His only bright spot.Wolf Heart wasn’t the only one who thought she should go to Ben. Evelyn McKenzie was asking her to leave Texas, at least for a visit. Brow furrowed, Cora sank onto her bed. From the sound of it, Ben was deeply entangled in obligations. She’d be foolish to think he’d be free by spring or even a year from now.
After the way she’d treated him in the garden, picking up the shard from her father’s whiskey jug and accusing Ben of havinga similar character, could she really expect Ben to fight his way back to her? Unless she gave him a reason to?
And what of her dream? At this point, the surest way to hold onto the ranch would be to ride into town and tell Arthur she’d reconsidered. Live in misery for the sake of cattle and acres?
She glanced around at her mother’s wallpaper, the frilly curtains, the carved walnut bedframe, and the cedar chest. Hollow without someone to share them with. All of the furnishings were from Nashville. Her mother had brought them along when she’d forsaken everything familiar to go with her husband to the unknown.
But she was not her mother.
Saddlebags over one shoulder and a carpetbag in the other, Ben strode down the gangplank of theMary Belleas he disembarked in New Orleans. The Mississippi lapped against the bow. A fleet’s worth of frigates, schooners, steamboats, and ocean-going steamers flanked the wharf. Hopefully, one of them would head out tomorrow for Galveston. Coal smoke and damp stung his nose. Better that than the odor of the liquid sludge which flowed through the city’s drainage ditches.
It was a city full of sights, but the only sight he cared about was across the Gulf and half of Texas. Blue eyes, uburn-tinged chestnut hair, and maybe, just maybe, a smile for him.
He shifted the weight of the saddlebags as his boots struck the worn boards of the dock. The ticket office was farther down on the wharf, if he recalled correctly. “Excuse me.” He nodded and stepped around a lady dressed in a wide hoop skirt.
“Mr. McKenzie? Mr. Benjamin McKenzie?” A young man wearing a black wool wheel cap and a brown sack coat quickstepped down the dock, calling out like a newspaper boy hawking the morning edition. He scanned the crowd coming down the gangplank. “Benjamin McKenzie?”
Ben waved at him and strode over. “I’m Mr. McKenzie.”
“Benjamin McKenzie of Philadelphia?”
“I am he. What do you need of me?”
“Telegram, sir.” The youth whipped an envelope from his coat and held out his hand.
Ben dug in his pocket for a coin and exchanged it for the message.
“Much obliged.” The boy tipped his hat and hurried off.
Ben grimaced as he opened the envelope. If his father or mother were trying to drag him back already… Surely, no new crisis could have arisen in the ten days since his departure. He paused. Maybe he shouldn’t read the message. Just act as if he never received it, at least until he set foot in Texas.
A groan rumbled in his throat. He couldn’t not read it. But nothing short of a life or death emergency, verified by a telegram from Evie, would turn him eastward before he saw Cora.
He uttered a prayer and pulled out the message.
Received wire from Ramsey. Cora on way to Philadelphia. Can catch her in New Orleans. Arriving on the steamerHarlan.Evie.
On her way to Philadelphia? Cora was coming to him? Mouth agape, he stumbled against a post. A smile crescendoed through his whole being. His girl was coming to see him—not really his girl, the way they’d left things, but if she was on her way to New Orleans, maybe all was right in the world, and she would be again. More than he’d dared even pray for. It didn’t mean shewas coming to stay or that he’d ask her to. But she was willing to travel across the country to visit him. He swiped his hand over his face, but nothing could wipe away the smile.
His hand dropped to his side. What if he’d already missed her? TheHarlancould have already landed as far as he knew, and if he didn’t catch her when she disembarked, he might never find her in this city. He took off at a fast walk.
“Hey, mister. Forget something?”
Ben pivoted toward the voice.
An unshaven dockworker pointed at the carpetbag Ben had left by the post.
Ben hurried back and grabbed it. “Much obliged. Can you tell me how I can find the schedule for when theHarlan’s due in port?”
The next day, Ben stood on the wharf. Since yesterday, he’d soaked in a bath, washed his clothes, and even stopped by the barber’s for a shave and a haircut. He clutched a half dozen roses wrapped in paper in his sweaty palm. Cora’s ship was due any hour. Thank God, he hadn’t missed her.
Would Charlie be with her? The telegram hadn’t said anything about him.
Ben scanned the rows of steamers moored along a stretch of docks a mile long. Laborers hustled around him, working their way between piles of sacks and crates and towers of cotton bales. Down along another stretch of wharf, passengers disembarked from a steamboat. An egret croaked from a nearby piling.
Last night, he got down on his knees and prayed, and he did so again this morning. His hope for a future with Cora wouldlikely be decided in the next few days. His girl was coming to see him. How much dare he ask of her? He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He was here to rescue her, not ask her to leave Texas.Even if he had to glue his mouth shut.
He had to be patient. On the way to wharf this morning, he’d booked them separate rooms in the St. Charles Hotel. He’d visit with her a few days here in New Orleans. Gauge her feelings. Then, if he believed he stood a chance, he’d propose. It was a lot to ask that she’d agree to be his wife under the stipulation that it could very well be six months, a year, or even longer before he could return to Texas and claim her as his bride.
