Or, so Emmett had proclaimed. She clenched her teeth anew because she had heard it so often she’d believed it herself.
“Don’t baptism do that to all?” Bronx asked, mild, then dipped his lips into the teacup, a tiny china thing made absurd by his large, hardworking hand. “Leastways, the old lady told us upon reading her scriptures.”
“Us?”
“Me and my brother.”
“And the old lady?” Lila’s mouth pursed, Emmett coming to life in her words. Again. “Rather a disrespectful thing to call your mama.”
His cheekbones turned the deep red of communion wine. “You shame me, Miz Brewster. My ma didn’t survive my birthing, God keep her safe. My pa had left us behind for California, so Ma had rented an upstairs garret outside of town. Our landlady had no husband or kids of her own. After Ma passed, she took us in. Me and my brother. We grew up tending her garden and her critters. Please, I apologize, to you. To her. You remind me of the respect due her. In truth, I should say her given name. Miz Edith. She was a good and generous soul.”
Regret swamped Lila at the preachy words that were Emmett’s own. How long would it take to find herself? Would she need to leave Leadville before she did? Bronx shut his eyes tight, as if he was holding off a tear, and planted both feet on the floor like he was ready to leave. She didn’t want him to.
“Oh, Mr. Sanderson. I’m so sorry. Please finish your tea.” Heat wracked through her. “Please, please, accept my apology. I didn’t mean to critique. Or pry. But...” She hesitated because she truly wanted to know. Wanted to know everything about him, although she shouldn’t. “I’m so used to my husband’s ways.”
“It’s all right.” He tossed a tight grin. “I know how it is, someone holding some kind of power over you. And sometimes memories hurt, is all. You been through that road.” He watched her carefully.
“Yes, of course.” For a flash, she wandered the road again. The empty nights. Then the shock, the tears. The shameful relief.
Most of all, the deathbed promise. She shuddered, ached for the day she need look only in the future, not the past. “Oh, Mr. Sanderson, might you overlook my busybody words if I inquire what brings you to Leadville?” She laughed, soft and ladylike, like Emmett had required, then took a delicate bite of cake. “It’s not an easy destination. Why, it took me days just to learn how to breathe.”
Bronx rested a thumbnail on his bottom teeth. “Altitude sickness can hit anybody, that’s for sure.” He relaxed again, and her heart pittered—she hadn’t forced him away.
“You know the mountains, then?” She was curious. Missouri hadn’t prepared her for the Rockies of Colorado, and the powerful peaks and ranges still stunned her.
His eyes widened, and he took a long time to reply. “Some. More than some. But I reckon it’s mining, what brought me here.”
She glanced at large, work-worn hands that, for a single indecent moment, she imagined drifting over her body in the dark. One of Miss Mollie’s girls had told her, but Emmett had only tried once.
“Uh...” Her heart hammered hard with guilt over her adulterous thought. “I...I don’t imagine a mountaineer would much like burrowing in the ground.”
He looked away. “Things don’t always mean what you see,” he said, and then said nothing at all.
No. Anybody hereabouts saw a dedicated widow. A wife too barren to give her man a child. But she laughed instead of telling her truth. “Oh, that’s the lesson of Leadville.”
“How so?” He grinned. Interest glazed his night-sky eyes.
She smiled back. “The gold hunters had too hard a time, sifting through muddy sludge to find their ore. Left in a huff. Finally, that thick mess turned out to be lead carbonate hiding fortunes of silver.”
Bronx’s eyebrows rose like a dark moth taking flight, and she soldiered on, brave at being on her own with a man. And grateful not discussing vice or the scriptures. “These days, placer mining is all played out, but I believe the Matchless and some on Iron Hill always have opportunity for hard workers.”
“I am that. A hard worker.” He stretched out long legs in decent woolen trousers toward the fire. “And I burrowed in the ground plenty. Spent time on the cutline separating these United States of America from the Dominion of Canada.”
“Cutline?” Canada? He had come a long way. She poured him another cup. What was he here to find? A fortune? Leadville was not an easy byway. One must have real purpose to trudge up here.
He glanced out the front window at a passing runabout, then back at her. “Border. A ten-foot wide slash between us going on for some five thousand miles.”