Gabriel's Lady

“Just shows how little you know of me, Mattie. I’m a prince of a fellow.”

“I never said otherwise. But as to your marriage…”

Gabe rolled up to his feet. “What is it about women that makes them ask so gol-danged many questions?” he asked her, softening the query with one of his dazzling smiles.

Without another word he walked away into the dark.

Amelia dug in her carpetbag and pulled out the silk shawl her mother had given her on her twenty-first birthday. It had been the only bright moment in an otherwise miserable day. They had all known it was going to be hard getting through the celebration without Parker. Amelia and her brother were exactly one year and one week apart in age, and up to this year they had always celebrated their birthdays together. Now Parker had taken off with only a note to explain that he had joined the latest group of gold-crazed prospectors rushing to stake out new claims in the Black Hills. Amelia could hardly believe it, and her father had been so distraught that the strain on his fragile heart had sent him to bed for two days.

It had been on the very day of her birthday that the doctor had told them sternly that her father was simply in no condition to continue to work full-time at the bank he had founded and controlled like a fiefdom for the past twenty years.

Amelia ran the fine silk through her fingers, remembering. Then she twisted the shawl around her head, letting it drape over her shoulders. She might look odd, but the insects around her ears were making her crazy. If the shawl didn’t work to keep them away, she intended to climb back into the listing coach and make her bed there.

“Is that the latest New York fashion?”

Amelia jumped at the sound of Gabe Hatch’s voice coming out of the darkness behind her. She had managed to avoid talking to him most of the evening. She cranked her head to watch him emerging from the darkness. “How did you guess that I was from New York?”

He shrugged and crouched down next to her. “You have the stamp.”

She turned back toward the fire. “I’m trying to get away from these miserable bugs. If I were in New York, I’d be wearing this shawl to the opera.”

“They won’t hurt you—the bugs, I mean. I’m not too sure about the opera.”

Amelia ignored his gibe. “There must be millions of them. Is it always like this on the prairie?”

“Yup. This time of year.” He leaned close to her head and sniffed. “Part of the problem is you smell too pretty.”

Amelia pulled away. “I beg your pardon?”

Gabe went from his crouch to a sitting position and leaned back on his hands, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Your hair. You’ve used some kind of fancy soap and the bugs like it. Not that I blame them,” he added with a grin.

For the second time that day Amelia felt her cheeks growing warm with a blush. Not even her father had ever commented on anything so personal as the soap she used. All at once she remembered that Mr. Gabe Hatch was a reprobate. She should refuse to talk with him. But she found herself answering tartly, “I suppose they like it better than the odor of liquor.”

Gabe’s grin stretched wider under his golden mustache. “Now, that would make an interesting experiment, Miss Prescott. And I just happen to have some whiskey in my bags. Shall we try it out—for the sake of science?”

If it weren’t for the man’s remarkable smile, she would just refuse to speak to him entirely. But there was something so engaging…

“Shall I get us a bottle?” he asked again.

Amelia took a deep breath. “Mr. Hatch,” she said primly. “Obviously you are one of the unfortunate souls who…imbibe. I feel it my duty to tell you, sir, that this practice is one which can only lead to a most dire fate.”

“Ah.” Gabe’s expression became sober, but his blue eyes mocked her. “A temperance crusader. Is that why you’ve come to the Black Hills, Miss Prescott? You’ll have plenty of fodder for your campaign here, I wager.”

“I’m no crusader, Mr. Hatch. I was merely giving you some friendly advice. I was not named after Amelia Jenks Bloomer for nothing.”

Amelia bit her lip. Her mother, Caroline, had been a friend of the noted crusader for temperance and women’s suffrage when Amelia had been born, but in recent years Amelia had become a bit embarrassed at the name, particularly now that people had taken to applying it to a type of women’s underclothes. Nevertheless, something in Mr. Gabe Hatch seemed to bring out the reformer in her.

“I suppose your brother is named John Brown,” Gabe said with a look of amusement.

The remark took Amelia by surprise. Her brother had, in fact, been named after an abolitionist. Not the misguided firebrand John Brown, but the abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker, one of her father’s idols. “How do you know I have a brother?”

Gabe reached to throw a small log into the campfire. “I’m just teasing you.” His eyes came back to her. “Are you against teasing, too?”

Amelia shifted uncomfortably. The shawl had fallen to her shoulders. She had quite forgotten about the insects. “I’m not against teasing, Mr. Hatch, but you’ll forgive me if I do not find it appropriate under the circumstances in which we find ourselves.”

Gabe leaned back again and looked up at the sky. “Nothing wrong with the circumstances as far as I’m concerned. It’s a beautiful night.” He waved a hand upward. “Tell me if you’ve ever seen a sky like that back East.”

Amelia tilted her head. The sky had turned black. As she continued to stare, more and more stars appeared, until the points of light seemed to be swirling around them. “No, I’ve never seen anything like this,” she answered him finally.

Gabe nodded. “That’s the West for you. We may be lacking some of the comforts you have back home, but there are sights here that will make your heart want to leap right out of your body.”

His voice had softened. Amelia continued to stare at the spinning, star-spangled sky. A log fell in the campfire, sending up a shower of sparks that joined in the display. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…” she murmured sleepily.

“Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Gabe finished quietly.

Amelia sat up straight. “You know Shakespeare, Mr. Hatch?”

Gabe grinned. “You’re surprised that a lost soul such as I can appreciate the Bard?”

Amelia nodded slowly. His eyes in the firelight were really the most extraordinary blue.

“I find it useful,” Gabe continued, moving closer to her. “I haven’t found a woman yet who can resist a sonnet.” He reached out and took her hand in his. “’Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,’ Miss Prescott?”

She pulled her hand out of his grasp and leaned back on it. For the third time that day her cheeks began to burn. Perhaps she was coming down with some kind of prairie fever. She closed her eyes and pictured herself arriving in Deadwood just in time to expire in Parker’s arms. It would, she thought, serve her foolish, bullheaded brother right.

Chapter Two (#ulink_a7fa4ab3-1dc5-55c0-9171-c4a5faeb0504)

Tin-roofed shacks, brush houses, tents and wagons made into temporary sleeping quarters dotted the steep, wooded sides of Deadwood Gulch like debris scattered after a storm. It was only on the floor of the gulch, the single main street of Deadwood proper, that the structures became real buildings. Amelia stepped down from the lumbering mail coach and looked up and down the block in amazement. It was solid saloons.

“How many drinking establishments does this town have?” she asked Mattie Smith.

Mattie smiled. “Twenty-seven, at last count. You temperance workers have your work cut out for you here.”

Amelia shook her head. “I told you—I’m not a temperance worker. I’m just here to find my brother.”

“So how come you went off to sleep in that broken-down coach last night the minute Gabe took out his bottle?”

“I don’t approve of spirits, Mrs. Smith. But I’m not a crusader.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Miss Prescott, because you’ll find Deadwood a sight easier to take if you don’t start in preaching. The truth is that most of these boys come here thinking they’ll be rich in weeks. Instead they end up broke and homesick. I figure they deserve what little comfort they can get.”

Amelia looked down at her pleasantly rounded companion. “You’re a compassionate person, Mrs. Smith, I can see that. I promise you that I don’t intend to set about reforming disappointed miners. I just want to find Parker.”

Amelia felt a sinking sensation as she realized that the task might prove more difficult than she had anticipated. It might even mean going into some of these…drinking establishments. She sighed. Perhaps Morgan would know what to do. He and Mr. Hatch had both left the coach at the edge of town in front of a tall, thin building with narrow letters that spelled out Telegraph squeezed across the front. Morgan was always proud when an occasion arose to show that he had book learning, a skill he had never had a chance to acquire during his childhood in the mines in Wales. He still worked with her father three nights a week after supper, though Morgan had mastered the basics years ago and their lessons had evolved into spirited discussions of various books they read together.

Mattie cocked her head to one side. “Parker Prescott. Now, that name sounds familiar.”

Two cowboys with wide leather chaps over their dirty denims came crashing out of a swinging door just a few feet from where the women were standing. Mattie gave them a brief glance, then continued speaking. “Why, that’s Claire’s young man. Of course…Parker.”