant cousin, and only love
.

She thought of the photograph of him hidden away in the black satchel under the cot. The photograph and his letters, filled with true poetry and beautiful pictures drawn by him, freehand. Pictures and letters and one thing more. She closed her eyes. What if it had been washed away in the flood?

Carina reined in her thoughts. It was foolish to imagine she would need it, foolish to have brought it at all. And what were the letters and pictures but torment? She was spurned. What did she want with reminders? She poured hot water into the dough and worked it with her fingertips into a ball, then tipped it onto the floured board. How would she knead it with only one hand?

She looked up at Èmie. “Come. You wanted to learn. Wash your hands, and I’ll teach you to make pasta that will win the heart of any man.”

Èmie flushed, then stood and scoured her hands. Carina laughed when minutes later Èmie’s hands were thick with dough, the weariness gone from her as they chattered and worked elbow to elbow. Carina instructed as Mamma had instructed her, as Nonna had instructed Mamma and so on for generations back.

Together they made a meal fit for the king of Sardinia himself. How Papa would have praised her efforts as her brothers fought for the choicest servings. How Mamma would have swelled with pride to see her daughter performing the duties she would need as a wife. And how Flavio would have taken it for granted that she had done it for him.

Beh! She had not done it for Flavio. She and Èmie had labored to please the palate of a man to whom she owed her life. A man she scarcely knew and more than a little feared. Yet it mattered in a way it shouldn’t, and Carina’s stomach fluttered with anxiety. To cook for Quillan Shepard. Whatever had possessed her?

In the gloaming, Quillan examined the rock D.C. had brought him. He’d hauled enough ore to know it was promising, the silver rich, the gold leaf visible even without crushing. “Well, Daniel Cain, how do you feel about mining now?”

D.C. grinned. “I guess it’s not so bad.”

“Not as great as freighting, though.” Quillan patted the box of his wagon, which was now upright across two poles beside the creek.

D.C. grimaced. “Freighting’s hard on the backside.”

Quillan wrapped an arm over his shoulder. “You know, D.C., there’s no perfect world. You have to take the bad with the good. It makes you a man.” Even though there was a whole lot more bad than good.

“This …” D.C. held up the ore. “Is gonna make me a man.”

“Maybe. But remember what happened last time. There’s always someone bigger, someone tougher. Don’t rest your happiness on something you can lose.”

D.C. nodded slowly. “Like your tent and Daddy’s.”

“I wish it were only my tent.” The loss of his cache had been eating him all day. Stupid thoughts like wondering how much had been in there and trying to figure it without having ever counted. And thinking maybe he ought to dig out around the area where he thought his tent had been, just to see if maybe …

“You got your wagon back.” D.C. patted the wooden side.

Quillan smiled grimly. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Aw, you can fix it up. And we can use it to haul the ore to the smelter. We won’t have to pay freight, and that’ll be so much profit.”

Quillan yanked a splintered axle loose and laid it in the mud. “By ‘we,’ I presume you think I’ll be working the mine with you.”

“Sure. Now you see what we’ve got. You’re half owner.”

Quillan straightened. “As I told your daddy, I’m not working the mine. It’s an investment only. I’ll haul your ore, but you’ll have to hire on some men to work the mine. From the looks of it you’ll need an engineer and a manager and a crew.”

“But why won’t you—”

“Don’t you know when to let it go?”

The boy shrugged. “I just expected you’d jump in. Not a man in Crystal wouldn’t be shouting the news if he’d found ore like this lyin’ on the surface.”

“Well, I suggest you keep it to yourself, or the roughs might strip that surface for you as neatly as they stripped your daddy’s money from your pocket.”

D.C. frowned. “Aren’t you ever goin’ to let me live that down?”

“Soon as you demonstrate what you’ve learned from it.”

“Quillan?”

Quillan leaned an elbow on the wagon side.

“I’m gonna make my daddy proud.”

Quillan looked at the earnest eyes, pale as Cain’s, though lacking the old man’s wit and wisdom. Maybe the boy wasn’t hopeless after all. “You do that, D.C.”

Watching him walk away, Quillan wished it had been so easy for him. Cain’s sun rose and set on D.C. No matter how many times the kid messed up, Cain was there to shake him off. Not a bad thing, family.

He remembered Reverend Shepard showing him how to milk the cow, placing his hands on the udders, then covering them with his own and making the motion, squeeze and tug, squeeze and tug. Quillan remembered the thrill he felt when the milk squirted out, a sharp
fft, ftt
and the brief touch of his foster father’s palm on his head. If only it could have all been like that.

With the eye of a mother for a newborn child, Carina eyed the cannelloni Mae removed from the oven. She had not meant this project to involve Mae and Èmie, but with her arm in the sling, she could not have done it alone. Now, breathing the aroma of the cannelloni stuffed with stewed beef, which Mae had provided but Carina minced and seasoned with parmigiano cheese, egg, and nutmeg, she felt the pleasure rise up again.

Mae thumped the pan unceremoniously onto the stovetop and closed the heavy oven door. “Well, there it is, and a lot of work to be put into someone’s stomach.”

“But worth it for the pleasure it gives the mouth.” Carina smiled, feeling proud and thankful.

Mae rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand and laughed. “Can’t say I’m not eager to try it. Only I have to finish shoveling out for the men first. And now all these women and children, too. I’ll just be glad when they’re all back where they belong.” She bustled back to the dining room with a third pot of stewed beef that included carrots and potatoes this time.

Èmie had already left to prepare her uncle’s meal, and Carina stood alone in the kitchen, hoping Quillan would come soon while the pasta was hot and al dente. Then she hoped he would forget altogether. But the knock on the kitchen door dashed that hope. She felt as flustered and self-conscious as a goose. What was she doing?

She threw up her free hand as he knocked again. “Yes, I’m coming.” She pulled open the door.

Quillan stood there with a jar in one hand and the thumb of the other hooked into his suspender. He held out the jar. “It was the best I could do. Caramelized apples. Mrs. Barton’s from last season.”

He was hatless and his hair was tied back, showing the darker hair at his temples and neck. He had trimmed the length of the mustache, though it was still full. His lip had a good line, and she realized she was doing it again, staring at Quillan Shepard.

“Oh.” She reached for the jar. “They’ll do.”

The side of his mouth quirked slightly. “May I come in?”

“Sì. Yes.” She was acting a fool. “Have you washed?” What was that to ask a man?

“Yes, ma’am.” Now the rascal’s tilt was back in his smile.

“I only meant the food is hot and ready.” She motioned to the table, wishing Èmie had stayed when she begged her. But Uncle Henri must be fed.

“If you’ll sit …” Carina swept up his plate, then realized she couldn’t hold it and serve the cannelloni both. Dr. Felden had ordered her not to put any weight on the shoulder until it stopped aching.

“Why don’t I hold that while you serve?” Quillan was at her side, taking the heavy crockery plate.

Bene. She was pazza to be in this position at all. He held the plate while she scooped the steaming cannelloni al gratin. Then he took another plate from the stack, and she saw he meant for her to eat with him. She hadn’t thought to share the meal. Where was Mae?

Carina scooped a second fat cannelloni onto the plate and watched him set them on the table. Then she reached for the long loaf of crusty white bread and laid it on the cutting board with the knife. Now there was nothing else but to sit down across from him.