Page 34 of Mail-Order Viscountess

The implication in his words made her stomach dip. She opened her mouth to explain—the storm, the broken ice, the cave—but the expression on Mr. Hartwell’s face stopped her cold. Their wrinkled clothing. The cave behind them. The complete absence of any chaperone.

He’d already decided what this looked like.

“Mr. Balfour and I were caught in the storm,” she said anyway, keeping her voice level. “The river ice broke. The rest of our party made it across, but the blizzard grew worse. We took shelter until it passed.”

“I see.” Mr. Hartwell’s mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “And this gentleman is...?”

“Thomas Balfour.” Thomas stepped forward, extending his hand. “Of the Balfour Ranch, about a day’s ride north of here.”

Mr. Hartwell made no move to take the offered hand. His gaze traveled over Thomas again. “The Balfour Ranch. Yes, I’ve heard of it.” His tone suggested he’d heard nothing favorable. “And you were escorting Miss McKinney to this ranch?”

“Her sister is traveling there.” Thomas’s tone had gone flat. “Miss McKinney was accompanying her.”

“Her sister.” Mr. Hartwell repeated the words slowly, as though tasting them. His attention shifted back to Kate, and something in his expression made her skin crawl. “The young woman who was to be married, I believe? The mail-order bride?”

Heat flooded Kate’s face. He’d heard their conversation on the stage—of course he had. She’d been foolish to discuss Clara’s situation so openly, but exhaustion and worry had loosened her tongue.

“My sister, Clara, yes.” She lifted her chin, refusing to show the shame burning through her. “She’s engaged to Mr. Balfour’s brother.”

The lie came out smooth, automatic. Better to let him believe the arrangement still stood than try to explain the tangled mess of Thomas’s brothers’ deception.

“Is she?” Mr. Hartwell’s eyebrow climbed. “How convenient. And you spent the night...where, exactly?”

Her mind scrambled for an acceptable explanation—trapped overnight in a cave with an unmarried man, no chaperone, their bodies pressed together for warmth. It didn’t matter that nothing improper had happened. Society didn’t care about truth when scandal made a better story.

And Edmund Hartwell moved in the exact society she needed to build her seamstress business.

“In a cave behind the waterfall.” Thomas gestured behind them toward the frozen cascade. “It was the only shelter available. Miss McKinney’s safety was my main concern.”

“Your main concern.” Mr. Hartwell’s tone dripped with skepticism. “How very noble of you, Mr. Balfour.” He shifted in his saddle, the leather creaking.

She tried again. “We were caught in the storm. There was no impropriety. We simply⁠—”

“You spent the night together.” Each word fell like a stone into still water. “Alone. Unchaperoned. In a cave.”

Thomas shifted into a wider stance, his presence like a wall at her side. “Mr. Hartwell, we were traveling with my brother and sister-in-law to my family’s ranch when the accident occurred. I assure you, nothing untoward⁠—”

“I know the Balfour family by reputation.” Mr. Hartwell’s gaze didn’t soften. “Respectable ranchers. Your brother James, if I recall, recently married. But that doesn’t change what I’ve witnessed here.”

His hand moved to his coat pocket, and he rubbed something between his fingers—a nervous habit, perhaps, or a way of steadying himself for what came next.

“My wife had arrangements with Miss McKinney.” He spoke slowly, as though the words pained him. “Business arrangements. She was quite taken with the young lady’s needlework on the stage from Fort Benton.”

Hope flickered in her chest—irrational, desperate hope that maybe he would understand. That the connection with his wife might count for something.

“Mr. Hartwell, please.” She hated the pleading note in her voice but couldn’t quite suppress it. “If you would just let me explain to Mrs. Hartwell⁠—”

“Miss McKinney.” His tone gentled, but his expression remained fixed. “I am a businessman. I deal in facts and appearances. The fact is that you spent the night unchaperoned with a man who is not your husband. The appearance...”

He spread his hands, letting the implication hang in the frozen air. “Butte society may be rougher than what you knew in the East, but it is no less unforgiving. If word spread that Audrey had taken on a seamstress of questionable reputation—” He shook his head. “She would never recover from the shame. Nor would I ask her to.”

The words landed like a shovel-full of dirt on the coffin of her plans—the business arrangement, gone. The independence she’d planned to build, gone. The backup plan if the ranch didn’t work out, the security of knowing she could support herself and Clara, all of it crumbling to dust.

“There was nothing improper.” Thomas’s voice went hard. “Miss McKinney behaved with perfect propriety under dangerous and impossible circumstances. Any man with sense would see that.”

Mr. Hartwell’s gaze flicked to Thomas with something that might have been sympathy. “Perhaps. But sense has little to do with society, young man. You would do well to learn that.”

He gathered his reins, preparing to leave, and the last of her hope drained away. This was really happening. Her reputation—the only thing of value she possessed in this new land—was being stripped away by a chance encounter and the rigid rules of propriety she’d spent her whole life trying to escape.