Table of Contents
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Philadelphia, 1899
There's a sucker born every minute...
The odd thing about that was that no one who truly knew Emily Bright would ever have applied that phrase to her. For no one who spent as much time as she did with people on the extremes of human existence, in pain and grief and joy, could remain ignorant of some of mankind's essential flaws.
But she'd been born and remained a deeply optimistic person. And that cornerstone of her character, her insistence upon expecting the best in every person and situation, made her the perfect audience for the advertisement that a handsome young man thrust in her hand as she clipped down the street by the Broad Street train station. She'd sneaked off to visit Mrs. Sweeney, whom Dr. Goodale had decreed was recovering nicely from a bout with pleurisy, but Emily wished to examine her one more time just to make sure.
That, and the fact that she very much wanted the information on the flyer to be true.
Free land!
It can be yours! The vast central plains of this great nation abound with plentiful game and pure, sparkling waters, soil so rich that crops spring forth before one has barely scattered seeds upon the fertile ground! And it can be yours, your own home, on your own land, due to the foresight of our government, with no more investment than your own courage and labor...
She stood frozen, oblivious to the stream of jostling people that eddied around her.
Home, her own home.
She'd never had one, notone of her own since she was five. Oh, she'd lived places, she and her sisters, places she'd always understood she'd have to leave eventually. Even the beautiful house she'd lived in for the last fourteen years — no one had ever allowed her to labor under the delusion it was hers. And now Norine, her sister Kate's stepdaughter, had made no secret of the fact that she was impatient to move back into the house her father had willed her.
Where would Emily and Kate go now? She'd no idea. Kate cheerfully insisted Emily shouldn't worry, all would be fine. And then she'd popped off to dinner with Floyd Ruckman, the late Dr. Goodale's old, very rich, and utterly unappealing friend.
Emily was terribly afraid that Kate had every intention of sacrificing herself on the altar of not-so-holy matrimony for Emily's sake once again. Emily had been too young to stop Kate all those years ago when she'd married Dr. Goodale. But now that Emily was fully grown and quite capable of taking care of herself, she had no intention of allowing Kate to make the same mistake again. But allowing, or not allowing, Kate to do something was never as easily accomplished as decided.
Kate had already given years of her life for Emily's sake. Emily had no doubt she would continue to do so until Emily proved it completely unnecessary. She'd wracked her brain for weeks in an attempt to figure out how to do just that, but short of marrying Mr. Ruckman herself, she'd yet to come up with a plan.
Someone plowed into her back, and she stumbled forward, reflexively clutching the precious paper.
"You're holdin' things up, missy," a man in a natty suit and handsome black bowler growled at her.
Blinking, Emily surfaced from dazzling dreams of a snug little cabin surrounded by acres of burgeoning fields and pretty orchards. Hers, all hers. "Oh. I'm terribly sorry." Around her, harried people rushed to catch the next train, shouted to hail a cab, or hurried toward the shops and businesses on the street, the ebb and flow of a great city and busy lives.
"Time to get movin'."
"Yes." She grinned so brightly the impatient gentleman couldn't help but smile back. "It certainly is."
It took her three weeks to prepare. Luckily, those three weeks had been busy ones for Kate as well, swept up in the details of settling the doctor's immense estate and of mediating between Loren and Norine, her stepchildren, who hadn't been able to divide a breast of chicken at dinner without squabbling when they were younger. Things had not improved greatly over the years.
Emily often wondered if Kate was tempted to simply step aside. There was no advantage in her standing between them; the amount of his estate that Dr. Goodale left to his second wife was a tiny sliver of his wealth. But Kate was never one to leave a project undone, and her marriage to Goodale was as much a business agreement as anything else in her life.
And so Emily had little trouble convincing Kate to allow her to journey to Colorado to visit their other sister, Anthea, and her family. Though Kate didn't approve of Emily's traveling alone, they'd made the trip several times over the years. The train to Denver was both safe and reliable, and Gabriel, Anthea's husband, always met them at the station himself. Anthea could always use a little assistance, Emily reminded Kate; their oldest son, twelve-year-old Jimmy, seemed to have inherited every one of his father's hellion tendencies.
Kate simply could not leave Philadelphia until the estate was completely settled. She must not consider it, Emily insisted. And Kate could concentrate on the numerous details more fully without Emily's presence distracting her.
Not to mention that, though she would appear in public with her petticoats hanging out before admitting it, Kate was not nearly as fond of the rustic charm and wide-open spaces of Gabriel's ranch as Emily and Anthea were. Anthea had been married for years before Kate was fully convinced that, yes, Anthea really wanted to live in such uncivilized conditions.
And so, three weeks and several twinges of conscience for...
Marry Me. Copyright © by Susan Kay Law. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
loading...