Morrow Creek Runaway

He meant her, of course. Rosamond divined as much and appeared flummoxed by it. Typically, she recovered quickly.

“If you mean me, I’m not a part of my mutual society,” she informed him, turning toward the mantel. “I don’t participate. And you’re in no position to evaluate such a thing anyway.”

“Too late. I believe I just did.”

“And I’ll be the one to say when you should leave.”

He laughed. “Now, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m no woman’s patsy, Mrs. Dancy. Not even yours.”

She frowned. “I wish you’d quit calling me that.”

“Mrs. Dancy? It’s your name.” Now.

“I thought you wanted to apply for membership in my mutual society.” She gave him a clear-sighted look. “You said so.”

“At this point, I might need convincing.”

“No one needs convincing to join my mutual society.”

He waited, clearly indicating otherwise.

He won. Rosamond rushed in to fill the space between them.

“It’s a very reputable organization, where like-minded men and women can meet and converse under sociable circumstances. We engage in poetry readings, nonwagering card games, and dances and fetes of all kinds. All the members are properly vetted, ultimately by me, but also by my staff. My members possess good characters and fine hearts. They’re capable of providing a reasonable living and a secure home for each other.”

“Do the men in Morrow Creek know your ‘girls’ are former prostitutes?” Miles inquired. “Because it would be only fair.”

Rosamond seemed surprised he’d guessed the truth. But only for an instant. “My friends’ pasts are their own concerns,” she told him, rallying to their defense without hesitation. “As far as anyone needs to know, they are upstanding women.”

“Some with fatherless children to raise. Is that a bonus for your members? I’d imagine some might not see it that way.”

Her eyes flashed at him. “There are many fatherless children in the West. I was a fatherless child after my parents’ passing. If you are concerned about being saddled with an urchin that’s not your own, then you should definitely not—”

“You’ve misunderstood me,” he broke in, delivering her an assessing look. When had his Rosamond become so cynical? “I like children. I think you saw that yourself this morning.”

In fact, he’d loved those little rapscallions. Being around them had reminded Miles of being in his own rollicking household in the tenements, with his beleaguered but loving mother trying to hang laundry, cook corned beef and change the diapers of his younger siblings all in quick succession. Mary Callaway had managed admirably.

At times, Miles had helped her care for the littler children. In a busy household with a strong woman at its head, everyone pulled their weight. Even his rascally father had done his share of bathing and storytelling and spoon-feeding porridge.

Unexpectedly, Rosamond gave a heartfelt smile. “Yes, they did seem to love you out there in the yard, didn’t they?”

Her smile almost undid all of Miles’s good intentions. Almost. He needed to be smart. He needed to be tough. He needed to be resolute. But when faced with Rosamond’s sunny smile...

All he wanted to do was be beside her. Forever.

Nevertheless... “But you can count me out, all the same, Mrs. Dancy. I’ve decided that people who hesitate over caring for puppies cannot be trusted. So I’m rejecting your society.”

She gawked at him, obviously at a loss for words.

“Perhaps we’ll see each other in town someday,” Miles went on with a tip of his hat. “Goodbye, Mrs. Dancy. And good luck.”

Then, with a few thuds of his boot heels, he left the woman of his dreams behind—and, in the process, took the biggest gamble of his life so far.

Chapter Five

Rosamond was just finishing her third cup of strong coffee when Judah Foster strode into her breakfast room with his hat in his hands. Surprised by his swift arrival—since she’d only just sent him on his latest errand twenty minutes earlier—Rosamond clattered her coffee cup into its saucer.

“That was fast,” she said. “Did you run all the way?”

She glanced past her security man with an instant smile on her face, half expecting to find Miles Callaway standing there, all tall and handsome and confounding. She’d sent Judah to fetch him—or, failing that, to deliver a note to him—but it wasn’t beyond reason that Miles might impulsively decide to come for breakfast instead of simply answering her summons later.

After all, Miles had done several unexpected things so far, Rosamond mused—including arriving at her doorstep in the first place. His pretending not to be Miles Callaway—not to know her—had roused her suspicions. But when he’d told her his name two days ago, his unexpected truthfulness had gone a long way toward disarming her defenses.

So had his telling her he was giving up on his search for “his Rose.” It was significant that she’d nearly burst into tears upon hearing the news, Rosamond knew. She’d realized then that she didn’t want to lose Miles so soon after seeing him again.

She wanted to trust him. She couldn’t possibly trust him.

But if Miles wasn’t in town at Arvid Bouchard’s behest...

Well, if he wasn’t, that changed things completely.

Rosamond so wanted to be herself with Miles—to be with Miles. It had been one thing to remain aloof when they’d both been pretending not to know one another. It had been another after he’d come clean.

If Miles was going to be honest...maybe so could she.

First, she needed to see him again. That was proving to be more difficult than she’d planned. But Rosamond was nothing if not confident in her capacity for rising above difficulties.

Almost from the moment Arvid Bouchard had cast his first lecherous glance her way, that was all she’d been doing.

“I’ve never known you to move so fast, Judah,” she joked, spying no tall, dark-haired, bearded subject of her dreams in the doorway but holding out hope for a miracle nonetheless. She returned her gaze to the young man in her employ. “When your brother, Cade, recommended you for this job, he should have mentioned you could put a jackrabbit’s pace to the test. He seemed to believe that your previous leg injury would hinder you, but that’s clearly not the case, is it?”

Her lighthearted tone didn’t budge the frown from her security man’s face. Instead, Judah studied his hat brim.

It became clear that Miles was not waiting in the wings.

“I couldn’t find Callaway,” Judah confessed. “He wasn’t at the boardinghouse. Miss Adelaide said he left all his kit in his room last night and didn’t come back.”

Hmm. It was unlikely Miles would have left behind all the cash that Bonita had found in his bag. Also, Rosamond couldn’t help feeling it was unlikely Miles would have left her. Not after they’d just found one another. Not after all this time.

No matter that Rosamond had done exactly the same thing to him. She’d abandoned Miles back in Boston, too distraught to consider the consequences.

All she’d wanted was to find safety somewhere. Endangering Miles and his reputation hadn’t factored in. That’s what would have happened if she’d turned to him for help. She would have destroyed Miles’s future as well as her own.

“You should have waited,” she told Judah. “It’s scarcely past dawn. He might have simply gone for a walk, that’s all.”

“A man who stays out all night isn’t generally in a hurry to get back home again.” Judah twisted his hat brim, sounding discontented. “A man who stays out all night isn’t generally too fond of fresh air, either. I bet he’s pulled foot.”

“You think Mr. Callaway has left town?” Rosamond dismissed the notion instantly. Maybe because she didn’t want it to be true. “No, he can’t be gone already. He just got here.”

“Maybe he knew he couldn’t get what he came for.”

“Which was...?”

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it...” Judah scowled at her wainscoting, obviously not wanting to say. “You.”

“Pshaw. He wouldn’t even join my mutual society.” That still irked her. No man had yet refused a direct invitation.

“He wouldn’t? He turned down your marriage bureau?” Judah gawked at her, then smacked his hat-holding hand upside his head. “There goes five dollars I’d rather have kept to myself.”

“Five dollars?”

“Seth told me Callaway turned down a membership to your marriage bureau. I bet him five dollars he was dead wrong.”

Rosamond felt touched by Judah’s faith in her and her society’s supposed irresistibility. Also, troubled by Seth’s apparent eavesdropping. She’d have to look into that. In the meantime... “Yes. Mr. Callaway did express a...reluctance to apply.”

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