Tall, Dark, and Determined (47 page)

“Don't cry, sweetie.” He thumbed a tear away from her cheek. “It's all going to be fine.”
I'll make sure of it
.

“No it won't.” Cora entered the kitchen, a bulging rucksack over her shoulder and a shovel in her hand. Miss Higgins followed close at her heels, similarly equipped.

“Lacey and Dunstan went to explore the mines.” Evie's tears ran afresh. “Jake—they might still be inside the tunnels!”

No
. He struggled to hide his horror as he extricated himself from her arms and swiped the shovel from her sister. “I'll send Lawson to get word to the men to come help. The sooner we get through, the sooner we'll find them.”

Please, God, let them still be alive
.

Lacey couldn't breathe, and for once it wasn't because of her corset. Grit filled her mouth, and a heavy weight pressed her into the ground.
Chase
. She tried to call his name, but managed nothing more than a dry wheeze. She took a breath and tried again.

“Chase?” When he didn't answer, the sour taste of panic filled the back of her throat. Lacey squeezed her hands under her and pushed upward, trying to jostle him. “Chase!”

He groaned and stirred, but then went still.

“Come on, Chase.” Heart beating fast enough to race a train, Lacey pushed up again.

“Don't move,” croaked a voice next to her ear. “Can't … breathe …”

She could have cried for joy at hearing him speak.
He's alive! Thank You, Lord. Please help him…. Help me help him. We have to get up and find a way out
.

“We're pinned.” Still raspy, he sounded stronger as he shifted his weight. “The support's bowed over us.”

“You can't move?” Panic began its slow creep again.

“A little.” He strained, and Lacey felt some of the pressure ease off her. “Scoot to the right, Lacey.”

Wiggling and sliding, ignoring sharp jabs from pieces of rock, Lacey moved over. Her bag halted her progress, making her stop everything to slip the strap over her head and push it away. Then she began to move again. It went slowly, agonizingly slowly, as Chase couldn't hold himself up indefinitely. Finally, she slid free and dragged air into her starved lungs. Dimly, she realized Chase was doing the same thing—he'd been compressed beneath the weight of the bowing beam. She crawled beside him.

“Can you move now?” Lacey pressed her hands against the wooden support, feeling the tension, knowing it wouldn't hold.

She heard the slide of rocks and a grunted breath as he tried to move and failed. “My coat's caught at the side and the bottom of my sleeve.” He didn't say he couldn't take it off.

But he didn't have to. Lacey groped around for the bag she'd pushed aside, found it, and felt around the interior with trembling fingers. It seemed as though years went by before her hand closed around the slick wax of a candle, and she found the pocket holding her matches. It took five tries before she lit one properly then managed to light her candle.

The soft glow looked abnormally bright in the blackness, but Lacey held it forward to better see Chase. Sure enough, his jacket was pinched between the leaning wall and the floor, which pushed higher than the area mere feet away. From the looks of it, the beam must have pressed down on his back and ribs.

But he didn't complain.

“I can cut it away,” she told him. “If you hold this.” She pressed the candle into his outstretched hand, letting her fingers linger atop his. “It'll only be a moment.”

“Thank you.” A cough punctuated the words, and Lacey realized he'd probably breathed in far more dust than she had.

“Here.” She took back the candle and pressed her uncapped canteen into his hand. “Take a drink before I get started.”

It took some shifting, but he rolled slightly, tilting his head to drink. “Aaah. That's better.” The difference in his voice astonished and pleased her as she withdrew her folding knife from the pocket of her pack and knelt over him.

“Hold still,” she cautioned unnecessarily. The moment she drew close, he'd stiffened as though bracing himself. Lacey reached out and felt the fabric, tugging slightly to get a sense of its weave and strength. Thick and somewhat stiff, it refused to pull free. Lacey lifted it as far from Chase as she could before puncturing the cloth then sawing to start a rip line. Soon the rip was long enough for her to grab both sides and tear the fabric down to the bottom seam. This she cut.

Slicing down the length of the sleeve made for trickier work, but she'd gotten a feel for the fabric by now. Chase held still as a stone until she finished. Taking back the candle, she scrambled backward, so he could move away from the wall.

He moved to the side before pushing himself into a sitting position, rolling his shoulders and pressing one hand against his ribs. “Thank you.” Chase took the candle and held it aloft.

For the first time, Lacey saw their surroundings. Beyond the buckling wall, they had mere yards before the tunnel collapsed in a mammoth tangle of dirt and stone. She moved toward it and began pulling at the smaller rocks, pushing them away.

Please, God
, she prayed.
I know I'm not worthy of Your grace, but we need help
.

Beside her Chase began working on larger rocks. Between the two of them, they cleared a good-sized heap off to one side before the sheer size and weight of the remaining rock defeated them. Lacey sank down, panting slightly from the work.

“They know we're in here.” Again pressing his hand against his ribs, Chase settled beside her. “There's air coming in—I feel the draft on the right side of the pile. We'll be all right until they find us.”

“Yes. “Lacey stared at the small stub of candle they'd sandwiched between some rocks. “Do you have any of your candles?”

“No.” He looked at her for a moment, dark eyes missing nothing. Then he slid his arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer. “But I'm here.”

Somehow the warmth of his arm around her shoulders, the feel of his strength along her side, kept the fear at bay as her candle guttered. Now there was nothing but darkness … and Chase.

“Lacey?” His voice rumbled, low and reassuring.

“Yes, Chase?” She noticed they'd slipped into using first names, but liked it.
Besides
, she reasoned,
when you're wearing britches and sitting on the floor of a caved-in mine, the proprieties went out the window a long time before
.

“I was wrong, and I owe you an apology.” Of all the things he might've said, he chose to remind her of their differences?

She brushed it aside. “You can apologize once we're out of this place.”
For now I don't want anything to divide us
.

“Lacey?” He shifted closer. “What is it that makes you think God won't forgive you?”

“Does it matter?” Any other time she would have pulled away.

“Very much.” Certainty underscored his words like bedrock. “Because I can't understand what a woman like you could have done to make her unworthy of God's mercy.”

She thought about that for a long time and decided it was a compliment.
So now that he thinks the best of me, I'm supposed to tell him the worst?
Lacey sighed at the irony of it.

“I resented my brother.” The words dropped like fellows of the stones around them. “When he came to Hope Falls, leaving me behind because women of quality weren't welcome in a mining town, I resented him. His freedom made me jealous. I could buy the mercantile and take part in Braden's plans, but I couldn't make my own. In his last letter, he told me to stop asking when I could come join him—he'd send for me when he wished, and until then I should keep myself busy. He suggested shopping. I wrote back that if the mines made it so Hope Falls would never be readied for us, I might begin to hope they failed. The next day we heard of the cave-in.”

She heard him suck in a sharp breath and knew he was starting to understand. “It was a coincidence, Lacey.”

“I know. But I still thought it, and then I heard he was dead. Gone forever, and the last words I'd written him were in anger. It was the second time I cried in the last ten years.”

“When was the first?” His hand cupped her shoulder, rubbing up and down in a soothing motion.

“The day my father died. Before that,” she rushed on even though he hadn't asked, “was the day my mother passed away. We were told she wouldn't make it, and I cried for a week straight until we lost her. Crying doesn't make a difference—it just keeps you from appreciating what you have while it's here.”

“And it lets out some of your emotion, lessens how easily something can provoke your temper.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You couldn't have saved your parents or spared your brother, Lacey. As for envying Braden for his opportunities—it's understandable. It's human.” Chase squeezed again. “It's
forgivable
, so long as you regret it and do better.”

“That's what I thought, too.” The hot prickling of tears warned Lacey to stop talking, but she couldn't keep it in anymore. “But then I found out Braden lived. I was so relieved, so happy…. I sold our family home and convinced the women to come here and find husbands to help protect us. What they really needed protection from was my planning.” She gave a dry laugh.

“They're adults, Lacey. You were trying to take the burden off your brother and provide for your friends.” He paused. “However misguided your attempt became.”

“But …” Lacey gave a hard swallow and plunged into the worst of it. “When we arrived and Braden began raging and yelling and trying to kick us out, throwing my failures in my face every day … I began to think we would have done better without him, that if the brother I knew and admired couldn't have come back from the mines, I didn't want what was left over.” The tears won, sliding down her cheeks and dripping off the tip of her nose. “How could I resent him all over again? It's a fatal flaw. I've tried to suppress it, tried to ignore it, tried to confess it and start again. But it didn't work, Chase.”

“Repenting doesn't mean you never make the mistake again,” he told her. “It means you fight your hardest not to. From the sounds of it, you've been fighting yourself and your brother for so long, you don't know the difference anymore.”

“Maybe not.” Lacey sniffed back more tears. “So long as I'm fighting all the time, I'm not at peace. I'm not gentle or patient or long-suffering like Cora. You were right when you said I lacked virtue, Chase. You knew it on the second day you met me! No matter how much I try, I'm not a good-enough Christian. I don't think I ever will be.”

“Stop trying to be a good-enough Christian,” Chase advised. “You're a believer in Christ, so focus on Him instead of on all the things you think you need to change about yourself. Maybe then you'll realize how brave and clever and caring He made you to be.”

Lacey's breath hitched at the sweetness of the words and the conviction behind them.
If only he really believed that
. “You thought I was a murderer.”

“I said I was wrong.” He slid his hand down her arm. “Didn't you wonder why I didn't apologize, Lacey?”

“Men don't give apologies.” She shrugged.

“They do when they mean them,” he corrected. “You see, Lacey, there's a world of difference between being wrong”—his fingers twined with hers as he finished—”and being sorry about it.”

    FORTY