The Wedding Cake War

“I will never set foot in this house again, I promise you.”

Kellen stared at her for a full minute. She was magnificent. A lioness defending her lair. Except that it was his lair. And it was his hand that wanted to touch her trembling chin. His body that hungered to feel her passion. Her fire.

“Goddammit, Lolly.”

“Goddammit what?” She spit the words at him, and all at once he couldn’t stand it one more second. He kissed her.

Big, big tactical error. Her lips under his were like warm velvet. Suddenly he wanted his mouth, and his hands, on every inch of her skin.

“Stop,” she said after a few exquisitely sensual explorations of her neck and throat. “Kellen, you must stop.”

“Why must I?” he murmured against her hair. He kissed her again. He didn’t want to stop. Ever.

Acclaim for Lynna Banning

“Do not read Lynna Banning expecting some trite,

clichéd western romance. This author

breathes fresh air into the West.”

—Romance Reviews

The Scout

“Though a romance through and through,

The Scout is also a story with powerful undertones

of sacrifice and longing.”

—Romantic Times

The Angel of Devil’s Camp

“This sweet charmer of an Americana romance

has just the right amount of humor, poignancy

and a cast of quirky characters.”

—Romantic Times

The Law and Miss Hardisson

“…fresh and charming

…a sweet and funny yet poignant story.”

—Romantic Times

The Wedding Cake War
Lynna Banning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In memory of my mother,

Mary Elizabeth (Banning) Yarnes

With grateful thanks to Suzanne Barrett, Tricia Adams,

Debbie Parcel, Brenda Preston, Susan Renison,

David Woolston and Andrew Yarnes.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Oregon, 1879

If she’d thought about it for one single minute, Lolly would never have boarded the train in Kansas City. That was a character failing, she supposed—jumping headlong from the saucepan into the cook-fire. She’d inherited the tendency from her father.

Which was exactly why he was dead and she was breathing the cigar-smoky air of this railway coach. In all his forty years on this earth, Papa had never backed down, changed his opinion or avoided a fight.

And neither would she. With a bit of luck and some…well…acting ability, she would triumph over any adversity. Even marriage to a man she’d never laid eyes on.

The train slowed, then chuffed to a stop. “Maple Falls,” the conductor shouted from the back of the car. “Home of sawmills, grist mills, gin mills, wild women and the Methodist church.”

Lolly choked down a bubble of laughter. If only half those things were true, Maple Falls would prove intriguing. In a town with both Shady Ladies, as Pa had termed them, and Our Heavenly Father’s Second-Best Parlor, as her Presbyterian mother dubbed the Methodist church, there was the promise of happenings that might prove interesting. She most fervently hoped so. After her impulsive flight from Baxter Springs, she badly needed some cheering up.

Lolly bit the inside of her lip. She needed more than cheering up. She needed a new life. A new place, as far from Kansas as she could get. She only hoped it wasn’t too late.

At the thought, her entire body turned to petrified whalebone. She was too outspoken, too set in her ways. Too plump.

Too…old.

Maybe it was too late.

Get off the train, a voice commanded. Just put one foot in front of the other and walk out into Oregon.

It was harder than she anticipated. For one thing, her fancy new jab-toed shoes, ordered from Bloomingdale’s, pinched her feet. And for another, all at once she felt as if her bottom half was glued to the seat; every bone in her body resisted moving a single step toward the momentous event that awaited her. She could scarcely breathe she was so frightened.

The coach emptied, and still Lolly sat stiff as chicken wire on the hard leather seat until a head poked into the far end of the car.

“Miz Mayfield?”

She sucked a gulp of smoky air into her lungs. “Yes?”

“Better hurry up, ma’am. Train’s about to pull out.”

As the boy spoke, the railcar jerked and began to glide forward.

Good gracious! Which was worse, being inadvertently kidnapped by a train, or facing a town full of hungry lions? Well, maybe not lions, exactly. But she knew exactly how the Christian martyrs in Roman arenas must have felt. Trapped.

Lolly stood up, grasped her leather satchel and made her way unsteadily up the aisle, clinging to the backs of the seats until she reached the iron debarking step.

The train engine tooted twice and began to accelerate.

“Jump, ma’am! Hurry, it’s rollin’.”

Jump? Was he crazy? She’d break both her ankles in these shoes.

She heaved the satchel into the young man’s arms and hurriedly unsnapped one French kid boot, then the other, tossing them out the train door just as the coach began to pick up speed. Wrapping her knitted wool shawl about her head, she folded her arms over her chest, whispered a quick prayer and stepped off the platform.

She toppled into the youth clasping her satchel, knocking him flat onto the wood platform. His wide-brimmed hat rolled away under the spinning train wheels.

“Godalmighty, ma’am, whadja do that for?”

Lolly sat up, straightened her black straw bonnet and scooted her knees off the young man’s chest. “To get off the train, of course. You said to jump.”

“Sufferin’ scorpions, ma’am, I didn’t mean on top of me!”

Lolly rose to a standing position, her legs shaking like twin columns of jelly. Her stocking-covered toes curled against the uneven boards beneath her feet, telling her where every splinter lurked in the rough wood. What a way to begin her new life, making a spectacle of herself in public.

She scanned the onlookers. Was he here? Watching her stumble about like a tipsy Presbyterian? Would he change his mind when he saw her?

She bent over the boy. “I am extremely sorry. Are you hurt?”

“Heck, no, I ain’t hurt.” He assessed her generous figure. “I guess I’ve been hit by hay bales bigger’n—” His voice trailed off.

“Beg pardon, Miz Mayfield. You ain’t shaped like no bale of hay, no matter how—” His thin face flushed the color of cooked beets.

Lolly took pity on him. “Have you a name, young man?”

“Huh? Oh, sure. But at the moment I can’t exactly recall— Oh yeah, it’s Henry Morehouse, ma’am. At your service.”

Lolly suppressed a burst of laughter. “Well, Henry Morehouse, I am Leora Mayfield.” She extended her hand. “I have been in correspondence with the ladies here in town, and I have come out from Kansas to marry—”

“Oh, we know all about that, Miz Mayfield.” He hoisted her travel satchel in one hand and offered his arm. “I’ll escort you over to the schoolhouse to get registered.”

“Schoolhouse? Isn’t there a hotel?”

“Why, sure, ma’am. We’ll get you registered there, too.”

She peered at him. He was a nice-looking, lanky boy of about fifteen, she guessed. Clear-blue eyes and floppy wheat-colored hair.

“Why must I register at the schoolhouse?”

As her question sank in, his cheeks colored. “Well, you see, ma’am, the colonel, he figured…well, he figured—”

“Colonel! Mr. Macready is a colonel? In what army, may I ask?”

“He was a Reb, ma’am. But not anymore. War’s been over some years now.”

“I am aware of that.” She brushed off her skirt, keeping her head down so her black straw bonnet shielded her face. So, Mr. Macready had been a Confederate soldier. Papa had fought on the Union side. Her saucepan was boiling over.

“What,” she said in as steady a voice as she could manage, “precisely has the colonel ‘figured’?”

“That you all could sign up at the schoolhouse first. That way, we’ll know how many.”

She tried hard not to frown, she really did. Frowning just added wrinkles to her already sundried face. Not that anyone knew how parched her skin was; no one but herself ever touched her cheek or her nose, or any other part of her. Which was the reason why she was braving the wilds of Oregon instead of withering into an old maid in Kansas.

“That way you’ll know how many what?”

Henry Morehouse studied his dusty brown button-top shoes. “I’d rather not say, Miz Mayfield. Best we just go along and do it. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Henry?” Back in Kansas, grown men had quaked at that tone. She used it now because she was exasperated.

The boy shuffled two steps backward. “Don’t usually answer to Henry,” he mumbled. “My friends call me Hank.”

Lolly stepped toward him. In her stocking feet they were exactly the same height. “Hank, then. Best we just ‘go along and do’ what?”

“S-sign up, ma’am. Like I told ya.”

“Sign up for what?” She narrowed her eyes in her best Pin the Polecat look and watched the Morehouse boy bite his lower lip.

“For, uh…for what the colonel figured, ma’am. That’s all I can tell ya, till we get to the schoolhouse.”

Lolly spun on her heel, then wished she hadn’t. Ignoring the bite of wood splinters through her stocking, she collected her shoes from the platform, rescued Hank’s mashed hat from the railroad tracks and returned to the motionless boy.

“March,” she ordered.

“Oh, yes, ma’am.” He started to salute, then realized his error and grinned sheepishly at her. “Just follow me.”

The schoolhouse sat smack in the center of a field of blue lupine and scarlet Indian paintbrush. A wandery path snaked its way through the ankle-deep blooms to a run-down building that looked more dilapidated than any farmer’s neglected barn in Kansas. Why, the gaps between the split logs weren’t even chinked! She could tell they had been at one time, but the mud-and-straw daubing had dissolved to dust. The wind, or the snow, could whistle through at will. No doubt the students froze in the winter and baked in the summer.

It was high summer now, Lolly reflected as she zigzagged along the path behind Hank Morehouse. The air brushing her cheeks felt hot, and the heavy, lazy heat pressed the air out of her lungs. The schoolhouse would be an oven.

And it was. The instant she stepped over the threshold her already-wilting underclothes stuck to her back and chest, and her muslin drawers pasted themselves to her legs. At every step she heard the skitch-skitch of her inner thighs brushing together. Could everyone else hear it, too?

The three gray-haired ladies seated behind a long oak table didn’t even look up. The only other occupants of the room were two younger women sitting off to one side, spines straight, hands folded, smiles unwavering.

Lolly crossed the uneven plank floor with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Was this some sort of inquisition?

Hank clumped up to the table. “Got another one fer ya.” He plopped her satchel on top of an empty school desk and stuffed his lanky frame into the child-size seat.

All three elderly women snapped their heads up.

Lolly’s stomach tightened into a hard knot. Another one? Another what?

A large-bosomed matron in a royal-blue day dress grasped a pencil. “Name?”

“Another what?” Lolly ventured in her Refined Voice.

The woman’s eyebrows waggled. “Bride,” she said. A satisfied smile spread over her face. “Name?”

“Leora Mayfield.” Lolly swallowed. “But I believe I am the only bride. At least that was my understanding from the newspaper advertisement.”

“Oh, no, dearie,” a lilting voice sang. “There’s no profit in just one bride.”

“Profit?”

“Well, you see, dearie,” the woman cooed. “We, that is the Maple Falls Ladies Helpful Society, are determined to finance construction of a new schoolhouse. You can see for yourself that this one is in such sad disrepair, and—”

“Let me tell it, Minnie.” The Bosom in Royal Blue made a sweeping gesture. “This schoolhouse was built back in twenty-seven, you see, when old Abel Svensen left us a small bequest in his will.”

“That was over fifty years ago,” Minnie interjected, her hands fluttering as she spoke. Dressed in a lavender-sprigged dimity, the tiny woman looked like a dainty butterfly trying to decide where to land.

“Now,” Royal Blue continued, “the walls are collapsing, the floor is buckling, the outhouse needs—”

“Dora Mae Landsfelter!” Minnie’s hands danced. “Not in polite company.”

Dora Mae turned snapping blue eyes on Lolly. “So you see, Miss Mayfield, that is why we need a new schoolhouse.”

“But…”

“Why,” the older woman continued in a no-nonsense tone, “we, the ladies of the Maple Falls Helpful Society, have resolved to raise the necessary funds.” She held Lolly’s gaze in an unblinking look.

“Why,” chimed the third woman, rising from her chair behind the table, “the Helpful Ladies are sponsoring this competition.”

Lolly blinked at the three. “Competition?”

“To be the bride!” Minnie’s hands swooped and circled in the warm air. “Isn’t it exciting?”

Exciting? Lolly pondered the word. Being a bride would certainly be exciting. The answer to her prayers. All her life she’d longed to fall in love and marry, have a family, a home of her own. Now, as she approached her thirtieth year of virginity, she’d given up on the fall-in-love part. She just wanted to get married and have a family, like other women.

But a competition?

“What kind of competition?” She tried to use her Kansas Quaking voice, to no avail.

The lace ruffles at Minnie’s neck shuddered with excitement. “Oh, dearie, I’m so glad you inquired. Our competition—”

“Let me tell it,” Dora Mae interrupted. “First, the candidates will—”

“I thought up that part,” the third woman chirped. “Let me tell it!”

“Candidates?” Lolly whispered. Candidates?

“Of course,” Dora Mae exclaimed. “What is a competition without competitors? Ruth, you didn’t make that part at all clear.”

Ruth Underwood’s round, pleasant face fell. “Oh, of course, the competitors.” She tipped her head toward the two young women seated against the wall. “Miss LeClair just arrived yesterday. And—”

Dora Mae raised an admonishing hand and took over. “And our own hometown candidate is Miss Gundersen. She’s the schoolteacher, so we thought…”

Minnie’s hands took flight. “We selected our schoolteacher to represent all the other women in Maple Falls, the ones who—”

“Who have been pursuing our prize bachelor, Colonel Macready, for years. The ladies of the Helpful Society thought it best to avoid infighting among our native population.”

Lolly needed to sit down. Her head spun, and her undergarments were beginning to feel squishy against her hot skin. Worst of all, she wanted to laugh. Papa always said if something funny went by, notice it. Well, now she was noticing it like crazy. This whole idea was ludicrous.

She had been duped. She’d sold the newspaper office and vacated her room at the boardinghouse in Baxter Springs and come out to Oregon to…to…well, not to marry, as it turned out. To compete for the groom!

It was too much. Simply beyond the pale.

At that moment a disturbing idea flitted into her consciousness. “What is wrong with Colonel Macready?”

Three pairs of eyes widened in consternation. Dora Mae’s pencil catapulted out of her fingers and clicked onto the floor. “Wrong?”

“Oh, dearie, you can’t be serious?” Minnie fanned her face with her fingers.

“That man is God’s gift to the feminine gender,” Ruth added. “Why, even my old heart quakes something terrible when he as much as walks by, and I’ve been—”

“Married for thirty-four years,” Minnie finished for her.

“Thirty-five years, Min. Makes no difference. That man is a man.”

“I see,” Lolly said. “And we, the three of us—” she glanced at the two young women now perched at the edge of their chairs “—are supposed to…”

She couldn’t say it. Something inside her rebelled at the thought of having to compete for a husband. By all rights, in a civilized world, it should be the other way around. He should fight for her. After all, Cinderella did not chase after the prince, did she?

On the other hand, Cinderella wasn’t counting the days until her thirtieth birthday. A lump of hot coal plopped into her chest.

Lolly’s gaze traveled over the trio of Helpful Ladies to rest briefly on Hank Morehouse, slumped in decided disinterest over her satchel, his eyes shut. She forced her attention to the other two candidates.

Both young. Twenty at the most. One, dressed in a stylishly cut emerald-green silk with matching shoes and a fringed parasol, looked the perfect Southern lady. Miss LeClair, no doubt. Even in the wilting heat, not one hair straggled from her crown of golden ringlets.

The other woman, seated next to Miss LeClair, looked even younger in a pretty blue-checked gingham with pearl buttons all the way to the hem. Her soulful brown eyes were set in a rather plain-featured face.

Lolly knew exactly what had driven herself to this step. What, she wondered, was wrong with them?

Perhaps, a voice whispered, they are as desperate as you are.

She eyed the younger women again. Both held her gaze for a brief moment, and in that instant Lolly recognized something. Whatever their reasons, whatever their differences, they were all sisters under the skin. They all wanted to get married.

“It’s for the school, dearie. You do see that, don’t you?” Minnie’s sugary voice floated to her over the buzzing in her ears.

“For the children,” Dora Mae added. “Twenty-seven students will attend the Maple Falls school come the fall term. They simply must have a new—”

“All right, all right,” Lolly murmured. “A schoolhouse is a fine thing in a community.”

Dora Mae thrust the pencil at her. “Just sign right here, Miss Mayfield.”

“And then,” sang Minnie, her hands stroking the air, “you can meet the other brides.”

Chapter Two

Dora Mae smoothed the creases in her royal-blue skirt, captured Lolly’s hand and tugged her across the floor. “May I introduce Miss Fleurette LeClair, from New Orleans. Miss Leora Mayfield.”

The green-silk-clad woman tipped her head. Her face wasn’t the least bit welcoming. It wasn’t even friendly. Her green eyes shot ice chips up and down Lolly’s plain black travel ensemble. Lolly tried to smile.

The perfect lips opened. “Wheah you from?”

“Um…well, I’m from Baxter Springs, Kansas. I used to run a news—”

“Oh,” Miss LeClair sniffed. “That explains it.”

Lolly’s mouth opened of its own accord. “Explains what?”

“All that black,” Fleurette drawled. “And, my heavens, yoah shoes.”

“What’s wrong with my shoes? They’re brand-new. I ordered them from Bloom—”

“It’s summertime, honey. Or have you not noticed?”

“And this,” Minnie interrupted with a flutter in her voice, “is Miss Careen Gundersen. Most everyone calls her Carrie, and she was born and raised right here in Maple Falls.”

Carrie extended her hand and enfolded Lolly’s in a firm grasp. “I don’t in the least object to black in the summer,” she murmured. “It’s quite elegant.”

Lolly smiled at her, then turned her gaze to include Miss LeClair. “I am pleased to meet you both, even under these rather odd circumstances.”

Her remark met with a prolonged silence.

“I mean, it is a bit odd, don’t you think? All three of us competing for the same—”

“Decidedly,” Miss LeClair acknowledged with a little nod that made her ringlets bounce.

“Perhaps just a bit,” Carrie allowed. “But you haven’t met Colonel Macready yet. He—” she drew the word out on a long sigh “—makes it all worthwhile.”

“Really,” murmured Miss LeClair.

Carrie beamed. “I’ve been calculating the odds. I’m quite good at mathematics, being a school-teach…”

Her voice trailed off as Miss LeClair pivoted and headed for the doorway, unfurling her parasol on the way.

“I am not interested in mathematical odds,” she said over her shoulder. “It is a lady’s breedin’ and accomplishments that will tip the scale.”

Her cool-as-silk tone hinted at an assumed superiority that made Lolly’s lips tighten. The back of her neck began to tingle. For a fleeting moment she imagined a jungle, tangled green vines full of twittering birds and silent, deadly snakes. Deep inside her a kill-or-be-killed instinct stirred.

Carrie broke the awkward quiet. “Let’s all go over to the hotel and have some lemonade, shall we?” Her earnest brown eyes rested on Lolly, then on Miss LeClair. Lolly watched Fleurette deliberately turn her back and address the Helpful Ladies.

“When am Ah to meet Colonel Macready?”

The older women looked at one another. “This afternoon,” Dora Mae replied.

“This evening,” Ruth said in the same instant.

Minnie’s hands swooped in front of her face. “Well, we hadn’t exactly decided when….”

Miss LeClair’s parasol spun to a halt. “This evening, Ah take it. And what will be the occasion? Ah ask because Ah wish to dress appropriately.” She cast a disparaging glance at Lolly’s traveling costume, then lingered on Carrie’s blue check. “Did you make that yourself?” she inquired.

“Why, yes. I sew quite a bit and…”

“Exactly,” came the murmured response. “Ah thought as much.”

That tone of voice, Lolly thought, was like the hiss of a poisonous viper. Rarely had she taken such an instant dislike to another human being, unless it was a braggadocio Rebel soldier exulting over some past victory or attacking her latest newspaper editorial.

Lady or not, Miss Green Eyes from New Orleans was just plain rude. And stuck-up. It would be pure pleasure to take some of the starch out of her no-doubt perfectly stiff petticoats.

Carrie just smiled. “Come on. I calculate it to be ninety-seven degrees in here. Doesn’t a glass of cold lemonade sound just about perfect? It will lower our body temperature at least two degrees.”

Lolly guessed there wasn’t a mean bone in Carrie’s slim, gingham-swathed body or her fact-overloaded brain. She might be a little pedantic, but that was because she was a trained teacher.

Lolly was educated, too. She had read her way through the Baxter Springs library shelves while she struggled to keep the newspaper going so she could care for her mother. Her education might have been a bit sporadic, but who cared if she’d discovered Shakespeare before she stumbled onto Plato?

Besides, she reasoned, there wasn’t one of the occupants in this musty-smelling schoolroom who couldn’t stand to learn something new. Herself included.

Lemonade sounded like a fine place to start.

“Do tell us, Miss Gundersen, Ah mean, Carrie, what do you know of Colonel Macready?” Fleurette swirled another teaspoonful of sugar into her lemonade glass.

Lolly watched Carrie’s heart-shaped face come alive at the mention of the man’s name. With such a pronounced case of hero worship, she wondered how the young woman could stomach having two rivals sipping cold drinks at the same table.

“Oh, the colonel is…well, he is just wonderful. Simply, truly…wonderful.”

“Wonderful,” Fleurette echoed dryly. She tapped her spoon against the edge of her glass and laid it on the tiny pink tea napkin provided. “Wonderful, how?”

“Oh, in every way, I assure you. I’ve known him all my life, you see. He came to live here in Maple Falls when I was four…or was I five? Let’s see, I am nineteen now, and the colonel arrived right after the war. That’s sixty-five subtracted from seventy-nine…. Yes, I was five. I remember it was on my birthday.”

“More to the point, how old is he?”

Carrie giggled. “Oh, I calculate he’s old enough to be my father and then some. But Dora Mae Landsfelter is years younger than her husband, and she said such things don’t matter in the least.”

“Carrie,” Lolly said, her voice gentle. “Could you calculate how old the colonel is exactly.”

Carrie closed her soft brown eyes for a moment. “Forty-three.”

Fleurette lifted her lips away from her lemonade. “Ah do wonder why he has not married in all this time.”

Lolly’s hand stilled on her glass. The question had occurred to her, as well. How had the town’s prize catch remained uncaught for fourteen years?

“Well,” Carrie began, lowering her voice, “some people say he lost a sweetheart in the war and never recovered. Others say he’s stubborn and set in his ways and he never before wanted a wife for fear she’d change him.”

Lolly’s ears burned. Stubborn? Set in his ways? The same had been said of her ever since she turned fourteen.

“He hardly lets anyone female into his house,” Carrie went on, “except for old Mrs. Squires. She’s kept house for him for years, but the colonel does all his own cooking, and Mrs. Squires says he even irons his own shirts. Can you imagine?”

“If he married, he would require servants,” Fleurette murmured. “Ah have had servants all my life.”

Lolly bit her tongue. Slaves, more likely. She squashed down a ripple of anger and decided to change the subject. “What is his home like?”

“It’s a big white house with gray shutters, and it has three whole floors and a music room and a library. I’ve never seen the library, but once I attended a recital in the—”

Fleurette cut her off. “Why would a bachelor purchase such a mansion?”

“Oh, he didn’t purchase it. He inherited it from his great-aunt Henrietta on his father’s side. She married a Northerner and came out west, but she died of the quinsy soon after the war…. Why, what’s the matter, Leora? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Lolly unclenched the fist she hid in her lap. Mama had died of the quinsy a month after Papa had been killed at Chancellorsville. She spoke over a tightened throat. “Nothing is the matter.”

“Do Ah understand that Colonel Macready is a Southerner?” The excitement was evident in Fleurette’s voice.

“Oh, yes, he’s a real Southern gentleman. From Virginia. He has the most courtly manners, when he wants to, that is. And he’s so tall and well formed and…” Carrie blushed and gulped her lemonade.

“Why—” Fleurette paused, pinning her gaze on Carrie “—since you seem obviously smitten with the gentleman, has he never courted you?”

Carrie gaped at her. “Me! Every single female in this town, and even some not so single, are smitten with Colonel Macready. He’s never courted any of us!”

“Perhaps because he is a Southerner, and y’all are Yankees,” Fleurette murmured.

“Or perhaps,” Lolly said in a level tone, “because he wants to be the Smitten and not the Smittee. So to speak.”

Carrie gave a whoop of laughter and clapped her hand over her mouth, then continued. Lolly watched the green-eyed, golden-haired Fleurette straighten her spine and crook her little finger into a dainty arc.

“Ah’m sure that is exactly right, Miss…May-pole. A gentleman’s heart is not easily won.”

“Mayfield. It’s Mayfield.”

“Why, of course it is,” Fleurette purred.

“In this case,” Lolly continued, “the gentleman is willing to donate his heart to finance a schoolhouse. Apparently he doesn’t care one way or the other whether he’s smitten or not.”

Fleurette tipped her head to one side like a curious robin. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?”

Carrie’s hand drifted down from her mouth. “It won’t matter, ladies. The colonel has given his word on the matter. He will marry whichever one of us wins the competition. Oh, I do hope it will be me!”

“Why, my dear, Ah’d say you are enamored of the gentleman.”

“Actually,” Carrie said. “I don’t really know him very well. I’m just one of dozens of females in town who adore him and simply swoon when he smiles. But he treats us all exactly the same.”

A calculating look came into Fleurette’s eyes. “You don’t know the first thing about this man, do you? Except that you swoon when he smiles.”

“Why, no,” Carrie said. “If I did, I’d surely tell you both. We’re all in this together, are we not?”

“Precisely,” Fleurette said, her voice light.

Lolly didn’t like her tone, pleasant as Fleurette had tried to make it. Again, the back of her neck tingled.

The scent of the young woman’s perfume, something cloyingly sweet and heavy, like gardenias, made Lolly’s head swim. She turned away to draw an untainted breath and spied young Hank Morehouse lounging in the dining room doorway, sending hand signals in her direction. Satchel. Upstairs. Room 3.

Lolly nodded. No sooner had the boy disappeared than a blur of royal blue sateen announced the presence of Dora Mae Landsfelter.

“Ah, here you are,” she trumpeted. “I have an announcement.” Dora Mae clasped her hand over her still-heaving bosom. “This evening, at eight o’clock…” She panted.

The three candidates froze, fingers curled around their lemonade glasses.

“The Helpful Ladies will host a reception in the hotel ballroom. And at that time…” She paused dramatically. “You will meet Colonel Macready. She slanted a look at Fleurette. “Dress will be ladies’ evening attire.”

Fleurette gasped. “My trunks! Have they arrived?”

“They have. Mrs. Petrov had all three moved up to your room at her boardinghouse.”

Lolly sat stricken, unable to move. Trunk? Her trunk had been on the train; in her agitation about disembarking she’d completely forgotten about it. Now she realized all her possessions, except for what she obviously carried in her travel satchel—clean undergarments and a shawl and her toiletries and her Bible—were still on the train and headed for Portland.

How could she have been so scatterbrained? All she had to wear this evening was the black faille traveling suit, which at this moment felt heavier—and hotter—than ever before. She desperately needed something light and airy. Something summery and man-catching, with flounces and ruffles and…