She glowered at him with high indignation. “I am a proper young lady. Such liberties as you just took I find scandalous! And you will not insinuate again that I’m a harlot when I most certainly am not!”
“I know. You’re an actress, and a damn good one. Women don’t usually react that way when I kiss them.”
What arrogance! At least he hadn’t been able to tell that she’d rather liked the kiss, found it quite intriguing. That would have been too embarrassing. But he was still insulting her with that actress nonsense, so she stressed, “I’m not an act—”
He cut in, “A little too much protesting, or are you regretting the role you got stuck with? You do know you can improvise, right? So don’t kick yourself too hard over the lost opportunity. I’m sure you’ll get another.”
Opportunity? “That will not happen again,” she insisted.
“Does that mean I have to shove you away next time?”
She gasped. She sputtered. He added, “That’s a yes, I take it? Fine, since you obviously spent a lot of time rehearsing, I won’t interfere with your role again.”
Was that an assurance that there would be no more kissing? She wasn’t exactly sure, but he’d already walked away, so she followed. But she couldn’t help wondering how she might have reacted if he hadn’t insulted her before he’d kissed her. Would she have pushed him away? Yes—no—maybe. She didn’t know! But for a first kiss, it had certainly been memorable, even if she wouldn’t have picked the bear for such an experience.
Back in the yard she hung her wet clothes to dry on the fence at the side of the cabin where they would be out of view of anyone entering or leaving the cabin. Coming back around the porch, she saw Morgan leading his horse into his storeroom. She frowned when he came out alone, closed the large steel door, and locked it. But he’d told her that he stabled his horse in his mine. . . .
Her eyes immediately moved to the other big hole in the cliff, which she’d wrongly assumed was his mine, just as she’d wrongly assumed the steel door led to a storeroom. Her father’s mine was this close to Morgan’s?! Yes, of course it was, verified by two chairs on the porch and two beds inside the cabin.
Hands on hips, she demanded, “Why didn’t you admit my father’s mine is right here in your yard?”
He was approaching her but didn’t stop, just growled in passing, “I’m pretty sure I warned you not to open that can of worms. Not another word about it, lady.”
Oh, they would most definitely discuss it, but maybe after dinner. When he wasn’t growling. But why was it such a bone of contention with him?
She followed him inside to return the bar of soap to the basket and was amazed to see shaving tools in it, razors, strops, a fancy lather mug, little scissors. It was a miracle that they hadn’t all rusted from disuse. When she turned around, she saw Morgan slipping his arms into a white shirt. After lighting a lantern, he picked up both pots from the fire and carried them to the table. The wooden table. And there was no metal pot holder to set them on.
“Wait!” She quickly grabbed a small towel from the shelf, folded it, and laid it on the table. “There. So you don’t warp the wood.”
She heard his snort, but didn’t wait for his sarcastic reply. She fetched her brush instead and sat down on the bed to tackle the tangles in her hair. They were as bad as she figured, and her hair was still damp, which didn’t help.
But Morgan was suddenly sitting down next to her and taking the brush from her hand. She leaned away with a gasp. “What are you doing? I don’t need your help.”
“Instead of getting all prissy, why don’t you just wait and say thank you later?”
She closed her mouth on what she’d been about to say. Did she really come across as prissy to him? Well, what did he expect when everything she’d experienced with him was new and utterly foreign to her? Including this, a man brushing her hair. Only her maid or Aunt Elizabeth or Sophie had ever done this for her.
She expected to cry from his yanking her hair out by the roots as he brushed through the tangles, but instead she kept feeling his fingers brush against her neck as he divided the locks and held them tight by her nape so he didn’t pull any. She was amazed that someone like him could be so gentle, but she wasn’t about to share that thought with him. By the time the last of the tangles were gone and he was running the brush through the entire length of her hair, she was close to sighing in pleasure!
When he stood and moved back to the table, she said softly, “Thank you.”
His eyes met hers before he replied, “My pleasure. No different from grooming a mule’s tail.”
He was comparing her to his mules? She decided not to reply and joined him at the table as he ladled out two large bowls, then two small ones. A thick stew with carrots was in the large bowl and beans in the smaller one.
“This isn’t the cougar you shot, is it?” she asked hesitantly before she picked up her spoon.
“No, this meat isn’t as tender. Dried venison never is. Too bad you’re so finicky.”
He broke off a chunk of bread for her, but there was no butter for it on the table. It was possibly the last of the fresh loaf he’d brought from town, not so fresh now two days later. Would he make more? Did he know how? The stew was evidence that he had some knowledge of cooking.
She watched him dip his bread in the stew to coat it with gravy before taking a bite of it. She tried that and was surprised by how good it tasted.
“Are you good at map drawing?” he asked after a while. “Or are you just supposed to dazzle me with your beauty?”
These backhanded compliments didn’t impress her, but they did disconcert her a little. He had been watching her while they ate, so she had a feeling he was leading up to discussing that kiss, or getting ready to insult her again.
Violet had kept her own eyes averted—the man still hadn’t buttoned up his shirt! But she glanced up at him now to abruptly change the subject. “I want to view my father’s mine after dinner.”
“There’s nothing for an impostor in Charley’s mine,” he replied.
“His money?”
“With no mine door to secure it?”
That was a good point, but Morgan’s mine was about as secure as a bank vault. And if he and her father had been friendly, Charles might have asked Morgan to lock his money up for him. No—he’d already said he didn’t have Charles’s money. Good grief, this was so frustrating, and he was beyond infuriating with his flat refusals to do as she asked.
He stood up, saying he was going to wash his empty bowls in the stream. She followed him to do the same, annoyed that her legs still hurt so much, annoyed with Morgan, annoyed with the world—and tripped and fell face-first into the bed of flowers.
“What the devil!” she cried out, pushing herself back to her feet.
He glanced back at her. “You didn’t notice the fence?”
“You could have warned me.”
“Didn’t think you’d go walking through my flowers.”
“Yes, you did!” she accused.
“Yeah, but I know enough to step over a fence.”
“What bloody fence?”
“Use those violet eyes of yours—Violet.”
She squinted behind her until she saw a rope strung between stakes barely a foot high. And it didn’t exactly contain the flowers. They were already growing on the other side of it.
“It’s good enough to keep the animals out,” he added. “That and a few good yells taught them pretty quick.”
Glimpsing bright orange through the trees down below, she realized it was the setting sun and was pleased to have this confirmation of which way was west. She just didn’t know if this mountain range was north or south of the road they’d traveled on so long yesterday, or even east if the road had curved around the range.
Glancing around at the flowers, she realized they were nothing like the wild ones she’d seen yesterday. “These don’t grow here naturally, do they?”
“I had a dream one night that my m
other paid me a visit. Which is never going to happen, but I still ordered some seeds and tossed them around this spring. New ones keep sprouting, and the garden’s a bit messy, but I think Ma would approve.”
This was the first time he’d talked about his family. She wanted to ask him about them, but he was already walking away, so obviously he didn’t want to continue the conversation. Still, it surprised her that he’d plant flowers just because his mother liked them. Unless he’d used that as an excuse so he wouldn’t have to admit that he liked them. Did he think that would make him appear less manly? Ha! Nothing could make him appear less manly.
Back in the cabin, he lit several lanterns that hung on the walls, then split an apple for them for dessert and sat down to eat his half. She wondered if he would try to stop her if she went down to view what was now her mine. She didn’t need his permission—except he didn’t agree that it was hers.
And then she was incredulous when he said, “I know that Charley hid his earnings somewhere up here. He heard too much about the money not being recovered from that recent bank robbery in town. That was why Charley refused to use the bank and hid his money up here.”
“Did you lose everything in that robbery?”
“No, nothing worth mentioning. I use banks in New York and Nashart. I haven’t bothered to look for Charley’s stash. You can if you’ve a mind to, but you don’t get to keep it. Find it and I’ll send it on to his sons.”
That would actually work out perfectly—if it was enough. “How much did he have?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous. Have you run out of ammunition?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The proof of your identity you offered earlier involves sending a telegram, which I can’t do immediately. So what else do you have to support your claim?”
She hadn’t thought he would accept personal information about her father as proof that she was Charles Mitchell’s daughter, and he still might not, but she was invigorated from the bath and her long nap, and ready to do battle again. “You’re quite right. The proof I offered you earlier is days away, not here right now. But I have more up here.” She pointed to her head. “I can tell you more about my father than you can tell me. His hair was a lighter shade of blond than mine, his eyes dark blue, and he favored a handlebar mustache—at least, he did the last time I saw him. He was a tad over six feet tall. He broke his right leg when he was a young man and was left with a very slight limp that wasn’t noticeable unless he was overly tired, so hardly anyone knew about it. He had a good sense of humor and liked to tell jokes. I could recount some he might have told you, but I’m bad at remembering jokes even if I’ve heard them a dozen times. But there was one about two sailors, and another one about a princess and her watchmaker, something about her constantly summoning the poor man to her palace to repair her watch that wasn’t broken. And Charles’s birthday was May fourteenth. Oh, and my brothers are twins. If he mentioned that, he might have admitted that he could never tell them apart.”
“Could you?”
“When we were children I could, but when I saw them for the first time in five years just three weeks ago, both fully grown, no, I couldn’t.” She was pleased that he no longer looked skeptical. “You finally believe me, don’t you?”
“It was the jokes. They were horrible.”
She laughed. “We loved them—when we were children.”
Chapter Sixteen
THE BURDEN OF MORGAN’S disbelief that she was Charles Mitchell’s daughter had been more harrowing than Violet had realized. Now that it was gone, Morgan no longer made her quite so nervous. He might still look like a shaggy bear, but she’d had brief glimpses of his gentle side, and he no longer seemed ferociously unreasonable. He also no longer had any excuse not to answer her questions.
“What did you mean when you said you allowed my father to stay?” she asked first.
“The answer might not be good for the digestion,” he warned.
“I assure you I have an excellent constitution.”
“I meant mine.”
“Oh, the answer makes you angry,” she said, then reminded him, “But I’ve weathered your storms so far, haven’t I?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I suppose you have. Well, I woke up one morning to find your pa picking at the cliff only a few feet from my claim. I wasn’t happy about it.”
“You were furious, weren’t you?” she guessed.
“You could say a little more’n that. I yelled at him to get the hell off my hill. He just waved at me and smiled, as if he didn’t hear me, which just made me angrier. I went down there and saw that he’d hammered in a stake that was literally touching mine. But he hadn’t made a dent in the rock yet. So I told him that his claim was invalid and he had to be gone by the end of the day.”
She paled. “Was that true?”
“Yeah, two mines can’t be placed that close together unless the owner of one buys out the other or the two miners partner up. Your father should have known that. Then I took a good look at him. He was already sweating and the sun hadn’t even come over the range yet. It was cold as hell that early—”
She interrupted, “You realize that ‘cold as hell’ is an oxymoron?”
“You realize you got my drift anyway?”
She blushed a little. “Continue, please.”
“It was obvious he wasn’t going to last more than a few hours, if even that, so I went back to the house to make coffee and sat on the porch to wait until he figured out he was no miner. He might not have been too old to mine, but he was certainly in no condition to do hard labor. And I was right. Within the hour, he collapsed.”
Her eyes flared. “What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said. Charley grabbed his chest and fell over. By the time I got down there, he wasn’t conscious. So I carried him inside the house and put him on my bed and waited for him to wake up and explain.”
“What was there to explain? He had a bad heart. Dr. Cantry mentioned that when I spoke with him.”
“I didn’t know that—yet. And there are other reasons why someone might pass out like that. Some people can’t tolerate the altitude up here, have trouble breathing. But, yeah, Charley mentioned his heart problem when he woke up. He’d only just found out about it himself, and that it was bad. But he assured me that he had no choice, that he had to mine even if it killed him, and he explained why. Your mentioning that loan that he left your brothers with was my first clue that you might be telling the truth. He told me the same thing that morning, and that his boys were depending on him to make the family rich again.”
She winced. It sounded so fanciful when he said it, a lost cause. And yet her father had a mine that now belonged to her and her brothers. An invalid mine? Obviously not, since it was dug, staked, and recorded in town—with Morgan’s permission. He’d allowed it. Why would he do that when he’d admitted how angry he was at her father that day?
But she still had so many things to worry about: how to get her silver out of here, how to pay off the loan immediately, claim jumpers, how to hire workers to mine for her. Or she and her brothers could sell it. Morgan had told her Mr. Sullivan was interested in buying it, but she had a feeling Morgan might raise hell about that option, so she decided not to mention it yet.
Instead she asked, “Do I need to worry about those claim jumpers? Did they ever bother you again?”
“There were signs of someone stealing my silver ore last year while I was in town, leaving picked-out pockets in the walls. After that, I ordered the steel door when I bought the building materials for the house. And there was one other time, end of last winter, when I saw evidence of trespassers in my camp, but I can’t say for sure if it was those two claim jumpers who shot at me.”
“Do the claim jumpers work for Mr. Sullivan?”
“That’s a dumb question. I’d probably be dead by now if they did. No, they showed up early on, when the people in town thought I was a trapper selling hides every so often. Th
ey were either already roaming these hills and happened upon me, or they followed me up here before I grew cautious after learning how cutthroat mining can be around here, even this far out.”
She felt a twinge of unease now that she knew for sure she was a mine owner. Morgan had already told her about the sheriff investigating small miners’ complaints that big mine owners had threatened them, and he’d just implied again that Sullivan wanted to harm him. Having met Shawn Sullivan and his daughter, she just couldn’t imagine him doing anything like that. Morgan was wrong about Mr. Sullivan, but she wasn’t about to try to convince him of that when that particular subject was what he’d call a “can of worms.”
So she moved on to the question that confused her most. “Why did you let my father stay?”
“He said I’d have to shoot him to get him to stop mining here.”
“No, he didn’t,” she replied indignantly on her father’s behalf.
“Yeah, he did. But I was already feeling sorry for him after hearing why he was so desperate. He was willing to die to help his family. Caring about kin that much is something I can understand.” He suddenly stood up. “More dessert?”
“After a visit to the mine.”
“You don’t want to wait until morning?”
“Does daylight reach into the mine?”
“Not very far,” he admitted. “Grab a lantern, then.”
She picked up the one on the table and he reached for one on the wall, then led the way across the yard to the large hole in the cliff.
Inside the tunnel, she noticed that the support beams were as tall as Morgan. Anyone taller than him would have to duck.
“Why is the floor so smooth?” she asked.
“Because I chiseled it smooth.”
She gasped. Lowering her lantern and looking at the floor more closely, she saw brighter streaks in the rock. “Is that silver we’re walking on?”
“The tunnel runs straight through the lode, which was reached after six days of digging. It’s not pure silver, it never is. It needs to be processed, which is what the smelter outside is for. But it’s a rich lode, eighty percent silver with a sprinkling of copper and gold.”