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at the sound of the scream.

      “What’s wrong?” Dakota asked breathlessly. The other ranch hands crowded around.

      Maeve was rubbing her daughter’s back and Violet’s whimpering was slowing down.

      “We’ll be fine,” Noah answered. The girl’s eyes had opened wider at the sight of the other men. She might be silent now, but she wasn’t at ease.

      “Give her some room to breathe,” Noah advised the other men.

      The men were used to animals that panicked and nodded.

      “Anything she needs,” Dakota whispered as the men turned their backs.

      They all walked away quietly and picked up the trunk again.

      Noah waited a few minutes for the girl to start breathing normally.

      “Let me help you down,” he finally said as he lifted his arms up to help the burdened Maeve down. He pulled her toward him and then let her slide to the ground. Carefully, he avoided touching her daughter cradled in her embrace. Something in his heart shifted as he watched Maeve protect the girl. Not all women were so fierce in defending their young. His wife never would have been.

      When Maeve stood squarely on the ground, he put his arm around her and escorted her to his house. He could feel her trembling, but he didn’t say anything. He sensed she was too proud to admit to being shaken up, though he found he liked having her lean on him.

      He wondered how they were going to live with each other, even for the duration of the storm. He had always said that his heart had been torn out by its roots when his wife left. Now he suspected there might have been a seed left behind. He doubted it was enough for him to love someone again, but it might be enough to remind him keenly of all that he was missing. He liked being able to protect the woman and her child. He knew that when they were gone from him he’d worry.

      With those despairing thoughts, he reached down and turned the knob so he could open the door to his home. He looked down and saw red strands of hair sticking out around where the blanket was wrapped. Maeve moved farther toward him. He was relieved that it was the situation and not him that made her hesitate.

      “It’s a good house,” he said, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. “Safe and warm. Live in it as your own while you’re here.”

      As he swung the door wide-open so they could all enter, he wondered how long the blizzard would last.

      “Your daughter will feel better once she’s been here for a while,” he said, adding the last bit of comfort he could, wondering what had happened to Maeve and Violet to make the girl so afraid.

       Chapter Three

      Darkness continued to fall as Maeve let Noah guide her through the main door of the house, down a short hallway and into a large square room that smelled faintly of coffee. She figured he sat here sometimes and drank his morning beverage. The windows were bare and must provide a good view of his ranch as he emptied his cup. Tonight, however, the gray sky outside didn’t let in much light. Despite the picture she’d painted in her mind about the man and his coffee, Maeve sensed the room was seldom used and had seen much sadness.

      Or maybe it was her, she thought.

      “Your home’s lovely,” she forced herself to say politely, clutching Violet close to her as though she needed to protect the girl. By now, she could see brocade-covered chairs in the shadows so she knew she wasn’t in the kitchen. It was the parlor, maybe. She still didn’t look up as she felt drops of melting snow fall from her tumble of hair, landing on the plank floor beneath her.

      “I’ll wipe up the spots,” she said. “We’re dripping everywhere.”

      Noah grunted, but didn’t say anything.

      She didn’t blame him. If only Violet had been able to hide her fears, he might have come to see her daughter’s delightful side. As it was, he likely thought he’d be living in a house full of screams if he married Maeve. What made her particularly unhappy was that Noah would never know that Violet sang Sunday school songs in a sweet voice and tried to catch birds because she thought they were hungry and she wanted to feed them bread crumbs.

      Maeve heard Noah’s footsteps as he walked across the room, sounding increasingly distant.

      She felt as if her chance for a new life was slipping away.

      “It was her father,” Maeve blurted out without thinking. She had never meant to tell anyone this part. “He was killed in a brawl at a bar.”

      Noah turned around, but didn’t say anything.

      “On the waterfront,” she added since he seemed to expect more details. “Violet was sitting in the corner and saw it all.”

      Noah raised an eyebrow. “Did she follow him there? To the bar?”

      Maeve shook her head. This was why she hadn’t wanted to tell him. “My husband was taking care of her and he took her there because he had an—ah—an appointment.”

      “And the bar owners let her stay?”

      “They let people do anything. It wasn’t the kind of place most people would go.”

      “And I remind her of that?”

      She shrugged. “I understand many of the men in the brawl had beards. In the dark, that’s probably all she saw of their faces.”

      “She must have been terrified.” Noah’s voice was tense.

      Maeve was silent even though he seemed to be waiting for her to say more. She couldn’t confess the rest of it. She didn’t want anyone to know the shame of her husband betraying her like he had. It still made her feel ugly.

      Finally, Noah walked to the fireplace.

      Maeve let the blanket slip down from her head so she could look around. Four large paned windows, two on each outside wall, faced out to the night and she could see the silhouette of trees swaying as the wind blew beside the house.

      She hadn’t noticed earlier, but now that she searched the shadows, she saw the room was lined with exquisite furniture. Polished Georgian-style settees with rose brocade upholstery and mahogany legs carved in graceful arches. A pair of Louis XVI chairs. Matching side tables with crystal-cut lanterns on them and small silver bowls that she knew were waiting for calling cards and fresh flowers. She’d never expected to find a room like this out here in the territories.

      “You must have sent back East for everything.” She couldn’t gesture because she still held Violet in her arms, but she nodded her head toward the furniture. Lined up straight against the walls, it rivaled what she had seen in the homes that she had cleaned in Boston.

      “Steamboat to Fort Benton,” Noah said as turned back from his position by the fireplace. “Then mule-drawn wagon to here.”

      Maeve was so surprised by everything along the walls that her eyes hadn’t made their way to the half circle of furniture near where Noah stood.

      “You can lie your daughter down here,” Noah said with a gesture toward a wooden bench. “If she’s quiet enough that she doesn’t still need you to hold her.”

      Maeve blinked, not sure she was seeing things clearly. The more intimate grouping of furniture in front of the fireplace was crudely made. She thought her eyesight was deceiving her until Noah bent over to light a kerosene lantern and the chairs were completely visible.

      She had been right. The furniture was what a frontier house would contain—various pieces of unmatched wood, forced together to make a chair or a table, with no thought to beauty or grace. The pieces were not smooth or built to last. Even the lantern looked modest when compared to the crystal globes sitting on the edges of the room.

      If it wasn’t obvious that the inner circle of chairs was what the man used regularly, Maeve would have been insulted to