unattached men on the train she would even consider if push came to shove and she was forced by circumstances to choose a husband. Finn Carson, one of the guides, was one of them. The other, a miner named Gage Morgan, was a tall, husky man, older than Finn by few years. He was quiet, a good-looking specimen with dark hair and smoky-gray eyes. He’d offered his hand and had engulfed her own in his palm, just for a moment as he passed by the open grave this afternoon.
“Ma’am,” he’d said quietly, and his piercing eyes had darkened, taking her measure, a hint of admiration in their depths as he offered silent condolences. On the surface, he was all that a woman could ask for, she thought, and wondered what there was about him that made her stomach clench. Not that he had offered any disrespect. Never had he been anything but courteous the few times she’d nodded in his direction during the weeks they’d been following the trail.
Now she wondered at him, her fists clenching as she thought of what it would mean, should she take either of those two men as her husband. Eventually they would want to claim their rights, and she would be obliged to comply.
Shivering, she pushed aside the memories of nights filled with fear. Sleepless hours when she dreaded Lyle’s home-coming, those times when he was out at a saloon or gambling at a poker table.
Taking a man into her bed was a daunting prospect. Offering her body before the baby was born was out of the question. She was misshapen, her body swollen with the babe she carried. Not that she cared—in fact, she gloried in the heavy weight of the child within her. But to a man, especially one who’d had his share of voluptuous women, she might be more than a bit off-putting. But then, most of these men were hungry for female companionship, and that fact alone would probably make her more appealing to them.
She smothered a giggle under the quilt, and then felt a stab of shame that she could lie in her bed less than a dozen hours since Lyle’s body had turned cold in death and laugh at the prospect of another man climbing into her wagon and taking his place at her side. She needn’t fear turning a man’s head, she decided, punching her pillow as she tucked it beneath her head.
The deed to land near Pike’s Peak was another matter. It was enough to lure any man into her clutches, given the steady stream of miners heading west, hoping to find just such a claim to work. If Lyle was right, if the land were indeed worth—
She sat upright. If the deed was worth what Lyle had claimed, perhaps someone had killed him in order to lay hands on it. Shivering, she pulled the quilt up around herself and leaned against a trunk. Someone might be, this very moment, planning on finding the deed.
And she didn’t even know herself where it was. Only that Lyle had hidden it and laughed when she’d asked its location. “You don’t need to know,” he’d said harshly.
“Mrs. Beaumont? Jessica?” The voice was low, its tones pitched so as not to carry beyond her hearing, and she caught her breath sharply as she saw the shadow of a man standing at the back of her wagon. Standing head and shoulders above most of the men on the train, he was easy enough to recognize. Finn Carson, himself, come to call. She drew the quilt closer about her shoulders and felt the beating of her heart like a bass drum in her ears.
“Yes, Mr. Carson,” she answered, her whisper carrying to where he stood.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked. “I’m going to crawl under your wagon to sleep tonight, and I wanted to know if you need anything before I settle down.”
“Are you by chance staking a claim, Mr. Carson?” she wanted to know, aware that her voice held a brittle note. He might as well put up a sign, she thought. This woman taken.
And then his words verified her thoughts, and she heard amusement color the syllables. “You might say that, ma’am.” He was unmoving and she shifted, rising to her knees, the better to catch the expression on his face.
“I hope you know that Jonas wasn’t pulling your leg, Mrs. Beaumont,” Finn said. “You don’t have a choice. Either you marry one of us, or you get sent back East when we reach Council Grove.” He stood without moving, as if he awaited a reply, and then he held out a hand to her.
“Will you come over here and talk to me?”
“No.” She didn’t believe in mincing words, could not countenance a clandestine meeting on the very day she’d buried her husband, and her cheeks burned with embarrassment as she wondered that he would expect it of her.
“Will you take a word of advice, then?” he asked quietly.
“Talk to me tomorrow,” she said sharply. “I’m a newly widowed woman, Mr. Carson. At least give me tonight to mourn before you make your bid for me.”
He was silent for a moment, and then he propped his forearms on the side of the wagon and leaned forward a bit. “I saw you in Saint Louis, Jessica.” As though he owned the right to it, he used her name deliberately. “I watched the way the bastard treated you that day when the first wagons loaded up and pulled out toward Independence. You can’t know how badly I wanted to knock him flat on his back.”
“You saw me? In Saint Louis?” She was stunned by his words, not that he’d seen her, but that his reaction to Lyle’s behaviour had been so strong. “Why should you care about the way Lyle treated me?”
“I’ve watched your wagon, him especially, for the past weeks, ever since we left Independence, and he did nothing to impress me with his…his ability to perform as a man.” He chose his words carefully, and Jessica heard the bitter tinge they carried.
“Who are you?” she asked, whispering the words as a shiver of apprehension swept over her. “Have you been keeping an eye on me all along?”
“No.” It was one syllable, one word, muttered harshly, and she knew it for a lie.
“Good night, Mr. Carson,” she said, drawing the quilt over her shoulder again as she placed her head carefully on her pillow. She heard him move after a moment, heard the muffled rattle of a metal bucket beneath the wagon as he found his place on the ground. And knew that Finn Carson was a man to be reckoned with.
He’d botched it. He’d pushed her too hard, said too much. He’d backtrack, let her stew a bit and then choose his time. The ground was hard beneath him, but Finn was used to sleeping wherever darkness found him. He’d shared feather ticks in his time, slept on cotton mattresses more times than he could count, and spent more nights under the stars than he could shake a stick at.
Sleeping beneath Jessica’s wagon was, after all, akin to staking a claim, as the lady herself had said. And somewhere in that wagon was the deed to a claim that Aaron Carson had died for. Finn’s mouth flattened as he thought of his older brother.
Aaron’s mercantile had held the man captive as surely as if it had wrapped chains around him for almost ten years. He’d been tied to making a living, when his heart had yearned for adventure, and his feet had itched to travel toward the goldfields. Aaron’s letter to Finn in April had been filled to the edges of each page with his excitement.
A customer, a man Aaron had outfitted and sent on his way four years before, was dying and had sent the deed to his claim back to Saint Louis, addressed to Aaron, the storekeeper, with a description of the location of Carson’s Retail Establishment.
Becuz you give me a hand when I needed it, the letter had said. Now I’m dying and here’s yer payback. The miner had signed it with a shaky hand, and sent the letter, the deed, and the assayer’s report with it to Saint Louis. Aaron’s
