Naomi Rawlings - The Wyoming Heir

“I read her letters. She loves that school, makes good grades, will graduate come spring. She needs to stay.”

“Ma...” Luke scrubbed a hand over his face.

“I’ve got a letter for Cynthia, too, on the dresser over beside Samantha’s. You’ll take that one, won’t you?”

Cynthia? His hand stilled over his eyes. He hadn’t heard the name of his brother’s widow for three years and didn’t care to hear it again for the rest of his life.

But Ma was staring at him, hope radiating from her weary eyes.

“You know how I feel about Cynthia.” And if Ma wasn’t half delusional from her illness, she never would have brought up the confounded woman. “Just mail the letter yourself.”

“You’re not even going to see—?”

It started then, one of the coughing fits that spasmed through Ma’s body. She grabbed the rag sitting beside the rose water and held it to her mouth, planting her other hand on the vanity for support.

“You should have been in bed.” Luke strode forward, slipped one arm beneath her knees, and used the other to brace her back before he swooped her in his arms. The coughs racked her body, shaking her slight form down to her very bones. “Breathe now, Ma. Remember what the doc said? You need to breathe through this.”

He laid her on the bed and sat beside her, holding the rag to her face. Blood seeped into the cloth, staining her teeth and lips and pooling in the corner of her mouth. The doc had also told him and Pa not to touch the foul cloths, or they could end up with consumption. But he wouldn’t watch his mother struggle to keep a simple rag in place.

He braced her shoulders and gripped the cloth until she lay back against her pillows, eyes closed, stringy chestnut hair falling in waves around her shoulders, most of it knocked loose from her bun because of the jerking.

And she’d wanted to ride with him to the edge of the ranch.

He tossed the rag into the pail in the corner, already a quarter filled with sodden cloths, washed his hands in the basin, then moved back to her. The scents of rose water and blood and chronic sickness emanated from the bed.

She opened those dull blue eyes and blinked up at him.

“Are you...” All right? He clamped his teeth together. Of course she wasn’t all right. Every day she crept closer to death. And every day Sam stayed East was a day forever lost between mother and daughter.

“Luke...promise me.” Short breaths wheezed from her mouth.

“Promise you what?” He knelt on the floor, his eyes tracing every dip and curve and line of her features, branding them into his memory lest she not be alive when he returned.

She wrapped her hand around his, her corpselike skin thin and translucent against the thick, healthy hue of his palm. “Th-that you won’t tell Samantha how sick I am.”

“What do you mean? Haven’t you told her yet yourself? Doesn’t your letter explain?”

She looked away.

“Ma?” He stroked a strand of limp hair off her forehead. “You have to let Sam know you’re sick.”

“No.” A tear streaked down the bony ridges of her cheek. “If I tell her, she’ll come home. She needs to stay and finish school.”

“She deserves to make that choice on her own. Deserves the chance to see you before you...” Die. He couldn’t move the wretched word past the knot in his throat. Ma might not want Sam told about her condition, but Sam would never forgive herself if Ma passed without her saying goodbye. “Surely you want to see Sam again? Surely you miss her?”

Ma squirmed. “Let her finish her schooling, and we’ll see each other next summer.”

Except Ma wasn’t going to live that long. “Sam needs to know. Now.”

“I won’t let her give up the life she loves to watch me die.” She shook her head, her sunken eyes seeking his. “You mustn’t tell her. Promise me.”

He couldn’t do it. He could barely stand to leave Ma as it was, wouldn’t if he had any choice in the matter. How could he promise to keep her condition from Sam? Maybe Ma was right, and Sam wouldn’t want to come home, but she should know what was going on.

“Luke? Promise?” Ma’s voice grew panicked, even desperate.

Something twisted in his gut.

His twin’s death three years earlier had been quick, nearly instant. Watching Blake die had hurt, but watching the life slowly drain from Ma? No one should be asked to endure such a thing.

But he couldn’t very well leave her knowing he’d denied her last request.

He might never see her again. Even if he got Sam and brought her home, he might be too late.

“I promise.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue. “Goodbye now, Ma.”

He stood, swiped Sam’s letter from the top of the dresser, and left, taking long strides out of her room and through the ranch house before she could thank him.

Before delight from his agreement could fill her face.

Before common sense forced him to rescind his promise.

Chapter One

Valley Falls, New York

The simple cotton curtains on the classroom window fluttered with a whispered breeze, while autumn sunlight flooded through the opening in the thin fabric and bathed her in a burst of gaiety. But the warm rays upon Elizabeth Wells’s skin didn’t penetrate the coldness that stole up her spine, numbing her lungs and turning her fingers to ice.

Elizabeth tightened her grip around the envelope in her hand. She could open it. It wasn’t such a hard thing, really, to slip the letter opener inside and slit the top. She just needed a moment to brace herself.

The envelope weighed heavy against her skin, as though it were made of lead rather than paper. She ran her fingers instinctively along the smooth, precise edges. A quadrilateral with two pairs of congruent sides joined by four right angles. The mathematical side of her brain recognized the shape as a perfect rectangle. But the contour of the paper didn’t matter nearly so much as what was written inside.

She sighed and glanced down, her gaze resting on the name printed boldly across the envelope.

Miss Elizabeth Wells

Instructor of Mathematics

Hayes Academy for Girls

Forcing the air out of her lungs, she slit the envelope from the Albany Ladies’ Society and slipped out the paper.

Dear Miss Wells...

The jumble of words and phrases from the letter seared her mind. Regret to inform you...revoking our funding from your school...donate money to an institution that appreciates women maintaining their proper sphere in society. And then the clincher. The Albany Ladies’ Society not only wanted to stop any future funding but also requested the return of the money they had already donated for the school year.

And they called themselves ladies. Elizabeth slammed the letter onto her desk. Two other organizations had also asked that money previously donated—and spent—be returned. Then there were the six other letters explaining why future funding would cease but not asking for a return of monies.

This request galled more than most. If even women cared nothing about educating the younger generation of ladies, then who would? She’d spoken personally to the Albany Ladies’ Society three times. Her mother was a member, and still, at the slightest bit of public opposition to the school, the society had pulled their funding.

She stuffed the letter back into the envelope, yanked out her bottom desk drawer, and tossed it inside with the other letters—and the articles that had started the firestorm.

She shouldn’t even be receiving letters from donors and disgruntled citizens. Her brother, Jackson, was the head accountant for Hayes Academy for Girls, not her.

But then Jackson wasn’t responsible for the mess the academy was in.

She was.

She’d only been trying to help. With the recession that had hit the area following the economic panic in March, the school had lost students. A lot of students. Many parents couldn’t afford to send their daughters to an institution such as Hayes any longer. And without those tuition dollars, the school risked being seriously underfunded. So she’d written an editorial delineating the advantages of female education and girls’ academies and had sent it to the paper.