Legend (Legend, Colorado 1)

“Years later a man showed up in Denver with a great deal of silver—there was a lot taken from the bank in Legend—and it was rumored that he was one of the robbers and he’d murdered his partners. No one could prove anything and he had a talent for buying the silence of any investigators.”

Ruth looked at Kady. “Three days ago the man was found dead in his study, a knife through his heart. The person who killed him never fired a shot. He silently slipped over a high wall, fought several guards, and entered the man’s study. On the man’s desk was a signed confession of his participation in the holdup in Legend so many years ago.”

Ruth’s eyes bored into Kady’s. “The knife found in the man’s heart had a medal in the top of it, a medal given for one year’s attendance at Sunday school.” She took a breath. “I asked the sheriff to show me the knife. It was Cole’s medal, and I . . . I had made sure he had been buried with it.”

Turning away from the sight of Ruth’s pain, Kady remembered how Cole had looked when he’d returned from his ten days away from her: his shoulder bleeding from a deep cut and

many bruises on his face and neck. Thinking of it now made her feel sick at the senselessness of revenge. Killing that man had brought no one back.

Ruth continued. “Along with the confession was a will, witnessed and legal, and it left the man’s millions to build orphanages all over Colorado.”

Suddenly, it was all too much for Kady, and she put her head in her hands and began to cry. Cole, she thought, had to be the best, most pure-hearted person she had ever met. Maybe killing out of revenge was wrong, but he’d been able to use the money that had cost so much blood for a good purpose.

Ruth sat in silence for a long while, letting Kady cry softly into her hands, leaving her alone, interrupting only to offer her a handkerchief. When Kady seemed to have herself under control again, Ruth spoke. “You will be wanting to go back to your own time now.”

“Yes,” Kady said softly. “I want to go home. I think I’ve done what I was supposed to do here. Cole had his chance at . . . at life.” But not at love, she thought. She’d cheated him out of that. But how could she love him when her heart already belonged to Gregory?

Abruptly, Ruth said, “Who put the wedding dress in the old flour tin?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was thinking of your story that you found a wedding dress and my son’s watch inside an old flour tin. Who put it there?”

“I have no idea. I assumed it was Cole’s mother’s dress, but . . .” Remembering, Kady gave a soft smile. “But Cole said he hadn’t been at the wedding, so he didn’t know what she’d worn.” At the memory of Cole’s joke Kady almost started crying again.

“Describe the dress to me.”

Kady thought that now was not the time to have a fashion recounting, but this seemed to be important to Ruth, so she began to sketch the lovely gown with her hands.

Kady had not said three sentences when Ruth said, “Wrong skirt. The skirt is wrong. My daughter-in-law was married in eighteen sixty-three and the skirts were very full then, with hoops, but your dress had a bustle. Your wedding dress was the style of eighteen seventy-three.”

“Then who was it made for, if not Cole’s mother?”

Ruth gave Kady a raised eyebrow look.

“Oh, no, you can’t believe that it was made for me. I know it fit me, but how could anyone know that I was . . . I mean who could guess that—”

“Me,” Ruth said simply. “I could have the dress made and put into a tin box.”

Several times Kady opened her mouth to speak, but each time she closed it. Finally, she fell back against the chair. “This really doesn’t make sense. I think this is one of those chicken-or-the-egg things. I found the dress before I met you.”

“Yes, but by your own admission, now is almost a hundred years before you find the dress. What’s to keep me from having the dress made and putting it in a box?”

“Does that mean that all this is going to happen again? That I’m going to find the box later and return to Legend and put on a feast and—” Kady cut herself off, as the memories were too fresh and too painful.

For a moment she tried to clear her head and think about what was going on. “What is it you want from me?” she asked Ruth cautiously. “What is it that you’re leading up to?”

“I wish you could bring Cole back to life. I wish you could stop all the killings of my family and even—” She gulped. “I even wish Legend could have lived. But I don’t see how that can be achieved. Kady,” she said, smiling, “I am grateful to you for giving my grandson what you did. I wish I could have seen him as a man, but I know that, had he lived, he would have looked and acted just as you described.”

Kady was waiting for the other shoe to drop because she could tell that Ruth Jordan was building up to something. “What do you want of me?” she asked again.

“When you get back to your own time, I want you to see if I have any descendants. I want you to meet them.”

Kady smiled. “And what do I tell them? That I knew their great-great-grandmother back in 1897? Or that I had a great adventure with their great-grand . . . cousin, or whatever, as an adult, but in reality he died when he was only nine years old? And that everything happened over a hundred years ago?”

Ruth laughed. “Does sound a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it?”

“And what about Gregory?” Kady asked. “No offense, but you Jordans have a knack for ignoring the man I love. The man I am going to marry. Somehow I don’t think he’s going to understand any of this.”