to offer?”
She’d answered the question of why a man of consequence like an earl would be foolhardy enough to become involved with spying on the AMU. He was trying to find the man who killed the father of the woman he loved. So where did all that leave Helena and Brendan? Poor Helena was closer to a slave than the miners. “Do you still love him and does Brendan Kane return your feelings?”
She looked up in surprise at the mention of Brendan’s name and a tear glistened at the corner of her eye. “He loves me so much he won’t see me or talk to me. He thinks he’s not good enough for me but that isn’t true. He’s wonderful. And noble. All he worries about is that he can’t give me what I’ve always had. He’s bitter about losing me but he’s as stubborn as Uncle Franklin. I wanted to run away with him, but he says he won’t rob me of my inheritance. How did you find out his name?”
Joshua leaned forward and took her fisted hands in his. “I just got an earful outside my father’s room. Franklin wants retribution, Helena, and he’s using your earl to get it. Have you ever heard of the American Miners United or the term Workmen?”
“Of course, Uncle Franklin says it was members of the AMU who shot your father and killed mine. And they’ve threatened Uncle Franklin. Workmen are what their members are called.”
“Do you think Brendan Kane could be a Workman?”
Fire shot to her eyes. “He’d no more shoot a man in cold blood than he would his own father! And he wouldn’t belong to an organization that would!”
He’d needed to know what she thought. She thought Workmen had killed her father. She wouldn’t harbor one. “I hadn’t thought so but I haven’t seen or heard from Brendan since I left here.”
Helena’s eyes widened. “You know Brendan.”
“He was my best friend. Your guardian is trying to frame Brendan as a Workman. They have Pinkerton spies all over Schuylkill County. A man named McParlan is close to getting a membership list in his sector. If they bring the men involved with the AMU to trial, many will hang. Your guardian means to see Brendan’s name added to the list.”
“I’ll warn him,” Helena burst out.
Josh shook his head. “No, you can’t. Neither can I. He may know men who’re in the AMU. They could be his good friends. There’s no sense in tempting him to warn a friend. If he did and something happens to one of the Pinkerton agents, and especially the earl, Brendan could be implicated.”
Joshua thought of Brendan as he watched emotions and thoughts race across Helena’s face. He didn’t like the idea of his friend being in the kind of pain he himself had been in for years. He didn’t want him to feel the emptiness that goes with losing love. For long minutes, the only sound in the room came from a clock ticking in the corner.
“According to the terms of your father’s will, will you ever be able to marry as you wish?”
“When I’m twenty-one. In three months time, I inherit, married or not. I’d hoped to put him off but Uncle Franklin is determined to choose for me before then. I can’t let another man touch—” She stopped and shook her head, a blush staining her pale cheeks. “I won’t marry anyone but Brendan.”
Joshua stared at the young woman across from him. Helena seemed strong enough to bear up under the strain of a plan forming in his mind. In a way, it would be less pressure than she was currently under.
“What you need is a diversion. What I need is to keep Franklin here in Wheatonburg where I can watch how his trap for the AMU unfolds and so I can make sure Brendan isn’t caught in it when it’s sprung.”
“How do we accomplish that?” she asked, her eyes wide with excitement and dread at the same time.
“By letting everyone think we’re considering marriage.”
Helena simply stared. “So,” she said slowly, “we pretend you’re courting me and Uncle Franklin takes me off the auction block.”
“Yes, but we have to find a way to keep Franklin here so I can watch him.”
Helena shook her head. “He won’t leave me here. The last time I was here I met and fell in love with Brendan. He’ll want to make sure we stay away from each other. I’m just afraid Brendan will think I’ve given up. He keeps telling me to, but I swore not to.” Her lips turned up in a sudden mischievous grin. “I suppose it would serve him right for his lack of faith.”
Josh found himself grinning, too. “Are we agreed then?”
Helena nodded. “How will I ever be able to thank you?”
“By making plenty of pretty babies with Brendan and naming one after me.”
Helena tilted her head and stared at him for several seconds. “You sound as if you’ll never have a son of your own. Someday you’ll meet the right person.”
Josh shook his head. “I don’t think so. I met her years ago. She was the daughter of a miner.”
“And you lost her?”
“I had better go,” Joshua told her, standing abruptly and hastening from the room. He knew it wasn’t fair but he couldn’t talk about Abby so soon after his first painful glimpse of her.
Chapter Three
Helena grew visibly nervous when the town came into sight the next morning. “How did you meet Brendan?” Josh finally asked, hoping to get her to relax.
Helena smiled. “Uncle Franklin brought me here when he had to go away on business. He thought I’d be well chaperoned, but I was only here a couple days when your father was shot. While the house was in turmoil, I had a groom saddle a mount, and I rode into the mountains. I was quite lost, and enjoying every minute of it, when I came upon Brendan fishing.”
“And that would have been it for Brendan. You’re everything he used to say he wanted in a wife.”
Helena looked confused. “But he sneers at my money. He wants a ranch and I could buy one for him but he won’t hear of it.”
Brendan was clearly the more practical of the two. Which meant he’d changed. Had he changed enough to warn a friend if he learned of the Irish-sounding earl who was undercover for the Pinkertons and hunting his hide?
As they rode through the outskirts of town, Helena said, “It’s so dreary. I’ve wondered why they stay here.”
“They were lured here with a promise of a better life. They stay,” Josh answered, “because men like Gowery and my father promised to be their saviors but keep them enslaved to debt.”
“That angers you, doesn’t it? Imagine how terrible it is to be told where to go, who to see, who to love.” Helena blinked away a mist of tears.
Joshua felt her hopelessness. The life she described was clearly her own. “Helena, this will work. You’ll be safe and we’ll keep Brendan safe. We just need to resist the temptation to warn him about your earl. The man sounded honest if angry over your
