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“Me, too.” She glanced out the window. “So we’re going tonight because of Jack?”
Cole held in his own sigh. “The party is sure to have people chomping at the bit to acquire an already promising claim.”
The carriage stopped, and Cole waited for the driver to open the door before escorting Maddie down the steps and up the walkway of an impressive brick home. He’d lined up these tours in hopes to put a fire inside Maddie. Get her talking about future plans at the parties they attended.
Though Maddie was kind and pleasant, she barely muttered a word. Knowing he couldn’t cut the tours short, Cole continued as planned, but was brooding as deeply as Maddie by the time they were over.
On their way back to the hotel, they passed a rather large and elaborate church, and he recalled another thought, one that was never far from his mind. He and Maddie had never discussed what Elwood had told the miners, not fully.
Displaying little emotion, Maddie said, “Don’t worry. I haven’t told anyone we aren’t really married here, either.” Turning away from the window, she went on to say, “If they find out differently, and they will, considering how fast word spreads here, they’ll start to question other things, and that could ruin Jack’s chances to sell his claim.”
He didn’t want her to be right, but she was, and the set of her jaw said she wasn’t open to discussing any of it. She seemed to react that way to everything lately. Refused to talk about the future, of where she wanted to live, to build a house. All she’d say was they’d discuss it after Trig arrived and she paid off her debts.
Growing more frustrated by the heavy silence growing between them, Cole asked, “Do you want to go shopping?”
“We went shopping yesterday,” she said without glancing his way. “And this morning. Let’s just go back to the hotel. I want to read the newspapers.”
“You’ve read every paper they have,” he snapped. “From all across the nation.”
“Mr. Harms promised to collect any new ones that may have arrived this afternoon,” she said, turning back to the window. “I like reading about new places.”
I don’t, he wanted to bark. He liked seeing new places, exploring new places, which was the one thing he was having a hard time giving up.
Chapter Sixteen
The mayor’s house was more elaborate than the ones they’d visited earlier in the day. Maddie attempted to be impressed, to be awed by the decorations and the furniture and the servants, but she wasn’t.
She wasn’t impressed with Lucky, either. Shortly after returning to the hotel this afternoon, he’d left, giving her strict instructions to stay put, as always. She didn’t mind him telling her things like that; he was just worried. Besides, it wasn’t as if she had anywhere to go. That was what was driving her crazy. At least when she’d been in hiding with Smitty, she’d been outdoors. Able to breathe.
Mr. Harms, the man behind the front desk at the hotel, had delivered new papers, but they hadn’t held her attention. Instead, she’d questioned things. Like how long it would be before Trig arrived. Though she didn’t want to be parted from Lucky, she did want Mad Dog caught, and that wouldn’t happen as long as Lucky was at her side. It wasn’t safe for Lucky, and with all the people he had guarding her, Mad Dog might never approach her. And knowing that he was out there somewhere, waiting, was worse than having him actively chasing her. An oddity, but a reality.
When one of the girls from the dress shop arrived with the green gown, Maddie had let her in and accepted help in getting ready, since Lucky wasn’t there to button the back of her dress.
In the end, Maddie had even let the girl, April had been her name, curl her hair with a piece of iron the shape of a gun barrel and hot enough it made her scalp sizzle. Maddie still wondered if she’d ever find all the pins April had shoved into her head to keep the curls in place.
She wasn’t impressed with the mayor’s house, or Lucky, but the mayor’s wife really aggravated her already raw nerves. Normally Maddie welcomed Lucky’s touch, and his nearness, but this evening, the way he kept his palm in the small of her back, urging her forward to say hello to people she had no desire to meet, made her want to stomp on his foot.
She wouldn’t, though. Not because he’d given her another lecture on being neighborly, either. He no longer did that. She wished he did. It was easier to understand. She understood the concept of being neighborly. The concept of being a rich woman was what she didn’t understand. Rich or not, no one needed to be rude. The mayor’s wife was. Rude. Mean. And ugly.
