With a tiny shake of her head, Kathryn leaned back against the seat and looked at her son in awe. He had the refined, aristocratic look of the O'Connors, a look that had taken generations of breeding to achieve. He had long, thin fingers that looked as though they were meant to hold a lace handkerchief. But Kathryn knew the truth. At Jeremy's own insistence, he'd taken boxing lessons (free in exchange for Jeremy's writing letters home for the boxer) and she knew what a punch he could make with those hands.
From the way he was dressed, Jeremy looked as though he'd never seen the outside of a drawing room. No one would guess that they had lived all their lives in tenements where the smell of cabbage always surrounded them. Jeremy had witnessed his first murder when he was one year old, after he'd wandered into a street brawl between two drunken sailors.
It was when he was four that Kathryn finally decided to return him to Sean O'Connor. She was going to take him back to Ireland and allow his father's family to raise him. What did it matter if she were hanged for kidnapping? What did it matter that Sean's family were the coldest, most ruthless people she'd ever met? At least Jeremy would be safe with them in Ireland. And safe was all that mattered to her;
That was the first time Jeremy ran away. Four years old and he ran away from home for three days. Kathryn had been insane with worry, not eating or sleeping for those three days. The police had been no help. What did they care that some slum kid had disappeared? They had leered at Kathryn and offered to give her another child.
After three days Jeremy had sauntered home, clean, well fed, and said that he was not going back to Ireland, that he wanted to live with his mother, and if she tried to send him away, he'd run away again.
That had been five years ago, and since then the two of them had been on the run. But this year Jeremy had been feeling as though he were grown-up and so wanted to stay and fight his father. "He has no claim over me since you never married him," he'd said several times.
Kathryn had tried to explain about money being able to buy anything, but for all the prematurely gained wisdom in his eyes, Jeremy still had a child's belief in justice.
When she'd been offered the job of tutor to a nine- year-old boy in the remote, isolated mountain town of Legend, Colorado, it had seemed like a dream come true. She was to be the teacher of Zachary Jordan, son of Mr. Cole Jordan. And maybe, just maybe, in this remote town, they'd achieve what had become the most beautiful of words to her: safety.
"This is it?" Jeremy said with contempt as he stepped down from the stage. "This is what we left civilization for?"
"Jeremy, I really don't care for your tone of voice. And I'm sure this is the... the..."
"Red-light district?" he asked, sidestepping as the stage driver threw their small trunks to the ground.
Kathryn drew in her breath and stared at the awful place around them. There seemed to be nothing but saloons and gambling houses as far as one could see. Noise, dirt, unwashed men, raucously laughing women, great wagons full of rocks, horses and manure, filled the place. There didn't seem to be anything clean or even decent as far as she could see. In front of her was a garish, gaudily painted sign that had a woman's leg wearing a black stocking and a frilly garter. What looked to be a high-heeled bedroom shoe dangled from the toe and the place was called The Lady Slipper. Kathryn didn't have time to look at other signs because she had to step back as a dirty man with graying whiskers made a lunge for her.
"Me first," he said, then when Kathryn sidestepped, he fell into the mud at her feet.
If Kathryn had had so much as two dollars to her name she would have climbed back onto the stagecoach and ridden away, as far from this den of iniquity as possible. Instinctively, she put her arm around Jeremy and drew him closer--as though she could protect him from what she was seeing, hearing, and smelling.
With her arm still around Jeremy, she looked at the stage driver, who was climbing back onto the box.
"Can you take us out of here?" she asked.
"You bet, lady, for fifty bucks each. In cash."
"I dont have--" He didn't let her finish but just chuckled. "Thought not. Well, there're plenty of ways for a pretty gal like you to earn money in Legend. Giddyup!"
Coughing from the dust of the rapidly departing stage, Kathryn turned back around, the two of them standing alone in the middle of the wide, foul street, three small trunks at their feet. Kathryn didn't have time to think about an alternate plan because a wagon drawn by six horses was coming straight toward them. With one quick gesture she thrust a case at Jeremy, grabbed the other two, and ran for the safety of the boardwalk.
But just as they stepped in front of the saloon, a man came flying through the glass window and hit the boardwalk, then rolled into the street, where two men on horses nearly trampled him. Dropping her cases, Kathryn grabbed Jeremy, his back pressed against her front as she tried to pull both of them into the safety between the door and the window. When a shot rang out, she tightened her grip on Jeremy.
Out of the saloon door came a man, his back to her, but she could see the power of his build: shoulders so thick they curved round to his chest, a taut waist with a decorated knife sheath at his side.
"You ever show up in this town again, Bartlett, and you'll answer to me," the big man said to the one in the dirt. Then, to Kathryn's horror, she saw that the man in the dirt was about to draw a gun, and from the angle of the porch post, she doubted if the man standing in front of her could see him.
"No!" she shouted, and in the next second, with the speed of a striking snake, the man on the porch drew a knife from a concealed pouch down the back of his shirt and threw it. In the next second the man on the ground lay pinned to the dirt, blood pouring from the knife sticking into his shoulder.