Reclaimed Love: Banished Saga, Book Two (7 page)

“Well, then, it’s a good thing Gabriel has a suspicious nature because he envisioned just this type of scenario,” he said with a wide smile and handed a sealed envelope to me.

I gasped with joy, snatching it out of Richard’s fingers. I traced Gabriel’s bold handwriting, feeling a connection with him after all of these weeks.

“That smile is thanks enough,” Richard said. “I think Gabriel will continue to send your letters to me, and I will deliver them to you, if you find that acceptable, Miss Sullivan.”

“I do. Exceedingly acceptable. Thank you, Richard,” I said.

“Rissa, Rich and I were in the middle of a serious discussion about bellowing techniques at the smithy,” Colin said with a smirk. “Would you mind giving us a few moments alone?” He tilted his head toward the piano and a quiet part of the room.

I smiled again, rose and walked toward the piano stool. I rarely sat in this part of the parlor as it held so many bittersweet memories for me from the summer when Gabriel and I officially courted. The final memories—his telling me that he would leave and then giving me his locket—were too painful to relive.

However, tonight I sat on the piano stool, determined to remember the joy and happiness of Gabriel’s visits. I carefully opened his letter, reading the return address.

September 23, 1900

My darling Clarissa,

Over three weeks have passed since I left Massachusetts, and yet I have heard nothing from you. In my weaker moments, as I lie awake at night, I feel like I will drown from an overwhelming loneliness. I worry that you have had a change of heart. When I think about your life, during the day while I work, I know that your stepmother most likely causes your silence. Please write me. Please tell me that your feelings have not changed. It is the dream of us being reunited that makes the struggle of living in a mining town worthwhile.

If you have not received any of my letters, you may be surprised to learn that I am in Butte, Montana, rather than San Francisco. I met a young man named Matthew Donovan in Chicago who was headed to Butte. I decided to join him as I thought it would be better to have a friend than go to a place where I knew no one.

It would take a magician’s wand or a blind man’s optimism to say that Butte is an attractive place. There are smokestacks everywhere pumping ash constantly into the sky. So much soot falls to the ground that many can’t even raise a garden. The surrounding mountains and hills have been stripped of trees for the mineshafts, and there are piles of dirt and tailings everywhere you look.

On the bright side, the Uptown part of Butte, which we would call downtown, is a fancy area with good shops, restaurants and hotels. The manners might not be quite as formal as Boston, but the people are as fancily dressed.

I am enclosing this letter with Richard’s. If it is as I suspect and you have not been receiving my letters, I will continue to send my letters to you with Richard’s aid.

I miss you, my love.

Gabriel

I held Gabriel’s letter to my heart, joy filling me and banishing all doubts. I glanced toward Richard and Colin to find them watching me closely. I rose, walking to join them again.

“Did you finish your bellowing discussion?” I asked as I again sat on a chair near their sofa.

“Oh, yes. We were comparing notes on how loud we had to yell to get our youngest assistants to do anything,” Colin replied with a wink.

I laughed.

“Good news then, Miss Sullivan?” Richard asked.

I nodded. “Although I hate that he had reason to doubt me due to my silence.” I glared in Mrs. Smythe’s direction and met her scrutinizing glare. “Richard, please continue to visit whenever you have a letter or any news of Gabriel. I enjoy seeing you.”

“That would be very nice, Miss Sullivan. I find the house to be too quiet now with Gabe gone.”

“Have you received much news from him?”

“Yes, Miss Sullivan.” On a long sigh and with an impish smile, Richard said, “Gabriel lives in a boardinghouse, filled to the brim with miners. He has found work at a hotel where they need to have a lot of finish work done. Seems there’s a lot of money out there from all those mines, and people want fancy houses and hotels. He’s begun to make friends, though mainly with a group of miners he met through his friend, Matthew Donovan. He’s just becoming acquainted with his workmates.”

“I am glad he is making friends and has a good job,” I said. “I never thought a mining town would be that prosperous.”

“It seems that this one is different in that its fortunes aren’t as fleeting as most.”

“I can’t imagine living in such a place.”

“I think Gabe is still reconciling himself to it too,” Richard said with a small laugh. “I should leave you. I will call again when I have another letter.”

“Please call whenever you would like. Your company is most welcome,” I said.

“You are very kind, Miss Sullivan.”

I watched Richard leave. “Why on earth would he go to a mining town?” I asked as I turned to face Colin.

“Makes one reconsider the future, don’t you think, Rissa?”

I studied him, not wanting to think too much about Colin’s words. He gave me a quick kiss on my forehead as he rose to leave the parlor.

CHAPTER 5

GABRIEL KNOCKED at the Egan’s door as a cold, brisk wind helped clear the valley of the ever-present pollution. Gabriel shivered. He paused on their doorstep, enjoying the view of the valley and distant mountains normally veiled by smelter smoke.

“Coming!” a soft female voice called out, then the door was opened. “Mr. McLeod! It’s wonderful to see you,” Amelia said as she let him in.

He handed her a loaf of fresh bread and a fruitcake that he had bought at the baker’s.

“You didn’t need to bring anything,” she chided him, although she smiled as she reproached him. “This bread seems fresh. It will go well with dinner. I hope you like stew,” she said as she made her way to the small kitchen.

“Yes, that’s fine, ma’am,” Gabriel replied as he wandered toward the bookshelf in the living room. A gentle light shone from two end lamps on either side of the settee, casting a welcome glow over the room. On the bookshelf he saw many of his old favorites, picking out books at random to peruse. As Amelia reentered the room he said, “I beg your pardon. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this many books.”

“Well, I am glad someone appreciates them. Liam did no end of bellyaching to have to bring them all the way from Leadville. But I would not leave them behind. Many of them I inherited from my mother and grandmother. They were learned women and encouraged me to become a teacher.”

“Were they disappointed you had to give up your career when you married Liam?”

“Well, they both died in an influenza outbreak a few years before I met Liam. But I believe they would rejoice in my life and my family. They ensured I had the ability to make a good living, if I were never to marry, but they always wanted me to live the life I desired.”

“You sound like Clarissa,” he said.

“Hmm, the mysterious woman you left behind in Boston.”

“Not mysterious. Just … special. Sometimes I think she wasn’t real. That I imagined her out of my loneliness,” he murmured and then flushed.

“Well, I am sure she is real, as you don’t seem like a lunatic. I’d hate to see you end up in Warm Springs.”

Gabriel shook his head at the thought of the mental hospital twenty-five miles from Butte. “No, I know she was real. Though I am guilty of having conversations with her in my head now.”

“Still no letter?”

Gabriel shook his head. “I hear there’s a good library in town,” he said by way of changing the conversation.

“Yes, there is. I would take out a membership seeing as you like books so much.”

Gabriel nodded as the front door swung open to welcome Liam, Matthew and Ronan. Amelia leaned in for a quick embrace from Liam, his hand resting for a few moments on her belly.

Matthew’s eyes lit up when he saw Gabriel. “Look what I found when I went by the boardinghouse on my way here,” he said. “The man at the desk said he forgot to give it to you.” Matthew waved a letter in front of Gabriel’s face that Gabriel quickly snatched out of his hand.

“Clarissa,” Gabriel murmured, tracing her writing with his fingers.

“She’s finally written then. Why don’t you take a moment and read her letter while we, ah, set the table,” Liam said as he gripped Matthew by the shoulder and pushed him toward the dining room table. Ronan chortled and followed them.

Gabriel barely heard them as he collapsed into one of the dilapidated easy chairs.

October 2, 1900

My darling Gabriel,

Oh, to finally receive a letter from you! I have missed you more than I can say, and not receiving word from you has caused such torment. I discovered today that Mrs. Smythe has been intercepting my mail and destroying your letters.

I thought my heart would break with no word from you and no way to write you. Thankfully you had sensed things were not as they should be and had sent another letter for me through Richard. Thank you, my darling! Just seeing your handwriting has brought me a measure of peace. I have been taunted by those less charitable that misfortune had befallen you or that you had forgotten me. However, to receive a letter from you, even though it is from a mining town, is more wondrous than I can say.

I miss you. I miss our walks, our talks, your smile. I miss everything about you. I worry that you will become as a ghost to me, a wonderful memory, but something that was never truly real. Please tell me that you will return to me soon.

I enjoy teaching, though every time I hear a creak at the doorway after hours, my heart leaps at the thought that it might be you, leaning against the door frame, watching me with that mix of amusement and deep interest. I know it is foolish of me, and yet I cannot force myself to stop imagining you, here with me.

Write me often. Tell me of your life in Butte. Is it very different from Boston?

Ever Yours,

Clarissa

“Gabe, is all well?” Matthew asked from the dining room. He sat with his jacket slung over the back of his chair and his shirtsleeves rolled up as he held Nicholas on his lap, playing horse with one of his legs.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I think so. She writes that her stepmother had been intercepting my letters. And that she dreams of one day being reunited with me. I wish she had written more.”

“Hmm…” said Liam.

“Mr. McLeod—” Amelia said.

“You should really call me Gabriel.”

“Yes, well, Gabriel then, I am sure she’ll write more soon. It is just one letter.”

“I know. But it is hard not to be disappointed when it’s the only news I have had from her in over a month.”

“Give her time to write you. Soon you’ll find she has written you such detailed letters that you will long for the shorter ones,” Amelia said.

Gabriel smiled, placing Clarissa’s letter in his inner jacket pocket. “How are things at the mine?”

“The usual. Long days, but steady pay,” Liam said, clasping Amelia’s hand.

“One of the damn mules died today. I thought it would make us late to dinner,” Ronan said as he stuffed a piece of bread in his mouth. He wiped away crumbs from his mouth and rubbed at his beard. The patch on the left elbow of his brown jacket was fraying, and Nicholas lost interest in Matthew’s game and instead pulled at the strings.

“The poor creature,” Amelia murmured.

“Put out of its blind, cantankerous misery,” Ronan said as he grabbed at Nicholas’s hands and then tickled him. “Ah, the poor beast just gave out on us when it was hauling its heavy carts full of ore.”

“I told you that last cart should have been split in two,” Liam muttered.

“I know, but Devlin McDermott wanted all his ore on one cart,” Ronan said, as Nicholas squealed with laughter and burrowed into Matthew to escape Ronan’s tickling. “Didn’t want any of us to receive credit for his work.”

“Selfish bastard,” Liam said. “He was still only going to earn his $3.50 a day. Didn’t need to kill the mule over it.”

“I thought they would refuse to move if the load was too heavy,” Gabriel said. “That’s what the lads at the pub tell me.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t too heavy, and it was this mule’s time. But Devlin should know that he won’t be made foreman by making the rest of us look bad,” Liam growled.

“We still met our goals, Liam,” Matthew argued.

“Yes, but barely. We are supposed to work as a team, and that man is going to get us into trouble.”

“What other news?” Amelia asked with a bright smile as she clasped Liam’s hand.

“Young Johnny Fitzgerald had his leg crushed by one of the carts today,” Matthew said, settling Nicholas onto the floor to romp around. “They’re not sure as they might have to amputate.”

Liam glared at him.

At Gabriel’s hiss, Ronan’s “For the love of God,” and Amelia’s grimace, Matthew looked chagrined. “But, I’m sure he’ll be taken care of by the Company.”

“I hope so. It’s just unfortunate he’s not a member of the Hibernians,” Liam said, picking up young Nicholas to sit on his lap. “They’d help take care of him. That extra $8 a week until his leg healed would help, surely.” He paused for a moment to watch Matthew. “I’d see about joining if I were you. If you plan on staying here and working in the mines, that is.”

“Let’s talk of lighter things,” Amelia said. She moved toward the cramped kitchen area and began to ladle out stew. “Mr. … Gabriel, how is your work?”

“It’s good work, and there is plenty of it. The pay’s decent, though not miner’s wages, and it’s regular. I’ll be able to put some by each month. The boardinghouse is a little expensive,” Gabriel said.