“This does not make sense, Mr. Wilder.

“It is to your advantage that I fail in this venture. Why in the world would you offer help?” asked Jane.

Rydell took a single step toward her and reached out. “Been askin’ myself that question all morning.”

“And what is your answer to that question?” Jane’s voice had steadied, but it dropped to a whisper.

“Damn—darned if I know,” he admitted. And before he knew what he was doing, he closed his fingers around her upper arm. She didn’t move, just looked at him. Unable to help himself, he pulled her toward him. And his mouth found hers.

Her lips were warm. He’d never known such excruciating sweetness. Instinctively he broke free. He didn’t think he could stop if he didn’t call a halt now.

“You’re right, this doesn’t make sense,” he breathed against her temple. “No sense at all.”

The Courtship

Harlequin Historical #613

Praise for Lynna Banning’s previous titles

The Law and Miss Hardisson

“…fresh and charming…a sweet and funny yet poignant story.”

—Romantic Times

Plum Creek Bride

“…pathos and humor blend in a plot that glows with perception and dignity.”

—Affaire de Coeur

Wildwood

“5 .”

—Heartland Critiques

Western Rose

“…warm, wonderful and witty—a winning combination from a bright new talent.”

—Award-winning author Theresa Michaels

#611 MY LADY’S PLEASURE

Julia Justiss

#612 THE DARK KNIGHT

Tori Phillips

#614 THE PERFECT WIFE

Mary Burton

The Courtship
Lynna Banning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Available from Harlequin Historicals and

Lynna Banning

Western Rose #310

Wildwood #374

Lost Acres Bride #437

Plum Creek Bride #474

The Law and Miss Hardisson #537

The Courtship #613

Dedication

For my mother, Mary Elizabeth Banning Yarnes

Acknowledgments

With grateful appreciation to Jean Louise Banning, Suzanne Barrett, David Woolston and my agent, Pattie Steele-Perkins

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Chapter One

Dixon Falls, Oregon

1874

“Jane Charlotte, don’t you dare step one foot out that door without straightenin’ your hat! Why, it looks just like a puffball that’s been knocked plumb off center.”

With a sigh, Jane poked one finger against the stiff straw creation she’d clapped on top of her dark hair and felt it shift an inch to the right.

“Now, pull your waist down and tuck it in nice, honey. Y’all can’t go traipsing into town looking like you’ve got no maid to tend you.”

Jane faced her mother, who was reclining on the worn green damask settee, an open copy of Tennyson clutched in her thin fingers. “We have no maid, remember, Mama? We left Odelia at Montclair with Aunt Carrie, and Juno ran off with that sharecropper in Dillon County after the War. We’re on our own out here.”

Her mother’s unblemished ivory forehead wrinkled. “Truth to tell, Ah don’t like to remember, but never you mind. Tuck in your waist, now, honey. And tell your father where you’re goin’ in such a fizz.”

Jane’s throat closed at the mention of her father. Papa was dead and buried in the orchard, and her chest ached every time she thought of it. Mama didn’t want to remember this, either—that they’d laid him to rest three days ago. Some days, Mama fancied herself back in Marion County, sitting on the porch in the shade of the tupelo tree, sipping lemonade.

“I won’t be gone long, Mama.” She bent to kiss the smooth, cool cheek and patted her mother’s hand. “You find a nice poem by Mr. Tennyson to read out loud after our supper, you hear?”

“You speak to your father before you leave, Jane Charlotte. Ah don’t know what he’ll say to your goin’ out unchaperoned….”

Jane bit her bottom lip. Papa’s dead, she wanted to scream. Don’t you understand? He’s gone! But such an outburst would serve no purpose; Mama would forget it within half a minute, and Jane’s throat would hurt for hours from screaming. Her mother refused to accept unpleasantness; she simply pretended it didn’t exist. Maybe she should thank the Lord her mother preferred the past; it kept her from being frightened of the present, and Jane was frightened enough for both of them.

She straightened her spine, smoothed down the folds of the dark blue sateen skirt she had made over from a ball gown of her mother’s, and moved to the front door. The paint around the lock plate was flaking off, revealing the bare wood beneath. It needed fixing.

Everything needed fixing—the house. Their lives. Even herself. It had been ten years since she’d first delved into her mother’s clothes trunk; how much longer could a few outdated ball gowns last? And the house—it had gone to wrack and ruin since her mother’s health began to fail.

“’Bye, Mama. I’ll be home in time to make your tea.”

“Jane Charlotte, tell your father…” The small, clear voice faded as Jane descended the porch steps.

Tell your father. She gritted her teeth. She’d like to tell him a thing or two, like to shout the truth at him: Papa, you dragged us away from everything we knew, everything we loved, and you didn’t take care of us, Mama and me, nor our property, and…and now you up and die and we’re practically starving!

Hush up, now! No well-bred Southern lady rails at a dead parent no matter what they’d done, leastways not in public. And certainly not among Yankees! She marched down the path to the front gate, groaning aloud at the sight of the weed-infested border of sunwithered Sweet William and the overgrown roses massed along the fence. Well, great heavens, she couldn’t keep up the cooking and the cleaning and the pruning and lovingly dribble wash water on the roots like Mama did before she took sick.

Oh, Papa, whatever am I to do? A sick, hard knot formed in her midsection. She didn’t feel like herself anymore. At that, she gave a choked laugh. Be truthful, Jane. For months and months, even before Papa died, she had felt like a fledgling sparrow who’d fallen out of its nest. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fly back in.

Well, fly you must, ready or no. She swung the gate shut, wincing at the screak of the rusty hinge—one more thing to attend to—and twitched her skirt free of the fencepost. It took all her willpower to steady her breathing. She felt for all the world like David girding himself to meet Goliath.

Only this was worse. She snapped open her mother’s best black silk parasol. At the bottom of their dusty, sun-baked hill lay the town, and there waited The Enemy. Goliath was a Yankee.

She straightened her hat and ordered her feet to carry her forward. I am sorry, Papa, but you left me no choice.

“She’s comin’, Dell! Miz Jane. Walkin’ up the street lookin’ jes’ like a queen.”

Rydell Wilder’s entire world spun to a stop. “You sure about that, Lefty?”

“Dad blame-it, my eyesight’s good as it ever was. Ever since you started this here bank ’stead of ridin’ shotgun for me, you never b’lieve one thing I say. I tell you it’s her.”

Rydell stood up and stared into the old man’s face. Lefty Springer was the only person in the entire world he’d ever confided in. He’d trust the man with his life if it came down to it; after all, Lefty had trusted him with thousands of dollars in payroll shipments from the time he turned sixteen.

Barton Springer—Lefty, to those few who knew how he’d lost his right arm at Shiloh—never spoke a word unless he had to. The old man had been the first customer at the bank Rydell had established in town when he was a week shy of twenty-three, and he was the only patron allowed to use the private side entrance to his office. Rydell waited for the details.

Lefty looked at him expectantly, and Rydell chuckled. He didn’t believe for one minute that Miss Jane Charlotte Davis was heading for his bank. Not unless hell was freezing over. But the old man’s sharp blue eyes sparkled, and then his gaze narrowed.

“Got over it, didja?”

“Sure thing, Lefty.” He grinned at the lie. “Another ten years or so and I won’t care about breathing, either.”

“Thought so. Dell, I came to warn ya—she looks like she’s made up her mind to somethin’.”

Rydell shook his head as a queer pain stabbed into his heart. “Jane Davis hasn’t been allowed any kind of life to make up her mind about. Her folks pretty much saw to that. Offhand I’d say she’s just visited the mercantile and is headed toward home.”

“She’s comin’ this way, I tell ya.” The old man twirled one branch of his drooping gray mustache with his left forefinger. “Thought ya might like to be prepared, is all.”

Rydell grasped the older man’s shoulder. “Thanks, Lefty. Buy you a beer later.”

When he was alone, Rydell tipped his chair back, propped his boots on the desk, and closed his eyes.

Jane.

All these years he’d carried her name and the memory of the shy, frightened girl who’d treated him with kindness when he’d chased a group of bullies out of the schoolyard. She was new in town, from the South he gathered from her speech. Maybe fourteen or fifteen, and she looked…different. Her clothes were too fussy for a small town like Dixon Falls, her manners too formal. The other students surrounded her as she walked home, tossing rocks and chanting. “Queen Jane, Queen Jane, she’s got no brain. She’s stuck-up, too, and awful plain.”

The taunt made him mad. They’d bedeviled him, too, but he could fight. Jane could not, so when it came down to it, he’d done it for her. When it was over, she put her small, soft hand on his and whispered two simple words. Thank you.

He’d been fifteen. She didn’t come back to the school; he heard later that her folks taught her at home. Rydell had finished his schooling, rode shotgun for Lefty Springer, and watched from a distance as wide as two oceans while Jane grew up in the big yellow house on Dixon Road.

He’d tried hard to forget her.

Wilder’s Bank sat at the far end of the town of Dixon Falls, an imposing two-story white-painted building, the only structure along the main street that looked strong enough to withstand the winter snows and the hot, dry July wind without the roof sagging and the paint peeling off. Jane hesitated a moment, then stepped onto the board sidewalk.

A silver-dollar-sized spot of sunlight seared her chin. Peering upward, she noted the hole in the faded black parasol and groaned aloud. She could patch it with a scrap of silk from Mama’s trunk. Or she could live with it. What she’d like to do was toss the blasted contraption into the horse trough in front of the Excelsior Hotel, but she knew there wasn’t enough money to purchase another. That sad fact was what brought her into town in the first place.

She would manage with the damaged parasol. She needed something much more important than that, Jane thought with a shudder. And it was waiting inside the bank—her last hope for survival. For the hundredth time in the last three days, she wondered how she could live through the humiliation.

Inside the bank it was mercifully cool and quiet. The gray-painted window shutters were closed against the midday heat. It was, she noted, the only building in town that had shutters. In the dim light she drew in a slow, careful breath and walked resolutely to the counter. The air smelled of lemon oil and tobacco smoke.

The young man behind the iron grill blinked. “Yes, ma’am?”

“I would like to speak with Mr. Wilder, please.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll just step in and see if he’s busy.”

Jane willed her gloved fingers to rest in a ladylike manner atop her reticule while the clerk disappeared through a doorway. What if he’s occupied? What if he wants to see all our family private papers, Papa’s will and the deed to the house? What if he says no?

“Just step this way, ma’am. Mr. Wilder’s always happy to see a pretty lady.”

I’ll just bet he is. Rydell Wilder had a Past, her mother had whispered over the years. Papa had been less subtle. “No background, no breeding, and a damned Yankee besides.”

Clamping her lips tightly shut, she followed the young man in icy silence, listening to her black leather shoes tap-tap on the polished wood floor. When the clerk thrust open a heavy oak door, Jane’s heart jumped.

She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

But you will. You must. She sucked in a breath so deep her corset pinched and forced her feet through the doorway.

The man behind the desk rose. “Jane,” he said, then caught himself. “Miss Davis.”

“Mr. Wilder.”

“I was sorry to hear about your father.”

Jane steeled herself, stepped toward him and extended her white-gloved hand. Too late she saw the dark smudge on the palm, where she’d laid her hand on the dusty front gate.

He didn’t seem to notice. “It’s been some time since I’ve seen you,” he said, his voice low and oddly tense. “How are you? And your mother?”

“Why, we’re just fine, Mr. Wilder. Thank you for inquiring.”

He hesitated, an alert, almost wary look in his steady gray eyes. Well and no wonder, she thought. Papa never did like him, and made no bones about saying so.

“Please sit down.” He drew up a slat-back oak chair and gestured. Jane noticed the cuffs of his white shirt were rolled back, revealing tanned wrists and forearms sprinkled with dark hair. The sight made her uneasy. The dark jacket that matched his trousers lay on the chair behind the desk.

She wished he would put it on. Rydell Wilder was tall and lean and good-looking, even if he was a Yankee. His mouth, especially. Unsmiling as it was, the lips were well-formed. She remembered from school days that he rarely smiled. His mouth had seemed thin, pressed into a hard line. Well, he had been struggling then, she reminded herself.

As she was now, she admitted with an inward sigh. How time altered things.

He settled himself into the chair behind the desk. “What can I do for you, Miss Davis?”

“I—” Her throat closed.

“Yes?”

“You know…about my father’s death.” It was as far as she could get at the moment. She worked to keep her breathing steady.

“I do know. And I am sorry, as I said.”

Honey, not vinegar, she reminded herself. To catch a fly, a Southern woman uses charm and lightheartedness. She tried to smile at him.

“Mr. Wilder, my father—through no fault of his own, mind you—left us with some…er…obligations.”

“Debts, you mean.” The bank owner’s voice was gentle but firm.

“Why, yes, I suppose you could call them that.”

Do not prevaricate, Jane. It is beneath you. Papa owed everyone in town, from the liveryman to the mercantile owner. She’d found the notes in the box of private papers in the chiffonier. Even Mama didn’t know about them. She’d rather die than admit their existence to a Yankee. But…

“Oh, all right, debts.”

“How much?”

“Over two hundred dollars.”

His dark eyebrows rose. “Are there assets?”

Jane’s stomach clenched. “Just the house. Papa built it when he came out West after the War to work for Uncle Junius on the newspaper. Since Uncle passed on a year ago, well, the house…” She swallowed hard. “It’s in need of some few repairs, but it’s all we have now.”

Rydell leaned forward, folding his hands on the desk. “And?”

And. Jane stared at his hands. The long, tanned fingers sent a jolt of awareness into her belly. His hands had held guns, had handled gold. His hands, she had heard her mother whisper, had touched women. Many women.

She wrenched her gaze away, studied the wall behind his dark head. “Well, Mr. Wilder, I have come to a decision. A very difficult decision, you see, because…” Her voice faltered.

“I can imagine,” he said quietly. “This must be hell—uh, hard for you.”

With all her heart she wished he hadn’t said that. The very last thing she wanted was understanding. It stripped her pride away, left her exposed. Vulnerable.

But, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“I have decided to establish a business in Dixon Falls. A dressmaking shop. I am quite a capable seamstress, you see….” She made another attempt at a smile, but tears stung under her lids. All these years she had dreamed of going back to Montclair, imagined how it would be when they lived again with Aunt Carrie. Odelia would help with Mama, and they would plan picnics and a ball in the summertime. To think that now she had to beg like a common…a common laborer.

Oh, God, can this really be happening? I am sitting here in Rydell Wilder’s bank at noon on the hottest day yet this July, asking—begging!—for money?

“How old are you, Jane?”

His voice was low and quiet, but the question sliced through her muddled thoughts. She stiffened. “How old…? Not ‘How much do you need?’ or ‘How do you intend to proceed?’ but ‘How old am I’? Why on God’s green earth would you want to know that?”

“I know how much you’ll need,” he said. His mouth quirked toward a smile. “And how you intend to proceed; you’ll roll up those lacy sleeves and go to work. What I need to know is what my risk is.”

“Your risk? What about my risk? I am prepared to offer our home as collateral.”

“I don’t want your home. As you said, it’s in disrepair, and besides…”

Every nerve in her body jangled into excruciating attention. “I am twenty-six years old,” she blurted. “If you don’t want the house, what do you want?”

He did smile then, a slow, sensuous curving of the lips, and a light flickered deep in the cool gray eyes. He paused, assessing her with an odd mixture of amusement and pain. “I want to make you a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” Her voice sounded tight.

Rydell waited a full minute before answering her. She would never know how many years he had thought about such a moment, a time when Jane would again turn to him for help. His chest felt like a horse had ridden over it.

He’d wanted Jane for so long he couldn’t remember a time when seeing her didn’t make him ache. He knew about the debts her father had incurred, about the state of their house. At least a dozen times he’d planned to go to her, in spite of her father’s disapproval, and offer a proposal of marriage.

“I’ll lend you three hundred dollars, enough to pay off your father’s…obligations, rent you a store, and get you started in business.”

Jane sat bolt upright. “You will? Just like that?” She narrowed her eyes. “With no collateral?”

Rydell smiled. “A deal, as I said.”

That she wanted to be independent surprised him. He had to admit he admired her for wanting to try setting up her own business, but the truth was he wouldn’t give a moldy flapjack for her chances of success. She was a lady with a capital L, refined manners, soft voice, gentility.

He’d always admired that, too. Oh, Lordy, she was so close to being his he couldn’t think straight. He was facing the biggest gamble of his life.

“If you succeed in your business venture,” Rydell said carefully, “you simply repay the loan.”

Jane stared at him. “And if I can’t?”

Rydell took a deep breath and tried to keep his voice steady. “Well, here’s the deal. I’m going to hold you yourself as collateral.”

“Me?” Jane echoed. “What happens if I fail?”

He sent her a quick look, his eyes unreadable. “If you fail, you marry me.”

Chapter Two

For one unsettling moment, Jane thought she was going to faint. “I beg your pardon? I think I must have misheard—”

Rydell held her gaze. “You heard it right. If you go broke sewing dresses, then you’ll marry me.”

She fought a wild desire to pinch herself. “Marry you?” Her voice was definitely not her own. She tried again. “Marry you? Why on earth would I do that?”

He regarded her with a steadiness that made her heart skip erratically. “Maybe because you’re up a creek.”

Fury brought her to her feet. “Now just one minute, Mr. Wilder. I am not ‘up a creek’ as you so crudely put it. I admit my father’s passing has caused a small problem, but problems are not new to me. I will persevere, and I will triumph.”

Rydell nodded. “Oh, you’ll persevere, all right. But you’re not equipped for life the way it shakes out in the West—your folks made sure of that. They treated you like a hothouse violet. For a woman like you—a lady—you’ve pretty much got three choices, as I see it. One, work yourself into an early grave keeping up that house for your ma. Two, take a job in a saloon—or maybe worse. Or…” he lowered his voice “…three, get married. I’m offering you a respectable way to survive.”

Jane bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood and sank onto her chair. “My parents did not overprotect me,” she snapped. “They cared for me, taught me about the finer things of life, about history and art and music. Mama encouraged my piano studies until she…” Her voice trailed off.

“You’re twenty-six, Miss Davis. Your father discouraged every unattached male within a hundred miles from comin’ anywhere near you. I’d say you’re well on your way to being an old maid.”

Jane expelled a pent-up breath. “And just what gives you that idea? Yankee gossip, most likely.”

Rydell leaned closer. “Is that what you dreamed about while you were growing up? Caring for your mother for the rest of your days?”

“You do not know one thing about my mother!”

Rydell chuckled. “Once nice thing about living in a town as small as Dixon Falls—when you don’t know what you’re doing, somebody else is sure to.”

A corset stay dug into her midriff and Jane jerked upright. “Well, I never!”

“Look, Miss Davis. We already have a schoolteacher here in town, and you don’t look strong enough to shoe horses. So what the hell else are you gonna do?”

“I…” Her mind whirled. “How would you know about my piano?”

“I listened some, over the years,” he said quietly.

The look on his face made her pause. “Just how do you know that my father discouraged potential suitors?”

“I know because I was one of them. Your father said I wasn’t fit to shine your boots. He thought a rootless kid with no family background wasn’t worth spit.”

Papa said that? Well, she supposed he knew more than she did about such things. “Besides,” Jane murmured. “You’re a Yankee.”

“Still am,” Rydell said mildly. “But the war’s over, Miss Davis.”

“For you, maybe. Not for us. My daddy and mama lost their entire plantation when the Union army came marchin’ through. Papa never forgave the North for that. The only reason we came west was because Father was ruined, and Uncle Junius needed help on that awful newspaper of his.”

“The way I see it, your father never really settled in Dixon Falls. Oh, he ate and slept out here all right, but he stayed in the past. He kept your mother imprisoned there, too.”

“He did no such thing! Why, Mama went out lots of places!”

He went on as if she had not spoken. “And—forgive me for saying this, Jane—he kept you there, as well. Locked up in that house up on the hill, arranging bouquets and practicing the piano—preparing yourself for a life you’d never have.”

Jane flinched. The words stung because they were true. The only times she was allowed to attend a town social, even visit the mercantile for soap or a spool of thread, Papa always accompanied her. She had been allowed no friends. Sometimes she’d felt so lonely she thought she’d die.

Looking back on it, she wondered why she’d put up with things the way they were. Rebellion, of course, would have been unthinkable. A state could secede from the Union, and fight a long and bloody war over it. But a daughter didn’t secede from her family. That was beyond the pale.

Then, before she knew it, it was too late.

Deliberately, she changed the subject. “I would prefer that you hold my home as collateral for the loan, Mr. Wilder. Not my…person.”

His face changed. “It isn’t the house I want, Jane.”

“And you are most certainly not what I want!” She managed to keep her voice steady, but her hands shook like dry leaves in a wind. For an instant she thought of jamming them under her skirt, but discarded the idea immediately. A lady never sat on her hands, not even when frightened half to death. Or mad enough to commit murder.

“Yeah, well, I figured as much. Nevertheless, those are my terms.”

Honey, she reminded herself. Not vinegar. She unclenched her hands and drew in a slow, careful breath. A whalebone stay jabbed anew. The best way to forget all her troubles was to wear a tight corset; it was hard to concentrate.

As soon as she could trust her legs to support her, she rose. “Very well, Mr. Wilder. You have the advantage of me at this moment, since I do need the money. But, sir, while I may be forced to accept the terms of your wager, do not for one moment harbor any hope of winning. I am an excellent seamstress, and I intend to succeed at dressmaking if it’s the last thing I do in this life.”

His lips twitched. “I understand.”

“And,” Jane continued, unable to stop the words roiling in her brain, “I promise you that if I ever do marry, it will be of my own free will and never, never because I have lost a wager. I am not in the habit of gambling.”

“Certainly not.”

“Neither am I in the habit of failing. I shall not fail!”

“Of course.” His voice was annoyingly calm. He slid open the top desk drawer and counted out three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills from his private cash supply. Folding them in half, he handed the money to her.

“There’s an empty storage room next to the mercantile. I own it. You can rent it for three dollars a month, as is.” He extended his hand toward her. “Agreed?”

Jane slipped the currency into her reticule. “It is indeed agreed, Mr. Wilder. Thank you.” She laid her hand in his and gave it a businesslike shake. Even through her glove, heat from his palm surged from her fingertips to her elbow, and she snatched her hand free.

“As we have nothing further to discuss, I will bid you good afternoon.”

Which was most certainly not what she wanted to say. Sometimes she wished she wasn’t a Davis at all, with ladylike manners to remember and a reputation to uphold. Just once she’d like to say what was really on her mind—that Rydell Wilder was a lowdown snake in the grass, an upstart with no sense of propriety and a grievous lack of breeding. Why, he’d even said “hell” in the presence of a lady. The world had come to a sorry place when the likes of him owned the only bank in town!

She resisted an overwhelming urge to slam his office door as hard as she could. Instead, she closed it quietly, relinquishing her grip on the polished brass knob when the latch clicked. The last thing she saw before the door swung shut was Rydell Wilder’s steady gray eyes looking at her from behind his big walnut desk.

Oh! She could gobble down a whole keg of nails, he made her so mad!

The minute she was gone, Rydell folded his fingers into a fist. Jane Charlotte Davis hadn’t a clue how hard real life could be, but by thunder she was going to find out. Was he crazy to lend her the money that could take her out of his life once and for all? Could she possibly make a go of setting up her own business?

Not one chance in a thousand. He rose and paced to the window opening onto the street. A flash of blue caught his eye, sending a familiar ache into his chest.

Oh, hell. Even if she could sew ruffles around a circus tent, she had no experience in trade, no understanding of life in a dusty Oregon lumber mill town. All he had to do was watch and wait—he figured in about ninety days he’d be a married man.

God help him, he wanted her to fail!

Maybe he wasn’t so crazy. He’d worked and sweated for ten years to offer Jane something more than the rough life of a freight line owner’s wife. He’d eaten beans and biscuits for months on end, saved the pay he’d earned riding shotgun for Lefty, and invested it. When Lefty grew too frail to drive the wagon, Rydell had bought him out, and after a few years saw his chance to establish a bank. It was a smart move. Owning a bank made him a lot of money and brought him the respect of the entire town. Now he ate steak every night, shared an occasional drink with Lefty, and was sought after by all the single women, respectable or not.

The only hunger he hadn’t eased over the years was his longing for the shy girl with eyes like a summer sky and thick chestnut hair that hung to her waist. She looked different now, more filled out and sure of herself. He was older, too—work-hardened and female savvy. Even so, the thought of even touching her hand made his heart stutter.

Leave it alone, Dell. Don’t think about her anymore.

Ten long years he’d waited for a chance, and now it was here. He wondered if she remembered him, from before he’d become a man.

He wondered if she knew how a man could feel about a woman.

“Walk you home, Miz Jane? Barton Springer’s the name, case you don’t remember. Drove a wagon for Wells Fargo and knew your daddy.”

Jane tipped her parasol so the shade covered the man’s weathered face. “Mr. Springer, of course I remember you. You were a great help to my father and Uncle Junius at the newspaper office.”

He grinned and fell in step beside her. “Sure sorry to hear about your pa, Miz Jane. ’Specially so soon after Mr. Junius. What you gonna do, now he’s gone?”

“The first thing I will do, Mr. Springer, is stop by the mercantile. I am going into business.”

His bushy gray eyebrows twitched upward. “You, ma’am? All by yourself?”

“All by myself. I’m going to rent the store next to the mercantile. Then I intend to purchase some bolts of fabric—muslin, I think, or perhaps sateen—and some thread. Oh, and maybe a lantern so I can work in the evenings.”

“You gonna need some help totin’ them things, Miz Jane. I’m puttin’ myself at your service.”

Jane surveyed the bent figure trudging beside her. He looked healthy enough, but his right shirt-sleeve was pinned up, indicating a missing arm. She couldn’t bear to embarrass him by declining his offer.

“That is most thoughtful of you, Mr. Springer. First, however, I wish to inspect my place of business. Mr. Wilder said it was right next to the mercantile, but I don’t recall seeing anything that looked like a store.”

The old man gave her a sideways look. “No wonder in that, I guess. ’T’aint much of a store, more like a…well, you’ll see fer yourself, it’s just yonder.”

“I don’t care what it is, Mr. Springer, it’s a start. For me, it’s a whole new life!” For a fleeting moment she wondered at herself, talking so freely about her plans. She’d been taught never to speak of things other than the weather and recipes for rheumatism medicine and who’s having a baby, and here she was chattering on about her ideas. Maybe it was because Mr. Springer’s blue eyes snapped with intelligence. Or was it because he was a sweet, frail man whom she sensed was a bit lonely for company? Perhaps he was a kindred spirit. His interest in her venture seemed so genuine she didn’t even mind too much that he was a Yankee.

“You don’t mind me sayin’ so, Miz Jane, you been frownin’ somethin’ fierce ever since you come outta the bank. I never seen anyone look more serious.”

Jane stopped midstride and stared at him. “‘Serious,’ Mr. Springer, does not begin to describe my state of mind. I am committed. Determined. Resolute!” She stopped herself from adding “desperate” only because he was pointing at something behind her.

“There ’tis. Your store.”

Jane whirled to see. “Where? I don’t see a—Oh, you mean that little add-on next to the…? Oh. Oh, my.” Her heart sank.

A tilting clapboard structure no wider than the back end of a wagon leaned against the mercantile building. She stepped closer. The single window, slightly wider than the plain plank door, was so grimy she could not see through the glass. No matter. At the moment, she couldn’t face looking inside. A weathered wooden sign swung on a chain in the wind. Mercer’s Feed & Seed. Cash Only.

“Used to be Rafe Mercer’s feed storage room. Looks kinda worse for wear, don’t it?”

Jane’s mouth was as dry as field cotton. “It looks like the darky quarters back home in Marion County. Only not as clean.”

“Miz Jane, I jes’ gotta say this. This ain’t no kinda place for a lady. Why don’t you take your momma and go back where you come from?”

She bit down hard on her lower lip. “I cannot, Mr. Springer. My mother is…unwell at the moment, and…”

And she had no money for train fare, other than what Mr. Wilder had lent her. Besides, even if her mother could travel, she couldn’t leave Dixon Falls with Papa’s debts still unpaid, and now, on top of that, there was the bank loan to pay back.

The old man’s eyes narrowed in unspoken understanding. “I bet you’d hightail it outta here if’n you could find a way.”

“I’ll find a way,” Jane said quietly. “And the first step is to take down that awful sign and scrub that window.” She nodded her head politely. “Good day to you, Mr. Springer. I’d best visit the mercantile and purchase an extra bar of lye soap.”

“You tell Mr. Mercer I’ll tote yer supplies on over to your store for ya. Meanwhile, I think I’ll mosey on down to the Silver Cup and have some words with an old friend.”

“Dell, you outta be horsewhipped fer what you’re puttin’ that gal through. This ain’t no way to court a lady like Miz Jane.”

Rydell downed the last of his whiskey and looked at Lefty across the oak table. “The courting part comes later. First, she’s got to give up that fool notion about supporting herself and her mother by making dresses.”

“You gonna let her work herself to the bone so’s you kin pick up the pieces? Dell, her hands ain’t never done nothin’ but play the pi-anna and embroider tea towels.”

Rydell looked straight at his friend. “I want a wife who’s a partner, not a decoration.”

“Then choose some other gal. Lord knows you’d have yer pick.”

Rydell ignored him. “Jane’s got more inside her than she knows,” he said. He smoothed one finger around the rim of his glass. “I’ve waited for ten years. I’m willing to wait some more.”

Lefty plunked his beer glass down so hard the liquid sloshed over the side. “You waited ten years cuz her daddy ran you off. Now that he’s gone, why’nt you jes’ grab her? I seen you do that with plenty of other women, so don’t say you don’t know how. Jes’ do it!”

“Lefty, you ever think about a man and a woman? What it means for them to be together?”

“Hell, yes, all the time. Nuthin’ complicated ’bout that. Hug ’em, kiss ’em, and rope ’em quick.”

Rydell grinned. “You’re a smart man, Lefty. How come you’re so dumb when it comes to women?”

“I’m a good forty years older’n you, boy, so I know what I’m yakkin’ about. Women is women.”

“There’s more to it than that. Jane is…Jane. She’s not ready.”

The older man groaned. “You’re a smart man, too, Dell. How come you’re so dumb when it comes to Miz Jane?”

Rydell rose and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “She’s a spinster. Overeducated. Underexperienced. But I like her. Always have. She deserves the chance to learn who she is.”

Tossing a coin on the table, he strolled toward the saloon doorway. “Besides,” he said over his shoulder, “she won’t suffer long. As green as she is in the ways of the world, inside of a week she’ll drop into my hand like a ripe peach.”

“I don’t think so,” Lefty muttered. “I think you’re the one who’s gonna learn the lesson.”

But his words, punctuated by the swish-whap of the swinging doors, echoed in an empty barroom.

Chapter Three

“Here’s your tea, Mama.” Jane lowered the silver tray onto the table next to the upholstered settee. “I fixed it just the way you like it.”

“Why, thank you, dear. Such a nice custom, don’t you think? Whenever Ah am in a tizzy, Ah just have my tea and soon it’s all better.”

Jane gazed past her mother’s pale blue eyes to focus on the rose-flowered wallpaper on the wall behind her. How Mama clung to the past, especially when things upset her. Her entire day was made up of rituals from when she had been a belle—hot cocoa served to her in bed, roses arranged in crystal vases, tea every afternoon. Then the War came, and their lives were shattered. Until the day he died, her father referred to that dreadful fighting as The War of Northern Aggression.

“I went to town today, Mama. To the bank and the mercantile.” She forced a gaiety she didn’t feel into her tone.

“I trust you were properly chaperoned?”

Jane hesitated, her hand on the handle of the silver teapot. “No, Mama,” she said softly. She lifted the delicate painted china cup and tipped the pot forward. Her hand shook as she poured.

“Your father spends entirely too much time fussin’ over those peach trees of his. We’ve already got a cellar full of jams and jellies, and Ah can’t bear the thought of another crop comin’ on. We must ask Jonas to bring his darkies to help.”

Darkies! Jane met her mother’s dreamy gaze. Jonas had been her father’s overseer at Montclair. Numb, she tried to think what to say.

“Mama? We haven’t laid eyes on Jonas, or his darkies, for over a decade. Are you feeling a bit tired?” She set the teacup down and took hold of her mother’s soft, cool hand. The skin was so transparent a tracery of blue veins showed through.

A dull pain pressed near her heart. Her mother was growing frail. Washing the kitchen floor and changing the bed linen, as they had done together each Saturday morning since they’d come west, would soon be out of the question. From now on, Jane would have to manage by herself.

“Mama, I spoke to Mr. Wilder at the bank this afternoon. I—I’m going to start a business.”

“Wilder? I don’t recall the name, dear. Who are his people?”

Jane let an inaudible sigh escape through her lips. As far as she knew, Rydell Wilder had no “people.” Anyway, she didn’t want to think about him.

She moved toward the kitchen. “Finish your tea, Mama, while I fix our supper.”

She concocted a sandwich of sorts using sliced tomatoes and cheese melted on the biscuits left over from breakfast. Jane wasn’t the least bit hungry, and her mother ate both portions.

After washing up the dishes, she opened all the windows and the front door to catch the cooling evening breeze, then pulled the cherrywood sewing cabinet into the front parlor. Tomorrow she’d have to find someone to load it into a wagon and haul it down to her store. But first, she had to scrub the place six ways to Sunday with a bucket of hot soapy water and a broom.

Her mother settled on the settee, propping her feet on a crewelwork-covered hassock to relieve the swelling in her ankles. The kerosene table lamp sent a pool of light over the book open in her lap.

“Jane Charlotte, just listen to what Mr. Tennyson writes. “The old order changeth, yielding place to new…. Whatever does he mean?”

A sob bubbled up from Jane’s throat, and she clamped her jaws tight shut. She thought of Papa, lying cold and still in a grave behind the orchard, of Montclair before the Union army came, the way the sun lit the tupelo tree as they drove the buggy down the drive for the last time. The old order.

“It means that things change,” she murmured. “That we must look forward, not back.”

Right then and there she decided she detested Mr. Tennyson. Things weren’t supposed to change, especially if they were beautiful things—peaceful summer days and evenings so quiet you could hear the darkies singing from their quarters beyond the stables, a father who was strong and brave, a mother like a small exquisite bird entertaining dinner guests dressed in shirred emerald satin and petticoats so wide she had to move sideways through doors. Why, why did such lovely things have to be destroyed?

Worst of all, why did she now find herself beholden to that aggravating know-it-all Mr. Rydell Wilder? Merciful heavens, he looked at her as if he owned her already!

She frowned as something stirred her memory. There was a boy once, who looked something like Mr. Wilder around the eyes. He’d walked her home from school that first day, and she noticed first that he was tall, with a shock of unruly dark hair tumbling over his forehead, second that he was barefoot. He had shoes, he’d told her…. He just didn’t wear them except in winter.

He had a gentle voice, she recalled. He explained about being new in a town and said he would watch out for her. She remembered that his shirt was clean and pressed, but the sleeves were so short his wrists stuck out. When he saw her staring at them, he unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled them up. His knuckles were scraped raw from a fight he’d been in. She wanted to cry at the sight of those bony wrists.

Odd that she’d think of that now. It was so long ago, but for some reason remembering it made her feel warm inside.

“Jane Charlotte, Ah want to read some of this lovely poetry to your father. He is partial to poetry, you recall. Wordsworth and Shelley are his favorites.”

“Mama? Mama, I’ve tried to explain about Papa….” Oh, what was the use? Mama had always refused to acknowledge things that were unpleasant.

Jane stood up, aware that her chest felt tight. The skin over her cheeks burned. She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. Perhaps it would be wiser to—

“Miss Davis?” A low voice spoke through the front door screen. Jane froze as the tall form of a man loomed on the porch. With the lamplight from inside, she could not see him clearly in the dark. Mercy me, at least she’d latched the screen! Otherwise he could walk right in.

“Who’s there?” she blurted.

Her mother looked up from her volume of poetry. “Jane Charlotte, where are your manners? Is that any way to greet a caller?”

A lazy laugh rumbled from the front porch. “Thank you, Mrs. Davis. It’s Rydell Wilder. May I come in?”

Jane stood as if transfixed. Come in? Few people—and decidedly fewer men—ever crossed their threshold.

“Jane Charlotte.” Her mother’s light, clear voice carried over the thudding of her heart. “Don’t keep your guest standin’ on the porch.”

With reluctance, Jane moved forward and unhooked the latch.

Rydell stepped through the doorway. “I’m obliged, Mrs. Davis. If you hadn’t interceded, I might have frozen to death.” He sent Jane a quick look, amusement dancing in his eyes.

“It’s a warm summer night,” Jane snapped. “People don’t freeze to death in July.”

Her mother stirred on the settee. “Wilder,” she murmured. “Wilder…have we been introduced?”

“Some years back, ma’am. When your husband was associated with the newspaper office.”

“Oh, yes. How nice to see you again, Mr. Wilder.”

Jane stepped forward. “What do you want?”

“Jane Charlotte!” Her mother had not raised her voice, but Jane jerked guiltily just the same.

“Ah expect you wish to see my husband, Mr. Wilder? We were just about to have our afternoon tea, won’t you join us? Jane, go set the kettle on and call your father.”

Rydell’s gaze held hers for a long, long moment, and then he dipped his head in a barely perceptible nod. “Thank you, Mrs. Davis, but my errand concerns your daughter.” He turned to face Jane.

“You left something in my office this afternoon.” He pressed a white envelope into her hand. “The key,” he said in a low voice. “You’ll need it to unlock the store.” He closed her fingers around the stiff paper.

An army of white-hot needles marched along her skin where his hand touched hers.

“Jane Charlotte, do let us have some tea! And call your father.”

Jane fought the urge to scream.

“Please don’t trouble yourself,” Rydell said. He looked straight into Jane’s eyes. “There’s no need to bother Colonel Davis. I’m sure he has pressing business elsewhere this evening.”

He released Jane’s hand, bowed to her mother, and turned toward the door. Jane noticed his leather boots were polished to a shine.

“Lefty Springer’ll be there tomorrow, if you need help,” he said.

“I need no help, thank you.” Her hand still tingled, and the sensation made her slightly dizzy. It felt as if that part of her body didn’t belong to her any longer, but belonged instead to him. Goodness, what if he touched my shoulder? My chin? Would those parts of me feel the same? As if they belonged to a different person?

Rydell grinned at her. “Like I said, Lefty’ll be there. You can fire him if you want, but I warn you, he’s almost as stubborn as his employer.”

It took her a moment to grasp his meaning. By the time she’d thought up a retort, he had disappeared through the doorway. The screen banged shut behind him.

Her mother sighed. “My, what a nice young man.”

“He’s a Yankee, Mama!”

“Is he? Well, fancy that. A Yankee in Marion County.”

“Mama, we’re not in…” Oh, what was the use? Maybe it was better this way. At least Mama was not suffering the awful grief widows usually endured.

Jane’s mind buzzed. Her hands itched to be busy. Part of it was the need to escape rather than watch her mother retreat into her pretend world. The rest…well, she couldn’t bear to think of that just yet. Her skin felt stretched tight along the length of her spine and across her shoulders. The sensation was so intense she half expected her body to split in half. She needed to do something!

Her pulse hammering, she climbed the stairs up to the attic for her pattern box and the worn copy of Godey’s Ladies’ Book.

All at once she could hardly wait to begin.

Jane twisted the key in the rusty lock and pushed the plank door wide. A puff of hot, musty air washed over her, smelling of chicken mash—earthy and slightly sweet. For a moment she felt she might lose her breakfast.

She leaned over the mop bucket she’d brought from home, clamped her hand across her stomach, and closed her eyes. She could not do this. The only thing she’d scrubbed in her life was her mother’s already-spotless kitchen floor, and this was a far cry from that. This, she acknowledged, gazing at the cobweb-swathed walls and ceiling and the grains of something moldy heaped into the corners, was one step above a henhouse. Or maybe a step or two below.

Merciful heavens, she had borrowed good money to set up a dressmaking shop in a pigsty! The smell was overpowering.

Another wave of nausea swept over her. She clenched her jaws tight and convulsively swallowed down the bitter saliva pouring into her mouth.

When she could raise her head, she fumbled in the pocket of her blue work skirt for a handkerchief, folded it in half cross-wise, and tied it over her nose and mouth. The scent of lavender masked the odor of the stifling room just enough; if she left the door open and worked fast, maybe she could manage it.

She took the bucket outside, filled it at the pump near the horse trough in front of the hotel across the street, then lugged it into the mercantile. Mr. Mercer had offered to heat water for her on the potbellied stove next to the candy counter. While she waited, she rolled up the sleeves of her high-necked white waist and began sweeping down the walls.

Debris, dirt particles, even what looked like decayed bird droppings rained down on her. She rolled the sleeves back down to protect her arms. As she worked, a thick yellow dust rose and hung in the air like smoke. It made her cough, and her eyes began to smart, but she gritted her teeth and worked steadily until Mr. Mercer poked his head in the doorway.

“Here’s yer water, Miz Davis. ’Bout to boil, it was, so watch yerself, it’s awful hot.” He plunked the brimming bucket onto the floor.

Jane leaned on her broom to catch her breath. “Thank you kindly, sir.”

The storekeeper shook his balding head. “Saddest thing I ever did see,” he murmured.

Jane took his comment to heart. “I find I am quite surprising myself. It is hard work, but it just wants a bit of pluck and dash and it will all come straight.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that, ma’am. I mean the thought of a lady turnin’ my feed store into a dressmakin’ shop. Too ladyfied for the likes of Dixon Falls.”

Jane stared at the wiry man in denim overalls standing before her. “Ladyfied? Why, you have ladies here in Dixon Falls, do you not? Ladies who wear dresses?”

“We got women. Not ladies. Not like you ’n yer ma, that is.”

Jane gave him her warmest smile, then realized he couldn’t possibly see it under her handkerchief mask. “Oh, we are all pretty much the same under the skin, don’t you think?”

“I dunno, ma’am,” he mumbled as he turned away. “I jes’ dunno.”

“Well I do,” Jane announced to the dust swirling in his wake. “Women are women. We all wear corsets and underdrawers and shimmies and petticoats. And dresses,” she added. “Handsome dresses that I intend to conjure from pattern pieces and my own imagination.”

With that, she unwrapped the square of lye soap, drew out the kitchen paring knife she’d brought in her pocket, and began to shave slivers of soap into the bucket of hot water. She swirled her broom to and fro, and when the suds bubbled to the top, she plunged the straw in up to the stitching and sloshed the soapy implement back and forth along the length of the wall.

Droplets of dingy water and soapsuds splatted onto her clothes, and her hair, neatly pinned up this morning, began to loosen and now straggled about her face. She felt sodden, and her fingernails were so dirt-encrusted she could not bear to look at them. She could just hear Mama’s reproachful voice. “Jane Charlotte, what have you been doin’ with your hands!” Even if her mother had a voice that was always soft and regulated, she brooked no mistreatment of hair or skin; such a transgression was worse than disobedience and elicited as sharp a criticism as if she had volunteered to spy for the Yankees.

Oh, well, it couldn’t be helped. She’d paid off all of Papa’s debts first thing this morning; by this evening, she would have the place for her business. She positively must be a success. She had to repay Mr. Wilder’s bank loan or suffer a fate worse than death—marriage to That Man. That Yankee.

She worked through two more buckets of hot water before the walls and floors were cleaned to her satisfaction. She would not open a business in dingy quarters! Her back and shoulders felt as if she’d been yoked like an ox to a Conestoga wagon. Every muscle in her neck screamed. Even her derriere was sore.

By the time she got around to washing the front window, she was so tired her legs would no longer support her weight. She sank down onto her knees, dipped a clean rag into her still-warm water bucket, and addressed the lower half of the expanse of glass.

And that was how Rydell found her. He tapped on the open door and lifted his foot to step over the threshold when her voice stopped him in his tracks.

“You get one speck of dirt on my clean floor and I’ll dump this mop bucket over your head.”

Her back was toward him, but he realized she could see his reflection in the glass. He eased back onto the boardwalk step. “I brought your supplies from home,” he called.

She scooted around on her bottom to face him.

“What are you talking about? I haven’t sent for anything yet.”

Rydell caught his breath. She was filthy from head to toe, her hair bedraggled, her once-white waist half pulled out of her water-splotched blue skirt. A ridiculously feminine-looking embroidered handkerchief, folded into a triangle, covered the bottom half of her face. She looked like an angel-bandit. A dirt-streaked and very weary angel-bandit.

He resisted the impulse to scoop her bodily from the floor and carry her off to his private suite at the hotel. And a bathtub.

Her eyes flashed fire. “Have you come to gloat over my difficulties?”

“Believe me, Miss Davis, I would not gloat over a lady in your current…situation.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Rydell pushed down the chuckle that threatened. “Lefty Springer got bucked off a horse this morning. I came in his place.”

Jane glared at him. “To do what? Laugh at me? I must be a pretty sight, all wet and dirty and so tired I could…” She stopped abruptly as her voice wobbled.

He tore his gaze from her face and studied the floor instead. She was tuckered out, close to breaking. He had predicted as much, but now that it was before him, he wanted to spare her pride. He concentrated on the toe of his boot.

“I came to help, Jane. Lefty gave his word, and I back him up. Always have. His leg’s hurt, so I came instead. Your sewing machine and some boxes of patterns and such are in the wagon out front.”

Jane looked up at him in silence. The blue eyes under the dark eyebrows grew shiny. “I do thank you, Mr. Wilder.” Her voice sounded choked up. “And I apologize. I am so tired I hardly know what I am saying.”

“Rafe Mercer’ll help me unload. You ready for your things?”

Jane tossed her cleaning rag into the bucket and got to her feet. “How did you know what to bring?”

“I asked your mother. She was very helpful.”

“Mama? Why, she hardly knows where she is, let alone where I am or what I am doing.”

Rydell nodded. “I think she understands more than you think. What’s important to her is you. I convinced her I was helping you.”

She shook her head. “That does not exactly make sense, Mr. Wilder. It is to your advantage that I fail in this venture. Why in the world would you offer help?”

Rydell took a single step toward her, reached out and pulled down the handkerchief mask. “Been askin’ myself that question all morning.”

“And what is your answer to that very question?” Her voice had steadied, but it dropped to a whisper, whether from emotion or exhaustion he couldn’t begin to guess.

“Damn—darned if I know,” he admitted. The scent of lavender floating in the air made his insides ache. Oh, God, he wanted to…

Before he knew what he was doing, he closed his fingers around her upper arm.

She didn’t move, just looked at him. He saw fear, and then something else in her eyes. Unable to help himself, he pulled her toward him, lifted his other hand to her shoulder, and bent his head. When his mouth found hers, he lost all track of time.

Her lips were warm and tasted of salt. He’d never known such excruciating sweetness. Instinctively he probed for more, then broke free. He didn’t think he could stop if he didn’t call a halt now.

“You’re right, this doesn’t exactly make sense,” he breathed against her temple. “No sense at all.”

Chapter Four

“No,” Jane said in a faraway voice. “It most certainly does not make sense.” She wanted her words to come out crisp and proper-sounding. Instead, she sounded as if she just woke up this morning and wasn’t sure where she was. His mouth on hers had felt simply heavenly, as if the sun and all the stars tumbled down and kindled a glow inside her.

Merciful Lord, she must not feel that way about it! After all, Mr. Wilder had taken a great liberty. She should be outraged instead. She snapped open her eyelids.

“If I had the strength to lift my arm, I would demonstrate how a lady responds to such an ungentlemanly assault.”

He said nothing, and with every passing second she became more aware of his arms about her. “Kindly unhand me, Mr. Wilder. I will then proceed as if your grievous action never took place. Back home in Marion County, such behavior would likely cost you your life.”

Rydell lifted his arms away from her. “You’re not in Marion County, Jane. Out here, nobody’s gonna challenge a man to a duel just because he lost his head and kissed a lady without her permission.”

Jane sniffed.

“Next time,” he said with a grin, “I’ll ask permission.”

She took an instinctive step backward. “You will do no such thing! This is a wild, unprincipled country, and I’ll have you know—”

“It is that,” he acknowledged. “But it’s getting more civilized every day. Got a school, now. A hotel and two churches. Even a Ladies Helpful Society.”

She would have stalked out the door, but the mop bucket and broom sat in her path; she felt so whirly-headed she didn’t think she could walk straight enough to get past them.

“I apologize, Miss Davis. Got carried away by the smell of your handkerchief, I guess.”

She looked him in the eye. “See that it never, never happens again.”

To her surprise, he turned his back on her. “I’ll bring in your sewing machine.” He removed his jacket and began rolling up the sleeves of the starched white shirt he wore underneath. His bare forearms looked so…so…unlike Papa’s. Papa’s hands and his short, plump arms had always been milk-white.

A funny tingle went up the back of her neck. This man’s skin was sun-bronzed, and sinews rippled underneath. Indecent. No proper gentleman in the South ever bared his arms in the presence of a lady.

He grabbed up the mop bucket and moved through the open doorway onto the board sidewalk.

“Never,” she repeated into the silence. Her breathing steadied.

In the next moment he reappeared, balancing her sewing cabinet on one shoulder.

Her head pounded. Her legs trembled. Oh, she wished he would just go away! Go do whatever bankers did at the end of the day.

This is ludicrous, Jane Charlotte. You’d think she had never scrubbed a floor in her life! Here she was shaking with exhaustion, her muscles refusing to obey her commands. And it was all his fault.

“Never,” she repeated under her breath.

“Where do you want this?”

Jane jerked. “What? Oh. There, by the window.”

He bent his knees and tipped his broad shoulder forward. The cabinet legs clunked onto the scrubbed plank floor, and he shoved it gently against the wall and stepped away. She pounced on it with a clean rag, flicking off the veil of dust on top and refusing to look at him.

“Here’s your pattern box,” he announced after his next trip out to the wagon.

She desperately wanted him to stop. She would not be beholden to him.

“And the iron and your button jar. Didn’t know it took so many things just to sew a dress.”

“Didn’t your mother sew?” she snapped. She regretted the words the instant they passed her lips. From what she remembered about Rydell Wilder, he’d lived on his own, without mother or father, ever since he’d come to Dixon Falls as a boy.

“No,” he said, his voice quiet.

Oh, bother. She’d been rude and she was sorry. But she didn’t want his help. His very presence in the tiny store made her thoughts tumble like the bits of colored glass in Aunt Carrie’s brass kaleidoscope. He had touched her. Kissed her. And now he acted as if nothing unusual had occurred.

But it had. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. His mouth had pressed hers, and a sweet, silken warmth kindled in her belly. Back in Marion County, she would be hopelessly compromised by such an event. Out here in this wilderness they called Oregon, one pair of lips touching another didn’t carry the same significance. What an uncivilized place!

It would certainly matter to Papa. Papa would have Mr. Wilder horsewhipped or betrothed within the hour. But Papa was gone.

And so the significance of being kissed by Mr. Wilder, or lack of significance, is up to you, Jane Charlotte.

Oh, she couldn’t think a bit straight. She was so tired she knew if she took a single step she would totter just like Granny Beaudry. Her grandmother had been near eighty when they left Marion County; at the moment, Jane felt nearly as old and just as frail. She’d worked too long without stopping to rest. Had eaten nothing since her meager breakfast of toast and tea.

Had felt decidedly wobbly ever since Rydell Wilder had kissed her. All she wanted to do now was get him out of the store, away from her.

“I will arrange the chairs and the dressmaker’s mannequin later,” she announced. “Thank you, Mr. Wilder, and good afternoon.”

He straightened. “Whatever you say, Miss Davis. Lefty’ll come by tomorrow, see if you need anything. He’s pretty handy, even if he has only one good arm. Sensitive about it, though.”

“It will be a relief to have him instead of…I mean—”

Rydell chuckled. “Got your brain tied up some, I’d say.”

Jane sucked in a quick breath. “Whatever do you mean?”

“All of a sudden, your tongue doesn’t quite know which way to flap.” He grinned at her. “That’s not like you.”

“Just what gives you a harum-scarum idea like that?”

“Instinct, I guess. Woman savvy. Either you don’t like me…” His grin widened. “Or my kissing you meant something.”

Two thoughts collided in her brain at the same instant. One, she hated him. Two, she liked the kiss. “I believe,” she said with all the ice she could muster in her tone, “the former statement will suffice to explain why I want you to depart before I—”

“Talk plain English, Jane. This is the frontier, not a parlor.”

“Out,” she snapped. She snatched up the broom and whacked it across his knees. “Out!” Fury gave her the strength for two more blows before he backed out the doorway, still grinning. She heard his lazy laughter as he climbed into the wagon and rattled off down the street.

Jane leaned against the broom handle to steady her shaking body. Even if she was a lady, the next time that man kissed her, or touched her, or even looked at her sideways, she would kill him! She had no time for such nonsense; she had work to do. Dresses to sew. A loan to pay back.

She propped the broom in the corner, swiped her dust rag over the sewing cabinet one last time, and surveyed the rudimentary beginnings of her new life. Rough, uncultured town and Mr. Rydell Wilder be damned. She would succeed or she would die trying.

“You mean you jes’ grabbed her and bussed her, right there in front of the store window? Lord love ya, Dell, you’re gonna scare the bejeesus outta the lady.”

Rydell watched his friend hobble to the potbellied stove in the corner and splash more hot coffee into his mug. “She didn’t act scared, Lefty. She acted more like she’d been poleaxed. Truth is, I don’t know exactly what came over me.”

“You’re the one that’s poleaxed. What were you thinkin’ of, fer God’s sake?”

Rydell shifted on the hard wooden chair, the only available seat in the tidy one-room cabin Lefty Springer called home. The older man occupied the neatly made-up cot on the opposite wall.

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“Well, I guess not, son! Like I said, all you have to do is stand still and wait. Don’t push her—ladies like Miz Jane may look soft, but they can be stubborn as a mule and twice as skittish.”

Rydell sipped the black sludge his friend called coffee and nodded in silence.

“Somethin’s eatin’ at you, Dell. I seen it right off.”

Again Rydell nodded. He’d fought his way to acceptance, and then respectability, in this small, close-minded town, overcome his background, his lack of education and polished manners. It had been a long, hard pull. He’d worn patched britches that were too short for his long legs, learned to spell and do sums with the younger children and been ridiculed by the older ones, watched through the hotel dining room window to learn proper table manners.

What bothered him was not that he hadn’t succeeded. He had. He’d lived in the tiny shack down by the river and eaten beans and biscuits for ten long years, worked hard, and saved every last penny. Now he owned the bank, dressed in suits that fit, ate whatever he wanted. The townspeople had begun to overlook his hard-scrabble beginnings, began to patronize his bank, even hint that their daughters were unmarried.

The only thing his life lacked now was Jane, and that was the problem.

“Well?” Lefty clicked his thumbnail against the tin cup balanced on his left knee.

Rydell met the older man’s sharp blue eyes. No use hedging to Lefty. He’d always seen right to the core of a man.

Rydell exhaled. “To be honest, I see something in myself I’m not sure I like.”

Lefty’s bushy gray eyebrows waggled. “Yeah? What?”

“I guess I’m afraid that something I’ve worked hard for in this town might slip away.”

“Why would it?” Lefty snapped. “Hell, kid, half the town borrows money from your bank to pay the other half fer somethin’ or other, and pays you back interest for the privilege. I told you at the start, it was a good idea. You ain’t got a thing to worry about ’cept where you’re gonna build a house for Miz Jane.”

Rydell worried his forefinger around the rim of his coffee mug. “What if there’s more to it? See, inside I still feel like maybe I don’t belong here among all these decent, respectable folks.”

“’Cuz of your pa, is that it? Why he never gave you his name?”

“Partly.”

“Well, spit it out, son. I’ve been cooped up here a day and a half with a swole-up knee and I’m gettin’ hungry for a hotel dinner.”

Rydell smiled in spite of himself. Lefty always had a hard time when he couldn’t move around much. Seemed to remind him of that Army hospital when he lost his arm.

“I never knew who my pa was. Whether he was a good man, or a card sharp. An honorable man or a thief.”

“So,” the older man said, heaving his weight off the cot. “You’re not so sure who you are, izzat it?”

“Partly.”

“Partly! Lordy, Dell, you’d a been a good lawyer. You gonna string this out ’til the dining room closes? Tell me the other part and let’s eat!”

Rydell stood up and set his cup in Lefty’s spotless dry sink. “The other part is this: The man who marries Jane Davis will automatically be respected.”

“Shore will. So?”

“Even if that man turns out to have a horse thief as kin, having Jane as a wife would protect him.”

“Yup. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that it doesn’t work both ways. Such a man couldn’t protect Jane in the same way. Coming from a family like hers, being associated with him would ruin her.”

Lefty clapped his good arm on Rydell’s shoulder. “Son, I’ve known you since you was sixteen and so skinny-ribbed and knob-kneed you looked more like a baby moose than a man. And I’ve watched you fall for Miz Jane like a felled tree and moon for her these ten years while you turned yourself inside out to grow up and get yerself established.”

“That obvious, huh?” Rydell grinned at the older man.

“Plain as a duck’s bill to me, though I doubt anyone else cottoned on to it. You always were good at keepin’ secrets.”

Rydell flicked a glance at Lefty’s face. How much did the old man know?

“You’re growed up now, Dell. You’re a finelookin’ feller with half the gals in Douglas County sweet on ya. What the hell else do you want? You want to marry Miz Jane, you go ahead and marry her. If she’ll have you.”

A fifty-pound lead weight rolled off Rydell’s chest. “Should have been a lawyer yourself, Lefty. You talk just like you know all the answers.”

“Ain’t the answers that’s important, it’s the questions. An’ the question here is, what the devil’s got into you? No matter about yer pa, you’ve got everything to gain by marryin’ Miz Jane. Now come on, so’s I can get some supper before my stomach caves in.”

Rydell shortened his stride so Lefty could keep pace with him with his injured knee. With every step he took between the old man’s cabin and the Excelsior Hotel he turned the matter over and over in his mind.

He wanted Jane. Had always wanted her, ever since that day in the schoolyard. He used to walk out to their place on the hill after it got dark and listen to her play the piano. The rippling notes floated like pearls on the warm air, and he stood for hours outside the trim white picket fence and gazed at a world he knew nothing about. A world that excluded him. He wanted her anyway.

He stepped off the walkway and started toward the hotel, then stopped dead in the middle of the street.

“Whatza matter?” Lefty complained.

“Nothing. Everything.”

His dream was within reach, now. He wasn’t going to give up. Nothing on the face of the earth was going to stop him.

Jane dragged herself up the hill to her house as the red-orange sun slipped behind the mountain tops. Just as she reached for the front gate latch, a tall, wellbuilt Negro man stepped out onto her porch.

“Miz Jane?”

She stared at him. She’d seen him about town, but she didn’t know his name.

“It’s Mose, ma’am. Mose Freeman. The blacksmith.”

“Oh, yes. What are you doing here?”

“Was jus’ walkin’ home past your house and I smelled somethin’ funny, like hot iron. I know that smell, see, and I knock and I come on in cuz sure as God made sweet corn, I smell fire.”

“Fire! Is Mama—?”

“Well, ma’am, your momma, Miz Davis, she boil all the water outta the teakettle, an’ it settin’ on the stove glowing red. So I dunk it into a dishpan of water. No harm done, Miz Jane.”

“Oh, thank you, Mose. Mr. Freeman. Thank you so very much!”

The soft brown skin of his face crinkled into a smile. “You better go on in, cuz your momma sayin’ how she wants her tea.”

“Yes, of course,” Jane managed over the tight feeling in her throat. “I am indeed grateful.”

With a wave, the man was off down the road, and Jane opened the front door.

“Jane Charlotte, is that you?”

“Yes, Mama.” She smelled something sharp and smoky in the air. The scorched teakettle.

Her mother’s silvery voice echoed from the parlor. “Abner came to make tea, but Ah don’t believe it’s ready just yet.”

“It wasn’t Abner, Mama.” She moved into the room. “You haven’t laid eyes on Abner since we left home. Or Odelia or Aunt Carrie, either. That was Mose Freeman, the blacksmith.”

“The blacksmi…What have you been doin’? Your hair looks all windblown, and your skirt! My stars, that hem is simply filthy!”

Jane gazed at her mother’s slight frame curled up under a crocheted afghan on the settee. “I told you about my shop, Mama, remember? My dressmaking shop?”

Her mother looked up, a blankness in her pale blue eyes. “Why, no, dear. Tell me all about it while we have our tea. Abner? Ab—?”

“Mama.” Jane felt her heart squeeze tight. Oh, Mama, please. Please don’t leave me like this.

She turned away and forced a lightness into her voice. “I’ll fetch the tea, Mama. And then I’ll make us a nice supper.”

And then I will go to bed and cry until I can’t feel anything anymore.

“Jane, do call your father. He’s been out all morning and must surely be tired.”

Try to remember. Oh, please, Mama, just try a little bit.

The teakettle was ruined. Jane boiled water in the gray enamel saucepan and made hot milk and bread for their supper. It was a pitiful offering, but she was so tired she couldn’t think of anything else. Besides, they were running out of staples.

They ate in silence. Jane listened to the moths batting against the lighted dining room window, the ting of her mother’s silver spoon against the edge of the china soup bowl. The air was warm and smelled of rain. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. I cannot bear this alone. I cannot.

She had to take care of Mama.

She had to open her shop, had to stitch up at least one garment to sell—otherwise they would run out of flour and tea and molasses before the week was up. And she had to bake bread, do the washing and then the ironing, scrub the—

“Jane Charlotte, honey, you look plumb worn out.”

Jane clenched her fist in her lap. “I’m fine, Mama.”

Her mother reached across the table and smoothed her soft fingers over Jane’s hand. “We will be all right, Jane. Things are difficult just now, but they will work out. The Beaudry women have always been strong.”

“I’m only half-Beaudry, Mama,” Jane said wearily.

The fingers tightened on her hand. “Half,” her mother said, her pale blue eyes looking into Jane’s, “will be sufficient.”

Chapter Five

“Anything else this morning, Miz Davis?”

Jane drew in a deep breath. She had inspected every bolt of yard goods Mr. Mercer had in stock—crisp yellow percaline, rose and pale green checked gingham, airy white dimity. Nothing seemed just right. She wanted something unusual, something eye-catching to display in her shop window. Something that would stop the ladies of Dixon Falls in their tracks.

“Miz Davis?” the mercantile owner reminded.

She scanned the shelves of fabric once more. “There, on the top. What is that red?”

Rafe Mercer pushed a ladder into place and clambered up four rungs. Reaching out his long arms, he grasped the bolt and dragged it off the pile, balancing it on his shoulder. “Muslin, ma’am. Ordered it by mistake.”

He descended the ladder and plunked the fabric down on the polished wood counter before her. “Ten cents a yard.”

Jane’s head began to buzz the way it always did when she began to envision a new design for a dress or a hat trimming. Yes, she could see it now. And in red, just the thing. The eyes of every woman in town would be glued to her store window display!

“And the blue, next to it?”

With a sigh, the thin, graying man propelled his skinny legs up the ladder again. “Cambric,” he called down to her. “Bought extra this year for the big Fourth of July doings at the schoolhouse on Sunday, but the ladies decorating committee didn’t use it all. Sell it to you for…eight cents a yard.”

“Seven cents,” Jane countered. “And I will offer you one dollar for the bolt of red muslin.” Oh, how Papa would bellow if he knew she was bargaining! But her money was borrowed; she certainly could not afford to squander it.

Mr. Mercer’s thin face blanched. “Ma’am, that’s near thirty yards of muslin.”

“Ordered in error, I believe you mentioned.” She swiped her gloved forefinger across the rolled fabric and held it up. “Unless I am mistaken, Mr. Mercer, this has been on your shelf for a good while, long enough to collect dust. Seven cents.”

“Oh, all right, Miz Davis. A dollar for the bolt. That’ll be, lessee, two dollars and five cents altogether. You need any thread?”

In her mind’s eye she was already laying out the yardage and marking the gathers. And two bright colors, red and blue, just perfect for the Fourth of July. Every female in Dixon Falls would want one.

“Miz Davis?”

Jane jerked to attention. “What? Oh, yes, thread, if you please. Two spools of Brook’s cotton.” She counted out the coins while the mercantile owner wrapped up her parcels.

“I’ll send the Harrelson boy over with your purchases, ma’am. The flour and tea and such I’ll deliver to your house on my way home this—Ah, good morning, ladies.” He turned his attention to the two new customers sweeping through the doorway. “Mrs. Tanner, Miss Price.”

Jane shut her reticule and fairly floated over the planked floor, her brain whirling with ideas. She’d done it, made the first purchase for her new business! The feeling was so heady, and so unexpected, she suppressed an urge to laugh out loud.

Jane Charlotte, just you stop and think what Papa would say.

For a moment her elation dimmed. Of course Papa would disapprove. How could he not, coming from a long line of gentleman plantation owners? Working with your hands for a living was “common.” Face it, Jane. You yourself are now an employed woman. A shopkeeper.

And Mama…she dared not think about Mama. She would not think of them, she resolved. She was doing what she had to do, either that or marry, and the only offer she’d had was from Mr. Wilder and it hadn’t been the least bit proper. To succeed she had to care for her widowed mother and earn enough money to keep them fed and clothed until they could return to Montclair. It would take every ounce of concentration and fortitude she could muster, but it would all come straight in the end. She knew it would.

The two ladies passed her by. “Good morning,” she said automatically. Jane heard one of them give an audible sniff.

She should have addressed them by name, but she realized suddenly she did not know which one was which. Was Mrs. Tanner the dark-haired woman in gray, or was that Miss Price? The latter had golden ringlets and a merry laugh, but looked too young to be married. In fact, both women looked to be not a day over twenty.

For just an instant a dart of envy pricked her. By comparison, at twenty-six, she herself would be considered “old.” And probably stiff-necked, as well.

Behind her, she heard the two young women whisper together, and then a soft giggle. They were talking about her. She could feel it in her bones. Pain swallowed up her envy.

She had lived here in Dixon Falls ever since she was fifteen years old. Eleven full years, and she still felt like an outsider. Oh, people were polite enough; no one had ever been unkind to her except for schoolboy bullies years ago. But somehow she felt separate from everyone else, as if she didn’t belong.

She closed the door of the mercantile on the happy laughter of the two women, punctuated by Mr. Mercer’s deeper tenor voice. “Right this way, ladies. Allow me.”

An empty feeling yawned in the pit of Jane’s stomach. I feel so alone.

In the next moment, she felt her spine stiffen. Jane Charlotte, you stop that this instant. Don’t you dare go all mooney over your lot in life! Just because Papa is gone and Mama isn’t well doesn’t mean you are any less than you were before, does it?

Certainly not. She’d had private tutors, had studied history and Latin and Greek grammar, took years and years of piano lessons from Mama. She knew how to serve tea and plan a dinner party—everything a proper young lady should know. She was Ready.

But ready for what? What was it all for? She’d lived all these years in suffocating isolation. A bell jar. She’d never been allowed to join the other young people at socials because they “weren’t the right sort,” Papa said. She was never allowed to walk into town unless Papa accompanied her. No friends ever came to call. She had been so lonely growing up she hadn’t wanted to grow up!

But she had. She’d gone right ahead and done it, and before she knew what had happened, she had turned into an old maid.

Her steps slowed. Was this some kind of punishment for coming to live in a town full of Yankees?

She unlocked the door to her shop, surveyed the dim interior, and rocked back on the heels of her black buttoned leather shoes. She would need a kerosene lamp, even in the daytime. And a stove of some sort to heat her sadiron. And…

She gazed at the tiny space, small as a shoe box. At least it was clean. The air still smelled faintly of soap. She would bring the long cheval dressing mirror from the upstairs bedroom and Aunt Carrie’s bust form. What amazing foresight her mother’s older sister had shown when she insisted that the padded dressmaker’s form come west with them. Jane had used it ever since to fashion new garments for herself out of her mother’s old gowns. She used the illustrations in Godey’s Ladies’ Book for inspiration, and the fabrics had lasted through many remakings. She knew the styles had grown outdated over the years, the skirts too full, the tops too ornate, too stiff and formal for a small dusty town in Oregon. She always looked different. Out of place. And the townspeople still called her Queen Jane.

“But no more,” she vowed. It would be sheer joy to work with something crisp and new from the mercantile! With her first earned dollar, she would send for the latest edition of Godey’s book. “And,” she announced to the silent cherry sewing cabinet, “since I cannot any longer use our dining room table, I will need a cutting board. A nice big one. Propped up on…what?” she muttered to herself. She hadn’t the faintest notion. Barrels? Stacked-up old trunks?

“Sawhorses! Yes! Now where can I find—”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miz Jane…”

Jane whirled to see Lefty Springer standing in her open doorway. “Mr. Springer.”

“Lefty, ma’am, remember? Mose down to the blacksmith shop, he’s a pretty fair carpenter. Bet he’d cobble you up a pair of sawhorses quicker’n a frog snaps flies.”

“Of course! The perfect thing. Oh, I do admire a man who can think.” She headed for the door, then stopped dead in the middle of the room. She couldn’t go traipsing around town, down to the blacksmith’s shop, without an escort; it just wasn’t done. Mama would have a fit.

“Mr…. Lefty, I am so glad you came visiting this morning. I need your help.”

The old man beamed.

And when Mrs. Evangeline Tanner and Miss Letitia Price stepped through the mercantile doorway and onto the board walkway, they gasped and pointed.

“Well, did you ever see the like!”

“Queen Jane and that old one-armed freight wagon driver!”

Jane rested her fingers on Lefty’s extended good arm and was skipping—skipping!—across the street in the company of an old man who couldn’t stop grinning.

Rydell counted out ten dollar bills and handed them through the cage to the trim, gray-haired woman on the other side. “There you are, Mrs. Manning.”

The woman folded the bills into her black crocheted bag and smiled at him. “Thank you, Mr. Wilder. Now, you’ll remember to come on out and meet my granddaughter sometime, won’t you? She’s come all the way from Kansas City to visit for the summer.”

He watched the woman’s small black shoes move toward the bank entrance and shook his head. Only yesterday it seemed, Mrs. Manning’s daughter, Eula, had moved back East to be married; now Eula had a grown-up daughter looking to do the same thing. All of a sudden, he felt old.

And left out in an odd way. He’d sent Josiah, his bank clerk, home to be with his wife. The young man was so nervous at the prospect of their first child he was useless this morning, but—Rydell had to laugh—he himself wasn’t much better. All morning he’d done nothing but think about Jane Davis.

A small grimy fist appeared on the counter before him. “Kin you save this for me, mister?” The fingers unfolded to reveal a single copper penny.

Rydell leaned forward. A round freckled face peered up at him, wide blue eyes questioning.

“You want to deposit this in the bank?”

“Yessir. Else my brother’ll grab it from me. Will you save it for me?”

“Sure thing, son.” With a chuckle he slid the coin into a bank envelope. He’d not been much older than this when he’d started saving pennies, only there hadn’t been a bank then. Rydell saved all his earnings in a pickle jar secreted under his mattress.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Tommy. I helped the Queen Lady down the street set up a sawhorse ’n she done paid me.”

The Queen Lady? Did he mean Jane? He dipped the pen in the inkwell and scribbled on a piece of notepaper.

“Okay, Tommy, here’s your deposit receipt. When you want your money, just show it to the clerk.”

The boy nodded, and the round face disappeared.

A sawhorse? He’d step down the street and investigate, but he couldn’t leave the cash drawer unattended. He’d wait until noon, when he could lock up the safe.

Customers drifted in and out for the next hour, and Rydell’s curiosity grew. What the devil did Jane want with a sawhorse?

The clock on the wall tick-tick-ticked toward twelve. At one minute before noon, Tommy’s freckled visage reappeared at the counter.

“Mister, I got ’nother ’posit to make.”

Rydell reached for the envelope marked Tommy. “How much this time?”

“One big an’ one little. Here’s the little one.” He plopped another penny onto the smooth wood surface, and Rydell added it to the envelope.

“’N here’s the big one.” With both hands he lifted a tiny ball of orange fur and set it on the smooth oak surface. “It’s lost. I found it in the alley back of the livery stable, but if I take it home, my brother’ll steal it for sure.”

Rydell eyed the clock. “Okay, Tommy. I’ll take care of it.” He scooped the purring kitten into his coat pocket, where it curled up and burrowed its nose into a corner seam.

“Thanks, mister.”

Rydell sent the under-clerk to lunch, closed up the safe, and locked the front door of the bank. Then he headed up the street to see what Jane was up to.

“That’s it. A little to the left. No, too much, Lefty. Yes, right there will do nicely.” Jane cocked her head, assessing the position of her new cutting board, a discarded door plank Mose Freeman had carted from Tanner’s lumberyard. With a sawhorse propping each end, it made a perfectly level, smooth surface on which to sponge-shrink her yard goods and lay out pattern pieces. Already, a bucket of water and her sadiron were heating on the small oil stove Lefty Springer had “found” for her. It looked so new she suspected Lefty had actually purchased it from Mercer’s Mercantile.

The old man’s interest in her new business touched her heart. He’d even volunteered to watch over the shop while she’d walked up the long hill to check on Mama and boil up some eggs for her lunch. She left Mama dozing on the settee, and Jane hoped she would sleep until suppertime, when she would return to fix the evening meal.

All morning she’d worried about another teakettle incident—or worse. What if Mama fell and couldn’t get up again? What if she went out to the orchard to look for Papa and couldn’t find her way back? A hundred dangers suggested themselves as she organized her little dressmaking establishment. A hundred reasons why she felt torn in two.

She didn’t really know any of the women in town, much less the farm wives that lived out in the country and came into town only occasionally. Not only did she have to start her business, she had to befriend her clientele, women who were virtual strangers. She would have to work hard to make them think of her not as Queen Jane, but as a capable dressmaker.

And of course Mama needed her attention, too. Merciful heavens, how could she be in two places at once?

She blotted the perspiration from her face with a damp wadded-up lace-edged handkerchief and tried to think. The hot, still air smelled of dust and acrid smoke. The heat from her little stove made it stifling inside the shop. Lefty perched on an empty nail keg positioned half in, half out of the doorway, whittling on a piece of oak.

“Why’ntcha sit yerself down, Miz Jane? You’re gonna melt into a puddle if’n you don’t slow down and rest a bit.” He motioned to a second upturned keg.

“Oh, I just can’t, Lefty. I must get this muslin sponged before suppertime so I can cut out my patterns first thing tomorrow. The Fourth of July is only two days away, and I simply must be ready by then! It offers such a wonderful opportunity for my…well, my first original creation.”

With his boot, Lefty pushed his wood shavings out onto the board sidewalk. “Cain’t sew if you cain’t stand up.”

“Oh, but I can,” Jane countered. “I sew sitting up. It won’t matter a whit if my legs won’t hold me up, I can seat myself at the sewing machine. I intend to finish my—”

Through the open doorway stepped a tall figure, and Jane gave a little gasp. Her heart somersaulted at the sight of Rydell Wilder.

“Why, howdy, Dell. Come to oversee yer investment, have ya?”

That man! What right did he have to come barging in without even a by-your-leave? Jane grabbed a length of red muslin and hastily draped it around the padded bust form in the corner. Surely it wasn’t proper for a gentleman to see a lady’s…well, replica of herself, without a stitch of clothing?

All at once she was doubly grateful for Lefty’s presence in the tiny shop. Her brain seemed as sluggish and sticky as molasses, and her stomach felt as if thousands of bird feathers swirled inside it. She was afraid of him.

Afraid he would kiss her again.

Afraid she would like it.

She stared at him, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“Miss Davis.”

“If you have come to watch me struggle, you can turn right around and…I declare you’re watching me just like a hungry tiger stalking its prey.”

“I assure you—”

“Waiting until I fail, and then you’ll pounce on me.” She heard Lefty make an odd choking sound, but he lowered his head so she couldn’t see his face.

And then she noticed something strange. Mr. Wilder looked lopsided. The right pocket of his well-fitted suit bulged out of proportion, and then, right before her eyes, it moved.

Mesmerized, she watched the dark fabric pooch out. Unable to contain her curiosity, Jane moved forward, eyeing Rydell Wilder’s coat pocket.

Chapter Six

Jane stopped two paces in front of Rydell, narrowed her eyes and pointed at his coat pocket. “What have you got in there?”

With a sheepish grin, Rydell plunged his hand into the opening in the soft worsted and brought forth the orange kitten. Jane’s eyes widened.

“Why, the darling little thing! Wherever did you find it?” She took an involuntary step forward, stretching both hands toward the tiny ball of fur.

“A young…bank patron found it in back of the livery stable. He entrusted it to me for safekeeping.”

Jane’s hand darted toward the animal, then retreated. If she touched the kitten, her skin might brush against his. She laced her fingers together behind her back. But oh, how she longed to smooth her fingertips over that soft-looking fur.

The hand holding the kitten moved nearer. “Jane?” a low voice spoke. “Would you like to have it?”

Yes! All those years when she was growing up she’d longed for a pet, something of her very own to care for. Papa always said an animal would make too much work for Mama.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. It really belongs to your patron, you see, and I just couldn’t—” She broke off as Rydell offered the kitten. Taking extreme care not to touch the hand of the man who stood before her, she extended one finger and nuzzled the tiny face. A small pink tongue licked her forefinger, and at that moment her hand brushed his.

A zing of awareness raised the fine hair on her forearm and danced on up past her elbow. Her heart beat so loudly she could hear it. Could he?

He just stood there, looking at her with those knowing gray eyes and that firm, unsmiling mouth. It gave her the shivers.

Lefty grinned at her from the doorway, then dropped his gaze to the oak piece in his lap. Snick, snick went the blade of his pocketknife, and then he began to hum a tune to match the rhythm. Little Brown Jug.

A spell seemed to have fallen over her. She could neither move nor talk nor even think rationally. Why, merciful heavens, what a silly bit of nonsense!

She ordered her knees to bend, knelt and set the feline onto the plank floor. On wobbly legs, it headed for her sewing basket, climbed in and curled up next to the calico-covered pincushion. The soft rumbly purring rose into the quiet room, and no one moved.

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