laughed and let herself be dragged along. By then, the crazy situation had somehow captured her. The day’s events had begun to seem like some weird and yet magical dream. Her lips still tingled from the feel of Justin’s mouth on hers. And she was pleased, she truly was, that her little reenactment, skirting so close to disaster, had ended up a great success.
In the foyer, the crowd surged straight for the double doors that opened directly onto the covered wooden sidewalk of Old Town’s Main Street. They pushed the doors wide and a blinding gust of freezing wind and snow blew in, making everyone laugh all the louder.
“Brrrr. It’s a cold one.”
“Yep. She’s really movin’ in.”
“Gonna be one wild night, and that’s for certain.”
The snow swirled so thick, the other side of Main Street was nothing more than a vague shadow through the whiteness. The horse, a palomino mare, and the buckboard were there, waiting, the reins thrown and wrapped around one of the nineteenth-century-style hitching posts that ran at intervals along Main at the edge of the sidewalk, bringing to mind an earlier time.
Katie herself had requested the horse, whose name was Buttercup. The mare belonged to Caleb. He kept a fine stable of horses out at the family ranch, the Lazy D. A sweet-natured, gentle animal, Buttercup was getting along in years—and, boy, did she look cold. Icicles hung from her mouth. She glanced toward the crowd and snorted good and loud, as if to say, Get me out of this. Now…
Really, maybe they ought to slow down here. The snow did look pretty bad.
“Um, I think that we ought to…” She let the sentence die. She’d always had a too-soft voice. And no one was listening, anyway.
The revelers herded her and Justin into the old open, two-seater carriage. It creaked and shifted as it took their weight.
“Use the outerwear and the blankets under the seat!” Emelda shouted from back in the doorway to the hall foyer. A frown had deepened the creases in her brow. Maybe she was having her doubts about this, too.
But then Emelda put on a brave smile and waved and the wind died for a moment. Really, it was only two blocks west and then three more northeast to the museum. And, according to the weather reports, the storm was supposed to blow itself out quickly.
It should be okay.
Justin brushed the snow from a heavy ankle-length woolen coat—a tightly fitted one with jet buttons down the front and a curly woolen ruff at the neck. He helped her into it, then put on the rough gray man’s coat himself. There was a Cossack-style hat for her that matched the ruff at her neck. No hat for Justin, and he’d left the silly, floppy one back in the hall. But he didn’t seem to mind. There were heavy gloves for both of them.
They shook out the pile of wool blankets and wrapped up in them. Justin pulled on his gloves and Josiah Green handed him the reins.
“Bless you, my children,” Green intoned, as if the marriage vows he’d just led them through had been for real.
“Thanks,” Justin muttered dryly. “Looks like we’ll need it.” He glanced at Katie. “Okay…” He had a you-got-us-into-this kind of look on his handsome face. “Where to?”
“If you want, I’ll be glad to take the reins.”
“I can handle it. Where to?”
Even if he didn’t know what he was doing, it should be all right, she thought. Buttercup was patient and docile as they come. “Straight ahead. Then you’ll turn right on Elk, about three blocks down.”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
She forced herself to raise her voice and repeated the instructions.
Justin shook the reins and clicked his tongue and Buttercup started walking. Her bridle, strung with bells, tinkled merrily as they set off, the beer-sodden townsfolk cheering them on.
The wind rose again, howling, and the snow came down harder.
A half block later, the thick, swirling flakes obscured the hall and the knot of cheering rowdies behind them. A minute or two after that, Katie couldn’t hear their voices. All at once, she and this stranger she’d just pretended to marry were alone in a whirling vortex of white.
Katie glanced over her shoulder. She saw nothing but swirling snow and the shadows of the buildings and cars on either side of Main.
The snow fell all the harder. It beat at them, borne by the hard-blowing wind. Katie huddled into the blankets, her cheekbones aching with the cold.
Buttercup plodded on, the snow so thick that when Katie squinted into it, she could barely see the horse’s sleek golden rump. She turned to the man beside her. He seemed to sense her gaze on him. He gave her a quick, forced kind of smile—his nose was Rudolphred, along with his cheeks and chin and ears—and then swiftly put his focus back on the wall of white in front of them.
For a split second, she spied a spot of red to the side—the fire hydrant at the corner of Elk and Main. Wasn’t it? “Turn right! Here!” Katie shouted it out good and loud that time. Justin tugged the reins and the horse turned the corner.
They passed close to the fire hydrant. Good. This was the right way. And as long as they were on Elk Avenue now, they’d literally run into the museum—a sprawling red clapboard building that had started out its existence as the Thunder Canyon School. It sat on a curve in the street, where Elk Avenue made a sharp turn due east.
The palomino mare slogged on into the white. By then, Katie couldn’t see a thing beyond the side rails of the buckboard and Buttercup’s behind.
Good Lord. Were they lost? It was beginning to look that way.
Hungry for reassurance, Katie shouted over the howling wind, “We are still on Elk Avenue, aren’t we?”
Justin shouted back, “I’m from out of town, remember? Hate to tell you, but I haven’t got a clue.”
Chapter Two
Just as Katie began to fear they’d somehow veered off into the open field on the west side of Elk Avenue, the rambling red clapboard building with its wide front porch loomed up to the left.
“We’re here!” she yelled, thrilled at the sight.
Justin tugged the reins and the horse turned into the parking lot. Ten or twelve feet from the front porch, the buckboard creaked to a stop—at which point it occurred to Katie that they couldn’t leave poor Buttercup out in this. “Go around the side! There’s a big shed out back.”
He frowned at her.
She shouted, “The horse. We need to put her around back—to the left.”
His frown deepened. She could see in those blue eyes that he thought Buttercup’s comfort was the least of their problems right then. But he didn’t argue. Shoulders hunched into his ugly old-fashioned coat, he flicked the reins and Buttercup started moving again.
When they got to the rear of the building, Katie signaled him on past a long, narrow breezeway and around to the far
