"You mean she didn't thank you for all those things you bought her?" Candace said in disbelief.

"Oh, she thanked me, all right. You would've thought somebody was holding a gun to her head to make her do it, though." The memory of her stilted "Thank you, Mr. Logan" still rankled. He had bought her the clothes to overcome the feelings of shame he knew still tormented her. He wanted to prove to her that he did not believe she had done anything to be ashamed of. He had even been stupid enough to expect her to be pleased. If he had remembered her reaction to the first clothes he had given her, he could have spared himself the disappointment. The girl simply did not know how to accept a gift.

"She's gonna look mighty pretty on her wedding day," Candace said, hoping to tease him out of his dark mood.

But Josh did not want to discuss his wedding day, certainly not with Candace. Casting about for a change of topic, he remembered that he had something important to discuss with her. "There was a man in town looking for you the other day."

Candace's dark eyes glittered in the moonlight as she pretended to simper. "Was there now?" she asked playfully.

"A colored man, and Hankins said he looked like you," Josh said, watching her reaction carefully.

"Looked like me?" Candace echoed, puzzled.

"Yeah, I figured he might be some kin of yours. Hankins said he was asking if you still worked for me and where my place was located."

Candace frowned thoughtfully. "Might be. I got lots of kinfolk, brothers and cousins and…" She paused. "How old a man was he?" she asked sharply.

"Hankins wasn't sure," Josh said, catching the change in Candace's tone but uncertain as to what it meant.

"Was he around my age or older or… younger?" Candace asked, her voice strange in the darkness.

"I really don't know. Is anything wrong?" he asked with growing concern.

"Wrong?" she said distractedly. "No, nothing's wrong." Then she smiled, her teeth a white slash in her dark face, but Josh knew the smile was forced. "Well, if he's kin of mine, I reckon he'll show up here sooner or later. Good night, Mr. Josh."

Josh frowned as he watched her hurry away. When Hankins first told him about the stranger, Josh had been certain the man could not possibly mean Candace any harm. He knew Candace could not have an enemy in the world. But for the first time in his life Josh considered the fact that he knew very little about Candace's past, a past that might possibly include someone of whom she would be afraid. But Candace was not afraid, not exactly. Her emotion had been something different, something he could not quite identify. He stood there in the dark, puzzling over it for a long time and trying not to look up at Felicity's darkened window.

"How long will you be gone?"

Asa Gordon looked up to where his landlady stood in the open doorway, and smiled. "Don't know exactly. This is a tough case and I might be gone several months," he reported, and returned to his packing. The task would not take long. His few changes of clothing would fit easily into the carpetbag sitting on his bed.

"Should I hold the room for you?" Mrs. Cruthers asked.

She was being professionally polite, in case someone happened to overhear, but Asa heard the petulant undertone in her voice. For the past several months, the buxom widow had been much more than his landlady. Sacrificing the cozy comfort of her bed was his only regret at leaving Philadelphia. But it was a tiny regret. He suspected that Mrs. Cruthers was beginning to imagine wedding bells in their future. Better to make the break a clean one.

"I reckon you can let the room go to someone else, since I don't know when I'll get back," he said, allowing just the proper note of apology to tinge his voice.

He had not expected a tearful scene, but he was equally surprised by her cold hauteur. "I should have figured as much from the likes of you," she sniffed, turning on her heel and stalking angrily away.

Asa paused in his packing, marveling over her reaction. Women, God love them, never ceased to amaze him. With a philosophical shrug, he resumed his chore. There would be other buxom widows. There were plenty of them in Texas.

Felicity's wedding day dawned bright and clear. She happened to notice this because she was wide awake long before the sun had even peeked over the horizon. Sitting up against the headboard of her bed, she drew her knees up to her chest and clutched them tightly. In the feeble morning light she could see the golden dress hanging on a peg across the room and looking like just one more elegant accessory to this golden room.

Shivering slightly, she pulled the quilt up over her shoulders, even though she knew her chills were not caused by the temperature. She shivered because she was afraid, more mortally afraid than she had ever been in her entire life. In a few hours scores of total strangers would descend on the ranch to witness her marriage to a man she hardly knew. Tonight she would no longer sleep in this golden room, alone. Tonight she would sleep with Mr. Logan in his bedroom next door. And tonight he would do that awful thing to her again.

But it wasn't awful if you were married, she reminded herself sternly. And, she admitted reluctantly, it wasn't even awful if you weren't. Every night since it had happened she had awakened from tormented dreams, her body damp and aching, longing for something she could not even name. She did not dare to let him know her longing, though. Instead, whenever he came close, whenever he tried to take her in his arms, she resisted. She could not allow him one single kiss because even one kiss was more temptation than she could bear. If she gave him her mouth, she would give him everything, and that would be wrong. She simply could not allow it, not again, not until they were married.

Tonight they would be married. Felicity shivered again. Maybe now the quarrels would end, the quarrels that frightened her almost as much as thoughts of the wedding. Mr. Logan's angry voice insisting, "We'll be married in a few days! What will it hurt?" and then, "We'll be married tomorrow, for God's sake!" and her insisting right back, "But we aren't married yet!" Then the fear would come, the fear that he would call the whole thing off. Sometimes he was so angry that she wondered why he didn't, why he didn't just send her away and be done with her.

She supposed he would be embarrassed to call off the wedding after everyone already knew about it. That was the only explanation that made any sense to her. The idea that he might want her, specifically, as his wife was too preposterous even to consider. As exciting as making love with him had been for her, she knew he could easily find a much more exciting woman to take her place. Hadn't Mrs. Delano already indicated her willingness? There surely must be many others whom Felicity had not met. She found the thought extremely depressing.

But in spite of everything, he was still going to marry her today. She had to keep reminding herself of that. As Joshua Logan's wife, she need fear nothing ever again. She would never be alone or poor or hungry or lost. And he would protect her. She would never again have to look over her shoulder to see if someone was following her. She would have a home, and she would have Mr. Logan to take care of her. That was more than she had ever hoped for. She should have been grateful.

But if only she could have his love, too. She understood only too well that the ache she felt for his physical body was just a symptom of her craving for his affection. Unless he cared for her, unless he loved her the way a man loves a woman, she would always be alone and poor and hungry and lost, no matter what luxuries surrounded her.