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weren’t wrong at all. In fact, you were probably quite right to assume there wouldn’t be any other woman who might consider a proposal like yours, because no self-respecting woman ever would. But in all truth, yours isn’t a proposal of marriage at all. It’s a business proposition. And while I find your proposition interesting, albeit highly unconventional, I’m afraid I must decline,” she said and rose from her seat. “Under the circumstances, I think it best if I leave now and trust you can find someone else to tend to your housekeeping needs.”
    Frowning, he got to his feet. “You’re saying no?”
    “I’m afraid I must,” she whispered.
    “Just like that? Without any further discussion or consideration of my proposal?”
    “Exactly like that,” she said, stepping around him.
    He followed her as she crossed the room.
    “Would you at least stay to discuss the idea further?”
    She stopped, forcing him to do the same, but she did not turn around right away. When she did, her features were pale and her hands were trembling. In the depths of her dark eyes, he saw just a glimmer of hurt she had buried as deeply as his own before a flash of defiance eclipsed it.
    “How old are you, Mr. Smith? Precisely.”
    “Twenty-eight. As of last May.”
    “Well, as you can no doubt see for yourself, I’m a fair bit older,” she countered. “I’m thirty-one years old, and as you were quick to point out so ungallantly, I’m also a spinster. Not by choice, but by circumstances I have no inclination to explain to you. But please know this,” she said firmly. “I may be a bit long in the tooth and unduly plain, even by generous standards. I also may not have more than a single coin or two to my name or a room within my cousin’s household to call my own, but I’m not desperate enough to accept a proposal of marriage that would make me nothing more than a . . . a solution to your problems. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take my leave,” she whispered and promptly walked out of the room.
    Stung by her reproach as much as her refusal, he followed her back to the kitchen, where she ignored him while she removed her apron and donned her cape. “I didn’t want to . . . I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said weakly.
    She marched to the back door, paused, and turned around to face him again. “No, I don’t imagine you meant to do that at all, but you did,” she replied, opened the door, and slipped outside.
    He charged after her. “At least let me escort you back to the landing,” he suggested, hoping he might be able to change her mind along the way.
    She waved off his offer without breaking stride. “Thank you, but I’ll find my way by myself,” she insisted, but never looked back. Not once.
    He braced to a halt and watched her head straight into the woods behind the house, but he knew by the way she walked, with her back rigid and her head held high, that it was useless to follow her to try to change her mind.
    It was not the first time he had failed to convince a woman to accept his marriage proposal, but he certainly hoped it would be the last.
    His only consolation was that this time, the woman who had spurned him did not take his heart with her when she walked away.

Five

    Ellie refused to let her bottom lip even quiver or to allow a single tear to fall as she marched away from the farmhouse.
    Once she reached the privacy of the thick woods separating the property from the orchards, however, she unlatched the lock on her well-practiced resolve to keep her feelings to herself and opened the floodgates, releasing emotions she had kept hidden from the rest of the world for a very, very long time.
    Leaning flat against a massive swamp maple tree, she rested her forehead against the solid trunk and pressed her open palms to the rough bark. She gulped in shaky breaths of cool air as hot tears flowed down her cheeks, but it was the sense of total abandonment that lay heaviest on her heart.
    The notion