Gold Rush Bride

“But, the prices…how did you know what to—”

“Mei Li!” Crockett waved at the Chinese girl Kate had seen earlier standing in the doorway of the store.

The sprite ducked into the crowd, and Kate didn’t see her again until her head popped up on the other side of the counter. She wore a dazzling smile, and garments the likes of which Kate had never seen. “You wish me help?”

“Yes.” Crockett yanked a list out from under the counter and handed it to the girl. A price list, Kate surmised, though she couldn’t read it.

Both the girl and Crockett seemed to know more than Kate would have suspected about the operation of her father’s store. She’d remember to ask Mr. Vickery about it later.

“Miss Dennington could use some help.” Crockett looked at her again with those probing eyes.

She nodded, still wondering at the frontiersman’s motives but grateful for the assistance he’d provided her. In seconds, the Chinese girl filled the order of another miner and waved forward the next in line.

Landerfelt scowled from the corner where he and Mr. Vickery had been shoved. He cast the stub of his cigar to the floor and pushed his way out of the crowd onto the muddy wagon trail the locals called Main Street.

Crockett’s smile faded. His dark gaze followed Landerfelt out the door. Before Kate could thank him for his kindness, he pushed his way after him and was gone.

“Who on earth was that man?”

“That Will Crockett,” Mei Li said, and proceeded with the next transaction.

Kate watched him out the window. He stood rigid, hands fisted at his sides, outside Landerfelt’s storefront, as if he were waiting for something, for Landerfelt, perhaps. She’d felt the tension between them. “A frontiersman, is he?”

“Fur trader. Trapper.”

Kate could well believe it from his garments. Still, there was an air about him that smacked of drawing rooms and Sunday teas. Not that she knew anything about such things. The two-room tenement in Dublin she’d shared with her father and four brothers was a far cry from such a life.

“He lives here in Tinderbox?”

“No. Will Crockett go north. To Alaska. For beaver. Fox. Good fur there. His boat leave few days.”

“Really?” Perhaps he was a true frontiersman, after all.

“You keep store, yes?”

“W-what?” She hadn’t been listening. Her gaze was still fixed on Will Crockett. “Oh, the store. No, how can I? Mr. Vickery said it was the law. Single women can’t own a business.” Well, not any decent business, she recalled with a shudder. “No, I’ll have to sell it all. I’ll need the money to get home.”

And to make certain Michael and Sean didn’t end up in debtors’ prison. She wouldn’t put it past her mother’s sister. The only reason Kate was able to convince her to lend the money at all was the promise of weighty interest from the fortune her father was supposed to have made in California.

“No, you no sell,” Mei Li said. “No one buy for good price. They want gold, not store. You get cheated.”

The girl was right, and Landerfelt’s ridiculous offer was proof. Kate scanned the faces of the miners fighting over the few items remaining in the store. She read desperation in their grim expressions, gold lust in their eyes.

“You work store for money. Mei Li help.”

Kate shook her head. “No, it’s impossible. Mr. Vickery said—”

“I know, I know. No single women. No immigrants.” Mei Li rattled off something unintelligible under her breath—a Chinese curse, if Kate had to guess.

“Then the only answer is—”

“Easy answer.” Mei Li looked up from her work at the scales and smiled. “You marry.”

“What?” She nearly dropped the last pound of butter in Dennington’s Grocery and Dry Goods on the floor.

“Will Crockett good choice. He like you, too. I see it in eyes.”

Kate plopped onto the stool behind her and pushed her unruly auburn hair out of her face. The clamor of the miners faded as her gaze traveled out the window, snaked across the street and lit on the formidable figure clothed in buckskin and fur. The sky grew dark around him, and he seemed not to notice the light drizzle as he stared into the window of Landerfelt’s Mercantile and Mining Supply.

Will Crockett, indeed. Sweet Jesus, what an idea.

Chapter Two

It was a hell of an idea.

But one that Will would never consider, not even to get back at Landerfelt. The notion of marrying Dennington’s daughter sheerly for profit reminded him too much of how he had ended up out West to begin with.

He gazed at the out-of-place miniature propped against a pickax in the window of Landerfelt’s store and pushed the newly hatched thought out of his mind.

Mary Kate Dennington’s clear blue eyes stared back at him.

And all this time he’d thought the image was of Dennington’s wife. “Well, what do you know.” He’d seen the Irish merchant pull the keepsake out of his pocket and study it countless times over the past few months. “That’s my Mary Kate,” he’d say.

Will studied the image. The artist who’d painted it was good. He’d captured that…what exactly was it about Kate Dennington that drew him in? She wasn’t pretty, at least not in that coquettish sort of way he’d been raised to admire. Yet there was a strength about her, a wholesome sort of courage in the way she’d stood up to Landerfelt that was damned attractive. Not that it mattered.

The point was, Dennington had been a decent man. One of the few men in Tinderbox Will had respected. The least he could do before he left town was see to it Eldridge Landerfelt didn’t swindle his daughter out of what was rightfully hers.

Landerfelt had done enough swindling for one week. Will stuffed a hand into the empty pocket where the bankroll he’d been building for months had been stashed. That cash was to buy his passage on the steamer leaving San Francisco for Sitka in three days’ time, and to set himself up in the fur trade once he arrived. Thanks to Landerfelt’s latest power play, it was gone. Along with his horse and his best rifle. All he had left to his name were the clothes on his back.

He closed his eyes and tipped his face into the rain. When he opened them again there was Landerfelt, standing behind the counter grinning at him. Their gazes locked through the distorted glass of the storefront.

How in hell had he gotten that miniature?

Dennington had always kept it on him. He’d been sick with fever on and off for nearly a year. Will had made it a point to look in on him whenever he was in town. Surprisingly, over the last month the Irishman’s health had improved. So much so that Doc Mendenhall had predicted a complete recovery. But on Tuesday morning Liam Dennington was found dead in his bed. Just like that. And the miniature scribed with his daughter’s likeness was for sale in Landerfelt’s store.

“It’s the spittin’ image of her, ain’t it?”

Will turned at the sound of the familiar voice. It had been weeks since he’d seen Matt Robinson—his only friend, now that Dennington was gone. Although Matt was a year or two younger than Will, he’d grown up on the frontier and had taught Will everything he knew about how to survive. Trapping, trading, where and how to live.

They’d worked the Rockies together, then had made their way west to California. But the beaver were all trapped out now, and Matt had succumbed to the same lust that had every butcher, baker and candlestick maker heading for California in droves.

Gold fever. Will ground his teeth.

Matt whistled as he eyed the miniature. “I saw her two days ago at Sutter’s Fort. Had no idea she was Dennington’s kin. She don’t look much like him, does she?”

Will glanced toward Dennington’s just as a frazzledlooking Kate ducked out of the store to retrieve the traveling bag she’d left outside. It was a wonder no one had stolen it.

For the hundredth time in the past hour, his gaze was drawn to her trim figure and the wisps of auburn hair framing her lightly freckled face. She stole a glance at him, and he felt a queasy sort of unrest.