The Ranger's Bride. Laurie Grant

that second noise—it sounded like a cry of pain.”

      “I thought so, too, Mama,” Lucy said, obviously eager to get back into her mother’s good graces by agreeing with her.

      “No, I’m sure you’re mistaken,” Addy assured them, eager to run to the bedroom, her mind full of visons of Rede hemorrhaging from a reopened wound while Olympia Fickhiser babbled on. “It’s an old house, and it makes all sorts of odd noises, especially in hot weather like this.”

      “Nonsense, this house isn’t that old. Your uncle built it only ten years ago.” It appeared that the mayor’s wife had every intention of following her back to the bedroom.

      She had to get to Rede, but she had to stop the woman from coming with her! “I—I—I hesitate to tell you this, Mrs. Fickhiser,” Addy said desperately, “for I’m sure you’ll think it’s too silly for words, but my aunt wrote me that she’d seen the ghost of my uncle in the house. Of course, I don’t believe such a faradiddle, but my family is Scots-Irish, and you know how fanciful the Irish can be….”

      Mrs. Fickhiser turned as white as the lace trim on the high neckline of her dress. “I—we have to be going,” she said, rising unsteadily to her feet. “You may deliver the dress when you’re finished with it.”

      Addy watched out the window as Olympia Fickhiser, her daughter in tow, ran out the front door and into her waiting buggy.

      She could barely suppress a groan of her own. Now the mayor’s wife would tell everyone the seamstress’s house was haunted, or if she feared to appear foolish, that Adelaide Kelly was mentally deranged enough to believe it was!

      But she couldn’t worry about that now. She had to find out what had caused the loud thud in the back bedroom.