Chapter Sixteen
MATTHEW‘S HEARTBEATquickened. A million different possibilities for how she had acquired that large sum flitted through his mind. He stopped those thoughts in their tracks. He trusted Sophia—else he wouldn’t have married her.
“I am curious,” he finally admitted.
“I imagine so.” She gave him a little smile. “It isn’t every day you meet a woman carrying so much money in her dress.”
Matthew’s spirits lifted. It couldn’t be too terrible, with the way she was able to make a joke about it. And so he leaned back on his hands and waited.
“It was my parents’ money. Specifically, it’s money my father earned from his accounting business and invested into other businesses and companies in Kansas City. Growing up, I always wondered why we never had as much as other families in similar lines of work. My mother did all the cleaning and cooking, my father always hired out for a carriage if we needed one, I only got new dresses when I had to have them—that sort of thing. But when I grew older, I learned why.” The ghost of a smile lifted her lips, and Matthew fought to keep from reaching up to touch her face.
“He was planning for the future,” he said, more to distract himself from his thoughts than to help Sophia tell her story.
She nodded. “You remind me of him in that way.”
His insides warmed at the compliment.
“When my parents died, the funds and investments passed to me. I had just met with the attorney and bank to have everything situated when Francis Durham came to my door.”
Matthew lifted his eyebrows. “The man who wanted to marry you?”
“Yes.” Her face twisted in clear disdain. “But it wasn’t an offer made out of any sort of love or kindness. He wanted the money.”
Matthew sat up. “That’s why you left?”
“It is.” Sophia looked down at her hands, which were twisted together in her lap. “At first, he tried to claim the funds were his. That Papa had borrowed the money. And when my attorney asked him for proof, he changed his story and said that he’d given Papa half of each investment. There was, of course, no proof of that either. That’s when he insisted I marry him. And when I declined, he . . .”
A simmering fire burst into life deep down inside of Matthew. “He did what?”
Sophia swallowed visibly. “He told me I had no choice. That I would either agree to marry him or he’d find a way to get the money from me, legally or not.”
Matthew dug his fingernails into his palms. “Did he do anything?”
“I didn’t give him the chance. I went the very next day, withdrew all of the money from the bank, sold as many of the investments as I could, and went to the only place I thought he wouldn’t find me—Independence.”
“And the wagon train,” Matthew finished. “Did you tell anyone where you were going?”
Sophia shook her head. “I didn’t have many friends to leave behind, and no family to tell.”
A heavy weight lifted from Matthew’s shoulders. “That’s good.”
But Sophia still looked troubled. “I still think about him from time to time. How many young women on their own come through Independence? If he gets the idea that I might have traveled west—” She stopped abruptly and shivered.
Matthew wrapped an arm around her, and it felt as natural as if they’d known each other their entire lives, as if they’d had a long engagement and knew every detail about one another. “You’re safe here, I promise you. Even if he were to think you left on a wagon, he’d have to learn that you took on another name. And still, that would lead him as far as Pueblo, where—if that sheriff had time to speak with him—he’d learn you’d been kidnapped. I doubt that deputy bothered to relay the fact that you’d been found. And then what?”
“I don’t know.” She relaxed a little into his embrace. His breath hitched in his throat at her trust in him.
“Nothing. Nothing will happen.”
