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“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.
