Chapter Two

As was her habit, Brenna waited on the boardwalk in front of the inn for the stage the next morning. It was, as usual, late.

She pulled her scarf up around her ears then tucked her hands into the arms of her coat to warm them.

“Forget your mittens?” Micah asked, coming to stand behind her. He always met the stage, too. He thought it gave people a good impression of the town.

“I didn’t think it would be so cold,” she admitted. “But it won’t be long now.” She waved at the air. “Listen, you can hear the horses.”

He grinned. “Maybe it’s not the stage, maybe it’s Santa. And he’s got that fat hen in his bag for you.”

“I’d appreciate the hen, but it’d spoil by Christmas.” She turned her attention up the street where the red stagecoach was rounding the corner of the livery. “No, a customer or two will be more to my liking this morning.”

The driver brought the handsome coach to a rocking halt right in front of her hotel.

A couple disembarked first, older, plump as dumplings with graying hair and merry, twinkling eyes. They wouldn’t be checking in, Brenna thought, disappointed, watching a young man with an even younger wife and tiny baby joyously greet them and lead them to a farm wagon sitting outside the general store.

The next was a fashionably dressed woman about Brenna’s age. Tall and blonde, she scanned the crowd, her eyes coming to rest on Brenna’s face for half a minute. Since she seemed uncertain, Brenna moved to greet her, but a harried, nice-looking man pushed his way to the front of the crowd. The woman’s gaze remained on Brenna for another moment then she turned to the man with a shy smile.

A mail-order bride? But Brenna had no time to mull over the woman’s situation when the next people descended from the coach. A black-haired youth, caught just on the edge of manhood with brilliant blue eyes and lashes like soot, climbed down then turned to lift out a tiny girl with auburn curls who was squeezed into an outgrown blue coat.

“Judas, Mary, and Joseph.” She couldn’t hold back the curse and saw shock shoot across Micah’s face at her uncharacteristic outburst.

She studied the handsome sixteen-year-old boy and pretty little girl. What were they doing here? The time wasn’t right. She wasn’t ready yet, no matter how much she’d wanted them. But that was neither here nor there; since there they were in the flesh.

The boy took the child’s hand in his and marched up to face her. “Pleased to see ya again, sister.”

“Not so pleased to see you, Thomas Patrick Malone. What the devil are ya doin’ here? Didn’t I tell you specifically to stay in New York with Auntie Maeve until I sent for ya?” she demanded, the brogue she worked at hiding spilling out in her anger.

“Aye, ya did.” Thomas’s expression hardened. “But you din’t tell me what to do if she died.”

“Died?” The word hit Brenna like a punch to the stomach. “Auntie Maeve’s dead?”

“Two months now,” Thomas confirmed. “You’ve been promisin’ to send for us for over a year now, so I took the last bit of money Auntie put back and here we are. Just in time for Christmas, too. I hope you told Santa to save something especially nice for Martha here, as that’s all that’s kept her still this long way.”

Brenna looked down at the little girl, and her heart melted.

“Of course. Santa has just been waiting for her to get here.” Brenna knelt and gathered the five-year-old into her arms. And in that moment, she realized how empty they had been. No matter what the cost, she knew she would never have the strength to send her away again.

She heard Micah clearing his throat. Once. Twice. Then a third time, more urgently. She instinctively wiped her eyes as she turned. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying.

“Brenna?” Micah’s curious voice shifted her focus so she could see the whole of the street again, not just her brother and Martha.

“Micah.” Shifting Martha’s weight, she reached out and touched his sleeve. “This is my brother, Thomas.” She indicated him. “Tom, this is Micah Trent, our sheriff. And this,” she bounced the little girl, “is Martha.”

“Nice to meet you, Martha.” Micah offered his hand.

In reply, she stuck her thumb in her mouth. Gently, Brenna pried it loose.

“And you, Tom,” Micah turned to her brother, hand still extended. “Or do you prefer Thomas?”

“Either.” Tom’s voice was neutral, but the look he gave Micah was one of appraisal. “I’m hungry, and I’m sure Martha is, too.” He turned his expectant gaze back to Brenna. “We ran out of money yesterday, and I gave her what was left of our food this morning.”

“Bless you, Tom,” she said softly, stroking the little girl’s hair. “Come along with me. There’s plenty of food at the hotel. Micah, will you join us?”

“No, you go on. You need time to talk.” He nodded toward Holly Hill’s front door. “I’ll make sure anyone looking for the hotel finds their way. I’ll come by later.”

Like a dog called away from a fight, Tom gave Micah one final, hard look as they walked away.

“So is that how it is now?” he asked pointedly as Brenna set Martha on her feet on the polished wood floor of the lobby.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Him. Is he the new one?” Tom’s words hinted at judgment.

“New what?” Brenna questioned, though she knew what he was asking.

“Where you’ve been getting the money to send to Auntie Maeve every month?”

Brenna stuck her red, roughened hands out for his inspection. “I’ve been working. Here. I get up before dawn and go to bed at midnight. I cook, wash dishes, launder sheets, and make beds. I dust and mop and muck out the chamber pots. I pay the bills and whatever was left I sent to Auntie Maeve. For you.”

“They pay chamber maids enough here to account for what you sent?” Tom’s chin jutted out. So much like his narrow-minded father.

“No, they don’t, and if there were any paid chambermaids in this town, I wouldn’t have money. I don’t work for wages anymore. I work for profit.” She stepped close to him, right in his face. “I bought this inn two years ago and been breakin’ my back to make a go of it since.”

He snorted derisively. “You bought it? With what?”

“My jewels,” she said quietly. “They were always intended for me to sell.”

He snorted again.

“I work hard, Thomas, every day and night to make a life for us.” She raised her chin defiantly. “A respectable life, far away from Five Points and the filth and the dirt and the fighting. Away from the gangs that killed your da. And away from the disease that killed Mam.” Tears stung her eyes. “It’s what she wanted. That was what I tried to do before, but I went the wrong way. This time’s different. This time I’m doing the work, not depending on someone else and what they’ll give me.”

He made another noise, this one more like a deflated huff and turned toward the back of the hotel. “I’m still hungry. You said you had food.”

****

“A brother?” Jeb repeated in wonder, pulling a red-hot horseshoe from the forge with tongs and setting it on his shop’s anvil. “No foolin’. Did she ever tell you she had family?”

“Nope.” Micah felt a little sick about that. He’d fallen in love with Brenna. Not just with her beautiful face and hair the color of Indian corn and her lush, compact body but with her courage and spirit. She’d come to town, bought the ramshackle three-story building that served as the stage coach stop and, with a silver tongue, fetching smile, and an iron will, transformed it to a real, functioning inn. “Am I stupid? I was planning to ask her to marry me, and I didn’t even know she had a brother and sister.”

“Was?” Jeb’s voice was full of concern. “Hell, brother, you’re cross-eyed in love with the woman. Do a brother and sister make that much difference? Maybe she had a reason for not sayin’.”

“Don’t you see?” Micah watched as his brother rhythmically pounded the horseshoe into shape. “I just realized how much I don’t know about her. She told me that she and her mother came from Ireland to join her father when she was a little girl, but he’d died from pneumonia while they were making the trip, but that’s all I really know.”

“So what do you think happened? Her ma was a young widow with a child, alone in a country where she don’t know anybody, so she married up again, and had the brother and sister. You said their name ain’t McCabe, and they’re a lot younger than she is. Maybe their pa just passed. Maybe that’s why they came.”

Micah pondered that a minute. “No, I don’t think so. I gather they’d been staying with an aunt, but the boy—Tom—said that she’d died two months ago. And he said that Brenna had promised to send for them. You don’t think she was just telling them that, do you?”

“Do you?” His brother’s retort was pointed. “Do you think she’d promise them and then not keep her word?”

Micah thought of Brenna. What he knew of her, her kindness, her determination. “No, I don’t—I can’t. But, I’ve been courting her since spring. Why didn’t she tell me she had family?”

****

Another late night. Brenna banked the fire in the stove, happy that her baking was done for the next few days. Fewer travelers on today’s stage seemed to signal folks were settling in for the holiday, like the couple who left in the farm wagon and the city girl with the fancy dress who met her young man this morning. Only three of the hotel’s twelve rooms were filled, and those guests had said they’d be leaving the next morning when their relation came from the next county to collect them, which in a way, was a blessing.

Martha was asleep on a cot in Brenna’s room, and Tom, after loudly protesting his assignment to the other attic room, had settled in the lean-to off the woodshed out back.

Now that she was past the surprise of seeing them, she was glad they were there. Even though they hadn’t arrived on her schedule, she had gotten one thing she’d wanted for Christmas. Her family was back together.

A rap at the kitchen door startled her. She pulled back the curtain at the window, expecting Tom, but smiled with eagerness when she saw Micah.

“I saw the light,” he explained awkwardly. “Is it too late?”

She thought of Tom and what he’d have to say in the morning if he saw the sheriff creeping in at eleven p.m. She opened the door wide. Tom might think he had the right to judge, but he depended on her kindness, not she his.

“No, it’s not. I was thinking of a cup of tea before bed. Would you like some?” She noticed him eyeing the fruits of her evening’s labors. “And we can have some pie. They’re just from the oven.”

He didn’t grin as she’d expected. “That would be nice, Brenna. Thank you.”

He was being so formal. Her excitement at seeing him cooled. Something had changed. It was ending. She’d known all along their relationship could not last. It had to end. And if he was here to break it off, she’d be spared the misery of having to initiate the conversation. She should be relieved; instead, sadness overwhelmed her.

She’d hoped to have one Christmas full of the breathless anticipation of a kiss under the mistletoe and shyly giving him the thick wool muffler she’d spent the autumn knitting. One Christmas to be a woman in love.

“The fire’s still going in the sitting room,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you go in there? I’ll be along in a moment.”

He nodded and walked into the dining room on his way to the fireplace, but she felt him watching her as long as he could.

What could she say to him? Her hands shook as she took her china tea service off the shelf. She set the tea to brew while she cut wedges of the warm apple pie.

He was due a sincere, heartfelt apology—more, because she’d played him false, and he was a good man who didn’t deserve to be led on by a woman like herself.

“Here we are,” she tried to keep her voice light as she wheeled her tea cart across the planked floors to the sitting room. “Cream and sugar?”

“Just sugar.”

He was so stiff and starched she thought he’d break if she bumped the cart into his leg.

“Two lumps, please.”

She used silver tongs to place the sweetener in the bottom of his cup then poured the steaming tea over it. The strained silence between them stretched on as she prepared her own cup, with more cream than tea and one addition of sugar.

They spoke at once.

“Micah—”

“Brenna—”

She looked down at her cup. “Go ahead.” Better to let him have the dignity of breaking things off. Easier to let him say the painful words.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a brother and sister?” He asked the question gently.

Because, just for a little while, I wanted to pretend I wasn’t who I am. “I was going to. The time just never seemed right. And I never wanted anyone to think they’d be a burden. I needed to know I could support them before they came. I just didn’t expect our aunt to die before I was ready.” And that was the truth. At least as much of it as she could tell.

Something in his eyes changed, but as well as she knew him, she couldn’t read what it was.

“And you’ve been running the hotel and sending money back to help them ever since you came?” His disbelieving tone was almost accusatory. “Without telling a soul?”

Thank God, she felt her Irish rising. A good bit of temper might get her through this. “Well, they’d be my family, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes, they would,” he said in a hushed voice, taking her hand. “Sometimes you are so much like my sister. Stubborn, bull-headed. Doing everything her way and doing it all alone. I was going to wait for this until Christmas, but knowing your situation now, I think now is a better time.”

Yes, it was. They should break it off now. Before Tom’s imagination and temper got the better of him. Before Martha got attached.

But, to her surprise, he dropped to one knee before her. “I promise, Brenna, to make them my family, too, if you’d do me the honor of marrying me.”

Her head swam. Marry him? She couldn’t marry him. He was too good a man.

From somewhere, he produced a small box. Now, he opened it awkwardly. “It’s not—”

Her eyes fell on the intricately fashioned garnet ring. “My ring,” she gasped.

“Yes, yours.” His voice held almost a chuckle. “If you’ll have me.”

She closed her eyes. Micah didn’t understand. It was hers—or it had been once already. The only piece she’d truly regretted selling. She couldn’t believe he’d found it and could believe even less that he’d chosen it for her.

Hands shaking, she lifted it from the box just before she felt the room spin and everything went black.