Gabriel's Lady

Amelia decided to ignore the strong language. In view of the obvious nature of Parker’s disappearance last night, she decided that swearing was the least deleterious of Parker’s new activities.

“He could die, Parker. That bank is his life, and he’s simply not willing to turn over the reins to anyone else but you.”

“He’s not willing to turn them over to me, either, sis.”

“At least you could try.”

Parker tore at a tuft of grass and threw it violently into the river. “We’ve been warned about Father’s heart condition for years now, Amelia. How come it suddenly gets so especially grave just when I’m trying to make a new life for myself?”

Amelia put her hand on her brother’s knee. “We owe them, Parker. They’re our parents, and they’ve always taken care of us.”

Parker was silent, continuing to pull up blades of grass. Finally Amelia said, “Couldn’t your partner run the mine for a while? What’s his stake in this, anyway? You say you bought this equipment yourself. What has he put into it?”

Parker flopped backward on the grass and closed his eyes. “It was sort of a…mistake.”

“What does that mean?”

He winced and peered up at her through one half-open eye. “You’ll find out sometime, I guess. I lost half the mine to Gabe in a poker game.”

“A poker game!”

“When I first came out I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, and I was hardly panning out enough to eat on, so I thought I’d try my luck with the cards. It worked out pretty well—for a while.”

Amelia turned around and sat back on her knees facing him. “I knew that that Gabriel Hatch was the one who had gotten you into trouble.”

Parker opened his eyes. “It was my decision. Gabe had nothing to do with it. Besides, the pot I lost was worth more than my entire mine, but he refused to take more than half.”

“How generous of him! He refuses to steal more than half the property of an innocent boy who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“I knew perfectly well what I was doing, sis. In fact, you might be surprised to know that I was getting pretty good at the tables.”

“Good enough to lose half your mine.”

“Just forget it, all right? It’s my business, not yours.” He rolled to his feet. “I have to get to work.”

Amelia watched as he crossed the bridge over to the long wooden trough that ran along the gravel bank of the river. He set his wide-brimmed hat back on his head and bent over to pick up a shovel.

So they had quarreled once again. Parker had changed in the few months they had been separated, and Amelia felt a stab of grief. She wanted her brother back. She wanted her family living all together harmoniously in their comfortable house in New York. But she had the sick feeling that those days were gone forever.

She stood and walked slowly up to the cabin. She felt the need to blame someone for the change in Parker, and the likely candidate was Gabriel Hatch. But when she tried to generate some anger against the attractive gambler, she found herself remembering how he’d helped cure her headache last night, how he’d tried to console her about Parker. Most of all she found herself remembering that when she’d stood next to him on the bridge in the moonlight, her heart had inexplicably started beating as wildly as the wings of a trapped bird.

Amelia knelt on the stone hearth of Parker’s big fireplace and stirred a pot of stew that Morgan had helped her fashion from a squirrel he had caught that afternoon. The concoction smelled gamey to her, but she was hungry enough to be willing to give it a try.

She had utterly refused to consider going to town to dine with Gabriel Hatch at the Willard Hotel. Morgan had reminded her of the invitation just after Parker had confessed the manner in which Hatch had obtained half the mine. Though Morgan felt it would be rude to turn the man down, Amelia had decided that, considering the strange feelings the gambler had engendered in her, the less she had to do with him, the better.

The door opened and Parker’s lanky frame filled the doorway. They hadn’t spoken since their quarrel at lunch. “I have a proposition,” he said.

His voice sounded hesitant, but hopeful. She looked up.

“I know I can make the mine work, Amelia. And I’ve just got to be able to give it a try.”

It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Her shoulders sagged, and she went back to stirring the stew.

“Don’t turn away, sis. Listen to me. As I said, I’ve a proposition. If I had Morgan to help me, I could really get this thing going. Give me six weeks—six weeks—to make the mine profitable. At the end of six weeks if I haven’t either found my lode or built up our panning to at least twenty-five dollars a day, I’ll go back home with you.”

His face had that expression of satisfaction he’d always shown when he’d beaten her at a game of chess or two-handed whist. “And what if you do strike it rich, as you say, by the end of six weeks?” she asked.

He hunched down next to her, his eyes gleaming. “Then you and Morgan go on back to New York by yourselves. I’ll send Mother and Father my love, and before long I’ll send them enough money for that tour of Europe they’ve put off their entire lives. Father can’t very well work at the bank if he’s on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.”

Amelia considered her brother’s words. She didn’t believe there was any way he would be able to make the mine work in just six weeks, even with Morgan’s help. It would mean a delay in their return, but perhaps this bargain would be a way to accomplish her mission without more fighting. “You’d need to ask Morgan if he’d be willing,” she said.

Parker grinned. “I already did. He says he’ll go along with whatever you decide.”

Amelia gripped the handle of the stew pot with the makeshift apron she had fashioned that morning from one of her petticoats. “This is ready to eat,” she said, standing.

Parker pulled out the flap of his shirt and used it to take the pot from her and carry it to the table he had built from two flour barrels and some planking. “So what do you say?” he persisted.

Six weeks. Six weeks of a wooden bed and squirrel stew and…

“I’d want you to stay away from that Mr. Hatch,” she said. “I still think that he’s responsible for getting you into trouble.”

Parker seemed to sense her capitulation. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I haven’t gotten into any trouble. At least, not any I can’t handle. But as to Gabe, he has as much right to be around here as I do. He owns half the place.”

Amelia felt the strange flutter in her chest again. She looked up at her brother. “So Gabriel Hatch is part of the deal?”

Parker gave a firm nod. “He’s part of the deal.”

Chapter Four (#ulink_ab3948b3-e287-5f3e-ac7b-0d842078c341)

It had been a discouraging day. The stew of the previous evening had not set well with her, and Amelia’s stomach had rolled all morning. She had gotten on Parker’s nerves again with her hovering presence. All she had wanted was to understand the workings of the mysterious equipment he had installed at his mine, but he had grown defensive at her questioning. By midafternoon he was fully out of sorts and had taken off again for an unspecified destination “in town.”

Amelia sat on the hard cot and looked disconsolately around at the single room that would be her home for the next six weeks. There were two windows chopped in the logs, but they were covered by oil paper, so it was impossible to see outside. Besides the cot, the crude table and four barrel chairs, there was the cane rocker, a set of cupboards built up the wall and a large wood bin. That was the extent of the furniture. Amelia closed her eyes and pictured the elegant Prescott parlor back home with her mother’s prize Biedermeier furniture. Independence certainly had its price, she thought wryly. But when tears began to prickle behind her eyelids, she gave herself a shake and stood. One of Caroline Prescott’s favorite phrases was, “Never underestimate the power of the human spirit.” Surely her mother’s daughter could not let herself be daunted by an unasked-for stint of pioneering.

She brushed her hands together resolutely. The room was sparse and crude, but it didn’t have to be dirty. Her first order of business would be to give this place a good, thorough cleaning. She marched across the room and flung open the door to call to Morgan, who was at the river’s edge sifting a cradleful of sludge.

“Does my brother have any cleaning supplies in the lean-to?” she called.

Morgan laughed. “Cleaning supplies?”

“Brushes, brooms, buckets, soap.”

With no apparent effort, the Welshman pulled on a thick rope and hoisted the heavy cradle into an idle position. Then he came over to her. “I don’t think so, Missy. What do you want those things for?”

“To clean, of course. If this is to be our home for the next few weeks, the least I can do is try to make things a little more livable.”

Morgan peered into the tiny cabin with a doubtful expression. “It would be quite a task, if you ask me.”

“Well, it would give me something to do. Obviously Parker doesn’t want me hanging over him while he’s mining. So I’ve decided that I’ll just take over the housework and the cooking.”