The Ranger's Bride. Laurie Grant
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Название: The Ranger's Bride
Автор: Laurie Grant
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
Серия: Mills & Boon Historical
isbn: 9781474016698
isbn:
Addy, imagining how the couple must have felt, said nothing.
“But surely you can understand why I could not possibly bring myself to tolerate such a scandalous couple living across the street from my innocent daughter, can’t you?” Her tone indicated Addy’s answer had better be yes, if she hoped for continued business with the mayor’s wife.
Addy would have loved to say that Lucy would probably be better off living with the supposedly scandalous couple than with such a judgmental woman as her mother, but she could not afford to. The disapproval of a pious busybody like Olympia Fickhiser could make Addy’s living on her own in this town financially impossible.
“Of course I can see why you would feel that way,” she hedged. It was women like Olympia Fickhiser who would have made Addy’s life in St. Louis hell after her divorce.
And what on earth would Olympia do if she knew Addy was harboring the Ranger in her bedroom, a man she had just met on the stage yesterday?
As if to echo her thoughts, just then a thud sounded from the back of the house, followed by a muffled sound that Addy thought might be a groan.
“What was that?” Olympia demanded suspiciously. “Is someone here?”
Good Lord, had Rede fallen out of bed? Addy leaped to her feet, throwing the gown on the chair she had just vacated.
“No, of course not,” she called over her shoulder. “I was moving a stack of books to my bedroom when you came, and it sounds as if they’ve fallen over. Let me just check—”
“But 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.
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