The Bride Lottery

“Search her,” the matron demanded. “She stole my brooch.”

The conductor’s large hand clamped around Miranda’s arm. “Stand up.”

“She came and sat beside me,” the woman went on. “All friendly like. Just plopped down next to me and started talking. I knew something was wrong right away. A respectable person does not approach strangers like that. It took me no time to realize she’d walked off with my ruby-and-diamond brooch.”

“Empty your pockets,” the conductor told her.

Not a request, with a polite miss or ma’am at the end of it. An order, harshly spoken, the sharp tone already classifying her as a criminal.

Anger flared in Miranda, fizzled out again. Hunger, fatigue, the hopelessness of her situation, all succeeded in curbing an outburst of temper where common sense might have failed in the past. She could see the lecherous glint in the man’s eyes. With a shudder Miranda realized that if she resisted the order, he might use her refusal as an opportunity to insist on a bodily search.

Not voicing a single word of protest, Miranda reached into the pocket on her gown, pulled out her mother’s brooch and displayed it in her palm.

“It has an engraving,” the matron said. “‘To my darling wife. H. Fairfax.’ Fairfax was my mother’s name. Nearly a hundred dollars it is worth. Real diamonds and rubies.”

The conductor put his hand out. “Let’s see your ticket.”

Miranda could hear the note of triumph in his voice. The man knew she didn’t have a ticket. Instinct told her he’d been harboring his own plans to benefit from her plight. If the woman hadn’t come up with her brazen scheme to acquire the brooch without paying for it, the conductor would have cornered her into an empty compartment, demanding intimate favors in exchange for a free passage.

The flare of anger finally won. “Here,” Miranda said. “Take it.”

She flung the brooch at the matron, hitting her squarely on the nose. The woman screamed, pretended to collapse into a swoon, but the real purpose of her fainting fit was to duck down and snatch up the brooch. She managed the motion with surprising agility for someone so amply built. The jewel safely clasped in her fist, she scurried back down the aisle to her own seat.

The conductor pulled out a pair of handcuffs from a pocket on his uniform. Forcing Miranda’s wrists together, he slapped the irons on her. “Next stop is Fort Rock, Wyoming. I’ll hand you over to the town marshal. He’ll hold you until you’ve paid the fine. One hundred dollars.”

One hundred dollars. Miranda closed her eyes as she felt the cold steel bite into her skin. There was no way she could raise such a sum. The man might as well be asking her for the Crown Jewels of the British monarchy, and the treasure of the Spanish Crown on top of it.

Chapter Three (#u6263ff93-6fa5-55f7-bcef-2e846db924ff)

The marshal’s office was in the small concrete jailhouse next to the station. Miranda didn’t resist when the conductor escorted her over during the fifteen-minute stop. She could feel people staring at her, on the platform, from the train windows. She didn’t care. She was too hungry. Too tired. Too defeated. Let them lock her up. At least they’d have to feed her, unless they wanted a dead woman in their jail.

“Marshal! Bringing in a prisoner!” the conductor bellowed, relishing his role as a lawman. He was holding on to the chain that linked the cuffs, leading her behind him like a dog.

Her temper rising once more, Miranda jerked free from his grasp. The conductor grinned. He fell back a step and gave her a shove on the buttocks, nothing but a poorly disguised grope. Miranda tried to kick him on the shins but almost stumbled and ended up lurching headlong across the jailhouse threshold.

Cool air greeted her. Built like a square block with thick concrete walls, the jail only had one tiny window high up in the rear of the single cell. The front office contained a desk and two chairs, both of them occupied. The cell behind the iron bars was twice as big and empty. Miranda eyed the narrow cot with longing.

“What is this?” The marshal straightened in the wooden chair behind the desk. He was young, barely in his thirties. Dressed in a dark suit, with neatly cut sandy hair and even features, he looked more like a merchant than a man who spent his life fighting crime. If it hadn’t been for the tin star on his chest and a gun in a holster at his hip, Miranda would never have guessed his profession.

“Caught her stealing on the train and traveling without a ticket.”

Miranda listened in silence as the conductor enumerated her transgressions. She didn’t even try to argue her case. She was guilty of traveling without a ticket, and no one would believe her if she protested her innocence to the theft of the brooch.

The marshal pulled open a desk drawer, counted out a hundred dollars and demanded a receipt. The conductor pocketed the money and removed the handcuffs. He raked one more lascivious look over Miranda before hurrying back to the train.

Miranda rubbed her wrists. Her ears perked up when the marshal turned to his teenage deputy, who was loitering in the second chair, balancing on two legs against the unpainted cement wall.

“Fetch Lucille,” the marshal said. “Tell her I have one for her.”

The chair crashed down to four legs. The innocent blue eyes of the fresh-faced deputy snapped wide. “Lucille?” His gaze shuttled to Miranda. “But this one looks like a lady...”

“She’s a lawbreaker who owes the town a hundred dollars.” The marshal made a shooing motion with one hand while using his other hand to lock the receipt in the desk drawer.

The young deputy—in Miranda’s opinion his posterior should still be wearing out a school desk—loped off. The marshal turned to face her. He eyed her up and down. Now that she thought of it, his short, straight nose and wide mouth resembled those of his teenage deputy. Father and son, Miranda guessed, which made the lawman older than she’d assumed at first glance.

The marshal lifted his brows at her. “Hungry?”

Miranda nodded. He gestured for her to sit down in the chair his son had vacated and reached for a parcel in a linen napkin on the desk. Unwrapping a slice of crusty pie, he dumped it on a tin plate and carried the plate over to her. Perched on the edge of the chair, Miranda closed her eyes and took a deep inhale. Oh, the heavenly smell of it!

“My wife bakes the best pies in town,” the marshal said.

Miranda blinked her eyes open and gave the food one more appraising glance before she took a big bite. Remembering her manners, she muttered a thank-you through the mouthful. She crammed in another bite. The marshal reached over and tried to take the plate away from her. Miranda craned forward in the seat and nearly toppled over, her fingers clinging to the plate, as if glued to it. The marshal tore the plate free from her grasp.

“If you’ve been starving, you got to eat slowly.”

He stood in front of her and waited for her to chew and swallow before he allowed her another bite. Miranda had barely finished devouring every morsel when two sets of footsteps rang outside. A shadow blocked the sunlight through the open doorway.

Miranda squinted. Lucille—for it could be none other—evidently shared the fashion sense of the lady who had stolen her brooch. Scarlet gown, tight corset, rouged cheeks, red hair in an elaborate twist, all topped with a frilly pink parasol.

Lucille moved inside, taking up most of the space. She snapped her parasol shut, ran an assessing gaze over Miranda, then glanced over her shoulder at the marshal.

“How much?”

“A hundred.”

“I can do that.” Lucille pointed with her parasol, almost poking Miranda in the gut. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

Miranda shrank back in the hard wooden seat. “I can’t—”

The marshal cut her short with an ushering motion. “Go,” he told her. “I have a bounty hunter with four bank robbers arriving before nightfall. If you stay, you’ll have to share the cell with them. Wouldn’t wager much for your chances.”

Lucille smiled and pointed to the open doorway with her parasol.

“I’m not a prostitute,” Miranda said through gritted teeth, but she followed the woman, blinking when they emerged into the bright sunlight.

The train was just leaving, the whistle blowing, steam rising in the air. In the window, the matron in purple was watching. Miranda’s hands fisted. The cow! She was wearing Mama’s brooch on her bulky chest! Miranda looked about for something to throw, but there was nothing suitable in sight. A cart full of potatoes would have served her well now.

The tip of the parasol poked into her ribs. “Come along, darling.”

Miranda turned back to Lucille. “I am not going to work for you.”

Lucille’s eyes narrowed. “Until I’ve made a hundred dollars from you, you’ll do exactly what I tell you. If I tell you to jump, you ask how high. If I tell you to run, you ask how fast. If I tell you to take your clothes off, you ask if I want it quick or slow. Do you understand?”

The parasol plunged into Miranda’s ribs, hard enough to bruise. Miranda nodded. She was getting the impression that Lucille’s parasol had no more to do with blocking out the sun than Cousin Gareth’s silver-topped cane had to do with assisting walking. They were weapons, pure and simple.

She followed Lucille down the street. Fort Rock was a decent-size town, with a central row of timber buildings with false fronts that made them look taller. There were two side streets, both flanked with unpainted log cabins. They were in Wyoming now, Miranda recalled. A cool breeze stirred the air and a line of snowcapped mountains rose on the horizon.

They entered a saloon through the swinging doors. Four young women in various stages of undress lolled about on padded chairs. Two were smoking and playing cards. A petite blonde was knitting what appeared to be an endless scarf, and a dark-skinned girl was reading aloud from a book that sounded like a penny dreadful.