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Overview
Seeking to ease her ailing father’s mind in his final days, Callie Southgate agrees to marry a mail-order groom coming to Colorado from back east. When she first meets her husband-to-be, she cannot help being timid around the handsome, mysterious man. But when they marry, Callie finds a passion she never knew in his embrace.
Con-man and bank robber Jace Greer is given the perfect opportunity to start over when a stagecoach carrying a mail-order groom is ambushed, leaving Callie’s future husband dead. Taking on the deceased man’s identity as his own, Jace continues to the Southgate home with the hope of leaving his sinister past behind him.
But as true love blooms between Jace and Callie, secrets Jace tried to keep buried begin to surface, threatening their futures—and their lives. Will Callie be able to see beyond Jace’s transgressions and love him for the man he has become?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626815445 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Diversion Books |
| Publication date: | 02/06/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Colorado Territory 1870
It was the prettiest wedding gown that had ever come out of Mrs. Beasley's Bridal Emporium in Boston. Full-skirted white satin, trimmed with yards of lace — an exquisite copy of the very gown Queen Victoria had worn at her wedding. It had belonged to Callie Southgate's mother. She hated it.
"Callie, what in tarnation are you doing all this time?"
Callie hastily reached for the tissue paper to cover the billows of silk and turned to give her little sister Beth a stiff smile. She felt as guilty as a schoolgirl caught fibbing at a ladies' seminary. "Nothing!" she exclaimed — too quickly, too brightly. She shifted on her knees and made a great show of rummaging through the brass-bound trunk before her. "That is ... I thought I might find a pretty doily in this old trunk. The dresser in the spare room has a scratch that's most unsightly."
Beth bounded into the room, her best crinoline swaying like a bell beneath her skirts and revealing the merest glimpse of her lace-trimmed drawers. She plopped herself down on the foot of Poppy's oversize bed, grinned at Callie, and peered over the heavily carved footboard into the trunk. "That's Mummy's wedding dress! I haven't seen it in ages. I was afraid Poppy had left it behind in Boston."
"Bosh. He'd never." Callie reached up to tickle the freckles on Beth's uptilted nose. "When you can't wait to grow up and be a bride? This gown is just sitting here, waiting for you."
Beth tossed her blond braids in pleasure and grinned again. The gaps from her missing baby teeth made her look like a mischievous jack-o'- lantern. "And you? You've been wearing your hair up forever, and I don't hear any talk of beaux around the supper table. You're almost an old maid!"
Callie touched her red-gold chignon self-consciously. "Stuff and nonsense. Plenty of women are unmarried at twenty-one."
Beth snickered. "Only your ladies' circle back in Boston, wearing the bloomer. They looked silly. And sounded it, too. All that talk of emancipation."
"I was proud to number 'women's righters' among my friends. Heaven knows I won't find any of their quality in this godforsaken territory."
Beth wrinkled her nose. "You sound like a prig when you talk like that. I like Colorado. I'll be jiggered if I don't!"
Callie compressed her lips in a thin line. "You mustn't use slang. It's not ladylike."
"Oh, botheration! The man I marry someday won't mind. He'll be one of those miners who goes out in the creek and dips his pan and comes up with more gold than he knows what to do with! And proper talk be hanged."
Callie's mouth curled in disgust. "And tramps into the house with his hobnail boots that scratch the floor, and pounds on the table for his supper."
Beth laughed, a joyful giggle. "That's just the ticket for me." She giggled again, her blue eyes twinkling merrily in her eight-year-old face. "But maybe you should marry Mr. Perkins when he gets here. Just your sort. He sounds like a silk-hat mollycoddle from his letters. A regular daffy-down-dilly. A first-class twiddlepoop!"
Callie rolled her eyes. "Mercy! Where do you get such language? I'm sorry we left Boston. I swan, the words out of your mouth these past three months have fairly blistered my ears!"
"I've heard lots worse at Poppy's store. Dang my buttons, but those prospectors can jaw! You should come down more often."
"You should stay home more often, and apply yourself to becoming a lady," said Callie primly. "And Mummy in her grave little more than a year. You'd turn her hair gray, I can tell you, if she heard such talk."
The twinkle vanished. Beth fidgeted on the bed and traced a pattern on the quilt with one stubby finger.
Callie felt a pang of remorse. It didn't seem fair to raise Mummy's ghost merely to keep her boisterous little sister in line. But this wild young Colorado Territory seemed to have infected all the Southgate children. Sissy, a formerly placid three-year-old, was developing a temper. And Weedy, tall and muscular for fifteen, had begun to swagger and come in late from town, smelling of Demon Rum.
Poppy didn't seem to notice or mind. He was too excited about their "great Western adventure" — the spanking-new store, the raw land, the rowdy town of Dark Creek, nestled in the Rockies. This crude house, so newly built that the pine boards still oozed pitch. Callie sighed. She felt like a fish out of water.
"Will you marry Mr. Perkins?" Beth ventured at last, her normally bubbling voice subdued.
Callie chucked her under the chin to show her they were still friends. "We haven't even met him yet," she said gently. "And he's only coming to help Poppy with the store." A lie, of course, though she had begged Poppy to keep the secret from the others. She didn't want to face the truth. Not yet.
But what had dragged her — unwilling, hesitant, reluctant — to Poppy's room today to look at Mummy's wedding gown? What, if not that unwelcome truth?
Beth bounced up and down on the bed, her exuberance returning. "Mrs. Horace Perkins, Mrs. Horace Perkins," she said in singsong. "Oh, don't it sound capital?"
Callie held up a warning finger. "Hold your tongue. I don't want Mr. Perkins bedeviled by a pigtailed matchmaker. What will happen, will happen. I won't have a single word about marriage passing your lips. Nary a word."
Beth nodded and turned an imaginary key on her mouth. "Tick tock, double-lock."
"Thunderation! Why are you girls dawdling in here?" Big Jim Southgate filled the doorway, his massive shoulders and wide-legged stance blocking the view of the corridor beyond. His shock of snow- white hair, untamed by oil or pomade, nearly touched the lintel of the door; it framed large but fine features — piercing gray eyes, an aristocratic nose, a wide mouth that was accustomed to smiling. Despite his size and bulk, his black frock coat fitted him to a tee, giving him a distinguished appearance. He seemed like a great lord, larger than life, graciously stooping to mingle with mere common folk.
"Callie? Beth?" he said in his booming voice, pitched just one step below a jovial roar. "Is the house slicked up already?"
Callie stared, awed — as always — by his imposing presence. "Neat as a pin, Poppy," she murmured.
Beth scrambled from the bed, raced to the door, and threw herself into her father's arms. He lifted her up and swung her once around. "And I made the biscuits, Poppy!" she said, breathless with excitement. "All by myself! Mrs. Ackland allowed as how they were the most amazin' light biscuits she ever laid her peepers on!"
Callie winced as the slang words grated on her ears. Another month in this territory, and Beth would be swearing like the bummers who congregated around the saloons on Front Street! She fished in the trunk and came up with a linen runner, frosted with embroidery. "Here, Beth. See how this looks on Mr. Perkins's bureau."
Beth reluctantly slid from her father's arms and pulled the runner out of Callie's outstretched hand. "Botheration," she grumbled. "All this fixing-up! If he wasn't such a namby-pamby, he could stay in the storeroom behind the shop. Then we wouldn't have to hire a watchman to keep things safe. Or spend all day fussing over his room."
Big Jim kissed Beth on the top of her head, then sent her scampering to the stairs with a firm hand to her bottom. "Do as your sister says, pet. Mr. Perkins doesn't sound like the kind of fellow who's used to roughing it." He turned to Callie and chuckled. "That outhouse takes getting used to on a cold mountain morning!"
Callie blushed at her father's indelicate words and busied herself with putting away Mummy's gown. Then she reached for her cane and struggled to her feet. "I'm sure it will seem like a palace to Mr. Perkins," she said stiffly. "Beggars can't be choosers."
"Now, Mousekin, that's not fair. The war left him destitute. Without funds or living kin. Like many another man. And I'll allow as how he's roamed about since then, never lighting on anything permanent. But he comes from good Baltimore stock. And my friend Cooper vouched for him before he died. Poor as Job's turkey, he said, but honest. And as genteel as you could hope for."
"But Mr. Cooper only knew him from before the war, and scarcely saw him after. And we don't have so much as a photographic likeness. Only a few letters." She hobbled past her father into the hallway, her mouth curved in a bitter line. "All I know is, Mr. Perkins jumped at your offer of travel money. And agreed to marry me without a meeting first. I'm only surprised he's coming in on the stage, and not a freight wagon, like a piece of machinery or a parlor chair. Bought and paid for. My mail-order groom."
"Now hold on just a minute, girl! You come right back here!"
Big Jim's bellow stopped Callie dead in her tracks. She turned and limped back into the room, avoiding her father's eyes.
He closed the door behind her with a loud bang. "This business isn't set, not by a long shot! And Mr. Perkins knows it. He's here to manage the store. If he looks sharp and proves his worth, I might make him my junior partner. But there'll be no wedding until you agree to it. He knows that, too. And if you don't take a fancy to him, I'll send him packing and look for another prospect back East. Do you understand? I'm not pushing you into anything, am I?"
She crumbled before the onslaught of his words, his domineering presence. Had there ever been a time when she hadn't given in to him? "Of course not, Poppy," she said, barely above a whisper, "but ..." A spark of rebellion flared unexpectedly in her breast. "Why must you send for a husband at all?"
"Because you're too finicky and citified for the men here!" he roared. Callie flinched. Big Jim's hard expression softened; he patted her shoulder with a gentle hand. "I want what's best for you, Mousekin. The happiness of home and husband and children. But I don't know why you have to settle for a whey-faced city boy. I've seen a heap of good- looking prospects since we came out here. Real men."
"Who? Miners and ruffians? Ranchers who smell of sheep-dip? Or maybe one of the saloon keepers or gamblers," she said in disgust. At least the unknown Mr. Perkins had some refinement, according to Mr. Cooper.
"What about Ralph Driscoll, the new banker? Say the word, sweetie, and I'll approach him."
"He didn't catch my fancy," she said, tossing her head as though Ralph Driscoll were beneath her slightest discourse. In truth, she'd found him the most attractive man in Dark Creek — older, roughly handsome, with a great deal more polish than the other rowdies in town. But he had watched her hobble down the street one day, leaning heavily on her cane, then quickly averted his gaze, his face a mask of condescending pity.
Big Jim riveted her with his searching eyes. "Not catch your fancy?" he boomed. "Why the devil not?"
She had never been able to lie to Big Jim. "Well, even if he had," she said defensively, "I surely didn't catch his eye. He passes me by as though I were invisible."
"Speak up, then! Don't be a mouse. Say howdy-do to the man!"
She felt her face growing warm with shame. "Oh, Poppy, how could I? With ... this?" She placed a tentative hand on the hip that had never quite been right, despite years of exercises and dozens of trips to doctors and bone specialists. "Why would he want a ... a cripple?"
"I don't know why that should make you shy. And don't call yourself that ridiculous name! You have an imperfection. Nothing more! A slight imperfection, that's all. And you've a pretty face and a good mind. All that book learning. A man should be proud to be seen with you. I surely am!"
Somehow, his faith in her always made her feel worse, not better. If the world didn't treat her as Poppy expected her to be treated, it could only be because she was less the woman than he thought. But how could she make him understand? "It's only that I ... "
He brushed aside her stumbling words with a wave of his hand. "Mrs. Ackland said you plan to stay here when we go to town to meet the stage," he growled.
She gulped nervously. She hadn't wanted him to know in advance. "Yes. A few last-minute chores."
His brow darkened. "No, by jingo! Mr. Perkins deserves a welcome from the whole family. Especially you."
"But ... but, Poppy," she stammered, "you know I'm ... uncomfortable in town."
"Dag nab it, I'll not tolerate a mouse for a daughter much longer!" he thundered, storming to the door and throwing it open. "There's no call for it. You're too fine a woman for that. Your mother, God bless her, wasn't shy!"
How would you know? she thought sadly. Mummy had never been anything but reserved and meek around Poppy. A frail woman next to a big bear of a man. Completely overpowered. Like a feather in the midst of a nor'easter. She sighed. But she herself would be obedient to Poppy's wishes — because she knew no other way. And because she loved him so much.
"When shall we go into town?" she murmured.
"That's my good girl," he said gruffly. "Weedy will hitch up the horse and wagon at two. Wear your best bonnet." He gave her a loving smile that warmed her heart and left the room.
But when the sound of his heavy footsteps had receded down the stairs and vanished into silence, she surrendered to her despair. She closed the trunk on Mummy's gown, then limped to the window to stare out at the mountains that crowded in on the large house.
The high peaks were still covered with snow, though it was the middle of June. Below the timberline, the dark green of the lodgepole pine was somber, even in the sun, and the aspens quivered helplessly in the sharp, unceasing wind. A solitary hawk wheeled and turned, black against the cold blue sky. A lonely, empty vista, so different from the warm bustle of Boston. But no more empty than her heart.
"Oh, Poppy," she whispered to the silent room, "what if I don't want a husband?"
CHAPTER 2For as long as Jace Greer could remember, he had been hungry. For food, warmth, money. For the comfort of family. A vague ache that filled his days, twisted his guts, disturbed his nights. A longing that was never satisfied, no matter what he did.
Not that he couldn't take care of himself, of course. He'd knocked around so much in his twenty-seven years that there wasn't a damn thing that could rattle him. He'd starved and frozen, stolen and cheated. He'd had money, and he'd gone begging. He'd shivered with fever and dysentery in a Reb prison camp and still got up whistling his defiance every morning. Life was like that. You licked it, or it licked you.
But still the hunger persisted — a quiet gnawing in his vitals that he'd tried to ignore. Oh, these last five years, since the end of the war, had been pretty good, sure enough. Champagne and oysters at Delmonico's in New York, the best damn whores Baltimore's brothels could supply, the luck of the Irish at hundreds of gambling tables from Philadelphia to New Orleans. And a smooth confidence game, now and again, to fill his pockets with fresh gold.
But it wasn't enough. It would never be enough.
He sighed and rubbed at the bulge beneath his vest. He could feel the money belt under his shirt, thick with the wads of greenbacks from that little bank outside of St. Louis. Five thousand dollars. His future. His grubstake for a chance at a silver mine in Colorado. Or a vein of gold, just waiting for him.
He'd covered his tracks well. Damned if he hadn't. Shaved his whiskers and mustache when the railroad train reached Cheyenne, given a false name when he'd booked the stage for Denver. Mr. Johnson. Bland and anonymous. The Pinkertons wouldn't be able to track him. And he'd left those murdering bastards, the Wagstaff brothers, sleeping off a drunk in Chicago. It had probably taken them two days before they realized he was gone.
Then why did he feel so edgy? So heavy with discontent that he wanted to jump out of his skin? Christ! he thought with disgust. Am I beginning to develop a conscience?
He swore softly as the careening stagecoach hit a rocky patch in the road and jolted him to the other side of the hard, horsehair-stuffed seat. He was getting damn sick of being jounced around. Scarcely a letup since they'd left Denver and hit the Front Range of the Rockies — except for a brief stop for a greasy meal and a fresh team of mules. And these last two hours, as the road had latticed back and forth across the rock-strewn bed of Clear Creek, had shaken the very teeth in his head.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Gold as the Morning Sun"
by .
Copyright © 1997 Sylvia Halliday.
Excerpted by permission of Diversion Publishing Corp..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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