Western Widows

PROLOGUE

"I must be drunk," Liam Anderson said, pushing his empty shot glass toward his friend Seth Barnes. "I just agreed to protect and see after your wife and you don't even have one."

The tinny music of the saloon's piano filled the air along with shouts and conversation by rowdy miners and other male members of Collins. The Montana Territory was a rough and wild place, working in the mines a dangerous profession. Life was perilous at best.

Richard Randolph tossed back a shot of rotgut whiskey and pointed at Liam. "You have to vow, Anderson. I don't want my woman claimed by one of these bastards." He waved his hand around the room pointing out the rough edged men that surrounded them. The other men at the table nodded their heads in agreement.

"Perhaps claiming a woman should be our first steps," Aaron Moore added, his voice slightly slurred. He was the least sober among the group of four.

"Damn time you got yourself hitched," Seth Barnes said, filling everyone's glasses from the half empty bottle on the table.

"What about you?" Aaron asked.

"I'll know her when I see her." Seth tossed back his next shot with a wince, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "You're not going to die anyway," he told Aaron. "You're too big, too smart to let Death take you."

"A woman would be smart to keep her distance," Richard countered. "She'd surely be crushed beneath him if he tried to bed her."

All of the men laughed at that.

"You'll do it?" Richard asked Liam, sounding sober as he did so.

Liam met his friend's stare, held it. "I promise."

"And you?" Aaron questioned Seth.

"I'll protect your woman just as I know you'll protect mine."

"Now let's drink to old age," Liam called out, raising his glass.

The other men lifted theirs as well, content that the pact was made, their words bound by their honor, but they all knew it would never need to be fulfilled. They were too bullheaded to get themselves killed.

A WIDOW’S WANTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHARLOTTE

It had been three months since the cave in and I was at my wit's end. Glancing down at the small, neatly folded pile of sewing I'd completed in the early hours of the morning, I swallowed back the tears that lodged in my throat. I could no longer stay in the house without any payment to the bank and it had taken me two days of painstaking work to complete the one dress. For a pittance. Not enough to make payment on the house and keep food in my belly. The meals to date had been provided as charity by the women of the church, but that couldn't sustain. I put a hand at my lower back and stretched, my muscles tight and sore from stooping over my needle and thread. It was a lost cause to try and survive without Richard and I'd been told such.

You were newly wed, you will find another.

You are young and must find another husband.

Who will support you, if not a man?

This is no place for a woman alone.

I'd heard it all since Richard had been killed in the mine collapse. He'd been gone longer than we'd been married. Several men, one who had only a few teeth left in his mouth, had offered marriage since his death, but I'd spurned them all.

I looked out the window past curtains I'd sewed the week after our arrival. I'd been so full of hope then, hope that this marriage would bring me happiness. It had been as elusive to me as a shooting star streaking across the sky. Random, quick and unattainable.

I'd had such hopes as a child, finding love, something akin to my parents' marriage. I remember, although vaguely and without clarity, the way they had looked at each other, the link they shared, like a chain of daisies I'd weave into a crown on my head as a girl. But the dreams, along with my parents, had died.

I'd been fortunate enough to have Matthew, my older brother, with whom to live. A cut to the leg as he'd chopped wood one winter morning had turned gangrenous and within a week he was dead, leaving me all alone. His friend, Richard, had stepped in and married me. I'd had no choice but to accept his suit and was tied by holy matrimony to a man I didn't love. He'd been kind, in his own way, but he did not appeal to me, to my senses. He'd saved me from being destitute, and for that I had been thankful, but I knew love would not blossom in our marriage. It had been founded solely on thankfulness and that was not enough. Perhaps fondness would have developed over the years, but most certainly not love.

Once again I was alone. It seemed death visited me more often than most, but life went on. The town around me bustled, the five deaths at the mine all but forgotten in the need for more silver. It wasn't Virginia City, but Collins was thriving from the boon.

Everyone, it seemed, but me. I winced as my back pinched. With no man to support me, I was doomed. Skill with a needle could not support me, not with the Chinese who'd arrived in town and worked for a pittance. Life would repeat itself soon enough. I'd have to marry in order to survive. This time, there was no Richard. No family friend to whom I could trust.

Collins wasn't a town for women. We had a hard life, whether as a bride or a whore at the saloon, it was not easy. Men were rough and life was practically lawless. The way the gentlemen—no, they couldn't be called that—looked at me, approached me, pushed even the boundaries of Collins. There were no marriageable women, especially none under a man's protection. Until now. I was easy pickings, like a vulture cleaning a carcass, if I only gave them a chance. I barely left the house, fearing for my safety. I had few friends and saw them only at church. I had no protection of a man and that was well known in town, most definitely among the men.