Katie’s arms ached from carrying Georgie through the alley. She chose each step, careful not to walk in the patches of yellow-gray slush. She knew it had been created by dishwater, flung onto the snow from the row of windows above.
“You’re getting too big,” she murmured.
Georgie twisted in her grasp and regarded her with serious blue eyes, then stuck his fingers in his mouth and resumed looking straight ahead. He was just ten months old, but he grew heavy during the weekly trek from the mountain shanty to Katie’s west-side tenement. She was forced to leave him with a miner’s wife six days a week. Her long hours at the hotel prevented her from fetching him until her day off. If only someone who lived nearer would look after him. Then I could at least bring him home at night.
But the miner’s wife was the best a girl with her reputation could do. The woman also took in laundry…and the children of prostitutes.
Does Georgie even know I’m his mother?
The thought brought a sting to Katie’s eyes. The time they’d spent together was limited, yes, but she’d tried to make it special. And she was saving every spare cent in hopes that someday she could take him away from here, to somewhere no one knew about her past. Where she could give her son a better future.
Katie ducked through the brick entryway and felt her way along the pitch-black corridor that led to the staircase. She clutched Georgie close and braved the rickety stairs.
“We’re home,” she announced as she stepped through the door.
The two women who shared her tenement glanced up from their places at the table. One acknowledged Katie’s presence with a grin, the other a grunt. The room greeted her silently with its stained, uneven floorboards and cracked walls of the same shade as the slush she’d avoided earlier.
Despite the dreariness of her surroundings, Katie considered herself fortunate. She couldn’t afford her own place and was glad when two chambermaids at the hotel said they needed a roommate. One of them, Sylvia, was a bold black-eyed girl who sometimes painted her face; the other, Helen, a world-weary killjoy whose husband had run off with a fancy-house girl. As long as Katie paid her third of the rent, they didn’t mind about Georgie—unlike the respectable boardinghouse matron who evicted her the moment her pregnancy became noticeable.
“Your kid’s bathwater is heating,” Sylvia said. “I wanted to use it, but Helen wouldn’t let me.”
Katie saw the steam that rose from the cookstove, a reassuring sight. She had laboriously packed snow into the iron kettle this morning before dawn, shivering on the gigantic snowbank behind the building.
Georgie’s bath was always a battle. By the time she brought him home, he was so tired he either wailed in protest or barely stayed awake.
Tonight, he did the former.
Sylvia raised her voice above his shrieks. “Didn’t I hear some high-and-mighty gent at the hotel offer to take that kid off your hands?”
Katie gave her a startled look. She hadn’t known anyone else had been working so late that night. “You heard us?”
Sylvia’s gaze darted to her plate of boiled potatoes, but not before Katie saw the truth in her eyes. She heard everything. She glanced at Helen. And she told Helen.
Katie sighed. “I admit I have thought twice—a hundred times, actually—about his offer.”
Georgie kicked his legs, and she tightened her grip on his slippery torso. Water sloshed from the washbasin and soaked her brown twill work dress.
Sylvia flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I would have handed that imp right over. Glorious freedom, I’d say.”
Helen said nothing.
But later, after Georgie was tucked into bed and Sylvia had gone out with friends, Helen came over to the washbasin and helped Katie lift it. They carried it to the window together.
“Don’t mind Sylvia,” Helen said. “She’s just young is all. You go right on being a good mother.”
Her words stayed with Katie the rest of the night. She tossed and fretted as she tried to fall asleep. Her cot seemed hard as a wooden plank. Or rather, her father’s cot. She’d folded it up and brought it with her when she’d come to Aspen in search of work after his death in a mine collapse. She knew there was no respectable employment for a girl at the camp, so she’d taken the small amount of money he kept stowed under the floorboard and used it for travel expenses. Before long, she’d landed the job at the Clarendon.
Hardly respectable, but at least it pays.
She forced her thoughts to happier times, before her father’s death. Her mother left them when Katie was a small girl, but her father did his best to give her a pleasant upbringing. Better to think of those days than to dwell on the enormity of the decision she’d just made for her own child.
Her agonized mother’s heart couldn’t bear it, all that she’d denied Georgie. The best schools, travel to exotic places, the prestige of being a Baxter.
Helen’s kind words drifted through her mind again. A good mother.
But at that moment, Katie didn’t feel like one.
The next morning, Georgie happily banged his spoon on his breakfast tray, his cherubic face covered in fried mush. Katie placed a kiss atop his silky head and knew she could never give him up. Whether the decision was right or wrong, I couldn’t make a different one.
Peace settled over her. There would likely be times of doubt, but for now, she was certain. God, let me never fail him.
Her roommates were at work, and Katie basked in the quiet. She wiped Georgie’s face and hands, laid a blanket on the floor, and set him down. He immediately craned his head toward the table, his attention fixed on the spoon. A disgruntled furrow creased his forehead. She laughed.
“What an impatient little scamp you are.” She reached for the spoon and was just about to hand it to him, when there was a knock on the door. She rose to answer it, expecting to find the man from the tenement next to theirs, who sometimes came to borrow coal. But the visage that greeted her was a far cry from sagging trousers and a soot-blackened grin.
Henry Baxter stood before her, tailored, pressed, and scowling. His dark gaze flickered to the spoon she still held. He lifted a brow but said only, “A chambermaid at the hotel told me I might find you here.” He paused, and added, “May I come in?”
She nodded and stepped aside, her mind in a whirl. Why is he here? Was he trying again to persuade her to give up Georgie? Well, it won’t work.
She left the door open. It wouldn’t do to further damage her already battered reputation. When she turned, she saw that he stood in the center of the room, bowler hat in his hands. She thought he’d be looking at the musty walls and scant furnishings around him, but his eyes were on Georgie. Though Henry wasn’t much taller than average, he seemed formidable as he gazed down at her son. His expression revealed nothing.
She knew she should offer tea but hated to serve him from a rusty kettle and chipped cups. Nor did she want him to stay any longer than necessary.
He faced her abruptly. “I’ll not waste your time, Miss Dupont, but get straight to the point.” He rolled the brim of his hat in his palm until it nearly bent in half. “I have come to do whatever it takes to gain your cooperation on the matter we spoke of.”
She felt a tingle, like a bitter wind swept through the window.
He continued. “You were disinclined to part ways with your son, as I recall. Let me assure you, you may keep him.”
The tingle did not lessen. Why am I not reassured? “I mean to.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you have any idea what it would do to my family if it was discovered that all our money had been bequeathed to an ill-begotten child?”
She clenched her apron in a tense fist. “Yes, sir, I do.” I’m quite familiar with the treatment of the fallen.
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “When I last saw you, you observed that Georgie’s mother was to be removed from my story.” He spoke through tight lips. “As it happens, Miss Dupont, my mother noticed it, too. She suggested I should revise that part.”
For the first time, a tiny flame sputtered inside her, a blaze of hope. And turned to ashes with his next words.
“She told me to ask you to marry me.”
Her thoughts scattered in a dozen directions. Time ticked by, and finally she realized he was speaking again.
“Mother had it all planned out, you know. How we would get married in some obscure town where no one has ever heard of us. We would be welcomed home with as much fanfare as a family in mourning is permitted to display. The press would be informed that the second son of Alexander Branson Baxter has come home to comfort his family, bringing with him the wife he married while overseas, along with their young son, George Alexander.”
Only one thought crystallized in her mind. “Georgie’s middle name is not Alexander.”
“It will be.”
Her retort didn’t escape, but the hostility must have shown on her face.
“Don’t you see that this is best for him?” he asked.
At the moment, all she could see was the brother of the man who had shattered her life, standing before her asking her to marry him. But is it really fair to compare him to Jackson?
He looked similar, it was true. They shared the same aristocratic features and dark hair, though in the light of day, she saw that Henry’s was more brown than black. Wavy with a hint of auburn. They were alike in manner, too. Both men had a diplomatic charm that made them very convincing. But while Jackson’s aplomb never failed, it seemed that Henry couldn’t quite keep his true feelings to himself.
She remembered something he’d said about being unworthy of the Baxter name. If the brother who claimed my virtue was the worthy one, what does that say about this one?
But none of that mattered. Not if the farce wasn’t believable. “I’m a miner’s daughter, not a duchess. No one will believe I’m anything more.”
“It’s risky, I’ll admit.” He gave a regretful sigh. “A pity you don’t have a foreign accent. People would just assume we’d met and married abroad, without our having to invent a story. Your unknown origins would be considered exotic and mysterious, rather than appalling and suspicious.”
So much for charming. But she overlooked his bluntness and spoke softly. “Mon nom complet est Katriane.”
He stared at her, for once speechless.
“My full name is Katriane,” she translated in a perfect French accent. “My father, Pierre Gerard Dupont, began calling me Katie when we first immigrated to America. For seven years, I have worked very hard to sound truly American.”
He recovered his ability to speak. “This should be easy for you then. Simply go back to being Katriane, and sound as French as you please.”
“Of course, it would be nice not to have to be so careful.”
“Well then.” He cleared his throat. “Say you’ll marry me, Katriane.”
In such close quarters, she couldn’t help noticing that he smelled like pine needles and cloves. Only better. She looked away.
Georgie whimpered and she hurried to kneel beside him, grateful for the distraction. She lifted him into her arms and gave him his long-awaited spoon. He clasped it as joyously as if she’d offered him the world.
And in that instant, she realized she could.
“Yes, Mr. Baxter,” she said. “I will marry you.”