Prologue

Ash Springs, Nevada

September 1, 1895

“You think she’ll come?” Maryann Porter asked.

Jacqueline Lavigne looked over the table at her friend and smiled. “She’ll come.”

“You seem very sure of it,” Maryann replied, her tone indicating that she didn’t share her friend’s confidence.

“She’ll come,” Jacqueline repeated. “She has nothing left for her out there.”

“What does she have here?” Maryann questioned.

“She has family!” Jacqueline replied, wounded.

Maryann frowned and sipped her tea. Jacqueline’s house smelled like dust and pine and old books. The pine came from the cabin and the furniture, hand built by Benjamin Lavigne himself nearly forty years ago when he was young and strong, long before disease took him as it took so many of their loved ones. As it took her son.

The smell of old books came from the piles of newspapers and catalogs that covered nearly every square inch of free space in her parlor and kitchen. The dust came from the papers and the piles of trinkets and gewgaws that occupied the space not occupied by old newspapers and catalogs.

She took another sip of tea and said, “From what I recall, Jackie, there was some debate on that point when Marie and Arthur left for Chicago.”

“That was fourteen years ago, Maryann,” Jacqueline replied, a touch of irritation in her voice, “And anyway, that was between me and Marie. Love always returned my letters.”

“Did she return them or did Arthur make sure she returned them?” Maryann challenged.

Jacqueline looked up from the letter and this time there was more than a touch of irritation in her tone. “Maryann Porter, have you lost all your faith? She’ll come. She has to. Whether because she wants to or because she feels her father would wish it, she’ll come. She’s a good girl.”

“You seem awfully sure of that considering you haven’t seen her since she was five years old,” Maryann replied, a little tartly.

“Will you stop being such a worrywart?” Jacqueline replied. Jacqueline clutched her teacup as though clinging to it. Her knuckles were gnarled and knobby, and Maryann realized that the rheumatism was progressing fast. She wasn’t at all convinced that Jackie’s long-estranged granddaughter would return out of the blue, but for her friend’s sake, Maryann hoped she would. “She’ll come. Her future depends on it.”

“Hers or ours?” Maryann said.

Jacqueline scoffed. “Dear, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but our future’s come and gone. Love’s and Michael’s futures are the only ones that matter.”

That earned a chuckle from Maryann, who shook her head and said, “I wish I had your faith, Jackie.”

“Me too,” Jacqueline replied, “You’d be a lot less annoying if you did.”

Maryann laughed and Jacqueline smiled. Her smile faded slightly as she looked out the window at the darkening sky. “She’ll come.”

***

Chicago, Illinois

September 2, 1895

Love looked at the pale, thin young man with the pencil mustache and weak chin and stifled the expression of disgust that threatened to show on her face. She forced a smile and said, “You’re very kind, Mr. Montgomery—”

“Charles, please,” the young man replied with an obsequious smile. “There’s no need for formality between us, my dear.”

“—Charles,” Love replied, struggling mightily to keep the irritation from her voice. “Charles, you’re very kind, but I’m afraid I’m in no position to consider marriage right now.”

A flash of irritation crossed Charles’s face, and resolved, unfortunately, into a rather petulant frown. “But why?” Charles asked, his tone rising in a whine that might have been appropriate in a five-year-old but was thoroughly repulsive in a twenty-five-year-old. “Your father’s dead, Love. You need someone to care for you. This house must be lonely with no one to share it.”

His eyes flickered over the parlor behind Love and the peevish look in his eyes changed to naked greed that was even more repulsive than the petulance. Love’s lips thinned. “Thank you so much for your concern, Mr. Montgomery. I think you’ll find I’m quite aware of the fact that my father is dead, and I assure you, I and my house are doing quite fine without anyone to share it, as is my bank account.”

Alarm and guilt flashed across Charles’s face. “L—Love, I assure you, I meant nothing by—”

“Good day, Mr. Montgomery.”

She didn’t wait for a reply before closing the door. She waited until she heard his dejected footsteps make their way down the porch before turning and heading to the sofa, collapsing on it with an exasperated sigh.

Charles, Kurt, Jeffrey, Matthew and Aloysious. Five different men in as many days had arrived to offer their condolences and then immediately suggest that Love would enjoy the company of an intelligent, aristocratic young man to ease her loneliness. And share in the considerable fortune her father left her.

What a shame for a poor young woman to be left alone with all this wealth, she thought wryly.

She looked around at the empty house and a twinge of sadness hit her. The truth was she was very lonely. Her mother had died nine years ago, shortly before her eleventh birthday, and her father had passed a month prior of pneumonia.

A tear welled at the corner of Love’s eyes as she recalled her father. He had worked tirelessly to build a fortune that would provide for her when he passed. When her family arrived in Chicago, they had barely anything to their name. Over the next fourteen years, he had built that nothing into wealth and prosperity. She loved him for working so hard for her future.

At the same time, she wished terribly that wealth hadn’t been so important to him. He wanted so much for Love to be wealthy, but Love doubted it had ever occurred to him to ask what she wanted.

She brushed the tear from her eyes and stared ahead at his portrait over the fireplace. He looked so formal and severe in that portrait.

He insisted that Love marry a well-to-do and well-connected young man with the resources to care for her. She had made it very clear that she would not marry for wealth. He, of course, was not happy with her for that.

When he died, his will stated his wish that Love would use the wealth he had left her to find happiness with a “man of her choosing, provided he be of suitable birth.”

Suitable birth! As though she were some European princess and her suitors were dukes and earls of the court! She chuckled and thought he would have approved of Charles. He certainly dressed like a noble even if his behavior was rather less than noble. They all were.

Only a month since Father’s death, and only a week had passed before the first of the suitors came and tried to win Love’s hand and her now quite substantial pocketbook. She thought bitterly that one of these men might have stood an actual chance if they indicated an interest in anything other than the money that came with her.

The doorbell rang again, and she sighed in exasperation. Good heavens, were they all lined up outside?

She stood and stalked to the door. She was not in the mood for this anymore. She threw open the door and said sharply, “What?”

The young man standing in front of the door recoiled a little, his face paling. He wore the sharply starched vest and bright cap of a courier from the telegraph and Love sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s been a trying day. What can I do for you?”

“Um, are you Miss Love Lavigne?” the boy asked.

He looked impossibly young, younger even than Love who was still a week shy of her twentieth birthday. Perhaps he was. Love knew that the telegraph often hired schoolboys as couriers.

She offered a smile and hoped it appeared genuine. “Yes, that’s me,” she said.

The boy looked relieved. He straightened up and, with a crispness and professionalism that would have brought a smile to the face of any grizzled old infantryman, said, “Telegram from a Ms. Jacqueline Lavigne of Ash Springs, Nevada.”

He handed Love the message, bowed crisply, pivoted on his heel, and walked away without waiting for her response or the tip Love would have given him had he waited a moment. Oh well.

Love walked inside, carrying the telegram. Her heels clicked on the marble tiles of the foyer and echoed through the vaulted ceiling of the parlor as she crossed to the kitchen. Her parents had been so proud of that house. “It’s like our very own palace!” her father had said. To Love, it resembled a mausoleum more than a palace.

She sat at the table and opened the note.

Love,

I hope this note finds you as well as can be expected considering the trials you’ve endured. You recall that I lost my own father when I was your age, and his loss wounded me terribly. I hope you have sought the comfort of your friends and loved ones and that they are to you a ray of light in the darkness.

Love smiled wryly as she read that. Comfort and light were not the words that came to mind when she thought of the greedy young men who scrabbled at her fortune like dogs at a bone. She continued reading.

I regret very much that I must ask this of you so soon after losing your father, but I’m afraid I have no one else to whom to turn. I’m afraid my rheumatism has become quite severe in recent months, and I am no longer able to operate the ranch the way I once was. I know it is a lot to ask, but if you could be persuaded to help an old woman out, I would very much value your company and assistance. I can’t offer much in the way of reward, but I hope that the joy of easing the final years of an old woman may provide you some measure of satisfaction in this life as I’m sure it will in the next.

If you are able to help, please respond by post or telegram at your convenience. And don’t rush. I know you’ll need time to wrap up your affairs. I take the liberty of saying I look forward to your arrival with great excitement. It will be a joy to see your face again.

Your loving grandmother,

Jacqueline Lavigne

Love read the note again, then set it on the table and considered.

She enjoyed her life in Chicago, but with her father gone, that joy had disappeared. Her house and her wealth were enough to ensure she lived comfortably for the rest of her life, but she did not relish the thought of living alone, and the men who desired to share her home with her were not the sort she considered to be good companions.

On the other hand, she hadn’t seen her grandmother in fourteen years. She barely remembered her and what she remembered mostly was the fights between her and her mother. They corresponded frequently, and from those letters, she could tell her grandmother loved her or at least the memory of her. She had often expressed a wish to see Love, and Love for her part would enjoy a chance to meet the only member of her family still living, but Love had no concept of ranch life beyond the rambling and incomplete descriptions she gleaned from their correspondence. She’d lived nearly her entire life in Chicago, one of the largest cities in the nation and a far cry from a rural Western town like Ash Springs.

She could stay here and live a life that was lonely, but comfortable and familiar. Or she could travel halfway across the country and live a life that was utterly foreign to her but share it with a woman who was not a complete stranger and was, after all, family.

The only family she had left.

She looked around at the empty, echoing house and felt very alone. Tears came again to her eyes. She set the letter down and wept.

Her father had loved her. For all his faults, he loved her, and though she couldn’t care less for the wealth that mattered more to him than anything in life, she missed his smile, his embrace, and the calm strength in his voice that had imparted so much strength to Love herself. Leaving Chicago would be leaving him, and that was the only reason she struggled with her decision.

But her father was dead. As painful as it was, he was dead, and Love was alive. Arthur Lavigne was convinced that a life of wealth and comfort would make Love happy, but Love was equally convinced that such a life would whittle her away to nothing. What was wealth anyway? How useful was Arthur’s wealth to him now?

What Love wanted was a life of her own with a love of her own in a home of her own. Not anyone else’s, hers. Moving to Nevada wouldn’t give her those things right away, but it would give her the chance to find them instead of accepting what was given without her input or consent.

Her decision was made. The next morning, she woke early, composed a message and delivered it to the telegraph office.

***

Chicago, Illinois

December 28, 1895

Love boarded the train with her head held high. She clutched her handbag in front of her and chose a seat next to the window. The handbag contained a hand mirror, a brush, and a locket with a picture of her parents inside. These, and the few clothes and treasures she had packed in the suitcase the conductor had taken to the baggage compartment, were the only worldly possessions she retained.

She recalled the looks she received from…well, from everyone when they learned she was selling her house and all her worldly possessions and moving to Nevada to care for an elderly grandmother. Most of them suggested that perhaps she could consider moving her grandmother out here to Chicago where she could live in comfort, or at least moving to Ash Springs with her fortune intact for Heaven’s sake, but Love had made up her mind.

She didn’t care to be wealthy. Wealth brought out the worst in people, made them small and selfish, and she didn’t care to be either. Even her father, the kindest, most goodhearted person she’d ever known, had cared far too much about money by the end.

It hadn’t bought him a second more of life, and as far as Love could tell, it hadn’t brought him a mite more happiness.

The conductor called, “All aboard!” The train began to pull away from the station, slowly at first, but rapidly increasing in speed until it seemed the city landscape flew past. There was Lake Park where she and her father had played hide and go seek.

There was the Art Institute where a young Love had proudly declared that she would study to be a painter before quickly learning she lacked the patience to become an artist. Love’s eyes welled with tears as she recalled the city she had spent nearly all of her life in. She would miss it, she decided. She didn’t have second thoughts about her decision.

Her future lay elsewhere, but she would still hold the past fondly in her heart. A few minutes later, the city gave way to farmland and then open wilderness. The city of Chicago receded into Love’s past, and she didn’t look back.

Chapter One

January 2, 1896

Ash Springs, Nevada

Love pressed her face to the glass outside the window and grinned. The train was slowing as it approached the station at Ash Springs, and Love couldn’t be more excited. She giggled a little, then flushed and quickly glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. If they had, they didn’t consider it important enough to acknowledge.

The other passengers stared stoically at anything that wasn’t another person with whom they might be expected to converse. Love turned back to the window and grinned as she saw the approaching town.

This was everything she imagined it would be! Far from the sprawling, crowded chaos of Chicago, Ash Springs appeared—at first glance, at least—to be the picture of a quaint little Western town. The buildings were all of wood plank construction, including the station, and there was nary a brick to be seen.

The station was a small single platform with a ticket counter the approximate size and shape of the ticket counter she had seen at the Chicago World Fair in 1893. The man standing at the counter wore a white button-down shirt with no collar and suspenders with brass buttons!

The other individuals waiting on the platform seemed to have walked out of a Wild West show. There were notched leather boots, brass buckles and wide-brimmed hats, and one man even wore a six-shooter pistol in a holster on his belt!

Love felt nearly giddy with excitement. She had imagined a quaint little western town and that was exactly what she found. When the train rolled to a stop, she practically ran down the stairs onto the platform, nearly bowling over the startled conductor who had his hand raised to help her.

She blushed and apologized, and the kindly man smiled and bowed before assisting other passengers. Love looked around the platform and took a deep breath. The air was crisp and clean, lacking the acrid odor of factory smoke that left Chicago in a near-permanent haze.

The weather, she was surprised to find, was rather similar to Chicago. A light blanket of snow covered the landscape and the soft breeze carried the same chill. There weren’t the tall, spreading oaks and elms and maples that Chicago boasted, but the seemingly endless expanse of wilderness that stretched out on all sides had a life all its own.

She hadn’t been here in so long she couldn’t remember it, but she was home.

“Love?” an elderly voice called. “Love, is that you, dear?”