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The room erupted.
Becky gasped. “Is Papa worried like that? Could he get sick? Could he even—die?”
“Nothing bad has happened yet,” Audrey said. She reached across Marlee and patted her sister’s hand. “Calm down.”
“We discussed this,” Mrs. Tuttle called, and the ladies quieted. “We decided there are plenty of townsfolk, along with ranchers and farmers from outlying areas, to ensure we’ll have a wonderful festival.”
“I can’t calm down,” Becky whispered. Big tears pooled in her eyes. “If anything happened to Papa, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Marlee’s heart went out to her younger cousin.
“I just don’t believe there’re going to be enough visitors to town,” Harriet declared. “True, a family might come during one of the festival days, but what about all the other days?”
“We discussed this, too,” Mrs. Tuttle pointed out. “Folks will come to hear the Barrett Family Singers. We’ve secured them for a number of performances.”
“I think we ought to cancel,” Melva shouted. “Now, while we can still return all this Christmas merchandise.”
“What about the restaurants?” someone asked. “They can’t return all the extra food they bought.”
Another round of chatter rose in the room.
Tears flowed down Becky’s cheeks as she leaned across Marlee and grasped Audrey’s hand.
“We have to cancel this festival,” she said. “We have to.”
“Becky, please,” Audrey said. “You’re getting yourself all worked up and nothing has happened yet.”
“But it might,” she insisted. A big sob tore from her throat.
Marlee took Becky’s hand. “Nothing bad is going to happen to your pa,” she said. “The Christmas festival is going to be wonderful. I helped Mrs. Montgomery with a dozen charity events in Philadelphia.”
“You did?” Becky asked, blinking back her tears.
“Yes. Hundreds of people turned out,” Marlee said.
“They did?” Becky asked, sniffing.
“They did?” Audrey echoed.
“Yes, of course,” Marlee said. She patted Becky’s hand. “So don’t worry about your papa. Everything will be fine.”
Becky shot to her feet. “Marlee knows how to fix the festival!”
A stunned silence fell over the room. Every head, every eye turned toward Marlee.
A knot jerked in Marlee’s stomach. Oh, good gracious, she hadn’t meant to butt into the ladies’ festival preparations. She’d only wanted to comfort Becky.
Mrs. Tuttle glared down at her. “Is that so, Miss Carrington?” she asked.
“Marlee works for a rich lady in Philadelphia,” Becky called. “She’s done hundreds of festivals just like this one.”
“No, Becky,” she murmured. “I said I’d done a dozen, not—”
“And thousands of people have come to them,” Becky announced.
“It wasn’t thousands,” Marlee whispered, “it was—”
“You’ve done all that?” Audrey asked. “Really?”
“Well, yes, but—”
Chatter rose from the ladies once more, a cacophony of questions, comments and demands for information.
Mrs. Tuttle raised her hands, quieting the group.
“Please, Miss Carrington, do tell us what you think,” she told her.
“Come on, Marlee,” Becky said, grabbing her hand and yanking her to her feet. “Tell them.”
She’d never been called upon to speak at a meeting before, to offer an opinion or a suggestion. In Mrs. Montgomery’s employ she’d been relegated to keeping notes. She couldn’t recall a time when she’d even spoken aloud. But what could she do?
Marlee faced the group and drew in a calming breath. Dozens of faces stared up at her, waiting for her to speak. Marlee’s heart raced. She hardly felt adequate to speak to the ladies. She’d only been in Harmony a short while, and she could only imagine how much effort the ladies had already put into the Christmas festival. But she had, after all, organized a number of charity events before and she did, in fact, know what to do.
“It seems to me that securing the Barrett Family Singers is your best bet for bringing in a big crowd. I think that’s the key to the success of the festival,” Marlee said. “The only situation to deal with is how to find more visitors and get them to Harmony.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Mrs. Tuttle asked.
“I think we should bring them in by train,” Marlee said. “There are three towns nearby, the farthest less than an hour away. We could get the railroad to put on extra runs during the festival.”
“But how would we get the people to come?” someone called. “We can’t round them up like cattle and herd them onto the passenger cars.”
“We could get the Harmony newspaper to print flyers and posters and have some of your young men distribute them in those towns. We could purchase small advertisements in neighboring towns announcing the festival and the performances by the Barrett Family Singers,” Marlee said.
“Everybody will want to come hear them sing,” a woman in the back of the room called out.
Marlee gestured toward Heddy Conroy, the minister’s wife she’d met earlier. “You could write to the churches in those towns and ask their ministers to announce our festival to the congregations.”
Mrs. Tuttle’s frown eased a little, but she still didn’t say anything.
“Someone from Flora’s Bake Shop or one of the restaurants could ride the trains and sell cookies or candy, or something more substantial to eat during their journey,” Marlee said. “Maybe members of the church choir might be onboard as well, and lead everyone in Christmas songs.”
“That would really put them in the Christmas spirit—before they ever set foot in Harmony,” Harriet Goodwin said. “They’d tell their friends back home.”
“I think the mayor, or you, Mrs. Tuttle, might be on hand at the train station to greet our visitors,” Marlee said. “Perhaps some of the business owners might send a representative to direct them through town. Who knows, some of them could decide they like Harmony enough to move here?”
Mrs. Tuttle drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. She nodded at Marlee before turning to the ladies.
“I think our Christmas festival would benefit greatly from Marlee’s suggestions,” she said. “I say we put them into action at once.”
A round of applause followed Mrs. Tuttle’s words.
“Oh, Marlee, I’m so glad you’re here,” Becky declared.
Marlee glanced around the room at all the smiling, happy faces turned her way.
“I’m glad I’m here, too,” she said.
Chapter Five
Carson muttered a curse as his elbow slid off the edge of his desk, jarring him back to reality. Annoyed, he pushed himself upright and grabbed a paper from the large pile stacked in front of him.
He’d set up his office this way, with an outer reception area and this inner office where he worked. He’d placed his desk in a certain spot, at an angle that allowed him to look out the window to Main Street for those few moments when he needed a break from his work and a glimpse at another human being.
For the last few days, all he could do was stare out the window.
What the hell was wrong with him? He’d been so intent on gazing out the window that he wasn’t tending to business. He had a lot of things to take care of, all of them far more important that the goings-on outside on Main Street.
Carson’s gaze swung from the letter in his hands, out the front window again. Work had been underway along Main Street for days now as Christmas decorations were being displayed. Large wooden red-and-white-striped candy canes had been nailed to all the posts along the boardwalk. Men had climbed ladders to string evergreen boughs across Main Street. Merchants were putting wreaths and candles in their windows.
Leaning slightly to his left, Carson caught a glimpse of several young women on the boardwalk across the street carrying market baskets. He followed them with his gaze searching their faces. They were clustered together so he couldn’t see all of them clearly. They came closer and he recognized Audrey Meade and her younger sister.
Carson sprang from his chair. If the Meade girls were there, that must mean—
He dodged around his desk and planted himself in front of the big display window that bore the name of his business. His gaze swept the group of young women across the street. Audrey, Becky, the barber’s daughter whose name he could never remember, that girl who worked at the—
Marlee.
His breath caught at the sight of her and a heat enveloped him. The same heat had plagued him for days, kept him awake at night and prevented him from tending to all the important matters that required his attention.
Still, he couldn’t drag his gaze from her. He watched as Marlee and the others set about tying wide red ribbons to the posts outside Flora’s Bake Shop. The task must have been more fun than he imagined because all of them were smiling, chatting. Becky said something. As he watched, Marlee’s grin turned into a full smile, then she broke out laughing. All the girls laughed with her.
What was it? Carson wondered. What had Becky said that transformed Marlee’s already lovely face into one of such merriment?
The day was cold but windless and the high sun overhead sent its rays down onto the girls. When Marlee turned her head, her hair seemed to shine with hints of red, at least all he could see of it under her bonnet.
He wondered what her hair looked like beneath that bonnet. He’d caught a glimpse of it in Willard Meade’s store when he’d seen her peek through the curtained doorway from the back room. Silky and soft, surely. He’d had an overwhelming urge to go to her, touch her locks, coil them around his fingers.
An urgency grew in him with predictable results at the memory of later that evening when he’d found her alone in the alley. How lovely she’d looked in the moonlight. Then, how she’d tried to pull a gun on him to scare him away.
Carson’s desire for her grew. She was a proper young lady raised among polite society back east. He hadn’t expected her to attempt to bluff her way out of their encounter in the alley. She had spirit—something else he hadn’t expected of her—which was probably the reason he’d kissed her.
Placing his palms against the cold glass of the window, Carson leaned in as he watched Marlee and her friends across the street. He’d kissed her, all right. It was hardly the way he conducted himself, certainly not the sort of thing he made a habit of doing. Surely every mama in town had pushed a young lady or two his way, hoping for a match. Carson didn’t have time for matters of the heart. Business, making money, securing a solid financial footing was what mattered.
Carson drew in a long, heavy breath as he studied Marlee. Her slender hands, the sway of her skirt, the little glimpse of her ankle he’d caught, the bodice of her dress that swelled to—
“You okay, Mr. Tate?”
Carson snapped back to attention as Drew Giles, his office helper, walked through the door, staring as if he’d suddenly lost his mind. Not that he blamed him. Carson wasn’t given to long moments of gazing idly out the window.
Barely twenty years old, Drew was a tall, slim young man with a shock of thick blond hair. He’d helped out at Carson’s office for several months now and seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.
Drew walked closer, then glanced out the window. A knowing grin spread over his face. “I see you’re admiring the town’s Christmas decorations.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Carson told him.
“Bigger things to come,” Drew said. He nodded out the window. “The whole idea of running the trains was Marlee’s idea.”
Carson frowned—both because he didn’t like that his feelings were so obvious, and that he had no clue what the “train idea” was.
“Seems some of the ladies were worried about enough folks coming to the festival,” Drew said. “The way I hear it, Marlee had the idea to run trains to all the nearby towns and bring them in for the day. Hundreds of people will be coming to Harmony.”
Carson glanced out the window again. Marlee had thought of that? It was a damn good idea—yet fraught with problems.
“We’ll get all kinds. Pickpockets, scam artists, thieves. The sheriff will have his hands full, that’s for sure,” Carson said. “But at least my investors aren’t coming until next month. I sure as hell don’t want them here deciding on whether to invest in my weaving mill with a town full of criminals.”
“They changed their plans,” Drew said. “They’ll be here during the festival.”
Carson’s head snapped around. “What the hell?”
Drew pulled a telegram from his back pocket and presented it to Carson.
“I just picked this up,” he said.
Carson scanned the telegram, then crushed it into his fist. “Damn it. This is going to play hell with getting my mill going. I can’t have those men here with scalawags and riff-raff running loose in our streets.”
He grabbed his Stetson and headed out the door.
Carson spotted Chord Barrett outside the jailhouse nailing Wanted posters beside the door as he made his way down the boardwalk. He’d left his office in such a hurry he hadn’t picked up his coat, but he was still so fired up about trainloads of strangers coming to town that the cold barely registered.
“Hell …” he muttered as he saw that Sheriff Thompson’s horse wasn’t tethered to the hitching post in front of the jail. He’d wanted to speak to the man personally. Not that he had anything against Chord. He’d proved himself a good deputy, despite the fact that he had the voice of a lark and toured the country doing musical performances with that family of his.
A man couldn’t pick his family—as Carson well knew—and he doubted Chord would have selected those peculiar parents of his who’d given their children musical names. He doubted, too, that Chord would otherwise have been part of the family in which all the kids—sons and daughter alike—favored each other so strongly, all of them tall, with light brown hair and cool blue eyes.
“Afternoon, Carson,” Chord called. “How you doing?”
“Not so good,” he replied.
Chord turned away from the Wanted posters and laid the hammer aside. “Sheriff’s out at the Dawson ranch. What’s on your mind?”
“What the hell is the town thinking, bringing in trainloads of strangers?”
Chord threw up his hands in surrender. “I’ll be damned if I know. Those ladies on the festival committee should have talked to the sheriff before doing all of this. It’ll be nothing but trouble, that’s for sure.”
“More than you think,” Carson told him. “Those investors who’re interested in the weaving mill are coming smack in the middle of the festival.”
The deal for the construction of a weaving mill on the outskirts of Harmony had been in the works for months. Carson had arranged for investors from back east to come take a look at the place and hear the details of his plan. He wouldn’t be the only one to benefit from the mill, of course. It would bring new jobs and new wealth to Harmony.
Chord muttered a curse under his breath, then opened the door to the jailhouse. “Ian, get out here, will you?”
