Page 37 of Mail-Order Viscountess

James stood quiet a moment. The silence stretched between them, broken only by the whisper of wind through pine branches and the distant sound of Rose’s laughter.

His brother’s jaw worked, the muscle jumping beneath the skin. James had that look—the one he got when he was calculating possibilities, weighing options against each other with the careful precision he brought to everything.

“Did you tell him nothing improper happened?”

“Of course I did.” Thomas kicked at a clump of snow, sending it tumbling down into the ravine. “Might as well have been talking to a fence post. He’d already made up his mind.”

“And Kate? How did she take it?”

The memory of her face—the way all color had drained from it as Hartwell delivered his verdict—tightened his chest all over again. She’d stood there in the snow, spine straight despite the blow, chin lifted even as everything she’d planned crumbled around her. Determined to the last.

“She didn’t say much.” He forced the words past the knot in his throat. “What could she? The man wasn’t wrong about how it looked.”

“But he was wrong about what happened.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He turned to face his brother fully. “You know how this works. Truth doesn’t count for much when scandal makes a better story. And Kate was counting on Mrs. Hartwell’s patronage to establish her seamstress business in Butte. That’s gone now.”

“We’ll need to do something.” James’s voice had shifted into that practical mode. The older brother identifying a problem, preparing to solve it. “Something to protect them both.”

“What kind of something?” The question felt hollow. He already knew the answer. Had known it since Hartwell rode away, leaving devastation in his wake.

“When we get to the ranch, we’ll all sit down. Talk about what the right thing is.” James met his gaze. “All of us. Including you.”

The right thing.

“Maybe both women should plan to stay at the ranch.” James shrugged.

“She won’t want to.”

“Wanting and having choices are different things.” His brother’s tone carried that practical edge Thomas had always both admired and resented. “You said yourself she has nowhere else to go.”

The truth of it sat like a stone in his gut. Kate McKinney, who’d spent her whole life fighting for independence, who’d dragged her sister across half a continent to escape being trapped. She’d have no choice now but to accept the charity of strangers. The very thing she’d been so determined to avoid.

And it was his fault. If he’d been faster crossing that river. If he’d found different shelter. If he’d made her stay in the wagon with James and the others instead of⁠—

“This isn’t on you.” James’s voice cut through the spiral of his thoughts.

Thomas glared at him. “It is though. If I hadn’t⁠—”

“If you hadn’t what? Kept her alive through a blizzard?” James’s expression hardened. “The ice broke. The storm came. Those were circumstances neither of you controlled. You did what any decent man would do—you made sure she didn’t freeze to death.”

“And destroyed her reputation in the process.”

James shook his head. “Hartwell destroyed her reputation. By choosing to see scandal instead of survival. By valuing appearance over truth. Don’t take that burden on yourself.”

Thomas nodded and shifted his focus back over the landscape. In truth, none of this was what really bothered him.

Maybe it was time he admit the reality aloud. Maybe James would stop pushing so hard.

He swallowed. “I don’t know if I can—” His voice almost cracked, so he stopped. Tried again. “I don’t know if I can give her what she needs.”

James stayed quiet a long moment. When he spoke, his tone had softened. “None of us know that when we start. We just choose to try.”

The knot in his throat had pulled tight enough to keep him from answering, even if he’d had the words. So he nodded.

After another moment, James braced a hand on Thomas’s shoulder—the same gesture he’d used a thousand times over the years. “We should get moving. Still have a few hours to the ranch.”

They walked back to the others in silence. Kate looked up as they approached, and for just a moment, her eyes met his.