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daring him to disagree.
    Caleb reached over to offer his hand while Josiah tightened his grip on Micah’s shoulder. “You’re a good man, Micah Tate, and the only one I want watching my island while I’m away. What say you? Will you accept my offer?”
    It took only a moment to manage a nod, but in that moment, Micah wondered whether he would ever see himself as Caleb and Josiah did.
    As God did.
    “Can I pray about it?”
    “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Caleb said.
    “Just don’t let my father talk you out of it,” Josiah added. “I figure you can patrol weekdays and preach Sundays.”
    Micah almost laughed as the glimmer of hope brightened. “Hey, now,” he said. “Keep in mind I’ve agreed to neither.”
    Yet as he said his good-byes and stumbled into the afternoon sun, Micah felt as wrung out as a morning’s wash. He also realized he’d like nothing better than a heaping plate of the redhead’s lunchtime fare.
    That is, unless he was too late for that, too.

Chapter 5

    Viola watched the doctor’s straight back as he marched down the steps and made his way to the gate. While the distraction of the kiss had done its job and postponed whatever news Dan intended to deliver, he’d nonetheless left her with the feeling the delay was only temporary.
    But then, what sort of permanence had he ever offered her? Viola frowned at the thought. His admissions of love came more frequently now, yet somehow the doctor seemed to feel these required no further commitment from him.
    Wandering through the empty rooms of her little home, Viola halted at the wardrobe, its carved surface glowing in a slender shaft of sunlight. The door opened on silent hinges, revealing a half dozen dresses suitable for a woman of modest means and one fit for a princess.
    Her fingers trembled as she reached for the gown she’d not touched in more than a year. A moment later, it was in her arms, soft silk against her cheek.
    Only the scent of soap remained, the acrid odor of dried blood and too many days of traveling aboard ship long banished. “Oh, Andre.”
    She let the dress crumple to the floor. Something in the gesture felt wrong, so Viola snagged it by the sleeve and draped it over the end of the narrow cot that served as her bed.
    Her hand lingered over silk brought to New Orleans all the way from the Far East. The pearls she’d worn at her neck had long since been lost, having scattered across the steps of the cathedral back in New Orleans, but those that decorated the bodice and sleeves remained.
    So many fittings, standing for what seemed to be hours on end in front of Mama’s gilt-edged mirror until the very shape of the dress seemed to stay long after Viola had stepped out of it. She didn’t dare complain or, for that matter, even consider uttering such words.
    And the cost. . . What she wouldn’t give to have half the price of this dress in her account over at the grocer’s or the mercantile.
    She allowed her mind to tiptoe backward to the cathedral steps but refused to let her thoughts remain there. Remembering how she came to the island served only to offer up the opportunity to forget all the things God had done with her and through her since her unexpected arrival. Had she remained behind in New Orleans, she’d likely be wed and in need of a midwife rather than having become one.
    No, she decided, she’d be dead. “Andre would have seen to it.”
    Yet even now, some two years after her fiancé’s death, Andre Gayarre reached from the grave to control her life and stand between her and the man with whom she’d fallen in love. By default, so did her father.
    From her window, she saw Emilie Gayarre approach. Viola put on her best smile. Were it not for Emilie, she’d never have found Fairweather Key. Neither would she have managed to become what she was: a midwife who often worked alongside the doctor she loved.
    Somehow the fact that she helped to bring new lives into the world seemed to atone in some