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stepped into the main room, setting a hand to her simply styled brown hair as if to make sure it was not misbehaving. "I must apologize again. Those children tell such tales! Stealing spit. Threatening to cook them! Such nonsense." She was silent for a moment as she looked around the room, taking in everything.
    "Just a few days ago they told me you'd taken them into the forest and left them there to starve," Matilda said as she made her way to the small winter kitchen at the back of the cottage. There was not enough room to do her baking here, but there was a small stove, a pantry of food, tea, and Granny's fine china cups.
    "Heaven only knows what they've told you, and anyone else who will listen!" Mrs. Hazelrig laid a tired hand on her forehead as Matilda heated water for tea. "They hate me," she added, in a lowered voice that made the statement seem a confidence. "I thought that with time their feelings toward me would change, but..."
    "They will," Matilda said with assurance. "Gretchen still misses her mother terribly, and Hanson simply follows his sister's lead. Patience, Mrs. Hazelrig."
    "Call me Stella," the woman said. "After all, we are neighbors."
    "And I'm Matilda." She experienced a moment of warmth. A neighbor. No one had ever made such an overture before. But then, Stella was new to the area and had not heard all the stories. Once she did...
    "I'm truly at a loss," Stella said softly. "Their mother's been gone four years." There was such despair in the woman's voice, as if she would never know peace again. "What can I do?"
    Matilda gave the question some thought as she waited for the water to boil. She mused as she prepared the cups—two of her finest—glancing through the window to see that Gretchen and Hanson were very carefully following her instructions, picking only the fully bloomed red roses and dropping them into their baskets.
    "You must make your own place in their hearts," Matilda said softly. "And realize that yours will be a new place, not an old one." She flashed Stella her brightest smile. "And I can teach you to make caramels."

 
     
     
    Chapter 4

     
    He was a little early arriving at the Candy house, but Declan dismissed his eagerness as a desire to see his plans fulfilled as quickly as possible. Once Vanessa Arrington was his wife, he'd be well on his way to seeing all his dreams come true.
    He was not particularly eager to see Matilda Candy again, he told himself as he dismounted before her cottage. Yes, she was an interesting woman, pretty if you liked the type, and a good listener with a great laugh. He might've dreamed about golden braids and bare feet in the past couple of days, or heard a laugh in town and turned to look and see if maybe... just maybe... it was Matilda he heard. All right, he conceded, she was an attractive woman, but that's not why he had arrived at her cottage well before dark!
    She didn't answer his brief knock, but he wasn't surprised. Her big kitchen was out back, and that was where she did much of her work. He wondered what she was making today; hard molasses candy, perhaps?
    The smell hit him when he was halfway around the cottage—not candy, not bread, but a tantalizing, feminine scent that teased his senses, a flowery fragrance that wrapped itself around him and made him think of women in long, deep bathtubs. When he rounded the corner he saw Matilda standing before a huge black cauldron with a low fire burning beneath it. She reached into a basket at her feet and came up with a handful of red rose petals. Declan stopped where he was to watch Matilda as she rubbed her palms together and let the petals drift from her hands into the cauldron.
    Something unexpected moved in Declan's chest. It was from the fragrance perhaps, or the sight of Matilda standing there surrounded by red rose petals; petals at her feet, raining from her hands. Yet she looked no different from the first time he'd seen her, with her long golden braids and those bare feet, wearing a