Page 60 of Mail-Order Lady

And it had started again first thing this morning. Now Clara was upstairs with Kate, Thomas, and the doctor. Where she should be, of course. Kate’s health mattered far more than his need to see his wife. To understand what that kiss had meant to her.

His wife.

The words still felt strange in his mind, even after the long journey from Fort Benton. Even after the kiss two days ago that had cracked something open in his chest.

He pushed away from the window and turned toward his study. He needed to occupy himself with something. Correspondence. The ledgers. Anything to keep his hands and mind busy while he waited for the doctor to finish his examination.

But as he opened the door, the memory rushed back of Clara, sitting at the desk, bent over papers.

The papers still lay where she left them.

He moved to the worksurface and stood over the pages. Her handwriting covered the top sheet in neat, even lines.

He shouldn’t read it.

Just like he wouldn’t open letters not addressed to him or listen at doors when voices carried from other rooms. This was her personal journal or correspondence. A man didn’t pry into another person’s private writings.

But his eyes had already caught the first line.

Once there was a princess who lived in a castle with two wings like arms that reached out to hold everyone inside.

His breath stopped.

A story. Fiction, by the look of it. Not letters or journal entries or the kind of practical writing a woman might do to keep household accounts.

He read the next paragraph.

She had lived in the castle all her life and had never seen beyond its walls. Her mother, the queen, kept the gates locked and the windows shuttered, for she said the world outside was full of dangers that would harm a girl who did not know how to protect herself.

His pulse kicked. Clara.

Not directly perhaps—not the literal facts of her life—but the shape of it. The feeling of it.

But the princess had a sister. A brave sister with golden hair who climbed the walls and sneaked through the gates and brought back stories of the world outside. The princess loved her sister more than anything, and when the sister was gone, the castle felt cold and empty, no matter how many fires burned in the hearths.

That had to be Kate, of course. And seeing this glimpse into how Clara felt without her… No wonder the two had formed such a connection.

He turned the page over.

One day, the queen decided the princess must marry a man from a distant kingdom. A cruel man who would keep the gates locked even tighter than before. The princess knew she had to escape, but she did not know how. She had spent so long inside the walls that she could not imagine what it would be like to walk beyond them. What if she opened the gate and found nothing on the other side? What if the world outside was exactly as her mother had always said—dangerous and full of pain?

The lines blurred in front of him, and he blinked. His chest pulled so tight, he couldn’t draw a full breath.

He turned the page over and set it back on the desk. This was Clara’s private writings. Her own story, placed in a fictional setting. She’d not given him leave to read it. With all the tense happenings yesterday, she’d likely forgotten she left these here. And maybe she trusted that he’d leave them alone.

Yet the manuscript pulled at him like a hand reaching up from deep water. Maybe one more paragraph. Just to see which direction she would take the story.

He’d stop after that.

The princess stood at the gate with her hand on the bar. Sounds drifted from beyond the wall. Voices, laughter, the rush of wind through open spaces. Her heart pounded so hard it felt as though it might crack her ribs. What would happen if she opened the gate and stepped through? Would the world swallow her whole? Would she disappear into it like a drop of water into an ocean?

But then her sister stepped beside her and placed her hand on the bar also. “We can lift it together. This adventure will be ours to discover with each other.”

Footsteps sounded overhead, jolting him from the story. He dropped the paper to the desk. Arranged them all as they’d been before. His heartbeat pounded through his body.

The doctor’s boots moved across the room above, and lighter steps followed.

He strode to the door and stepped into the main room just as the doctor appeared at the landing. Clara followed a half step behind, her hand resting on the banister.