The Bride's Fortune (Western Hearts and Promises #5)

Prologue

The carriage swayed around Imogen, coal dust ghosting against the window. And the bag sat at her feet like a creature deciding whether to bite. It was a plain canvas valise, scuffed at the corners, fastened with two cracked leather buckles.

They’d bought it from a man in a town they’d passed through, because the bag they’d had before was covered in dirt.

Nothing about the new bag announced what it carried. That was perhaps the worst part. A bag like any other, holding a fortune that belonged to no one they could find.

Beside her, Trapper had finally closed his eyes.

He held his hat in his lap the way other men held a Bible, with the brim turned out, as if the train were still a place where a man kept his manners.

Three weeks ago he had been the sheriff of Oxbow, Colorado, and now he was her husband.

She still didn't always believe it when she looked at him.

"You're awake," he said, without opening his eyes.

"I am."

"You've been awake for days."

"Yes."

He sighed and sat up. The light through the window had turned the color of weak tea. Outside, the prairie rolled past in long brown rolls, with here and there a windbreak of cottonwoods leaning eastward as though they had given up arguing with the wind.

"You haven't decided," he said.

"I've decided. I just haven't done it."

"Those aren't the same thing."

"No," Imogen said. “But until I know that it’s the right decision, I’m not sure how to step through that gap”

She bent and laid her hand on the bag, on the place where the canvas was warm from her ankle. There was no comfort in touching it.

"I keep thinking of her," Imogen said.

"I know you do."

"She's three carriages back. She's been sitting next to her trunk all morning with her hands folded over a letter as though she's afraid to crease it."

"You said her name was Mills."

"Florence Mills."

"Massachusetts?"

"Worcester."

He nodded. He had a way of nodding that took in more than the word he was answering.

After three days of her carrying the bag back to him from one stranger to another, after three days of her returning, shaking her head, he had stopped suggesting candidates.

He had said, only once, that he trusted her judgment of people more than he trusted his own.

Imogen had wanted to argue with him about that, because the man who had once held an entire town's lies in his head clearly knew more about people than she did.

But he wasn’t ready yet to trust his own judgement again. Not in any matter other than their own marriage. On that he had been quite sure.

"She told me about her family," Imogen said. "Not directly. She skirted them. But she's running from something she won't put a name to. And she's worried about doing wrong."

“So she’s moral? That’s good.”

"She talks about right and wrong," Imogen said. "Most people use those words the way they use the names of cities they've never been to. She used them like she'd lived in them."

Trapper looked at her then. His eyes were quiet, and the small lines at their corners that had once been carved by Oxbow's weather were softer here, away from the place.

"That's your answer," he said.

"It's a coward's answer."

“No it’s not. The truth is that you’ll never know for certain until the thing is done. You’ll always ask yourself questions. It’s a good instinct that just isn’t serving you at this moment.”

She turned the bag once between her ankles. The buckles knocked together, a small bell. "We won't tell her what's in it before we go."

“No. Of course not. She’ll find out. And when she does, we’ll be gone. She’ll know there’s no cost attached to it, just that it’s hers.”

"If she opens it on the train, she'll be frightened."

"She'll be frightened either way. Better she's frightened by a thing she can hold than by a man she doesn't know explaining it."

After a moment he said, "Next stop is Coppersand."

“We can get off there."

The whistle blew. The train began to slow. Imogen lifted the bag onto her lap, and the weight of it sat in her thighs as if she had picked up a sleeping child.

"You'll walk with me?" she said.

“I’ll stay out of sight, but yes.”

He stood, and offered her his hand, and she took it, and they began the long walk through the cars to where a woman from Worcester sat with a letter folded in her lap, waiting to be handed a favor she would never have a chance to refuse.