Chapter One #2
“Are we going to the hotel?” Lizbet inquired of her stepfather, surprised by the calmness in her own voice, because inside, she was anything but calm.
William sighed a long-suffering sigh.
Marietta glared. Tapped one expensively shod foot.
Mr. Middlebrook said nothing; he merely glowered at Gabe.
Finally, after a short, charged silence, William spoke again, addressing Lizbet. “We’re having dinner at Henry’s home,” he said carefully. Evenly. “After that, we’ll make our way to the Statehood Hotel, where we have reservations.”
Lizbet was tired, and a lot of the fight had gone out of her. She needed food and rest before she dealt with this unexpected situation.
Not once had her stepfather mentioned Mr. Middlebrook, let alone relayed plans to dine with the man.
She looked at Gabe, feeling as slack as an understuffed scarecrow after a hard rain, and replied bleakly. “I think we’ll be fine, Mr.—”
“Whitfield,” he replied. “Gabe Whitfield.”
“Mr. Whitfield, then,” Lizbet said, as though some important matter had been settled. “Thank you kindly for your concern.”
Gabe Whitfield’s fine mouth moved slightly, as though he wanted to smile but wasn’t quite able to do it, and he nodded. “Anytime,” he said.
Then, to Lizbet’s surprise—and vague relief—he nodded toward a two-story white clapboard house on the other side of the road.
Lizbet hadn’t noticed that before, either.
Thus, she hadn’t seen the tiny black woman sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. She was huddled in the folds of a bulky shawl, despite the warmth of the day, and even from that distance, Lizbet could see that she was watching the scene unfolding in front of the general store with dour interest.
“You need a place to run to,” Gabe Whitfield went on, “you just head for Mrs. Ornetta Parkin’s boarding house right over there—that’s her, in the rocking chair.
She’s a fine woman, and she’ll take you in—” Here, he paused and allowed his steady gaze to drift back to Mr. Middlebrook’s rapidly reddening face.
“And she’ll see that you’re safe. The children too, of course.
If the need arises, send for me and I’ll do whatever I can to help. ”
Afraid to look at her stepfather, or Mr. Middlebrook, who had backed off, although she could almost feel him simmering like a full kettle fixing to blow off its lid, Lizbet stored up the information she’d just been given.
“Thank you,” she said moderately, moments later, tempted to take Frankie’s and Jubal’s hands and march right over to throw herself and the children on Ornetta Parkin’s mercy. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Gabe nodded, turned and walked away. Climbed into the seat of his buckboard, released the brake lever with a motion of one foot and brought down the reins.
Too soon, he’d rounded a corner and vanished.
“Is he a cowboy?” Jubal asked, with a note of admiration in his voice. He still hung on to Lizbet’s hand with a grip that was almost painful, but his gaze had followed Gabe Whitfield and his wagon out of sight.
“I don’t know,” Lizbet murmured in reply, struck by the wistful note the words carried. “Maybe.”
By then, the jitney driver and a burly man wearing a grubby apron were unloading the trunks and valises bound to the roof of the dented gray vehicle so that two other men could stow them away again in Mr. Middlebrook’s spare wagon.
Mr. Middlebrook, for his part, had withdrawn a little way, and Lizbet, temporarily resigned, situated herself in the rear seat of the surrey, with Frankie on her left and Jubal on her right.
William, no longer playing the devoted stepfather, glared at her over one shoulder as he and Marietta and Mr. Middlebrook settled into the seat ahead of the one she and the children occupied.
Lizbet had never liked her stepfather; he’d drained away her mother’s considerable inheritance for one thing, but the antipathy ran far deeper than that.
William’s greatest sin, in her view, which she knew was unfair, was not being Luke Fontaine.
Her father had been a wonderful man, solid, good-natured and fair-minded.
A fine doctor, in fact, well loved by his patients, as well as his wife and daughter.
He’d died of a heart ailment when Lizbet, her parents’ only child, was twelve years old, and the deep, echoing chasm his death had opened in the core of Lizbet’s being had never closed.
Devastated, confused and blind with grief, her mother, Gwendolyn, had soon married William Keller, an acquaintance of Lizbet’s father, and not long after that, Frankie came along, followed three years later by Jubal.
Gwendolyn Keller had loved her children, there was no question about that. But she’d never really recovered from losing Luke, the great love of her life.
Gone was the strong, spirited, incredibly intelligent woman Lizbet had known and dearly loved. It was as though marriage to William had drained her not only of her money, but of her identity.
Snapping herself back to the present moment, Lizbet glared back at William, half-sick with the remembrance of all he’d done to weaken her once-vibrant mother.
What was he up to now?
She was beginning to realize that she already knew the answer to that question, but she wasn’t up to a confrontation.
Not yet.
Now she simply stared back at him, her mouth tight and her backbone stiff.
“Where are we going, Lizbet?” Jubal asked, scrambling onto his knees on the surrey seat, so he could whisper into her ear. “Who is that man?” He nodded in Henry Middlebrook’s direction.
Frankie, blue eyes wide, face smudged, like Jubal’s and her own, with the dust of the road, leaned forward and answered anxiously, “He’s the devil, that’s who!”
Fortunately, the noise of a team and surrey in motion, coupled with that of the wagon rolling along behind them, loaded down with their baggage, made the conversation inaudible to the trio in front of them.
“He’s not ,” Jubal protested. “The devil has horns and hooves and a long red tail with a pointy end!”
“Hush,” Lizbet said, in an earnest whisper.
“I don’t like him,” Frankie insisted, folding her arms stubbornly in front of her chest.
Lizbet left her agreement unspoken and said instead, “Everything will work out, you’ll see. And no more talk about the devil, if you please.”
Would everything work out?
Yes.
Lizbet Fontaine ached with purpose. She would keep these children—and herself—safe from the threat Henry Middlebrook represented.
So help her God.