No Other Will Do (Ladies of Harper's Station #1)(5)
“Yes, he is.” Emma scanned the countryside for signs of the coward, even though she knew she’d find nothing. She never did. And this was the third note he’d left in a fortnight. Each one in a place that penetrated the colony a little more deeply. “But at least it’s still just words.”
“We’ve no guarantee it will stay that way.” Victoria Adams voiced Emma’s greatest fear. “If words won’t get him what he wants, he will escalate.” Tori’s voice rang with the certainty of one who had experienced such a lesson firsthand. “Let me see the note, Emma.” She held out her palm.
Emma sighed and tugged the wad from her pocket. She dropped it into her friend’s hand, knowing that Tori would recognize at once that an escalation had already occurred.
Victoria uncrumpled the note and scanned the page, a soft echo of the threatening words escaping under her breath as she read.
“Women of Harper’s Station—
Clear out by tonight or I’ll clear you out myself. This is your last warning.”
“We have to call a meeting.” Emma marched down the church steps and began pacing the yard.
Tori followed her down the steps but didn’t pace. She simply leaned against the railing and waited for Emma to circle back around. “What will you tell them?”
The soft question stopped Emma in her tracks. She spun toward her friend. “I won’t leave, Tori. I won’t let a bully drive me away.” She flung out her arm toward the handful of buildings that clustered around the old stagecoach station that had attracted the first permanent settlers to the area twenty years ago. “Harper’s Station is supposed to be a refuge for women escaping this kind of intimidation. We’ve worked too hard building this place up, bringing the women in, giving them a fresh start. I won’t scurry away like some timid little mouse just because some pigheaded man wants to flex his muscles!”
Tori, dear that she was, made no effort to interrupt Emma’s impassioned ranting. She simply held her friend’s gaze and waited patiently for the kettle to stop hissing. Which it did. Eventually. Emma might refuse to sacrifice her principles, but she’d never sacrifice the safety of her ladies. Not for any reason. Not even for the ideal that brought them all together in the first place.
She paced back to where Tori waited at the church steps, releasing her indignation a little bit at a time until her mind cleared of the haze. “I’ll encourage all the mothers with children to follow the sheriff’s advice and move—temporarily—to one of the neighboring towns.” Emma’s shoulders sagged as she met Tori’s gaze. “Including you.” How she hated to send her closest friend, her partner in starting the colony, away. But Tori had a four-year-old son, and if anything happened to Lewis . . . Well, such a thought didn’t bear thinking.
Tori’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not going anywhere.” The steel in her tone brooked no argument. “I’m not leaving you to fight this battle on your own. Besides, where would we go? All my funds are tied up in the store. I can’t exactly take the merchandise with me. And if I lose that, I lose everything.”
“I’ll keep an eye on things for you,” Emma offered, but her friend cut her off with a firm shake of her head.
“You have the bank to run. You don’t need the additional worry of tending my shop. I’ll keep a tight leash on Lewis. We’ll be fine.” Tori fisted her hands at her sides, and Emma knew at once that she wouldn’t be swayed.
Victoria never showed emotion beyond the affection of friendship and love toward her son. Nothing else. No fear, anger, surprise—nothing that could possibly give someone an advantage over her. If she was worked up enough to clench her fingers into a fist, her feelings on the matter must be strong, indeed.
“I want to show my son that when you believe in something, you fight for it, even when danger threatens. You don’t hide.”
A world of pain lingered behind that statement, a pain Emma could only imagine. Tori had been fighting since the day she discovered herself pregnant after being attacked by a man esteemed by her entire hometown. Fighting for a place to belong after her father sent her away. Fighting for a way to provide for herself and her child. Fighting the fear that she’d misjudge a man’s character again someday and experience the nightmare all over again.
Emma stepped close to Victoria and took her arm. Only then did Tori unclench her fists and lay one of her hands atop Emma’s.
“We stand together,” Emma vowed.
Tori nodded. “Together.”
Two hours later, just after noon, Emma stood at the front of the church, her back propped against the left side wall, watching her ladies file in. Her heart grew heavy as her gaze skimmed each familiar face. Which ones would leave? Which would stay?
Betty Cooper tromped down the center aisle, her stocky build and no-nonsense stride blazing a trail for the four younger women who followed in her wake. The middle-aged matron oversaw the laying hens that provided a large share of the income that the women of Harper’s Station brought in. She’d been with Emma since the early days. Widowed, no children, but she had one of the biggest hearts Emma had ever encountered. She hid it well behind a gruff manner and an insistence on hard work, but she clucked over the ladies she supervised as if they were her own chicks.
The ladies of the sewing circle, several of whom had children in tow, chatted amongst themselves as they took their usual seats in the middle rows on the right side. They crafted exquisite quilts that fetched top price in Fort Worth. If half of them left, how would the remaining ladies meet their quota? The broker expected fifteen quilts every month, an easy enough order to fill with ten ladies plying their needles every day, but if their number fell to five . . . ?