Stagecoach Bride
Autore
Darlene Mindrup
Letto da
17,0K
Capitoli
15
Chapter 1
February 1859
“I’m telling you for the last time, I can’t use no woman driver.”
Amanda Ross stared at Mr. Dailey, the Butterfield agent, in frustration, and then glared at Adam Clark’s buckskin-clad figure leaning against the office’s pine-slatted wall. Adam grinned at her. She had hoped upon hope she would see him when she initiated her scheme to come to Memphis. However, if he had just waited a few moments longer to enter the office, she wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Cold Memphis early-morning sunshine beamed through the open doorway and slanted across the agent’s heavy wooden desk. Amanda moved into it as she leaned forward—the better to impress the little roly-poly man seated behind it. This was her big chance to prove to her family she wasn’t a fragile china doll that would break at the least amount of pressure. She had to get this job!
“Then if I can’t be the driver, how about the conductor?” she argued.
Mr. Dailey’s incredulous eyes squinted under beetling brows as he appraised her: abundant brown tresses hidden by a small hat, a Remington revolver strapped to her hip behind buckskin jacket and breeches, and small feet clad in buckskin moccasins. Regardless of the fact she could easily have been mistaken for a man dressed as she was, Amanda still stood little more than five feet tall. It was clear Mr. Dailey held the same reservations about her abilities that made her family so overprotective of her.
“Conductor my foot. I don’t need no woman on my stage line, especially in such a responsible position.”
Amanda placed her hands on her hips and glared at the man. She had expected some measure of resistance, but the agent had dug in his heels harder than a mule fighting the halter. The ticking of the pendulum clock on the wall sounded overly loud in the tense silence following his statement.
“Now, look here, Mr. Dailey. If the Good Lord thought enough of a woman to entrust her with His most prized possession, His only begotten son, then perhaps you should give a little more consideration to that same fairer sex.”
Mr. Dailey’s teeth snapped together in aggravation, his lips thinning to a hard line. “Don’t you dare go preachin’ to me,” he told her curtly.
Amanda fixed her pleading gaze across the room on Adam, hoping for support. He had come into the office just as she was about to convince Mr. Dailey to take her on as a driver for the Butterfield Overland Mail line, which ran from Missouri all the way to San Francisco. The infrequent letters she had received from Adam about his job as a driver for the stage line had given her the idea in the first place.
Adam had stopped in the doorway as though he’d been shot, his hazel eyes widening at the sight of her. Although she hadn’t seen him in several years, and even though she had changed her appearance, he had instantly recognized her. Her face had burned at his appalled look. Mr. Dailey had been shocked and then angry when Adam had inserted his nose into her business and informed him in no uncertain terms that Amanda was not a he, but a she.
One look at the agent’s furious face and Amanda had seen her chance of becoming a driver sliding down the proverbial drain. The fact that it was obvious from his cherry-red complexion that he was embarrassed to have been fooled by her costume didn’t help matters, either.
She glanced at Adam again in frustration. She and Adam had known each other since she was a babe. He was a close friend of her family, and she knew she had no hope of avoiding the interrogation—not to mention the chastisement—that was certain to come. In the meantime, he simply watched her argue with the agent, a supercilious look on his face. No doubt he would tell her father where she was and what she was trying to do. Her father would haul her back to Nashville and lock her in her room until she agreed to his Machiavellian idea of a marriage arrangement. She cringed at the thought.
Adam shifted against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, the buckskin fringe on his shirt moving when he shrugged his broad shoulders at her pleading look. One dark eyebrow lifted at her challenging glare. He pushed back his hat with one finger, revealing the dark hair beneath. His white-toothed grin made it perfectly clear he would do nothing to help.
She scowled, and his lips twitched, amusement causing his hazel eyes to shift from brown to green, the way they always did when he found something humorous.
Fixing Mr. Dailey with the most imperious glare she could muster, she motioned toward Adam.
“You can ask Adam. He knows me. He knows I can ride as good as any man. I can even outshoot him.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Adam tense, the amusement of just seconds ago gone from his expression and replaced with a cautionary frown. His chiseled features and the angled planes of his face became at once almost unrecognizable. The laughing young boy of her youth had become a hardened man with secrets in his eyes. She studied him, trying to see the boy she remembered so well, until Mr. Dailey sighed, his patience clearly at an end.
“I don’t care if you can outshoot, out-rope, out-anything! The answer is no.”
The sound of a steamboat’s whistle as the boat cruised up the Mississippi River nearby interrupted the ensuing silence. Before she could gather her thoughts to argue further, a male voice checked their conversation.
“If I might interrupt a moment.”
Mr. Dailey turned with fawning attention to the impeccably dressed dandy who had followed Amanda in the door earlier.
“Yes, sir?” Mr. Dailey said, ignoring Amanda’s huffing protest at her instant dismissal. “How can I help you?”
He stepped forward. “Perhaps I can be of assistance to the...” He hesitated, a frown wrinkling his face with distaste a moment before it morphed into an appealing smile. “The young lady.”
Amanda studied her unexpected champion. Slightly taller than Adam, he was an impressive man. He had enough good looks, with that black hair and those vivid blue eyes, to set most female hearts to thrumming, and although his British accent might be off-putting to some, she found it rather intriguing, despite his finding her attire distasteful. At least, she assumed his aversion to her was because of her unconventional clothing.
On the other hand, his clothing was the finest she had ever seen, and she’d bet her bottom dollar his tie pin was pure gold.
He tugged at his gold cuff links, straightening his sleeves before fixing a condescending look on Mr. Dailey.
“If you would consider allowing Miss...?”
Those vivid blue eyes settled on Amanda with a powerful impact, and she had to untwist her tongue before she could answer him. “Uh...Ross. Amanda Ross.”
His eyes carefully blank, he turned back to Mr. Dailey. “As I was saying, if you would allow Miss Ross to accompany the stage, I will pay her fare.”
“Now, wait just a minute!” Adam pushed off the wall, his face as dark as a thundercloud.
The Brit glanced at him, lifting one disdainful brow in inquiry as to Adam’s reason for interfering in something that didn’t involve him. Unconcerned blue eyes stared into narrowed hazel ones, which had suddenly turned almost black in anger. The men reminded Amanda of two cock roosters challenging each other over disputed territory. She had never seen Adam so ruffled.
She swallowed hard at the cold look on his face. Nostrils flaring, teeth gritting, he was one step away from doing something that surely wouldn’t be good for any of them. The other man would do well to back away from that intimidating look. Adam rarely bluffed and, even though the other man was taller, with Adam’s firmly muscled body, she had no doubt who would turn out the victor.
Thankfully, Mr. Dailey interrupted their silent exchange.
“I’m sorry, Mr....?”
“Nightington.”
Mr. Dailey nodded, casting a wary eye Adam’s way. “Mr. Nightington. Did you say you were willing to pay Miss Ross’s fare?”
Rustling from the corner of the office near the Franklin stove drew their attention, and a woman stepped from the shadows into view. Her wool dress whispered softly against the wood floor and, as she moved into the sunlight, Amanda’s mouth literally dropped open.
She was the most beautiful woman Amanda had ever seen. Her golden hair crowned a perfectly flawless oval face. Her blue eyes twinkled in amusement as she noted Amanda’s hanging jaw, quietly accepting the admiration she must surely receive wherever she went. Rose-red lips nearly matching the color of her dress curved in a smile, exposing perfectly even white teeth. She inspected each person in the room, her eyes lingering just a moment longer than necessary on Adam. Her rose fragrance drifted about her in a scented cloud as she approached.
She was dressed in the height of high fashion, but Amanda didn’t envy the woman her attire despite the chill February temperatures. Too often she herself had been forced by propriety to wear the layer upon layer of clothing deemed necessary by high society, but which restricted movement—so much so that it left room for nothing except sitting around and looking pretty. Amanda’s buckskin outfit was more to her taste and much more comfortable. So why did she suddenly feel dowdy in comparison?
“If I might explain,” the woman suggested, her British accent more melodious than Mr. Nightington’s. Her eyes fixed with confident interest on Adam. “What my brother is trying to say is that we have to get to San Francisco on Thursday’s stage, and he is reluctant to allow me to travel in the presence of so many men without a female chaperone.”
“Now, wait just a minute,” Amanda interrupted angrily. “If I wanted to buy a fare, I am perfectly capable of purchasing my own. I am no one’s chaperone! I came here to drive, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
“Conduct,” Mr. Dailey disagreed before realizing what he had said. Snapping his lips together, beetling brows drawing into a frown, he waved his hands furiously. “That’s not what I meant!”
“Besides,” Adam told the blonde beauty, his appreciative look sliding over her slowly and setting Amanda’s teeth on edge. “Even if Dailey here allowed Amanda to drive, the drivers only travel for sixty miles and conductors one hundred and twenty. There are new drivers and conductors all along the route. That would leave you without a chaperone for the rest of the 2641 miles. What will you do then?”
Mr. Nightington glared at Adam as though he was about to do him a physical injury, his hands fisting at his sides. “I said I would pay her fare as a passenger. I had no intention of implying that she would be either a driver or a conductor, whatever that is.”
His sister placed a restraining hand on his arm and gave them each a cool smile that brought a swift frown to Amanda’s face. Warning bells went off in the back of her mind, though she wasn’t certain of their cause. Her instant antipathy toward the woman was not a common occurrence in her experience.
“If I might begin at the beginning,” Miss Nightington said, and it seemed to Amanda the other woman had to forcibly drag her gaze from Adam to focus on Mr. Dailey. Amanda couldn’t blame her because, next to her brother’s dapper appearance, Adam stood like a towering testament of unadulterated manhood without even trying.
“My name is Rose Nightington, and this is my brother, Evan. We need to get to San Francisco before the end of next month. It’s imperative.”
She blinked her long, dark lashes at Mr. Dailey, flashing him a pearly smile. His eyes widened, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. Tugging at his bow tie, he cleared his throat and told her, “Well, I’m sure that can be arranged. But as for a chaperone...”
Evan impatiently pulled his wallet from his inside coat pocket. “How much?”
Mr. Dailey glared at him. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly,” he disagreed coolly. “How much will it take to make this happen?”
Amanda felt as though matters pertaining to her own life were suddenly being taken from her hands. She was about to speak up when she glanced at Adam and saw his eyes were fixed intently on Evan Nightington. The tick in the corner of Adam’s cheek warned her he was rapidly approaching the end of his patience, and from past experience, she knew that wasn’t a good thing.
When Evan started counting out hundred-dollar bills, Amanda’s mouth once again about hit the floor. Although she came from a wealthy family, she had never seen someone flaunt money so boldly.
“Mister, I’d be careful if I were you,” she told him, warily glancing around to see how many people were privy to their conversation. There was only one other man in the room, and he seemed more interested in the stage timetable on the wall.
Evan’s sister threw him an icy glare. “I agree. Put that away.”
She turned to Amanda, her perfect smile crawling over Amanda like a slithering snake. She shivered, and doubted it came from the near-freezing temperatures. The woman put her distinctly on edge. Perhaps it was because Rose had barely taken her eyes off Adam, though why that should concern Amanda, she had no idea. He was big enough and old enough to take care of himself.
“Miss Ross, I... We would make it worth your while if you would consent to accompany me as a chaperone.”
Amanda wanted to let the woman know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t interested in her money. Perhaps if she didn’t already have enough of her own, she might be tempted, but her desire was not for money, but a chance to show what she was capable of.
She glanced at Adam again and noted the imperceptible negative shake of his head. She then looked at Mr. Dailey, who blinked at her with owl-like eyes awaiting her decision.
She drew herself up to her full height, which she knew wouldn’t impress anybody, and shook her head. She saw Adam close his eyes, puffing out a slow breath of relief.
“I want to drive or conduct,” she told them all, and Adam’s lids flew back open. His lips pressed tightly together, his hazel eyes holding a warning she prudently ignored. Mr. Dailey was already shaking his head.
“It ain’t gonna happen.”
“Mr. Dailey,” Evan argued, “I happen to know that the Butterfield is seriously in debt.”
Amanda blinked in surprise at this bit of information, and saw Mr. Dailey wince, giving credence to the statement. So it was true! How on earth could Evan Nightington be privy to that kind of knowledge? Her suspicions of the brother and sister were growing by the minute, and the look on Adam’s face verified she wasn’t the only one with reservations about them.
“If we can manage to work this out somehow, I will pay you ten thousand dollars.”
Mr. Dailey’s eyes nearly popped from his head, his bushy mustache twitching up and down in nervousness. He cleared his throat twice before he could finally speak.
“What you need, Mr. Nightington, is a private service. I suggest you consider checking in at the shipping office.”
Brusquely pushing Amanda aside, Evan took her place and leaned across the desk to glare into the other man’s eyes.
“I haven’t time to take a ship. I already told you that.” He straightened slowly, his intense eyes staring mesmerizingly into Mr. Dailey’s. He lifted a dark brow enticingly. “Ten thousand dollars, Mr. Dailey. What do you say?”
Rose Nightington pressed her lips tightly together, glaring at her brother’s back. Her delicate nostrils flared as she sucked in a breath to obviously hold back words Amanda felt fairly certain no lady would ever utter. It would seem she was not in complete agreement with her brother, yet she said nothing. That was certainly curious—Rose Nightington seemed much more a force to be reckoned with than her sibling.
Amanda looked at the superintendent, waiting for him to tell Mr. Nightington what he could do with his money. Instead, Mr. Dailey chewed nervously on his bottom lip, glancing at the instructions to Butterfield employees posted on the wall. Amanda followed his look, and a portion at the bottom of the page jumped out at her.
“It is expected of every employee that he will further the interests of the Company by every means in his power....”
There was hesitation in Mr. Dailey’s voice when he spoke. “Even if I did let her drive, there’s still the matter of there being only sixty miles.”
Amanda’s heart took an excited dive and then just as quickly soared. He was actually considering it!
Thank You, Lord! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
Adam stepped forward, eyes blazing with enough anger to curl the agent’s bushy mustache. “You’re not serious!”
Evan turned and fixed his narrow eyes belligerently on Adam. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”
When Adam’s hands flexed, Amanda knew it was time to intervene.
“Adam, please.” There was more to those two pleading words than anyone else in the room would comprehend, but Adam understood what she was intimating.
He glared at her, his posture rigid. “Absolutely not!”
* * *
Without saying another word, Amanda continued to plead with those incredibly violet eyes. Adam sighed inwardly. Amanda might not be much to look at otherwise, but he had never been able to hold firm when she turned her soulful orbs on him. And time after time, he had acceded to her will. But this? No, this time, he would stand his ground. This was not some little childhood prank she was talking about. She could be killed!
“No, Amanda,” he reiterated, and her shoulders stiffened, her eyes darkening to a near-plum color in anger. He sighed again. He knew that stubborn stance. He glared back at her with a look that matched her own, and then trumped it. If he had to hogtie her and take her back to Nashville, that’s just what he would do.
Evan Nightington turned back to Mr. Dailey, disregarding Adam’s baleful look, which he would have taken heed of if he’d been wise.
“Perhaps I could hire the entire stage for ten thousand dollars.”
What was so confounded important that the man would throw away money like that? Somehow, Adam didn’t think it could be anything legitimate, which only made him more determined than ever to put a stop to Amanda’s foolishness.
Mr. Dailey rubbed his jaw in thought as he continued to study the Englishman. Probably, like Adam, wondering if he really had that kind of money to throw around. Apparently, the thought was making the man reconsider his standpoint on women drivers. His skeptical gaze focused on Adam.
“Is Miss Ross really able to handle such a job?”
Adam opened his mouth to disavow any such claim but, truth to tell, he couldn’t. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Amanda could not only handle a team of horses, but probably do it in such a way that she would outdo other Butterfield drivers in the process.
And as for conducting, well, anyone who could manage an estate the size of Amanda’s father’s could easily handle such a task. She might be tiny, but a powerful lot of talent was packed into that pint-size package.
He remembered a time when she was fifteen years old and she had been in a wagon with the foreman of her father’s plantation when he had suddenly had a heart attack, keeled over and dropped the reins. Feeling the release, the horses had panicked and took off. Amanda had stopped the runaway wagon by jumping onto its tongue and grabbing the bridles of the horses to pull them to a stop. Could she handle a stage?
“She could do it, yes, but...”
“Well, then.” Evan aimed a smile full of charm at Amanda. “If you are certain this is what you would like to do?”
Adam gritted his teeth. The Englishman made it seem as though he were bestowing some great favor on Amanda. He had to give the guy credit for knowing just the right thing to say. No one had as much determination as Amanda when she had made up her mind to do something, especially when someone doubted her. It would be easier to hold back the rushing tide of the ocean.
Adam interrupted before Amanda could do something foolish, like agree to this harebrained scheme.
“No one, and I repeat, no one, can drive twenty-eight hundred miles at one time without stopping except to change horses.”
Mr. Dailey turned startled eyes to Adam and stared at him for several long seconds, blinking hastily as though just coming back to reality. He shook his head slightly, shoulders drooping, and sighed.
“Mr. Clark is right,” the agent said. “That’s just not possible. And the Butterfield line is, after all, a mail coach. No matter what, the mail must get through on time.”
“It would be possible if two people co-drove,” Amanda argued. “If one driver rested, while the other driver drove.”
Mr. Dailey was already shaking his head. “There is a reason our drivers only drive particular stretches of road. They know those roads like the back of their hands because they often have to drive at night in total darkness.” He shook his head regretfully, seeing ten thousand dollars flying out the window.
Rose Nightington spoke up again, her melodious voice somehow soothing in an environment grown tense with hot tempers. She studied Amanda several seconds, her doubt about allowing Amanda to control a stage and six large horses reflected in her face.
“Perhaps if Miss Ross conducted, she would be able to sleep while the driver drove.”
Amanda nodded vigorously. “That’s a great idea. That would work. Don’t you think so, Mr. Dailey?”
Adam wanted to reach out and pound something. He couldn’t believe Mr. Dailey was actually considering it. Had the whole room gone absolutely insane? The idea was so ludicrous, he couldn’t believe the Nightingtons had asked it in the first place, and it was beyond amazing that Mr. Dailey was stewing the proposition over.
“No!” Adam objected again, a tad more heartily this time. “Amanda is not taking a twenty-eight-hundred-mile trip!”
“And exactly who are you to speak for Miss Ross?” Evan snapped, his blue eyes glowing with anger and frustration. Adam was fairly certain the man’s money had always cleared any path he chose to take. He undoubtedly didn’t like being thwarted.
“Yes, Adam,” Amanda almost purred, her eyes sparking dangerously. “Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?”
So she thought she had gotten her way, did she? Well, she could think again.
“I’m the one who is going to march over to the telegraph office and contact your father, that’s who.”
The color leached from Amanda’s face in shocked surprise. “You wouldn’t!”
He folded his arms across his chest, feet planted apart. They glared at each other for several seconds, neither willing to give an inch.
“If Mr. Clark is so concerned for Miss Ross’s welfare,” Rose inserted quietly, “perhaps he would like to come along.”
Adam looked at her, really looked, for the first time. She was something to behold with all that gold hair and those ruby-red lips. He had never seen someone with her kind of flawless beauty outside the theater. But the coldness in her icy-blue eyes ruined the picture.
The look she gave him in return was downright short of decent. His midsection tightened in an unconscious response to the invitation he saw in her eyes. As flattered as he was to have such a beauty take notice of him, he forced himself to glance away. There was something decidedly unsettling about the woman and her brother.
Adam met Amanda’s hopeful look and hesitated. Why was she so determined to do this? Amanda had done some pretty crazy things in her time, but she had always listened to reason, especially when it came from him. Now he had a feeling if he didn’t let her do this, she would find a way to get around him on her own, she was that stubborn. It was better if he could be there to keep an eye on her.
“There are the other drivers to consider,” he told them.
“They would still receive their pay, don’t worry about that,” Mr. Dailey interrupted. “What if you went along as second conductor after you reach the Pike Rail Road? At each station, the relief driver who knows the route would take over, but you and Miss Ross would replace the regular conductor for the full journey. Do you think that would work?”
The Butterfield Overland Mail must really be running in the red if Mr. Dailey was that desperate. He looked at Adam with the same kind of hopeful expression as Amanda. Adam knew this wasn’t going to work, but her violet eyes were working their old-time charm. He sighed heavily, irritated by his inability to reason rationally when it was obvious this was so important to Amanda.
There was a reason he had left home at seventeen, and he was looking at it. He had been unable to deny Amanda anything, and he knew the potential for some kind of disaster only grew with the passage of years. It was only a matter of time before her childish pranks would become more serious. It had never occurred to him she would someday follow him and prove that supposition.
“All right,” he capitulated reluctantly, hoping he could still talk some sense into her.
Four pairs of eyes fixed on him in differing degrees of relief.
“But only if I am certain no harm will come to Amanda,” he qualified.
“Excuse me, please.”
Surprised at the quiet interruption, everyone turned to the man who had been silently studying the stage schedule. He was rather nondescript, someone who would easily be overlooked in a crowd. His plain black suit and round wire-rimmed glasses gave one the impression he was a businessman, but something about the man didn’t quite fit the picture. Adam couldn’t explain it; it was just something that set his instincts roiling.
“I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. Will other passengers be allowed to ride this stagecoach that Mr. Nightington has commandeered? I have a ticket for Thursday, as well, and I really must get to California.”
Mr. Dailey glanced at Evan Nightington. “That’s true. Mr. Bass here and two other passengers have already booked passage for Thursday. You’ll have to wait until Monday since no one has booked that stage.”
Evan and Rose exchanged lightning glances. Rose gave an imperceptible nod of the head that Adam would have missed if he hadn’t been looking at her instead of her brother. There was no doubt in his mind who was in charge in that family.
“We have no problem with that,” Evan told them. “At least with only the five of us inside the coach, we will have a little leg room.”
“Then it’s settled,” Mr. Dailey said, his smile reaching from ear to ear.
Adam caught the look the other passenger was giving the Nightingtons and was startled at the intensity of his stare. There was something almost sinister in his eyes. The man quickly glanced away when Evan turned to him, making Adam wonder about the man’s connection to the Nightingtons—and just what exactly Adam had gotten himself and Amanda into.
