Chapter 2
Rose Prescott let her hands fall to her sides as her final note faded into the rafters.
That familiar bone-deep ache settled in her chest as applause rippled through the singing hall, a large room added to the back of Murphy’s Saloon.
Men clustered around the small tables, raised their glasses, and called for more, but she was already edging toward the narrow doorway leading to the backstage area.
“That’s all for tonight, gentlemen.” She kept her voice warm enough to satisfy, but distant, as always.
The emerald silk dress her stepfather insisted she wear clung to her skin, and she had to work to draw breath in the thick air, heavy with the stench of cigars and spilled whiskey.
She slipped behind the curtain. Her slippers made no sound on the warped boards. The hallway back here was cooler, at least, though the sounds of the saloon—raucous laughter, the clink of glasses, the occasional crash of furniture—followed her like ghosts.
“Ruby.”
She tensed as Vincent Dunhill’s voice cut through her brief moment of peace like a knife blade. When she turned, he leaned against the wall, his bulk blocking most of the dim light from the oil lamp mounted nearby.
Even in the shadows, his pale eyes glinted.
“The take was good tonight.” He straightened, and at nearly six feet, he loomed over her.
“Better than last week. That new song you’ve been working on—the melancholy one about lost love—they ate it up.”
Rose nodded, though something cold twisted in her stomach at his satisfied tone. Vincent always spoke of her performances like a merchant discussing his most profitable goods. “I’m glad it pleased them.”
“Pleased them?” His laugh was low and calculating.
“Ruby, my dear, you had half those men ready to weep into their whiskey. That’s not just pleasing—that’s artistry.
” He reached out to adjust a wayward curl that had escaped her carefully arranged hair, and she forced herself not to flinch.
Having his hand so close to her tightened every muscle in her body. “Your mother would be proud.”
The mention of Mama sent a familiar pang through her chest. Margaret Prescott had been dead four years now, but Vincent still wielded her memory like a weapon when it suited him.
“I’m tired, Vincent. May I retire for the evening?”
“Of course, of course.” But his hand settled on her shoulder, fingers pressing just firmly enough to remind her who held the power between them. “Though I did want to discuss expanding your repertoire. Perhaps something a bit more…spirited for the weekend crowds.”
Rose’s throat tightened. She knew what he meant by spirited—songs that would encourage the men to drink more, stay longer, spend more money. Songs that would chip away another piece of her dignity.
She was tired. Soul-weary tired in a way that had nothing to do with the late hour and everything to do with the weight of the twenty-year contract that bound her to this life.
“Good night, Vincent.”
He stepped aside to let her pass, but the burn of his gaze followed her down the narrow hallway to her dressing room. The door stuck slightly—it always did in the damp mountain air—and she had to put her shoulder against it to get it open.
The small space barely contained a washstand, a cracked mirror, and a trunk for her costumes. But it was hers, the only place in Virginia City where she could drop the mask of Ruby Starling and simply be Rose Prescott again.
She sank onto the single wooden chair and unpinned her hair, letting the auburn waves fall around her shoulders. In the mirror’s reflection, the weariness in her own green eyes stared back at her. Her smile had become a practiced thing that never quite reached them anymore.
Sixteen years left. The contract stretched ahead of her like a prison sentence, payment for her mother’s medical bills and funeral expenses.
Vincent had been so generous, so understanding when Mama lay dying.
He’d taken care of everything—the doctors, the medicines, the burial plot.
All Rose had to do was sign her name and promise to perform until the debt was paid.
She’d been fifteen and desperate. Now she was nineteen, and the debt seemed to grow rather than shrink with each passing month.
She pulled out the day-old copy of the Virginia City Enterprise that someone had left behind in the saloon. She often read the advertisements, though she couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was the glimpse they offered into other lives, other possibilities.
Her gaze drifted over notices for mining equipment, cattle for sale, and rooms to let. Then a small advertisement near the bottom of the page snagged her attention:
Seeking Respectable Woman for Household Position
She read the words advertising the job of household assistant twice, then a third time, her heart beating faster. It sounded like a dream…or an echo from the past. A peaceful mountain ranch. Away from the smoke and noise and calculating eyes. Away from Vincent.
But even as hope flickered to life in her chest, reality crashed over her like snowy water. The contract. Vincent would never let her leave. And he had contacts everywhere. He would find her and drag her back. Then he’d make her pay for ever thinking she could best him.
Still, her fingers traced the words peaceful mountain ranch.
What would it be like to wake up to clean mountain air instead of the stale smoke of the saloon?
To spend her days helping with honest work instead of performing for strangers who saw only what they wanted to see?
Singing in front of men who saw her as a thing to enjoy instead of a person.
Walnut Springs. The name stirred something in her memory, though she couldn’t place what.
She couldn’t remember the name of the town nearest the Balfour ranch, but might Walnut Springs be it?
Surely not. The Montana Territory was so vast—it could be anywhere. Perhaps she’d heard a drunken miner mention the name.
She folded the newspaper and tucked it into her trunk beneath her spare chemise. Just having it there, hidden away like a secret, made something flutter in her chest that she hadn’t felt in months. Years even.
Hope, perhaps. Or maybe only the desperate craving for something different.
She stood and moved to the small window, pushing aside the faded curtain to look out at the night. Virginia City sprawled below in a maze of flickering lights and shadows, the constant noise of the saloons echoing even at this late hour.
Somewhere beyond those hills lay ranch country—wide open spaces where a person could breathe freely. She barely remembered what that felt like. She and her mother had moved here when she was nine, and she had so few memories from before.
But sometimes, in dreams, she remembered sunshine streaming through tall windows and the sound of laughter echoing through spacious rooms. A kitchen that smelled of fresh bread and herbs, not stale beer and tobacco.
Strong hands teaching her to knead dough, and a boy with dark hair who used to make her laugh until her sides ached.
Those memories felt like someone else’s life now, soft and golden and impossibly distant.
A place she could never return.
Rose pressed her forehead against the cool glass. The advertisement would be for a different ranch, so maybe…
But she couldn’t respond. Of course she couldn’t.
The contract felt like heavy chains around her wrists, binding her to this smoky world where she was nothing more than Vincent’s investment.
Yet if she could find a way to get free of Vincent. If she could line up work before she attempted escape…
Did she dare?
She pressed her palm against the cold pane. Once upon a time, she’d believed God watched over her. That he cared about a little girl and her mother who’d had to leave the safe, happy ranch and go on an adventure to the city.
But He hadn’t answered when Mama’s breath grew thin and rattling. He hadn’t answered when Vincent’s contract chained her. Perhaps heaven helped women who had earned it somehow—good women, strong women. Not the sort who sang to keep a man’s ledger balanced.
“Please,” she whispered before she could stop herself. The word felt foolish in the smoky dark. “If You see me—if You still do—let me out.” Only silence followed.
She would have to find her own way.
She turned back to the room and pulled out the newspaper again, smoothing the creases with trembling fingers.
What harm could there be in simply writing a telegram? Not to accept the position—she couldn’t do that, not without knowing more—but perhaps simply to inquire. To imagine, for a few precious moments, what it might be like to have choices again.
She pulled out a sheet of writing paper from the small supply she’d horded away. Her pen hovered over the blank page as she considered her words.
To Telegraph Office, Walnut Springs, Montana Territory:
INQUIRING ABOUT HOUSEHOLD POSITION ON RANCH STOP EXPERIENCED WITH HOUSEKEEPING STOP PLEASE RESPOND WITH STARTING DATE IF POSITION STILL AVAILABLE STOP REPLIES TO VIRGINIA CITY TELEGRAPH OFFICE ATTENTION MISS R P FULL STOP
She stared at the words, her heart hammering.
Miss R. Prescott—not Ruby Starling. No one at the telegraph office knew her by that name, so the reply would sit until she came to fetch it.
And using her real name felt like shedding a costume, like stepping out from behind the emerald silk and stage lights into something true.
Was she exaggerating by saying she had experience with housekeeping? She kept her own room well, and she and Mama had always cooked for themselves in the little stove downstairs beneath their rooms. She could learn quickly, so surely she’d be able to pick up any other skills needed.
Tomorrow she would find a way to slip to the telegraph office to send this during the afternoon, when Vincent was busy with his other business ventures.
She had enough coins saved from the tips customers sometimes pressed into her hand—money Vincent didn’t know about— hidden away in the false bottom of her jewelry box.
But what if Vincent found out? What if he intercepted the reply? The telegraph office wasn’t far from Murphy’s, and Vincent had friends everywhere in Virginia City. Men who owed him favors, who would tell him if Rose Prescott started receiving mysterious messages.
She crumpled the paper and tossed it toward the small waste basket, but it missed and landed on the floor beside her chair. The sight of her initials, written in her own careful script, lying crumpled and discarded made something fierce rise up in her chest.
She was tired of being afraid. Tired of Vincent’s watchful eyes and calculating smiles. Tired of singing other people’s sorrows while her own dreams withered away like flowers in a drought.
Rose smoothed out the telegram and read it once more. The words looked small and uncertain on the page, but they represented something larger—the first step toward a life that might be her saving grace.