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Dumbfounded, he sifted a handful of the dry bits through his fingers. Leah grabbed his hand and pointed to the kernels in his palm.
“They are not dead, Thad. They are dried out, but they are only sleeping.” She lifted dancing eyes to his. “It is a good omen.”
He caught her about the waist, spun her around and around until she was dizzy, but she still managed to hold on to her apronful of sun-scorched wheat seeds.
“Leah. My darling Leah, I feel like I’ve aged twenty years this summer.”
Her pleased whoop of laughter made him grin. He set her down practically on his boot tops, wrapped his arms around her and untied her sunbonnet. Then he buried his face in her hair. “Hell’s bells,” he whispered. “You smell like lemons.”
Leah reached one arm around his neck, and he brought his lips near her ear. “Leah, I will regret hurting you for the rest of my life.”
A shocking notion poked into her brain. “You could make it up to me…?.” She made her voice as silky as she could. “Starting tonight.”
His eyes widened momentarily and then darkened. “Why not now?” he murmured.
“It’s Saturday, Thad. My Ladies’ Knitting Circle meets in town this afternoon.”
“Damn the meeting. You always come home from those damn things wrapped tighter than new barbed wire.”
“Today I will not. I promise.” She kissed him until they were both out of breath, then turned toward the house.
The air in Verena Forester’s small upstairs apartment was hotter and more oppressive than it was outside. To Leah’s relief, a large pitcher of cool lemonade sat on the refreshment table, along with a plate of what must be Uncle Charlie’s cookies, with coconut flakes sprinkled on top.
Coconut? Where would Uncle Charlie get coconut? Surely not from Carl Ness’s mercantile. Perhaps Uncle had sent away for it.
“It is too hot to knit,” Verena announced as she filled glasses with lemonade. Instead, the assembled ladies nibbled on cookies, sipped their lemonade and talked. Gossiped, really, Leah decided after listening for ten minutes. But at least the talk wasn’t about her.
But then Thad’s name came up, and Leah snapped to attention.
“Has to plow it under, I hear,” someone remarked in a subdued voice.
“Oh, what a shame.” This from Jeanne Halliday. “C’est terrible.”
“That dratted man. Always a dreamer,” Verena sniffed. “His head’s been in the clouds ever since—” She broke off and rose to replenish the cookie plate.
“Why, it’s enough to break a man’s spirit,” Darla Weatherby said in an acid tone. “My Henry would never risk growing wheat, of all things.”
Leah swallowed a gulp of lemonade and tried to focus on something other than the remarks swirling around her. Verena’s wallpaper, for example. Tiny pink roses on a sky-blue background. How oddly feminine for such a…well, soldierlike woman.
Had Thad really wanted Verena?
The answer came like a bolt of lightning. Thad had never wanted Verena!
Leah wanted to laugh with relief. It was Hattie who had liked Verena, not Thad.
Not Thad.
Leah’s attention shifted to the sound of young Noralee Ness’s shoes swinging back and forth against her wooden chair rung.
“My father says Mr. MacAllister is a renegade.” The girl looked up at Verena. “What’s a renegade?”
“Someone who purposely does something unusual, dear,” Verena instructed. “Something different.”
“Like planting wheat,” Lucy Nichols murmured, straightening her ruffled yellow muslin for the fourth time.
Darla Weatherby leaned forward. “Like marrying a—” Ellie Johnson jabbed her elbow into the young woman’s rib cage and she sucked in her breath.
“A renegade is a rebel,” Verena finished.
With a quiet groan, Leah went back to studying Verena’s wallpaper. The longer she stared at it, the more she understood the stiffnecked dressmaker. Her outer armor might be hard and prickly, but the woman had a soft underbelly.
Then Verena said something that made Leah choke on her lemonade.
“I feel sorry for Thad MacAllister. It cuts a man down to size to be proved wrong.”
Leah stifled an impulse to leap to her feet and scream at the woman. But inside her head, she heard her mother’s voice. Wake not the sleeping tiger.
Her mother had been wise. Leah could fight this battle with a whisper.
“You are mistaken,” she stated, her voice quiet. “All of you. Thad has not been proved wrong, and even if he were, his size is not relevant.”
“What’s ‘relevant’ mean?” Noralee whispered to Verena.
