Riddle of the Prairie Bride Read online

  Fire, Ida Kate told herself. Think of fire. Hot tea. Stew in the pot … She said it aloud: “Imagine sitting indoors, safe and warm by the stove. We’ve got to get Hanky … We should be there by now …”

  And then, like an answer to their prayers, a black shape loomed out of the white. Another few steps and they would have smacked into the side wall of the house. “We’re home!” Ida Kate exulted, her heart thudding with gladness.

  “Thanks to you,” Caroline said. “And when we’re inside, really sitting by that stove, I believe I know a story you need to hear.” Her next words were nearly whipped away in the wind, but still Ida Kate heard them: “A story I dearly need to tell, God help me.”

  CHAPTER 12

  STORY TIME

  Just as they’d worked their way around the side of the house and reached the door, a shrouded figure appeared out of the swirling white. It was Papa, covered from head to toe with snow.

  Ida Kate threw her arms around him. “Papa!”

  “Get inside, quick!” he shouted urgently.

  “I was worried about you, Papa!”

  “I never made it to Hays City,” he explained as they tumbled inside and the fury of the storm blew a drift of snow in with them. Papa slammed the door. They all stood in silence for a moment, sheltered at last, listening to the storm outside.

  Ida Kate drew a deep, shaky breath. Safe!

  Then Hanky’s wail broke the silence. Caroline ran to the bedroom.

  “I realized that if I didn’t hurry home, I might be stranded in town for days,” Papa said, unwrapping Ida Kate’s shawl and shaking out the snow. “And it doesn’t look like I’m going to need that plow blade as soon as I’d thought I would!” He shook his dark head, and more clumps of snow fell to the floor. “The storm came on so fast, it was all I could do to turn the wagon around and head on home again. Had to walk the horses the last few miles—couldn’t even see to ride. I pressed on home, but thought I’d have to sleep in the barn with the animals.” He frowned at Ida Kate. “Couldn’t find the guide rope—”

  “Oh, Papa—that’s because I untied it,” Ida Kate confessed.

  “She came searching for me, Henry,” Caroline explained in an unsteady voice, returning with the baby in her arms. “Oh, this has been a terrible adventure, but we’re all here, and the important thing now is to build up the fire in the stove and get warm and dried. And comfort this desperate, abandoned baby. Ida Kate, please take him while I change.”

  “Poor Caroline, what happened to you?” Papa’s eyes widened as he took in her appearance for the first time. “Your hair—it’s completely frozen! How long have you been outside? And why—?”

  “An hour or two, I imagine,” Caroline admitted. She was rubbing her hands to get some warmth into them. “Though I must say it seemed many hours more than that to me.”

  “I want to hear the whole story,” Henry said.

  “Oh, you will,” Ida Kate assured him. “And another story besides, right, Caroline Fairchild?”

  Papa heard her tone and looked from his daughter to his intended bride, then back again. For the first time he seemed to notice there was tension in the air along with relief at being out of the blizzard. “What’s happened here?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I promised Ida Kate a story, and she shall have it,” Caroline said.

  “Story?” he asked. “I’m all in favor of stories around the stove on a day like this!”

  They poked up the fire in the oven and left the door open. The orange glow made Ida Kate feel warmer already. Then they settled the baby and changed out of their wet clothes. They warmed milk for Hanky and made hot tea for themselves. Finally they were all warm and dry and wrapped in blankets. Papa cradled Hanky on his lap. The little boy was exhausted. His head lolled comfortably on Papa’s shoulder. Old Hickory lay at their feet.

  Caroline sat cupping her hot mug of tea with both hands. She stared into it as if attempting to read her fortune in the tea leaves.

  Papa watched her, his eyes twinkling. For a long moment, no one spoke. They listened to the howl of the wind and the crackle of the fire. Then Papa cleared his throat. “Once upon a time …?” he asked gently.

  Caroline’s head jerked up, and she stared at him. But she didn’t say a word, and after another moment, she lowered her head again and stared into her cup.

  Ida Kate could not sit quietly for much longer. “I’ll tell the story if you won’t,” she said. “But—oh, Papa—you’re not going to like it.” She took a sip of tea and burned her tongue. “Once upon a time there was a bride. But she wasn’t who she said she was …” Ida Kate stopped. The fake Caroline Fairchild gazed back at her. Then she nodded as if to say, Do what you have to do.

  “Go on,” ordered Papa.

  Ida Kate abandoned telling it as a story and just blurted out the words. “Listen, Papa, I’m sorry as anything to have to tell you this. But you mustn’t marry Caroline. You won’t want to when you know! She’s not who she says she is—she’s not Caroline Fairchild!” She saw the impostor droop lower over her tea mug and decided not to mention the murder yet. She wasn’t so sure about that part of the story now anyway.

  Papa sighed and shook his head. His black beard quivered. He reached over and put his hand on Ida Kate’s knee, but his eyes were on the impostor. “I know that, Ida Kate,” he said.

  The impostor’s head flew up. She and Ida Kate were both staring at him.

  “I guessed that some time ago,” Papa said calmly.

  “Y—you did?” Ida Kate was amazed. “But then—well, who is she? Who?”

  “I thought you were going to tell me,” he said.

  “She’s somebody named Lucy,” Ida Kate whispered. She looked at the impostor, who was slowly nodding her head. “Lucy. But—why?”

  “Why don’t we ask her to tell us?” Papa said simply. He turned to the impostor. “My dear, it’s story time.”

  The woman who was Lucy stared at him. Two bright red patches stained her cheeks. Slowly she lowered her head to her hands. Just when Ida Kate opened her mouth to break the awful silence herself, the woman raised her head again. Her eyes were glistening with tears.

  “My name is Lucy,” she affirmed in a shaky voice. “Lucy Dotson. Just a farm girl from New York, not a belle from North Carolina—nor even South Carolina. I’ve never been to the South at all, and let me tell you, it will be a relief not having to put on that accent anymore.” Her voice broke in a sob.

  Ida Kate saw her father’s lips twitch in his beard. Her own lips were pressed tightly together against the sobs she felt rising in her throat. Why should she cry? Finally they were hearing the truth! Or were they? How could they believe anything this impostor had to say—ever?

  “I went off to work in the factory in Lynn, Massachusetts,” Lucy Dotson was saying in a low, controlled voice. “I lived in a boardinghouse. I shared a room with another factory worker.”

  “Caroline Fairchild?” whispered Ida Kate.

  “Caroline was my friend. But …” Lucy Dotson’s voice faltered. “She died.”

  “Don’t you mean you killed her?” interrupted Ida Kate, the tightness in her throat making her voice tremble. “Why else did you cry and run when I accused you?”

  “No,” Lucy insisted in a low, intense voice. “I cried because although I already knew you suspected me of not being Caroline, I never dreamed you suspected me of murder. I ran to the bedroom and shut myself in when I realized how completely despicable you find me.” Then she looked into Ida Kate’s eyes. “I was amazed when you came to search for me in the snow—feeling as I know you do. I hoped if I stayed by the fence post someone driving along the track might eventually find me … if I managed to last that long. I never once expected you would be the one to come searching, Ida Kate, knowing what you think of me …”

  “But—” Ida Kate began in confusion.

  Her father cut her off with a tap on the knee. “Here, why don’t you hold this bundle of baby for a bit? You look like you
need something to hang on to just now.” He passed the sleeping little boy to her. Then he pulled a clean handkerchief from his vest pocket and handed it to Lucy.

  Ida Kate rested her cheek against Hanky’s silky curls. Lucy wiped her eyes and blew her nose. The fire popped and the blizzard raged.

  “Caroline and I became fast friends,” Lucy explained. “We worked long hours side by side, with the banging of the machinery and the hiss of the steam engines in our ears all day. We talked about our lives, about what had brought us to Lynn. So I learned a bit about Caroline’s family, how they’d lost everything in the war, and how her brothers and her father had died. I learned how she’d married a distant cousin who was always something of an invalid, how she was left widowed with Hanky to support … And I was there when Caroline first decided to reply to a newspaper advertisement from a Kansas farmer.”

  She raised her eyes and gazed at Papa. “We spoke about how you appeared to be a man of fine character. How your daughter sounded very sweet. I was happy for Caroline when she decided to travel to Kansas, though it would mean losing my dear friend’s daily company. She was so glad to have this chance to get away from the factory, and to secure a family for little Hanky. She loved him so much—she would do anything for him, even if it meant marrying a man she’d never met. I felt glad for her. She was starting a new life—and a big adventure. I told her I might well answer such an advertisement myself if a similar one caught my eye. I, too, was longing for adventure …”

  Her voice trailed off. Papa stroked his beard, staring at the fire. Ida Kate hugged the sleeping baby—Caroline’s true son.

  But how had he come to be in the care of Lucy Dotson?

  As if Lucy had heard Ida Kate’s thoughts, she continued her tale. “So Caroline was making her plans, getting ready for her journey to Kansas. Until one terrible day …” Her voice faltered. “One day there was a dreadful accident at the factory, and Caroline was … killed.”

  “How?” whispered Ida Kate.

  Lucy regarded her for a long moment. “I don’t believe you want to know the details of that horrible death, Ida Kate, my dear. There was an explosion—one of the steam boilers …” She closed her eyes for a moment as if to blot out the remembered sight of the accident.

  Lucy continued her account of the days following Caroline’s death. She paid money from her own meager wages to board Caroline’s son for another few weeks with his baby minder until it could be decided what would become of him. She’d had to sell most of Caroline’s belongings to pay for the funeral, and immediately afterward the landlady of the boardinghouse asked Lucy to clear out the rest of Caroline’s things from their room, seeing as there was no family coming to collect them. She needed to rent that bed to the new girl, hired to replace Caroline.

  Lucy bit her lip. “The factory conditions are terrible,” she muttered. “And the wages are pitiful. But the factory owners can always hire another girl to replace one who leaves—or dies. People are lining up every day in the cities, desperate for work.”

  It was while she sorted through Caroline’s belongings that Lucy found the packet of letters from Henry Deming. “Caroline had saved every one of them,” she told Papa, lifting her head and looking straight at him. “You should know that she treasured them.”

  “And you read them,” he said, his voice stern.

  Lucy flinched from his tone, but nodded. Ida Kate shifted in her chair. She was beginning to see how everything had happened. “You read them,” she said to Lucy, “and decided—”

  “I decided,” Lucy interrupted in a stronger voice, “to read every one. Caroline had already shared the first one with me, but then I read the rest. I confess it freely, though I know it was not my place to read them. They were delightful—a bright spot in the difficult task of sorting through everything of Caroline’s. I often imagined I could hear her laughter and feel her presence near me as I read the letters.” Lucy turned to Ida Kate. “As you say you feel your mama, my dear. A happy, loving presence.”

  “Yes,” murmured Ida Kate. “That’s how it is.” She shifted the baby in her arms and carefully sipped her tea. Papa was still staring into the fire, silent.

  “Everything—I had to sort through all her most personal things,” continued Lucy after a moment. “I had to decide what to save and what to sell or give away. I gave her clothing to factory girls who wore the same size. I gave many of her books and trinkets to her other friends, but I kept some things for Hanky. For when he’s older. His father’s dagger. And something of his mother’s …”

  “Her hair?” breathed Ida Kate.

  Papa turned from the fire, shooting Ida Kate a puzzled look. But Lucy nodded. “Yes, I cut off the braid after the funeral, before the burial. Caroline had such lovely hair—and even though she was dead, that braid still looked so alive! I thought that someday Hanky might be glad to have it. A little bit of his mother …”

  Papa’s stern expression softened as he smiled at Lucy. “That was kind of you,” he said. “I did the same thing when Eleanor died. I cut a lock of her hair to remember her by.”

  “Papa, you did?” Ida Kate had not known that.

  He turned his smile on Ida Kate. “I take it you found this braid of Caroline’s and thought …”

  She flushed. “Yes.” She looked at Lucy. “I’m sorry. I should have known you weren’t a murderess.”

  Lucy studied her for a moment, and tears started to well in her eyes again. “You’re a generous girl, Ida Kate.” She cleared her throat and resumed her story.

  “I read all the letters, and I was struck by how interesting you both were—you, Henry, and Ida Kate, too. The letters were lovely, Henry, and …” She hesitated, then lowered her eyes miserably. “And I rather think I fell in love.” She took a deep breath and looked up again, meeting Papa’s eyes. “I decided I would write to you immediately and tell you what had befallen your intended bride. But then I saw the train ticket.”

  She drained the last drops of her tea and set the mug onto the stove top. She took a deep breath and wiped her tears with Papa’s handkerchief. “I told myself I would use the ticket to come to Kansas with Hanky. I—I knew it was wrong, but I had been longing to escape the factory work, yet I didn’t want to go back to living with my brother and his wife who took over our family farm after my parents died. I wanted a home of my own.”

  “And Hanky needed a home, too,” Ida Kate added, glancing down at the baby.

  “Yes. The landlady was going to take him to the county orphanage, but I couldn’t bear to see that happen. I said I’d take care of him myself. I thought that’s what Caroline would have wanted. I guess I was telling myself that I would come with the baby to Kansas and explain everything when I arrived.” She sighed. “But I didn’t explain. I know I was terribly wrong.”

  “You’re telling us now,” Papa said calmly. Ida Kate stared at him in wonderment. He stretched out his long legs toward the stove. “I wondered why I didn’t hear from you—that is, from Caroline—after I’d sent the train ticket. But that must have been about the time she was killed …”

  Lucy nodded. “So after I decided to go in her place, I packed my things and Hanky’s—as well as Caroline’s family photograph album. I didn’t know who any of the people were, but I thought Hanky might like to have likenesses of his ancestors. Perhaps one of them is his father.”

  “Clivedon Fairchild,” said Ida Kate. “Not Claude.”

  “Not Claude,” agreed Lucy. “Clivedon Fairchild, from North Carolina. But, you see, I had only my memories to go on. Where had Caroline said she’d grown up? Did she have any living relatives? What had her family been like? I had her letters from you, so I knew details about who I would be meeting once I got here—but I did not have her letters to you. I didn’t know what she’d told you about herself.”

  “You didn’t know she wrote that cats made her sneeze,” Ida Kate said.

  “Exactly.” Lucy patted her lap, and Millie leaped up and curled into a ball.

&
nbsp; Papa laughed. “A vital clue.”

  “There were lots of clues,” Ida Kate said. She nuzzled the sleeping baby.

  Lucy sighed. “Especially Hanky, I imagine. I—I haven’t had much experience with babies … maybe you’ve noticed?”

  Ida Kate had to smile. “A little,” she said.

  “I have no doubt the poor lamb misses Caroline,” said Lucy. “I miss her so dreadfully myself.”

  Papa was grinning at Lucy now. “I never knew a mother to have such trouble dressing a baby,” he said. “You’ve got his sweater inside out, even now.”

  Lucy blushed. Ida Kate folded back a corner of the blanket around the sleeping boy to peek at the sweater he was wearing. She grinned. “So, Papa, you knew all the time?” She wasn’t quite sure how she felt now, knowing the story.

  Certainly Lucy’s story made more sense of the facts than Martha’s dramatic theories of murder had. But … this Lucy Dotson was still a liar, even if she wasn’t a killer or a kidnapper. Why had Papa not challenged her when he first suspected she was not who she said she was? And how far could they trust that this tale was the truth?

  “I suspected something was amiss,” Papa said calmly. “But I never once—not for one second—suspected Lucy of murder.” He hitched his chair closer to Lucy’s; he put his hand on her arm. “Lucy, my dear, I could see there was something you wanted to tell me. Over and over, whenever we chanced to be alone, it was right on the tip of your tongue.”

  “Oh, it was,” said Lucy with a sudden sob. She dabbed her eyes with Papa’s handkerchief. “I am so ashamed. I’m not a liar by nature—though how I can ever hope you’ll believe that, I don’t know—but once I arrived, I couldn’t tell you. I just couldn’t bear to end my time with you. I started sneaking around, searching for the letters Caroline sent, so I could learn more about who I was supposed to be. Oh, the lies just started spiraling. One turned into another, and there was no end in sight. I knew I couldn’t keep it up forever—nor would I want to live that way—but I dreaded telling you. I felt so low, and yet I kept on with the ruse because revealing the truth would mean losing you. Ending it. And it’s been so wonderful …”