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won’t mention it again.”
    With a grunt, Gavin climbed into the wagon and drove the team toward the barn.

Five
    Emily pressed her face against the pillow and tried to recapture her dream. She was at a masked ball. Couples in dazzling costumes twirled around a mirrored ballroom, the women’s gowns sweeping out in wide arcs in time to the music. She danced in the arms of a tall stranger, his face hidden behind a black mask. Eyes like steel stared at her through narrow slits. He held her close, so close his breath seemed to be hers.
    The fingers of her left hand tightened on his shoulder, and he whimpered.
    Whimpered?
    She opened her eyes and found herself staring into Joker’s fuzzy face, his shiny black nose mere inches from hers. The dog was beside her in the bed, crowding her to the edge of the mattress. Before she could move, the wolfhound slapped her with another of his affectionate licks. She lifted her hand to ward him off — and promptly fell to the floor.
    “We’re going to come to terms, dog.” She stood, hands on hips. “Now get off my bed.”
    His tail slapped the heavy patchwork quilt.
    “I said, get off.” She pointed at the floor.
    Joker stepped down from the bed and flopped at her feet, rolling onto his back to expose his belly.
    “Oh, no. You’ll get no reward from me. How did you get in here anyway? Don’t you belong outside, protecting us from wolves or something?”
    He whimpered again.
    Emily moved toward the door of her bedroom and eased it open. The main room was empty. “Get out,” she whispered. Tail between his legs and head slung low — she almost felt sorry for him — Joker obeyed. Sounds from elsewhere in the house met her ears a second before the door snapped closed.
    She glanced at the bed with longing. Oh, for another hour of slumber. But there would be no return to sleep now, not with the household stirring. She didn’t want them to think her a lazybones.
    Emily walked to her trunk and pulled out clean undergarments. She’d hung her dresses the night before on wooden pegs pounded into the log walls of her room. Now she chose one of her favorite day dresses and laid it on the bed. The sky-blue gown had a simple bodice, pointed front and back, and an overskirt that was draped back to form short side panniers with fullness behind.
    After removing her long-sleeved nightgown, she completed her morning ablutions with haste. A chill in the morning air didn’t invite her to linger.
    She fastened the last button of her bodice and settled onto the edge of the bed, reaching for the hairbrush on the bedside table. The brush had belonged to her mother. Maggie had kept it hidden when their uncle was selling off everything of value from their New York home, and she had brought it with them when they came west on the wagon train. It had been Maggie’s gift to Emily on her eighteenth birthday. Fingering the intricate design on the silver brush, she wondered if her parents could see her from heaven. Would they be proud of the woman she’d become?
    Tears pricked her eyes. How she wished she could remember her mother and father. But she’d been so young — only a year old — when they died. What memories she had of them belonged to Maggie first. They’d become hers as her sister told her the stories, over and over again through the years. When their uncle had one of his cruel moods, they used to hide from his wrath, and Maggie would tell her stories of their parents, of their mother’s beautiful hair, of their father’s great laugh, of how very much they’d loved Maggie and Emily.
    Her thoughts turned to Dru. She wasn’t well, but at least she was here with her daughters. Sabrina and Petula wouldn’t have to take another person’s word about the love their mother felt for them. They would know it firsthand. Fortunate girls.
    On the heels of that thought came shame. How awful to feel envious. Maggie had raised her, loved her, protected her. Emily couldn’t have asked for more. She