14

The following morning, Aunt Letty watched Kate pour horehound mixture into the tray of the candy-making machine. “Well? How come you haven’t said a word about last night’s dance?”

Before answering, Kate picked up a knife and spread the mixture evenly over the tray, releasing a subtle smell of licorice.

She’d managed to avoid her aunt’s questions earlier at the house. But there was no escaping them here at the shop. “Not much to say. It was very nice and well attended.”

It would have been perfect had Connie not had her heart broken, and Kate blamed herself for that.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

Kate sighed. “If this is about the Texas Ranger—”

“I don’t know how you can have anything to do with that awful man. Not only did he ruin your wedding, but Hoot Owl Pete said it was the ranger who shot out our window.”

Kate set her knife down and turned the crank. Perfect little hard candies popped out of the machine. If only what she had to tell her aunt would pop out that easily.

She stopped turning the crank and faced her aunt. “There’s something you don’t know about him.”

Aunt Letty frowned. “There’s nothing you can tell me that would make me change my mind. He’s trouble with a capital T.” She sniffed. “You know what happened to Cathy Spencer when she got involved with that troublemaking Jeff Parker. She ended up on her very own Wanted poster. And I’ll tell you another thing—”

“He saved my life.” Kate hadn’t wanted to mention her near-drowning, but it was the only way she could think to keep her aunt from being rude to Brett in the future.

Aunt Letty’s mouth dropped. “What?”

“I almost drowned.” Choosing her words with care, she told her aunt everything—or almost everything—that had happened at the river. Some parts, like the way he’d held her in his arms, seemed best to leave out.

Her aunt’s eyes rounded in horror. “Mercy, child. What were you thinking?”

“All I could think about at the time was saving that poor dog.”

“Kate, if anything had happened to you…” With her hand on her chest, Aunt Letty gasped for air. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I knew it would only upset you. But after the way you treated Mr. Tucker last night…I thought you should know that he’s more than made up for stopping the wedding.”

“Harrumph.” Aunt Letty folded her arms across chest. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I know you’re still upset with him, Auntie, but saving my life counts for something, don’t you think?”

Aunt Letty gave a reluctant nod. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“All right.” Aunt Letty dropped her arms to her sides but didn’t look any less stubborn. “I’m grateful to the man, but don’t expect me to like him. And that still doesn’t let him off the hook. If it wasn’t for him, you and Frank would be husband and wife, with maybe a little one on the way.”

Unable to have children of her own, her aunt couldn’t wait for the day Kate provided her with a little grandniece or grandnephew to spoil.

“Don’t look at me like that,” her aunt said. “Remember what happened to Claire Nelson?”

“Yes, I remember,” Kate said with a sigh. How could she not? At least once a week, Aunt Letty reminded her how Claire’s seven thoughtless children had failed to present her with grandchildren before the poor woman reached the pearly gates.

“All I ask is that you not be rude to him,” Kate said and, on the chance that her aunt needed more persuasion, repeated that the ranger did save her life.

“I’m never rude,” Aunt Letty said, her voice obstinate. She studied Kate for a long moment. “You’ve not said a word about Frank. Did the two of you make any headway?”

“Headway?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Frank was very…sweet.”

“Sweet?” Aunt Letty reached for an empty candy jar and began filling it with the newly pressed horehound candy. “Babies are sweet. Puppies are sweet. That’s hardly the way to describe a future husband.”

Kate brushed her hair away from her face. “Well, he was sweet. And he didn’t even get jealous when Brett asked me to dance.”

“Oh? So now it’s Brett.”

Kate bit her lip. His first name had slipped out without conscious thought. Even more surprising, she liked the way her lips parted as she released it, as if she were to throw a kiss. Startled by the thought, she quickly banished it from her head.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but Mr. Tucker and I are friends,” she said. Or at least she’d thought they were. Now she didn’t know what to think. He had been so attentive at the start of the evening and had made her feel like a queen. But as the evening had progressed, he’d become more and more withdrawn until he’d hardly said a word while driving her home.

Aunt Letty shook her head. “I don’t know how you can be his friend. Not after what he’s done. If it wasn’t for him, you’d be…”

“I know, I know. Mrs. Frank Foster.” Kate sighed. “Auntie, please. We’ve been all through this. Brett made a mistake and has tried his best to make up for it ever since.”

“All right, all right.” Her aunt capped the full jar of candy. “So, did you dance? You and Frank?”

“Yes. Yes, we did.” If it could be called that. Dancing with Frank was like dancing with a lamppost. His feet hardly moved. While dancing with Brett was like floating on air. He was at least six inches taller than Frank, which meant she only came up to his shoulders. Yet they’d glided around the barn floor as if only one.

Oh no, not Brett again. Jolted by the way he commanded her thoughts—he’d been all she’d been able to think about since the dance—Kate slid a second tray into the candy-making machine and turned the crank more vigorously than necessary. The brass rollers pressed the sugary sheet into dozens of perfectly shaped little candies but did nothing to soften her mood or stop her obsessive thoughts.

“Frank even said I looked pretty,” she said, knowing that would please her aunt.

“Of course you looked pretty.” Her aunt’s face softened into a gentle smile. Kate recognized the faraway look in her aunt’s eyes and knew it had nothing to do with the present. “I remember when your uncle and I first laid eyes on you.”

Kate knew the oft-repeated tale by heart but never tired of hearing it. Her adoptive aunt and uncle had traveled to Missouri to visit Uncle Joe’s sick father. While they were there, a train carrying orphans from New York had arrived. It had been the first such train to Missouri, and no one really knew what to expect, least of all the young, frightened passengers, including Kate.

“And there you were,” Aunt Letty said. “You were so tiny…”

“I think the word is ‘scrawny,’” Kate said.

“And cute as a button.”

Kate stopped turning the crank and rolled her eyes. “Homely as a blank wall, more like it. That’s why no one wanted to adopt me.”

Her aunt began filling a second jar. “No one else wanted to adopt you for fear you wouldn’t be strong enough to do your share of work.”

Kate smiled. That was her aunt’s version of the story, but Kate suspected that the real reason no one had wanted her was because of her gawky, thin appearance and ginger-red hair.

“Your uncle took one look at you and said, ‘She’s coming home with us.’”

“I remember,” Kate said, her mind traveling back to a memory that in many ways she wished she could forget. She still had nightmares of that awful, smelly orphan train.

Though she had been but six at the time, Kate remembered that long-ago day as if it were only yesterday. When she was two, her father had been killed in the war. Four years later, her mother succumbed to consumption, leaving Kate orphaned. She then became a ward of the Children’s Aid Society and was taken to a house with stern caretakers and overrun with vermin.

Not long afterward, Kate and three dozen other children had been transported to Missouri by cattle car. They’d arrived at the station in the middle of the night. She recalled huddling on the platform until a kindly minister arrived to take charge. The minister’s wife did her best to make the orphans look more respectable with the aid of a wet sponge and a hairbrush, but not much could be done about the rank smell of cattle.

Soon, the station had been packed with people. Kate and the other orphans were exposed to all manner of probing. Legs and arms squeezed, teeth examined, hair checked for lice. Some orphans were asked to lift heavy boxes. The oldest, strongest, and—in Kate’s mind—best-looking children went first. She had been the last one standing.

Just when she’d thought she’d have to go back to that awful house in New York, a tall man with a bushy mustache stepped forward to claim her. His sheer size frightened her at first, but it wasn’t long before he’d won her over with his kindness.

“You’ll be safe with us,” he’d said. Safe.

Her aunt said something, breaking into Kate’s thoughts. “I’m sorry, Aunt Letty,” Kate said, wiping away the tears such memories never failed to produce. “What did you say?”

“I was just saying what a dear, sweet thing you were. You looked like a wounded bird. When we got back to town, we told everyone you were our niece and, strangely enough, no one ever questioned it.”

“That’s because you treated me as your own,” Kate said. Years later, she’d found out that some of the orphans arriving on that same train hadn’t been as lucky with their new families as she had been with hers. Some had even been treated like slaves.

Aunt Letty’s face melted into a smile. “Since we weren’t lucky enough to have a child of our own, we were convinced that you were a gift from heaven.”

“You and Uncle Joe were the real gifts,” Kate said.

Her aunt finished filling another jar and set it aside. “Lordy, aren’t we a fine couple? This is supposed to be a happy place, and here we are, looking like we just lost a best friend.”

Kate laughed and glanced at the clock. “Oh my, look at the time.” Customers would soon arrive, and she had yet to write out the list Brett had asked for. That thought brought another, whisking her back to how it felt to dance in the arms of the tall and handsome ranger.