Colorado Dawn Read online

  Praise for

  CHASING THE SUN

  “A satisfying conclusion with this sweet nineteenth-­century western…​Fans of the series will enjoy another visit to the Wilkins clan, while new readers are sure to admire Warner’s vivid descriptions of love and life in the land of enchantment.”

  —­Publishers Weekly

  “Coming to the end of an enjoyable saga is like bidding far-­flung relatives and friends good-­bye after a holiday or vacation. If the reader is immersed in the tale, tears and a feeling of sorrow follow the turning of the last page. And that’s exactly how I felt reading the last paragraph of the Wilkins brothers’ story…​Without a doubt, Kaki Warner is a writer to watch, an author with a promising future. She’s definitely an addition to my must-­buy authors list.”

  —­All About Romance

  “What an excellent series she has written…​Kaki Warner really hits all the angles and makes this series such a warm, romantic read.”

  —­Smexy Books

  “Warner does a superb job…​[She] swept me into the lives and hearts of the rugged men and strong women of the Wilkins family…​Through her exquisite writing, I’ve come to know and love these people.”

  —­The Romance Dish

  “A true page-­turner, Chasing the Sun is full of action and adventure described with Warner’s trademark detail. Once again, her characters’ relationships provide a story filled with emotional, humorous, and gut-­wrenching moments.”

  —­Romantic Times

  OPEN COUNTRY

  “Warner earned readers’ respect as a strong western writer with her debut, the first book in the Blood Rose Trilogy. With the second, she cements that reputation. Her powerful prose, realistic details, and memorable characters all add up to a compelling, emotionally intense read.”

  —­Romantic Times

  “A thoroughly enjoyable historical romance.”

  —­Night Owl Reviews

  continued…

  “Vivid imagery…​[A] beautifully spun tale that will leave readers satisfied, yet yearning for Jack’s story.”

  —­The Season

  “A wonderful historical tale starring a strong ensemble cast…​[A] superb Reconstruction era romance.”

  —­Genre Go Round Reviews

  PIECES OF SKY

  “A wonderful read I couldn’t put down…​Reminds us why New Mexico is called the land of enchantment. A truly original new voice in historical fiction.”

  —­Jodi Thomas, New York Times bestselling author

  “Romance, passion, and thrilling adventure fill the pages of this unforgettable saga that sweeps the reader from England to the Old West. Jessy and Brady are truly lovers for the ages!”

  —­Rosemary Rogers

  “Readers may need a big box of Kleenex while reading this emotionally compelling, subtly nuanced tale of revenge, redemption, and romance, but this flawlessly written book is worth every tear.”

  —­Chicago Tribune

  “In her auspicious debut, Warner kicks off the Blood Rose Trilogy…​Warner develops [the] romance with well-­paced finesse and great character work…​Warner makes great use of the vivid Old West setting.”

  —­Publishers Weekly

  “Generates enough heat to light the old New Mexico sky. A sharp, sweet love story of two opposites, a beautifully observed setting, and voilà—­a romance you won’t soon forget.”

  —­Sara Donati, author of The Endless Forest

  Berkley Sensation titles by Kaki Warner

  Runaway Brides Novels

  HEARTBREAK CREEK

  COLORADO DAWN

  Blood Rose Trilogy

  PIECES OF SKY

  OPEN COUNTRY

  CHASING THE SUN

  Colorado Dawn

  KAKI WARNER

  BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—­110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-­party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2012 by Kathleen Warner.

  Excerpt from Bride of the High Country by Kaki Warner copyright © by Kathleen Warner.

  Cover illustration by Alan Ayers.

  Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

  Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / January 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

  Warner, Kaki.

  Colorado dawn / Kaki Warner.—Berkley Sensation trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-425-24522-4 (pbk.)

  1. Women photographers—Fiction. 2. Scots—United States—Fiction. 3. Colorado—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.A8633C65 2012

  813’.6—dc23 2011036421

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Heather, Adeline, Kenzie, and Jackson

  With all my love

  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

  Prologue

  LISTER HOUSE, OUTSIDE LONDON

  SEPTEMBER 1868

  Maddie turned the key in the lock at her parents’ small stone cottage, paused for a moment to gather her courage, then opened the door and stepped inside.

  Silence greeted her. That oppressive kind of silence that came when a house has been left empty too long and the life and energy o
nce trapped within its walls was slowly draining away. A fanciful notion. But funerals always made her melancholy.

  Still wearing her coat and clutching her reticule in cold, numb fingers, she walked slowly through the rooms.

  Everything looked the same, like a tintype frozen in time—­her mother’s bonnet draped over the arm of the settee, the same array of photographs lining the walls, a book left open on the table beside her father’s chair. Even the air smelled familiar—­a subtle blend of old smoke with a hint of her father’s pipe tobacco and her mother’s sachet. But beneath it, barely detectable, hung the damp mustiness of an empty house and the beginnings of decay.

  And they had only been dead a week.

  In the kitchen, she dropped her reticule on the table and stripped off her coat and gloves. Moving by rote, she set a fire in the cookstove and lit the lamp sitting on the table, then went through the rituals of preparing tea. Once she had the kettle heating and the tea caddy and sugar bowl on the table, she set out her mother’s favorite cup, a napkin, and a spoon.

  Then she sat down in her father’s chair, dropped her head onto her folded arms, and wept.

  An hour later, she was still sitting there, her tears long spent, nursing her third cup of tea and trying to decide what to do with the rest of her life.

  Her parents were dead. Her marriage was a failure. She would probably never have children or a home of her own. Even this house would have to be sold to cover the cost of her parents’ funerals. With no other family and no resources, her future stretched bleak and empty ahead of her.

  So what was she to do? Go back to Scotland? To a father-­in-­law who couldn’t abide the English, and a mother-­in-­law who rarely left her room? Angus’s sister, Glynnis, was so busy running the Kirkwell lands she had little time for a husband, much less a friend, and his two older brothers were so involved with their own pursuits they were rarely at home, and when they were, they called her the English girl because they couldn’t remember her name. With her husband gone years on end, what reason had she to go back?

  She looked down at the heavy signet ring Angus had given her before he rode off to rejoin his cavalry regiment over a year and a half ago. She hadn’t seen him since. In over four years of marriage, he had written her two letters and visited her once. Four years, languishing at the family’s remote Highland estate, the unwanted English bride of a Scottish earl’s son, while he played soldier in Ireland.

  She had given up her dreams for that?

  She almost yanked the ring off her finger and threw it across the room. But she hadn’t the energy for even that. After her hurried dash across half of England to get to the funeral on time, then standing in the icy drizzle as Vicar Collins presided over the small graveside service for her parents this afternoon, she was so emotionally drained just lifting her teacup took an effort of will.

  It was all rather meaningless, anyway, if the target of her ire wasn’t even there to make note of it.

  Beyond the window, the wind huffed and moaned. Tiny pellets of sleet rattled against the windowpanes. Gusts sent drafts back down the stovepipe to burp puffs of smoke into the still air.

  Perhaps he had died. That’s what soldiers did, especially rash, high-­spirited cavalrymen who took needless risks. But she had always thought Angus Wallace was too big, too headstrong, too fearless to die. Besides, if something had happened to him, his family would have been notified—­if not his wife, then surely his father, the Earl of Kirkwell.

  If not dead, then what?

  Utterly indifferent.

  The realization left her breathless with despair.

  Fearing another onslaught of tears, she looked around the room, seeking distraction. Her gaze fell on the framed photograph hanging beside the door that led into the parlor. A calmness came over her as she studied the smiling faces of her parents, remembering that last holiday at Brighton, and how Papa had cajoled her mother into donning one of those scandalous bathing costumes and testing the waters. Maddie had tried to make them sit still all afternoon. Finally, when they stopped to rest on the wall overlooking the beach, she saw her chance.

  It was one of her first attempts at portraiture, and a poor one at that. Blurred lines, misplaced shadows, shoddy composition—­all marks of a novice photographer. But it was her favorite, because there was more to it than just an image on paper. For the first time she had captured not just form, but emotion. There was a story behind those smiling faces. She had seen it, and coaxed it out of the shadows, and trapped it in tintype for all the years to come.

  Perhaps she could do that again.

  That notion burst into her head, half formed and elusive. But it grew with every heartbeat until it filled her mind. Dare she?

  For the next two days, as she set her parents’ house to rights and packed away their things, that thought dogged her footsteps like a lost cat.

  It was absurd. So far beyond reason and practicality it wasn’t worth pursuing. Yet, after her third restless night, she surrendered to the lure of possibility and resolutely climbed the stairs to the attic where her photographs and equipment were stored, determined to at least give it a try.

  The Scottish had a saying: “Be happy while you’re living, for you’ll be a long time dead.” And Maddie intended to be happy. She deserved it, Angus Wallace be damned.

  The next afternoon, she was sitting before Mr. Reginald Farns­worth Chesterfield’s desk at The Illustrated London News nervously clasping her gloved hands in her lap and growing more convinced by the moment that grief had robbed her of her senses.

  Daughters of baronets and wives of third sons to earls did not seek employment. They did not set up shop, or peddle their wares, or go into business, especially such a male-­dominated business as photography. They stayed at home and tatted and traded vague reminiscences about their absent husbands and childless, empty lives until God finally took pity and allowed them to die.

  “Hmm,” the gray-­haired publisher said as he pulled another photograph from the portfolio she had brought for his perusal.

  Hmm? What did that mean?

  She tried not to fidget. A chance. That’s all she wanted. She would work for a pittance—­or at least enough to keep her parents’ house so she would have someplace to live. She would even take an assignment on speculation, just to prove she could do it.

  Minutes ticked by. Maddie’s confidence dwindled to quivery jelly. After almost a half hour of silence, she was on the verge of snatching up her portfolio and fleeing the building.

  This was all a horrid mistake. It was time to accept her fate and go back to Northbridge, and learn to speak Gaelic and eat haggis without gagging.

  “I had to look at them one more time,” Mr. Chesterfield finally said as he slid the photographs and cartes de visite back into the heavy canvas folder. “Just to be sure.”

  Maddie tried to keep her breathing even.

  After tying the closure tabs, he tipped back his swivel chair and studied the ceiling, his brow furrowed in thought, the forefinger and thumb of his right hand idly plucking at the gray hairs sprouting from his top lip. “It’s a rather forward-­thinking notion,” he mused, more to himself than to her. “Revolutionary. Still…​It just might work.”

  Abruptly he swiveled around and stared at her across his desk. “Have you seen the photographs of Matthew Brady?” he demanded. “Those he took in America during their recent rebellion?”

  “Y-­yes.” Her voice sounded like a mouse squeak, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “They are most evocative.” Astounding. Haunting. Compelling. Everything she wished her photographs could be.

  “And those of William Jackson,” he pressed. “And Tim O’Sullivan?”

  “The ones of the American West? They’re fascinating. Each image seems to tell a tale all its own.”

  “Yes!” The elderly man beamed, showing small, crooked teeth beneath his gray muttonchops. “But they only present one side of the story, don’t you see.”

  Maddie didn�
��t but nodded politely, her fixed smile starting to wobble. “One side.”

  “The male side, as it were.”

  “Ah. The male side.” She wondered if he was insane. And what he would do if she cast up her accounts on his desk. Perhaps she should leave before she did.

  “But to see it from a whole new perspective, that’s the challenge. That would certainly catch your eye, would it not?”

  “Indeed.” Clearly insane.

  “Of course it would! So what do you think, madam?”

  Maddie felt that thickness in her throat again. “About what, sir?”

  “The female perspective!”

  “Well…​insomuch as it’s the only one I have, I rather like it.”

  He gave a sudden bark of laughter that made her jump. “You misunderstand. I’m asking if you would like to travel to America, Mrs. Wallace, and photograph the West from the female perspective.”

  Maddie was too astounded to respond. America?

  “I have been wanting to send an expeditionary photographer over there for some time.” His voice grew more enthusiastic with every word. “But a woman! Now that would be unheard of. Revolutionary!” He startled her anew by slapping the flat of his hand down on her closed portfolio. “You have the talent for it, madam. But have you the will? What say you?”