She looked uncertainly at the others. “But…but he was to have written a letter first,” she protested, “so we could evaluate his application, then send him an invitation if we agreed he was a good candidate.”
“Perhaps his letter got lost in the mail or delayed,” Sarah pointed out, reasonable as always.
She supposed what Sarah had said was possible, Milly had to admit. Stagecoaches carrying the mail got robbed, or his letter could have fallen out of the mail sack and blown away, or gotten stuck to another going elsewhere…. But the man should have waited for a reply from them.
“I say an applicant is an applicant,” Maude Harkey said. “He must have come a long way. Least we can do is see him and hear what he has to say.”
Milly couldn’t argue with that, she decided. They had prayed fervently that their advertisement would be answered, and it had been, though not in the way she had planned.
Now that the moment had come, though, she felt a little faint. Her corset suddenly felt too tightly laced. It was hard to get a breath. She rose, wishing she had worn her Sunday best instead of this green-and-yellow-sprigged everyday dress, wished that she had time to pinch her cheeks…. Darting a glance at the others, she saw that all of them appeared to be wishing much the same.
“Well, by all means, invite him in, Dan,” Milly said with a calmness she was far from feeling.
The boy looked over his shoulder at whoever stood beyond their sight and said, “You kin come in.”
He was tall, taller by a head than Milly, which must put him at six feet or so, she thought absently, and so darkly tanned that at first Milly thought he was a Mexican. But then he doffed his wide-brimmed hat, and she saw that his hair gleamed tawny-gold in the light shed by the high window just behind him. His eyes were the blue of a cloudless spring sky, his nose straight and patrician. He wore a black frock coat with a matching waistcoat over an immaculate white shirt. He looked to be in his early thirties.
He was easily the most compelling man Milly had ever set eyes on.
He bowed deeply from the waist, and when he straightened, he smiled as his gaze roved around the circle of thunderstruck ladies.
“Good afternoon, ladies. My name is Nicholas Brookfield. I am looking for Miss Millicent Matthews.” His eyes stopped at Sarah. “Are you Miss Matthews, by chance?”
“I—uh, that is, I’m S-Sarah Matthews, her s-sister…” Sarah stammered, going pale, then crimson. She gestured toward Milly. “That’s Millicent.”
The woman she pointed to was nothing like the image Nick had formed in his mind of Miss Millicent Matthews, being neither blonde nor short. She was tall and willowy, her figure hinting at strength rather than feminine frailty. Her hair gleamed like polished mahogany, so dark brown that it was nearly black, her eyes a changeable hazel under sweeping lashes, her lips temptingly curving rather than the pouting rosebud he had always thought the epitome of female loveliness.
In that instant, Nicholas Brookfield’s ideal image of beauty was transformed. Millicent Matthews was the most striking woman he had ever encountered. He couldn’t imagine why he had thought, even for a second, that she was blonde. Why on earth had this woman needed to place such an advertisement? Were the men of Texas blind as well as fools?
“Mr. Brookfield, I’m sorry, we weren’t expecting you. In the advertisement we placed, we indicated that an interested gentleman was to send a letter. Is it possible your letter got lost in the mail?”
Nick had wondered if the woman would confront him for not following directions, but she had given him a way to save face, if he wanted to use it. Nick wouldn’t take refuge in a lie, however, even a small one.
He gave her what he hoped was a dazzling smile. “I’m afraid I didn’t want to wait upon an answer to a letter, Miss Matthews, the post being so slow, you understand. I’m here in Texas to take up a post in Austin, but I happened upon your advertisement and found it so intriguing that I rode on to Simpson Creek, purely out of curiosity.”
“‘Purely out of curiosity?’” she echoed, narrowing her eyes. “Does that mean you’re not interested in marriage, sir? That you just came to see what sort of a desperate female would place such an advertisement?”
“Milly,” her sister murmured, her tone mildly reproachful. “We shouldn’t make Mr. Brookfield feel unwelcome. We haven’t even given him a chance.”
So Miss Matthews could be prickly. This rose had thorns. Then he heard his words as she must have heard them, and he realized how offensive his half-formed idea of meeting the lady and her associates merely as a lark before settling down to a dreary job was.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it to sound that I was merely looking to amuse myself at your expense, ladies. I…I truly was impressed with your initiative, and decided I wanted to meet you.”
His reply seemed to mollify her somewhat. “I see,” she said, studying him. Her eyes seemed to look deep into his soul. “You’re British, Mr. Brookfield?”
Nick nodded. “From Sussex, in southeastern England. But I’ve been in India the past decade.”
“I—I see,” she said again, seemingly uncertain what to do now.
Nick was increasingly aware of their audience hanging on to every word. “I—that is, I wonder if we might speak privately?” He couldn’t think properly with all of them staring at him, let alone produce the right words to keep her from dismissing him out of hand.
Suspicion flashed in those changeable brown-gold eyes. For a moment Millicent Matthews looked as if she might refuse.
Nick added the one word he could think of to change her mind, and infused it with all the appeal he could muster. “Please.”
She glanced at the others, but they were apparently all waiting for her to decide, for no one said a word or twitched a muscle.
“Very well,” she said at last. “We can step outside for a moment, I suppose. Sarah, will you take over the meeting? If you’ll follow me, Mr. Brookfield…” She led him down the hall past the sanctuary.
Pushing open the pecan wood door, he walked outside with her, around the side of the church past a small cemetery and into a grove of venerable live oak and pecan trees behind the church. Fragments of old pecan shells crunched under their feet.
It was pleasantly cool in this sun-dappled shade, though the heat of the afternoon shimmered just beyond the influence of the leafy boughs. Insects hummed. A mockingbird flashed gray, black and white as it flitted from one tree to another. A curved stone bench curled around half of the thick trunk of one of the trees, but Millicent Matthews didn’t sit down; instead, she turned to face him.
“Mr. Brookfield, before we say anything more, I feel compelled to point out that I’m merely the one who composed the advertisement. There are several other ladies to choose from, as you saw. I assure you, it’s quite all right if you find you prefer another of them…”
So she had a sense of fair play and generosity. Nick liked that about her. But somehow he knew her suggestion was something he didn’t even want to consider. It was incomprehensible how he could sense that already, but there it was.
“I
