Page 95 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
“That was a misunderstanding.” He spun back around. “I owned up to my mistake and apologized. And that’s why I wanted to marry her. So no one could say she was anything but my wife. I wanted her to have my name and—” Everything. He had wanted to give hereverythinghe had, but he had withheld his heart. Because he’d been scared.
“All these men courting her…” She set down the wishing stone and linked her fingers together. “She had plenty to choose from. She had a job, and she had sworn not to marry. So why would she agree to marry anyone at all, least of all a man who had hurt her, unless she trusted and loved him with her whole heart?”
Well,fuck.
His own heart tore right open as he saw the mistake he’d made. He’d been so blinded by his anger and hurt, he hadn’t seen that Marigold was as fearful of rejection as he was, so she’d gone and done it first.
“I should have seen how she felt about you.” Pearl’s brow pleated, and tears came into her eyes. “I was thinking of myself. Thinking…” She used her finger to turn the wishing stone in a circle. “She’s just so infuriating, sometimes. Especially when she thinks she’s right.”
He could have laughed at that if he wasn’t suffocating in the tragedy of his own wrongness.
“I was angry with her for pushing Hiram on me. I couldn’t stay in Topeka, either. She made you sound like such a good prospect.” She looked up, mouth quivering. “I thought I could be like her. Brave enough to come here and start over on my own terms. I thought I could marry you and look afterherfor a change. But she’s ahead of me here, too. She turned this into a home I could love, but I can’t stop feeling as though I’m taking what’s hers. And she deserves good things, Virgil. She does.”
She used the inside of her wrist to swipe away a tear, so pretty in her sorrow, he thought someday, some hapless man was going to be completely undone by her. Not him, though. His heart belonged to another. He only felt kinship because they were both miserable and angry with themselves for hurting the one person they loved most.
“Will you please go get my sister?” she implored.
“I will.” He didn’t know how he would make up with Marigold and bring her home, but he would. Because he loved her and he couldn’t live without her.
…
Virgil got underway at first light, tempted to ride on horseback for speed, but settling on the mules and the little wagon so he wouldn’t have to double Marigold all the way back here.
It was still raining, but he ignored the discomfort. He deserved to suffer for leaving her in Denver, enduring whatever gossip he’d stirred up with his stupidity. It must have looked like he had cast her off in favor of her sister, which was about the worst thing he could do to her, given all she’d been through.
God, he was sorry for that. He would have to find a way to fix it. He wasn’t a man for making public speeches, but he wanted people to know she wasn’t second-best or a convenient arrangement for the sake of his children. She was a remarkable woman who would make him the luckiest man alive if she would be his wife.
He needed to get to her and say that. Make her believe it. Makeeveryonebelieve it.
He realized that rushing noise in his ears was actually the roar of the swollen creek as he approached the bridge he’d built. The mules halted a few feet in front of it, refusing to cross, danged stubborn things.
Virgil clucked his tongue and snapped the reins.
They didn’t move.
“Damn it, I have a woman to win back.” He got down from the wagon and walked out in front of the animals, drawing the reins with him as he stepped onto the bridge, trying to tug them across.
They stayed exactly where they were.
“I am not fucking arguing with you two. She’s hurting. Do you understand that? And I can’t bear it.” It tore him apart, filling him with urgency toget there. “Take your mule asses across this bridge—”
The bank gave way beneath his feet.
He somehow kept a slippery grip on the reins as he slid onto his ass against the soggy embankment.
Flopping onto his stomach, he clasped the wet leather in both hands and shouted, “Back, back!”
The mules backed up, pulling him up the broken edge of the creek onto solid ground.
He was covered in mud, shaking, and trying to catch his breath, but all he could think as he stared at the broken bridge and rushing water was that he still had to get to Marigold.
But how?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Writing letters for the men in Quail’s Creek had been hard enough. They’d often been homesick and disillusioned by the difficulty of a goldminer’s life. Here in Denver, they were destitute and begging for money so they could go home. Rather than turn anyone away, Marigold had started accepting a potato or a cup of cornmeal or even an empty cup, reasoning that she needed dishes as badly as she needed something to put in them.
Once the Dudleys realized her service could bring in customers—some broke, but also curiosity-seekers who were so starved for entertainment they would watch a woman write a letter—the saloonkeepers had allowed her to work at one of their gambling tables so long as it wasn’t needed by anyone who wanted to play cards.
