Liz Ireland Read online

  “Yes, your trunk.”

  She tossed her head and emitted a gay little laugh. “Oh, I travel light! These two are all I brought with me.”

  Roy took hold of the two aged leather bags sagging at her feet, surprised at how little they weighed. He’d expected a rich lady to haul around half her worldly goods with her. Which just went to show, Mrs. Fitzsimmons was not only pretty, she had a little sense, too. Of course, she had been married already. Even if she hadn’t been married for long, a little of her husband’s natural male practicality seemed to have worn off on her.

  A widow! What a shame.

  Of course, maybe she hadn’t really been in love with her husband. He’d heard that rich families sometimes married off their daughters to other wealthy people just to make a good match, like farmers trying to improve the quality of their livestock. He shuddered to think of anything so degrading happening to Mrs. Fitzsimmons. Eleanor. What an odd, fussy name for such a lively girl. He wondered if people really called her Eleanor, or something shorter. Nora, maybe, or—

  “Shall we wait here for Parker?” she asked.

  Roy shook his head, berating himself for being so absentminded, but looking at Eleanor, he felt a little addlebrained, as if he were catching cold. “He’ll be here soon.”

  “Is it a long ride back to your farm?”

  “Almost an hour’s ride, if you take it slow.” He spoke slowly, concentrating.

  “Oh, let’s—I shall enjoy every minute of it!” She took a breath as if she were inhaling warm springtime air instead of the cold wet stuff that felt as if it might turn one’s lungs to a solid chunk of ice. “I just love looking at the countryside!”

  Roy squinted out at the expanse of brown earth and grass around them. Facing away from town, the view was almost completely unbroken by trees. Born in this land, he’d long since ceased to marvel over it, but most people when first set down in the prairie grassland became almost seasick from the relentlessly flat terrain. They couldn’t see the wonders hidden there—hills hidden by the uniform grass, waterways that would snake through the landscape almost unseen until a person was right on them. “You like it here?” Disbelief rang in his tone.

  “If you’d been surrounded by buildings all your life, you would relish the open space.” She took another deep breath, which seemed to darken the roses in her cheeks. “It’s so refreshing, so clean!”

  Air was pretty much air in his book, but swept away by her expression of joy and awe, he took a deep breath, too, and was astonished. It was refreshing!

  “It’s cold here, though,” he warned her. “You’ve come at a bad time.” He heard his sentence hang in the air, saw the look of mortification that passed over her face, and hastened to add, “A bad time of year, I meant. We have mighty cold winters—but of course we’re pleased to have you.”

  She laughed. “Thank you! With such a kind host, I couldn’t mind the weather.”

  Her answer tickled him. What’s more, he believed her words. He believed her because her eyes sparkled with pleasure, and because even as the wind seemed to bluster across the prairie for the sole purpose of wrapping its icy fingers around them, Eleanor smiled with enjoyment. Unconsciously, he felt a silly, joyful grin pull at his own lips.

  “Only…” Her eyes glinted merrily. “If that brother of yours doesn’t come fairly soon, I might turn to block ice like the man hawks on Second Avenue.”

  Roy didn’t understand Second Avenue or ice men, but her joke nevertheless made him throw back his head and roar. Which was the first time in months he’d laughed so hard. Now he was glad he’d waited. The feeling was like a dam bursting.

  He wondered whether she was always this way. A little of her would be a damn sight better than Ike’s flaccid humor. She was a lot easier on the eye, too.

  Eleanor turned her head, and her smile broadened. “And this…” She gestured forward with a woolen-gloved hand. “This must be Parker!”

  Parker walked forward and Roy felt his wide smile freeze on his face. How had Parker gotten that wagon around so fast? For some unknown reason, he wished his brother had taken longer. He wanted to pull Eleanor aside and talk to her some more, just the two of them. Laugh with her. He wanted…he wanted to have just a few more moments in which he alone was the object of her attention.

  Which was silly, of course. He would have plenty of time to talk to the woman back at the farm. Probably too much time. More likely than not, the sight of her red cheeks and dancing green eyes would begin to wear thin after a few days.

  But for now…

  For now, he saw his brother approach and felt stricken to the core when he realized how handsome Parker was. How his blue eyes sparked with intelligence, and how his smile was so open and friendly. Almost like Eleanor’s. And his overcoat was much nicer than the old farm coat Roy had put on when he left the house in such haste to meet the train. Roy’s coat was the same one he wore to feed livestock, and it looked it.

  When Parker and Eleanor greeted each other, it was as old friends would. Parker took both her small hands in his and inspected her from tip to toe. “Why, Mrs. Fitzsimmons! Look at you!”

  She laughed gaily. “Mr. McMillan! You’re even more handsome than I suspected!”

  And then they turned and, arm-in-arm, headed toward the wagon, already chattering together like intimate friends. Both seeming to have forgotten Roy completely. Behind them, he trudged along with the bags, biting his lip to hold back a scowl. There was no cause for the sharp stab of jealousy he felt in his chest, just as there was no reason at all for the gloominess that suddenly sank over him like a raincloud.

  But reason had nothing to do with the lost, forlorn way he suddenly felt. He probably looked just like Parker had last winter when he’d been forsaken by fickle Clara Trilby. And for all the world, he felt like moaning!

  “You’ll have to excuse my brother,” Parker said. “He can be a little distant with people sometimes. Especially women.”

  Ellie was puzzled as she watched Roy disappear into a feed store Parker had just stopped in front of. Distant? That word certainly didn’t describe the Roy McMillan who had met her at the station—although he had been a little quiet since they’d been in the wagon. “Is he shy?” she asked, remembering the difficulty he’d had finding his voice after she’d stepped off the train.

  Parker considered. “Not shy so much as suspicious.”

  Oh, dear. For the first time since reaching Paradise, she felt a prick of uneasiness.

  So far her trip west had been nothing but pleasurable, despite having left the only city, the only life, she’d ever known, and despite an exhausting, bone-rattling train ride. She’d been filled with hope and full of plans. Some might have been intimidated by the less-than-deluxe conditions, or the sameness of the landscape, but as Ellie sat upright on her stiff seat last night, only fitfully sleepy, she’d felt her anxieties slipping away just like all the material possessions she’d left behind. The open landscape, as flat in places as a tabletop, with its ocean of brown, gold, and amber waving grass punctuated with lonely towns and even lonelier farms, embraced her with its openness.

  And Paradise was just the bustling little town Parker had described. It didn’t quite live up to its namesake, but there was a lot here for her to like. The low wood buildings that lined both sides of a deeply rutted dirt road gave off their own sense of majesty and importance. And after travelling so far from the previous stop on the train, and especially from Omaha—the only town of real size she’d seen in Nebraska—she could well imagine how essential each and every enterprise here was to the people who lived nearby. In fact, the area gave her the feeling that the skills of as many people as possible were needed to keep the hard soil tamed and carry on the miracle of civilization on an unforgiving prairie. Maybe now she would feel essential, too—not, as she was in New York, a maid to be used and tossed aside when she became inconvenient.

  That last thought reminded her that she was coming to Nebraska—and accepting the McMillans
’ hospitality—under false pretenses. She had a few secrets that would be best kept hidden for as long as possible if she intended to forge a new life for herself, and for her baby, here. There was no reason anyone should find out that her child was illegitimate. She wasn’t going to allow him or her to pay for her sin.

  But if Roy McMillan was the suspicious type…

  “Your brother seemed perfectly harmless to me,” she said with a cautious smile. “Besides, I cannot imagine why anyone would be suspicious of me. I’m…well, just what I seem.”

  Parker grinned back at her. “Just a pretty young widow from Park Avenue?”

  At that moment, a cold gust of wind dissolved her smile into a tooth-chattering grimace. Ellie shivered, both from the cold and from Parker’s description of her, which didn’t suit her at all, she was afraid. Perhaps, at twenty, she could still be called young, but pretty? Her swelling belly, which she took pains to hide beneath petticoats and wraps and her coat, made her feel about as appealing as Ahab’s white whale. And of course, she was no more a widow than she was Queen of England, and as for Park Avenue, the only reason she’d ever been tolerated there was for her ability to appear unobtrusively with food trays.

  Parker stared at her, concerned. “You’re pale—would you like to go inside and get warm?”

  She shuddered, thinking of the man’s suspicious brother, and how easily he would see through her if he looked in her eyes now. “Oh, no—I am p-perfectly fine.”

  “Is that why your teeth are chattering? You must think I’m a barbarian for not insisting we go in earlier. Here,” he said, and before she knew what was what, he’d climbed off the wagon and was pulling her down, too.

  They went into the store, Homolka’s Feed and Seed, and were immediately the object of all eyes. Three men in shapeless coveralls and coats hunched around a small stove, while Roy spoke to a man standing by a back door. The building itself, which seemed more cavernous on the inside with its high beam roof and stacks and stacks of filled sacks of seed, intimidated Ellie for some reason. Smelling the strange, musty odor of the place, she knew immediately that she was in foreign territory—and from the way the men gaped openly at her, she was considered the foreigner.

  Her feet were rooted to the floor until Parker gave her a gentle tug forward.

  “Joe, Cal, Tom—this is Mrs. Fitzsimmons. She’s visiting us all the way from New York.”

  Parker’s introduction caused the men’s eyes to bug even more, and they stared at her now as if she were something especially exotic.

  “New York!” one of the exclaimed. “That’s a long way.”

  Ellie smiled. “Yes. Yes, it is,” she began anxiously. “It’s been a long journey, but now that I’m finally here, I don’t feel a bit tired. It’s so interesting to see the place Mr. McMillan described to me so perfectly. It seems I know each building as well as…”

  “Park Avenue?” Parker finished for her.

  As she looked into his eyes, so kind and sincere, her smile broadened even as her conscience pricked her. Her descriptions of New York had been accurate…which was more than she could say for her descriptions of herself.

  And yet Parker McMillan had been far too modest about his own appearance. He was tall and straight and proud, with a shock of blond hair atop his head that showed beneath the brim of his black hat. He had blue eyes that shone with kindness and intelligence. Though his frame was slighter, his eyes and hair lighter, he was almost the spitting image of his handsome brother…except that for some reason, Roy was the one who drew her eye.

  And when she looked at Roy now, he was staring straight back at her with an intensity that made her fear he could see straight through her smiling enthusiasm down to the deceit that lay behind it. She shivered, shuffled closer to the stove, and concentrated on warming her hands.

  She would have to be careful around Roy McMillan. Very careful indeed.

  A lot had changed in Paradise, Isabel Dotrice decided, and for the better. Though heaven knows it couldn’t have gotten worse from the last time she’d seen it! Back then there was a trading post and a feed store and a muddy trench that served as a street between the two. Now there were all sorts of establishments—a dentist, a drugstore, a lawyer’s office, a doctor and a mercantile. A church steeple and the cupola of a schoolhouse were the highest points in town and quite impressive in their modest way. A handsome brick edifice that proclaimed itself a hotel sat plop in the middle of this bustling community, and there were even a few buildings just built, standing idle, awaiting new commerce. She was most amazed to see a wire for a telephone stretched above Main Street.

  All in all, quite different, and much improved.

  Isabel took as much of the frigid air into her lungs as she could stand and let it out, smiling as her veil billowed away from her face. So far her journey had been very promising. Could things possibly work out as well as she dared to hope?

  She strolled along the surprisingly clean wood-plank sidewalk and peered curiously into storefronts, drawing many stares. Nebraskans always were nosy about strangers, she remembered now. She smiled back at them and kept right on walking, and even tossed a wink at the dentist as he gaped at her while he was supposed to be extracting a man’s tooth. The look on his face made her giggle to herself—heaven knows she wouldn’t want to be the man’s patient!—but she was stopped in midchuckle as she came upon just what she’d been hoping for.

  It was a small two-story wood building with a particularly appealing front, whitewashed and with a cheery red door. Perfect. She did love red! Peering in the window, she saw that the first floor was divided into a front and back room, which would be absolutely suited to her purposes. To the right, a small staircase—little more than a ladder, really—led to the upstairs. Of course the interior was rather dark, and painfully plain, but what was she here for if not to bring a little sparkle? Goodness knows these poor people needed a little brightness in their drab lives as they tried to cling to their patch of civilization on the endless prairie.

  She strolled over to the dry goods store and walked in, enjoying the bell as it jangled her arrival. She would have to get one of those. Oh, there was so much to be done!

  A bespectacled man looked up from the counter where he was measuring out a bolt of cloth for a customer. “Help you?” he asked tersely. He eyed her closely and, because she was a stranger, a little distrustfully.

  She smiled. “I hope so. I was wondering whom I should speak with to inquire about renting the empty building next door.”

  The man’s scissors stopped in mid cut, and the three other people in the room, all women, turned to gape at her.

  Isabel paid them no mind, only straightened a little taller and smiled more. She noticed the younger woman, a pretty blonde, eyeing her outfit with interest. Isabel’s cashmere coat was cut in the latest fashion, fitted to cover her wasp-waisted travelling dress. The Paris magazines apparently hadn’t reached Nebraska for a few decades. From the looks of things she wouldn’t be a bit surprised to discover these women were still blundering around in crinolines beneath their full, bulky skirts.

  “Well now,” the proprietor said in a drawl that seemed achingly slow. “I guess you’d mean Lew Offerman’s place.”

  “The door is flaming red,” Isabel said.

  “Yes, that’s Offerman’s, all right.”

  She’d forgotten these country folk sometimes needed a mental nudge. “Where may I find Mr. Offerman at this time of day?”

  “I saw him a little while ago going into the feed store.”

  “Splendid! Thank you!”

  She turned to leave, but couldn’t help stopping to view the hat display, though display was an overly complimentary term for the drab straw contraptions and poke bonnets which drowsed forgotten on a wooden rack in a corner. The sight made her mournful and determined all at once. Such a waste of material, such a lack of imagination, such a horror to think of one of them actually atop a human head. She’d arrived just in time, apparently!


  At that moment, a wagon with two fine horses leading it passed the store, drawing all the attention away from her.

  “Who’s that?” the pretty blond girl cried, running up to the picture window and nearly plastering herself against it most immodestly.

  The two older women joined her at the window and watched as the threesome Isabel had observed at the depot with such interest trotted out of town.

  “There’s a woman riding with the McMillan brothers!” the youngest brayed unhappily.

  “I didn’t recognize her, did you, Cora?”

  The other woman, who looked suspiciously like the blonde’s mother, pursed her lips at the disappearing wagon. “No, I didn’t. Now who do you think she is, and why would she be driving out toward the McMillan farm?” Her tone was disapproving, as if the McMillan brothers might be up to no good with this unknown woman. Or maybe they thought the woman would somehow be a corrupting influence on two grown men. “She didn’t look like kin to me.”

  “Could she be a housekeeper?” the other woman asked.

  The blond girl frowned. “Housekeeper! What would three bachelors want with one of those?”

  The two older women exchanged a meaningful glance.

  “It’s very peculiar—but those McMillan men never did hold with convention. I thought the younger ones would be different.”

  “Hmph!” Cora exclaimed. “After the way Parker treated poor Clara? I should think not!”

  Fussy cats! Isabel could maintain her silence no longer, even though she hadn’t the slightest idea what exactly had happened to poor Clara, or even who poor Clara was. This was a point of honor. “Excuse me, but I believe the young woman is a visitor from out of state who just came in on the train.”

  Three pairs of eyes swivelled toward her; the people seemed startled that she would know anything about the stranger, being a stranger herself. Only the youngest was bold enough to ask, “Visiting who? Do you know?”

  “Parker McMillan, I believe. Though she seemed quite friendly with both boys.” Although they could hardly be called boys anymore. Isabel suppressed a melancholy sigh. Where did the years scamper off to?