they’re not the real reason.”
“They’re not?” She turned back and offered him one of the glasses. He took it, trying to keep his eyes off the way her slender white arm disappeared into a ruffle of maroon silk.
She perched on a stool on the opposite side of the table. “It’s Kate who’s the problem,” she said. “She’s going to have a baby.”
Carter was a little taken aback at her bluntness, but he recovered quickly, saying, “It’s not illegal to have a baby.”
“Well, you wouldn’t know it to talk to the people in this town. They’d just as soon lock her up and throw away the key.”
Carter knew a lot about bitterness, but it was hard to hear it coming from Jennie Sheridan’s beautiful lips. “I’ve met a passel of nice people in this town in the few months I’ve been here. I find it hard to believe they’re as vindictive as you say. In fact, besides Lyle Wentworth, I had another person offer support for you two today—Dr. Millard.”
Jennie’s expression softened. “Dr. Millard’s a good man. A lot of the people in town are. But then there are the ones like Henrietta Billingsley. I’d thought she was my mother’s friend. Now she comes around here and tries to blame Kate for my parents’ deaths.”
Jennie took a big swallow of cider and Carter could see that her hands were shaking. Unlike his own bitterness, which had been long-standing and coldly calculated, Jennie’s was raw, sharply edged with hurt. “I had heard that your parents died of the influenza last spring,” he said gently.
“They did. Kate’s condition had absolutely nothing to do with it—the very idea is absurd. They didn’t…know about it before they died. Kate didn’t even know then.”
“People say cruel things sometimes without thinking.”
“Oh, Henrietta thinks about them, all right. Then she goes ahead and says them, taking joy in the process.”
She held herself stiffly erect on the stool, and Carter had an almost uncontrollable impulse to walk around the table and pull her off the stool into his arms. He’d met the woman only today, but he was already feeling as if some invisible thread had wrapped itself around the two of them, tangling up her feelings with his own.
“You’ll have to learn to ignore her, then,” he said instead. “Just deal with the people who are worth your attention—people like Dr. Millard.”
His comment was rewarded with another half smile. “Yes, we do have some friends left.”
Carter started to extend his hand toward where hers rested on the table across from him but changed his mind. He had the feeling that Jennie Sheridan would have to be gentled more cautiously than a wild young mare. He withdrew his hand. “I’d like to be counted as one of those friends,” he said simply.
She smiled again, this time with a rueful twist to her mouth. “Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be shutting us down?”
“I’m an officer of the court, and there’s a court order shutting you down.”
The smile disappeared. “So there you have it,” she said softly.
“Which is why I spent a great portion of my afternoon going through law books trying to find a way out for you.”
He could see the sweep of her long lashes all the way across the table as she blinked in astonishment. “You did?”
He nodded. “I told you, I’d like to help.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Why?”
It was a logical question, he supposed, but he hadn’t expected it. And he had no idea what to answer. It didn’t seem that it would advance his case with her any to say, “Because you made my entire body come alive this morning when I saw you walking down the street toward me.” It was a woefully inadequate answer, even to himself.
“I don’t like injustices,” he said finally.
Jennie regarded him with genuine surprise. “I’ve misjudged you, Mr. Jones,” she said softly. “I think I owe you an apology for yelling at you this morning.”
Carter grinned. “I’ll forgive you on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That you call me Carter.”
The glow in her brown eyes dimmed. “I don’t think I could do that”
“It’s not so much to ask. You call Lyle by his first name.”
“We’ve known Lyle since we were children.”
Carter slid off the stool and walked around to stand in front of her. After a moment’s hesitation, he plucked her right hand from where it rested on her knee and wrapped it in both of his. “You have lots of old friends in town. I’d like to be a new one.”
Jennie’s breathing deepened. She looked up into his eyes and nodded slowly without words.
“So you’ll call me Carter?” he asked softly, his voice persuasive, a little husky.
She gave another slow nod.
“Let me hear you say it,” he insisted. “Say, ‘good night, Carter.’”
“Good night, Carter,” she repeated, her eyes never leaving his.
He dropped her hand in her lap. “I’ll come by tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to wire the district judge in Virginia City about this case.”
Her only response was another nod and the wide gaze of her brown eyes.
He gave a satisfied smile and said, “I’ll see myself out” Then he turned, crossed the kitchen and went out through the front hall. By the time he got to the stoop, he was whistling and thinking to himself that perhaps the gentling of Miss Jennie would not be quite as slow a process as he had feared.
Flapjacks had been their father’s specialty. Or rather, they had been the only item that he ever cooked in his entire life, so it had been customary to make a big fuss whenever he, with great ceremony, donned their mother’s apron and took over the stove. Jennie and Kate had avoided the food for the first few weeks after the deaths, but when the silverheels had asked about flapjacks for breakfast, Jennie had decided she would take over her father’s duties.
She stood over the pan ladling and flipping until there was a platter of the fluffy cakes big enough to feed, as Kate pointed out each time, the entire Seventh Cavalry…or three hungry miners.
“He said he wants to help, but he didn’t say how?” Kate asked her sister as Jennie watched carefully for the first bubbles to rise on the last batch.
“He said he’d get back to us today with more ideas,” Jennie answered carefully. She’d had no choice but to tell her sister about last night’s visit from Carter Jones. The silverheels would have revealed it if she hadn’t mentioned it first. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to discuss the encounter with Kate. It had left her too confused.
“So what did you talk about?”
“I don’t know…just…well, Lyle, for one thing.” That ought to shut her sister up, Jennie thought smugly.
But she was wrong. Kate continued the interrogation. “What about Lyle?”
“Mr. Jones says he’s still smitten with you.”
Kate shrugged. “That’s his problem, I guess. Any man who would be fool enough to carry a torch for a fallen woman deserves to suffer.”
Jennie knew it was unhappiness, not cruelty, behind her sister’s brittle words. “Fallen woman, indeed,” she snorted.
But Kate would not be led away from the subject. “Well, what did you think of the man? You never answered my question about him yesterday.”
What