“Yes, but…I mean, why this way, with the Ladies Helpful Society stirring the pot?”
“Ah. The truth again, I gather?”
“Yes, please. It’s usually much more interesting than anything one could make up.”
“Well…” His throat threatened to close up tight. He swallowed again. “That is, I am comfortably situated and, well, I am getting older. And I find that I am…”
“Yes?”
He was beginning to sweat under his starched shirt. “In want of a companion. That is, a wife.”
She cocked her head and the fine dark eyebrows rose. “What for? You do your own cooking, I understand. Even your own ironing.” She looked from his chin to his toes and back. “And you look extremely well cared for, right down to your shiny gold cuff links.”
“Miss Mayfield, let me make something clear. I do not want a wife for the purpose of caring for me. I…well, I— My God, are you always so inquisitive?”
“Yes. Always. Up until a week ago I ran a newspaper office, you see. I got quite in the habit of asking questions. Also, it must be obvious that I have a personal interest in your reasons.”
“Ah, the Ladies Helpful Society again.”
“Exactly. Why ever would you put three elderly ladies in charge of choosing your life’s companion?”
“I can’t answer that. I just plain don’t know, unless maybe it’s because I gave my heart away twenty years ago and at my age I don’t expect to fall in love again.”
“Certainly not,” she said in a crisp voice. “Love is for the young.”
He missed a step.
“How old are you, Miss Mayfield?”
Lolly missed a step. Her stocking-clad foot smacked into the hard toe of his left shoe. She bit her lip. “I am twenty-nine and eleven-twelfths.”
“I am forty-three…”
She gazed up at his chin. My goodness, he didn’t look a day over thirty-five, except for that streak of silver at his temple. And the faint whisker shadow visible on his chin; why, he looked rugged and manly and…even a little dangerous.
“And two-thirds.” A conspiratorial glint of humor showed in his eyes.
“Ow!” She collided with his foot again.
“Miss Mayfield?”
“Colonel Macready?”
“Leora, is it?”
“Lolly.”
“My given name is Kellen. My grandmother’s family name. And…” He stopped in the middle of the ballroom and stood looking down into her face. “I would like—”
“Oh, theah you are, Colonel! Ah’ve requested a Virginia reel. You will partner me, won’t you?”
Fleurette eyed Lolly with a look that reminded her of a green glass bottle on her mother’s medicine shelf. The one that contained castor oil.
“That is, when y’all are finished heah, of course.”
Lolly caught Colonel Macready’s eye. Some devilish imp inside her pushed her lips open. “I do believe the colonel is quite finished.”
She spun away and limped—unobtrusively, she hoped—back to the green velvet settee where she sank down onto the soft cushion with a sigh. She would never, never learn to keep her mouth shut.
She bit her lip and watched the colonel swing Fleurette up and down the line of dancers while the band boomed out a reel. Fleurette’s yellow silk train twitched and jumped with a life of its own while the shiny brass instruments and one violin warbled on.
Lolly kept time with her stockinged toes hidden under her skirt, sipping the cup of apple cider she’d left on the side table. It tasted different now. Better. Warm and soothing when it reached her stomach. Her chest began to feel floaty, as if any moment it might sail away from the rest of her body.
Not only that, she thought in alarm, the tips of her— Heavens, she shouldn’t be having such thoughts!
Her nipples swelled into hardened peaks anyway. “Stop that!” she ordered under her breath.
She focused her attention on the yellow swirl of silk taffeta in the colonel’s arms and then on the colonel himself. How graceful his motions were as he swooped his partner around the room. And how tall and straight he was. She’d seen tall, handsome men before, but she had never seen one like this.
His tousled dark hair and mustache gave him a slightly rakish air, even though he was correctly dressed right up to his chin. His mouth moved, saying something to Fleurette, and his teeth flashed in a grin. Then his lips closed, leaving just a hint of a smile.
Fleurette gazed up into his face, her laughter trilling over the sound of the fiddle. Over the cornet, as well. The colonel’s chiseled features remained impassive, but his eyes—those unsettling eyes— like liquid jade—flicked over the line of dancers as if looking for something and then returned to his partner.
Fleurette’s lashes beat like gold butterfly wings against her pinkened cheeks. The colonel tightened his lips and looked up at the chandelier.
Lolly sat upright. At the chandelier? Was he bored? With the most ladified lady in the entire room? Why, they looked simply wonderful dancing together. The perfect couple.
So why was he staring at the ceiling?
Lolly’s toes curled under. A man as heart-stoppingly handsome as he was would always want a pretty partner on his arm. A pretty wife.
A pretty, slim wife.
Her breath gusted out in a rush. Oh, bother. She was not going to cry. Not one drop. She most certainly was not.
She would avert her eyes and…and have another sip of cider. She drew the cup to her lips.
Empty? Over the rim she saw Colonel Macready bow over Fleurette’s daintily extended hand, gently disengage himself from her fingers and head in Lolly’s direction.
Her heart flip-flopped. Her belly felt cold, and then hot, and then cold again. And farther down, between her thighs, a secret part of her throbbed to life.
“Oh, not you, too,” she breathed.
Before the colonel had completed three of his long-legged strides, a spoon tinked against a glass and everything—noise, motion and Kellen Macready—came to a halt.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?” Lolly tensed at Dora Mae Landsfelter’s commanding voice. Something momentous was going to happen. She could feel it.
“The Ladies Helpful Society of Maple Falls has a wonderful surprise for you this evening. A most unusual surprise, but I am assured by the committee members, Minnie Sullivan and Ruth Underwood, that it is perfectly proper. Colonel Macready? Will you step forward?”
“A Question Bee!” Carrie stared at Dora Mae Landsfelter’s beaming face, then tipped her head toward Lolly. “Does she mean like a Spelling Bee?” she intoned.
“I suppose so,” Lolly whispered back. “Why should our knowledge of those things matter to him? He wants a wife, not an encyclopedia.”
“Well,” Carrie ventured, “his wife will also be the mother of his children. Wouldn’t he want her to be educated?”
Fleurette swept toward them, a swirl of bobbing yellow ruffles. “What are y’all whisperin’ about? Are y’all talkin’ about me?”
“Not you at all,” Carrie assured her. “About the Question Bee.”
“Oh, that.”