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She had tried for hours to gather her bearings and find her way out of the woods. However, after that most of her memory was vague. She could remember being cold. Very cold. Colder than she had ever been in her life. Sleep had beckoned and Anna recalled how the sudden welcoming of the dark embrace felt and would lead her away from all the hurt she felt to the core of her heart. The next thing she knew, she awoke in Elizabeth’s parlor.
“So, how do you enjoy the Circle H?”
Anna nodded before filling her fork with food.
“The Haddock brothers are quite the pair. Not too many gentleman like themselves in this area.” Anna chewed her food, but watched the woman. “Raised by an English gentleman and his wife.”
She listened.
“The Haddock’s are the wealthiest and most prestigious family in the area. They own most all the land around here.” Elizabeth told her and from what Prescott had already recounted of his family’s history, didn’t surprise Anna. “Did you know they are the sons of an Earl?”
Anna’s hand froze midway in the process of delivering food to her mouth.
“That mountain is named after him.” She gestured out the window toward Mount Louis. “Louis Haddock came here as a young and eager Englishman, and like every other prospector wanted to buy all the land he could get his hands on. He fell in love with the area and eventually was able to buy all the surrounding land. Including the mountain. He obtained the legal ownership slip and named it after himself.”
A sinking feeling of horror drained from her face. Anna couldn’t believe of all the places for her to end up, she had landed on that man’s property. Admittedly, she knew nothing of him except that what her parents had told her.
When Anna was still in her mother’s belly, her parents had traveled west from the banks of the Red River. Gold in the mountains had lured them along with two hundred other pilgrims. Her parents planned on striking it rich. Along with a great number of other prospectors when word spread of gold being discovered along the banks of the Cariboo Trail.
The journey, however, took far longer and proved more difficult than they had ever imagined. Hardships along the way had forced them to sell or trade everything they owned and provisions had completely run out when their journey finally ended for them on the property owned by the Earl of Lorden.
Of course, at the time, the drifters had no idea the land was privately owned. When discovered, disagreements erupted between the Earl and the drifters until finally the Earl had begun proceedings to have the peasants evicted. But before anything could be resolved, he met with an untimely death. The travelers fled to the sanctuary of the mountain where they built homes and began their own community. Nothing ever came of the eviction threat and so they believed it had died along with the Earl.
Anna blinked and realized Elizabeth was still speaking.
“As a matter-of-fact, many young females here would be happy to call either one of those men their own. In particular Wade, being the oldest. With the death of his father, he became the sole heir of all his land as well as Mount Louis.”
Anna felt a heaviness in her chest. Wade was not her savior, but the enemy. His father had wanted her people off that mountain twenty-four years earlier and now, finally, he had his wish.
“Not to mention all the property and assets in England. He became a wealthy young man at the age of twenty. Not to mention an aristocrat.”
An aristocrat? Her confusion must have been evident for Elizabeth clarified. “Wade Haddock is actually the Earl of Lorden.”
Anna looked away. This couldn’t be real. A fleeting thought crossed her mind that maybe she and Elizabeth were thinking of two separate men. Prescott, possibly, but Wade? He was a big burly cowboy,
not a member of royalty.
“However, I’ve always been keen on Prescott, but he was a married man,” she said. “My own husband passed away early on and left me this here restaurant.”
For some reason, she thought of Wade’s Marion from the saloon and she felt herself grow hot with anger. She was glad Prescott’s woman truly loved him. Someone as kind and moral as Prescott deserved happiness. Wade, she thought, deserved to burn in hell.
“I reckon Wade won’t ever make that trip down to the altar. It hasn’t lured him yet, and I daresay it probably won’t anytime in the near future. So, if someone were to think they would make a fine Countess of Lorden, they would be sadly mistaken.”
Anna’s eyes shot up and found the woman studying her closely. She suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Was she sending a hidden message? If so, had she guessed Anna’s true identity?
The woman smiled and got to her feet. “I’m afraid I’ve talked too long. I must open the restaurant, but feel free to stay as long as you need.”
Anna nodded, then watched the woman leave. She felt suddenly very weary and prayed if the woman suspected anything she wouldn’t say a word to Prescott. Prescott was all types of a gentleman. But a silent one.
* * *
The day had brought milder temperatures and the sun attempted many times to break through heavy clouds. The cattle moved ahead of the wranglers who herded them through the steep decline of the Durand Pass. They looked in fine form and were behaving with little disturbance. By late afternoon, they reached the northern gathering pastures and broke early for camp. Anna could hear Wade tell Joe it would give the horses a well-deserved rest as the rocky declines in that part of the territory were quite hard on their hoofs.
Anna had a different mind-set. She wanted to get back to the ranch as soon as possible. There was an odious shadow hovering over the mountain and a sense of doom filling her heart. She had always loved this country and its majestic mountains so close to heaven. However, there was a semblance of evil connected to the mountain that Anna feared would always exist. The night before, when she had run into the woods, she recalled wanting to go home. But it was not the village in the mountain that had come to mind. It was the Circle H.
They had reached the campsite and the men had finished herding the cattle into the holding pen and were dismounting from their horses. Anna watched as they took their places around the campfire. Her eyes shifted in Chuck Rhodes direction. He was watching her. She felt a chill of apprehension run its icy finger down her spine. She looked away and saw Wade lay out his bedroll. In his arms that first night she had felt safe and warm. But the scene in the upstairs room in the saloon left a coldness in her heart that Anna wasn’t entirely sure would ever leave.
She looked toward Joe and remembered how Chuck Rhodes feared the man. No doubt she would be safe from the old man next to the lead hand, however, she wasn’t certain how safe she would be if the inconceivable happened and Joe discovered her sex. She bit her lip and looked around at the other wranglers. The same fear kept her from laying her bedroll next to theirs. Her eyes fell upon Prescott and with a sense of relief she slipped into the spot next to him.
