“Nothing. A stray thought.”

  “Oh, yeah. I have those all the time.”

  “You know what’s good for that? Cod liver oil.”

  Clay made a face that brought laughter back to the table, and they finished the meal with pleasant banter and no more flying dumplings.

  Lily joined Roen in the workroom after she and Hannah had finished clearing the table and washing the dishes. It was curious not to find him hunched over his maps or his notebook or even cleaning the lens on the telescope. He had a pencil behind his ear, but she couldn’t see one in his hand. His arms were folded across chest, and he was leaning back in the chair with his legs stretched under the table. It could have been the posture of a relaxed man, but Lily knew better now. She was able to observe the fine thread of tension pulling his body taut.

  He opened his eyes when she closed the door behind her, but he didn’t force a smile. Instead, he blew out a breath. “So,” he said. “She’s here.”

  “Yes.” Lily walked to where he was sitting and lifted herself onto the edge of the table and braced her arms. Her feet dangled inches above the floor. “Will you see her?”

  “Not tonight, but eventually, yes.”

  “Don’t leave it until too late. I’d rather she didn’t arrive here first looking for you. Now that she’s in Frost Falls, she only has to pose a single question to find you.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ll call on her tomorrow morning.”

  “Good.”

  Roen unfolded his arms and laid a hand on her knee. He squeezed it reassuringly. “No, it’s not good, but it has to be done.”

  Lily looked down at his hand. He had long fingers, beautifully crafted to hold a paintbrush, wield a chisel, or run scales on a grand piano, none of which he said he could do with better than a mediocre result. She’d assumed he was being modest, but then she came to know him better and realized he was merely being truthful. He was not particularly humble about his aptitude for calculation, his skill for capturing detail in pencil, or visualizing the lay of the land in three dimensions where it existed on a map in only two. He was merely honest about the talents he didn’t possess.

  Lily lifted her eyes to his and was glad when he didn’t take it as an indication he was supposed to remove his hand. “Did your family approve of Miss Headley?” If he found the question an odd leap, he didn’t say so.

  Instead, he asked, “Before or after she shot me?”

  Lily gave him a withering look.

  “All right,” he said, chuckling. “My parents thought she was an uninspiring choice. My mother had no interest in painting her, and my father told me he could not be induced to sculpt her in wet sand, let alone in marble. Artemis made all the proper noises about how perfect she was for me, but I believe I told you that Victorine supports the opera and that Artemis relishes harassing me, so her judgment is suspect. Apollonia was in Europe and never met her. Rand was the most complimentary. He thought I didn’t deserve her, which I later came to believe was true, though not in the way he meant it.”

  “Do you think they know she’s here?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t tell them about her telegram.”

  “Have you told them you’re married?”

  “No, not yet. It would not be out of character for them to rally and descend on us. I thought we should give ourselves time.”

  Lily’s nod was barely perceptible.

  He raised one dark eyebrow. “Do you think I should have already told them?”

  “I, um, no. I suppose not. We married with an end in mind.”

  “Hmm. About that, Lily, there’s been—” He stopped and the hand on her knee dropped to his lap as the door opened and Ham poked in his head.

  “Da?”

  Lily’s lips parted in surprise when her son asked for Roen and not her.

  “What is it, Ham?” Roen asked. “What do you need?”

  “Bed and a story.”

  “Ah, yes. Treasure Island. Go on up and I’ll be there in a few minutes to help you.” When he was gone, Roen said, “Lizzie is either already asleep or ready to drop. I’ll take her. You can stay with Clay and Hannah.”

  “You don’t want to work?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins beckon.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Lily sat up, thumped her pillow, and tried lying down again with one arm hanging over the edge. She was back to sleeping on her side of the bed, but there was nothing comfortable about the familiar depression. She may as well have been sleeping on stones. Huffing softly, she turned again, this time flinging her arm sideways toward the middle of the bed.

  “Lily?” Roen flipped back his blankets and got to his knees. He rested his forearms on the edge of the mattress and peered over the side of the bed. “Have you slept at all?”

  “Hardly a wink.” She turned toward him and drew her arm under the pillow. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping well myself. Only quieter about it.” He picked up a blanket from the floor, stood, and began to roll it. “May I?” he asked, using his chin to point to the middle.

  Lily nodded, realized he could only dimly make her out, and then said she was fine with the bundling blanket. When Roen tossed it on the bed, she straightened it. “Perhaps it should be thicker,” she said. “Taller.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. I’m not building the Great Wall.” Still, he yanked on one of the comforters and began to roll it on the edge of the bed. When he was done, he pushed it toward the middle. “Good?” he asked.

  “Better.”

  Roen lifted the covers and slipped under them. He turned onto his back and cradled his head in his hands. “Infinitely better.”

  “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

  “Oh, I know we’re not.”

  Lily chuckled quietly. “Good night.” She edged toward the barrier blankets and curled on her side so that her knees were close to her chest. She folded her arms around them and shut her eyes.

  “According to you, those blankets are there so you keep your distance.”

  “You’re wrong. They are there so you keep yours.”

  He sighed. “G’night, Lily.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They were a complicated tangle of arms and legs and twisted blankets when they woke. Lizzie was standing at the foot of the bed, watching them as raptly as she had listened to Roen’s tale about Old Man McCauley.

  Lily was flushed pink with sleep and a fair amount of embarrassment as she tried to disentangle herself. Roen, she noticed, looked perfectly at ease as if this were a situation he managed every morning. He sat up while she was only able to raise herself on her elbows. His feet were uncovered and he wiggled his bare toes at Lizzie.

  Giggling, she pointed to his feet. “I wear my socks to bed.”

  “Mine are on the floor. Would you get them for me?”

  She nodded and went to the side of the bed closest to him. She put them on her hands like mittens and held out her arms to show him that his socks came nearly to her elbows.

  Roen plucked them off one at a time and pulled them on his feet. “Thank you.”

  Lily’s efforts to kick away the blankets covering her were stymied when Roen threw off the last of his and dropped them on her. Sometime during the night he had removed all evidence of his bed on the floor and it was now lying heavily on top of her. Also, one of the bundling blankets, the smaller one, was suspiciously no longer bundled. Had she done that? Had he?

  “Where is Hannah, Lizzie?” she asked. “And why hasn’t she put a brush through your hair? It looks as if you’re wearing a tumbleweed on your head.”

  Lizzie’s lower lip trembled slightly as she patted her tangled mat of baby-fine hair. “I don’t want a tumbleweed head.”

  “Get my brush and crawl up here.”

  Lizzie ran around the bed to take the brush from her mother’s dressing table and climbed onto the bed.

  Roen helped Lily free herself and lifted Lizzie into place so the brush could be applied. “You haven’t told us where Hannah is,” he reminded her.

  “School. She left with Ham and Clay.”

  Lily and Roen spoke in unison, their voices similarly pitched but with different inflections. Roen framed the single word as a question. “School?” Lily’s said it with an exclamation. “School!”

  They traded slightly wide-eyed looks. “We overslept,” she said, dismayed. He said the same thing at the same time, but the difference was that Roen was hardly distressed. He had already begun to grin crookedly.

  Lily lightly tapped him on the shoulder with the back of her hairbrush. “This is your fault.”

  “How is that?”

  “I don’t know, but it’ll come to me in time.”

  He laughed, tweaked Lizzie on the nose, and got out of bed.

  “You have a tumbleweed head, too,” said Lizzie, wincing as her mother tugged at her hair.

  Roen plowed his fingers through his crosshatch of hair. “Right. I’ll take care of that.”

  “C’mon, Lizzie. We’ll finish this in your room. Your da needs to wash and dress.” Lily looked at Roen over the top of Lizzie’s head. “I suppose you’ll have breakfast at the hotel now.”

  He nodded. “It’s better that I meet her in a public place.”

  “Witnesses,” she said matter-of-factly. Out of Lizzie’s sight, Lily made the shape of a pistol with her hand and used her thumb to pull back the hammer. She aimed at the ceiling. “Always a good idea to have witnesses.”

  “You frighten me, Mrs. Shepard.” But he leaned across the bed and dared to kiss her on the mouth anyway.

  * * *

  • • •

  Roen sat down at what had been his usual table when he regularly took his meals at the hotel. Abe Butterworth left the front desk to chat with him for a few minutes, mainly about the progress he was making establishing a new route. Roen brought him up to date, explained the weather was hampering his progress but that he expected to submit a proposal to Northeast by the end of January. Abe was encouraged by this, imagining his hotel filled to bursting with Roen’s out-of-town hires.

  Abe excused himself when Fedora stepped up to Roen’s table. She was considerably less apprehensive about approaching him and stood patiently at his side as she took his order. When she looked him in the eye, he smiled and she actually returned it.

  “Busy morning?” he asked, looking around. As long as Victorine showed up, Roen considered that his timing was good. There were just two empty tables, and he was the only single diner.

  “Yes, sir,” Fedora said, nodding at the same time.

  “So all the rooms are taken.”

  She nodded again. “We have two families.”

  “I see one of them over there.” He lifted his chin to indicate the table with three children, all of them under ten, and two harried adults who were busy cutting pancakes into manageable triangles.

  “Yes. The Mastersons.”

  “New arrivals?”

  “Not so new. A week, I think. They’re leaving this afternoon.”

  “No, I meant have you had new arrivals?”

  “Oh, yes. Certainly we have.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Fedora surprised him by frowning ever so slightly. She was usually so careful to remain unreadable. It was also her custom to be agreeable. Excepting the occasion of their first meeting, she was as disturbed as he had ever seen her. “Isn’t it?” he prompted.

  She bobbed her head quickly, too quickly, and then hurried off.

  Roen didn’t watch her go. He was used to her hasty departures. He did wonder, however, at what had disturbed her enough to cause her to lower her guard. It was on the heels of that thought that one possible answer occurred to him. The lovely Victorine Headley had come to stand at the entrance to the dining room.

  Heads turned, though she did nothing to call attention to herself. Roen was used to that reaction. At one time, he had enjoyed seeing it, knowing that he was her escort and that she would be leaving with him. Now he wished she would simply leave. She didn’t. Her remote gaze moved from one table to the next until her eyes rested on his face. Although neither of them moved, the distance between them fell away. In Roen’s mind she stood just feet away, and her posture was the same as it had been when she showed him her palm pistol moments before she fired. He wanted to throw himself sideways, avoid the shot by feinting left or right, but he remained riveted to his chair. He couldn’t even get to his feet.

  Roen thought it might have been better if it had been that memory that pressed to keep him in his seat. He would have eventually come to his senses. The reality of what he was seeing now was as cruel as the first ball she’d fired, except this one was a shot to the gut. He felt the pain as if it were a fact.

  Victorine Headley was pregnant.

  Roen recovered his equilibrium by the time Victorine reached his table. He stood. Ellie had stepped out of the kitchen and was making her way to Victorine’s side for the purpose of seating her. Roen stopped her with a glance in her direction and a subtle shake of his head.

  “Victorine,” he said when she was upon him. She leaned toward him with the attitude of one expecting a warmer greeting, perhaps a kiss. He held out the companion chair for her and left her in no doubt that he wanted her to sit.

  “Roen,” she said politely, sweeping the skirt of her ruched day dress to one side as she gracefully folded into her chair. “It’s good to see you at last. I was so hoping I would find you here this morning.”

  He joined her. Her dress was aquamarine silk, chosen purposely, he was sure, to match her rather remarkable eyes. He admired her calculation. Was every garment she brought similarly colored, or had she seen him approaching the hotel and dressed accordingly? She wore a loose-fitting overblouse of the same color with large mother-of-pearl buttons. It was a tasteful accommodation for her condition.

  “You’ll understand if I don’t return the sentiment,” he said.

  “No, I don’t. Not really. Are you carrying a grudge?” She glanced down at her belly, which was touching the edge of the table. “That’s too bad of you because I’m carrying your child.”

  “So you win? Is that it?” he asked. “Never mind.” His gaze swiveled from Victorine and her feigned disappointment to Fedora Chen, who was standing unobtrusively at Victorine’s side. He had little doubt that Fedora had heard Victorine’s last words, but her expression remained neutral. “Miss Chen would like to know what you want for breakfast. I can recommend the pancakes.”

  Victorine smiled wanly. “Miss Chen, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll have two pancakes, one strip of bacon, and one egg. Tea, please, not coffee.” When the girl had left, Victorine said, “You’re friendly with the help.”

  “I’ve been here long enough to get to know people.”

  “She’s Chinese, Roen.”

  “And?”

  “And?” she asked. “You know what they’re like. Dirty creatures. I don’t believe she should be working where there is food. I could barely eat my dinner yesterday for thinking she might have touched it.” She shivered delicately. “I asked that woman to send another waitress to my table from now on, but she’s obviously ignoring me.”

  “That woman is Ellie Butterworth,” said Roen. “And if she sent Miss Chen here in spite of your wishes, then she had a reason for it. Mrs. Butterworth works hard to accommodate all her guests.”

  “Hmm.” Victorine was skeptical. “Oh, let’s not talk about them. Were you surprised to hear from me?”

  “Very little that you do surprises me.”

  “Liar. You looked as if you were poleaxed when you saw my condition.”

  “I said very little surprises me. Your current state is an exception.”

  Victorine placed one hand lightly against her belly and smiled. “I think it’s going to be a boy. Would you like a boy, Roen?”

  He ignored her question. “How did you find me?”

  She shrugged. “I hired a private investigator. He’s an inconspicuous sort, but apparently that is an advantage in his profession.”

  “I imagine it is.”

  Victorine huffed softly. “Why are you being like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Cold. Distant.”

  “Sitting with you is not pleasant for me. Would you prefer that I pretend that it is?”

  “I would prefer that you make an effort to be agreeable. For the sake of our child.”

  The effort that Roen made just then was not to recoil. “Why are you here?”

  “Has living here dulled your mind? You have always been accounted to be a sharp wit. What’s happened?”

  Roen leaned toward her and repeated his question, this time in a whisper. “Why are you here?”

  She frowned at him. Thin horizontal creases marred her normally smooth brow. “How can you not know I’m here because of our baby?”

  “Writing would have been an acceptable method of communication. Less expensive than a telegram. Much less costly than your trip here.”

  She waved this last aside. “Father insisted that I take one of his private cars. It’s cost him nothing at all.”

  Of course she would think that. “Writing?” he asked. “A telegram?”

  “Haven’t you always told me you trust facts? Evidence? What proof could I offer in a letter? Am I wrong that you wouldn’t have believed me?”

  “You’re not wrong,” he said after a long moment. “I don’t believe you now.”

  Victorine reared back in her chair as though struck. She opened her mouth to speak but clamped her jaw shut again when Ellie appeared with their food and a pot of tea.