Chapter One #2
Kate was not her daughter. Kate was Richard McKinney's child from his first marriage, the girl Margaret had spent twenty years treating as a complication rather than a child.
That Richard had split the inheritance between his wife and Kate—including leaving Kate's birth mother's belongings specifically to her, things Margaret had presumably kept for two decades—suggested a man settling accounts in his final days that his wife would not have sanctioned while he was alive.
How had Margaret received that news? Probably not graciously.
The hotel lobby was empty except for the clerk, who barely glanced up from his ledger. As Robert took the stairs, his mind counted them like usual. Sixteen. The hallway at the top stretched quiet and still.
He knocked on Mrs. Wang's door first. Three, then two.
She opened it right away, a smile in her dark eyes. "All is well here."
"Good." He glanced past her into the room, though of course there was nothing unusual to see. "I'll check on Clara, then go make some inquiries around town."
"She has not left her room."
He nodded and crossed to Clara's door. Three knocks, then two.
A pause. Then the sound of the lock turning, and Clara opened the door. She'd taken off her traveling cloak and tidied her hair, though a few strands still escaped near her temple. She looked tired. Actually tired, not just the careful version of tired she usually let people see.
“The horses are settled." He cleared the dust from his throat. "I'm going to walk the town. See what I can learn."
She nodded, but didn't step back from the doorway. "You think she's here."
"The Benton Belle arrived yesterday. If she kept to her plan—"
"She always keeps to her plans." Clara's tone was matter-of-fact, but her fingers gripped the doorframe. "What will you do if you find her?"
A question he'd been turning over since they'd left the ranch.
"Talk to her. Find out what she wants." He paused. "What she thinks she can claim."
"And if what she wants is me?"
The words hung between them. Clara's face stayed pleasant—that careful, practiced pleasantness—but her knuckles turned white against the wood.
"Then we'll deal with it." He kept his voice level. Professional. As if this were simply another legal matter to be managed. "You're not a minor. She has no legal authority over you."
"Legal authority and actual power aren't always the same thing."
They weren't.
He held her gaze, but kept himself from sinking into those blue eyes. "I won't let her force you into a marriage you don't want. No matter who the man is."
Especially if he's three times your age and looking for a decorative young wife to manage.
That was the marriage arrangement she’d schemed already. The one that drove Clara to answer a mail-order bride advertisement. The one that sent Clara and Kate all the way from South Carolina to the Montana Territory.
Ordering a bride for Thomas had been Enoch and James’s plan mostly, though Robert had seen some wisdom in it. Thomas needed a wife to settle down with. Thankfully, the best someone for him had turned out to be Kate, not Clara.
Yet would Mrs. McKinney still try to enforce that agreement? Or had she devised a new plan in the months since Clara fled?
"I mean it." His voice held a hard edge, but he didn't soften it. "Whatever she's planning, we'll counter it."
Clara studied him a long moment. Something shifted in her expression—not quite relief, but maybe the beginning of it. "Thank you."
He should leave. Go search the town. But his feet stayed planted in the hallway like they'd grown roots.
"Robert." She tilted her head. "You can go. I'll be fine."
Right. Of course she would.
He forced himself to step back. "Lock the door."
"Three knocks, then two." The corners of her mouth lifted again. "I remember."
He turned toward the stairs before he could do something foolish like promise her things he had no right to promise.
Before he could say he'd been watching her for weeks now and couldn't seem to stop.
That the silence in the wagon had felt like pressure against his ribs because he wanted to know what she was thinking and had no right to ask.
The street outside hit him with dust and noise and the smell of horses.
Better. This was better. Something to focus on besides the way Clara's fingers had gripped the doorframe.
Fort Benton possessed two boarding houses, lodging above all three saloons, and private rooms scattered through buildings that served other purposes during daylight hours.
Mrs. McKinney would choose somewhere with a veneer of respectability. The boarding house on Second Street, probably. The one that catered to travelers with pretensions.
He'd start there.
The afternoon sun pressed against his shoulders as he walked. A freight wagon rumbled past, loaded with furs that smelled like blood and smoke. Two men stood outside the gunsmith's, talking in low voices that cut off when he passed.
The boarding house sat back from the street, fronted by a narrow porch with carved posts that someone had painted white last season. Lace curtains hung in the windows. A sign beside the door read "Mrs. Dunmore's Rooms—Respectable Lodgers Only."
Respectable. That would appeal to Margaret McKinney.
He climbed the steps and knocked.
The woman who answered was perhaps fifty, with iron-gray hair pulled back in a severe bun. She looked him over with the assessment of someone who'd learned to judge character quickly.
"Afternoon." He kept his voice polite. "I'm looking for a Mrs. McKinney. I believe she may have taken a room here."
Mrs. Dunmore's expression remained neutral. "And who might be asking?"
"Robert Balfour. I'm an attorney." Not fully. He’d done the study course, but hadn’t had the opportunity to apprentice or take the exam.
She studied him another moment, then stepped back. "Come in, Mr. Balfour."
The front room appeared spotlessly clean, with dark wood furniture and more lace. A vase of dried flowers sat on a side table. The kind of attention to detail that spoke of a woman who ran her establishment with firm rules.
"I do have a Mrs. McKinney staying here." Mrs. Dunmore closed the door behind him. "Arrived yesterday on the Belle. Took my best room."
Of course she did.
Robert's pulse kicked up, but he kept his face impassive. "Is she in at present?"
Mrs. Dunmore grasped her hands together at her waist. "She went out about an hour ago. Said she had business to attend to in town."
Business.
The word settled like lead in his gut. What business could Margaret McKinney have in Fort Benton except the kind that involved her daughter?
"Did she say where she was going?"
"Not to me." Mrs. Dunmore's tone suggested she found this lapse in manners noteworthy. "She's not overly forthcoming, your Mrs. McKinney."
Not his Mrs. McKinney. But he didn't correct her.
"When she returns, would you tell her Robert Balfour called? I'm staying at the hotel on Front Street."
Mrs. Dunmore's eyebrows lifted. "You want me to tell her you're looking for her?"
Maybe he should say no. Keep the element of surprise. But better to get the meeting over with. And he could be watching for her. "Yes. Please tell her."
Mrs. Dunmore nodded. "I'll pass along the message, Mr. Balfour."
He thanked the woman again and let himself out.
The street had filled with afternoon traffic—wagons hauling freight toward the levee, riders heading in from the prairie, a cluster of men outside the saloon.
He scanned faces, looking for a woman of middle age with blonde hair and the bearing of someone who'd spent her life enforcing social hierarchies.
Nothing.
But she was out here somewhere. In town. On business.
He turned back to the hotel. She might be at the land office, checking records. Or the telegraph office, sending messages. Or—and this lodged like a stone in his chest—she might be at the hotel already, asking the clerk which room Clara was in.
He quickened his pace.