Sierra County, California - 1883 “Take it easy, bucko.” The attorney pushed the oak chair away and stood. “One of us has to take charge. You’ve been holed up in that cabin for six months, barely eating, and your daughter’s turning into a wild Indian. I’m trying to help.” He leveled a steady gaze on Wade. “That’s what friends are for.” Wade scowled. “Some help. I ask you to find me a housekeeper and you advertise for a goddamn wife! You know I’d never agree to a fool scheme like that. What kind of friend are you?” The look in Dan’s pale blue eyes softened. “Your only friend.” He rocked back on his boot heels and locked gazes with Wade. “Pull yourself together, lad, and hear me out.” Wade began to pace, listening with one ear as Dan blathered on. The attorney’s Boston-Irish accent grated on his already raw nerves, but Dan was the only man he could talk to, the only one who’d befriended him after his prison stretch. Sometimes he wished to God the prison guards had killed him and been done with it. “I asked around, and there’s not a single woman between Maiden Valley and Downieville willing to work as a housekeeper,” Dan went on, “so I looked for a wife. I sure had to offer something a damn sight more appealing than cooking and cleaning for an unsociable cuss of a rancher who lives five miles from his nearest neighbor.” Dan’s gaze ran up and down Wade’s creased shirt and trousers, the hair Wade knew was too long. “But even with the prospect of marriage,” the attorney smiled a toothy grin. “She might have to look hard to find the attraction. Face it, boyo, what have you got to offer a woman, housekeeper or wife? A dirty cabin, a run-down horse ranch, and a daughter who’s running wild.” “Charity and I are doing fine.” “You’re not paying attention, my friend. Who’s going to care for her when you’re off in the Toyiabe roundin’ up bangtails? Who’s going to make sure she gets her schoolin’? Wears a clean dress? Eats a proper breakfast?” Wade’s mouth thinned. “I thought.... Hell, I don’t know what I thought, but I don’t want a wife.” He stared out the window at the mercantile across the street where Myra had bought a bolt of blue cambric for curtains. The cloth sat in the corner of their bedroom, still wrapped in brown paper. She’d been too sick to do anything with it. Now, with Myra gone, Charity was his lifeline, his only reason for hanging on. He swallowed over the lump in his throat. “I can’t hitch myself to another woman.” “You think that now. But by the time winter comes, that bed of yours will be damned hard and damned cold.” Dan poked a blunt forefinger at the telegram on the desk. “This woman—name’s Corrie Kiernan—has good references. She worked in Boston for the Aldrich family. My parents knew them. Good, solid people.” Dan gave Wade a twinkly-eyed grin. “I bet she’d be able to teach Charity some of those lady skills Myra was so set on her learning.” The rough pine walls of Dan’s cracker-box office suddenly closed in on Wade. The mere thought of another woman in his house, his bed, sent icicles along his veins. “I don’t want a wife. No one can replace Myra. Not now. Not ever.”He reached for the sheepskin jacket he’d flung over the chair. “You write to this Kiernan woman and tell her there’s been a mistake. Tell her not to come.” “Can’t do that, Wade.” “Sure you can. Tell her I changed my mind.” “‘Fraid it’s too late for that, boyo.” Wade pivoted to face him. A vague sense of unease crawled up his spine. “Whaddya mean too late?” Dan tapped the telegram with a neatly trimmed fingernail. “Your Miss Kiernan is arriving on the four o’clock stage.” “Whoa, there.” The driver slowed the four bay horses and the coach rattled to a stop in front of the Maiden Valley Wells Fargo office. Corrie straightened her second-hand, black straw hat with its snowy ostrich plume and waited for Mr. Green to help his elderly wife step down. Corrie rose from the leather seat, smoothed the skirt of her navy serge travel dress and let the grizzled driver hand her down the step. Her black lace-up shoes had been shiny when she stepped off the train at Truckee, but six hours of coach travel on the dusty California road had covered them with a film of dirt. The driver lowered her carpetbag to the ground. Hoisting it in one hand, she jockeyed it onto the wooden sidewalk and sat down on the slat bench outside the bank to wait. The telegram from Mr. Sullivan lay neatly folded in her reticule. For the first time since she’d boarded the train in Boston, she felt the tension in her chest ease. She was safe. Far from the mill, in a place no one knew her. She allowed herself a good long look up and down the street of her new home. Sweet Mary! She hadn’t pictured the town at all like this. The street, little more than a widened, rutted path, ran between false-fronted buildings, barely two blocks long. It was rough. Dirty. And no gaslights. It didn’t matter. Here in Maiden Valley she would be safe. Married, with a new name. A new identity. She scanned the people passing her, two men wearing denims and vests, a lanky woman in a work-worn brown dress, and a child in overalls and golden ringlets. After a curious glance at her, they moved on. In Boston she’d have passed unnoticed; here she was an outsider. Different. She straightened her shoulders and scanned the boardwalk. A short, chunky man tipped his Stetson but kept walking. Obviously not her intended. The telegram said Wade Guthrie was tall. What did that mean? Was he tall and old? Tall and fat? Her throat tightened. It didn’t matter what he looked like. A woman on the run couldn’t be choosy. It would have been better if she’d heard from Mr. Guthrie himself instead of the attorney. Would’ve made it seem more like Mr. Guthrie had done the asking. She couldn’t help longing for a man who might really want her. A man who would love her. A man she could love in return. But whether her new husband came to love her or not as she’d once dreamed, she’d make him a good wife and that’s what mattered. Across the road, a sturdy dun stood harnessed to a wagon being loaded with supplies. Short-legged with sloping shoulders, the animal resembled one of her father’s Connemara ponies. A wave of homesickness for the rocky Galway coast swept over her. She swallowed over the lump in her throat. Nothing here remotely resembled the green patchwork fields of Ireland.She couldn’t think of that now. Out here in the west, she could make a new life. Boots clumped along the plank sidewalk and halted a few yards away. “Miss Kiernan.” The voice was soft and low, the words more statement than question. A not unpleasant voice, she decided. She turned, stared into veiled grey eyes set in a chiseled, square-jawed face that looked anything but welcoming. Corrie’s breath caught. “Aye,” she managed in a constricted voice. “Wade Guthrie.”
“Jesus, Dan, you did what?” Wade Guthrie slammed both fists down on Dan Sullivan’s mahogany desk.
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