Sadie's Vow Read online

  Of Gold & Blood Mystery Series

  Poisoned Legacy #1

  Brother Betrayed #2

  Double Jeopardy #3

  Tangled Destiny–A Christmas Novella and Prequel #4

  Unbridled Vengeance #5

  Hope Redeemed–A Spanish Novella #6

  Book Bundle Of Gold & Blood Series One, Books 1–3.

  Book Bundle Of Gold & Blood, Series Two Books 1 & 4–Elanora’s Story.

  Tainted Fortune #7

  Captive Heart–A Hawaiian Christmas Novella #8

  Ancient Deception #9

  Book Bundle Of Gold & Blood, Three Holiday Novellas (Books 4, 6 & 8)

  Dangerous Desires #10

  Home At Last Series

  Sadie’s Vow, #1

  by Jenny Wheeler

  Published by Happy Families Ltd, Copyright 2022, Jenny Wheeler

  It’s no coincidence that women had the right to vote in Western states first; there they were able to show that they were more than equal to the men. Wearing pants will do that for a woman. – Katherine Cooper, A Brief Western History of Pants.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Fifty-six

  Fifty-seven

  Fifty-eight

  Fifty-nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-one

  Sixty-two

  Sixty-three

  Sixty-four

  Sixty-five

  Sixty-six

  Sixty-seven

  Sixty-eight

  Sixty-nine

  Epilogue

  What’s next? If you enjoy the next book in the Home At Last series, Sadie’s Vow.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  #

  It’s no coincidence that women had the right to vote in Western states first; there they were able to show that they were more than equal to the men. Wearing pants will do that for a woman. – Katherine Cooper, A Brief Western History of Pants.

  Prologue

  New York, August, 1871

  The steamy summer’s night when her sister Phoebe caught the eye of the Cobra, Sadie McGillicuddy lost any hope of fulfilling her vow at her mother’s deathbed.

  But with her typical ornery attitude, she wasn’t ready to admit it yet.

  “You’ve got to protect her, Daa,” she murmured in her stepfather’s ear. Shamrock bar owner Brian McGillicuddy was leaning, nonchalant as you like, at the bar’s end. Sadie had stopped by, tray laden with tankards destined for the table in the far corner, to tickle his ear.

  “She’s only 19.”

  McGillicuddy regarded her with shrewd gray eyes shining out of a ruddy, bullet-proof face.

  “What are ye worrying about, lass? She’s more of a lure than you are, and that can’t be bad for business.”

  Her step father cast his eyes approvingly to the corner, skimming over the heaving mass of drinkers elbowing their way up to the bar for refills.

  Beads of sweat shone on his wide forehead, topped by a tumble of exuberant sandy curls. It was one of the hottest nights of the summer, and her mother had been dead for exactly one year.

  How can he look so pleased with himself? Has he forgotten it’s her anniversary?

  She glanced down at the khaki pantaloons she wore below a long- sleeved white shirt buttoned to the collar and acknowledged that she was hardly distinguishable as a woman. And that’s the way she liked it.

  She gazed into her stepfather’s satisfied face and told herself he had a business to run. A family of young ‘uns, her three younger sisters, to feed. He didn’t have time to waste mooning over the past and neither did she.

  As if to remind her of the fact, McGillicuddy said, “Ye’d better get moving with that there load. We don’t want to keep the Cobra waiting.” Her head swiveled involuntarily to the patrons awaiting her delivery.

  King Cobra was the San Francisco boss of the Bloods syndicate, and he’d been in New York a couple of months setting up a new chapter in the Bowery. He’d formed an alliance with Brian McGillicuddy and the last thing they needed was for him to take offense at waiting too long for his drinks.

  “On my way,” she said. “But I mean what I said. She’s too young to be hanging out with the likes of them.”

  If she had a talent for being invisible, her half sister Phoebe lit up a room. Her radiance lit up the dark little corner where she perched at a table with Cobra, Patrick Blackheart, the San Francisco chapter’s second in command, and two flighty dolly mops, one a fake blond, the other a scowling red head, who regularly worked the Shamrock’s floor.

  Phoebe had hair the color of warm toffee. It curled over eyes that lit up like sapphires whenever anyone said anything half way funny.

  Just sitting next to her at the table makes your heart sing.

  As Sadie wove her way through the mainly male crowd, ducking and diving around broad shoulders to get the mugs to the table, the condensation from the icy brew on the pewter tray numbed her fingers, but her spirits sparked warmer at the sight of her half sister.

  She was the very picture of their mother, although by the time Sadie had made her promise on her mother Grace’s deathbed, the daily drudgery of raising a family on a tight budget had long since snuffed out her mater’s sparkle.

  That was probably why her stepfather was so indulgent with Phoebe, she thought, as she did the final pivot around Cobra’s hunched form to reach the tabletop and her thirsty customers.

  Someone - Cobra, probably from the way Phoebe was eyeing him - had said something that amused her, and her flawless face shone with joy, the pearly white teeth showing through fine red lips curved in contagious merriment.

  As if sensing Sadie’s approach, Blackheart turned and then moved aside to allow space for her to reach between him and Cobra to deliver the refreshments. She gave him a grateful smile, which he acknowledged with a brief flick of one black brow. He was a strongly built, olive-skinned man, with a glowering masculinity that made her uncomfortable for reasons she didn’t want to examine too closely.

  Cobra only had eyes for her sister. He was shorter than Patrick, considerably older, the beginnings of a paunch showing at his waistline. She guessed Patrick was close to her age - late 20s or early 30s. Cobra was forty at least. As he raised his beer mug, the
springy hairs on the back of his hand were graying like those on his head.

  “Thank you, Sadie,” said Blackheart. “For doing Phoebe’s job.”

  His mouth quirked.

  Phoebe gave her slender shoulders a feminine shrug as if to say ‘More fool her,’ and continued as if Blackheart hadn’t spoken and Sadie wasn’t standing right there hearing it all.

  Yes. Phoebe and her mother looked alike, but that’s where any resemblance stopped. Her mother had always been a demure Catholic girl, obedient to her husbands and her priests, undemanding of their attention.

  For a moment, everything around her faded away. The roar of men’s voices, echoing off the heavy wooden beams. The energy-sapping heat, and the smell of sawdust and hops and sweat.

  Sadie was back at her mother’s sanctified bedside, Grace’s pale, lined face soft with its own holy peace, her breath wheezing in uncertain gusts.

  “Promise me. Promise me, my darling Sadie. Look after Phoebe. Don’t let her come to harm. She’s too desirable for her own good.”

  Sadie squeezed the dry skin on the hand she held lightly between her own and leaned over her mother’s wasted, laboring form. “I promise Mother. If I die doing it, I promise. And now, you get some blessed rest.”

  Her mother’s eyes fixed on her, beseeching. Her lips flickered at the corners in the briefest of smiles.

  “Swear it on the Bible.” Her eyes jigged to the worn Holy Book resting right by her pillow. “Please… do it now.”

  She took Sadie’s hand and guided it to the black leather cover. Sadie mumbled the words, barely comprehending. “I promise on the Holy Bible to keep Phoebe from harm.”

  Her mother’s blue eyes, so like her sister’s, gleamed in gratitude.

  Then the dark lashes, still long and curly, gently descended onto her papery cheeks and her chest slowly stopped rising and falling.

  A firm grip on her forearm brought Sadie back with a jolt. Her daydream had been so real it took her a few seconds to realize it was not her mother gripping her arm.

  “Sadie. Are you still there?”

  Patrick Blackheart’s black eyes questioned her. The man called Cobra stared, his eyes so like those of the serpent whose name he’d taken.

  “Oh, sorry. Of course.” She gathered her wits into a semblance of coherence, loading her tray with the empty pottles that littered the table.

  “Can I get you anything else?” Looking at Cobra.

  But he was already looking back at Phoebe, his tongue dipping in and out of his mouth like a snake’s. It wasn’t forked, she noted in a crazy moment, but it might as well have been.

  She whisked into a quick turn and headed back to the bar.

  Oh mother, how can I win this one?

  She exhaled her despair into the muggy, smoky air.

  However am I going to keep my sacred vow?”

  Day 1 April 1872

  One

  Count Adolphus Westerhoven wriggled to get comfortable on the hard leather railway seat and told himself it was only another three or four hours till he’d be disembarking at the Oakland Wharf depot.

  After ten months away in his Austrian homeland overseeing his penniless father’s funeral and re-settling his unbending elderly mother with her sister, he was desperate to get back to California and re-start his life.

  When he’d left, he’d just been Dolphie, outrider, protector and companion to his aunt, Countess Elizabeth Westerhoven, and that’s how he still saw himself. The title meant nothing without wealth or land to back it up.

  But he’d changed while he’d been away. He wasn’t the same carefree fellow who’d spent years as his widowed aunt Elizabeth’s fixer and right-hand man. He’d always be grateful for the way she and his distant blood relation, her husband Charles, had taken him so unreservedly into their lives when he’d been a rebellious youngster.

  But he sensed a new season was unfolding for him, one where he wanted a fresh direction in his life, though he was as restless as he’d ever been about what exactly it might be. Before he’d left for Europe at the news of his father’s fatal illness, he’d spent a few perilous weeks in Nevada’s Virginia City as a security agent and investigator for Elizabeth and others in her extended family, including her niece, Sarah Wyndham, and her good friend, Washington Senator Hector de Vile.

  He’d decided he’d had enough of being shot at, of tailing villains and meting out rough justice. His skills as a light-footed sleuth, a deadly marksman, and a meticulous observer might have equipped him well in the role, but he wanted to move on from reckless pursuits to a more settled life.

  He put down the book he’d been attempting to read for the last half hour and yawned. Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was just the sort of classic adventure he craved, but this evening he had too much on his mind to concentrate.

  His insides tingled with rising excitement at the prospect of stepping back onto California soil in a few of hours’ time. How often in the starchy, joyless house in a village near to Salzburg he’d dreamed of this day.

  He’d sent no warning of his planned arrival ahead, sure of an enthusiastic reception at Elizabeth’s Nob Hill house no matter the time of day. He stretched out his legs and put his heels up on the bunk bed opposite.

  His hand crept toward Verne’s volume when the door to his carriage burst open and a stranger burst in, man or woman he couldn’t at first glance tell, except for the fall of honey blond hair.

  Dolphie rose in one fluid movement and faced the intruder, one hand reaching for the stiletto in his boot.

  The newcomer slammed the door closed and leaned back against it, as if expecting someone else to burst in at any second.

  “I’m so sorry.” The voice was low and breathless but surely it was feminine, although she wore trousers and a white buttoned to the neck shirt. She maintained a flat palm against the door.

  “I need somewhere safe. Can I rest here a while?”

  Dolphie flexed his fingers to release tense, pent up energy.

  He gestured to the bed. “Sit down, why don’t you?” The woman held her ground, defending the door. After a studied pause, he raised his right brow in skeptical inquiry.

  “Are you expecting guests?”

  A pale pink flush climbed up her cheeks., leaving them glowing against her corn silk hair. The brief moments he’d spent in her company had satisfied him that, despite the strange garb, she was indeed a woman. The baggy neutral clothes didn’t entirely hide her pleasantly rounded curves.

  Piercing marine blue eyes drilled into him, and then she let her hand fall away from the door and flashed him a brilliant smile.

  “Hilarious,” she said, and he caught a hint of Irish lilt in the phrase. “But I’m warning you, if Blackheart appears, it won’t be a comedy.”

  “Blackheart?” said Dolphie. “Who the heavens is he, and is he as bad as he sounds?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “It depends.”

  He took in her calm self-possession, in such contrast to the fluster when she’d first bounced in. The pantaloons were slimmer than the ones worn by a few eccentric fashion plates in San Francisco’s demimonde Mission district.

  They were much more practical than the fashion version, and also more masculine. Her only concession to her femininity was a jaunty red, white, and blue scarf tied at her neck.

  “Depends on what?”

  She gazed at him in calculated silence, as if she couldn’t believe this conversation.

  Then her shoulders relaxed, and she moved toward the bed.

  “On whether you give him what he wants. Bloods don’t like to be denied.”

  “Let me get this right. You have annoyed some mobster from the Bloods gang, who may pound on my railway carriage door any second now.”

  She trilled with a light laugh. “That’s about the sum of it.”

  She was tall for a woman, willowy in form, and her face had an elegant symmetry; with high cheekbo
nes, a finely moulded nose, and delicate lips that quivered with quicksilver responsiveness.

  “Get into bed and pull the sheets over you,” he said with sudden urgency.

  She looked at him as if he was mad.

  “Do it. I’ll pretend you’re my wife.”

  She shrugged and followed his instructions as he stepped to the door to lock it from the inside.

  He’d just turned the key in the lock when a loud hammering sent it shuddering in its slot.

  “Who is it?” asked Dolphie.

  “Ticket collector,” roared a male voice from the other side. “Open up now.”

  Dolphie glanced across to the bed. The woman - it occurred to him he didn’t even yet know her name - put her hands over her ears as if to deny the latest development and mouthed “It’s him.”

  She dove under the sheets and lay still.

  Dolphie palmed the stiletto in one hand, flicked open the lock with the other, and in a move that owed a lot to his prowess as a fencing champion, slipped out into the corridor in one gliding movement and slammed the door hard behind him.

  0000000

  He stood primed in a fencer’s stance, his stiletto held horizontally in front of his body.

  A towering fellow with a heavy black beard stepped back, his hands instantly held up in front of him.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Easy.”

  “Ticket collector, you said?”

  Dolphie regarded the man mountain with a steady glare.

  “In a manner of speaking,” the muscular man said.

  “In what universe is that?” said Dolphie, thinking of Jules Verne.

  The man maintained his protective position with his hands, but relaxed his general stance.

  “Okay. Okay. I’m looking for my business partner, Sadie McGillicuddy. We had a misunderstanding and I’m wanting to check she’s alright. It can be a dangerous world for a woman on her own.”

  “Sadie, you say? Never heard of her.” Dolphie said. He stared at the man he assumed was Blackheart for half a minute, and then turned to go back into his Pullman car.

  “Oy. Oy!” the big man protested, more loudly the second time.

  “She headed this way and I’ve checked every other carriage between here and the one we were travelling in.”