Into the Bright Unknown (The Gold Seer Trilogy #3)(15)

And because sometimes I can’t control the meanness in my heart, I say, “You’re looking better than ever.”

Hardwick laughs. “Well, isn’t this almost a family reunion?”

I glance around, half afraid I’ll see Uncle Hiram. If Hardwick lied about Dilley, maybe he lied about my uncle being gone, too. Maybe I ought to run like blazes.

Hardwick steps toward me, and his associates trail in his wake like a school of fish. “I was on my way to the bank when I recognized Mr. Kingfisher outside, and I knew you wouldn’t be far away. Of course I had to divert my path to join yours. It’s not everyone who gets the better of me in a deal!”

He says it condescendingly, like me dealing with him was adorable and sweet . . . but there’s a fire in his eyes that makes my belly squirm. A moment ago, I had been invisible to the men in this office. Now every eye is turned toward me. A few are merely curious, but not one of them is kindly.

Hardwick takes a puff on his cigar and blows a huge cloud of smoke in our direction. His breath is wet and sickly sweet with tobacco.

“Mr. Hardwick,” I say, more as an acknowledgment, and falling just short of a greeting. “I didn’t expect to see you with Dilley. You told me he died.”

“Well, we thought he had! His men hauled him to the mission, where, with care and prayers, he made a miraculous recovery.”

“Praise the Lord,” Frank Dilley says.

“You still working for my uncle?” I ask Dilley flat out.

“You didn’t know?” he says. “Westfall is halfway to Australia by now.”

No reason for him to lie about that, and the relief almost buckles my knees.

Becky is bristling beside me. “We were about to be on our way.”

“No need to hurry,” Hardwick says. “What brings you all the way down from—what was the name of that little camp of yours—Charity?”

“Glory,” I answer, and I regret it as soon as the word slips my mouth.

“Glory be!” Hardwick chuckles. “That’s right, Glory. What brings you all the way down from Glory?”

The beautiful auburn-haired woman leans over and whispers in Hardwick’s ear.

“Excuse me, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Becky says, and I know she cannot bear to have anything whispered around her. “I’m Mrs. Andrew Joyner, lately from Glory, but before that from Chattanooga, Tennessee.”

“Mr. James Henry Hardwick, at your service, Mrs. Joyner. Allow me to introduce my newest associate, Miss Helena Russell.”

He makes “associate” sound like a fancy word for something I don’t quite understand.

“At your service,” Miss Helena Russell says, with a tinge of the mountains in her voice. Nothing about her is the least bit servile, but up close, I can see how the makeup and fine clothes cover a life of labor. Her skin is weathered and freckled. The wide sleeves of her dress fail to conceal forearms corded with the kind of muscle that comes from carrying milk pails and swinging axes. She may be dressed as stylishly as Becky Joyner, but she has more in common with me.

We pass introductions all around, and I’m still looking for a convenient way out that doesn’t include fighting past Frank Dilley when Hardwick doggedly returns to his original question. “You never did say what brings you to San Francisco, Miss Westfall.”

“No, I didn’t,” I reply. “What brings you?”

He laughs, and I wonder what puts a man like him in a good mood. Maybe it’s the lady standing at his elbow. “I’m here for the same reason you are,” he answers.

“You lost your home and family and had nowhere else to go?”

“I came to make my fortune.”

He’s already taken thousands from us, which seemed like a fortune at the time, but now, sensing all the gold of San Francisco—even just in this room—I know he has bigger ambitions. “And how are you going to do that?”

“Any and every way I can,” he says, nodding to himself. “Any and every way I can.”

“And that includes taking advantage of men like my uncle.”

Another puff on his cigar, while he considers this. “I didn’t know you cared about him. In fact, our agreement led me to believe that all you cared about was being free of him.”

“I care about the people he robbed to pay you. I care about the people he hurt trying to get rich, in order to make you richer.”

“You didn’t come out of the affair too badly. You somehow ended up with enough money to pay all his debts.”

My hands start to tremble, and tears well up in my eyes. I was kidnapped and force-fed laudanum. Dressed up like a doll for my uncle’s amusement. The Indians had it worse; I watched them beaten, starved, murdered. “We still haven’t received the charter for the town of Glory,” I blurt, just to get the images out of my head.

That was the key part of my agreement with Hardwick at Christmas. We’d pay off my uncle’s debts, and Hardwick would use his influence to get us a town charter so we could govern ourselves.

“California isn’t a state yet, my dear, and the wheels of politics grind slowly.” His grin is slow and satisfied. “And sometimes those wheels require additional amounts of grease to keep turning.”

Additional grease? “You’re saying you’ll need more gold.”