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  Kim went forward, but as she reached Leah she pulled back. “I don’t think I’ll touch you. Stand up right now and get that dress off. And while you’re washing I’ll tell you about the most wonderful night of my life.”

  Kimberly gave Leah cold water to wash in because Kim wasn’t about to lay a fire in Leah’s bare fireplace. “Wash your ears, too,” Kim commanded as Leah stood in her underwear. “It was so silly of you to ruin your dress. Oh well, that’s enough about that. Leah,” she said slowly, “Justin and I made love last night.”

  That was the first thing that had gotten through to Leah. She paused in her washing. “You and Justin?”

  “Isn’t it so hard to believe? It seems that Justin has hated me from the first moment he saw me. Men don’t usually hate me, but Justin did, and last night he was just furious, but later…Oh Leah, it was sheer heaven.”

  “Kim,” Leah said. “Tell me everything from the beginning. Where did you get the brooch you gave me?”

  “Well, that,” Kim said with a sigh. “I guess things started a long time before last night.”

  “I have all day,” Leah said firmly. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  “Breakfast? I guess so even though it’s afternoon, but lovemaking does make you hungry.”

  Minutes later Leah was washed, dressed, and cooking. “Start,” she ordered Kim.

  “I guess it started with Steven. He said there were two kinds of women: ladies who didn’t enjoy it and women who did.”

  “Kim, why don’t you tell me about the brooch?”

  “I will, but everything’s tied together. Oh Leah, you have to swear you won’t hate me when I tell you all this. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had and some of the things I’ve done—.”

  “I swear I won’t hate you unless you keep delaying the story.”

  “As I said, Steven made me think that ladies had to behave all the time so when Wesley and I fell in love—and I really did love him—I never let Wes kiss me very much. You see, I very much liked Wesley’s kisses, but I was afraid that if I showed him that I liked them he would think I wasn’t a lady and wouldn’t marry me. Oh Leah, it was hard at times to push him away. Wesley’s kisses are so nice. They’re—.”

  “Could we skip this part of the story?”

  “I guess so. Leah, this is the part I don’t like. When Wesley told me he was going to stay married to you, I was very, very angry. Actually, I was furious. It seemed so unfair because I’d always been holding back and being a lady while you and Wesley sneaked out at night and delivered food—oh yes, I knew about that. And, too, you’d wrestled in the mud. You hadn’t been a lady at all but you’d won the man.”

  Pausing, she looked at Leah pleadingly. “I was so angry that I stuck a hatpin in the horse and made the wagon fall down the hill. I thought you were inside. Oh Leah,” she wailed, burying her face in her hands. “I hated you so much I wanted to kill you.”

  Leah put her arm around Kim’s shoulders. “I had a sudden call of nature and left the wagon, so you didn’t hurt me. Maybe in your place I’d have done something similar. Here, now, eat your eggs and tell me what happened next.”

  “John Hammond saw me stick the pin in the horse and when I fainted—it’s the one and only time I ever really did faint—he told me he wouldn’t tell anyone. But later…”

  She took a big drink of milk. “He really is a dreadful man, Leah. He said he’d tell everyone what I’d done if I didn’t marry him.”

  “He blackmailed you?” Leah asked, aghast, as she sat down across from Kim. “But why? Why would he want to force you to marry him? He must have known you’d resent him.”

  “I asked myself that over and over. I didn’t like him much for making me marry him and I did everything I could to make him regret marrying me.” She smiled at a chunk of buttered bread. “You want to know a secret, Leah? I can cook. I never let Wesley know because Steven said real ladies didn’t cook and when we were traveling you always seemed to want to do everything by yourself.”

  “I made you feel useless?” Leah asked softly.

  “You could probably make any six people feel useless, but anyway, to punish John I refused to do anything at all. He was…very unpleasant at night and I didn’t really know about lovemaking until Justin—.”

  “What about the brooch? Doesn’t that come before Justin?”

  “Oh yes. It was very boring in John’s house, what with him gone all day, and since I refused to do anything I was supposed to do, I had trouble occupying myself. Except that John has this study, which he keeps locked, and right after our marriage he told me never, never, never was I to go in there.”

  “So of course you did,” Leah said with a smile.

  “Every day. It didn’t really matter because I didn’t care if he caught me or not because I’d already sworn to spend the rest of my life with him, so what more could happen to me? It took some searching, but I found the key, used it every day, searched the room, and returned the key.”

  “What were you searching for?”

  “For whatever he had hidden in there that he didn’t want me to see. I couldn’t find anything until I found his hidden closet.”

  “Hidden?”

  “Behind a bookcase. It was all I could do to move that case. Anyway, inside this closet were some very pretty things like jewelry and pretty little boxes and some books. It made me so angry because I thought he was hiding these things so he wouldn’t have to share them with his wife.”

  “You thought this? You’ve changed your mind?”

  “Leah, I couldn’t wear any of the jewelry, but I thought someone else could. John wouldn’t yell at someone else as much as he would at me. And besides, you’re so good at yelling back at men. You scream at Wesley all the time. I never could understand that, Leah. You said terrible things to him and I was always nice, yet he wanted to stay with you.”

  “What about the brooch?” Leah repeated.

  “I thought it was a miniature of one of John’s relatives and I knew it’d look good on your green dress and it did until you ruined it by playing in the soot. All right!” she said at Leah’s narrowed eyes. “The next thing I knew, that silly woman was screeching that you’d stolen John’s brooch. John grabbed my arm, said some terrible things to me, and pulled me out of the dance. Oh Leah, I was so scared.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “John didn’t speak to me all the way home and at the house he locked me in his study and I heard him ride away.”

  Kim’s eyes turned misty with a faraway look. “Then Justin came to my rescue.”

  “Rescue?” Leah asked. “Wasn’t he a little bit angry at you?”

  “Oh goodness yes. He was raging! Shouting all sorts of things to me and calling me the most awful names. I’d always known he wasn’t exactly enamored of me, but I had no idea he detested me. While he was shouting at me, and once he put his hands around my throat, I kept trying to show him the bookcase where the hidden closet was. It took a long time to get him to listen to me, but he finally helped me move the bookcase.”

  “And Justin saw all the things inside?”

  “More than that. While we were inside, John came home.”

  “Kimberly! Where’s Justin now?”

  “I’m getting to that. You see, Justin didn’t have any keys and all the doors in our house have locks, not like your house at all, and John had locked every door so Justin had to break in a window and the study door to get to me. Justin and I hid in the closet, wrapped in each other’s arms”—Kim sighed—“while John walked through the house. When we heard him leave and ride away, Justin said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ So we went outside, way into the woods, and it was dark and Justin wanted me to tell him everything that was in the closet because he hadn’t been able to see anything because John’d returned and we had to pull the bookcase shut. So”—she paused for breath—“I was talking and suddenly Justin got real excited and began to kiss me. I was so tired of holding back with Wesley and even wi