All in Good Time (36 page)

He smiled and lifted one of his hands as if he could catch on his palm the sound of his name flowing from her lips. “Pardon me, but do you know I’ve dreamed of hearing you say my name? Silly, isn’t it? For too many years I’ve been ‘Mr. Hawkins’ to everyone but my uncle Tobias—and believe me, having him say my name brought me no thrill.”

She’d been looking away for fear of giving away the depth of her feeling for him. He must know the important things first and not be distracted by her complete and utter hope that he might somehow love her. But hearing him say such things, she couldn’t help herself. She raised her eyes to meet his, and the moment he recognized what she’d tried to hide, his smile grew wider.

“There, that’s better,” he whispered.

Dessa knew she shouldn’t have given in, shouldn’t even now gaze at him with every corner of her heart exposed. But she wanted to remember this moment as he looked at her with her own feelings mirrored in his eyes. “Last night made me realize I’ve allowed my feelings for you to grow, and yet we really know so little of one another. Of our pasts.”

He frowned. “I know you must be disappointed in me. When I think back on it, I’m disappointed in myself.”

Hurriedly, she shook her head. “No, Henry. It’s not you I’m disappointed in. It’s myself.”

He remained still, waiting for her to collect her thoughts and speak. She knew he would wait as long as it took.

“There’s much you should know about me before you truly invite me into your life.”

“Tell me, then,” he said gently. “Tell me everything you think I need to know.”

“I was orphaned nearly at birth. My father was already dead, killed in the war. He never knew about me. My mother died shortly after my birth.”

Henry took one of her hands—the one intent upon pulling at the stubbornly perfect glove—and held it in his.

“My brother was three years older than me, and we were sent to an orphan asylum. But there were others living there too—grown people with noplace else to go, people who were sent there because they had no one to take care of them. And unmarried girls who found themselves in trouble. Those were the ones who became my mothers; all those aunts helped me survive. I’m alive today because of them, Henry. Women just like those in the Fourth Ward right here in Denver.”

She took a breath, then went on. “When my brother was ten and I was seven, we were put on a train and sent West to work.
My brother went to a farm in Kentucky, and I went to St. Louis as a maid of all work. I never saw my brother again. He died in an accident, falling from a loft.”

She wiped a tear that tickled her cheek on its downward path. She hadn’t even known she was crying. “I knew I was much better off, hired into the Pierson family home. I worked my way up from lowliest maid to assisting the housekeeper, because I wasn’t afraid of hard work and I knew how to be discreet. In a family like the Piersons, that was a requirement.”

“Discreet?” He said the word with some concern.

She nodded. “The only son, Sophie’s older brother, was an embarrassment to the family. Anyone who helped quell the rumors—to the extent that we could—was appreciated. But then . . .” She was no longer crying. Now she was only afraid, afraid of what he might think. “Bennet Pierson was rich, charming . . . handsome. He had learned at a very young age that he had special appeal to girls.”

Dessa went on, seeing that he still looked at her with interest and attentiveness. “He was quite a bit older than me, and by the time I caught his eye, he was already married. Marriage, of course, did not keep him from behavior he was accustomed to before.” She pulled her hand from Henry’s tender hold and put it to her forehead. “I don’t know why I was so foolish, except that I was young. Barely seventeen. I knew—I
knew
—what he was like. He used the staff as if it were just one more service we provided. Before it was my ‘turn,’ I’d looked upon the others with pity and a bit of disgust, I think. And I never gave them a bit of sympathy when he was finished with them. Until . . .”

She didn’t want to go on, didn’t want to finish this confession. He must know what she was trying to tell him. Such a long moment went by that Henry cleared his throat, shifting in his seat. But he said nothing. Did he not care if she continued?

Dessa let her shoulders slump. If Henry thought as little of her as she’d thought of herself all these years, he might as well hear the rest. “When he paid attention to me, I thought I might be different from the others. He gave me little gifts, and I thought mine were prettier, more expensive. I thought that meant he cared for me more than he had the others. He spent so much time trying to charm me, never giving up despite my . . . resistance.”

She sucked in another fortifying breath. “Sophie had been on an extended trip to Europe, or it never would have happened. When she returned, she requested me as her maid, and we became friends even with the difference in our ages and stations. Sophie would have set me straight before . . . well, before it was too late, if I’d let her know what was going on. She was so levelheaded, so wise. She didn’t find out until she spotted one of the gifts her brother had given me. She knew immediately what it meant, and was horrified.”

Dessa wrung her hands together, not daring to look at Henry. “By that time, I’d been with Bennet once. Sophie was determined I never take that risk again and demanded that her family let me accompany her to New York, where she planned to live for a while until starting the kind of mission we began here.”

“But how do you know, if Sophie Pierson took you away before this—this romance—died, that the scoundrel didn’t hold you in higher esteem than the others?”

The weight upon her rounded shoulders multiplied. “Sophie’s mother didn’t want to let me go, so Sophie had to tell her the truth—what her brother had done. When their mother confronted him about it, he denied it. Someone in love doesn’t deny the object of their love just to escape a scolding. And that’s all it would have been.”

Henry was silent a long time, and she could think of nothing else to say. She’d offered him her only excuse—youthful
indiscretion, he’d called it last night. But somehow this was different, because it was so much more personal.

“Did you love him?”

The question, quietly issued, held a hint of sadness.

She shook her head, still not looking at him. “I suppose that makes it worse, doesn’t it? To do something out of blind love might be more easily forgiven. But I . . . I was foolish enough to think he might love
me
out of all the others. And I realized over the years that I was prideful enough to want to prove that. But I could never have loved him, not knowing the way he treated so many women before me.”

Another long pause followed, and then Henry shifted again, setting his walking stick at their feet and turning so that he was facing her. He took both her hands in his, waiting until she looked at him.

“Dessa,” he said softly, “your past isn’t so much different from mine, you know. Pride was the culprit behind what I did too. I thought I shouldn’t have to work all the years it would have taken me to accumulate my initial investment.”

Dessa pursed her lips. She hadn’t wanted to ask him about the other part of his past. She had no right, not with her own. But the question was there anyway, and she couldn’t hold it back.

“And you, Henry? Did you love the woman in Chicago?”

His gaze never left hers. “I thought I did, at the time. But if I’d truly loved her, I wouldn’t have chosen the money over her, would I? I could have confessed what I had done and returned the money, asking her to wait if I’d been arrested. Yet I chose to return home, pick up the money, and use it exactly as if I’d never met her at all.

“I can’t say our pasts don’t matter. But hasn’t everything that happened in our lives before today made us who we are? I love the Dessa of today, and I know I’ll love the Dessa of tomorrow, too.” He squeezed her hands. “Your heart is what I love. Your
compassion for others, your eagerness to help, no matter what’s needed. Perhaps it’s true that we have much to discover about each other. But we know each other for who we are today. And we can watch over what we’ll become tomorrow. Together.”

Dessa let go of his hands to cast herself at him, not caring what anyone around them might think or say. Out here, they were free of the law, even that of etiquette. She couldn’t keep herself from him any more than she could capture the tears flowing from her eyes.

“I was so afraid to love you,” she cried. “But that fight was no use. I think I’ve loved you since I first stepped into your office.”

He caught her face between his palms. “Then will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

She laughed. “Oh, Henry! Yes!”

Then his lips claimed hers, and Dessa knew in this life she would never be happier.

Two years later

HENRY SCOOPED UP
the crawling infant before the child reached the open candy jar at the opposite end of the counter. No sense risking the boy’s single tooth on a hard piece of peppermint.

Dessa had left Cullen with him at the mercantile for the few minutes it would take her to run to the post office next door. They both knew Jeb, the Leadville postman, would have brought any mail by later, but for days now she’d been expecting a letter from Liling in San Francisco and was eager for whatever news it might contain.

“It’s here!” She waved a sturdy envelope as she flew into the store.

“Well? Is she or isn’t she?”

After scanning the content, Dessa raised merry eyes to him. “She is! Liling is getting married in two months and hopes we might make the trip out there. Oh! Wait until Jane finds out we’re going to San Francisco!”

“What!”

The squeal came from the back of the store, where Henry already planned an expansion to accommodate more goods. His mercantile was the best in Leadville, if he was speaking to anyone
but his mother. Her own store still thrived, keeping its focus on miners who continued to go after silver now that gold mining was a more distant memory.

Henry was even considering opening a real
department
store, but thought the only place for an ambition like that would be Denver. Even now, he was wondering how he might propose a partnership with William White for such a venture.

Jane rushed to Dessa’s side. The girl was eighteen, and Henry was as proud of her as if she were his daughter. She’d just finished two years of schooling in Denver at Wolfe Hall and was as much an asset to the store as she’d once hoped to be, with her math and accounting skills.

But being a shopgirl—or even the wife of a miner—wasn’t enough for his hopes for her. A trip to San Francisco would do her good, and leave behind, at least for a while, the attention of more than one poor miner. She ought to know she could find someone with bigger plans rather than settling for someone who might not be able to give her all she deserved.

“Remee will want to know as well,” Dessa said to Jane, who nodded. Remee was the proprietress of the rebuilt Pierson House, and with Dessa’s regular visits the mission continued to grow. Dessa remained the open-armed figure Pierson House had become known for.

Remee had built a reputation as a practical business partner. Though she continued to live under Pierson House’s roof, with the help of Henry’s investment she had taken over an abandoned clothing shop on the edge of the Fourth Ward. It was in a respectable-enough neighborhood to draw a wide number of clients, and under Remee’s direction a dozen women created both men’s and ladies’ fashion. It had drawn a profit within the first year, and they were already planning to expand—offering real jobs to women who needed them. Such financial incentive, Dessa knew,
was every bit as responsible for the growth and success of Pierson House as the acceptance offered to every woman in need.

Mr. Dunne had a job at Remee’s clothing shop taking measurements for men as well as selling merchandise. The old carriage house had been torn down, taken away with the rest of the rubble from the house. A cottage built in its place, minus the drinking cellar, now served his needs. A steady job, friends who needed him, and a revived faith had helped him satisfy the void he’d tried filling with drink.

And the new senator from Colorado, Turk Foster, split his time between Colorado and Washington, where he often made headlines in both cities for having charmed one deal or another from nationwide taxpayers. His past was notorious, but his smile and open wit made him among the best-known politicians no matter which side of an issue he held.

As Dessa and Jane discussed all they would see and do in San Francisco, Henry picked up the rest of Liling’s letter. He’d not only financed the sisters’ travel expenses but provided them with a trustworthy Chinese bodyguard and enough money to open a small tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was that bodyguard whom Liling would marry in two months’ time.

“What about Nadette?” Dessa’s question pulled his attention from the letter. “Do you suppose we can arrange for her to come too?”

“Hmm.” He held the letter outside their son’s reach, and Dessa took Cullen from him.

Having Nadette travel all the way from New York might take some doing, despite the two months they had to work with. It had taken time to convince her to accept their help, but somehow Dessa had wrangled from the girl that her secret dream had been to go to a girls’ school back East, one that would improve her piano playing. It seemed as unlikely a place as Henry could think of
for the rough-mannered girl he’d observed, but he hadn’t minded when Dessa asked if they could fund her education.

“It’s a long trip across the country just for a wedding,” Henry warned.

“Just for a wedding!” The words came in unison from Jane and Dessa, as if everyone except him would know how foolish his statement had been.

He shrugged. “Ask her, not me. Better send a telegram, though, so she can start making plans soon if she wants to come.”

Dessa reached across the countertop to kiss him, her face as lovely as ever when she looked at him that way. “Henry, you’re the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”

Henry smiled back. He would
never
tire of hearing her call him by name.