Change of Fortune

From the Author\nEXCERPT from Hardcover:
Chapter One
Oregon 1849\nThe horizon over the Willamette Valley glowed fiery red, shooting daggers of sunlight through the fine glass windowpanes. Quinn squinted but dared not shield her eyes. She sat upright, proper, folding and refolding her hands in her lap. Strands of red hair, damp with nervous perspiration, clung to the nape of her neck. Though Henry's jittery knee bounced against the flow of her cotton day dress, she kept a tight focus on Hugh MacCann lest her inattentiveness unleash his rage.
"These are only my mother's things I'm asking for, Father." Quinn's tone was respectful, calm, although beads of sweat wetted her brow. "Her Dublin lace, the silver service, her blue Staffordshire . . ." Her eyes flashed to a simple wood framed painting of an autumn sunrise in Boston, her childhood home after leaving Dublin. "Her watercolors. All things she promised would be mine when I married."
"Then she should have lived to pass them on to you!" Hugh MacCann's bellow froze Henry's nervous knee. "And the two thousand dollars you've asked for was never your mother's money."
Though it was a warm summer evening, her father wore a thigh-length frock coat as he paced. In his hand, he held their crumpled marriage certificate. "The money she pledged wasn't hers to give."
Quinn sprang up. "You made a promise to Mother—on her deathbed! I heard it myself. She said her personal things and two thousand dollars would be mine as a dowry so that I could start a new life here in the West with a husband." She stepped toward him. "You promised!"
The back of his hand slammed Quinn to the floor. A shot of pain flared upward from her jaw and pulled one eye into a squinted blur, which she quickly cast toward Henry. Although their marriage was a sham, she had half-expected Henry with his sturdy build to defend her if the need arose, but there he sat, frozen, silent, his scared blue eyes fixed on Hugh MacCann.
A trickle of blood oozed from Quinn's bottom lip. She pulled herself to her feet. Show no fear. Don't back down.
Expressionless, Hugh pointed to the man his daughter had married. "You there, what is it that you do?"
Henry's neck stiffened. "As in . . . work?"
"Well, I sure as Hades am not asking whether you pick your nose for pleasure, now am I? How do you make a living?" His Irish brogue was always thicker when he was angry.
Henry glanced at Quinn, who stood beside the davenport pressing a bare knuckle to her bloody lip to stop the bleeding.
"Don't tell me you need your new wife to talk for you?"
Steeling herself, Quinn said, "Father, no, but—"
"Then you needn't be answering for him." Her father gave her a hard glare before shifting his eyes back to Henry. "I'm waitin'."
After a throat clearing, Henry stood. His tan, coarse linen trousers bore the permanent wrinkles of a man more accustomed to sitting than standing, and his linen pullover shirt was drenched and smelled of sweat. "I'm going to paint houses and signs." When a raised brow met his reply, Henry started again. "It's my momma's idea. She likes painted houses. Like the ones in St. Louis. She says everythin' west of the Mississippi might be uncivilized, but it don't have to look like it."
With a stern turn of his head, Hugh fixed his eyes on Quinn as he tossed their marriage certificate onto the floor. "You married this worthless know-nothing instead of the surveyor general's son?" When his arm rose again, she flinched, then stiffened. She didn't resist when he took a handful of her red hair. Used it to yank her to him. "California will be a state soon, but I'd wager a bet that the land I claimed there will be ignored by the surveyors, all because of you."
She grabbed hold of the hand that held tight to her hair. "Father, let go—"
"MacCann County!" he shouted, barely inches from her face. The reek of jerky and day-old coffee hung on his breath. "That's what he was going to call it. It was to be one of the first named counties in California." He tw