Free Dangerous Men (Flynn Family Saga Book 2) by Erica Graham Page B

door.
    Maggie sighed.  She rubbed her face
with her hands.  “Well, I’m hungry.”  She started toward the kitchen.
    Flynn grabbed her wrist.  “Oh, no
you don’t.  I’ve tasted your cooking, remember?”
    Maggie tried to smile, but she
couldn’t quite manage it.
    Frank squeezed her hand and went
into the kitchen.  Pots and pans clattered loudly as he began to make supper.
    Maggie went to the door to Kate’s
room and knocked.  “It’s me.  Maggie.”
    Kate opened the door and stepped
back.  Her eyes were red from crying.
    “Can I come in?”
    Kate hesitated, and then she
stepped back from the door.
    Maggie entered the room.  “What
will you do now?”
    Kate shrugged.  “I’ll have to sell
this place.”
    “No!”
    “Yes,” she said calmly.  “I am the
wife of a murderer.”
    Maggie hesitated.  She remembered
the contempt in Tom Hanson’s eyes when he tried to take her father’s cross out
of the ground.  You can’t put a cross at a suicide’s grave!  That’s
sacrilege .  She nodded slowly.  “Where will you go?”
    Kate sighed.  “I have a cousin in San
Francisco.  She runs a finishing school for girls there.  She needs a cook.”
    Maggie stood up abruptly.  “No! 
You’re too good to be someone’s cook.”
    “Maggie, Frank is someone’s cook,”
Kate said softly.
    Maggie’s face reddened.  “That’s
not what I mean.  You have your own boarding house and—”
    Kate sighed.  “Maggie, sometimes,
we lose things we love in life.  When Richard left, I thought my life was over,
but I picked up the pieces and made a good life for myself.  Now, I have to do
it again, that’s all.”
    “I have money saved up.  It’s
enough to buy land near San Francisco.  I planned to raise horses before—before
my parents died.  You could run the farm with me,” Maggie said shyly.
    Kate hugged her.  “Oh, Maggie. 
That’s a very generous offer, but you can’t run a farm alone.”
    Maggie lifted her chin.  “I’ll be
seventeen by then.  A lot of women are already married and have their first
baby by the time they’re that age.”
    Kate shook her head.  “Think,
Maggie.  Who will you hire?  Can you trust them?”  Kate looked worried.
    Maggie bit her lip.  She thought of
Ellie Lonnegan’s bloody skirts.  She shivered.  “That’s why I need you, Kate.”
    Kate sighed.  “I’ll think it over. 
Besides, I thought you loved life on a wagon train.”
    Maggie looked away.
    Kate smiled.  “I thought so. 
Maggie, don’t give up on your dreams, not even for someone you love.”
    Maggie nodded slowly.  “That’s what
my grandmother said.”
    Kate nodded.  She rubbed her face
with her hands and shivered.
    “Are you cold?”
    Kate looked away and shook her
head.
    “Then what?”
    “I was thinking about—about the
hanging.”
    “You don’t have to go to the
hanging!”  Maggie stood up with her fists clenched.
    Gently, Kate took her wrists.  “Yes,
Maggie.  I do.  Just like you had to stay with your parents.”
    Maggie bowed her head.  She nodded.
    *  *  *
    Jasper Williams appealed twice, and
each time, his appeal was denied.
    Richard Hamilton was hanged on a
cold February day.  Maggie stood on one side of Kate, and Sam stood on the
other.  Frank came to the hanging, but there was no sign of Flynn.
    Maggie swallowed hard as the
deputies led Hamilton to the scaffold.  Kate’s hand groped for hers, and Maggie
took it.  They stood in silence as the priest prayed beside the condemned man. 
Hamilton’s face was pale and drawn.  The priest spoke quietly to him.  He
nodded.  He turned and looked at Kate.  “I love you, Kate.  I have never
stopped loving you.  I am sorry to have brought this shame on you.”
    Kate sobbed once.
    Then, they placed the hood over Hamilton’s
head.  Maggie shut her eyes.  Kate’s hand tightened on hers.  Maggie heard the
trapdoor open, heard the rope hiss, heard the thud as Hamilton’s body reached
the end of