More Than Gold Read online

  Escape to the West

  Book 6

  More Than

  Gold

  Nerys Leigh

  ESCAPE TO THE WEST BOOK 6: MORE THAN GOLD

  Copyright: Nerys Leigh

  Published: 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted, without written permission from the author. You must not circulate this book in any format.

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  The Escape to the West series

  No One’s Bride

  A Hope Unseen

  The Wayward Heart

  An Unexpected Groom

  The Truth About Love

  More Than Gold

  Each of the books in the Escape to the West series is a complete story by itself and you don’t need to read the others before this one. Although if you prefer no spoilers at all, reading them in the above order is best.

  There may be occasional mentions of the other books in here, but don’t worry if you don’t remember those or haven’t read them yet. Understanding the references isn’t at all necessary to this plot and won’t spoil your enjoyment in any way.

  Prologue

  April, 1870.

  “She simply can’t stay here. I won’t have it.”

  “But darling...”

  “She’s twenty-nine, Albert. Twenty-nine! You’ve coddled her for too long and now she’s a spinster old maid and it’s your fault. You should have made her get married years ago. You aren’t helping her, allowing her to stay here like this. It’s not right.”

  “But darling...”

  “I feel like this isn’t even my home. I’m your wife. I should be the one managing the staff and running the household, but I’m not. She’s always here, making decisions that aren’t hers to make. I’m a stranger in my own home!”

  “But darling...”

  “The staff barely acknowledge that I’m the lady of the house.”

  “But darling...”

  And there were the fake tears, right on cue.

  Grace pursed her lips in disgust as she listened to her new stepmother yet again manipulate her ineffectual father. It was all she could do to not march into the parlor and give them both a piece of her mind.

  “Don’t cry, darling. I understand this is hard for you.”

  “I don’t think you do,” Felicia sobbed. “I want to be your wife as a woman should be, but Grace won’t let me. She won’t let me do anything.”

  Grace’s nails dug into her palms. She would have happily let her stepmother take over some of the duties in the house, but every time she suggested something, Felicia was always ‘too busy’, meaning getting some ridiculous beauty treatment, cackling with her insufferable friends, or spending Grace’s father’s money. The only reason she wanted Grace out of the house was so she could redecorate in her own garish taste and have no one there to rein in her spending.

  “I can’t force my daughter to leave. She has nowhere to go.”

  Felicia gave a watery sniff. “Of course you can’t, but it isn’t too late. You can arrange a marriage for her. Why, Mr. Howard has been widowed for more than six months. I’m sure he’d appreciate the chance to wed a slightly younger woman, even one of Grace’s… appearance.”

  Slightly younger? Edward Howard was thirty years Grace’s senior but could have passed for even more than that. He had hair growing out of his nose and both ears.

  “And he’s quite wealthy,” Felicia went on. “I checked.”

  Of course the scheming harpy had checked. She’d been trying to get Grace out of the house for three months, ever since she’d beguiled her father into marriage.

  Grace’s father sighed. “Maybe you’re right. It is time Grace married.”

  Grace gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Surely he didn’t mean to force her into a loveless marriage with a man practically old enough to be her grandfather?

  “I’ll go and talk to Mr. Howard tomorrow. At least he lives nearby so I’ll get to see her often. I should miss her if she wasn’t here.”

  Felicia’s voice turned to honey. “Of course you would, Sugarlump. You’re a wonderful father. And this is the best thing for her, you’ll see. I do love you.”

  “And I love you, my darling.”

  At the sound of Felicia’s giggle, Grace backed away from the closed door, not wanting to hear any more.

  She squeezed her eyes shut against stinging tears. He couldn’t do this to her. She was his only child, he couldn’t just cast her aside as if she meant nothing.

  Pressing a hand to her mouth, she ran across the hall and up the wide staircase, not stopping until she was inside the sanctuary of her bedroom with the door securely locked. Throwing herself onto the bed, she buried her face into the pillow to muffle her sobs.

  It wasn’t like this was her fault. She wanted to fall in love and get married and have children, just like any woman did. She’d held onto hope even as every one of her thinner, prettier friends had found husbands, always believing that God had one special man for her. But as the years passed and the only men who ever showed any desire to court her were clearly more interested in her father’s money than her, she’d begun to wonder if it was God’s will that she get married at all.

  What she did know, however, was that it wasn’t His will that she marry an old man.

  Wiping angrily at her eyes, she sat up. They wanted her gone? Fine, she’d go. But she would do it on her terms.

  And those terms would not involve hairy ears.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Is this all you have?”

  Mrs. Wright looked up from her desk on the other side of the room, if you could call six feet away the other side of anything. “I’m afraid so. We only have two hundred and eighteen men looking for wives on our books at the moment. Are you certain not even one of them is suitable?”

  Grace looked at the piles of papers on the table in front of her. She’d been in the tiny office of the Western Sunset Marriage Service for close to three hours, scrutinizing advertisement after advertisement from men in the west looking for wives. Somehow, there seemed to be something wrong with every single one of them. But she wasn’t going to find perfection, she knew that. Why couldn’t she decide on even one?

  Was this why she was faced with being cast out of her own home by her father? Was she too fussy? Or was she simply too afraid to choose one, because then it would all be real? She’d be committing herself to leaving the only home she’d ever known. Traveling all the way across the country to a place she had no idea about, in order to marry a man she didn’t know.

  She’d be all alone.

  Tears brimmed in her eyes and she turned away from Mrs. Wright, embarrassed and fumbling to open her reticule for a handkerchief. She heard a chair move on the wooden floor and a few moments later a hand rested on her shoulder.

  “I can see your decision to travel across the country to marry isn’t an easy one. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Grace dabbed at her eyes and looked up into Mrs. Wright’s kind face. Seeing the older woman’s compassion made her think of her mother. Even though it had been seven years since her passing, times like these made Grace miss her like it had only been yesterday.

  She gave Mrs. Wright a small smile and looked down at the advertisements. “Thank you, but no. I really have no choice. It’s this or hairy ears.”

  There were a fe
w seconds of silence.

  “Um... hairy ears?”

  Grace raised her eyes to Mrs. Wright’s now bemused face and burst into laughter. She might have been becoming a little hysterical.

  “I’m so sorry,” she gasped between giggles, “I’m feeling a little out of sorts today.”

  Mrs. Wright sat beside her, smiling kindly. “I understand. Not about hairy ears, but I understand. For many women who come here, this is their last resort.”

  Last resort. Was it truly Grace’s last resort? She went through her options once again.

  1) Marry Mr. Howard and his hairy ears.

  2) Refuse to leave her home and spend the rest of her days arguing with her stepmother, at least until she bankrupted Grace’s father. Or worse, get pushed out anyway.

  3) Beg her spinster aunt to take her in and spend the rest of her days living under her ridiculously strict and hopelessly outdated rules about behavior and dress.

  4) Travel across the country to marry a man she’d never met and trust God to guide her to the right person.

  There was a certain irony to the fact that the final option, the one she’d been forced into, was the only one that gave her any hope of maintaining some control over her own destiny. At least she got to choose the man she would be spending the rest of her life with.

  “Last resort just about covers it,” she said, her eyes drifting over the advertisements scattered across the table.

  “Well then,” Mrs. Wright said, clapping her hands together, “let’s find you the perfect husband.”

  They sifted through the papers again, sorting them into piles of definitely no and possibly yes. The ‘no’ pile grew far faster than the ‘yes’.

  “This one seems interesting,” Grace said, reading the advertisement from the young widower farmer again. She’d discounted him at first because he had two children and she had not the first idea how to take care of children, but considering she’d likely have her own one day, she’d need to learn at some point.

  Mrs. Wright took the piece of paper from her. “Oh no, I’m so sorry, he’s already asked a young lady to marry him and she said yes, just yesterday. This one should have been moved to the matched file.”

  Grace watched her place the advertisement to one side on the desk. Sighing, she turned back to the remaining two hundred and seventeen sheets of paper.

  Her eyes settled on a name - Gabriel Silversmith. Ah yes, the gold mine owner. For some reason, that made her smile. Mr. Silversmith owned a gold mine.

  She picked up the advertisement. “What about this one? Is he still looking for a bride?”

  “He certainly is. Would you like to try corresponding with him?”

  Grace read the details again.

  Age: 34

  Location: Green Hill Creek, California.

  Children: None.

  Marital status: Never married.

  Means: Owner of a profitable gold placer claim.

  Requirements: A wife with whom to share life’s ups and downs, challenges and victories. My deepest desire is to build a happy life together based on mutual support, respect and companionship.

  It was almost poetic.

  She nodded. “I think I would.”

  ~ ~ ~

  It was lunchtime by the time Grace returned home.

  Her father and Felicia were already seated in the dining room while Mabel served them. Grace left her coat in the hallway and joined them at the table, her heart pattering in her chest.

  They were halfway through the meal when her father cleared his throat, the usual indication he was about to say something he was uncomfortable with.

  “Grace, I paid Mr. Howard a visit today.”

  “Did you?”

  She knew he had. She’d followed him, to make sure he was going where she suspected he was. A deep sadness had settled over her as she watched him walk through the front gate of Mr. Howard’s town house. Part of her had held onto a vain hope that he wouldn’t betray her.

  He cleared his throat again, glancing at Felicia who gave him the smallest of nods. “We had a very productive conversation.”

  “Did you?” she repeated, the pattering of her heart graduating to pounding.

  “Um, yes. It seems that, that is to say, I suggested that perhaps he, um, I mean you and he, could, uh, enter into an arrangement.”

  Grace took another bite of her potatoes, although she’d lost her appetite. “What kind of arrangement?”

  Her father swallowed and looked at Felicia again. “Um...”

  Felicia rolled her eyes. “Just tell her.” When he hesitated, she huffed out a breath and said to Grace, “Your father and I feel it would be beneficial if you had your own life in your own home. To that end, your father suggested to Mr. Howard that you and he should wed, and he was agreeable to the idea. You are to be married at the earliest opportunity.”

  Grace was gripping her knife and fork so tightly they dug into her palms. She placed them onto her plate and closed her eyes for a moment, praying for the strength to not break down in tears.

  When she opened them again, she looked them both in the eye. “I’m so grateful that you have seen fit to take all choice in my life away from me, since clearly I cannot be trusted to make my own decisions. However, I will not be able to marry Mr. Howard in whom, as you well know, I have no interest at all.” When Felicia opened her mouth to speak, Grace raised her voice to drown her out. “Don’t worry, Felicia, I won’t be staying here any longer than I have to, so you’ll be able to spend however much of my father’s money as you wish.”

  Felicia raised a hand to her chest in feigned shock. “I don’t know...”

  “In fact,” Grace went on, “neither of you will be forced to endure my presence at all in a few weeks, since I will be moving to California. But if that’s not far enough away, please do say so and I will endeavor to leave the country entirely.” She pushed back from the table and stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll retire to my bedroom where I won’t be in your way.”

  Ignoring her father’s calls and Felicia’s orders to him to “let her go”, she strode from the room.

  She only allowed the tears to come when she was safely in her bedroom.

  Chapter 1

  “If you do that for much longer you’re going to need to stop in at the store to buy a new one.”

  Gabriel looked down at his hat and untwisted the brim, loosening his grip. “I may be a mite nervous.”

  Mrs. Jones gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’d be worried if you weren’t. It would mean you didn’t care if your new bride liked you or not.”

  Is that what it would mean? Right now he’d take it over feeling like his insides were scrabbling to get out.

  Pastor Jones pointed along the railroad track at a plume of steam rising above the distant trees. “Here it comes.”

  Gabriel’s gut dropped to his feet.

  He hadn’t been nearly this nervous the first time around. Then again, he hadn’t considered how it could all go so horribly wrong.

  He glanced at Mrs. Jones standing beside him. He wasn’t one for talking about his feelings, but since his confidence seemed to be taking a nap, he needed the reassurance.

  “Do you think it was my fault, what happened with Jo? Mrs. Parsons, I mean.”

  “Do you?” she said, not unkindly.

  He’d considered that very question repeatedly. “I know I got some things wrong. Badly wrong.”

  “You were in a difficult situation. To be honest, it’s my belief that God never meant you and Jo to be together. Although He did use you to bring her here so she could meet Zach. I know it’s not much comfort to you at this moment, but I also believe He will honor your part in that by bringing you the perfect wife. Just have faith that He knows what He’s doing and it will all work out.”

  He gave her a non-committal nod and returned his attention to the approaching train. Faith wasn’t something he’d ever had a great deal of, if any. But he appreciated what Pastor Jones and hi
s wife were doing in helping him to get another bride after what happened the first time, so he wouldn’t question her on it.

  The train slowed to a halt in front of them, the breeze blowing a cloud of sooty steam across the station. Gabriel’s grip tightened around the brim of his hat again.

  Mrs. Jones patted his arm. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”

  She was too observant by half.

  He swallowed and nodded and didn’t say anything, in case it came out as shaky as he felt.

  Passengers poured out of the train as the steam cleared, taking advantage of the stop to stretch their legs for a few minutes before it started off again. Gabriel moved his eyes from carriage to carriage, attempting to catch a glimpse of his new bride.

  Unlike Jo, who had traveled with four other mail order brides, Grace was on her own. He’d worried a little about that. It took a week for the train to come all the way from New York, a long time for a woman to be on her own without the protection of a man, although she hadn’t seemed concerned in her letters.

  He liked that about her. She was straightforward and practical. She’d adapt well to his life, he was sure of it. Almost sure.

  This time, he’d made the right choice.

  Probably.

  Pastor Jones moved forward and Gabriel searched the crowd in that direction. And then he saw her.

  Blonde hair gathered at her nape cascaded forward over one shoulder. Ruby red lips turned up in a smile while sparkling blue eyes peeked from beneath her bonnet. A rose pink dress fitted her slender curves, moving gracefully with her as she walked. The woman was stunning.

  She sashayed up to Pastor Jones and walked past into the arms of a man waiting beyond him.

  Gabriel’s shoulders slumped. It wasn’t her.

  Distracted by the beautiful blonde, he hadn’t noticed what the pastor was doing. He dragged his attention from the vision in pink to where he stood talking with someone Gabriel couldn’t see.