Broken Vows by Henke Shirl

Author:Henke, Shirl [Henke, Shirl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Shirl Henke
Published: 2011-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

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Nevada, 1874

Virginia City had always been an unbelievably ugly place to Patrick Madigan's way of thinking. He looked at the steep mountains towering above the town, bare and bleak, as raw as the disfiguring holes the mines had gouged in the earth. San Francisco—that was his town, with its wide streets and steeply rolling hills, situated high above the aqua-green grandeur of the Pacific. The violence and gaudiness had been bred out of the city by decades of civilization and permanence. Permanence was a virtue he believed Virginia City would never achieve. Even with its big brick buildings, there was always a look of instability about the town that never slept. That very insomniac frenzy indicated its tenuous hold on existence.

“You've grown too whimsically philosophical, Patrick, my man,” he muttered to himself, chuckling as he stepped away from the big bay window in the offices of Madigan & Madigan, Ltd. He had arrived yesterday to handle a timber contract for Rory while his younger brother was off in Washington. Would their parents ever have believed it—their youngest son a United States congressman?

Of course, Rory's election meant more work for both of them, but then work was all his brother lived for—work and revenge. Where had that carefree boy of childhood memory gone? After their parents and Sean died, Rory had been bewildered by the sudden tragedy, heartbroken to be separated from Ryan and him, but hopeful of their reunion. Their little brother had always been the most buoyant optimist.

Something—someone—had changed him. Even though Rory had tried to keep it secret, on one rare occasion when they sat up and drank late into the night, he had let down his guard and had told Patrick about her. Rebekah Wells. The beautiful young preacher's daughter who had thrown him over for Amos Wells' wealth and prestige. His brother's pain was like a festering wound that healed over but remained putrid, eating away deep inside. Rory's obsession grew, an obsession to eventually bring Wells' empire crashing down about his ears—to utterly ruin the man. And the man's wife.

Patrick, too, wanted Wells brought to justice. But Patrick saw in Rory's hate a dangerous cancer that would destroy him as surely as it destroyed their common enemy. And Amos Wells was their enemy. The ruthless greed of the silver kings and their banking cohorts was responsible for their brother Ryan's death.

Ryan had died in a mine shaft explosion deliberately set by the men who owned controlling interest in the mine. The practice was not unusual, especially on the Comstock, where mining speculations had reached frenzied heights—or depths, depending on one's point of view. Patrick had always thought California politics none too clean, but as one wag had said, “If California in '49 was the vestibule of Hell, then Nevada in the '70's was the throne room of Satan himself.”

Unscrupulous mine owners often suppressed the news of a rich strike so they could buy up all the market shares cheaply. To keep word

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