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around her slender waist the specter of spinsterhood was definitely hovering around her.
    "Oh, you're beautiful enough," Abby continued, "I'll be grantin' you that. But the fact remains you're five years past prime marrying age and with no dowry and no position and no home to call your own, it seems to me that Mr. Addison's offer is something to—"
    "Oh, blast Mr. Addison's offer!" Caroline stormed across the room and picked up her hairbrush, drawing it through her hair with quick, violent strokes. "I don't want to hear about Mr. Addison's offer." She caught the girl's eye in the mirror. "Tell me honestly, Abby: Do you really believe Emily Addison would welcome me with open arms?"
    Abby adjusted the apron of her uniform. "She seems to be very fond of you."
    Caroline drew the brush through her waist-length hair. "She was more fond of my father."
    "All the more reason to be charitable to the daughter," Abby said without much conviction. "Mr. Addison is the apple of her eye. If he loves you, she would never refuse him."
    "Ah, yes," said Caroline. "I can see us now, twenty years hence. Thomas will still be fussing over Emily, making sure her glass of Madeira is full. He'll be a doddering old man at forty-five, full of crotchets and quirks before his time."
    Abby laughed out loud. "You must have kissed the Blarney Stone a time or two, miss, to spin a tale like that."
    "Tell me I'm wrong then, Abby." She turned, brush in hand, and waited. Abby looked down at her booted feet and adjusted a lace. Caroline's voice grew softer. "Abby. Can you tell me I'm wrong?"
    "No, Miss Caroline, I can't be tellin' you you're wrong, but I can tell you we don't all get everything we want in this world. You're too much like your father, God rest his soul. Always lookin' for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow." Abby got up and walked across the room to where Caroline stood near the dressing table. "There's not pot of gold, Miss Caroline. Sometimes there's not even a rainbow."
    "I cannot stay here," Caroline said, slapping the back of her silver hairbrush against her palm for emphasis. "If I marry Thomas, I'll end up locked away in this house like one of Emily's fusty old antique clocks. They'll dust me off for company but the rest of the time I'll be relegated to my room to do needlework and grow old."
    "Then what will you do if you don't marry?" Abby persisted.
    "I can find a position somewhere."
    "A position!" Abby's freckled nose wrinkled. "And doing what, Miss? They don't pay young ladies for having fine table manners."
    The jab at her crazy-quilt education hit home but Caroline refused to acknowledge it before her sharp-eyed maid. "You said yourself I sew a fine seam, Abby. I could take in work."
    "You're too slow at it, Miss. You couldn't keep yourself in tea with what you'd be makin'."
    "Perhaps I'll become a ladies' maid," she said, unable to resist striking back. "Certainly it doesn't take great skill."
    Abby didn't rise to the bait. "You'd be findin' out quickly enough," she said with a grin. "'Tis more to this than meets the eye."
    Caroline sank down on the bed, brush still clasped between her hands. "So what you are saying is that I am good for nothing useful."
    "I never said that, Miss Caroline. What I said is it's harder to earn a livin' than you think."
    "So, tell me then, Abby, what can I do? What on this great earth of ours am I capable of doing?"
    "You'd make a good and capable wife."
    Caroline raised the brush as if to throw it at Abby but the young woman stared her down. "You infuriate me sometimes, Abby."
    "Truth hu rts the first time, don't it, miss?"
    "I refuse to marry Thomas Addison."
    "Then you should be thinkin' about the future, Miss Caroline, for it will be here before you know it."
    "I could always go west. I've read there are many opportunities out there for women." The original idea to head toward Nevada had been Caroline's and not Aaron's at all.
    "Hah! And you'd know what those opportunities are." Abby crossed