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and added, “Thank you again for bringing my bride safely here to me.”
    Mr. Lin shared a surreptitious glance with Hetty, then bowed his head. “Just doing job, Boss.”
    Hetty wasn’t ready to be alone with her husband. Maybe Mr. Lin could provide the buffer she needed this first evening between herself and Karl. After weeks on the trail, she knew the Chinaman far better than the stranger she’d wed. She blurted, “Will you join us for supper, Bao?”
    Mr. Lin shook his head. “So sorry. Have work. You enjoy first supper with husband.”
    Hetty watched with a sinking heart as he turned and marched back down the aisle.
    “Are we gonna eat or what?” Griffin asked.
    “Griffin,” Grace said in a soft voice. “Don’t be a brat.”
    “I’m hungry, too,” Karl said. “Shall we all go?” He gestured down the center aisle toward the door to the church.
    Griffin dashed for the door, with Grace yelling, “Don’t run in church!” as she sprinted after him.
    Hetty saw Karl was smiling as he watched the two rambunctious children charge down the aisle. It was a beautiful smile, one that traveled from his mouth, with its slightly crooked front tooth, all the way to his brown eyes, which—Hetty would have sworn—shimmered with dazzling golden flecks in the light streaming through the stained-glass window.
    A moment later Karl turned to her, the smile gone, the golden flecks gone, his face as ordinary as it had been when she’d promised to be his wife for as long as she lived.
    “Shall we go, Mrs. Norwood?”
    “I prefer Hetty.”
    Another smile flickered on his lips but never appeared there. “I wanted to hear how it sounded. Mrs. Norwood, I mean.”
    Mrs. Norwood. Married to plain Mr. Norwood.
    Hetty felt sad. Bad. Frustrated. Irritated. Why, oh, why had she agreed to marry this stranger when she wasn’t the least bit attracted to him? How was she going to allow him the liberties of a husband? And why did he have to be so
nice
?
    Most grown-ups would have yelled at the two kids for galloping down the aisle. Karl had
smiled
at them, accepting their exuberance as part of what made them Grace and Griffin. She couldn’t help liking him, even if she wasn’t attracted to him.
    Hetty hoped mere liking was going to be enough to get her through the night to come. There was no going back now. She slipped her arm through Karl’s and said, “I’m starved. I was too nervous to eat before the ceremony.”
    The smile appeared on his face again, and she found herself fascinated by that slightly overlapping front tooth. He pulled her close as he admitted, “I couldn’t eat anything, either. I was nervous, too.”
    “You were?”
    “It’s not every day a man is lucky enough to marry the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.”
    “Oh.” Hetty stared into Karl’s brown eyes and realized the golden flecks were there again. “What a lovely thing to say.”
    He kept his gaze focused on hers, and Hetty felt her empty stomach fill with butterflies. She had no idea how to respond to such a compliment. She didn’t want to lie and say she was happy with his looks, too, but it seemed she needed to say something.
    His stomach growled, and Hetty was surprised into laughter.
    Karl shot her a rueful look. “So much for impressing my new bride. Shall we go, Hetty? Supper awaits.”
    “Of course.” Hetty refused to think about what came next. At least, not until after she’d filled her stomach. Maybe then there’d be no room left for the butterflies to take flight.

“I’m so sorry,” Hetty said.
    “It was an accident,” Karl replied as he dabbed at the wine staining his vest and trousers with the red-and-white-checked napkin he’d carried away with him when they’d left the hotel restaurant and headed upstairs to their room. “The boy didn’t mean to do it.”
    The problem was, Hetty was pretty sure Griffin had known exactly what would happen when he’d reached for a bowl of butter in the center of the table. She