Behind a Lady's Smile Read Online Free PDF Page A

the man who put aside his own time and safety to rescue the duke’s granddaughter from the wilds of America? Dukes were rich. Dukes could throw a couple of thousand dollars at him and not even feel a pinch. All his scrimping and saving over the years and here he’d gone and found a pot of gold right in the middle of Yosemite.
    He made thirty dollars a week, a sum he was pretty proud of. In the last five years, he’d managed to save nearly five thousand dollars. He’d figured in another year or so he’d have enough money to go home and start his own photography studio. Equipment was expensive and so was rent, so he wanted a bit more cash in hand before heading east. And now he’d have it.
    Mitch didn’t know much about diamonds or rubies, but he knew about gold, and those bits of jewelry were made of gold. That alone would give him enough money to pay for their trip back to New York, with maybe enough left over to get them on a steamship to England. He could picture it now, knocking on the door of a palatial home, producing their long lost granddaughter with a flourish. Why, yes, it was a terrible sacrifice for me, but nothing is too good for Miss Hayes. What? A reward? Why, I couldn’t. I have delivered your granddaughter because she asked. All right, then, if you insist, though I do believe ten thousand dollars is more than generous.
    Perhaps ten thousand dollars was a bit optimistic, but what was that sum of money to a duke? A duke could sneeze out that sort of money.
    Only one thing worried him. What if the old duke and duchess were so angry with their daughter for running off with Mr. Hayes that they refused to accept their granddaughter? Mitch took up the letters again.
    “Will you read them to me?” Miss Hayes sat up, her eyes alight with excitement, and Mitch felt a small twinge of something in his gut that he didn’t like.
    “Sure. The first one is dated eighteen fifty-four. Were you born here or in England?”
    “In America. I was born the first year they were here.”
    “That means you’re twenty or twenty-one.” She didn’t look it, but she must be, based on what he knew. Imagine, twenty years old and stuck out alone in this wilderness. What the hell had her father been thinking?
    He began to read: “July twenty-third, eighteen fifty-four.

    “Dearest daughter,
    You have broken your mother’s heart with your rash decision to leave for America. Your letter was met with great joy and greater sorrow. It is a small death for us, for we fear we shall never see you again. I write this with deep regret over my words, and it is with solemn hope that I pray those will not be the last words you hear from me.
    Dearest Mary, come home to us. It is not within my power to judge what you have done, so I leave that to God’s hand and His will.
    Glastonbury.”

    All the letters that followed held very much the same tone. They were filled with regret and yearning and couldn’t have been more perfect. The last of them, written about the time her mother must have died, beseeched their daughter to come home, to allow their granddaughter to live the life which she deserved, to be raised in the bosom of her family. Surrounded by pots of gold and bags of diamonds. Mitch was practically giddy.
    As he read the last of the letters, he looked up, and immediately altered his expression upon seeing Genny’s tear-filled eyes. They looked, hell, they looked purely beautiful, the color of leaves in spring when the sun is shining through them. Then she blinked the tears away and Mitch was slightly relieved that they turned a more ordinary green.
    “I have to go home. Don’t you see?”
    “Yes, I do. We’ll get you there. Don’t you worry about a thing. But you have to be able to walk; Millie can only carry you so far. It’s a good four days to Sacramento, and with your leg, maybe longer.”
    “Sacramento?”
    “Bit west of here. That’s where we get on the train. We’ll take it to Omaha, then on to Chicago and