Page 13 of Mail-Order Viscountess

“I’m sure they did.” She kept her tone neutral, offering nothing that could be used against them later. “We’ll see you at dinner.”

After that clear dismissal, Rose’s smile tightened at the edges, but she nodded and withdrew, pulling the door closed behind her with a soft click.

The silence that followed pressed against Kate’s ears after weeks of constant noise—wind and wagon wheels and the endless chatter of fellow travelers. She moved to the door and tested the lock. It slid into place smoothly enough. Not much of a barrier if someone truly wanted in, but better than nothing.

When she turned back, Clara had sunk onto the edge of the bed, her shoulders curving inward. The afternoon light filtering through the curtains caught the tear tracks on her cheeks—fresh ones, joining the paths the earlier drops had carved through the travel dust.

Kate’s chest tightened. She crossed the room and sat beside her sister, close enough their shoulders touched. “We don’t have to stay.”

“I know.” Clara’s voice came out thin, like she’d worn it down to nothing. “But where would we go?”

The question hung between them. Back to Columbia? Back to the man more than two times Clara’s age, whom her mother had chosen—the perfect next step on her insatiable climb to the top of Columbia society. Never mind that he’d buried two wives already and looked at Clara like she was a brood mare he was purchasing.

No. They couldn’t go back there.

Fort Benton sat behind them—a rough river town where they’d waited three days for this stage. They could return there, find lodging, and wait out the winter. Except their funds wouldn’t stretch that far, not with the prices these frontier towns charged for everything.

“We could stay in Butte.” She forced the words out steadily, though her mind raced through calculations. The money left in her reticule—enough for maybe two weeks of lodging if they were careful. A month if they found somewhere cheaper than this hotel. “I have the commission from Mrs. Hartwell. That’s a start.”

Clara’s head lifted, and something flickered in her eyes. Hope, maybe, or just the desperate need to believe Kate could fix this like she fixed everything else. “One commission?”

The doubt in her sister’s voice stung, though Kate couldn’t argue with it. One commission wouldn’t support them through a Montana winter. Not in a mining town where prices climbed as high as the mountains surrounding it.

“It’s more than one commission.” Kate kept her voice firm. “It’s an introduction. Mrs. Hartwell moves in society here—she said so herself. If I do good work for her, she’ll recommend me to others. I can build a clientele.”

“How long will that take?” Clara worried at a loose thread on her cuff. “A month? Two? What do we do in the meantime?”

She had no answer—not one that would satisfy either of them. The truth sat heavy in her stomach. She reached for Clara’s hand, stilling the anxious picking at the thread. “We’ll manage. We always do.”

Clara’s fingers curled around hers, small and cold without her traveling gloves. “What about the ranch?”

The ranch. Where Thomas Balfour’s family waited—the brothers who’d orchestrated this disaster, their wives, and a housekeeper. All of them complicit in dragging Clara across half a continent for nothing.

But Rose had seemed kind. Nervous, yes, though there’d been genuine warmth in her smile when she’d greeted them at the stage depot. And she’d called Thomas’s brothers out for their deception without hesitation. That counted for something, didn’t it?

Or maybe Kate was just desperate enough to see kindness where none existed.

“The ranch is an option.” She forced the words past the resistance in her throat. “Thomas Balfour said we’d be free to leave whenever we wanted. That he’d pay for our passage back East if we chose to go.”

“Do you believe him?”

Did she? He’d sat there with his face battered and swollen, his ribs clearly paining him with every breath, and admitted the truth. He could have lied—let them believe he’d written those letters, gone through with the wedding, and dealt with the fallout later. Or simply refused to marry Clara, pretending he’d changed his mind.

Instead he’d confessed. Offered them choices. Promised to pay their way home.

The cynic in her—the part that had learned to trust no one except Clara—whispered that words meant nothing. That men said whatever suited them in the moment and changed them once they had what they wanted.

But the part of her that had watched him flinch when Clara’s face crumpled—that part whispered something different.

“I don’t know.” The admission tasted like failure. “But staying in Butte means spending money we don’t have while I try to build a business from nothing. Going to the ranch at least buys us time to figure out what comes next.”

Clara’s thumb traced circles against Kate’s palm—a habit that revealed she was thinking. “What if they won’t let us leave?”

The worry in her sister’s voice pulled something tight in Kate’s chest. She’d spent years shielding Clara from the worst of her mother’s manipulations, their father’s weakness, the reality of how little protection women had in this world.

And now they sat in a hotel room in the Montana Territory, discussing whether to trust strangers who’d already proven themselves capable of deception.

“Then we’ll find a way out anyway.” She closed her fingers around Clara’s hand. “I won’t let anyone trap you. Not them. Not anyone.”