Page 54 of Mail-Order Lady

She breathed in once more, then finally eased from his arms.

She’d work through all those questions later. For now, he needed to send a telegram.

She pressed one hand to his chest and lifted the other to cup his cheek. He kept both his hands clasped behind her back, holding her exactly where she wanted to be.

Having her hand so near his mouth made her want to reach up and place her lips there again, but she resisted. “Go do what you need to. Then come back to me.”

He turned his head to brush his mouth over the heel of her hand. “I promise.”

This time, she made herself pull back fully out of his arms. The idea of keeping him there was becoming far too tempting.

But there was no way in the wide Montana sky she could keep from grinning as she turned toward the door.

CHAPTER 16

The telegram sat folded in Robert’s coat pocket, pressed against his ribs with every movement of the horse beneath him. He’d read it three times in Walnut Springs before mounting up. Once more at the creek where he’d stopped to water his gelding.

The words hadn’t changed.

Father had sent confirmation, plain and unambiguous. Nathan Richard Balfour. Eldest son. Born in wedlock to a woman named Elspeth Graydon, daughter of Viscount Wellesley. The pirates were documented. The death certificates issued. The grief thirty years buried. And he was certain this man was his son.

This meant the title line had shifted under all of them, like a fault in the earth shifting before an earthquake. What kind of man was this new brother? Other than the facts from the telegram, the only thing they knew of him was that he’d likely followed them from Fort Benton, maybe shot the mountain lion in the dark without revealing himself, and stood in a yard full of pointed rifles without flinching.

The lower meadow opened ahead, the cottonwood standing at its head the way it always did. Almost home. Whatever else had changed this past fortnight, the mountains hadn’t moved. The ranch stood solid and safe.

And Clara. That kiss.

He’d replayed it a thousand times in the hours since. The way she’d risen on her toes and pressed her lips to his cheek. The warmth of her hands on his shoulders. The softness in her voice when she’d said come home safely to us.

And then when he’d kissed her—really kissed her—she hadn’t pulled away. Hadn’t stiffened or gone still the way he’d half-expected. She’d leaned into him, her fingers sliding up into his hair, her breath catching in a way that had undone him completely.

I’m glad you kissed me. Very glad.

Heat swept through his chest even now, a day later. Had she simply been trying to comfort him in his distress? Or had she…?

He couldn’t let himself finish the thought. Not yet. Not until he’d had a chance to see her again, to read her face in light of what had passed between them.

The house appeared through the trees, smoke rising from the chimney in a thin gray line. The barn stood solid to the left, and someone—James, probably—had turned the horses into the lower pasture. Everything looked exactly as it should.

Except for the figure sitting upright against the barn.

Nathan.

Appeared he’d been settled in that spot a while, from the looks of his bedroll and the ashes of a fire.

Robert aimed his gelding toward the front of the house, but gave Nathan a nod in greeting.

Nathan just watched, and the set of his face carried… Not hostility. Not eagerness either. Something steadier. The expression of a person who had stopped expecting warmth and had made peace with it.

He rode to the house and climbed down, then tied the gelding to the post. He’d see to him in a moment—the horse had earned a proper rub down and grain—but first things first.

The front door opened before he’d taken two steps up the porch.

James stood in the doorway with Rose in the shadows behind him, and his expression—the small line between his brows, the way his jaw sat a fraction too tight—said the hours Robert had been gone hadn’t been easy ones.

“You’re back.” James’s voice came out careful. “The telegram⁠—”

“I have it.” Robert moved past him into the house. “Get everyone.”