A Most Unsuitable Match (30 page)

Fannie looked around at the room.
Periwinkle blue.
The log walls were painted Mother’s favorite color. The two chairs next to the tea table by the fireplace were like the ones in Mother’s room. And Edie had a gilt-rimmed mirror hanging on the wall opposite the window. It was so much like Mother’s it felt . . . almost haunted. She shivered again. Shook her head.

Edie sighed dramatically. “So sorry to disappoint you, my dear. I’m certain you wish you’d kept the fairy tale intact.” She seemed about to say something else, but instead, she turned to go. “I’ll see that Edmund and Patrick know you’re here. Edmund’s patient is doing better. In fact, he’d planned on returning to town this morning.” She nodded toward the door. “I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable waiting in the buggy.”

Edie was just like Mother, after all. The warm woman in the letters didn’t exist. Determined not to let her see the pain she’d caused by dismissing Fannie so easily, Fannie hurried to leave, blinking back the threatening tears. She’d just gotten to the door when Edie called after her.

“I wonder, Fannie. In your mother’s things . . . did you find an amethyst ring? It would have matched a necklace and earrings Eleanor used to wear.”

“It was there.” Something in Fannie wanted to strike out at the stone-faced woman rejecting her. “I don’t recall ever seeing her wear it.”

“Well, of course not, dear. I sent it to
you.
But obviously she didn’t tell you that. Obviously . . . she didn’t tell you anything.”

Fannie whirled around and lashed out. “Now that I’ve met you, I’m glad she didn’t.”

But Edie was gone. She probably hadn’t even heard the words.

She’d hurried out to Edmund’s buggy to get away from Edie, crying as she climbed aboard, and then hunkered down to wait for him, finally falling into an exhausted sleep. At the sound of Edmund’s voice, she opened her eyes.

“Fannie. Fannie, wake up. I’ve brought you some water. We’ll be heading back into Fort Benton soon. You need to drink something.”

Fannie blinked, saw Edmund’s kind face, and began to cry again.

“You’re a foolish, foolish woman,” he scolded.

“And you lied to me!” Fannie spat the words out. “You
knew.
All this time you knew. You let Samuel go looking for her . . . and all the while—” Edmund touched her arm. She jerked it away. “Leave me alone.”

“No,” Edmund said. When Fannie looked back his way, he repeated it. “I won’t leave you alone. Stop behaving like a spoiled child who didn’t get what she wanted for Christmas.” He looked back toward the house. “Do you have any idea what it did to Edie to open the door and have you just . . . standing there?”

“I have an excellent idea,” Fannie said. “It didn’t mean a thing.”

“Oh, Fannie . . .” He shook his head. “Think, Fannie.
Think
. Put yourself in Edie’s shoes. You’ve left home and written twenty years’ worth of letters that read like fairy tales. And then . . . everything falls apart. You do the best you can, but the best you can do is something everyone in your past would find heinous. And then, just when you feel that you’re finally beginning to dig your way back out, someone young and innocent . . . someone you long to know . . . arrives on your doorstep. And you aren’t ready. You want her to admire you. But you can see exactly what you don’t want to see in her eyes. And your heart breaks.”

Fannie gazed back toward the log house.

Edmund cleared his throat. “As to my being a liar . . . I never lied. Not to you, and not to Mr. Beck. I do owe you both an apology. Of course I recognized Edie when Mr. Beck showed me her photograph.” He glanced toward the house. “I’ve been the doctor for Bonaparte’s since the beginning. I told Edie about you the first time I saw her after Samuel showed me that cabinet portrait. But I also promised her I wouldn’t say anything to you, at least for a while. To give her time to decide what she wanted to do.”

“You let Samuel go on a pointless search.”

“No I didn’t. He was going anyway, in search of his sister. And, quite honestly, I knew he’d probably run into someone who knew Edie. They’d tell him where Edie’s establishment was located, he’d run into the new owner . . . and maybe find Emma as a result.” He scrubbed his beard with the back of his hand. “I also thought that perhaps Mr. Beck would come back with evidence that would help you understand Edie. Evidence that would show you what I meant when I said she was starting to dig her way back out.”

Fannie frowned. Shifted in the buggy seat and turned toward him. “Bonaparte’s is a
brothel
, Edmund. I know what a brothel is, I know what Edie is, and you can please stop trying to talk around it.”

“Except that Bonaparte’s
isn’t
a brothel, Fannie. Not anymore.” When Fannie snorted disbelief, he smiled and opened his mouth to explain, but just then Patrick came trotting out from behind one of the “bunkhouses.” The man who was shuffling alongside the boy waved a greeting, and Edmund hurried to finish. “We’ll talk later, but, Fannie—none of us is completely who we seem. There’s a great deal of pain beneath Edie’s icy demeanor. It’s a defense. I don’t know all the reasons, but I suspect your family plays a part.” He put a hand on her arm. “I’ve never seen Edie cry, Fannie. She was crying when she told me you were out here.”

“Fannie?” Patrick asked in disbelief. He looked toward his father. “But how did Fannie get to Mrs. Bonaparte’s ranch?”

“Exactly the question I was about to ask,” Edmund said, even as he helped Pete hitch the little mare to the buggy for the drive back to Fort Benton.

“Lame Bear brought me,” Fannie told them. “He led Smoke and I rode.”

Pete’s gray head popped into view from the off side of the mare. “You come all the way out from Fort Benton with that old Injun? In the
night
?” He shook his head. “Wonder you didn’t all turn into wolf bait.”

Fannie cleared her throat. “Well . . . we weren’t alone.” She glanced at Edmund. “Those sons of his—he rounded them up first. They walked behind. With rifles.”

Edmund and Pete exchanged glances. When both men burst out laughing, Fannie sniffed. “I don’t see what’s so funny. I was nearly frightened to death the entire way.”

“Fannie Rousseau,” Edmund explained, “you have got to be the only white woman in all of Montana who calls up four Blackfeet warriors to escort an expedition.”

Pete joined in. “Yes, ma’am. That’s something all right.” He grinned. “You might want to have your answer ready when one of Lame Bear’s sons proposes marriage.”

Fannie shot both men a horrified look that set them both to laughing again. For his part, Patrick seemed impressed by the whole idea. “Do you think Owl and his brothers would come hunting with us sometime, Pete?” He glanced Fannie’s way. “Wouldn’t
that
impress the girls at school?”

“Patrick LaMotte,” Edmund scolded. “You just get in the buggy and stop thinking so much about how to impress the girls you haven’t met at the school you haven’t been accepted to in a place we haven’t gone.” He thanked Pete for his help, waved toward the house, and then climbed aboard.

Fannie sighed with relief when Edmund settled beside her on the buggy seat. She was going to be stiff and sore in places she didn’t realize she had come morning. What she wouldn’t give for a soak in a tub of hot water. Thinking about baths set her to thinking about the bathhouse at the far end of Main in Fort Benton. Bathhouses . . . brothels . . . her eyes grew heavy as Patrick enthused about camping out with Pete at the ranch, and the ancient gelding Pete let him ride . . . and then she was waking and realizing she’d been using Edmund’s shoulder for a pillow.

The minute she lifted her head, Edmund leaned down and said in a low voice, “Someone’s upset.” Fannie followed his gaze toward the clinic, where Abe Valley was waiting. The minute they drove up, he was at the buggy helping Fannie down, but all the while wanting to know what in tarnation she thought she was doing sneaking out in the middle of the night without so much as a “fare thee well.”

“I . . . I’m sorry, Abe,” Fannie stammered as she looked up at him. “I guess I didn’t think.”

“Yer darned tootin’ you didn’t think!” Abe sputtered. “Lucky you didn’t get pulled apart by wolves.”

“Wolves would never have gotten Fannie,” Patrick said from the buggy’s back seat. He told Abe about Lame Bear and his sons.

Abe looked doubtful until Edmund chimed in. “It’s true,” he said, barely stifling a chuckle.

“Well, at least she’s got the sense to know better than to head off into the wilderness without a gun.” He waxed colorful regarding the aftermath of such an event and swore his way through an imaginary funeral and then, after telling Fannie he expected her to be back in time to serve supper and help with cleanup, he stormed off.

“Mr. Valley was mad,” Patrick said with wonder. “I never saw him so mad.”

Fannie glanced at Edmund. “I should go. Help him with . . . everything.”

Edmund nodded. Glanced Patrick’s way. “Maybe we’ll bring Abe some business for supper.” He smiled. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and a piece of pie later.”

“That means I’ll have to bake some pies,” Fannie said with a grin.

“You know what I hate?” Patrick interjected. “I hate it when grown-ups talk about coffee and pie but they’re really talking about something else.”

Edmund laughed. “Would you rather I just said, ‘Patrick, find something to do. I want to talk to Fannie and I don’t want you to hear it’?”

Patrick shook his head. “No, I guess not. Then I wouldn’t get pie.”

“Pie it is, then,” Fannie said.

“And I’ll offer to go to bed early so the grown-ups can talk,” Patrick sighed.

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

P
SALM 37:4

Edmund and Patrick lingered over supper at Abe’s, and when the last diner left, the two helped transform the dining room into a sitting room by scrubbing tables and lighting lamps. Four boarders started up a card game at one table, and Patrick offered to help Abe wash dishes “so the grown-ups can talk about something besides pie.”

As Fannie and Edmund walked toward the levee in the moonlight, Fannie pulled her shawl about her shoulders and folded her arms across her torso. “I don’t think I really know how to have this conversation.”

“Well, I know how to begin it,” Edmund said. Stopping short, he touched Fannie’s arm and, when she turned toward him, he repeated his apology. “I truly did not mean to deceive anyone. My intent was only to give Edie time to adjust to the idea that a past she obviously finds very upsetting has caught up with her.”

He leaned toward her slightly. “Please say you believe me.”

His sincerity was undeniable. “Of course I do.” She took his arm. “What I don’t understand is Edie. She’s nothing like the woman she created in her letters. Were they all lies? And if they were, and Mother knew it . . . why did she keep them?” Fannie shook her head. “I don’t understand any of it.”

Edmund covered her hand with his. “All I know is that Edie was visibly shaken when I told her you were here. Stunned, really.”

“That, I do understand,” Fannie said. “Her letters created a fantasy. When I showed up at the door, she’d been found out.” She paused. “And honestly, Edmund . . . what woman wants her family to know she’s running a brothel?”

“Except, as I said earlier, she isn’t. She did . . . but she doesn’t anymore.” They were near the clinic, and Edmund guided her there, motioning for her to be seated on the front porch bench while he leaned against an upright. “The Bonaparte’s up in the gold camps was just what you say. And a successful one, apparently. But last year, something terrible happened. One of Edie’s favorite girls took her own life. The patient I drove out to see—Mollie—said that, for a while, they were all afraid Edie was going to follow suit. She was that distraught. Then Edie closed down. She sold out and came here. Five of her girls came with her when she told them she wanted to provide a haven of sorts—if they were interested.” Edmund looked out toward the river. “She had the ranch built, and very quietly, word has traveled in the territory that if a sporting girl needs a way out, she can come to Bonaparte’s.”