Beauty for Ashes Page 0,44

they’d splurge and go to the inn for steak and potatoes and his favorite lemon pie. Afterward she’d surprise him by setting a date for their wedding. Imagining his look of happy surprise brought a smile to her face. Now that she had made up her mind, let go of her girlish fantasies, she was eager to set her plans in motion.

She entered the Verandah just as the evening train arrived, the sharp sound of the whistle reverberating in the quiet streets. She called a greeting to Mrs. Whitcomb and mounted the steps to her room with the odd feeling that something was amiss. The hotel was too quiet—no muffled talk coming from the room of the Provost sisters, no Lucy pounding down the stairs, no Rosaleen dealing cards in the parlor. It was as if the entire place was holding its breath.

She shook her head to clear her apprehensions. She was merely overly excited, maybe even a bit nervous, awaiting the chance to tell Nate of her decision. When he got back, the old hotel would breathe again.

She tidied her hair, splashed a bit of lavender water onto her neck, and sank into her chair beside the window. The smell of boiling turnip greens and frying fatback drifted up the stairs, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anything since her two biscuits with jam at breakfast. Her stomach rumbled, but the prospect of more of Mrs. Whitcomb’s food wasn’t enough to rouse her from her chair.

Shouts and footsteps sounded in the street below. A woman laughed. Someone began singing loudly and slightly off key. A glass shattered. Carrie parted the curtain. Mill hands, no doubt, with a little too much liquor in their bellies.

Then the Verandah’s front door crashed open, and Mrs. Whitcomb let out a surprised yelp. Carrie rushed down the stairs. When she reached the landing, she stopped stock-still, her skirt swirling about her ankles. She clutched the newel post, her heart kicking.

Nate Chastain strode into the foyer. Behind him, wearing a shimmering pink dress and a triumphant smile, stood Rosaleen.

THIRTEEN

Griff scrawled his signature at the bottom of the bank draft and sealed it for mailing. The Pinkertons’ fee for finding Rosaleen had taken a healthy bite from his funds, and in the end he had forgiven the debt he’d come here to collect. What was the matter with him? Maybe he was losing the granite-hard resolve that had for so long served him well.

He collected his gloves, hat, and a couple of the sugar cubes he kept as special treats for Majestic. The train whistle emitted two short blasts, and he thought again of his brother’s surprise announcement. Though marrying anyone merely to increase the Rutledges’ land holdings was utterly ridiculous, he envied Philip. His brother would have a family. Somewhere to belong. Everything Griff had rejected in order to pursue life on his own terms.

He hadn’t thought of Susan Layton in years. She wasn’t a beauty. Her chin was too weak, her eyes too round and too prominent. But she had a trim, womanly shape, a sweet disposition, and a ready laugh. Like most young girls of her class, she’d been educated in the finer points of etiquette. She knew which fork was for pickles and which for fowl and how to chatter on for hours and hours about nothing more consequential than the weather. She had been taught to refrain from expressing her opinions, to be subservient to her man, dutiful in every way. Philip would have little cause for complaint. But what on earth would the two of them talk about?

He picked up his key and headed for the door. When his father had first broached the subject of Griff’s marriage to Susan, Griff simply had not been able to imagine twenty, thirty, perhaps forty years of sitting opposite her at the dinner table with little more to say than “pass the salt” and “do you suppose it might rain?” He wanted a woman who shared his curiosity about the world, who knew what she thought about things and wasn’t afraid to express it. Someone as open, as warm, and yes, as headstrong and opinionated as Carrie Daly.

He grinned to himself. She’d held her tongue when Nate Chastain had spoken for her that day in the bookshop, but just barely.

Even if she weren’t promised to the bookseller, though, he had little to offer her. It might be months, a year perhaps, before things were sorted out at his bank in London and he