Quinn had not returned.

“The ball’s started already,” Tiernan said from his place by the fire. “But if you leave now, you’ll not miss all of it.”

Mirabelle smoothed the wrinkles in her blue dress. She’d been sitting, waiting, for a couple of hours now, and she had the rumples to prove it. “I was holding out hope that Quinn would be back in time. That doesn’t seem likely now, does it?”

“He has his faults, but the lad keeps his word. If I had m’ guess, I’d say he went straight to the gathering and is there wondering where you are.”

“I know when the train comes in to town.” She rose and moved to the front window. “If he were going to arrive today, he would have hours ago.”

Tiernan rose and, to her surprise, crossed to her. He set his hands on her arms and looked at her tenderly, paternally. “He did promise you. I know my lad well enough to be certain he’ll do everything in his power to be there, especially because we all know how much you were looking forward to it.”

Her heart dropped. “I’ve been dreaming of this. He probably thinks me a little silly for it.”

“He tries to be logical about things and pretend his head has all the say in his life,” Tiernan said. “But I know that heart of his. It’s more tender than he lets on.”

“I think yours is as well,” Mirabelle said.

His expression turned a little sad. “I loved his ma deeply, but we had a difficult go of it early on as we sorted things out between us, figuring out how to build a life together.”

“I don’t know how to do that with Quinn. Sometimes he seems to want something more than the arrangement we have between us, and sometimes I’m not certain he even remembers that I’m not the maid.”

“Oh, he remembers,” Tiernan muttered. He stepped away and to the door. “Come on, lass. I’ll take you to the dance.”

He was offering to take her? Tiernan never went anywhere. He seldom left the house, even.

“I am so touched that you would offer, but”—emotion solidified as a lump in her throat—“I don’t think I could bear to go.”

Tiernan looked concerned. “But you wanted to dance.”

Misery clutched at her. “I wanted to dance with him.” A hot tear pooled in the corner of her eye. “Clearly, I am not logical about things. I was ordered over the telegram like a piece of farm equipment. A man doesn’t rush back to dance with a plow.”

“He’s a fool. I told him as much myself.” Tiernan wandered back to the fireplace. “I’ve seen the way he looked at you when he left for Topeka.”

“How did he look at me?” Even as she asked the question, she worried about the answer.

“Not the way he looks at his plow.”

Oh, how she wanted to believe that. “Then why didn’t he come home when he said he would?”

“I’ve every confidence there’s a reason.” Tiernan sat in his chair and took up his book.

Mirabelle made her way slowly to her bedroom. She pulled the blue ribbon from her hair, the same one she’d worn on her wedding day. She hadn’t been certain Quinn would make the connection, but she’d hoped. And it had been such a perfect match for her gingham dress.

She sat on her bed, hands resting on her lap, and wrapped the ribbon around her fingers. Why did she let herself grow hopeful so often and so easily? She only ended up getting hurt.

Her next breath shook from her. She needed to pull herself together. There would be other opportunities to attend a dance. Quinn likely had a good reason for not returning when he said he would. Yet it still hurt. It hurt that he hadn’t come back. It hurt that he’d gone despite her worries about the timing. It hurt that she was missing so many things she’d longed for: the dance, companionship, love.

She pulled her legs up on the bed and wrapped her arms around them, burying her face against her knees. What a fool she was, crying over a missed social.

Heavy footsteps sounded at the door. It was sweet of Tiernan to check on her, but she couldn’t bear for him to see her sobbing like a child. The footsteps grew closer. The bed shifted beside her.

She wanted to tell him he needn’t worry, but no words came.

Two strong arms wrapped gently around her. She knew then it wasn’t Tiernan who’d come to comfort her, but Quinn. Every bit of control she had over her emotions evaporated. Her tears turned to sobs.

He pulled her closer. “I hate seeing you cry, dear, especially knowing it’s because I broke my word to you.”

“That’s not why.” She took another trembling breath. “It’s not the only reason.”

“Tell me what all’s hurting you. I’ll fix it if I can.”

She turned enough to bury her face against his chest, her hand clutching his vest.

“I feel so foolish.” Admitting that aloud helped calm her a little. “It is only a dance, and you’ve told me there will be others. It isn’t as if I’ll never have another chance. Yet I feel like my whole world came crumbling down while I waited for you.”

He didn’t say anything, just continued to hold her. The protective comfort of his embrace chipped away at her protective wall.

“Your father offered to take me to the calico ball so I wouldn’t miss it.”

“He did?” Quinn sounded as surprised as she had been.

“If it really was just the dance I was upset about, I would have gone. But I didn’t. And yet here I am crying about it.”

“Maybe you . . .” She had never heard such hesitation from him. “Maybe you wanted to go with me.”

That set the tears flowing again, though without the shoulder-shaking sobs. “I know that’s not our arrangement. I do. We each see to our work; that’s what we agreed on. It’s so silly of me to—” Her breath caught, and she couldn’t continue.

“I missed you while I was gone,” he said. “I thought of you. Not about your chores or the work you’d be doing. I wondered how your dress was coming along, if you’d had tea with your friends, if Da was being good to you. I wondered if you were upset with me for leaving when I did.”

He’d thought about her. Worried. Wondered.

“I was late leaving Topeka, then snow down the line stopped the trains for nearly two days. I sat in a rail station, knowing I was going to be late returning home, and something became very, very clear to me.”

She wiped at her eye with the back of her hand, not moving from her position tucked into his arms.

“It wasn’t the delay or the inconvenience or the chores I wasn’t seeing to that weighed on me most. I was disappointing you, and that tore right into me.”

She turned a bit more, her bent legs resting against him, curled in a ball in his arms.

“I know perfectly well what our arrangement is,” he said, “and it didn’t matter one bit. Your heart and your happiness held greater importance to me than all of that.”

She looked up at him, hope and uncertainty warring inside her. He brushed at the moisture on her cheek. How a man as large as he could offer so tender a touch, she couldn’t say. But in that moment, she needed it. She treasured it.

“Maybe,” he said, “it’s time we rethought our arrangement.”

She steeled herself. Hope had too often proved fickle. “You said in your telegram that you were not interested in an emotional or romantic attachment. You were very specific.”

“Well, as my da often tells me, I’m something of a clodhead.” He touched the pad of his thumb to her chin. “There’s the smile I’ve been missing.”

Though her eyes burned and moisture still clung to her lashes, she wasn’t crying as she had been. She felt hopeful without feeling afraid. It was an entirely unfamiliar experience.

“I finished my dress.” She held her breath.

“I noticed. You did a fine job of it. It’s lovely.”

A little heat touched her cheeks, though she wasn’t embarrassed. Indeed, she was pleased. Touched. “I would have been quite the belle of the calico ball, you know.”

He slipped his arms free and stood. She resisted the urge to ask him to come back, to keep holding her.

“You told me you hadn’t ever danced, which is why I was late leaving Topeka.”

That made little sense.

“I saw something in a shop there that I wanted to bring back for you, but I took too blasted long making my mind up about it. My own fault, really.”

He pulled something from his pocket. She couldn’t see what it was. It fit in his hand, mostly obscured. He returned to the bed and placed the item on her bedside table. A box-shaped something. Metal, with floral designs etched all over.

“What is it?” She scooted closer.

He looked at her. “A music box. It plays a waltz. I thought if you had music, I could teach you to dance, then you wouldn’t be so nervous about attending the sociables. We should have had a couple of days for practicing, but the snow came and ruined everything.”

“You bought this for me?” She shook her head. “It’s too expensive. You have your debts to pay down.”

He offered a soft smile. “I didn’t go into debt for it. I simply sold a couple of things.”

“For me?”

He held a hand out to her. She set hers in it, letting him gently pull her to a stand. With his free hand, he lifted the lid of the box. In notes soft and bell-like, a tune began.

“Will you dance with me, Mirabelle?”

“I don’t know how,” she reminded him.

He wrapped his arm around her waist and tucked her up to him. “We’ll work on the steps later. For now, I just want to hold you.”

“That’s not part of our arrangement,” she reminded him, her heart pounding in her chest.

“It ought to be part of our new one.”

She set her arm at his shoulder, her other hand still in his. As the lilting music filled the tiny room, he swayed with her in his arms. No words were needed. They simply held each other with the promise of a new beginning.