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Last in the circle was eight-year-old Noralee Ness, daughter of the mercantile owner, who sent her a shy nod. Surprisingly, the girl had come without her mother or her twin sister.
Leah smiled at her. “Hello, Noralee. I did not know you could knit.”
“Yes, ma’am, I can. Mama taught me last Christmas when I was in bed with the chicken pox.”
Her spine rigid, Verena perched on a ladder-back chair near the refreshment table. “Tea, ladies?” When the dressmaker had poured tea into all the delicately flowered cups, Ellie rummaged in her knitting bag and produced a tin of sugar cookies, which she passed around.
The women talked about patterns and yarn colors and trim, their conversation peppered with a good bit of gossip. Darla reported that her mother had traveled to Saint Louis to visit her ailing sister and had brought back scandalous postcards, some with pictures of the new opera house. Ellie reported on her students’ interest in holding a spelling bee.
Noralee chattered on and on about school, dropped a number of stitches and finally lapsed into silence. Verena inspected the girl’s progress at the end of every finished row and corrected her errors none too kindly. Leah pressed her lips closed and held her tongue.
After the first hour, talk turned to Smoke River and the townspeople. Jeanne Halliday announced that two new foals had been born at the Double H ranch, which she and Colonel Halliday owned. Ellie hesitantly asked about Thad’s wheat crop and what he hoped to harvest come summer. Her husband, Matt, was thinking about planting a wheat field next year, but he was waiting to see how Thad’s crop fared this year.
Darla Weatherby spread the lacy black shawl she was working on across her knees and inspected Leah’s half-finished scarlet muffler with undisguised disapproval.
“Red is so…bright, don’t you think?” Darla said.
Leah looked up. “It’s for Thad. So I can see him easily when he comes in from the fields at night.”
“From his wheat field?” Darla sneered. “You know what they’re calling it, don’t you? ‘MacAllister’s Disaster.’”
“I heard it was ‘Thad’s Madness,’” Verena interjected.
Leah straightened. “No, I had not heard what they are calling it. For Thad’s sake I hope it will soon be ‘MacAllister’s Triumph.’”
“Hah!” Verena snorted. “Everyone knows wheat doesn’t do well this far south. Thad’s brain is addled, has been ever since Hattie—”
“Hush, Verena.” Ellie cut her off.
“Well, it’s true,” the dressmaker persisted. “Just look what he did last December, marrying again scarcely a year after—”
“Verena! Do hush up!”
“And now he’s planted wheat,” Verena sniped. “The man’s addled, I tell you.”
Addled! Under her knitting Leah twisted her hands. Thad was anything but addled. Troubled, perhaps, but not addled.
A thick silence fell. “More cookies?” Ellie offered quickly. The schoolteacher rose and passed around the tin box; Noralee took three and sent Leah a sympathetic look.
Her heart pounding with hurt and fury, Leah folded the half-finished red muffler on her lap. “I am sorry that some of you—” she looked directly at Verena and then at Darla “—that some of you feel my husband has been foolish. However, I do not believe he has. Throughout history, all innovations have come from someone who was willing to try something new.”
Five sets of eyes were riveted on her. Drawing in a shaky breath, she plunged on. “And about Thad’s remarriage. Thad is a good man. He loved his wife and it is unfortunate that she died, but I am his wife now, and I am a good wife to him.”
She lifted her chin. “Besides, who are you to judge the private lives of other people?”
Verena sent Leah a look full of daggers. Darla gulped and stared down at her lacy shawl. Ellie and Jeanne nodded at Leah in approval and even young Noralee Ness sent her a furtive smile.
Leah stood up. She could not leave Verena’s apartment fast enough, but she managed not to race for the door. She swept down the wooden stairs and out onto the plank walkway where she had tied Lady. She jammed her knitting into the saddlebag and yanked the lead rope free. Lord in heaven, she needed a swallow of whatever it was Thad drank at night.
She had her boot halfway into the stirrup when she glanced over the mare’s broad back and caught sight of something that made her breath stop and her jaw go slack.
“Third Uncle? Third Uncle! Is that really you? What are you doing here in Smoke River?”
The approaching little, rounded figure stopped short. He wore an impeccable Western-style suit and overcoat of dark gabardine, a white shirt and a bow tie of crimson silk. On his arm swung a jaunty red umbrella.
