“Yes.” Grace swallowed the last of her reticence as she took a seat. Emma sat beside her, close enough to offer support without smothering. Malachi sat in the chair catty-corner to the sofa and leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs.
“Did you receive a telegram?” Malachi inquired as Bertie discreetly disappeared into the kitchen.
Grace nodded. “I have reason to believe that the man I’ve been hiding from for most of the last year has discovered my location. He’s coming for me. And his coming might put Harper’s Station in danger.”
She turned to look at Emma, not wanting to witness the disapproval in Malachi’s eyes. He was a good man, but protecting the women of Harper’s Station was his priority. Emma and the aunts, in particular. The secret Grace had kept from all of them had put the people he loved in jeopardy.
“If you could just retrieve the items you placed in the bank vault for me,” Grace blurted, “I can leave by morning. If anyone arrives looking for me, you can assure them that I’ve gone.”
Emma stiffened, her expression changing from that of patient listener to offended tigress in a flash. “Didn’t you once say that you were done running? That Harper’s Station was your home?”
“Well . . . yes.” Grace darted a glance at Malachi. His expression was as fierce as his wife’s, yet not with the disapproval she’d feared. It looked more . . . protective. Of her.
“Then there’ll be no more talk of you leaving.” Emma folded her arms across her chest and glared. “If you think I’m going to let you face this threat alone, you are sadly mistaken.”
“Emma’s right.” Malachi’s deep masculine tones vibrated with authority. “You’ve got a better chance here with us. We stand together, Grace. No matter what comes. That’s what Harper’s Station is all about.” He leaned back and crossed one booted foot over his knee. “Besides, if a man is after you, he’ll stand out like a sore thumb the minute he steps foot in town, which gives us the advantage. You’re safer here than anywhere else.”
Grace shook her head—not in argument, but in amazement over the staunch support being offered. Emma didn’t catch the difference, however. Her expression grew more mulish.
“You’re not leaving, Grace, so don’t even try to argue. Let’s move on to the explanation of who this man is and what he wants with you.”
Grace wanted to jump up and hug her friends, but she’d never been the type to throw herself at others, preferring quiet observation over demonstrative displays. So she squashed her rioting emotions and gave a simple nod of acquiescence instead.
It seemed to suffice. Emma loosened her arms, and Malachi uncrossed his legs. He slapped his palms against his thighs as he leaned forward, his alert gaze pinned to her face.
Grace swallowed. “His name is Chaucer Haversham, and either he or someone acting on his orders shot and killed my father.”
“Oh, Grace.” Emma reached across the sofa and clasped Grace’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“What does he want with you?” Malachi asked, his tone kind even as he probed for specifics.
Grace focused on the level-headed marshal instead of his sympathetic wife. She needed to concentrate on the problem, not her loss, if she hoped to get through this explanation without breaking down.
“He wants the same thing he tried to get from my father—documents that prove he is not the only heir to the Haversham fortune. My father discovered them while doing an inventory of the library in Haversham House. If those documents come to light, Chaucer Haversham stands to lose over half of his newly acquired inheritance.”
Malachi let out a low whistle and rubbed a hand over his jaw. “And you have these documents, I assume?”
Grace nodded. “They’re locked up in Emma’s safe at the bank.”
Malachi’s gaze flew to his wife, his thoughts clear on his face. He was assessing the likelihood of Emma being in the line of fire when Haversham arrived.
Emma didn’t seem to notice her husband’s intense regard. She was too busy puzzling through what Grace had said. Her forehead crinkled. “I don’t understand. You didn’t give me documents to hold. You gave me books. Worn copies of Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I thought they were rare items you were holding onto for investment purposes.”
Grace shook her head. “My father said the books themselves are of no particular value. That’s why he didn’t think they’d be missed until after he had a chance to meet with the Pinkerton agent hired by Tremont Haversham to find the daughter he had believed dead for twenty-five years. The documents are secreted inside.”
“Then let’s retrieve them,” Malachi announced, bracing his hands against his knees as if preparing to rise. “I can deliver them to the Pinkertons. Haversham can hash out his inheritance mess in the courts. Getting rid of the documents gets rid of the threat. Problem solved.”
“I’m afraid it’s not quite that easy.” Grace looked from Emma to Malachi, then dropped her gaze to her lap. “I’ve been through those books a hundred times, and I can’t find evidence of any documents. Just a handful of scribbled notes in a few margins. I trust my father’s word. I know he found something—something he died to protect. I just don’t know what or where it is.”
4
I should have brought my bicycle,” Amos muttered under his breath as his mule veered off the road for the seventeenth time to munch on some scruffy-looking vegetation that must be the mule equivalent of catnip.
The livery nearest the depot in Seymour had been woefully picked over. He’d had a choice between a green-broke mustang with demon eyes and a mule the proprietor had dubbed Will. The name had sounded friendly enough until Amos mounted and discovered it was actually short for Willful. The beast refused to take direction or instruction, and while Amos was not the best of horsemen, even he knew that when he tugged the reins to the right and nudged with his heels, the animal beneath him was supposed to move right. But not Willful. The contrary beast simply ignored his commands and moved from one scraggly snack to the next with no respect for the urgency of his rider’s mission.
Amos had kicked the animal’s well-rounded girth, tugged the reins, and tried every encouraging sound from tongue clicks, to friendly get ups, to authoritative commands. He’d even gone so far as to whistle and make embarrassing kissing noises while rocking uncomfortably forward in the saddle. Nothing worked. The mule would only move when he was good and ready, and he was never ready until he’d eaten all the roughage within three feet of the road.
“For pity’s sake,” Amos muttered. “I can walk faster than this.” He leaned his weight into the left stirrup and rose up to dismount.
At the same moment that Amos pulled his foot from the right stirrup, Will raised his head from his snacking and set off at a bone-jarring trot. Amos nearly tumbled to the ground. Thankfully, his years of cycling had honed his balance. It wasn’t pretty—a death grip on the saddle horn, an awkward forward lurch resulting in a mouthful of hairy mane, and a series of lopsided shifting as he felt around for the stirrup—but he succeeded in staying aboard.
“Nice try, Willful. But you can’t defeat me that easily.”
As if rising to the challenge, the maniacal beast increased his pace just as they crested a hill. A large hill with a rather steep descent.
“Whoa, now.” Amos tugged on the reins, knowing it was pointless but having to try anyway. “Slow down, boy. No need to rush . . .” His words hit a crescendo and transitioned into a cry of alarm as the mule plunged down the hill, ears back, neck stretched.
Amos pressed into the stirrups and leaned backward in the saddle, holding onto his hat with one hand as he tried to keep from toppling straight over Will’s head.
Just when he thought he might survive with his bones intact if not his dignity, the mule zagged to the left, turning the gently curving corner at the bottom of the hill into an angle so sharp, Euclid could have used it to demonstrate the principle of perpendicularity. Unfortunately, Amos’s trajectory followe
d a different path, one more likely to demonstrate Newton’s laws than Euclid’s.
Newton’s second law of motion had him continuing along the linear path dictated by the hill instead of the corner. Then the law of universal gravitation kicked in and slammed his airborne personage to the ground with a force that returned Amos to the law of motion. Or non-motion. His resting body definitely wanted to stay at rest. It hurt too much to move.
But his aches and pains didn’t matter. A young woman was in need of his aid somewhere around that bend. He’d not let a few bruises and a bit of dirt keep him from his course.
Amos planted his palms against the hard-packed earth and lifted himself from the ground, wincing at the ache in the shoulder that had taken the brunt of the impact. Once he staggered to his feet, he made a hasty inspection—a difficult task when one’s spectacles dangled from one’s right ear. Thankfully, the lenses had been spared. After a quick reshaping of the wire frames and a rub from his handkerchief, the eyeglasses were back in place and the world around him returned to focus.
He brushed off the worst of the dirt and took a moment to straighten his collar and retrieve his hat. Then he marched around the bend and promptly stepped in a still-warm pile of mule manure.
He couldn’t look. All he could do was smell. Amos tipped his face toward the heavens and flung his arms up in protest.
“Are you trying to tell me something, Lord?” He pulled his hat from his head and glared at the cheerfully blue sky. “If so, could you just make the mule speak like you did with Balaam and save us both the aggravation?” A snuffling sound brought Amos’s gaze down to Will. The horrid beast was munching on more of those leafy weeds. “I always considered Balaam a brute for beating his donkey,” Amos said as he pointed a finger at Will, “but I’m beginning to understand how one might be driven to such action.”
Although . . . Balaam’s donkey had tried to warn his master away from the path he had chosen. Was Willful doing the same? Warning Amos away from Harper’s Station?
Lord, are you telling me to turn back, or did I just get stuck with the most cantankerous mule known to mankind by happenstance?
“And how am I to know the difference?” he muttered as he trod to the edge of the road and scraped the worst of the manure from his boot sole onto a rock. Needing something softer to clean the leather sides with, Amos spied Willful nosing around a new clump of his favorite snack. He smiled.
Walking straight for the bush, Amos nudged Willful out of the way and wiped the rest of the droppings off onto the cluster of tasty vegetation. He looked up at his nemesis and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not so funny when the things you care about get contaminated, is it?”
Will stopped chewing and stared at Amos. Then he turned and headed down the road as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Well, he hadn’t. He was a mule.
A mule carrying all of Amos’s belongings.
“Whoa, now,” Amos called, slapping his hat back on his head and hurrying after the departing beast. “You’re missing a passenger.”
The Lord must not have been trying to warn Amos away from Harper’s Station, for a true miracle occurred at that moment. Willful came to a halt in the middle of the road and stood as still as an oak tree on a windless morning while Amos mounted. And as a further answer to prayer, when Amos tapped his heels to the animal’s flanks and clicked his tongue, Willful actually moved. In the right direction.
Amos whispered a prayer of heartfelt thanks and vowed not to complain about the slow pace. As long as he kept moving forward, he might just make it to Miss G’s telegraph office before sundown.
Ten minutes later, the first buildings of the town came into view. Amos straightened in the saddle, his heart suddenly thumping against his ribs.
He’d made it.
She was there. Somewhere. His Miss G. Waiting for him.
Well, perhaps not waiting for him, as she didn’t know he was coming, but still. She was there. In one of those buildings. Alone. Frightened. In need of a brave young knight to rescue her. And while his steed might be a sorry excuse for a mule, and his armor might be a bit dusty and aromatic, his quest couldn’t be more pure, his intentions more noble. As soon as he found the fair maiden, he’d offer his protection and perhaps his name if she turned out to be even half of what he’d imagined.
As he passed a large house and corral, he spied telegraph wires strung on poles. He traced the wires with his gaze and quickly spotted the small wooden building that served as the termination point. The telegraph office.
With a gentle tug on the reins, Amos steered Willful to the right. He was still fifty yards away, his imagination churning with possibilities—was her hair brown or blonde; did she have blue eyes or green; was her figure tall and slender or short and curvy—when the mule balked. Amos frowned.
“Not now, Willful,” he grumbled, so full of anticipation over the meeting about to take place that he nearly missed the meeting being thrust upon him.
By a gray-haired woman with steely eyes and a Colt revolver aimed at the side of his head.
Amos turned his face toward her, raising his hands at the same time. “I mean no harm,” he said as he got his first full glimpse of the woman. Correction—women. There were two of them, though the second looked about as frightening as a grandmother with a plate of cookies. Probably because she did have a plate of cookies. Much less threatening than the Colt.
“Get off of that there mule, stranger, and state your business,” the taller one ordered. “I don’t like the looks of you.” She wrinkled her nose. “The smell of you, neither.”
Amos’s neck heated. “Sorry. I had a bit of a mishap on the journey—”
“I don’t care about your journey,” the virago interrupted. “I care about your destination. And why you thought coming here was a good idea. Now get off that mule. And keep your hands where I can see them.” She pulled back the hammer on the revolver and eyed him like a seasoned soldier taking aim at an enemy.
“Yes, ma’am.” Moving slowly so as not to spook her, Amos dismounted as best he could with his arms still raised. His left foot got hung up in the stirrup for a nerve-wracking moment, but with a couple hops and a lean into Willful’s side for balance, Amos managed to tug his boot free and plant both feet safely on the ground. He turned slowly to face his welcoming committee.
“What’s your name, dear?” the grandmotherly one asked, scooting closer to examine him, curiosity lighting her eyes. Curiosity and a healthy dose of wariness. None of the outright hostility of her companion, though, thank heavens.
“Amos Bledsoe.” He tentatively tipped his hat, casting a hasty glance at Revolver Granny as he did so to make sure he didn’t need to duck a bullet. His eyes widened slightly. Were those bloomers she was wearing?
“And your business?” Revolver Granny demanded. Bloomers or not, she had a steady hand with that gun. Not a single tremor. He wished he could say the same about his knees.
Cookie Granny frowned. “Really, Henry, must you be so brusque? He’s not even carrying a weapon.”
“Not that we can see.” Revolver Granny—Henry?—eyed him up and down, no doubt searching for any suspicious bulges. “He could be hiding one under that coat.”
“I’m not, I swear to you,” he assured them, taking hold of the edges of his jacket and lifting outward to prove it.
“Hands away from the coat, mister!” Revolver Granny thrust her weapon an inch farther into the rapidly shrinking space between him and the barrel of her pistol.
Amos immediately released his jacket.
“Now, state your business.”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine.” He swallowed. A friend whose name he didn’t even know. Not exactly a mark in his favor. “The local telegraph operator.”
Cookie Granny shook her head. “Oh, dear. That’s unfortunate.”
Unfortunate? Why? Had something happened to Miss G already?
“I told you he was a ruffian, Bert.”
Cookie Gr
anny’s name was Bert? Had he hit his head when he fell off the mule? That would explain a lot. Willful’s sudden good temper. The strange old ladies with men’s names and bloomers and . . . cookies.
“I’ll go fetch Malachi before dropping off the cookies at the café,” the one called Bert announced as she turned to leave.
“I’ll keep him covered until Mal gets here.” Henry grinned as she adjusted her grip on her weapon. “Won’t be long, if I know that boy. We protect our own around here, mister. When my nephew gets through with you, you’re gonna rue the day you ever set out to find Grace Mallory. You hear me? . . . Why’re you smiling?”
Amos couldn’t help it. His lips refused to turn down. He might be about to meet his Maker, but that particular problem paled in comparison to the other, more pertinent piece of information he’d just learned.
Her name was Grace.
5
A groaning hinge followed by a rush of cool air told Grace that someone had opened the door to the telegraph office, but she didn’t look up. She was too busy scribbling down the message coming across the wire.
The telegrams that came in from Emma’s New York broker always demanded her full attention. One missed number or decimal point could drastically change the entire meaning of the financial picture being painted. Thankfully, he always followed up with written correspondence, but sometimes the reports didn’t arrive until after action needed to be taken at the stock market.
The sounder quieted, and Grace finished scrawling the last of the information. She read over what she had written. Everything made sense, but like any good operator, she always sought confirmation.
Lifting her hand to the key, she tapped. Please repeat.
The telegraph clicked away, and Grace followed each word with her pencil on the message blank. She found a word she’d omitted and a misspelling of an investor’s name, but all the numeric information was accurate. She wrote in the corrections, then signed off.