A Bride For Brynmor (Songbird Junction Book 1) Read online

  “I haven’t repaid him for…” He shrugged as he gestured to the side of his face angled away from her.

  She didn’t need a direct sightline to know what was there. He referred to his clouded white eye.

  The last of her euphoria fell to horror. Twelve days ago in Noelle when she’d first heard about his injury, she’d suspected Ulysses’ involvement. But she hadn’t the strength to accept it. “Why didn’t you listen to me in Cheyenne when I told you to never come near me again?”

  He grimaced like she’d asked the unimaginable. “Because you needed help.”

  Damn your kindness. And my stupidity. If her pointing a rifle at him hadn’t dissuaded him, why had she hoped her words would?

  “And I did listen.” He whispered his next words in her ear, so low and fast that only she could hear. “I left you, and my feet led me to Ulysses. He struck my eye with his whip and vowed no doctor in Cheyenne would treat my wound. He’d make sure of it. That’s when I left you for good. My family dragged me to the next town. We kept wandering until we finally found Denver.” He raised his head and faced the crowd. “Show’s over,” he told them. “For real, this time. Nothing left to see or hear.”

  “Faith and begorrah, what did I miss?” a biting voice demanded from behind them. A woman with piercing jade eyes and a cloud of white hair piled high on her head stood in the doorway. “If I hadn’t been in the middle of sealing a wicked crack on a mandolin, I would’ve shown my face sooner.”

  “Thank you,” Brynmor said, “for arriving when you could, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”

  The shop owner shook a finger as bent as her spine was straight. “Brynmor Llewellyn, you’d best answer my question.” Her toe joined the rhythm of her still-admonishing finger, tapping the floorboards with a rising tempo.

  Brynmor gestured to Lark. “My friend was being harassed by her troupe manager.”

  “My ex manager.” She raised her chin. “I no longer sing for him.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed as she evaluated Lark. “You’re a songbird?”

  “A talented one.” The admiration in Brynmor’s voice made her twitchy. “Lark is a gifted musician as well.”

  She shook her head. “That’s all in the past.” She wanted to be more than her voice. She wanted to be a good sister and friend. She wanted to be worthy of their faith in her.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick scowled in the direction Ulysses had disappeared. “But that loudmouth who departed so abruptly doesn’t agree? What is his name?”

  “Ulysses T. Stone,” Brynmor replied.

  “Some call him Tombstone,” Lark added. “Because he enjoys bragging he could put you under one.”

  “Charming,” the shopkeeper muttered in a scornful tone. “I’ve never heard of him, but his type is all too common. And you, Miss…Lark? What is your family name?”

  “I have none. My mother—” She clenched her teeth, regretting even that small a revelation. “My past is complicated.”

  “But not uncommon. A few years ago, I met a young lady who, like you, said she only had a first name and an unusual one too. I wish I’d—” She raised her gnarled hand as if to stop herself and whatever questions she probably sensed rising in Lark. “That’s in the past as well.”

  Lark tensed with disbelief and apprehension. As a shopkeeper, Mrs. Fitzpatrick must have met hundreds of people. Was it Oriole she remembered most or her violin?

  “See to your future.” The woman’s demeanor held the enviable firmness of someone used to commanding her own destiny.

  Was that how she managed to repair instruments with finesse using hands ravaged by swollen joints? Unrelenting determination?

  “If that ruffian pesters you again, do not hesitate to seek refuge in my shop.”

  “No. You don’t want him coming near you.” Her gaze leapt from the shop owner to Brynmor. “You shouldn’t either.” She backed away from them. “I must leave.” And take my problems with me.

  Brynmor reached out to stop her, then just as quickly shoved his hands in his coat pockets. The boyish action pulled the tan leather tight across his manly shoulders. “There’s no rush, is there?” His sigh sounded wistful. “Can’t you spare a moment to stand with me and catch your breath?”

  Wouldn’t that be divine? Temptation halted her feet.

  “You’d be wise to stay.” Mrs. Fitzpatrick shrugged. “But in my experience young folk hardly ever are. So, my dearie, I shall wish you Godspeed on your journey. And you, my boyo”—she shook her finger at Brynmor again—“if I don’t see you in my shop in a few minutes, I shall expect you this evening with a full account of your day’s activities. Otherwise I shall toss you from your lodgings.” She closed the door behind her with a spirited snap.

  Lark felt her jaw drop. “How much trouble have I caused you now?”

  “None.” Brynmor’s chuckle soothed her more than his words. “Mrs. Fitzpatrick is my landlady and a friend. You can trust her.”

  She could also trust Ulysses to hurt the woman if he suspected they were friendly. “What if he comes back here?”

  “He’ll make it easier for me to find him.”

  She didn’t like that prospect either.

  “Why didn’t you stay in Noelle?” he asked. “Why did you come back here?”

  “For Oriole and Wren.”

  “They were here?” He spun in search of them.

  She grabbed his arm to halt him and his worry. He went dead still, except for his breathing which ratcheted up a notch as he stared at her hand on him.

  She released him quickly. “We agreed to meet at noon, but I haven’t seen them. Luckily, Ulysses hasn’t either. How did you know I was here?”

  “My sister sent a telegram.”

  “I should’ve guessed.” She’d spent the last ten days in Noelle with Robyn and her new husband’s family, the Peregrines, waiting for today. Now she knew why she’d boarded the train without any interference. Robyn had chosen to let her go, so Brynmor could deal with her. That showed how much his sister had transformed. After Cheyenne, all three of Brynmor’s siblings had done everything they could to keep Lark away from him.

  The change was another complication for her. And Brynmor too.

  When he crossed his arms, the strength of his body and soul held her gaze captive. “You should’ve stayed in Noelle where more people are willing to protect you.”

  And who will protect them? And Mrs. Fitzpatrick if she gets involved now as well?

  She chose to stare at the music shop instead of him. “Safety in numbers is an illusion.” But being alone is worse. “I must find my sisters, but first I need to leave a warning that Ulysses was here and—”

  A terrible realization stole her voice. Ulysses now knew to look for letters hidden outside this shop! That complication left her muttering in frustration.

  “I’m sure Mrs. Fitzpatrick would agree to give a message to your sisters whenever they arrive.” Brynmor opened the shop door and held it wide, waiting for her to enter.

  She hesitated. Brynmor may trust the woman, but Oriole said not to. But then again, Oriole questioned everyone’s motives when they showed even the tiniest interest in her. She was sweet and savvy and suspicious. She’d said Mrs. Fitzpatrick had quizzed her about her violin and then offered an extraordinary sum for it—when the only thing remarkable about the instrument was how long Oriole had owned it.

  “Come in,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick ordered. “Before you let in all the cold air.”

  The shop owner’s command nudged Lark to the door. The instruments on display drew her inside.

  Rows of fiddles, banjos, mandolins, several pianos, even a few accordions and— She gasped with amazement. Mrs. Fitzpatrick had a hurdy-gurdy?

  The rare find yanked her forward like a lasso ’round her heart. She’d had the exquisite pleasure of playing a gurdy for a year before she’d been forced to let it go.

  She halted short of touching its intricate keybox. She couldn’t buy it or keep it, so why covet it? Everything she had must g
o toward securing food and shelter for her sisters. And transportation. As far away from Ulysses as possible, which meant away from Brynmor as well.

  Soon. But not right now. Her finger skimmed the taut drone strings then the polished wood, imagining she was once again touching Brynmor’s arm as they danced.

  “I hoped it might still interest you.”

  Her hand halted. “Still?”

  “That everything you said in Cheyenne wasn’t a fabrication.”

  She’d lied to him twice. First about her hurdy-gurdy. Second when she said she wanted him to leave and never come near her again. “It’s difficult to lie about everything. When you were in Cheyenne…” It felt like a dream come true. Until it became a nightmare.

  She turned her back on the temptation he and the gurdy presented and went to the counter where Mrs. Fitzpatrick continued repairing the mandolin she’d mentioned earlier. Wren would’ve been drawn to the instrument as strongly as Lark had been to the hurdy-gurdy. Or Oriole to her violin. They all had their weaknesses.

  “Mrs. Fitzpatrick…” She tried to keep her voice nonchalant, as if her hopes didn’t hang on the woman’s answer. “Has anyone visited your shop and left a message for, or asked for one from, a Miss Colm?”

  “Whose name is that?”

  “It was my father’s.” She sealed her lips against sharing anything more on that subject. Heaven help her if she said the truth. My father only told my mother his first name.

  The shop owner set down her repair tools and gave Lark her full attention. “You told me you didn’t have a last name.”

  “Colm is a name I only use for leaving messages for my sisters.” Oriole had insisted they do this so Ulysses would have a harder time tracking them. They’d learned early in life that most people couldn’t remember or repeat Cree names. The Llewellyn brothers’ uncommon but still pronounceable names had become the inspiration for using the Irish names.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick stared at her like she’d gone as batty as Ulysses had proclaimed on the porch outside.

  Brynmor cleared his throat, then waited until the shop owner’s glittering green eyes fixed on him. “Have you heard the name Colm recently?”

  “No,” the woman snapped.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. Fitzgerald flinched as if Lark’s apology rattled her more than the name. “Why?”

  “I’ve upset you.”

  “My complaint is with the past, not you. Certain Irish names are too similar. They remind me of things I’m determined to forget.” Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s voice had resumed its brisk confidence, but her revelation made Lark pause.

  None of this boded well for sharing her sisters’ Irish names. They were very similar to Colm. But first came the letter, then the names. “May I leave a letter with you for my sisters who may come looking for a Miss Colm?”

  “Yes, but if they also have secret names”—she huffed as she shook her head over the possibility—“you’d best write all of your names on your letter so I don’t forget.”

  Lark suspected the woman had never forgotten anything in her life. She pulled her notebook and pencil from her pocket and, in plain view of the shop owner, wrote: ᐄᐦᐄ

  “I shudder to ask,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said as she frowned at the foreign letters, “but have you invented a language as well?”

  Lark shook her head. “These symbols may not be well-known, but they’re no secret.” She kept writing in the script used by her mother’s people who lived north of the border in Canada.

  Despite the missionaries wanting her and her sisters to learn only the colonial languages—to better assimilate them into the white world—Lark had taught Oriole and Wren to write in Cree. Their heritage was the second thing they’d bonded over in the orphanage. The first had been none of them speaking French in a community where most of the Métis and the missionaries shared that ancestry.

  When she’d finished writing, her letter read:

  ᐄᐦᐄ

  ᓇᑕᐃᐧ ᓂᐢᑖᐧᐯᐊᐧᐠ. ᐊᓯᒋ ᒥᐦᑯ. ᒣᐢᑕᑲᔭ. ᐄᐧᑯᐃᐧᐣ. ᐅᓄᒐᔨᑯᐃᐧᐤ. ᐊᐢᒋᑫᐃᐧᑲᒥᐠ

  ᐊᐦᐴ ᓇᑕᐃᐧ ᐱᐦᐱᐦᒋᐤ. ᐁᑲᐧ. ᐅᓄᒐᔨᑯᐃᐧᐤ ᐯᔭᑯᐦᐁᐊᐧᒪᐠ ᐆᑌᓈᕁ ᓃᐹᔭᒥᐦᐋᐃᐧᐣ

  ᐱᐢᑌᐊᐧᒋᐊᐧᓱᐢ

  Which translated to:

  Enemy in sight!

  Go to three brothers with red hair inhabiting Falcons’ storehouse

  Or to Robin and Falcon family in the town noel

  Meadowlark

  She folded the paper and wrote on the outside:

  For Miss Cillian and Miss Cavan.

  From Miss Colm.

  When she handed it to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, the woman’s face turned white as birch bark. Lark instinctively stepped back.

  “You,” the woman said in a strangled voice, “have a sister who knew someone named Cavan? That’s as rare as Colm.”

  It was strange that all three of their mothers had known their father’s first name but hardly anything else. Lark lied about many things, but she didn’t appreciate being called a liar for something that, although fantastical, was true.

  “The girl with the unusual eyes and the violin.” Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s hand shot over the counter, and the much too small space Lark had put between them, and seized Lark’s wrist. “Where is she?”

  She braced herself to break free. When her captor grabbed Brynmor’s arm as well, she froze in shock.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick did not. She yanked them both closer to her. “Brynmor, you must take good care of this young lady and bring her sister back to me.”

  “Where they go is their decision. Not mine or yours.” He spoke in a soothing tone, as if he were trying to calm a pair of spooked horses, one who might trample him and the other ready to bolt.

  She yanked free of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s shackle. The tidy shop filled with her favorite things bore down on her like a trap. Brynmor’s footsteps shadowed hers. A slow, steady beat. He didn’t chase. He simply followed.

  Outside, she spun to face him as he paused to close the door. “I’ll never bring Oriole back here! And nothing that woman does or says will ever change my mind.” She rubbed her wrist, glaring at the faint red mark that enraged more than it hurt.

  “She had a son named Cavan.”

  Had? Her anger departed as fast as it had arrived. “I didn’t know. Neither did Oriole.”

  Or had she? Why had Oriole really suggested they meet at this shop and not somewhere else?

  “No.” She paced in a circle as she chanted the word in rising incredulity. “No. No. No! Did Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s son play the violin?”

  “Not well, according to her. She said that’s why he had to pursue the fur trade and never returned.”

  She lurched to a halt. The history of the Qu'Appelle Valley had been heavily shaped by French trappers and their legacy, but they weren’t the only ones. There’d been some Scottish and Irish fortune seekers as well.

  “So…” Brynmor exhaled resignedly as he frowned at the shop. “It’s not just her. You believe Oriole could be her granddaughter.”

  He’d never pried into their past, but he’d paid attention to what he saw and heard. Oriole had always been the girl with the violin. She’d been clutching it and Wren’s hand when Lark had been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the orphanage.

  If not for the two of them, she wouldn’t have stopped. Or rather switched. She’d started fighting for them.

  “Oriole may no longer be an orphan.” Envy pinched her heart, followed quickly by apprehension. She’d worried about her sisters for so long, she couldn’t stop. What she wanted most for them was freedom. And Mrs. Fitzpatrick had swiftly gone from outspoken, but helpful, to aggressively controlling.

  A long silence stretched between her and Brynmor before he asked, “What are you planning to do?”

  “I’ll keep hunting for my sisters.” She’d figure out the rest later.

  “Here or in Cheyenne?”

&
nbsp; “They wouldn’t go back there. Too many in Cheyenne owe Ulysses a debt. He’ll have his spies watching for us.” She leaned against a porch pillar as she contemplated the street ahead of her.

  She hadn’t gotten far since she’d given up her hiding spot on the other side. Her journey from Cheyenne to Denver had been costly. Getting her sisters even farther before secreting them away in a new home would drain her savings.

  She pushed away from her post with a purpose. “I need to find work.”

  “I know a man who’d like to hire someone to help with a shipment to Noelle.”

  “You mean you?” She scoffed in disbelief. “You’re too good at your job to require assistance.”

  “This cargo is different.” He spread his hands wide as if the disparity was huge.

  “It’s dangerous?”

  “No, just demanding. I can handle bales of wool but not lambs.”

  “Lambs?”

  “Two of them. They’re always hungry and won’t stay still. They wiggle like fish.” He shuddered. “I nearly dropped one the other day.”

  His worry made her shake her head. The only better caregiver than him would be the lambs’ own mothers. “Why do you have them?”

  “My brothers brought them home with the wool from the Merino farm. They were told it’s early for lambs to be born, and these were…” His gaze dropped to his boots and stayed there.

  “They were what?”

  He ran his hand over the back of his neck, appearing reluctant to say more. “Orphans,” he finally replied.

  Like her and Wren, but maybe no longer Oriole. That’s why he’d hesitated to say the word. He had another reason, though. He and his siblings were also orphans.

  She scrambled for something to distract them both. “I assume the wool’s for Robyn’s husband. Does he know what you’re bringing him?”

  The mischief in his boyish grin made even the sun shine brighter. “It’s a surprise.”

  The Llewellyn brothers loved to tease their brother-in-law and his family—especially Max’s grandpa, Gus.