The Wedding Cake War. Lynna Banning

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      In memory of my mother,

       Mary Elizabeth (Banning) Yarnes

      With grateful thanks to Suzanne Barrett, Tricia Adams,

       Debbie Parcel, Brenda Preston, Susan Renison, David Woolston and Andrew Yarnes.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Epilogue

      Chapter One

      Oregon, 1879

      If she’d thought about it for one single minute, Lolly would never have boarded the train in Kansas City. That was a character failing, she supposed—jumping headlong from the saucepan into the cook-fire. She’d inherited the tendency from her father.

      Which was exactly why he was dead and she was breathing the cigar-smoky air of this railway coach. In all his forty years on this earth, Papa had never backed down, changed his opinion or avoided a fight.

      And neither would she. With a bit of luck and some…well…acting ability, she would triumph over any adversity. Even marriage to a man she’d never laid eyes on.

      The train slowed, then chuffed to a stop. “Maple Falls,” the conductor shouted from the back of the car. “Home of sawmills, grist mills, gin mills, wild women and the Methodist church.”

      Lolly choked down a bubble of laughter. If only half those things were true, Maple Falls would prove intriguing. In a town with both Shady Ladies, as Pa had termed them, and Our Heavenly Father’s Second-Best Parlor, as her Presbyterian mother dubbed the Methodist church, there was the promise of happenings that might prove interesting. She most fervently hoped so. After her impulsive flight from Baxter Springs, she badly needed some cheering up.

      Lolly bit the inside of her lip. She needed more than cheering up. She needed a new life. A new place, as far from Kansas as she could get. She only hoped it wasn’t too late.

      At the thought, her entire body turned to petrified whalebone. She was too outspoken, too set in her ways. Too plump.

      Too…old.

      Maybe it was too late.

      Get off the train, a voice commanded. Just put one foot in front of the other and walk out into Oregon.

      It was harder than she anticipated. For one thing, her fancy new jab-toed shoes, ordered from Bloomingdale’s, pinched her feet. And for another, all at once she felt as if her bottom half was glued to the seat; every bone in her body resisted moving a single step toward the momentous event that awaited her. She could scarcely breathe she was so frightened.

      The coach emptied, and still Lolly sat stiff as chicken wire on the hard leather seat until a head poked into the far end of the car.

      “Miz Mayfield?”

      She sucked a gulp of smoky air into her lungs. “Yes?”

      “Better hurry up, ma’am. Train’s about to pull out.”

      As the boy spoke, the railcar jerked and began to glide forward.

      Good gracious! Which was worse, being inadvertently kidnapped by a train, or facing a town full of hungry СКАЧАТЬ