prepared to embrace her future.
Jessamyn ran one gloved finger over the black iron printing press in the center of the room and breathed out a sigh of satisfaction.
After her meticulous inspection of the Wildwood Times office, her fingers fairly itched to dust off the Washington handpress, grab up a type stick, and start composing her first issue. But before she wrote one single word she had to sweep the cobwebs out of the corners and give the grimy plank floor a good scrubbing. Papa may have been a firstrate newspaper editor, but his housekeeping left much to be desired.
Ignoring the sheriff, who still lounged casually against the front wall, she cast a glance at the dirty windowpanes and groaned aloud. Mama, you should have gone with Papa when he went out West! Her mother would have been too frail to work the long hours putting an edition to bed, but she could have cooked and cleaned for him, at least until she died. Maybe Papa would have lived longer if he’d kept regular hours and eaten nourishing food.
Jessamyn understood how physically demanding it was to publish a weekly newspaper. Lord knows she’d seen her father gray with fatigue often enough when she was a child. But Papa had loved his work.
And he had loved Mama, too. But not enough. At least, not enough to resist the lure of establishing his own newspaper in the West. “Got printer’s ink in my veins,” Thaddeus Whittaker had said each morning before breakfast. Mama had preferred the cobble streets of Boston over the dusty roads of Oregon.
She sighed. Papa’s zeal had more than rubbed off on her. By the time she was ten, she could set type faster and more accurately than he could. When her father left for Oregon, Jessamyn decided she would also become a newspaper editor. Like Papa. He had encouraged her through all the years of learning and struggle; in some indefinable way she had felt close to him, following in his footsteps, even though he was thousands of miles away.
How Mama had scrimped to send her to Miss Bennett’s Young Ladies’ Academy and then to Hazelmount Women’s College. After she graduated she took a job as the only woman reporter on the Boston Herald. Then, just a month ago, his last letter had arrived.
Come to Oregon, Jess, Papa had written. I need you here.
She hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. She’d waited a lifetime to hear those words. She was twenty-six years old and unmarried. A journalist, inspired and nurtured by her father. And an acknowledged spinster. What on earth did she have to lose? Besides, her papa needed her. A siren’s call could not have pulled her more strongly.
The day after she’d purchased her train ticket, a second letter had come. This time it was from a Dr. Rufus Bartel. Her father was dead.
She glanced down to find her hands gripping the press lever. A thread of pain encircled her heart. Oh, Papa. Papa! I’m here now. I’ll run your newspaper. I’ll make it the best newspaper in Oregon. She shut her eyes tight.
A low cough behind her made her jump.
“Seems to me, Miss Whittaker, you ought to nail down some lodgings for tonight.”
Jessamyn gasped. She’d forgotten all about Mr. Kearney. “Nail…what? Oh, you mean register at the hotel. I will, after I’m finished here.”
“The good hotel fills up fast on Saturday,” Ben offered.
“Then I’ll stay at the other one.”
“I don’t think so, ma’am,” he said in a quiet voice.
Turning her full attention on the man at her elbow, she folded her arms across her midsection. “Why not?”
“The only women who frequent that place are fancy ladies.”
“Fancy ladies?”
Ben hesitated. “That’s what we call ‘em out here. Calico queens. That or—” he hesitated a split second “—soiled doves.”
Jessamyn blinked. “Doves? Oh, you mean wh—”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ben said quickly. “So, you’d better hustle your bu…uh…baggage over to Dixon House, on the other side of the street.” He gestured over his shoulder with his left thumb.
“Other side of the street,” she echoed. Her voice trailed off as she studied the man who stood before her. Blue denim trousers outlined slim hips and the longest legs she’d ever seen. A fringed buckskin vest hung loose over a crisp dark blue canvas shirt with silvery buttons that marched up the expanse of his chest and ended at the closed collar.
Her gaze flicked down to the polished black boots and the jingly spurs, then moved back to his broad shoulders. Slowly her brain registered something she hadn’t noticed before. A purple scar ran from beneath one ear across his throat and disappeared inside his shirt collar.
She caught her breath. “You were wounded in the war, weren’t you?” she blurted without thinking. “The War of the Rebellion, I mean.”
The question hung in the lengthening silence.
The fine mouth tightened. “We call it the War Between the States. Yes, ma’am. Now, about your baggage—”
“The War Between… Oh!” Of course. He must be a Southerner! Her reporter’s curiosity battled with Miss Bennett’s lessons on propriety. Curiosity won.
“Mr. Kearney, would you tell me about your battle experiences? As a reporter, I mean?”
His entire body stiffened, then visibly relaxed, limb by limb, as if given orders to do so. “Won’t be time between now and the morning stage, Miss Whittaker,” he said, his voice low and rough.
“Morning stage?”
“Seven o’clock. I’ll ask Tom at the hotel to load up your trunks for you. That way you can enjoy your breakfast before you—”
“Mr. Kearney, I most certainly did not come all the way out here just to pay a ten-minute call and go back to Boston in the morning. I came to Wildwood Valley because my father asked me to.”
“Your father is dead, Miss Whittaker.”
Jessamyn’s heart squeezed. “I know. He left me sole owner of the—”
“Thad Whittaker was shot in the back.”
“Wildwood Ti—What did you say?”
“Your father was shot to death. Doc Bartel said he’d write you.”
Jessamyn felt the floor tilt under her buttoned shoes. “He did write. He just didn’t tell me… Shot? You mean with a gun? Oh, my Lord!”
Ben swore under his breath.
Jessamyn clenched her jaw tight for a moment before she could trust herself to speak.
“Who would do such a thing?”
“Don’t
