And then I think I’ll go to bed.”

Archibald’s brow arched. “You’re giving up? Just like that?”

“I’m not giving up. I just don’t feel like arguing with you.”

But in her room, she couldn’t climb into bed but her ankle was still too sore for her to pace. She wrapped a heavy wool shawl around her shoulders and took a seat on the cedar chest in front of her window and stared out at the moonlit landscape. It was a cloudless night and the stars were bright overhead, painting the barn and pastures a ghostly white below.

She’d arrived here with her mother as a toddler, having left Texas without any memories of the place. This ranch was all she’d ever known. And she understood she couldn’t stop her father’s cancer, but there was no reason she had to lose her only home, too.

Her father was leaving her plenty of money. She’d have more than she could ever spend, and the kind of security that meant she could do whatever she wanted... travel, build a fine house on the ranch, buy a second house somewhere else. But she didn’t want a second house and she’d never felt any interest in traveling, at least not very far. She enjoyed visiting Butte and traveling to Bozeman, but her favorite escape was camping in Yellowstone, when her father would pitch a tent in a sagebrush meadow on the historic Bannock Trail. The meadow was filled with quaking aspen and Douglas firs and a gurgling stream on its way to meet the Yellowstone River. They’d encountered all kinds of wildlife there—deer, bison, wolves, bears—but she’d never been afraid because her father wasn’t afraid, and she didn’t know if that was because he was an expert marksman, or if because like her, he relished adventure.

Ellie tipped her head against the glass, and squeezed her eyes closed. Dear God, please take care of my father. Make sure he knows he was loved.

Chapter Three

Three days later, on Sunday morning, Ellie sat in the fifth row on the right side of St. James, the row she and her father always sat in, struggling to concentrate on the sermon when two of her current suitors sat in her line of sight. Mr. George Baker and Mr. Leeland Fridley.

Mr. Baker was a banker, not a baker. Short, bald, and a little soft around the middle, he was close to her age, maybe twenty-four, with the most unpleasant tendency to perspire heavily whenever near her. He didn’t do it from a distance, just when speaking to her, and her father could blame Mr. Baker’s nerves, but the last time Mr. Baker took her for a drive, she couldn’t focus on anything but the beads of sweat rolling down his face. Damp palms were one thing, but a dripping brow was another.

Like Mr. Baker, Mr. Fridley had been raised somewhere on the East Coast. He’d arrived in Marietta with the first train and dealt in real estate. If you didn’t know him personally, you might first think Leeland Fridley handsome, but on acquaintance he quickly became tiresome, overly preoccupied as he was with appearances, money, and public opinion.

So, which was the better suitor? The short, nervous, damp Mr. Baker, or the attractive but supercilious Leeland Fridley?

Mr.