Josiah's Treasure (39 page)

“He’s coming. Oh. Oh.”

“Don’t faint here. Go out into the hall,” he ordered. “Sarah. Dear God.”

His voice, his face grew faint. There were more footsteps, more voices. One, commanding and deep, drew near. “Step aside, young man. I have her from here.”

Her eyelids fluttered as strong hands prodded. And then she remembered no more.

Daniel paced the length of the hallway outside Sarah’s room and yawned into his hand. The doctor had chased him off last night, audibly sniffing at Daniel and scowling over his drunken condition. But the doctor wasn’t here to chase him off this morning. Ah Mong had answered the door to a miserable Daniel, glowering over an infernal headache.

I will
never
drink again.

Minnie stepped into the hall, closing the bedroom door behind her. She looked surprised to see him there. “Mr. Cady.”

“How is she?”

“Still asleep but less restless, I’d say. Phoebe, who seems to know about these things, says it’s good she hasn’t been feverish.” Minnie glanced back at the door. “But I keep thinking it would be better if she’d just wake up.”

“Maybe I can go in and check—”

Minnie put out a hand. “The doc said to keep you out. He said”—a smile flitted over her lips—“that you’re just too ornery and loud. You were a bit drunk last night, Mr. Cady.”

She didn’t have to tell him. A double dose of headache powders had barely dented his suffering. “He did say she was going to be all right, didn’t he?”

The smile stuck this time. “Indeed he did. Said the bullet really only grazed her side, didn’t even touch bone, and she’s mostly bothered by her concussion, which is best cured by rest and time. Thankfully, because I would’ve hated the thought of her having to go to the hospital.”

“That is good to hear.” He gazed longingly at the door over her shoulder.

“You can’t go in, Mr. Cady. You know, I’d say you need to keep busy. Perhaps you should tidy her workroom and maybe Mr. Josiah’s study too,” she suggested, nodding toward a room at the opposite end of the hall. “That wretched Frank Burke made a mess of everything.”

“You’ll let me know as soon as she wakes up,” said Daniel.

“Absolutely. And while you’re at it, can you look for the cat? I can’t find him anywhere! He must have run off in all the ruckus.”

“He’ll come back. He’s got it too good here not to,” Daniel assured her, pretty certain he was talking about Rufus. And not himself.

At the end of the hall, Sarah’s studio looked like a whirlwind
had struck. Daniel picked a half-finished pencil sketch off the floor. A study of roses so finely done it had to be Sarah’s work. Daniel set the sketch on the nearest worktable, stacked supplies, those that weren’t smashed beyond usefulness, alongside. He shoved bits of shattered packing crates into one corner. At least the revolver was gone, picked up by the police last night.

The doctor had known right away that Sarah’s gunshot wound wasn’t serious, but when Daniel had seen all that blood, he hadn’t been so certain. He’d thought, instead, that he might lose her.

Daniel flung a piece of broken slat onto the pile. Frankly, Sarah Whittier was too stubborn to die. As pigheaded as she was, she would bound out of that bed in no time, gather her girls around her, and try to open that shop. Determined to the end.

And he wouldn’t want her to be any different.

Daniel put his back to the worktable and stared out the window at another beautiful San Francisco morning. He couldn’t stay here. He didn’t want to leave. But back in Chicago a pair of ten-year-old twins were waiting for him to return home, and Sarah was equally committed to her girls and their futures. Duty. They were both willingly chained to it.

Daniel glanced across the hallway to his father’s study. Another duty to face in a room that had more to do with Josiah than a carved headstone in a cemetery.

Slowly, he pushed the door open. The sweet scent of cigar smoke rushed like a tide over Daniel, flooding him with memories. How could the space still breathe of Josiah? He went inside, stepping over a handful of magazines blocking the way. Books and papers were scattered everywhere, and writing implements leaked ink onto the rug. The door to a wall safe hung open, its contents tossed to the ground. Daniel picked up an inkwell, righted the reading lamp that had occupied a corner table, straightened a painting that hung at a crooked angle. Even with the mess, Daniel could see what the room had once been—a recreation of the study Josiah had favored at Hunt House, only smaller in scale.

The blasted man had left Chicago but taken part of it with him. Just like the lilies in the garden.

“How dare you?” Daniel asked the space, grabbing up papers by the handful and stacking them on the desk, shoving books randomly onto empty shelves. Josiah couldn’t have cared, he couldn’t have wanted to remember, when seemingly all he’d ever done was try to forget.

Beneath a pile of correspondence shoved into a corner, a bit of gold winked at him. Daniel picked it up, a lone gold nugget, smaller in size than the tip of his little finger. It must have fallen out of something while the burglar was ransacking the room and gone unnoticed by the man.

Daniel lifted the nugget to the sunlight coming through the slats in the window blinds. “Not much of a treasure, Josiah. Worth all of twenty dollars, I’d guess.” But enough gold, apparently, to set off a firestorm of rumors and speculation.

Daniel placed the nugget in the center of the desk. On the floor near the desk’s chair, he noticed a long, flat box with a shattered lid. There were letters within, as well as a tidily wrapped set spilled out onto the floor, the pink ribbon enwrapping them as bright as the day it had been tied. Daniel picked them up. He recognized the handwriting.

“Josiah.”

He gathered all of the letters together. Some were written in his father’s scrawling hand, but many others were covered in the neat, even loops of his mother’s penmanship. At the bottom of the box was a faded telegram.

Settling into the chair, Daniel opened the letters and read, one after the other, reliving the most painful year of his life. But once he got to the telegram, that pain was replaced by an even fiercer anger.

Daylight was blinding, squashing any desire Sarah might have to
open her eyes and try to figure out what she was doing in bed, her head pounding, her side swathed in bandages.

“Miss Sarah!”

Sarah pried open an eyelid at the sound of Minnie’s voice. Minnie sprang from the chair next to the bed and leaned over. Her hair curled messily around her face and her dress was wrinkled as if she’d been sitting there a long time. But her face was wreathed in smiles. “Miss Sarah! Oh, thank goodness, you’re awake at last! And never any fever!”

On the other side of the bed, Phoebe smiled. “I told you, Minnie. We keep the wound clean and there will be no cause to worry.”

“What am I doing here?” Sarah asked, every word feeling like a blacksmith’s strike against an anvil in her head.

“You were shot last night. Don’t you remember? By Frank Burke.”

“Shot?” That would explain the bandages. “But my head . . .” She probed the back of her skull and found a tender lump. “I can’t remember what happened to me.”

“When Mr. Cady came to rescue you and that Frank shot you in the tussle, you fell backward and struck your head on the edge of a crate.” Minnie exchanged looks with Phoebe, who nodded. “The doc says you were concussed.”

“Oh.” Sarah tried to scoot higher on the pillows, but the motion set off throbbing in her temples and a rush of dizziness. “I’m afraid I don’t understand why Mr. Cady was here to rescue me. And what do you mean about Frank?”

Minnie and Phoebe took turns explaining what they’d learned had happened last night, that Anne’s man had come to rob Sarah again and that Mr. Cady, like some avenging angel, had interrupted him, but not before he’d shot Sarah. The police caught Frank when he tried to run off, though, and he was locked away. They’d also heard that Mrs. Brentwood had shrieked and cried yet had managed to help the doctor carry Sarah into her bedroom, right before she collapsed in a dead faint on the parlor
settee. The two girls giggled over that.

“Is Mr. Cady here?” asked Sarah. “I’d like to thank him.”

“I’ll tell him you want to see him,” said Minnie. “He’s been pacing like a caged animal.”

Minnie left the door open as she went to fetch Daniel, and it wasn’t long before Sarah heard hurrying footsteps and he burst into the room. Minnie gestured for Phoebe to come with her and leave them alone. Daniel inspected Sarah for injury as if he couldn’t believe she was alive and awake.

“Sarah,” he said, sitting on the bed, his weight sagging the mattress. He carried a stack of letters, which he deposited on the bedside table, and gathered one of her hands in his. His touch was comforting, whether he meant it to be or not.

I could never carve him out of my heart.

“For a moment last night I thought the worst,” he said. “I’m glad to see you’re all right.”

“The girls told me what happened, because I can’t seem to remember much,” she said, searching his face for some emotion deeper than anxiety. “And I don’t understand how you knew Frank was here.”

“I didn’t.” Daniel’s thumb swept across the back of her hand, causing her skin to tingle. “I was busy being stupid at the Occidental when that reporter came along and goaded me into asking you, one last time, about the nuggets.”

“Ah.” That rumor could have killed her. “Satisfied, Mr. Cady?”

He lifted an eyebrow and she thought of Josiah. “Actually, Miss Whittier, there was some gold.”

“There was?”

“A nugget about the size of a cherry pit. It was on the floor in the study,” he explained. “Frank Burke missed finding the treasure he was searching for.”

“Those stories about gold nuggets weren’t completely wrong.”

“It seems not.” He glanced over at the letters he’d brought
into the room. “But I was completely wrong about other things.” His gaze returned to her face, and his expression was somber. “Sarah, I need to go to Chicago.”

Her heart contracted. “I know you need to go back to Chicago, Daniel.” That had always been his plan. But she’d hoped that his actions last night, how gently he held her hand, meant those plans might have changed.

“I mean I need to leave as soon as I can. If I hurry, I can make this afternoon’s three o’clock train.” He frowned and took another look at the letters. “There’s business I have to attend to. With my grandfather.”

She could hear the anger in his voice. The emotion was never far from the surface for him. “Your sisters will be happy to see you.”

“It’s because of them that I need to go. They’ve been living with a lie. We’ve all been living with a lie.” He stood, his hand still wrapped around hers. She resisted the temptation to cling. “You have two very capable nurses out there in the hallway. You’ll be all right.”

Was he saying that to reassure her, or himself? “I’m sure I’ll be up and about in no time.”

“I never had a doubt, Miss Whittier.” Another brief smile that never reached his eyes. “If you want, I’ll send you a telegram letting you know I’ve arrived safely.”

“Only if that’s what you want to do. You don’t owe me anything, Daniel Cady,” she said. She wouldn’t beg to hear from him or shed tears of longing. Other women might, but not her. He wouldn’t expect her to, either.

Daniel slipped his hand from hers, and she felt every finger as it relinquished its hold.
How many times can my heart break, God?

Many times, it seemed.

“I shall be back, you know.”

Did she? Did she know that at all? “Take good care.”

“Read those letters.” He nodded toward the stack. “They’ll explain.”

Hesitating, he brushed a hand across her forehead, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, then turned and strode out of the room.

Minnie rushed in after he was gone. “Have you two worked everything out between you?” She lifted her brows expectantly, as if Sarah might announce they were set to be wed and all their problems taken care of.

Sarah couldn’t think about that, think about him if she didn’t want to bawl in front of the girl. “Minnie, help me sit up. I need to do some reading. And if you could, bring me some tea.”