He Chose the Sister Everyone Hid in the Kitchen. By Sunrise, Oak Haven Learned Why Her Name Had Been Written Into a Dead Man’s Will.
The cruelest thing Mabel Higgins ever heard her mother say about her was spoken as though Mabel were not standing three feet away.
“She has a good heart,” Martha Higgins told a visiting banker, lowering her voice with the solemn pity usually reserved for widows and dying horses. “But a good heart does not improve a woman’s prospects.”
Mabel had been carrying a tray of cinnamon cakes through the dining room.
She did not drop it.
She did not cry.
She simply continued toward the kitchen, closed the door behind her, and pressed both flour-covered hands against the wooden worktable until the trembling passed.
That had been four years ago.
Since then, she had learned something important.
A woman could survive almost anything if everyone around her believed she had already surrendered.
That was why, on the night Harrison Cole took her hand at Oak Haven’s spring jubilee, nobody was more shocked than Mabel herself.
Clementine Higgins stood frozen in the kitchen doorway.
Her golden hair had been arranged into glossy curls. The emerald velvet gown Martha had spent money they did not possess to purchase made her look like something painted onto the side of an expensive music box.
Behind her, Martha stared at Harrison’s fingers wrapped around Mabel’s flour-covered hand as though she had just witnessed a murder.
“What,” Clementine said softly, “are you doing?”
Mabel tried to pull away.
Harrison’s hand tightened.
Not painfully.
Protectively.
“There’s no need to make this unpleasant,” Mabel whispered.
Clementine laughed.
It was not her usual sparkling laugh.
This one had an edge.
“Unpleasant?”
Her gaze moved over Mabel’s plain brown dress, stained apron, loose hair and reddened hands.
Then she looked at Harrison.
“My sister has been serving food all evening.”
“I know,” Harrison said.
“She was washing dishes.”
“I know that too.”
Martha recovered first.
“Mr. Cole, forgive us. Mabel sometimes misunderstands kindness.”
Mabel felt something twist beneath her ribs.
Harrison’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But suddenly the warm young cattleman who had spent half an hour discussing Dickens and winter feed with her seemed to disappear.
In his place stood the man who controlled more than forty thousand acres of Wyoming grassland and employed nearly sixty men.
“I don’t believe she misunderstood anything.”
Clementine’s cheeks turned scarlet.
“You danced with me.”
“Yes.”
“Twice.”
“Yes.”
“You spent supper beside me.”
“Your mother assigned the seat.”
Mabel nearly choked.
Clementine’s eyes flashed.
Martha stepped into the kitchen and lowered her voice.
“Whatever amusement this is, Mr. Cole, perhaps we should continue it another time.”
“Amusement?”
Harrison looked at Mabel.
“I haven’t been this serious about a conversation in months.”
The words struck Mabel harder than they should have.
Clementine heard them too.
Her face changed.
For one brief instant, anger vanished, revealing something Mabel had almost never seen in her younger sister.
Fear.
Then it disappeared.
Clementine lifted her chin.
“You don’t know her.”
“No,” Harrison agreed. “But I’d like to.”
“You wouldn’t if you did.”
“Clementine,” Mabel warned.
But Clementine had already crossed the room.
“You see flour and homemade biscuits and think she’s some sweet country woman nobody appreciated.”
She stopped directly in front of Harrison.
“You have no idea what you’re choosing.”
Martha seized Clementine’s arm.
“That is enough.”
“No, Mother.”
Clementine’s eyes never left Harrison.
“If you want my sister, Mr. Cole, then by all means, court her.”
Her smile returned.
Beautiful.
Cold.
“But before you offer her anything permanent, ask Father what happened in Cheyenne eleven years ago.”
The kitchen became perfectly silent.
Mabel frowned.
“What?”
Martha’s face drained white.
