Seeking Respectable Woman for Household Position
Household assistant needed for established Montana ranch family. Experience with cooking, cleaning, and general domestic duties helpful but not required. Suitable for woman seeking change from mining town life to peaceful mountain ranch.
Position includes room and board in comfortable accommodations, plus generous wages. Duties to include cooking assistance, general housekeeping, and companionship for female family members. Remote location requires commitment through winter months.
He studied the words, imagining Rose reading them in some Virginia City boarding house or theater. Would she be curious enough to respond? Would the promise of mountains and peace appeal to someone who’d been performing in the rough-and-tumble world of a mining town?
He added one more line:
Reply to Telegraph Office, Walnut Springs, Montana Territory.
Would she think it odd for the correspondence to be held at the telegraph office? It was clear that he wanted to remain anonymous, but maybe that wasn’t uncommon for general advertisements like this that might receive a horde of responses.
He glanced over the missive once more. This would do. He’d ride to town tomorrow morning to send the message to the Virginia City newspaper. That would be the only town he advertised in.
Then he’d give a week to wait for Rose’s response. If she didn’t answer, he’d ride to Virginia City and plead his case in person.
Certainly she couldn’t resist a bit of the Balfour charm from her oldest friend.
He could only pray one of these steps would work. Something inside him had come to life with the thought of Rose back in his life, and he wouldn’t give up this dream again.
Not like he’d been forced to the first time she left.
CHAPTER 2
Rose Prescott let her hands fall to her sides as her final note faded into the rafters. That familiar bone-deep ache settled in her chest as applause rippled through the singing hall, a large room added to the back of Murphy’s Saloon. Men clustered around the small tables, raised their glasses, and called for more, but she was already edging toward the narrow doorway leading to the backstage area.
“That’s all for tonight, gentlemen.” She kept her voice warm enough to satisfy, but distant, as always.
The emerald silk dress her stepfather insisted she wear clung to her skin, and she had to work to draw breath in the thick air, heavy with the stench of cigars and spilled whiskey.
She slipped behind the curtain. Her slippers made no sound on the warped boards. The hallway back here was cooler, at least, though the sounds of the saloon—raucous laughter, the clink of glasses, the occasional crash of furniture—followed her like ghosts.
“Ruby.”
She tensed as Vincent Dunhill’s voice cut through her brief moment of peace like a knife blade. When she turned, he leaned against the wall, his bulk blocking most of the dim light from the oil lamp mounted nearby.
Even in the shadows, his pale eyes glinted.
“The take was good tonight.” He straightened, and at nearly six feet, he loomed over her.
“Better than last week. That new song you’ve been working on—the melancholy one about lost love—they ate it up.”
Rose nodded, though something cold twisted in her stomach at his satisfied tone. Vincent always spoke of her performances like a merchant discussing his most profitable goods. “I’m glad it pleased them.”
“Pleased them?” His laugh was low and calculating. “Ruby, my dear, you had half those men ready to weep into their whiskey. That’s not just pleasing—that’s artistry.” He reached out to adjust a wayward curl that had escaped her carefully arranged hair, and she forced herself not to flinch. Having his hand so close to her tightened every muscle in her body. “Your mother would be proud.”
The mention of Mama sent a familiar pang through her chest. Margaret Prescott had been dead four years now, but Vincent still wielded her memory like a weapon when it suited him.
“I’m tired, Vincent. May I retire for the evening?”
“Of course, of course.” But his hand settled on her shoulder, fingers pressing just firmly enough to remind her who held the power between them. “Though I did want to discuss expanding your repertoire. Perhaps something a bit more…spirited for the weekend crowds.”
Rose’s throat tightened. She knew what he meant by spirited—songs that would encourage the men to drink more, stay longer, spend more money. Songs that would chip away another piece of her dignity.
She was tired. Soul-weary tired in a way that had nothing to do with the late hour and everything to do with the weight of the twenty-year contract that bound her to this life.
“Good night, Vincent.”
