“I will never set foot in this house again, I promise you.”

Kellen stared at her for a full minute. She was magnificent. A lioness defending her lair. Except that it was his lair. And it was his hand that wanted to touch her trembling chin. His body that hungered to feel her passion. Her fire.

“Goddammit, Lolly.”

“Goddammit what?” She spit the words at him, and all at once he couldn’t stand it one more second. He kissed her.

Big, big tactical error. Her lips under his were like warm velvet. Suddenly he wanted his mouth, and his hands, on every inch of her skin.

“Stop,” she said after a few exquisitely sensual explorations of her neck and throat. “Kellen, you must stop.”

“Why must I?” he murmured against her hair. He kissed her again. He didn’t want to stop. Ever.

Acclaim for Lynna Banning

“Do not read Lynna Banning expecting some trite,

clichéd western romance. This author

breathes fresh air into the West.”

—Romance Reviews

The Scout

“Though a romance through and through,

The Scout is also a story with powerful undertones

of sacrifice and longing.”

—Romantic Times

The Angel of Devil’s Camp

“This sweet charmer of an Americana romance

has just the right amount of humor, poignancy

and a cast of quirky characters.”

—Romantic Times

The Law and Miss Hardisson

“…fresh and charming

…a sweet and funny yet poignant story.”

—Romantic Times

The Wedding Cake War
Lynna Banning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In memory of my mother,

Mary Elizabeth (Banning) Yarnes

With grateful thanks to Suzanne Barrett, Tricia Adams,

Debbie Parcel, Brenda Preston, Susan Renison,

David Woolston and Andrew Yarnes.

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

Epilogue

Chapter One

Oregon, 1879

If she’d thought about it for one single minute, Lolly would never have boarded the train in Kansas City. That was a character failing, she supposed—jumping headlong from the saucepan into the cook-fire. She’d inherited the tendency from her father.

Which was exactly why he was dead and she was breathing the cigar-smoky air of this railway coach. In all his forty years on this earth, Papa had never backed down, changed his opinion or avoided a fight.

And neither would she. With a bit of luck and some…well…acting ability, she would triumph over any adversity. Even marriage to a man she’d never laid eyes on.

The train slowed, then chuffed to a stop. “Maple Falls,” the conductor shouted from the back of the car. “Home of sawmills, grist mills, gin mills, wild women and the Methodist church.”

Lolly choked down a bubble of laughter. If only half those things were true, Maple Falls would prove intriguing. In a town with both Shady Ladies, as Pa had termed them, and Our Heavenly Father’s Second-Best Parlor, as her Presbyterian mother dubbed the Methodist church, there was the promise of happenings that might prove interesting. She most fervently hoped so. After her impulsive flight from Baxter Springs, she badly needed some cheering up.

Lolly bit the inside of her lip. She needed more than cheering up. She needed a new life. A new place, as far from Kansas as she could get. She only hoped it wasn’t too late.

At the thought, her entire body turned to petrified whalebone. She was too outspoken, too set in her ways. Too plump.

Too…old.

Maybe it was too late.

Get off the train, a voice commanded. Just put one foot in front of the other and walk out into Oregon.

It was harder than she anticipated. For one thing, her fancy new jab-toed shoes, ordered from Bloomingdale’s, pinched her feet. And for another, all at once she felt as if her bottom half was glued to the seat; every bone in her body resisted moving a single step toward the momentous event that awaited her. She could scarcely breathe she was so frightened.

The coach emptied, and still Lolly sat stiff as chicken wire on the hard leather seat until a head poked into the far end of the car.

“Miz Mayfield?”

She sucked a gulp of smoky air into her lungs. “Yes?”

“Better hurry up, ma’am. Train’s about to pull out.”

As the boy spoke, the railcar jerked and began to glide forward.

Good gracious! Which was worse, being inadvertently kidnapped by a train, or facing a town full of hungry lions? Well, maybe not lions, exactly. But she knew exactly how the Christian martyrs in Roman arenas must have felt. Trapped.

Lolly stood up, grasped her leather satchel and made her way unsteadily up the aisle, clinging to the backs of the seats until she reached the iron debarking step.

The train engine tooted twice and began to accelerate.

“Jump, ma’am! Hurry, it’s rollin’.”

Jump? Was he crazy? She’d break both her ankles in these shoes.

She heaved the satchel into the young man’s arms and hurriedly unsnapped one French kid boot, then the other, tossing them out the train door just as the coach began to pick up speed. Wrapping her knitted wool shawl about her head, she folded her arms over her chest, whispered a quick prayer and stepped off the platform.

She toppled into the youth clasping her satchel, knocking him flat onto the wood platform. His wide-brimmed hat rolled away under the spinning train wheels.

“Godalmighty, ma’am, whadja do that for?”

Lolly sat up, straightened her black straw bonnet and scooted her knees off the young man’s chest. “To get off the train, of course. You said to jump.”

“Sufferin’ scorpions, ma’am, I didn’t mean on top of me!”

Lolly rose to a standing position, her legs shaking like twin columns of jelly. Her stocking-covered toes curled against the uneven boards beneath her feet, telling her where every splinter lurked in the rough wood. What a way to begin her new life, making a spectacle of herself in public.

She scanned the onlookers. Was he here? Watching her stumble about like a tipsy Presbyterian? Would he change his mind when he saw her?

She bent over the boy. “I am extremely sorry. Are you hurt?”

“Heck, no, I ain’t hurt.” He assessed her generous figure. “I guess I’ve been hit by hay bales bigger’n—” His voice trailed off.

“Beg pardon, Miz Mayfield. You ain’t shaped like no bale of hay, no matter how—” His thin face flushed the color of cooked beets.

Lolly took pity on him. “Have you a name, young man?”

“Huh? Oh, sure. But at the moment I can’t exactly recall— Oh yeah, it’s Henry Morehouse, ma’am. At your service.”

Lolly suppressed a burst of laughter. “Well, Henry Morehouse, I am Leora Mayfield.” She extended her hand. “I have been in correspondence with the ladies here in town, and I have come out from Kansas to marry—”

“Oh, we know all about that, Miz Mayfield.” He hoisted her travel satchel in one hand and offered his arm. “I’ll escort you over to the schoolhouse to get registered.”

“Schoolhouse? Isn’t there a hotel?”

“Why, sure, ma’am. We’ll get you registered there, too.”

She peered at him. He was a nice-looking, lanky boy of about fifteen, she guessed. Clear-blue eyes and floppy wheat-colored hair.

“Why must I register at the schoolhouse?”

As her question sank in, his cheeks colored. “Well, you see, ma’am, the colonel, he figured…well, he figured—”

“Colonel! Mr. Macready is a colonel? In what army, may I ask?”

“He was a Reb, ma’am. But not anymore. War’s been over some years now.”

“I am aware of that.” She brushed off her skirt, keeping her head down so her black straw bonnet shielded her face. So, Mr. Macready had been a Confederate soldier. Papa had fought on the Union side. Her saucepan was boiling over.

“What,” she said in as steady a voice as she could manage, “precisely has the colonel ‘figured’?”

“That you all could sign up at the schoolhouse first. That way, we’ll know how many.”

She tried hard not to frown, she really did. Frowning just added wrinkles to her already sundried face. Not that anyone knew how parched her skin was; no one but herself ever touched her cheek or her nose, or any other part of her. Which was the reason why she was braving the wilds of Oregon instead of withering into an old maid in Kansas.

“That way you’ll know how many what?”

Henry Morehouse studied his dusty brown button-top shoes. “I’d rather not say, Miz Mayfield. Best we just go along and do it. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Henry?” Back in Kansas, grown men had quaked at that tone. She used it now because she was exasperated.

The boy shuffled two steps backward. “Don’t usually answer to Henry,” he mumbled. “My friends call me Hank.”

Lolly stepped toward him. In her stocking feet they were exactly the same height. “Hank, then. Best we just ‘go along and do’ what?”

“S-sign up, ma’am. Like I told ya.”

“Sign up for what?” She narrowed her eyes in her best Pin the Polecat look and watched the Morehouse boy bite his lower lip.

“For, uh…for what the colonel figured, ma’am. That’s all I can tell ya, till we get to the schoolhouse.”

Lolly spun on her heel, then wished she hadn’t. Ignoring the bite of wood splinters through her stocking, she collected her shoes from the platform, rescued Hank’s mashed hat from the railroad tracks and returned to the motionless boy.

“March,” she ordered.

“Oh, yes, ma’am.” He started to salute, then realized his error and grinned sheepishly at her. “Just follow me.”

The schoolhouse sat smack in the center of a field of blue lupine and scarlet Indian paintbrush. A wandery path snaked its way through the ankle-deep blooms to a run-down building that looked more dilapidated than any farmer’s neglected barn in Kansas. Why, the gaps between the split logs weren’t even chinked! She could tell they had been at one time, but the mud-and-straw daubing had dissolved to dust. The wind, or the snow, could whistle through at will. No doubt the students froze in the winter and baked in the summer.

It was high summer now, Lolly reflected as she zigzagged along the path behind Hank Morehouse. The air brushing her cheeks felt hot, and the heavy, lazy heat pressed the air out of her lungs. The schoolhouse would be an oven.

And it was. The instant she stepped over the threshold her already-wilting underclothes stuck to her back and chest, and her muslin drawers pasted themselves to her legs. At every step she heard the skitch-skitch of her inner thighs brushing together. Could everyone else hear it, too?

The three gray-haired ladies seated behind a long oak table didn’t even look up. The only other occupants of the room were two younger women sitting off to one side, spines straight, hands folded, smiles unwavering.

Lolly crossed the uneven plank floor with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Was this some sort of inquisition?

Hank clumped up to the table. “Got another one fer ya.” He plopped her satchel on top of an empty school desk and stuffed his lanky frame into the child-size seat.

All three elderly women snapped their heads up.

Lolly’s stomach tightened into a hard knot. Another one? Another what?

A large-bosomed matron in a royal-blue day dress grasped a pencil. “Name?”

“Another what?” Lolly ventured in her Refined Voice.

The woman’s eyebrows waggled. “Bride,” she said. A satisfied smile spread over her face. “Name?”

“Leora Mayfield.” Lolly swallowed. “But I believe I am the only bride. At least that was my understanding from the newspaper advertisement.”

“Oh, no, dearie,” a lilting voice sang. “There’s no profit in just one bride.”

“Profit?”

“Well, you see, dearie,” the woman cooed. “We, that is the Maple Falls Ladies Helpful Society, are determined to finance construction of a new schoolhouse. You can see for yourself that this one is in such sad disrepair, and—”

“Let me tell it, Minnie.” The Bosom in Royal Blue made a sweeping gesture. “This schoolhouse was built back in twenty-seven, you see, when old Abel Svensen left us a small bequest in his will.”

“That was over fifty years ago,” Minnie interjected, her hands fluttering as she spoke. Dressed in a lavender-sprigged dimity, the tiny woman looked like a dainty butterfly trying to decide where to land.

“Now,” Royal Blue continued, “the walls are collapsing, the floor is buckling, the outhouse needs—”

“Dora Mae Landsfelter!” Minnie’s hands danced. “Not in polite company.”

Dora Mae turned snapping blue eyes on Lolly. “So you see, Miss Mayfield, that is why we need a new schoolhouse.”

“But…”

“Why,” the older woman continued in a no-nonsense tone, “we, the ladies of the Maple Falls Helpful Society, have resolved to raise the necessary funds.” She held Lolly’s gaze in an unblinking look.

“Why,” chimed the third woman, rising from her chair behind the table, “the Helpful Ladies are sponsoring this competition.”

Lolly blinked at the three. “Competition?”

“To be the bride!” Minnie’s hands swooped and circled in the warm air. “Isn’t it exciting?”

Exciting? Lolly pondered the word. Being a bride would certainly be exciting. The answer to her prayers. All her life she’d longed to fall in love and marry, have a family, a home of her own. Now, as she approached her thirtieth year of virginity, she’d given up on the fall-in-love part. She just wanted to get married and have a family, like other women.

But a competition?

“What kind of competition?” She tried to use her Kansas Quaking voice, to no avail.

The lace ruffles at Minnie’s neck shuddered with excitement. “Oh, dearie, I’m so glad you inquired. Our competition—”

“Let me tell it,” Dora Mae interrupted. “First, the candidates will—”

“I thought up that part,” the third woman chirped. “Let me tell it!”

“Candidates?” Lolly whispered. Candidates?

“Of course,” Dora Mae exclaimed. “What is a competition without competitors? Ruth, you didn’t make that part at all clear.”

Ruth Underwood’s round, pleasant face fell. “Oh, of course, the competitors.” She tipped her head toward the two young women seated against the wall. “Miss LeClair just arrived yesterday. And—”

Dora Mae raised an admonishing hand and took over. “And our own hometown candidate is Miss Gundersen. She’s the schoolteacher, so we thought…”

Minnie’s hands took flight. “We selected our schoolteacher to represent all the other women in Maple Falls, the ones who—”

“Who have been pursuing our prize bachelor, Colonel Macready, for years. The ladies of the Helpful Society thought it best to avoid infighting among our native population.”

Lolly needed to sit down. Her head spun, and her undergarments were beginning to feel squishy against her hot skin. Worst of all, she wanted to laugh. Papa always said if something funny went by, notice it. Well, now she was noticing it like crazy. This whole idea was ludicrous.

She had been duped. She’d sold the newspaper office and vacated her room at the boardinghouse in Baxter Springs and come out to Oregon to…to…well, not to marry, as it turned out. To compete for the groom!

It was too much. Simply beyond the pale.

At that moment a disturbing idea flitted into her consciousness. “What is wrong with Colonel Macready?”

Three pairs of eyes widened in consternation. Dora Mae’s pencil catapulted out of her fingers and clicked onto the floor. “Wrong?”

“Oh, dearie, you can’t be serious?” Minnie fanned her face with her fingers.

“That man is God’s gift to the feminine gender,” Ruth added. “Why, even my old heart quakes something terrible when he as much as walks by, and I’ve been—”

“Married for thirty-four years,” Minnie finished for her.

“Thirty-five years, Min. Makes no difference. That man is a man.”

“I see,” Lolly said. “And we, the three of us—” she glanced at the two young women now perched at the edge of their chairs “—are supposed to…”

She couldn’t say it. Something inside her rebelled at the thought of having to compete for a husband. By all rights, in a civilized world, it should be the other way around. He should fight for her. After all, Cinderella did not chase after the prince, did she?

On the other hand, Cinderella wasn’t counting the days until her thirtieth birthday. A lump of hot coal plopped into her chest.

Lolly’s gaze traveled over the trio of Helpful Ladies to rest briefly on Hank Morehouse, slumped in decided disinterest over her satchel, his eyes shut. She forced her attention to the other two candidates.

Both young. Twenty at the most. One, dressed in a stylishly cut emerald-green silk with matching shoes and a fringed parasol, looked the perfect Southern lady. Miss LeClair, no doubt. Even in the wilting heat, not one hair straggled from her crown of golden ringlets.

The other woman, seated next to Miss LeClair, looked even younger in a pretty blue-checked gingham with pearl buttons all the way to the hem. Her soulful brown eyes were set in a rather plain-featured face.

Lolly knew exactly what had driven herself to this step. What, she wondered, was wrong with them?

Perhaps, a voice whispered, they are as desperate as you are.

She eyed the younger women again. Both held her gaze for a brief moment, and in that instant Lolly recognized something. Whatever their reasons, whatever their differences, they were all sisters under the skin. They all wanted to get married.

“It’s for the school, dearie. You do see that, don’t you?” Minnie’s sugary voice floated to her over the buzzing in her ears.

“For the children,” Dora Mae added. “Twenty-seven students will attend the Maple Falls school come the fall term. They simply must have a new—”

“All right, all right,” Lolly murmured. “A schoolhouse is a fine thing in a community.”

Dora Mae thrust the pencil at her. “Just sign right here, Miss Mayfield.”

“And then,” sang Minnie, her hands stroking the air, “you can meet the other brides.”

Chapter Two

Dora Mae smoothed the creases in her royal-blue skirt, captured Lolly’s hand and tugged her across the floor. “May I introduce Miss Fleurette LeClair, from New Orleans. Miss Leora Mayfield.”

The green-silk-clad woman tipped her head. Her face wasn’t the least bit welcoming. It wasn’t even friendly. Her green eyes shot ice chips up and down Lolly’s plain black travel ensemble. Lolly tried to smile.

The perfect lips opened. “Wheah you from?”

“Um…well, I’m from Baxter Springs, Kansas. I used to run a news—”

“Oh,” Miss LeClair sniffed. “That explains it.”

Lolly’s mouth opened of its own accord. “Explains what?”

“All that black,” Fleurette drawled. “And, my heavens, yoah shoes.”

“What’s wrong with my shoes? They’re brand-new. I ordered them from Bloom—”

“It’s summertime, honey. Or have you not noticed?”

“And this,” Minnie interrupted with a flutter in her voice, “is Miss Careen Gundersen. Most everyone calls her Carrie, and she was born and raised right here in Maple Falls.”

Carrie extended her hand and enfolded Lolly’s in a firm grasp. “I don’t in the least object to black in the summer,” she murmured. “It’s quite elegant.”

Lolly smiled at her, then turned her gaze to include Miss LeClair. “I am pleased to meet you both, even under these rather odd circumstances.”

Her remark met with a prolonged silence.

“I mean, it is a bit odd, don’t you think? All three of us competing for the same—”

“Decidedly,” Miss LeClair acknowledged with a little nod that made her ringlets bounce.

“Perhaps just a bit,” Carrie allowed. “But you haven’t met Colonel Macready yet. He—” she drew the word out on a long sigh “—makes it all worthwhile.”

“Really,” murmured Miss LeClair.

Carrie beamed. “I’ve been calculating the odds. I’m quite good at mathematics, being a school-teach…”

Her voice trailed off as Miss LeClair pivoted and headed for the doorway, unfurling her parasol on the way.

“I am not interested in mathematical odds,” she said over her shoulder. “It is a lady’s breedin’ and accomplishments that will tip the scale.”

Her cool-as-silk tone hinted at an assumed superiority that made Lolly’s lips tighten. The back of her neck began to tingle. For a fleeting moment she imagined a jungle, tangled green vines full of twittering birds and silent, deadly snakes. Deep inside her a kill-or-be-killed instinct stirred.

Carrie broke the awkward quiet. “Let’s all go over to the hotel and have some lemonade, shall we?” Her earnest brown eyes rested on Lolly, then on Miss LeClair. Lolly watched Fleurette deliberately turn her back and address the Helpful Ladies.

“When am Ah to meet Colonel Macready?”

The older women looked at one another. “This afternoon,” Dora Mae replied.

“This evening,” Ruth said in the same instant.

Minnie’s hands swooped in front of her face. “Well, we hadn’t exactly decided when….”

Miss LeClair’s parasol spun to a halt. “This evening, Ah take it. And what will be the occasion? Ah ask because Ah wish to dress appropriately.” She cast a disparaging glance at Lolly’s traveling costume, then lingered on Carrie’s blue check. “Did you make that yourself?” she inquired.

“Why, yes. I sew quite a bit and…”

“Exactly,” came the murmured response. “Ah thought as much.”

That tone of voice, Lolly thought, was like the hiss of a poisonous viper. Rarely had she taken such an instant dislike to another human being, unless it was a braggadocio Rebel soldier exulting over some past victory or attacking her latest newspaper editorial.

Lady or not, Miss Green Eyes from New Orleans was just plain rude. And stuck-up. It would be pure pleasure to take some of the starch out of her no-doubt perfectly stiff petticoats.

Carrie just smiled. “Come on. I calculate it to be ninety-seven degrees in here. Doesn’t a glass of cold lemonade sound just about perfect? It will lower our body temperature at least two degrees.”

Lolly guessed there wasn’t a mean bone in Carrie’s slim, gingham-swathed body or her fact-overloaded brain. She might be a little pedantic, but that was because she was a trained teacher.

Lolly was educated, too. She had read her way through the Baxter Springs library shelves while she struggled to keep the newspaper going so she could care for her mother. Her education might have been a bit sporadic, but who cared if she’d discovered Shakespeare before she stumbled onto Plato?

Besides, she reasoned, there wasn’t one of the occupants in this musty-smelling schoolroom who couldn’t stand to learn something new. Herself included.

Lemonade sounded like a fine place to start.

“Do tell us, Miss Gundersen, Ah mean, Carrie, what do you know of Colonel Macready?” Fleurette swirled another teaspoonful of sugar into her lemonade glass.

Lolly watched Carrie’s heart-shaped face come alive at the mention of the man’s name. With such a pronounced case of hero worship, she wondered how the young woman could stomach having two rivals sipping cold drinks at the same table.

“Oh, the colonel is…well, he is just wonderful. Simply, truly…wonderful.”

“Wonderful,” Fleurette echoed dryly. She tapped her spoon against the edge of her glass and laid it on the tiny pink tea napkin provided. “Wonderful, how?”

“Oh, in every way, I assure you. I’ve known him all my life, you see. He came to live here in Maple Falls when I was four…or was I five? Let’s see, I am nineteen now, and the colonel arrived right after the war. That’s sixty-five subtracted from seventy-nine…. Yes, I was five. I remember it was on my birthday.”

“More to the point, how old is he?”

Carrie giggled. “Oh, I calculate he’s old enough to be my father and then some. But Dora Mae Landsfelter is years younger than her husband, and she said such things don’t matter in the least.”

“Carrie,” Lolly said, her voice gentle. “Could you calculate how old the colonel is exactly.”

Carrie closed her soft brown eyes for a moment. “Forty-three.”

Fleurette lifted her lips away from her lemonade. “Ah do wonder why he has not married in all this time.”

Lolly’s hand stilled on her glass. The question had occurred to her, as well. How had the town’s prize catch remained uncaught for fourteen years?

“Well,” Carrie began, lowering her voice, “some people say he lost a sweetheart in the war and never recovered. Others say he’s stubborn and set in his ways and he never before wanted a wife for fear she’d change him.”

Lolly’s ears burned. Stubborn? Set in his ways? The same had been said of her ever since she turned fourteen.

“He hardly lets anyone female into his house,” Carrie went on, “except for old Mrs. Squires. She’s kept house for him for years, but the colonel does all his own cooking, and Mrs. Squires says he even irons his own shirts. Can you imagine?”

“If he married, he would require servants,” Fleurette murmured. “Ah have had servants all my life.”

Lolly bit her tongue. Slaves, more likely. She squashed down a ripple of anger and decided to change the subject. “What is his home like?”

“It’s a big white house with gray shutters, and it has three whole floors and a music room and a library. I’ve never seen the library, but once I attended a recital in the—”

Fleurette cut her off. “Why would a bachelor purchase such a mansion?”

“Oh, he didn’t purchase it. He inherited it from his great-aunt Henrietta on his father’s side. She married a Northerner and came out west, but she died of the quinsy soon after the war…. Why, what’s the matter, Leora? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Lolly unclenched the fist she hid in her lap. Mama had died of the quinsy a month after Papa had been killed at Chancellorsville. She spoke over a tightened throat. “Nothing is the matter.”

“Do Ah understand that Colonel Macready is a Southerner?” The excitement was evident in Fleurette’s voice.

“Oh, yes, he’s a real Southern gentleman. From Virginia. He has the most courtly manners, when he wants to, that is. And he’s so tall and well formed and…” Carrie blushed and gulped her lemonade.

“Why—” Fleurette paused, pinning her gaze on Carrie “—since you seem obviously smitten with the gentleman, has he never courted you?”

Carrie gaped at her. “Me! Every single female in this town, and even some not so single, are smitten with Colonel Macready. He’s never courted any of us!”

“Perhaps because he is a Southerner, and y’all are Yankees,” Fleurette murmured.

“Or perhaps,” Lolly said in a level tone, “because he wants to be the Smitten and not the Smittee. So to speak.”

Carrie gave a whoop of laughter and clapped her hand over her mouth, then continued. Lolly watched the green-eyed, golden-haired Fleurette straighten her spine and crook her little finger into a dainty arc.

“Ah’m sure that is exactly right, Miss…May-pole. A gentleman’s heart is not easily won.”

“Mayfield. It’s Mayfield.”

“Why, of course it is,” Fleurette purred.

“In this case,” Lolly continued, “the gentleman is willing to donate his heart to finance a schoolhouse. Apparently he doesn’t care one way or the other whether he’s smitten or not.”

Fleurette tipped her head to one side like a curious robin. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?”

Carrie’s hand drifted down from her mouth. “It won’t matter, ladies. The colonel has given his word on the matter. He will marry whichever one of us wins the competition. Oh, I do hope it will be me!”

“Why, my dear, Ah’d say you are enamored of the gentleman.”

“Actually,” Carrie said. “I don’t really know him very well. I’m just one of dozens of females in town who adore him and simply swoon when he smiles. But he treats us all exactly the same.”

A calculating look came into Fleurette’s eyes. “You don’t know the first thing about this man, do you? Except that you swoon when he smiles.”

“Why, no,” Carrie said. “If I did, I’d surely tell you both. We’re all in this together, are we not?”

“Precisely,” Fleurette said, her voice light.

Lolly didn’t like her tone, pleasant as Fleurette had tried to make it. Again, the back of her neck tingled.

The scent of the young woman’s perfume, something cloyingly sweet and heavy, like gardenias, made Lolly’s head swim. She turned away to draw an untainted breath and spied young Hank Morehouse lounging in the dining room doorway, sending hand signals in her direction. Satchel. Upstairs. Room 3.

Lolly nodded. No sooner had the boy disappeared than a blur of royal blue sateen announced the presence of Dora Mae Landsfelter.

“Ah, here you are,” she trumpeted. “I have an announcement.” Dora Mae clasped her hand over her still-heaving bosom. “This evening, at eight o’clock…” She panted.

The three candidates froze, fingers curled around their lemonade glasses.

“The Helpful Ladies will host a reception in the hotel ballroom. And at that time…” She paused dramatically. “You will meet Colonel Macready. She slanted a look at Fleurette. “Dress will be ladies’ evening attire.”

Fleurette gasped. “My trunks! Have they arrived?”

“They have. Mrs. Petrov had all three moved up to your room at her boardinghouse.”

Lolly sat stricken, unable to move. Trunk? Her trunk had been on the train; in her agitation about disembarking she’d completely forgotten about it. Now she realized all her possessions, except for what she obviously carried in her travel satchel—clean undergarments and a shawl and her toiletries and her Bible—were still on the train and headed for Portland.

How could she have been so scatterbrained? All she had to wear this evening was the black faille traveling suit, which at this moment felt heavier—and hotter—than ever before. She desperately needed something light and airy. Something summery and man-catching, with flounces and ruffles and…

What in heaven’s name could she do? Borrow something?

Don’t be a goose. Both Carrie and Fleurette had slim, girlish proportions, while she… Well, she was as rounded as a model in a Rubens painting, her hips and bosom blooming generously above and below her tightly laced-in waist. Besides, the smug expression on Fleurette’s perfect pink-and-cream face was enough to squash any such idea.

Carrie leaned toward her. “You look white as a huck towel,” she whispered.

“I am trying to think,” Lolly whispered back.

Carrie patted her hand. “You didn’t bring trunks full of gowns like Fleurette, did you?”

Lolly shook her head. She’d die before she confessed to being so addlepated at the train station. She finished off her lemonade to shore up her spirits. Between now and eight o’clock she had to come up with a fairy godmother, or else something she could turn into a—

“Of course!” she said aloud.

“You’ve thought of something?” Relief edged Carrie’s tone.

Would it be too daring?

“What is it? Oh, do tell me!”

It would be daring, Lolly decided. Outrageous, in fact. But, with her trunk rolling toward Portland, she had no choice.

She squeezed Carrie’s small hand. “I will wear…black. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

Lolly unpacked the contents of her satchel, stripped down to her camisole and drawers, and began to experiment. Her two-piece travel dress hung on hangers at the window, the plain gored skirt rippling in the breeze and the separate buttoned jacket turning this way and that as if undecided which direction to face. Already the creases were disappearing from the tight-woven fabric.

She sponged off her sticky body, then stretched out on the blue bed quilt to assess the situation.

The room was spartan but tidy. The mirror over the matching bureau reflected the white china ewer and basin she’d used for her sponge bath; her Bible lay next to the fluted glass lamp.

The tall cherry armoire opposite the bed confronted her accusingly, waiting to be filled. But she had nothing to put in it but her nightgown and one clean petticoat.

How, how? could she start a new life with one black dress and a Bible? The Heavenly Father had done it in six days, but He was God. She was a mere mortal, and female at that.

And more frightened than she had ever been in her life. No one could possibly know how the turmoil in her brain or the twitters in her stomach made her lightheaded and nauseous. Setting columns of type, even under a tight deadline, was easy compared to dressing up, especially when one had nothing to dress up in. Even protecting her printing press with her father’s revolver when her abolitionist editorials riled up the townspeople paled in comparison to the terror she felt at meeting Colonel Macready and the rest of the Maple Falls citizenry in nothing but her plain black dress, a bit of imagination and a lot of daring.

She donned her long black skirt, then lifted the black Spanish lace shawl from its tissue-paper nest in her satchel and approached the mirror. Tucking one edge of the delicate lace into the top of her camisole, she wound the long ends around her body, leaving her shoulders exposed. At her cleavage, she formed a soft knot and let the shawl fringe dangle.

There. It looked…exotic. Risqué.

Elegant. Sinful.

Dear Lord in heaven, what if they arrested her?

Chapter Three

Kellen Macready’s hand shook so violently he had to laugh. This evening’s ordeal would be worse than Chickamauga.

He stepped to the door in his paneled mahogany bedroom and yanked it open. “Madge!”

A faint voice floated from the floor below. “What is it, Colonel? I’m rollin’ out some biscuits.”

Kellen groaned. Mrs. Squires’s biscuits came out of the oven hard as minié balls. “I can’t tie this damned neckpiece.”

Footsteps clumped up the staircase. “Mercy me, you’re worse than a bairn.” Her rounded form appeared in the doorway, hands on her hips.

“Bairns don’t wear neckpieces,” he retorted. “Or shirts starched so stiff they crackle.” He liked teasing Mrs. Squires. She wasn’t afraid to talk back to him.

“I starch ’em the same way every week.” She fussed at his neck, her knobbed fingers still dexterous in spite of her arthritis. “Why the devil are ye wearin’ this fancied-up thingamabob tonight?”

“Because,” Kellen gritted out, “I gave my word to Dora Mae Landsfelter.”

“Oh, aye.” Mrs. Squires’s graying eyebrows drew together. “I remember. Sorry now, are ye?”

Kellen thought for a moment. “Only about the starch, Madge. I gave my word of honor about the rest. It will be all right in the end.”

The housekeeper sniffed. “You hope.”

Kellen jerked. He did hope. Then for the thousandth time in the past week he wondered how he’d gotten himself into this fix.

He’d considered marriage once, before the Great War and his twenty-first birthday. She’d wait for him, she said. But she hadn’t. She married his best friend the spring he marched off with the Army of Virginia, and the next winter she succumbed to typhoid. Women laced their fingers around one’s heart and then threw it away.

His intent was to keep his pledge to the school building fund committee, help them raise money. But he’d resolved that Dora Mae’s harebrained scheme wouldn’t involve any part of his heart. Plenty of people did not marry for love.

Mrs. Squires eyed him. “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”

“Reasonably sure, yes. For one thing, it will put a stop to that gaggle of matchmaking mothers pushing their daughters at me. And their sisters and their widowed aunts and their cousins and…”

Besides, he was the last male in the Macready line. He would hate to pass from this world without leaving an heir.

And in addition, you damned fool, you gave Mrs. Landsfelter your word.

Underneath he knew there was more to it than Dora Mae’s persuasive powers. Lately he’d been hungry for something more in his life. Something to fill the void yawning before him as he grew yet another year older. It was the one thing Kellen could not admit to anyone else. He was lonely. He wanted someone to talk to. Someone to laugh with.

Lolly’s heart plunked into her stomach like a bucket full of rocks. The receiving line stretched from the ballroom entrance halfway around the huge ballroom to the cloth-covered refreshment table, a distance of maybe twenty feet. To her, it seemed like the Great Wall of China.

And all those people!

She liked people, but she preferred them one at a time. In big crowds, her throat went dry as a dust dolly and even when she could think of something to say, she couldn’t push a single word past her paralyzed tongue. In Kansas, she had let her newspaper editorials and Papa’s revolver speak for her. Out here in Oregon she felt tongue-tied. A flatland country weed in a citified rose garden.

The line of faces turned toward her, waiting. In the glow of the huge gaslight chandelier overhead they looked like a row of smiling hard-boiled eggs.

“Thank heavens you’re finally heah,” a voice hissed in her ear. “They cain’t staht the reception until all three of us go through the receivin’ line together.” Fleurette stepped to the head of their little procession and signaled for Carrie to follow.

The young schoolteacher looked sweet in a high-necked mint-green dotted muslin with no trimming other than covered buttons to the hem of a softly pleated skirt. Fleurette’s frothy puff-sleeved concoction of yellow taffeta engulfed her slim figure in layers of ruffles and frills, swirled into a train at the back, punctuated with a large silk rosette.

“Are we-all ready?”

“Leora, you look just lovely,” Carrie whispered as Fleurette’s hand reached out to snag the young schoolteacher’s sleeve. “But…” Carrie paused as Fleurette pulled her into position. “Somehow you seem…shorter.”

“I changed my shoes.” Unable to trust her voice further, Lolly brought up the rear in silence, her lips twitching into a smile. What a picture they must make: The Three Musketeers turned out in full battle regalia.

She knew she must look like a gypsy, and she’d removed her shoes because they pinched her toes like an iron vise. But at the moment she couldn’t let herself think about it.

A hand reached out, clasped hers and pumped it up and down. The next thing she knew she was being introduced to the mayor, Cyrus Bowman.

Then the mayor’s imperious-looking wife, Hortense, and the banker and his wife and, next to her, his mother-in-law, all named something that sounded like Shumaker. Next came the head of the school board; the town doctor and his twin daughters; a mill owner named Hickmeyer; the newspaper editor, Orven Tillotsen; a retired railroad builder; and more wives and daughters and mothers-in-law than any one town deserved. The blur of names and faces made Lolly’s head ache.

Another outstretched hand grasped hers just as Carrie, one step ahead of her, made a little moaning sound. “There he is,” she murmured. “At the very end of the line.”

Lolly could see nothing beyond Carrie except great clouds of yellow taffeta, but over the next mumbled introduction, Fleurette’s voice rang out.

“Why, Colonel Macready, Ah have heard so much about you. So charmin’ to meet you at last. Ah, too, am a Southerner.”

Carrie turned her head toward Lolly and rolled her eyes before stepping up to the next person in line. “Mrs. Whipple, may I present Miss Leora Mayfield?”

Lolly tried to smile. “Mrs. Whipple.”

The old woman in plum sateen shot her a keen look and nodded brusquely. “My dear.”

At her side, Carrie heaved another sigh, and Lolly heard her quavery voice. “Good evening, C-Colonel.”

After Carrie, Lolly was next in line. Great balls of brimstone, she was but one step away from the moment she had agonized about ever since she left Kansas—meeting a perfect stranger who would marry her.

Kellen watched the three guests of honor unknot themselves from the circle they had formed and step up to the Meet and Greet Trail, as he termed it. Barbarous custom, receiving lines. An uncivilized way to trot out the goods for inspection before the fair.

He knew Careen Gundersen from many previous occasions over the years, mostly birthday parties her parents had hosted. Careen had turned out to be a very capable young woman. Prim, maybe. And a tad…flat, somehow. The girl had always had a sensible head on her shoulders; it was beyond his understanding why on earth she, of all people, would want to enter this matrimonial charade.

Gliding down the line ahead of Careen was a meticulously groomed lady in a voluminous flounced skirt that was wound up in the back like a beehive. Quite a lot of baggage resting on that derriere. He watched her navigate from Sol Stanton to Mrs. Whipple and on toward him, her posture so rigid that her golden-blond corkscrew curls didn’t bob but hung stiffly in place, even when she tossed her head. Sugar water and rag rollers, he guessed. Females put up with the damnedest things.

The women looked somewhat like curious birds, though of different species. Careen resembled a baby wren, her folded wings yet untried. The lady with the curls reminded him of a yellow silk peacock.

His gaze drifted beyond the peacock to the next person in the line, but he couldn’t get a clear view of her. All he could see was the gracefully flared black skirt she wore, which, now that he studied it over the bare shoulder of Miss—what was peacock’s name again?—struck him with its simplicity. Not a wren. Not a peacock, then. An elegant black swan.

“Why, Colonel Macready…” The peacock’s voice chirped on. “…am a Southerner.”

Kellen tore his gaze from the woman in black and focused on the beaming heart-shaped face before him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Ah said Ah am also a Southerner, like yourself.”

“Actually, after nearly fifteen years in Maple Falls, I now consider myself an Oregonian.”

“Oh, now, Colonel. Ah don’t believe that for one li’l minute.”

He made polite noises while she gushed on until he saw an opportunity to pass her on to the refreshment table, where Ruth Underwood and her husband were pouring champagne.

And applejack, he remembered from his earlier conversation with the hotel bartender. He licked his lips. He couldn’t get there soon enough.

Then Careen stood before him, sighing like a spring wind through the aspen grove.

“Careen, it’s nice to see you.”

“Good evening, C-Colonel. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks and weeks.”

“As have I,” he lied. “It’s a bit like one of your birthday parties, isn’t it? Except for the champagne, of course.”

And the applejack.

“Oh, Colonel, you will dance with me later?”

“Why, of course. I’ve danced with you at every party since you were five years old. Remember how you used to stand on my shoe tops?”

Why was she looking at him like that?

“I remember,” Careen murmured.

But Kellen was no longer listening. He found himself watching the woman in black, now speaking to old Mrs. Whipple.

Her chin tipped forward, allowing a waterfall of loose, dark curls to tumble over her bare shoulders. And God in heaven, what shoulders! Some kind of rich-looking lace festooned them, allowing glimpses of creamy flesh through the open cut-work. He tried not to stare. The way her body curved in and out made his neck burn.

She held on to Mrs. Whipple’s hand for an extra-long minute, and then Careen reached out and drew her away, toward him. The woman lifted her head, and her thick, dark hair danced against those satiny shoulders.

And then she did something so completely unexpected he wondered if he was dreaming. She shut her eyes tight and stretched out her hand toward him.

“Miss Leora Mayfield,” Mrs. Whipple intoned.

“Please, please,” she whispered. “Hold on to my hand. I am having a nervous reaction.”

Kellen clasped her hand in both of his and peered into her face. The woman was attractive. Extraordinarily attractive. He studied her wide mouth, the dark lashes against her cheeks. My God, she’s beautiful.

“Reaction to what?” he managed.

“To…this. All of these people.” Her lids opened and her eyes locked with his. They were so blue and clear they made his throat ache.

“Crowds terrify me.”

“Your nervous reaction is not to me, then?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no. At least not yet.”

Relief coursed through him, followed by a gut-tightening unease. Not yet?

Kellen stood motionless, steadying her trembling hand in his. The receiving line broke up, reforming in twos and threes at the refreshment table to his right.

“I was about to have a glass of something to drink,” he said gently.

“Oh, thank heaven. Could you possibly bring me one, as well? I’m so glad this is over, I feel like celebrating.”

He laughed without thinking. His opinion exactly.

“But it is not over. It has just begun.”

“For me it’s over. The hard part, anyway. The rest is up to the Ladies Helpful Society.”

Kellen winced. At this moment he didn’t want to be reminded of the corner Dora Mae Landsfelter and her cadre of Helpful Ladies had backed him into. All he wanted to do was enjoy this moment for as long as he could.

“Come.” He turned her toward the refreshment table. “I think we’ll both need a drink before this evening is over.”

Chapter Four

At the refreshment table, Kellen watched Ruth Underwood pour fizzing champagne into two glasses while her husband glugged dark gold applejack from a ceramic jug into teacups. He reached for a glass of the champagne for Miss Mayfield. Miss Mayfield, however, lifted a brimming cup of the applejack and brought it to her lips.

He kept his eyebrows from rising by sheer force of will. “You ever taste applejack before?”

She looked at him over the rim of the cup. “Never.”

“Would you care to sit down first?”

“Most definitely. As soon as I drink some of this.” She downed a big swallow, and he watched her eyes widen and then tear up. He lifted the cup from her fingers and steered her to the green velvet settee against the wall.

She sat down. Then jumped up. Sat down once more and bent forward as if to inspect the hem of her skirt. When she raised her head, Kellen presented the glass of champagne. She reached instead for the cup of applejack in his other hand.

A single-minded swan. “It’s pretty potent,” he cautioned. “More than ninety proof the way Josh Bodwin makes it.”

“Good,” she said. She took another swallow. “You’re quite right—lots of proof.” Her voice sounded raspy. Kellen drank half the glass of champagne while she gulped another mouthful of the brandy.

“Do you do this often?” he inquired. The only woman he’d ever known who could put away liquor like this was Great-Aunt Henrietta, and she’d had years of practice.

“No, I have never taken spirits before. It tastes rather like—” she thought for a moment “—crushed oak leaves.”

He couldn’t let her swill down any more; she’d fizzle out like a spent match. He had to think of something to distract her.

“Would you care to dance?”

Lolly looked up at him. She would give the moon to dance with this man, tall and elegant in his black dress coat and knotted silk tie. He moved without making a single extra motion, like a mountain cat. A panther, that was it. And his eyes were positively hypnotic, an odd gray-green, and twinkly, as if he were amused at something.

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Can’t?” His dark brows arched upward for a split second. “As in, you don’t know how? Or you are already spoken for? Or…you don’t wish to?”

“Oh, I do wish to, but…” No, she couldn’t possibly tell him the truth. He would think her a complete ninny.

Or would he?

“The truth is,” she heard her voice say, “I cannot raise my arms that high. My…that is, the top half of me will come undone.”

Colonel Macready stared at her. Completely unnerved by her admission, Lolly fiddled with the loose knot at her bosom. He swept his gaze over the gauzy lace covering her chest and shoulders, and suddenly his face changed.

“Your trunk went on to the next stop! Is that it?”

“How on earth would you know that?”

“Happens all the time. The Russell Steam Engine Line prides itself on two-minute station stops. They’ll bring it back tomorrow afternoon.”

“I am relieved to hear that. In the meantime…” She sent a surreptitious glance down her front.

“In the meantime, you could waltz without raising your arms. I will simply lower mine.”

She took another gulp of the interesting-tasting cider and rose unsteadily. “Very well. If you will promise not to laugh if, well, if shomeshing…that is, something…untoward occurs.”

Kellen swung her away to the band’s raucous rendition of “The Blue Bell of Scotland.” Not a waltz, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to put his arms around her and keep her talking.

They danced in silence for half a chorus, and then his black swan opened her mouth. What came out shocked him into a complete standstill.

“Colonel Macready, do you really, truly want to get married?”

He tightened his hand at her waist. She felt warm and soft under his fingers. No corset. Interesting.

“You want an honest answer, I assume?”

“Honest? Why, of course I want an honest answer. It is an honest question.”

“Well, then, yes.” He swallowed hard. “I do want to marry.”

“But why?”

“Why! What kind of question is that? Most men want to marry at some time or other.”

“Yes, but…I mean, why this way, with the Ladies Helpful Society stirring the pot?”

“Ah. The truth again, I gather?”

“Yes, please. It’s usually much more interesting than anything one could make up.”

“Well…” His throat threatened to close up tight. He swallowed again. “That is, I am comfortably situated and, well, I am getting older. And I find that I am…”

“Yes?”

He was beginning to sweat under his starched shirt. “In want of a companion. That is, a wife.”

She cocked her head and the fine dark eyebrows rose. “What for? You do your own cooking, I understand. Even your own ironing.” She looked from his chin to his toes and back. “And you look extremely well cared for, right down to your shiny gold cuff links.”

“Miss Mayfield, let me make something clear. I do not want a wife for the purpose of caring for me. I…well, I— My God, are you always so inquisitive?”

“Yes. Always. Up until a week ago I ran a newspaper office, you see. I got quite in the habit of asking questions. Also, it must be obvious that I have a personal interest in your reasons.”

“Ah, the Ladies Helpful Society again.”

“Exactly. Why ever would you put three elderly ladies in charge of choosing your life’s companion?”

“I can’t answer that. I just plain don’t know, unless maybe it’s because I gave my heart away twenty years ago and at my age I don’t expect to fall in love again.”

“Certainly not,” she said in a crisp voice. “Love is for the young.”

He missed a step.

“How old are you, Miss Mayfield?”

Lolly missed a step. Her stocking-clad foot smacked into the hard toe of his left shoe. She bit her lip. “I am twenty-nine and eleven-twelfths.”

“I am forty-three…”

She gazed up at his chin. My goodness, he didn’t look a day over thirty-five, except for that streak of silver at his temple. And the faint whisker shadow visible on his chin; why, he looked rugged and manly and…even a little dangerous.

“And two-thirds.” A conspiratorial glint of humor showed in his eyes.

“Ow!” She collided with his foot again.

“Miss Mayfield?”

“Colonel Macready?”

“Leora, is it?”

“Lolly.”

“My given name is Kellen. My grandmother’s family name. And…” He stopped in the middle of the ballroom and stood looking down into her face. “I would like—”

“Oh, theah you are, Colonel! Ah’ve requested a Virginia reel. You will partner me, won’t you?”

Fleurette eyed Lolly with a look that reminded her of a green glass bottle on her mother’s medicine shelf. The one that contained castor oil.

“That is, when y’all are finished heah, of course.”

Lolly caught Colonel Macready’s eye. Some devilish imp inside her pushed her lips open. “I do believe the colonel is quite finished.”

She spun away and limped—unobtrusively, she hoped—back to the green velvet settee where she sank down onto the soft cushion with a sigh. She would never, never learn to keep her mouth shut.

She bit her lip and watched the colonel swing Fleurette up and down the line of dancers while the band boomed out a reel. Fleurette’s yellow silk train twitched and jumped with a life of its own while the shiny brass instruments and one violin warbled on.

Lolly kept time with her stockinged toes hidden under her skirt, sipping the cup of apple cider she’d left on the side table. It tasted different now. Better. Warm and soothing when it reached her stomach. Her chest began to feel floaty, as if any moment it might sail away from the rest of her body.

Not only that, she thought in alarm, the tips of her— Heavens, she shouldn’t be having such thoughts!

Her nipples swelled into hardened peaks anyway. “Stop that!” she ordered under her breath.

She focused her attention on the yellow swirl of silk taffeta in the colonel’s arms and then on the colonel himself. How graceful his motions were as he swooped his partner around the room. And how tall and straight he was. She’d seen tall, handsome men before, but she had never seen one like this.

His tousled dark hair and mustache gave him a slightly rakish air, even though he was correctly dressed right up to his chin. His mouth moved, saying something to Fleurette, and his teeth flashed in a grin. Then his lips closed, leaving just a hint of a smile.

Fleurette gazed up into his face, her laughter trilling over the sound of the fiddle. Over the cornet, as well. The colonel’s chiseled features remained impassive, but his eyes—those unsettling eyes— like liquid jade—flicked over the line of dancers as if looking for something and then returned to his partner.

Fleurette’s lashes beat like gold butterfly wings against her pinkened cheeks. The colonel tightened his lips and looked up at the chandelier.

Lolly sat upright. At the chandelier? Was he bored? With the most ladified lady in the entire room? Why, they looked simply wonderful dancing together. The perfect couple.

So why was he staring at the ceiling?

Lolly’s toes curled under. A man as heart-stoppingly handsome as he was would always want a pretty partner on his arm. A pretty wife.

A pretty, slim wife.

Her breath gusted out in a rush. Oh, bother. She was not going to cry. Not one drop. She most certainly was not.

She would avert her eyes and…and have another sip of cider. She drew the cup to her lips.

Empty? Over the rim she saw Colonel Macready bow over Fleurette’s daintily extended hand, gently disengage himself from her fingers and head in Lolly’s direction.

Her heart flip-flopped. Her belly felt cold, and then hot, and then cold again. And farther down, between her thighs, a secret part of her throbbed to life.

“Oh, not you, too,” she breathed.

Before the colonel had completed three of his long-legged strides, a spoon tinked against a glass and everything—noise, motion and Kellen Macready—came to a halt.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?” Lolly tensed at Dora Mae Landsfelter’s commanding voice. Something momentous was going to happen. She could feel it.

“The Ladies Helpful Society of Maple Falls has a wonderful surprise for you this evening. A most unusual surprise, but I am assured by the committee members, Minnie Sullivan and Ruth Underwood, that it is perfectly proper. Colonel Macready? Will you step forward?”

“A Question Bee!” Carrie stared at Dora Mae Landsfelter’s beaming face, then tipped her head toward Lolly. “Does she mean like a Spelling Bee?” she intoned.

“I suppose so,” Lolly whispered back. “Why should our knowledge of those things matter to him? He wants a wife, not an encyclopedia.”

“Well,” Carrie ventured, “his wife will also be the mother of his children. Wouldn’t he want her to be educated?”

Fleurette swept toward them, a swirl of bobbing yellow ruffles. “What are y’all whisperin’ about? Are y’all talkin’ about me?”

“Not you at all,” Carrie assured her. “About the Question Bee.”

“Oh, that.” Fleurette tossed her curls. “Ah ’spect the colonel…” Her green eyes swept the room. “My, he is handsome, isn’t he? Ah think he desires knowledge of our background and upbringing.”

“He knows everything about me,” Carrie wailed. “What will I say?”

“Just tell him the borin’ ol’ truth, honey.” Fleurette bent toward the two women. “Could Ah join y’all on that settee? Mah poor feet ache somethin’ awful after all that dancin’.”

Carrie and Lolly shifted apart to make room, and Fleurette wedged her derriere between them. Two large puffs of yellow silk ballooned out on each side, spilling over Carrie’s green dress and Lolly’s black skirt.

“Oh, my, that does feel so much better. Now, what were we—”

“Ladies and gentlemen?” A spoon tinked for attention and the three gray-haired Helpful Ladies gathered in front of the refreshment table. Minnie Sullivan’s hands darted and swooped before her bosom. “Let me tell, Dora Mae. I was the one who thought of it.”

“It was my idea, Min. Don’t you remember? You had just finished your second serving of Ruth’s applesauce cake and—”

“Why, Dora Mae Landsfelter, don’t tell me you counted my desserts?”

“Goddammit to hell,” a deep voice rolled over the assembly. “I cannot abide squabbling females.”

“Oh, of course not, Colonel,” the two women sang in unison.

Colonel Macready strode through the tittering crowd. “It was my idea, if I remember correctly. I proposed it to Mrs. Underwood an hour ago.”

Minnie’s hands fluttered. “Oh, yes. Yes, you are quite right.”

“And since it is the only suggestion the Helpful Ladies have allowed me to contribute—” he made his way to the front of the room “—let’s get on with it.”

“Well put, Kelly,” a voice said.

“Ask yer questions, Colonel,” another man added. “We’re sure ’nuf curious about what these here ladies think about…things.”

Beside her, Lolly felt Fleurette’s silk-swathed body stiffen. Could the woman be nervous? She had sufficient fancy background and aristocratic upbringing to answer a hundred of the colonel’s questions. Lolly could only pray none of them would touch on Abolitionist newspapers in Kansas.

“Question One,” Dora Mae Landsfelter announced. “Colonel? You may do the honors.”

Kellen stood perfectly still, surveying the three samples of femininity squashed together, their fluffed-out feathers settling over their nests. The peacock’s showy plumage nearly buried both Careen and Miss Mayfield.

He chuckled under his breath. Life was too short not to enjoy this. He sank into an upholstered wing-backed chair, loosened his neckpiece and picked up his cue from Dora Mae.

“Question One,” he reiterated. “What about Maple Falls interests you the most? Miss Gundersen?”

Careen jerked as if an elbow had been jabbed into her ribs. “My students,” she said without hesitation. “They ask so many questions. Naturally, I try to answer every one.”

A murmur of approval ran around the room. It sounded curiously like industrious bees humming in a hive. Kellen leaned back against the brocade and smiled at Careen. She was very practical-minded, the epitome of a dedicated schoolteacher.

“Miss LeClair?”

Fleurette tilted her head coquettishly. Two bright eyes fixed on him and then disappeared under a fluttery fringe of descending amber eyelashes. The perfect rosebud mouth opened.

“Why, Colonel, what interests me most here in Maple Falls is your home.”

Someone—it sounded like Sol Stanton—guffawed, but Miss LeClair proceeded undaunted. “After all, a bride wants to know wheah she will be livin’.”

Kellen kept his expression as impassive as he could. A shot of applejack would help, but Matt Underwood was whispering in his wife’s ear and Kellen couldn’t catch his eye. He turned his attention to the black swan.

“Miss Mayfield?”

She did look lovely in that lacy black getup, her cheeks rosy, her blue eyes slightly unfocused and her nose…

Good God, her nose was bright red! She was snockered! An English heritage, he would guess; their cheeks and noses reddened under the influence of spirits.

He wanted to laugh. Correction, he wanted to throttle her. Something inside him couldn’t bear to watch her make a fool of herself. In the next second he wanted to protect her. Oh, hell, he wanted to…

It was too late to retract the question. Say something simple, he urged her. Something short, using words of only one syllable.

The tip of her tongue slipped out to wet her lips and he heard a tiny sound. Oh, Lord, she had the hiccups.

Her mouth opened. “I think…” She closed her lips and frowned, and Kellen saw her throat tighten in another spasm.

“I think what interests me most about Ma-aple Falls is you, Colonel.”

Kellen blinked. “Me!”

“Precise-ly. What I find most intri-guing is why you would let the La-dies Helpful Society choose a wife for you. Oh, I understand about building the new sch-ool, but, to be honesht, uh honest, I would think—”

Kellen sent a desperate look toward the refreshment table. Do something!

Dora Mae nodded. “Question Two,” she stated in a piercing tone.

Thank God. Kellen wet his own lips and dug his notes out of his breast pocket. “Yes, well. Question Two is…what makes you happy? Miss Gundersen?”

Careen’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s easy, Colonel. I like solving things, like riddles. Or arithmetic problems. I like to figure things out.”

Another approving buzz circled around the hive.

“Miss LeClair?”

The pale eyelashes swooped down, then up. “Ah am happy when Ah can please others. Especially one particular Other, if you take my meanin’.”

Kellen unclenched his fingers. Meaning taken, yes. But believed? Not unless pigs flew south in the winter.

“Miss…” He caught himself just in time. Had the black swan had time to conquer her hiccups? He bent forward on the pretext of flicking a speck off his trouser leg and sent a surreptitious glance at Miss Mayfield.

She sat straight as a queen, her hands clasped in her lap—or what he could see of her lap under Miss Peacock’s voluminous skirt. And she was looking him straight in the eye. A challenge.

Ask me, her expression said. Get it over with.

“Miss Mayfield?”

“Flowers,” she blurted. “Flowers make me happy. Yellow ones. And sunsets and bread-baking smells and peach ice cream and running barefoot in long green grass and lovingsomeonelikeIlovedmyfather….” She paused for air. “There’s much more, but that’s all I can think of at the moment.”

So there, her gaze said.

Well-done. He congratulated her with a silent nod.

And just in time, too. Miss Mayfield’s eyelids were beginning to droop. The applejack had caught up with her.

“And now,” Dora Mae announced with a flourish, “the Last Question. Colonel?”

Kellen crumpled his notes in his fist and took a deep breath. The question he really wanted to ask wasn’t on his list. In fact he hadn’t thought of it until this moment.

He shouldn’t inquire about something so personal. But he had to know. He had to.

He took in a deep lungful of air and plunged. “The last question is, Why on earth are you interested in marrying me?”

All three women gaped at him.

Careen recovered first. “Every eligible female in this town would simply die to marry you, Colonel. Surely you don’t find that surprising?”

Miss LeClair responded as Kellen would have predicted. “Ah have heard on good authority that yoah a brave military officer and a Southern gentlemen. And that is exactly what Ah am lookin’ for.”

And his swan?

Miss Mayfield’s head nodded toward the yellow-silk-clad shoulder on her right.

“Miss Mayfield?” He sent her an urgent unspoken message. Wake up. Hoping the sound of his voice would rouse her, he repeated the question in a louder tone. “Why are you interested in marrying me?”

The blue eyes popped open. “Why? My gracious, I think that would be obvious. I don’t want to be an old maid!”

Laughter. Then the humming of animated conversation rose and eddied about the room; it sounded exactly like a hive of bees beginning to swarm. Kellen was too stunned to respond.

Squeezed between the settee arm and Fleurette’s voluminous skirts, Lolly decided she had to stand up. Either that or fall asleep right where she sat. Already her toes were numb and the tingly feeling was beginning to move up her calves toward her knees.

She tried to rise, but she couldn’t struggle past the enveloping mountain of yellow silk. “Ahem,” she murmured.

Fleurette chattered away without dropping a beat.

Lolly shifted her weight. “Excuse me,” she murmured. She tried to press down the puffs of skirt material.

No reaction. Fleurette’s voice drawled on. And on.

Lolly didn’t want to make a scene, but she had to get out of there. Now. She could feel the lace shawl pulling away from the top of her camisole; two more minutes and it would unwind completely and she would be sitting here in nothing but her camisole!

Clasping one hand to her bosom to hold things together, she poked the other under the yellow silk, aimed for solid flesh and pinched.

“Oo-ooooh!” Fleurette sprang to her feet. “Well, really,” she huffed. “Ah do declare…” Her voice trailed off when the colonel stepped forward.

“Is something wrong?”

Lolly flinched. Had he seen what she did?

“N-no,” Fleurette stammered. She sent Lolly a venomous look. “Ah guess Ah was mistaken.”

But from the glint of amusement in the colonel’s eyes, Lolly would wager he knew very well what she’d done.

Now that she was unencumbered, she would try again to stand up and make as polite an exit as she could manage, considering that her head felt light and kind of swirly. She would rock her weight forward and straighten to a standing position, despite her dizziness.

She commanded her knees to flex. Nothing happened.

She stiffened her spine. On the count of three, then.

“Leora?” Carrie peered at her from the other end of the green settee.

“One,” Lolly said.

“One what? Are you all right? You look…”

“Two,” Lolly muttered under her breath.

“Leora?” A hand stretched toward her.

Three.

She tried. She really tried. But ever so slowly, she began to tip sideways. Oh, mercy and botherment. Her cheek touched the velvet. My, it felt so good to close her eyes and…

The next thing she knew, someone—a man she guessed from his strength and his piney-musky scent—was lifting her upright. She opened her eyes to see Kellen Macready’s face much closer to hers than seemed proper.

“Oh, h’lo,” she murmured. “You smell good.”

Kellen’s voice vibrated against her ear. “Miss Mayfield, put your arms around my neck.”

“I would if I could,” she whispered. “But they have stopped working.”

“In that case…” He lifted her off the settee, rolled her against his chest and began moving.

“Oh, please,” she moaned. “Not sho fast. I feel like I’ve sprouted wings and I’ll fly right up to the ceiling.”

“You won’t,” he assured her.

“How do you know?”

This time an unmistakable laugh rumbled in his chest. “Gravity is on my side.”

His voice sounded near her temple. “Close your eyes, Miss Mayfield. And don’t talk.”

Lolly obeyed. Oh, but it felt lovely to be held in his arms. Her head pressed against his neck; the silk tie he wore tickled her chin. He did smell good. So good she wanted to lick his skin and taste it.

“Miss Mayfield has fainted, I believe.” His deep voice resonated against her ear.

Oh, no, I haven’t fainted, an inner voice reminded. I never faint. Even if I think I might die, I don’t faint. At this moment she might be floating with the angels near the ceiling, but she certainly had not lost reason or consciousness.

Voices ebbed and sighed around her. One in particular cut through the woolly-bear feeling in her brain. “Well, Ah never…”

A door banged open and a rush of cooler air blew against her face and shoulders. As he descended the stairs, the colonel’s body sent a little jolt into hers at every step. She counted all eighteen.

“Miss Mayfield, where is your room?”

The sweet, drowsy feeling was spreading through her limbs. It was so delicious she didn’t want it to end. She shook her head.

He groaned. “You can talk now.”

“Dowanna,” she mumbled. “Wanna stay right here.”

He made the funny noise inside his chest and then groaned again. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, it would cause talk.”

“Don’t care. Been there before.”

A short silence. “For another, it would upset Dora Mae Landsfelter and the Ladies Helpful Society.”

Her lids flew open. “Oh! I forgot all about Dora Mae and…that. Tha’s why I was so scared all evening. Tha’s why I came to Maple Falls in th’ first plash. Place.”

“What is your room number?” he asked again.

“Ish room number…” Her mind went blank.

Kellen waited, breathing less steadily. “Yes?”

“Jush look for my shoes. I left them jush inside the door. Have pointy toes and they pinch.”

He guessed he had no choice. He stepped along the hallway with his burden in his arms, testing doorknobs, until he found one that opened. Sure enough, a pair of black leather pumps leaned against the baseboard. He kicked the door shut behind him, walked to the bed and laid her on top of the quilt. She curled up like a kitten, folded her hands under her chin and was asleep in an instant.

Kellen’s chest did something funny, as if a ripple had zigzagged from his throat to his belly. What the devil?

He spent a good five minutes just staring at her, noticing the scattering of freckles across her nose, the loose dark hair, sneaking from the bun at the back of her neck, the faint laugh lines in the outer corners of her eyes. She sure looked different from Careen and The Peacock.

And she sure felt different when he held her.

Damn. He had to get out of here. Now. Either that or risk a scandal that would destroy Miss Mayfield’s reputation.

He’d send Careen down to check on her. And tomorrow…

Oh, God, the Helpful Ladies and their bride competition! Tomorrow it would all start in earnest. How adept could a newspaper editor from dry, windswept Kansas be at greensward croquet?

Chapter Five

Shielding her eyes from the bright sunlight, Lolly moved along the board sidewalk keeping each footstep as smooth as possible to avoid jarring her head. This morning, the mere tap of her shoes on the wood planks sounded like cannon fire.

There it was. Bodwin’s Mercantile. She pushed open the door and bypassed a bushel basket of apples perched on top of a pickle barrel. The thought of food, even a tiny bite of apple, sent her stomach into rebellion.

“Something I can do for you, miss?” The lanky man behind the counter wiped his hands on his denim apron and leaned toward her. He had a breakfasty smell about him, as if he had a grilled sausage in his pocket.

Lolly gulped. “Yes, I—”

“Got just about everything in stock ’cept skunk traps and silver-tipped walking sticks.”

“Do you carry ladies’ outerwear?”

He surveyed her with penetrating blue eyes. “New in town, aren’tcha?”

Lolly swallowed. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, now, ma’am. Anybody’s lived here more’n twenty-four hours knows Dora Mae Landsfelter.”

“Yes, I am acquainted with Mrs. Landsfelter.”

“Well, then, you know why we don’t carry ladies’ outerwear. Or un-outerwear, neither.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Lolly said. “What has your mercantile stock to do with Mrs. Landsfelter?” She sensed a story here, maybe an amusing one, if she could worm it out of the shopkeeper. She could use a bit of levity this morning; her head buzzed as if it were crammed full of angry grasshoppers.

The lean man chuckled. “Name’s Joshua Bodwin, ma’am. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Leora Mayfield.”

“Oh, yes. You’re one of the brides. I recognize you from the reception last night.”

“You do?” She desperately hoped it was the first part of the evening, and not the last, which she had spent dangling from the arms of Colonel Macready.

“Yep. Kellen Macready pointed you out.”

“He did? What did he s-say?” Lolly’s voice cracked.

Mr. Bodwin grinned. “That you were partial to my applejack. I make it myself, don’tcha know. And deliver it to the hotel for their fancy do’s. I was hopin’ ’tweren’t too potent for womenfolk.”

“Oh, no,” Lolly fibbed. “It tasted quite wonderful. So…relaxing for a social gathering.”

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