He did, which was something of a problem. Five years ago, he likely wouldn’t have listened to his wife, would have hauled her over his shoulder and carried her home and started throwing her things into trunks.
He didn’t want to force her now. He wanted her to… to… want him. To want to be his wife and come to Deadwood and live in the lavish suite he’d furnished on the top floor of his hotel.
Maybe she didn’t understand exactly how much money he had. Maybe if he sat her down and explained how well he could provide for her, she’d agree to come with him without any more fuss. “I’d like to say I’ll be here a week, but the truth is, however long it takes to win Jessalyn over.”
“Why did you come back?” Five simple words, but there was weight behind them, a certain heaviness that burdened the air between him and the sheriff.
“My wife and daughters are here.”
Isaac rubbed his chin. “Then why leave in the first place?”
That answer got a heap more complicated. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“You forget you’re talking to the sheriff. Anyone who comes into this town with the potential of causing trouble is my business.”
“I’m not here to cause trouble.”
Isaac hitched a thumb through his belt loop, which wasn’t all that far away from his holstered sidearm. “Not sure your wife sees it that way.”
He hung his head. “Maybe you’re asking me the wrong question. Maybe it’s not a matter of why I left, maybe it’s a matter of why she refused to come with me.” His voice grew hoarse, the last few words clinging to the inside of his mouth before he forced them out.
But it was the truth. He’d invited her to come with him, even if the cost of four people traveling west would eliminate their small savings. Then when she’d refused, he’d told her he’d send for her—and he had.
If only she would have gotten his letters.
“I wanted her with me the whole time.” He cleared his throat and met Isaac’s gaze. “Now about that room?”
“I have a spare bedroom in my apartment above the telegraph office.”
Thomas laughed. “Does the sheriff position pay so poorly you need to rent rooms too?” It was the only reason Isaac might be willing to let one, because the man seemed more disposed to protect Jessalyn from her ogre of a husband than to help him get her back.
“The telegraph office is next door to where your wife lives. If you stay with me, you can be the one to rush down the stairs and help her haul in firewood, or carry bolts of fabric from the mercantile back to her shop, or do any other number of things you should have been doing for the past five years.”
And that right there he couldn’t argue with, because he’d carry all manner of things for his wife—no matter how much it pained his shoulder—provided she would let him. “All right.”
But would carrying things convince her to go to Deadwood? If the hard gleam in her eyes earlier was any indication, he’d be hauling a lot of firewood before she agreed.
Chapter Four
Jessalyn sniffled as her legs worked the treadle of her sewing machine. Beneath her hands, the emerald green satin shimmered in the lamplight while she sewed lace along the cuffs of the elegant bridesmaids’ dress.
It was the first of ten she needed to make before spring, followed by the wedding gown she couldn’t seem to get right in her sketches. And since exchanging letters with her client in Chicago would take months now that the harbor was closed, she had to finalize a design quickly lest she run out of time to sew the final dress.
Her feet stilled on the treadle, and she clamped her jaw as she stared at the uneven seam she’d stitched into the sleeve.
Finalizing a pattern for the bridal dress hardly mattered if she couldn’t do something as simple as sew lace onto a sleeve. She’d have to tear it out and start anew, and more carefully this time. The expensive satin wouldn’t tolerate three attempts at stitching like cotton or muslin would.
She rubbed her forehead and glanced away from the sewing machine to the window. Icy pellets of snow pinged against the glass in the darkness and wind gusted against the building. Thiswas her usual time to sew, the girls having gone to bed over an hour ago. But tonight she might as well curl up into a ball beside little Megan and try sleeping for all that she was accomplishing.
Except sleep wouldn’t come, not when the sight of Thomas’s face haunted her each and every time her eyes closed.
Seven months. That’s how long she’d cried herself to sleep after he’d left. It had been clear the day he’d disappeared exactly what had happened. It wasn’t as though she’d had no notion why he’d left and taken all but the money she kept stashed in a jar in the kitchen. Even though she’d tried to stem the tears, tried to smile when she walked down the road, tried to sing her best at church and carry on for her two young daughters and the one growing inside her, she still hadn’t been able to stop missing him.
Or loving him.
How foolish. She shouldn’t love someone who’d abandoned her.
But at least Thomas hadn’t abandoned her in the tenements where she’d grown up in Chicago. Even now, she could still smell the stench of garbage and rotting rodents, the sourness of chamber pots being emptied into the streets. She could still feel the wind as it tore through the tiny apartment with thin walls and a leaky roof that she’d shared with her mother. She could still taste the runny gruel they’d eaten and the brackish water they’d gotten from the pump down the street. Just as she could still see her mother’s sickly form lying on the straw pallet.
