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switch, Rose, honey. You know how eccentric I am.”
    Moving quickly, Rose placed herself in front of her aunt. Beth wasn’t going to leave the room until she promised not to interfere.
    â€œAunt Beth, do you remember the details of the feud?”
    â€œRemember it?” She laughed. “It was drummed into my head almost every day when I was a child. I was ten years old before I realized it wasn’t one of Aesop’s fables.”
    Rose took hold of her aunt’s broader shoulders to hold her in place. “All right, then, remember how Jace Carson proposed to the mayor’s daughter just because he thought she was going to have his baby? He didn’t love her, but he was ready to do the honorable thing.”
    Beth held up a finger, interrupting. “He didn’t, though. The baby turned out to be the gardener’s. The mayor’s daughter was afraid her father wouldn’t approve of him, so she kept it a secret until she couldn’t contain it any longer, then blamed Jace. But everything turned out all right, except for poor Lou Lou.” She’d always wanted to write a play about the feud and play the part of Lou Lou Wainwright, the woman who committed suicide when she found she couldn’t marry her lifelong sweetheart, Jace Carson, and started off the feud.
    Beth was straying off the path. Rose quickly redirected her attention to what she was trying to say. “The point is, Jace was going to marry her to do the right thing.”
    Beth looked at her niece, trying to second-guess her. “And you’re afraid that if Matt knows, that’s what he’s going to do.”
    â€œExactly.”
    Funny how two people could be in love, Beth thought, and still be so blind about the other person. It rather reminded her of the way she and Garrison had been about each other.
    Beth quickly caught herself before her thoughts took her off in another direction.
    â€œNot that I don’t think your young man isn’t honorable, dear, but I don’t think anyone could make him do what he didn’t want to do.”
    â€œThat’s just the point,” Rose insisted. “He’d want to be honorable.”
    Beth cocked her head, trying to follow Rose’s thinking. “And you don’t want him honorable?”
    â€œI don’t want him marrying me to be honorable, or to give the baby a name.” She swung around to face Beth as she made her point. “I want him to marry me because he loves me, because he wants a baby with me, not because he accepts me for his wife because I happen to be the mother of his baby. Do you see the difference, Aunt Beth?”
    â€œYes, I do. And if you don’t think that that boyloves you down to the soles of his worn cowboy boots, then you and I need to have a serious conversation.”
    Rose held up her hand. “No, no more talking. Please. I just want him to leave so I can get on with my life.”
    Beth was thoroughly convinced that young people didn’t know how to love these days. They kept insisting on getting in their own way.
    â€œNow that I’ve had a gander at that boy, Rose, it doesn’t seem like much of a life without him.”
    Before Rose could launch into another argument, Beth left the den and swept majestically into the living room.
    She beamed down at Matt, who immediately rose in his seat. Good looking and polite. She knew a great catch when she saw one. The thing of it was, to make Rose realize it, too.
    â€œSorry to leave you alone for so long, Matt.” Beth saw that he’d opened the gold-bound book on the coffee table and had been leafing through it. She jumped at her opportunity. “Oh, you’ve found my scrapbook.”
    Nostalgia had her sinking down beside him on the sofa, ready to page through the book with him.
    Only sheer will restrained Matt from doing a double take. The page opened in front of him was of an apparently nude, nubile woman who had