from the street, along with an ominous bang that caused Lydia, lurking unnoticed in the doorway to the main parlor, to start slightly.
“Here he comes now,” Mittie enthused, under her breath.
“Too bad he’s so fat and old and homely,” Millie lamented. “Our Lydia requires a handsome husband, one who’ll give her lots of children.”
“Hush,” Mittie scolded, in a whisper. “Lydia will hear you! And for the life of me, I can’t think why she would turn up her nose at a man like Jacob Fitch. He might be portly and of a certain age, and I’ll even concede that he’s not much to look at. But he’s rich and he owns an automobile.”
Lydia, carefully trained, since she’d been brought to this imposing house as an eight-year-old orphan, in many things, not the least of which was the wholesale impropriety of eavesdropping, cleared her throat delicately in order to make her presence known.
Both aunts blushed prettily when they turned to face her.
“Mr. Fitch has arrived,” Millie announced, recovering first. Like Mittie, she was small, almost doll-like, with the near-purple eyes that were the pride of the Fairmont line. As young women, the sisters had been breathtakingly beautiful, as their portraits attested. According to Helga, the housekeeper, Millie had loved a Confederate major, Mittie, a Union captain. Both men had been killed in the line of duty.
Word of the deaths had arrived on the same day, the legend went, and the aunts had worn mourning gowns ever since. Now, they contented themselves with the ups and downs of other people’s romances, especially their only niece’s.
If indeed the arrangement between Lydia and Mr. Fitch could be called a romance. It certainly didn’t feel like one to her.
“Let’s go and make tea,” Mittie said, snatching Millie by the puffed sleeve of her sad black dress and dragging her past Lydia, in the direction of the kitchen.
Lydia suppressed an urge to flee, or beg her aunts to tell Mr. Fitch she was indisposed—anything to avoid receiving the man and passing an interminable hour of “courting” in the parlor.
But, like eavesdropping, lying to evade one’s social obligations was not considered proper—and Lydia placed a great deal of importance on propriety.
As always, Fitch pounded at the front door, foregoing the bell, with its pleasant, jingly little ring.
Lydia smoothed her lavender dress, laid out for her that morning by Helga, because it matched her eyes. That, of course, had been before Mr. Fitch had sent his calling card ahead to announce an impending visit.
She dredged up another smile—it took considerably more effort this time—and went to open the door.
The man Lydia was to marry the following afternoon stood impatiently on the verandah, his motoring goggles pushed up onto his forehead in a way that was probably meant to appear jaunty, but instead gave him the look of a very plump bullfrog. He was covered in road dust—Mr. Fitch did love his automobile and was constantly racing along the dry and rutted roads of Phoenix at speeds of up to twenty miles an hour.
Often, he insisted that Lydia accompany him.
Now, he clutched a bouquet of wilting flowers, probably purloined from some neighbor’s water-starved garden, in his left hand. “Good afternoon, Lydia,” he said.
“Mr. Fitch,” Lydia acknowledged, with a coolness she couldn’t quite hide.
His small, too-watchful eyes swept over her. “You’re not dressed for the road,” he pointed out, his tone mildly critical. “Any wife of mine will always be prepared to go driving.”
Any wife of mine…
Lydia managed not to shudder, though the smile she’d put on—if it was a smile and not the death grimace it felt like—wobbled on her mouth. “It’s such a hot day,” she said. “I was hoping we could stay inside.” And I’m not your wife, Jacob Fitch. Not yet, anyway. Not until tomorrow.
Mr. Fitch trundled past her, into the house, nearly stomping on her toes. “Honestly, Lydia, this delicacy of yours is bothersome. Any wife—”
Lydia closed the door smartly behind him, cutting off the rest of his sentence. She was not delicate, had not been seriously ill since she was a child, though admittedly her appearance made her seem fragile. Like her great-aunts, she was small-boned, though at five feet two inches, she was taller than Mittie and Millie, and she did have a nice bosom.
Protesting that she was as healthy as anyone, however much she wanted to do just that, would serve no purpose. Jacob Fitch did not listen to anything she said, unless, of course, it was precisely what he wanted to hear.
He fairly shoved the flowers at her.
Lydia took them, and her heart turned over at their thirsty state. “I’ll just put these in water,” she said brightly. “Do sit down in the parlor, Mr. Fitch, and make yourself at home. I’ll only be a minute.”
Fitch tilted his head back, admired the high, frescoed ceilings, fading now, but still finely crafted. The huge crystal chandelier glittered, though unlit—at night, powered by gas, it glowed, and even after all these years, it seemed magical to Lydia.
A faint smile touched Mr. Fitch’s narrow lips. “The old place could use a man’s touch,” he said huskily, letting his gaze drift slowly to Lydia, then over her, like a spill of something viscous. No doubt he was anticipating their wedding night. “And so could you.”
Again, Lydia managed not to shudder, but just barely.
The thought of Jacob Fitch putting his hands to that lovely old house, much less to her naked body, made the pit of her stomach drop, as if from a great height.
Overcome with a flash of pure dread, she turned on one heel, biting her lower lip, and fled to the kitchen. Oh, to go right on through, out the back door, down the alley to—
To where?
She had no place to go.
No one to turn to.
Months ago, in a fit of panic, she’d sent off the letter, the one Gideon Yarbro had written to himself in case she ever needed to send it—Please come and get me right away, was all it said—when she was a little girl, recovering from pneumonia and the loss of her father. But there had been no reply, of course.
There wouldn’t have been, though, would there? Gideon, a mere boy at the time, anxious to reassure her, had scratched out that single line in penciled letters, sealed the envelope, addressed it to: Gideon Rhodes, Deputy Marshal, General Delivery, Stone Creek, Arizona Territory. Heaven knew where he was now, after a decade—he’d been bound for college that year, so it was unlikely that he was still the deputy marshal up at Stone Creek. And Arizona wasn’t even a territory anymore, it was the forty-eighth state.
These and other equally hopeless thoughts tumbled in Lydia’s mind as she ignored Helga’s penetrating gaze and filled a vase with cool water for the fading flowers. Now, she simply felt foolish for adding postage to that very old letter and dropping it through the slot down at the post office. She blushed to imagine it actually reaching Gideon—especially at this late date—and silently prayed that it had gone astray.
And yet it was her one hope,
