Rancher To The Rescue. Barbara Phinney

her gasp a few minutes ago when Mr. Burrows had announced he would take a couple of boys from the Orphan Train.

      That institution had been created to foster out children to good homes, to be loved and cared for. While it worked as such sometimes, there were protests out East by people who felt it was nothing but farming out indentured servants, or worse, a different kind of slavery. Noah couldn’t say one way or the other. He did agree that it wasn’t an ideal solution, but with thousands of orphaned and abandoned children in cities, what else could be done?

      He groaned softly and berated himself for his stupidity. Of course. Clare’s gasp should have told him immediately what she was thinking.

      His breath stalled in his throat. Had his own defensiveness overshadowed Clare’s fear? Mr. Burrows’s crass remarks just now had proven that the Orphan Train was the worst fate for her and her brothers.

      Lord, I don’t know what to do. It’s wrong to marry for financial gain. It’s wrong to take sacred vows simply to correct other people’s selfish errors.

      There had to be some affection, surely?

      “Is the offer still available?” Clare asked again, this time softly, a melodic question that rolled through him like a tune on a delicate flute.

      He forced his attention back to the conversation at hand. Clare looked tired this morning and he felt his brows press together at the sight of the violet shadows under her eyes. “Did you tell your brothers about your parents?”

      Her expression clouded. She offered him a single, slow sigh and he knew her answer before she spoke it. “I couldn’t. Not yet.” She wet her lips. “I’ll think about what to say but I need answers to some of my questions, first. Hopefully, they will come today at lunchtime.”

      “What questions? Besides you seeing the bank manager, what else do you need to do?”

      “Well, I need to find a carpenter—”

      “A carpenter?”

      She hesitated before clearing her throat. “There was a small incident last night.”

      “What happened?”

      “Just after you left, the boys tipped over their lamp and the rug caught fire.”

      His heart stumbled and he gasped. “Is everyone all right?”

      “Yes,” she added hastily. “We’re fine.”

      “Why did you light the lamp, anyway? It wasn’t dark out when I left.”

      “I didn’t. One of the boys did. I don’t know which one, and frankly, I think both were involved. They said they were cold and they aren’t allowed to put on a fire. They don’t always think first.”

      “You need to start disciplining them.”

      Her chin wrinkled and for a few long moments, she didn’t speak. “I can’t,” she whispered. “They miss our parents. They’re grieving because they think Mother and Father will be gone for what seems to them to be forever. I don’t have the heart to start punishing them, and then, a short time later, tell them our parents are never coming back! It’s cruel and unfair. So, please don’t ask me to punish them. I can’t! I miss our parents, too. I know how they feel.”

      Another pause followed. “And frankly, well, I feel betrayed, too,” she added.

      She dragged forward the chair that sat against the glass wall and collapsed into it. Her hand covered her nose and mouth, but Noah could see tears welling up in her soft brown eyes before she laid her arm across his desk and dropped her forehead onto it.

      Disconcerted, he glanced around. Was there something he was supposed to do? “Your parents—”

      Her head snapped up, her eyes, although watery, flashed pure anger. “Don’t tell me they’ll be coming home, because we both know that is very unlikely!” The anger dissolved immediately. “This is insane. I’m not mad at you. I’m furious at them for leaving us in the lurch.”

      Noah guessed he must have looked a little confused, because she threw up her hands. “I don’t care if it doesn’t make any sense! That’s the way I feel, if you really want to know.”

      If truth be told, Noah didn’t want to know. Still, something gripped him deep inside at the sight of Clare’s anguish. Life was far more unfair to her than it had been to him. He’d walked out of his home because his parents had tried to force him to do something he didn’t want to do.

      It was a choice. If he’d chosen the opposite, he’d have lived an opulent life, married and had children, and not wanted for anything.

      Except his freedom.

      But because of their poor planning, Clare’s parents had forced her into a far more hopeless situation. And all choice had been ripped from her. Suddenly, Noah could fully understand the resentment rising in her. It was rising in him, too.

      Which meant only one thing, he realized with a sudden chill. His offer of marriage could not be rescinded.

      His jaw tightened and he tried his best to relax it. “Yes. The offer still stands,” he muttered, cautiously meeting Clare’s soulful gaze.

      “Thank you,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ll marry you.”

      She blinked. If he’d expected a look of relief, he was to be disappointed, for right then, Clare burst into tears again.

       Chapter Four

      Even through her tears, Clare could see Noah’s sinking expression. He really hadn’t wanted to marry her, she told herself. And it didn’t help that she’d dissolved into tears. She shouldn’t be crying, not right after a marriage proposal.

      Friends of hers from college had been giddy and blushing, enjoying the excitement and romance of that special moment when their beaux had sunk to one knee and proposed.

      Clare felt herself stiffen, which was probably a good thing considering the unladylike draping across his desk had resulted in her corset digging into her flesh.

      Yes, but those women who’d married beaux while at college soon learned what marriage really meant to women. Clare wanted the narrow wooden chair she’d dragged forward to swallow her up. She was joining their ranks.

      Noah rose and walked around his desk, all the time pulling his neatly folded handkerchief from his breast pocket. He dangled it in front of her, and she snatched it. Drawing it up to her face, Clare caught the scent of his light cologne, a woodsy smell that was slightly stringent and cedar-like in quality and totally suited to him. She couldn’t help but draw it in with a silly, noisy sniff. After dabbing her eyes and nose, she stood and offered it back to him.

      He held up his hand. “Keep it. If we are to be married, you’ll probably be washing it sooner or later.”

      Truer words were never spoken, Clare thought with dismay. Oh, she didn’t mind doing laundry, all the sorting and siphoning off the soft rainwater, not to mention the boiling and wringing, were necessary and mindless tasks, done all day once a month if everyone stayed clean. But it was what all that represented. All of her principles, her beliefs that women should be treated as more than indentured servants, would be washed away like the mud on Leo’s pants. She was a person, and should have the same rights as men, and at that moment, the laundry chore Noah had just mentioned in passing was proof she would never see that dream in her own life.

      She balled the handkerchief up in her palm. With a swallow, she said, “I won’t cry on our wedding day. I promise you that much.”

      “Thank you. In the meantime, Mr. Pooley will be here soon, so I suggest you dry your eyes. Of course, he already knows of your loss, so tears are bound to be expected.”

      She pulled herself together. Tears might be expected, and yes, she’d done her share of crying yesterday, but