She picked up the final paper, reached for his pile, and then straightened them all into a neat, if unorganized, stack. “Perhaps not Byron or Warren, but Gilbert is as fine as they come. Did you know he married Isaac’s sister, Rebekah?”
“Well if that doesn’t beat all.” Thomas rubbed the back of his neck. There’d been no love lost between the Cummingses and Sinclairs when he’d lived in town. “A Sinclair-Cummings wedding. Who would have imagined?”
The corner of Jessalyn’s mouth tipped up in a smile, and she rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure how well the news went over with Elijah and Isaac at first, but they came around. It was a lovely wedding at the church in town. Then they had a cookout on the beach across the street, but the best part was when Gilbert gave Rebekah his yacht for a wedding present. He had it renamed after her.”
Jessalyn’s eyes held a certain wistfulness, and a slight smile curled the edges of her lips. Thomas swallowed. He’d used to make her smile like that, be the cause of the tender look that crept across her face.
Now she looked that way when she spoke of other people’s lives, not her own.
What would she do if he pulled her to him, kissed her jaw, and nuzzled her neck? Tried to get that smile to reappear?
But even if she let him hold her, what then? He could promise to buy her a boat and rename it after her if she’d takehim back, but that wasn’t going to fix things between them, not with her planning to move to Chicago.
“I have more than just the dresses you saw.” She gestured to the cabinet against the wall near the sewing machine. “It’s filled with designs that can be made easily and quickly, but look fancy and elegant. The manufactured dresses sold at most mercantiles are so boxy and shapeless the buyer may as well wear a potato sack.”
“Sure,” he croaked, his voice rough and gritty. He looked at the papers piled in her lap, papers that explained why she was adamant about not going to South Dakota. She hadn’t been lying when she’d said she’d made plans without him. And she certainly hadn’t been lying when she said she didn’t need his help.
So where did that leave him?
Besides without a wife for another five years or better.
Chapter Eight
Thomas stood at one of the windows in his room, staring at the bar across the street, only half seeing the men that loitered on the porch beneath the lantern light. His wife had plans to start a dress factory in Chicago, pages and pages of business ideas, and a whole cabinet full of dress sketches.
And she intended to hire women in need. Thomas rubbed the back of his neck. Somehow that hurt almost as much as knowing his wife concocted the whole thing without even a thought in regard to him.
Because there’d been a time when Jessalyn was a woman in need—and he’d been the reason for it.
He pressed his eyes shut and leaned his forehead against the cold glass of the window. Could Jessalyn open a dress factory in Deadwood instead of Chicago? Mining was hardly a safe occupation, as the pain in his shoulder attested. Oftentimes the women whose husbands had died left Deadwood as mail order brides, since there was little else for them in the mining town unless they turned to the brothels.
Thomas tucked a thumb beneath the waist of the too-tight trousers he’d bought at the mercantile that afternoon.How do I win her back, God?
He still remembered the way her face used to light with smiles, the tinkling sound of her laugh and brightness in her eyes when he’d teased her. Or taken her for a walk in the snow. Surprised her with flowers.
Had he ruined any hope of a good marriage by leaving five years ago?
Somehow, everything had seemed ruined before that, and he hadn’t a clue how to fix it then.
Just like he didn’t have a clue now.
But he did know how to fix his trousers. Or rather, how to get his trousers fixed. He looked down at where the hem of each pant leg rode two inches higher than it should on his boots. He’d purchased the longest size the mercantile carried, but just like the mercantiles in Chicago and Deadwood, nobody ever stocked clothes quite large enough for him. If the trousers were big enough in the waist—like one of the pairs he’d found today—they were five inches too short at his ankles instead of two.
He’d gone for the longer choice. Jessalyn should be able to loosen the waist and let the hems down a bit, shouldn’t she? His shirt pulled at his shoulders too. Unfortunately with his luggage lost on the ship, he’d had little choice but to buy new clothes. He’d meant to ask Jessalyn to make him some earlier, but once the doctor had brought up Olivia’s ear, everything else slipped his mind.
Big mistake. He could hardly breathe in these trousers.
Whoops and hollers sounded outside his window, and Thomas looked across the street to find more people had crowded onto the porch of the bar. Two of the men held another back by his arms, trapping him while a third man stepped forward, fists at the ready.
Where was Isaac? Thomas glanced down the street in one direction, then the other, but the darkness hid any movement save what was going on beneath the bar’s lanterns.
No man deserved to be held down and beaten. But there was something overly familiar about the man being restrained. Something about the way he stood. Something that…
Isaac. Was he not intervening because he was the man being held?
Something shiny glinted off the man’s shirt in the lantern light. A tin badge, perhaps? And he was the right height and build, tall and thin without quite being reedy. Turning, Thomas raced out the door and down the stairs, bursting into the cold night air without his coat. There were maybe a half dozen men against the one they held. His presence would make it two against six.
Thomas clenched his jaw, his nerves tensing. Isaac or not, hopefully the other man knew how to swing his fists.
