The Bride at Silver Sage (The Brides of Grand Springs #1)

Chapter 1

One

New York City

“You’ve not eaten,” Biddy said.

Even through the calamitous noise and chaos of the train shed, the older woman's voice carried.

Adele Warner had passed through Grand Central Depot a hundred times or more, yet this time, it felt different.

Perhaps because this might be the last time.

Under the great arched ribs of glass and iron, steam came down in warm wet sheets.

Behind the women, a baggage truck rattled past. Bells.

Whistles. The long asthmatic breathing of engines standing at rest.

"I ate."

"Coffee isn’t eating, Miss." Biddy said with reproach.

She reached up as she said it, straightening the brim of Della's hat, though Della knew the hat would still be in place.

Biddy Doherty was too good at her job for the hat to slip.

“There's four days of train in front of you and you'll not want to be starting it hollow. "

"Then I shall be hollow in Chicago and full again in St. Paul."

Biddy’s hands stilled, firm brown eyes fixing her with a look. "Don't be clever with me. Not today."

Della caught the hand at her hat and held it a moment, and Biddy’s fingers gripped back, hard and brief, a moment of shared unspoken comfort before she pulled away and made a business of the collar instead.

Biddy had been crying in the cab. She had done it quietly and facing the window, and Della had let her, because there was nothing to be gained by either of them acknowledging her tears.

Just now, her eyes were bright and her nose was pink at the end of it, though her mouth was set in the flat, determined line of a woman who intended to see things through to the end without disgracing herself.

Biddy had dressed Della's hair every morning for more than ten years. She’d become Della’s close friend and confidant, through hard times, sad times.

Good times. And in three weeks, when the new Mrs. Warner came into the house on Twelfth Street with her own opinions about staff, Biddy would very likely be out of a place.

They both knew it. Neither of them had said it out loud. Della thought better of them both for that.

"There," said Biddy, stepping back. "Now you look like a woman who knows."

Della inhaled, a brief smile brushing her mouth. "I look like a woman going to Montana Territory."

"You look like your mother," Biddy sniffed. "Are you sure you’re doing the right thing, Miss? This… Your dress,” She changed tack. “That’s a proper dress. It's a wicked shame to be taking it out to the middle of nowhere where there's nobody to see it."

"I expect there'll be somebody," Della replied, edging them both out of the way of another passing baggage trolley that clattered by.

"Cows. What do cows know about good dress sense?"

"I imagine they’ll be looking for a nice dress themselves when they see this," Della teased.

"Don't." Biddy pressed her lips together, and then, unwillingly, laughed — one short bark of it — and put her knuckles to her mouth. "Oh, you're a trial. You always were a trial."

Biddy turned to the carpet bag at her feet, rooting around in it, and came up with a small book bound in marbled paper. She held it out with both hands.

Della took it. “What’s this?” She opened it, eyes flashing up to meet her maid’s gaze. “Cook’s receipt book?”

Another short bark of laughter. “As if Cook would part with such a thing. No,” Biddy shrugged. “I wrote them out for you. I know you’ve been practising your cooking skills, but in case you wanted a taste of home…”

Della flipped the pages. Forty or more, written in Biddy’s laborious upright hand. “Biddy… This must have taken an age.”

“Since Candlemas.” Biddy flushed rose up to the tips of her ears.

"There's biscuit in the front, because you'll want biscuit every blessed day and there's no sense hunting for it.

There's coffee. There's a pot roast that'll forgive you nearly anything.

There's a plain cake at the back that I'd not put in front of your father, but it'll do for a man whose been out of doors. "

"Biddy—"

"And I've written it out for a range, mind.

" Biddy's finger came up. All brisk. As was her way.

"A range is not the same as a stove that you’re used to.

It's not the same beast at all and I'll not have you finding it out the hard way with a hungry man looking at you.

You keep your hand near the flue and you watch it.

You don't wander off. That's the whole of it, miss — the not wandering off.

You've a terrible habit of thinking about something else. "

"I do."

"You do." Biddy’s chin trembled and steadied.

Della’s eyes stung a little as she stared down at the thoughtful gift. The thing that might help her not make such a mess of this mad hatter’s plan after all. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you,” she glanced up.

Biddy’s eyes were glassy. She swallowed hard. “You’ll ruin a few pies, burn a few biscuits. But you’ll get it right. Same as you do with anything you turn your mind to.” Her hands went to Della’s collar, brushed absently as she fought to hold onto her tears.

Della, compelled to give her friend a moment, slipped the book into her own reticule where it sat against the stack of letters. She wasn’t sure why she’d felt compelled to keep them, other than they were the beginning of this new chapter.

Biddy saw them. “You’re sure of him?”

Della straightened up. “As sure as I can be of a man I’ve never met.”

“Well, that’s honest as can be, I suppose.”

“He writes in plain lines. He was thorough enough to answer every question I asked him. His answers didn’t change when I asked the same question more than once.”

Biddy’s look was filled with her own doubts.

“He could be as old as the hills. He might be a cad. A swindler, and a… a…”

“You’re right,” Della nodded. Biddy wasn’t saying anything that she’d not considered alone. But this way was better than staying. “I have to trust him, in the same way that he must trust I’m who I say I am, too.”

Biddy inclined her head. “You’ve the right of it.”

A conductor walked behind them, walking the length of the train that waited at the platform. “Chicago! All aboard for Chicago!”

“That’s me,” Della said quickly, looking at the open coach door. “He sent me the fare, plus ten dollars more with a note to say I was to take a berth and not sit up in the day coach overnight. That has to count for something.”

Biddy considered that.

"That's a decent thing," she allowed.

"It is."

"It's not the same as knowing a man."

"No," Della agreed. "It isn't. But I've known Mr. Compton since I was nine years old, and I know exactly what I'd be marrying. I'd sooner take the ten dollars and the stranger."

Biddy’s mouth went tight. "Your brother'll say?—"

"My brother will say I've thrown myself away," Della interrupted primly.

"For four thousand dollars."

"Four thousand two hundred and sixty," Della corrected. She shook her head. "Funny how he's correct about the amount of my inheritance and nothing else when it comes to sums."

Her father had been a careful man. He had been careful for more than thirty years on Pearl Street, careful with other men's coffee and other men's money. As expected, he’d been careful in his will, or he had believed he was. The house, the counting-house, the name, the whole of Warner & Company passed to Peter, because Peter was the son. His heir. His pride and joy. And for Adele, he’d left a settlement. A good one. Held in trust.

Held in trust by Peter.

Payable on her marriage. To a gentleman of whom her brother, as trustee, approved.

She had read the clause many times in the little room off the library with the fire going out beside her.

She had understood that her father had not been careless at all.

He had simply never once imagined a world in which his son would not do the decent thing.

He had died believing that Peter Warner would look after his sister, and there had never been the slightest reason on earth for him to believe it.

Peter performed for everyone except for his sister. She knew the monster behind the mask. And she trusted her brother about as far as she could have thrown him.

Which was not far at all.

"He'd release it tomorrow," Biddy said, "if you'd have Mr. Compton. You could stay here and?—"

"Henry is fifty-eight, and has buried two wives. Last Christmas, he put his hand on my back in the hallway and told me I had the look of a woman who’d breed well.

" Della smoothed her gloves, fury rippling along her veins at the memory.

"So, no. Peter won't be releasing it. At least not for marrying such a beast."

"And when Peter marries Miss Ledyard?—"

"When he marries Miss Ledyard," said Della, "he will spend that inheritance. Much, I suspect, as he would have done so anyway, had I been the obedient type and taken Mr. Compton, as he wanted me to."

Biddy made a small sound.

"He's borrowed against the Pearl Street lease," Della went on, evenly, because she found she could only say it evenly.

"I saw the paper on his desk in February.

He didn't hide it. It didn't occur to him that I could read it.

He has taken money at fifteen per cent against a property that returns him six, in order to redecorate a house he already owns, for a woman who has been raised to believe that a thing is only worth having if somebody else wanted it first." She drew a breath.

"I told him so. Then he laughed in my face and told me I was too obtuse to understand business.”

“Obtuse?”

“Stupid,” Della clarified. “Considering how we were raised, I could never understand making such poor financial decisions.”

“Your father would turn in his grave.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Della sighed.

“Is that when you answered the advertisement?”

Della hadn’t gone looking for it. She’d been sitting in her father's chair in the empty counting-house on a rainy afternoon. Out of boredom or curiosity, she’d picked up the Matrimonial News that one of the clerks must have left behind.

There among the men who wanted a lady of refinement, or a lady of means, among the ones where some had described their own eyes at some length, had been six lines of print with no poetry in them whatsoever.

A ranch in Montana Territory. Cattle. A house that wanted running. Long winters. No fortune. Stated plainly. I am looking for a sensible woman, and I would rather she came knowing the worst of it.

It had made her laugh in the silence. It had made her go in search of pen and some paper so that she could state how much she appreciated the plainness of his words.

"All aboard," the conductor called.

“Here,” Della pulled the top-most letter out of her reticule and held it out to Biddy. “Take this.”

“What is it?

“A character,” Della said quickly, too aware of the conductor’s beady gaze at their lingering too long.

“In my own hand, signed, and dated for after the wedding, so it can't be argued that I wrote it after any unpleasantness. Give it to Mrs. Franklin on Gramercy Park. She has three girls. Any of them would be lucky to find a maid of such skill.”

Biddy’s eyes went wide and filled at once. "Miss?—"

Della sighed, giving in, drawing the maid to her for a quick, hard squeeze.

She was walking away from everything. Not just her home and her friends.

Her life. In that great train shed, she questioned her decision, and not for the first time.

“Come now. Let’s be brave. I have a long journey and cannot spend them with damp eyes. ”

Biddy pressed a handkerchief to her eyes. "You'll write."

"Every week."

"You'll write when you get there, so I know you're not murdered."

"I'll wire from Grand Springs," said Della, "so you can find something else to fuss over. And you’ll write back to me, so I know where you end up.”

“I will.”

“Miss?” The conductor was behind them, impatience rippling off him. “If you’d be so kind?”

Della sent him a grateful smile. “Very well.”

Della went up the step.

At the door she turned, because she could not help it. Biddy stood on the platform with the steam going past her in long ragged banners, a small dark upright woman with her chin up, who had to find a new situation by next month. All because she refused to fall into line with Peter’s wishes.

Della lifted her hand. Biddy lifted hers. The shrill whistle pierced the air and the door closed.

Della went and found her seat. The train rattled, and the car swayed as the couplings took up the slack. With a burp and hiss, the long, iron beast lurched. She didn’t watch the depot slide away. Didn’t look for Biddy. Instead, she drew out the pile of letters, written in a plain hand.

She was twenty-six years old. Beyond marrying age, Peter had reminded her.

And that Compton was the obvious choice for a woman in her state.

The secrecy of the past few weeks. The planning and the subterfuge whilst her brother was distracted by the wedding and his pretty bride-to-be meant that she’d managed to slip past him.

This journey had cost her more than four thousand dollars. There was also no possible way back to New York without Peter Warner telling her he’d been right.

And that would never do.

She drew out the letter, folded and worn from having read it many times in the past six months.

Grand Springs.

She had nothing to do for two thousand miles. She began to read, though she could recite them by heart.

All right, Mr. Beau Hawkins. Let’s see which of the Warner children was right.