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Beneath the fabric of his shirt, muscles bunched, expanded, contracted. Were they bare? she wondered. Smooth, slick—
The Indian turned sharply, his gaze finding her on the crates and pinning her there.
Lily gulped. Good gracious! He’d caught her staring. Could he possibly know that she’d been thinking about his chest—of all things?
She shrank deeper into the crates, drawing her legs up under her. Humiliation burned her cheeks. How unseemly of her. How unladylike. Ogling a man. Wondering about his chest. Madame DuBois would indeed be appalled.
Desperate to escape the hiding place that had suddenly become a prison, Lily froze as she heard footsteps. Easing around the edge of the crate, she saw a man—this one rail thin with blond hair—walking from the passageway beside the carpenter’s shop toward the corral.
She’d not seen this man before. Lily was sure she would have remembered. His buckskins hung loose on his thin frame, blond hair streaked with gray lay across his shoulders, a heavy mustache drooped past his lips. His hat shaded most of his lined face.
The Indian saw him, too, watched as he approached. He’d not seen her at all, Lily realized. It was the blond-haired man who’d drawn his attention.
The two men faced each other through the corral fence, a contrast of tall and muscular, thin and stooped. Neither smiled. They didn’t shake hands. A few words were exchanged, but Lily couldn’t hear them.
The Indian glanced up and down the alley, then pulled something from his trouser pocket—a packet of papers, a wad of money, perhaps?—and passed it to the other man. He shoved it in his own pocket and walked away. The Indian glanced around once more, then turned and disappeared behind the stable.
Lily waited for a moment, the feeling of foreboding that had plagued her for so long growing stronger—but for a very different reason this time. Just as the Indian had done, she checked around to see if anyone was watching, then slipped quietly from her hiding place among the crates and hurried back to her room.
“There’s just no easy way to say this, ma’am,” Oliver Sykes said, ducking his head, refusing to make eye contact with Lily.
“What?” She looked back and forth between Sykes and Hiram Fredericks, both men grim faced and solemn. “What is it?”
Standing outside the door to her room, Lily gazed at the evening shadows stretched across the plaza bringing a cooling breeze with the disappearing sun. Sykes had come by to see her father again, then left and had just now returned with Fredericks. They’d called her outside.
“Your pa’s bad off, I reckon you know that,” Fredericks finally said.
“But he’s getting better,” Lily insisted. “He slept straight through the night, and he’s been resting quietly all day. He’s—”
“No, ma’am, that’s not so,” Sykes said with fatherly kindness.
“Yes, it is,” Lily told them. Why were these two men saying such things? She wanted them to leave. “Now, I must go back inside and see to my father—”
“He’s dying.” Fredericks closed his hand over her arm, holding her in place. “The fever took its toll.”
“It was just too much for him,” Sykes added. He paused, then added, “Your pa probably won’t make it through the night.”
Tears sprang to Lily’s eyes. “No…”
“He roused up a bit a while ago,” Sykes said. “He’s asking for you.”
Lily shook her head, her throat tight and thick. “But…”
“Go on inside,” Fredericks said kindly. He guided Lily into the room, then closed the door behind her.
Lily clung to the door, afraid to cross the room, afraid to approach the cot. Her father couldn’t be dying. Fredericks and Sykes meant well, but they had to be wrong—they simply had to be.
“No, Papa, you can’t—you simply can’t,” she whispered. “Not now. We haven’t even…”
But her father lay so still, awash in a gray, ghostly pallor, that she knew the men were right. Tears sprang to her eyes. Lily covered her face with her palms.
“Lily…?”
Her head jerked up at the sound of Augustus’s voice. She rushed to his bedside and dropped to her knees, joy filling her heart.
“Yes, Papa?” she said anxiously. “Oh, I knew you wouldn’t—”
“It’s…gone,” he whispered.
Lily frowned. “What—whatever do you mean?”
With effort, Augustus lifted his head from the sweat-stained pillow, but collapsed again, his lips moving as if trying to speak.
Lily leaned closer, her ear to his mouth. “What, Papa? What is it?”
“Money…” he whispered. “All…gone.”
She looked at him, unable to follow his reasoning. Why was he talking about money—of all things—at a time like this?
“Bad deals…lost it all…nothing left.” Augustus drew in a ragged breath, then wheezed. “That’s…that’s why I came West…to…to start over.”
“No, Papa,” Lily insisted. “That’s not true. You told me yourself that you’d always wanted to come West, to explore, to seek new adventures.”
His head moved back and forth with effort. “A lie. I told you that so…” He coughed. “Thought I could make my fortune over again…in Santa Fe. Thought I could…”
“But, Papa—”
Augustus’s eyelids sank.
“Papa? Papa!”
Chapter Three
Lily stood beside the mound of fresh-turned earth and the wooden casket that would be her father’s resting place for eternity, cold despite the heat of the midafternoon sun that bore down on them.
Augustus had passed away peacefully in his sleep during the night, just as Oliver Sykes had predicted, with Lily at his side.
Hiram Fredericks had made the funeral arrangements; he seemed to be in charge of such things, much like everything else at the fort.
Oliver Sykes, who had worked diligently to heal her father, had arranged for his casket to be built, then had laid him in it. Lily didn’t know who’d dug the grave, here among the other wooden markers outside the fort.
Fredericks read from the Bible, the thin pages rattling in the breeze, his white hair undulating on the unseen current. About a dozen men—most of whom Lily didn’t know—gathered there also. She wondered if they wanted to pay their respects, or simply craved a diversion from their daily routine.
Jacob Tanner, the young man who worked in the kitchen and had brought meal trays to her and her father, stood near the back of the gathering, his hands clasped in front of him, his eyes lowered respectfully. Lily appreciated his presence and felt his intentions were honorable.
Not in attendance was the Nelson family, the people her papa had paid to drive their wagon and assist them in their journey. Nor were the men from the wagon train, who’d come with them to the fort, present for the service.
Lily sniffed, choking back tears—bitter tears. Augustus deserved so much more at his passing. The presence of his friends and business associates in Saint Louis who really knew him and would have truly mourned his death. A carved, marble marker befitting a man of his stature, rather than a simple wooden cross. Men—knowledgeable men—who would have stepped in.
Someone who would tell Lily what was to become of her now.
She touched her finger to the corner of her eye, catching another tear. In the plain wooden casket lay her father. More of a stranger to her now than she’d ever imagined. She’d thought she knew what sort of man he was, but after his deathbed confession last night, she obviously did not.
Could it be true? she wondered as Fredericks’s reading of Bible verses droned on. Had Augustus really lost their entire family fortune?
Sitting at his bedside last night, hearing his confession, Lily had thought it was simply more of his nonsensical fevered ramblings. He’d been incoherent for days. He’d talked to people who weren’t there, flailed his arms against unseen foes. Surely something in his dying mind had prompted this delusion, fabricated the loss of his business empire.
But didn’t the mere fact that they were here in this forsaken wilderness give credence to his confession? Her father had lived his entire life in a large comfortable home, waited on by a number of servants, his every need catered to by others. When he’d told Lily of his dream to go West and explore new lands, she’d thought it odd. So unlike him.
Yet it made perfect sense if he’d indeed lost all his money and wanted to start over in Santa Fe.
It also explained why he’d been so reluctant to have Lily accompany him on this trip.
Other thoughts floated through Lily’s mind as the men, gathered around her father’s gravesite, sang a hymn.
Last Christmas she’d wanted to travel to Memphis to spend the holiday with her friend’s family. Augustus had told her no. When she’d asked for funds to commission several new gowns, he’d never sent the money; she thought he’d simply forgotten. Just before her graduation, he’d appeared unexpectedly at her boarding school and met privately with Madame DuBois. Now Lily wondered if there had been a problem with her tuition; that would explain why some of the other girls had whispered behind their hands as Lily passed them in the halls.
Fredericks gently touched Lily’s arm and she realized the service had ended. The men nodded toward her, putting on their hats, respectfully touching the brims, then drifted away. Jacob lingered a moment as if he wanted to say something to her, but finally he wandered away after only a respectful nod.
“Thank you,” she managed to say, her voice tight, barely more than a ragged whisper. She fought off another swell of emotion. “Thank you very much, both of you, for arranging everything.”
Oliver Sykes, standing on the other side of her, nodded. “It was a nice turnout.”
“I thought the Nelsons would be here,” Lily said, gazing around as if she might see them. “They helped us all along the journey. We’d gotten to know them quite well, I’d thought.”
“Oh, they left already,” Sykes said.
“Left?” Lily looked back and forth between the two men, an odd feeling tightening her belly. “What do you mean they left?”
“Gone on to Santa Fe,” Sykes explained. “Them and those other fellas from the wagon train who drove in with you. They all left at dawn.”
“But…” Stunned, Lily just gazed at the men. They’d gone? Left her behind? Abandoned her in this place? Without so much as a farewell wave?
“But my father paid the Nelson family to look after us,” Lily said, desperation creeping into her voice. “They’re supposed to do the cooking, drive the wagon, take care of the horses.”
The two men exchanged a troubled look that squeezed Lily’s stomach into a tight knot.
“This isn’t hardly the best time, right here at your father’s funeral, but I guess you’ve got to be told.” Sykes pulled at the back of his neck. “I mean, you’ll find out, sooner or later.”
Lily pressed her lips together, afraid to ask what he was talking about.
“Last night…” Fredericks cleared his throat. “Well, last night, your horses were stolen.”
“Stolen?”
“Yeah, and your wagon was looted.” Sykes shifted uncomfortably. “Pretty much everything you had in there is gone. The wagon was torn up, too.”
Her horses were stolen? Her belongings stolen? Lily pressed her hand to her forehead as the world suddenly pitched sideways.
She was penniless—and stranded?
“Who—who did it? Who’s responsible?” she asked.
Fredericks shrugged. “Don’t know. Sam Becker—he’s the blacksmith—he saw what had happened to your wagon this morning, then went to check on your horses and realized they were gone.”
“Shouldn’t we report this to someone?” Lily asked, spreading her hands.
“Well, Miss St. Claire, it’s not like we got a real lawman here at the fort,” Sykes said.
“Me and the boys, well, we just take care of things as they come up, best we can,” Fredericks explained. “Becker said he didn’t have any idea who might have taken your belongings.”
“I—I’d like to go lie down,” Lily gasped, feeling light-headed.
“That’s a good idea,” Fredericks said.
“Yeah, good idea,” Sykes agreed, as if he were glad to be rid of her.
“I’ll walk with you—” Fredericks began.
“No.” Lily pulled away from him. “No, thank you. I can manage.”
Though she wasn’t sure that she could, Lily somehow made it to her room and closed the door tight behind her. She fell back against it, her heart thudding in her chest, her mind whirling.
Her horses and her belongings were gone. Her wagon damaged. And she had no money.
Without cash how would she buy horses? How would she repair the wagon, let alone reprovision it?
How would she ever escape this dreadful land?
Lily pressed her fingers to her lips, holding back a sob. What would become of her?
Her gaze landed on the cot across the room, the cot on which only yesterday her father had lain, then died. She’d never felt so alone.
Bile rose in the back of her throat, closing off her breathing in this airless room.
She had to leave. She had to escape. She couldn’t abide this room—this fort—another moment.
Lily opened the door and slipped out of the fort into the prairie.
North paused outside the trade room as he glimpsed a swish of skirt disappear out the gate. Even without seeing her face he knew it was Lily St. Claire, the woman whose father they’d just buried. No other woman wore that sort of dress.
And no other woman would be foolish enough to leave the safety of the fort.
North shook his head. Why would she do this? Didn’t she know any better?
Or did she simply not care that she was a danger not only to herself, but to others who might have to go after her?
Since arriving at the fort she’d been waited on hand and foot, seemingly unable to accomplish the smallest task, or fend for herself. Was this customary behavior for white women?
