The Engagement Bargain Read online

  “Why are you doing this?” Anna asked, a quiver in her voice.

  “Money. Your father left you a lot of money, and I want it.”

  “Then take it, there’s no need to kill me. I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll sign over the money.”

  “It’s too late for that now. You should have died in Kansas City. Everyone would have assumed you were killed because of your mother.”

  “How did you find me?” This time her voice was stronger.

  “We followed your mother. The Great Victoria Bishop. Mummy must not love you very much. She didn’t come until we burned down her house.”

  Caleb sneaked a glance and whipped back again.

  “You’re lying,” Anna said. “Why would my father leave the money to me? He’s never even met me.”

  “He tried, but your mother turned him away. One word—” Mrs. Bekker’s voice dripped with frustration “—one word in his will shut me out. He left all his money to his natural heir.”

  “Then you’re not really my sister.”

  “Of course not. I was three years old when my mother married your father. She died the year I married Harvey. Your father didn’t think we deserved any money after that. Said he only took care of us for my mother’s sake.” Her tone turned shrill. “Your father owes me.”

  There was more to the story than what she was saying, of that Caleb was certain.

  “What do you hope to accomplish by this?” Anna implored. “You’ll be murderers. Living on the run.”

  “No one will ever know what happened here. When your lover returns, we’ll kill him, too. People will think it was a lovers’ quarrel.” She smoothed her eyebrow with one gloved pinkie. “I am accustomed to a certain manner of living. Crime doesn’t pay as well as it used to.”

  “You lied to Mr. Elder,” Anna continued. “You were never here to buy horses.”

  Excellent. She was keeping them talking, keeping them distracted.

  The man chuckled. “You’re finally catching up. The wife here is next in line for the money, and I’ve a mind to settle down.”

  Caleb moved quietly through his bedroom. He retrieved his gun and checked the chamber, then returned to the hallway. He’d heard enough, and Reinhart should be in position by now. With the marshal on his way, so much the better.

  Pulling back the hammer, he stepped into the light. “Let her go.”

  Mrs. Bekker spun around. “You’ll have to shoot me first.”

  This was the same woman from Kansas City, all right. The same unnaturally blond hair and glittery cold eyes. He shifted his gun a notch to the right. “No one wins here. Turn around and go, and we’ll forget all this ever happened.”

  He had no intention of keeping that promise, but the Bekkers didn’t need to know that.

  Anna sat awkwardly on the edge of her chair, her face pale. Caleb tore his gaze away from the distraction. “C’mon, Bekker, you strike me as a gambling man. You’ve played the odds before. You know you can’t win this.”

  Mr. Bekker aimed the gun at Anna. “I don’t have to win. I just have to eliminate the competition.”

  Husband and wife exchanged a glance and Mrs. Bekker lunged. Caleb fired. Another shot sounded. Then another. Gunpowder smoke filled the room.

  He coughed and stumbled toward Anna.

  Mr. Bekker lay on his back on the floor, his eyes sightless. Mrs. Bekker backed away from his lifeless form, her gaze skittering toward the door.

  Reinhart loomed over the body. “I hope you’re a good vet, because you’re a terrible shot.”

  He jerked one thumb over his shoulder and indicated the hole in the window. “I think you hit the tree out front, if that’s any consolation.” The man tipped his hat at Anna. “You have my vote the next time.”

  Anna launched herself at Caleb, and he caught her against his chest.

  Mrs. Bekker dashed for the door and collided with Marshal Cain on the porch.

  He grasped her around the upper arm and guided her back into the house. “Not leaving so soon, are you?”

  She shot him a look of pure loathing and flounced back to the chair Anna had abandoned, not even glancing at her husband.

  The detective nudged Mr. Bekker’s still body with his booted toe. “He killed my partner. I owed him one. I asked poor Owen to help me out, to ask a few questions while he was working on the Phillips case. They killed him for it.”

  “He knew,” Mrs. Bekker snarled. “He saw us that day—the second time we tried killing that tramp. We knew he was watching Mrs. Phillips. We stuffed him in her trunk. Figured he could fail at both cases. Served him right.”

  The woman was clearly mad, her eyes wild and unfocused. Caleb tucked Anna against his chest and turned. “We’ll be out back if you need us.”

  The marshal rubbed his chin. “We’ll be busy for the better part of the night, that much is certain.”

  Caleb left Anna for a moment while he lit a lantern, then led her out the back and into the barn.

  She glanced around and rubbed her shoulders. Caleb draped his coat over her and unlatched the barn door. Pipsqueak leaped out of the darkness as though he’d been shot out of a cannon.

  Anna laughed and patted his head. “I missed you, too.”

  She half turned. “How did you find me?”

  “Jasper saw them take you.”

  “And you rode to the rescue.”

  “Something like that.” He flashed a grin. “I have a feeling you’d have rescued yourself. I just simplified things.”

  She tugged her lower lip between her teeth. “I’ve been thinking about what you said....”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, I won’t. What if I stayed? We can...we can try. See how things are between us.”

  He pushed off and crossed the distance, sweeping her into his arms. “That’s a nice idea. I’ll tell you what—why don’t you go back to St. Louis? Stay a while. Sort things out with your mother. If you still feel the same way in six months, you can come back.”

  She hugged him more tightly, and he prayed she never saw through his ruse. She’d never return. Once she acclimated to her own life again, she’d forget all about him.

  She’d had a scare this evening. They all had. Her feelings were confused, jumbled. She was mistaking her fear and gratitude for something more. He wasn’t going to take advantage of that.

  “What if...what if I go for a few weeks? If you’re feelings are the same...” Her voice trailed off.

  He perched on a bale of hay and tucked her against his side. Pipsqueak clambered up and rested his head on her knee.

  “Have you ever read Black Beauty?” he asked, changing the subject to something neutral, something he hoped she’d understand later.

  “Everyone has.”

  “That story is the real reason I became a veterinarian. Anna Sewell wrote that animals do not suffer less because they have no words. That idea stuck with me. Words have power. I grew up on a farm. I never thought much about the treatment of animals beyond their general welfare. But Anna Sewell showed me empathy, and that changed me. Your words changed me.”

  “You’ve already got the vote,” she scoffed. “Why would you care what I have to say?”

  “Because I care about what you care about. Because your passion is infectious, because you have a way of sharing your empathy with others. Whatever you do, whatever path you choose, never forget that.”

  She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and yawned. “This has been a very long day.”

  She hadn’t understood what he was trying to say. Maybe she never would. Caleb held her away from him. “I’ll walk you home. You’re dead on your feet. It’s been a long night, and you have a train to catch tomorrow.”

  “Is that tomorrow already?”

  He walked her b
ack to her home, each caught up in their own thoughts. Izetta was waiting on the porch; she caught sight of them and quickly closed the distance.

  “What happened? I turned around and you two were gone. Then the marshal dashed off, and Caleb was nowhere to be found. I feared the worst.”

  “It’s a long story, and you’ll need a strong cup of coffee.”

  She shrugged out of Caleb’s coat and handed it to him. He fisted the material in his hands. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She kept hold of the coat and he ran his index finger down the back of her hand.

  “Do you know what I remember from Black Beauty?” she asked, her eyes luminous in the pale moonlight.

  He shook his head.

  “‘It is good people who make good places.’”

  Izetta urged her inside, and he waited as the door closed behind them.

  Six months, six weeks, six years. What did time matter? She was never coming back. She’d forget all about him soon enough.

  He’d gone and done the one thing he’d promised he’d never do. He’d gone and fallen in love with a woman who could never love him in return.

  He was a fool and he didn’t care. His brief time with Anna was worth a lifetime of suffering.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After Anna had finished her tale, Izetta rose, sensing Anna and her mother needed time together.

  As soon as they were alone again, Anna turned toward her mother. “Tell me. Tell me about him.”

  “This isn’t the time. All this fuss and shooting. Things like this don’t happen in St. Louis.”

  “Mother.”

  Victoria Bishop heaved a great sigh. “You don’t understand. You can’t. It was the war. People were dying every day. They were dying faster than we could bury them. My own brother joined up. He was only fifteen, and lied about his age. I assume the army knew full well he was too young, he was little more than a boy. By that time, no one cared. There weren’t enough men, there weren’t enough volunteers to replace the dead. He was killed within a month. They didn’t even inform my parents. We read his name in the papers, we read his name along with all the rest.”

  Anna shook her head. “I never knew. You never told me.”

  “That’s when I finally understood my purpose, that’s when I knew I had a calling. If women had the vote, there’d be no wars, there’d be no more dead bodies.”

  Anna had her doubts. Mrs. Bekker had seemed perfectly willing to kill without a second thought. Anna kept her views private, not wanting to interrupt her mother.

  “Your father was born under a lucky star.” Her mother snorted delicately. “He was one of the few who survived, and I hated him for it. He came home on leave, after I’d discovered I was pregnant. He no longer looked at me as a woman after that. I was a mother. A wife. All of our grand plans for the future were dashed. We were going to travel Europe, see the world, to have adventures. He was done with all that after the war. All that death had changed him. I gave him his freedom because I wanted my own. I wasn’t going to raise a passel of brats because he’d suddenly decided to settle down.”

  A kick in the chest could not have hurt worse. Anna was a person, not a nuisance. And yet her mother’s attitude toward her finally fell into place. Victoria Bishop would not play at domesticity. Anna was little more than an experiment for her mother, a tool for notoriety. Miss Victoria Bishop was not shackled by the conventions of motherhood.

  Her mother rested her elbow on the arm of the chair and cupped her chin. “I agreed to keep his name out of the papers, and he agreed to stay out of my life.”

  Anna flinched from the bitterness in her mother’s voice. “He simply walked away?”

  “A lowering realization, isn’t it? The male is a fickle species. His heart must not have been too broken. He was married within the year. Look what it got him. A stepdaughter who hated him and nearly killed his own flesh and blood.”

  Yet he’d left her an inheritance. He’d tried to find her. Somewhere along the way he must have questioned his choices. Anna collapsed onto a chair.

  “Still, you proved useful,” her mother said. “Bearing an out-of-wedlock child kept me in the news. Kept the cause in the news.”

  “I’m glad I was of service to you.”

  “Don’t be peevish. You’re not naive, you know how this works.”

  Her mother replaced her glasses and began scribbling out her correspondence, effectively dismissing Anna.

  The fog that had enveloped her since the shooting cleared. She didn’t want to believe that Caleb loved her because she didn’t believe anyone could truly love her. Not without conditions. Not unless she brought some purpose, some value to the relationship, and she had nothing to give him.

  She stepped outside and stared at the moon. A few moments later, Izetta joined her.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “Well enough I suppose.”

  “What are thinking?”

  Anna studied the night sky. “I’m wondering about God. I’m wondering about forgiveness. What does it even mean, and why does any of this matter?”

  Izetta walked a few paces into the garden. “I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t struggled with forgiveness. After the war, we all had to forgive. There was so much pain, so much suffering. People think of forgiveness as chopping away at something, hacking at a suffocating milkweed vine until you are sweaty and exhausted and there is nothing left, not even the roots. An afternoon’s work followed by a cold lemonade on the back porch.

  “I always thought of forgiveness as a seed, something you plant in the best spot in the garden. A place with neither too much sun nor too much shade. A delicate seedling you fertilize and water and protect from an early frost. A plant you nurture through drought and flood, carefully guarding the first fragile blooms from encroaching weeds and voracious rabbits.

  “Until one day you realize your patient labor has borne fruit, the roots have grown deep enough, and the stem is stout enough to survive the strongest wind.

  “Even then you must tend forgiveness through the seasons, through harsh winters and dry springs. Like any garden, forgiveness is something you must never neglect for long.”

  She wasn’t a legacy, she was a person. A person who had the right to choose her own future.

  “Thank you,” Anna said. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. For your friendship, for your advice. You have become very dear to me.”

  “And you to me.” Izetta passed Anna on her way back inside and caught her shoulder in a brief embrace. “If my sons had grown and married, I hope they would have picked someone like you. I would have been honored to have you as a daughter-in-law.”

  Izetta stood and dusted her hands. “Don’t stay up too long, you’ve a busy day tomorrow.”

  A busy day. A busy day of sitting on a train. She was returning home to a burned-out hole in the ground. All of her possessions except the ones she carried with her were gone. At the very least, she had nothing left to lose, which left her a certain freedom.

  She stared at the sky and another line from Black Beauty drifted over her, the words resonating in her heart.

  “My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still at the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my friends under the apple trees.”

  Where would her memories drift when her troubles were over? Anna feared she already knew the answer.

  * * *

  The following morning, she woke to the rain, packed to the rain and watched as two men loaded the wagon while rain sluiced off her umbrella. She’d said her goodbyes to Izetta in the rain, both of them promising to write often.

  Her mother had limped through the process with considerable grumbling about everything from the men’s handling of the baggage to the hard bench
seat.

  Anna stared at the town and thought of the past few weeks. She’d been shot, nearly stabbed, she’d discovered she had a father and lost him in the same instant. She’d discovered she had a stepsibling when that woman had tried to kill her.

  All in all it had been a momentous month.

  She’d forgotten that is was the second Tuesday in November until she saw the bunting outside the post office. Another election gone by, and still women were denied the vote.

  She was doing the right thing by leaving. A few weeks away and both of them could sort out their feelings. They’d been through a lot together. They needed space, they needed quiet. She’d test the waters in a few weeks. A letter to Jo with a few dropped hints should suffice. If Caleb wanted to see her in a few weeks, they’d see what happened from there. No need to rush things. Her mother required her assistance. This was the perfect time for them to separate. Anna would buy her own town house, and perhaps she and Caleb would strike up a correspondence.

  Everything neat and tidy and devoid of the melodrama that had plagued her life these past few weeks.

  One of the wheels of their carriage became stuck in the mire, forcing them out of the conveyance and into the mud. Anna assisted her mother onto the boardwalk, and they traveled the rest of the distance on foot.

  She reached the train depot and found a knot of women huddled beneath the eves of the telegraph office.

  One of the blurred forms broke free and dashed through the rain toward Anna. On closer inspection, she realized the woman was Jo, and she wore a Votes for Women banner across her chest.

  “We’re giving you a proper send-off,” she said. “We’re protesting as the men vote.”

  She grinned as though it was the Fourth of July and not a damp and drizzly November afternoon.

  Tony joined her. The younger girl didn’t hold an umbrella; instead she let the rain drip off her Stetson hat.

  Anna did a quick head count and realized more than half the women from the town were staring at her, all of them wearing banners.

  She turned to Jo. “You did this for me?”

  “Mostly for you. Plus, it’s good for the men around here to stand up and take notice sometimes. We can’t have them taking us for granted.”