Two Brides Too Many (2 page)

Questions piled upon questions, leaving Kat feeling a bit queasy.
What was Father talking about? Opportunities for what? And what did men in Colorado have to do with her and Nell? Kat glanced at Ida for answers, but her big sister looked just as dumbfounded as she felt.

“After the war, many men from the East moved out west, where they’re making good wages in the mines, railroads, and businesses. Some are even striking it rich. Vivian isn’t of the age for a husband yet. The rest of you are, and I’m afraid it’s time to start looking.” He shook his head. “Ida will finish her studies first, but I want the two of you to wire advertisements to the
Cripple Creek Prospector
in Cripple Creek, Colorado.”

“Advertisements?” The one word was all Kat could choke out.

“Yes, poppet. Advertisements for husbands.”

Kat pulled her napkin to her face and tried to hide her dismay. Traveling west to look for husbands was one thing. But advertising in a newspaper for one was another matter entirely. It just wasn’t something that well-bred ladies did.

But one look at her father’s pained face made her realize that everything had changed.

T
WO

1896, Cripple Creek, Colorado

K
at tried to block out the
clickety-clack
of the train wheels as she wrote in her journal.

An adventure. That’s what I’ll call this journey Nell and I are on. It’s not so much a romantic tale as it is an adventure story. The story of two sisters—

“My name’s Lucille Reger. My mother and I are going to see my aunt.”

Kat laid her pencil in her journal and looked up at the girl who sat in the train seat across from her.

“I’m Kat Sinclair,” she said, studying the young passenger. Lucille had boarded the train in Colorado Springs with her mother, who now
slouched in the seat opposite Nell, sleeping as if she hadn’t closed her eyes in days. The girl had had her nose poked in a worn copy of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
for most of the journey, but now the book sat on her lap. “And this is my sister Nell.”

Nell looked up from the letter she held and gave the girl a warm nod. “Hello, Lucille.”

“Are you writing a book, Miss Kat Sinclair?”

“This is just my journal.” Kat closed the soft leather cover. “My sister and I left Maine the better part of a week ago, and I’ve been writing about our journey.”

Pulling another letter from the bundle in her lap, Nell looked over at Kat, a brow raised. “You could write a book, you know, if you set your mind to it.”

“Thank you, but—”

“I’d read your book if it had princesses in it,” Lucille volunteered. “Or an evil witch.” The train snaked around another mountain, and the girl’s barley-sugar curls bounced at her shoulders. “Do you write about those things?”

“Sometimes I do write about my sister.”

Nell elbowed her. “The good princess.”

“I just like to write poetry and record things in my journal. I’m not a real writer.”

Nell huffed. “What do you call writing for the
Portland Press Herald
?” Sunlight streaked through the window, highlighting her freckles.

“I call it a thing of the past.” She’d written two articles for the paper, and it was not a regular job by any stretch of the imagination. Kat appreciated her sister’s encouragement, but now that she was moving
out West to marry a miner, journal writing was probably as close as she’d come to being a writer. It was probably best that she concentrate on this new chapter—life in Colorado with Mr. Patrick Maloney Kat returned the journal to her bag and pulled out her own bundle of letters. It was a much shorter stack than Nell’s.

They’d only been corresponding with their grooms-to-be for three months, but they were the most hopeful weeks she and her sisters had enjoyed since Father announced his move to Paris. Kat couldn’t believe she was finally going to meet Patrick.

Lucille held up the book in her hand. “I’m reading ‘Cinderella.’ It’s my favorite story. What are you reading?”

“These are letters from my own prince.” Nell smiled, her eyes sparkling.

Lucille’s blue eyes widened. “You have a prince?” Nell slid her intended’s hand-tinted photograph out of a worn envelope on her lap. “This is my Judson Archer,” she said, gazing at his face for probably the twentieth time this week.

“He does look like a prince.” Lucille’s curls bounced as she nodded.

Nell tapped the bundle in Kat’s lap. “My sister has one too.”

Lucille looked up at Kat. “Do you have a picture of your prince?”

Kat wasn’t inclined to call Patrick Maloney a prince. She’d never so much as met the man, but he was a foreman for a big mine, he wanted a wife, and he had sent her train fare. That had seemed to be enough to ease Father’s mind, so Kat tried to be optimistic. She pulled Patrick’s photo from the folds of his last letter. She’d received it the day Father announced that Kat and Nell couldn’t wait until June to wed the two men who wanted them for wives. The next day she and Nell had boarded the westbound train in Portland.

Kat scooted to the edge of the seat to show the tintype to Lucille. The girl shook her head. “I like his chin, but I don’t think a prince wears a hat like that.”

This girl was much too precocious for her own good. In the picture, Patrick wore a bowler with the eye of a peacock feather secured in the band. But a man’s clothing hardly disqualified him as a prince, or as an appropriate husband. She could think of a dozen quick responses to the child’s observation but thought it best to hold her tongue.

“Did you see my Judson’s ocean blue eyes?” Nell continued to gaze at her photograph.

“The photographs are hand-tinted, Nell. You can be sure it’s an embellished coloring.”

“Devotion swirls in their deep pools.”

Devotion swirls in their deep pools
. Kat sighed. To think, she’d been the one accused of florid prose.

She looked down and studied Patrick’s solid Irish face and well-trimmed handlebar mustache. Skimming his jaw with her fingertip, Kat imagined the feel of manly stubble. “Do you know what this cleft in Patrick’s chin means?”

“That he’s as stubborn as a mule.” Nell giggled, and Lucille mimicked her.

“It’s the mark of a decisive man.” She’d made up the theory, but it did seem likely, given the brevity she’d seen in Patrick’s letters. So what if he wasn’t as long-winded as Nell’s Judson? He had simply made up his mind more quickly. Plus, he worked as a foreman at the Mary McKinney Mine and volunteered with the fire brigade, so he was obviously an industrious man as well.

“Mrs. Judson Archer.” Her sister’s wistful whisper sounded like a flute in a romantic rhapsody as she picked up one of the letters and began to read. “‘My dearest Nell, I’m counting the days until you arrive in Cripple Creek and become my beloved wife. The fifth of June is far too many days away.’”

Patrick was obviously too busy with work to write incessantly. And probably too shy to go on about such personal feelings, but that was all right with Kat. She could do any writing that needed to be done.

“He said the fifth of June. This is only April twenty-eighth.” Lucille stood to reach for the letter, nearly falling on top of them before she sat back down.

“Our father had to leave Maine sooner than expected, so we had to move up our trip.” Nell tucked Judson’s picture and the letter back into its crumpled envelope and slipped the bundle into her satchel. “We sent telegrams to let them know we were leaving Maine several weeks early.” Nell brushed at the soot that spotted her dress sleeve.

“I want to see your princes. Will they be at the depot?”

Kat raised an eyebrow. Lucille sounded much too dreamy for a child her age.

“Yes, they’ll be there.” Nell studied the empty ring finger on her left hand.

“Are you marrying them tonight?”

A nervous giggle escaped Nell’s closed lips.

Kat sighed. Her sister was much too patient with the girl. “No.”

“Kat’s prince sent us the name of a boardinghouse where we can live until we’re married.”

Kat gave Nell her look that said enough was enough.

“She’s just curious,” Nell whispered.

“You’re encouraging her to be meddlesome.”

The train’s rhythm had slowed as it made its final ascent up the narrow track that gripped the edge of the mountainside, like a cat climbing a gnarly tree trunk.

The conductor opened the car door, and a blast of cold air followed him into the compartment and stirred Lucille’s mother.

“What?” The woman asked the question of her daughter, who pointed at the pudgy man with the wire-rim spectacles. He hitched his thumb between the buttons on his striped vest. “Fifteen minutes to the Cripple Creek Depot, folks.”

Nell glanced down at her soiled calico travel dress. “We’re a frightful pair…covered from our curls to our boots with soot. I do wish we had time to freshen up at the boardinghouse before we meet our future husbands.”

“We’ll just have to do our best with what we have,” Kat sighed. “Since they’ll be the ones taking us and our trunks to the boardinghouse.” She pulled a handkerchief and a mirror from her reticule, and Nell followed her lead.

Once Kat was satisfied that she’d done all she could to look her best for the man she’d soon call her husband, she twisted toward the window for a better view of her new home. The sight stole her breath. Clouds bubbled up over a tree-lined ridge, and the tops of wooden roofs peeked out from under the naked branches. The city was much larger than she expected. Snowcapped mountains surrounded the town like the fluted white edges of Mother’s favorite bowl. Pikes Peak loomed to the east, and the sun spread fingers of light across the purple
robes that adorned the stand of mountains to the west. Kat wanted to retrieve her journal, but there wasn’t time to write much.

“Those are the great Rocky Mountains,” Lucille’s mother whispered, adjusting the pearl-tipped pin in her hat.

Just then, the trains shrill whistle blew, signaling their arrival. Kat buckled her satchel and positioned her hat, pinning it solidly into place, while Nell pulled her wool coat off her lap and smoothed the velvet collar.

Kat bent toward the window, looking for any sign of a bowler with a peacock feather, but the pressing crowd gathered on the platform made it difficult.

“There’s been a fire.” Kat sucked in her breath and pointed to the scorched depot building. Nell nodded and looked up at the charred hillsides surrounding the station. “What have we gotten ourselves into?” Kat whispered.

Nell squared her shoulders. “We knew it would be different,” she said, trying to sound confident. “We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

They had to be. Father was thousands of miles away in France, and Ida and Vivian were depending on the two of them to forge a fresh start for all four of the Sinclair sisters.

The train finally screeched and squawked to a stop, and its passengers jumped into motion. Men stuffed newspapers into their bags and donned wide-brimmed felt hats and derbies. The three other women in the car adjusted hairpins and shawls, and reached for the arms of the men who accompanied them.

Clutching their bags, Kat and Nell joined the others in the aisle that would lead them back to solid ground and to their princes.

Nell watched as the young woman ahead of her took her husbands arm. They crossed the threshold and laughed, and a longing for such comforts stirred deep inside her.

Soon it would be her crossing thresholds with Judson Archer.

Passengers near the door at the front of the car pulled their wraps and overcoats off the pegs. As Nell neared the exit, she shrugged into her cape and buttoned it, pulling the fabric tight around herself.

They stepped onto the platform and moved, like sheep, with the crowd. As people branched off, greeting those who came to meet them, the crowd thinned, and Nell looked about for any sign of their intendeds.

There was no one on the platform who resembled Judson, and Mr. Maloney’s peacock feather would be hard to miss. “They’re not here, Kat.”

“I’m sure they’ll be here.” The tight set of Kat’s jaw contradicted her words.