A/N: I split the chapter into two because it was becoming gargantuan. The visit to Sykes' ranch is in the next, which will still be from Myka's point of view. Yes, there will be a trial, there will be a Bering and Wells. . . but not yet.

As January became February, the transition marked only by the tantalizing hints of mildness in the air and the transformation of the snow into debris-covered mounds of ice, Sweetwater seemed to stir from its winter stupor only to sink into doldrums more profound. Even the daily flow of clerks, assistants, and Malachi Ross's "pups" into and out of the new lodgings inhabited by Helena's benefactor and his attorney wasn't enough to rouse the citizens' interest. The men, just like their employers, were becoming another unremarkable – and unremarked – feature of the town, and Helena's trial for the murder of James MacPherson remained more rumor than event. Some people had even forgotten that the outcome had yet to be decided, musing to Myka when she stopped by to solicit advertisements for the Journal that Mrs. Wells must have been found innocent since she was still to be seen in Sweetwater.

Although where they were seeing Helena, Myka didn't know, since she hadn't seen her for weeks, not even at the Sunday morning services. Stepping carefully around clumps of blackened snow, New York papers and a letter from Tracy bundled together in her arms, Myka looked, as she always did, toward Sweetwater's largest, and loneliest, residence. If it weren't for Christina's almost daily visits, Myka could believe that the house was empty. She no longer saw Charles Wells either, although he had been in the habit, early on, of escorting Christina on her visits, more from a desire, Myka suspected, to work his charms upon Liesl than to shield his daughter from Sweetwater's rough manners. He had stopped taking Christina back and forth after encountering the sheriff eating cookies in the kitchen, an arm territorially slung along the back of one chair and his boots as proprietarily hooked over the rungs of another. Pete didn't usually visit until the evening; for him to be seated at her table in the middle of the day suggested that Liesl had asked him to come by. But when Myka had raised an eyebrow in silent question, Liesl had given her only the most innocent of smiles.

Opening the kitchen door, Myka was struck by how inviting the room looked. In addition to the regular cleaning and the putting up of new curtains, Liesl had "found" (so she said, though Myka suspected she had actually bought it with her own money) a different oilcloth for the table, one free of stains, rips, and burn marks, and, in the center of it, a set of small, decorative pitchers, descending in size from one that could plausibly hold cream to one the size of a thimble. Liesl said she had brought them with her from the Donovan ranch, but Myka again suspected that she had bought them. Made of ceramic with crudely painted flowers ribboning their middles, the pitchers were purely decorative, crockery made for a girl's tea service or, possibly, her doll's. They had been on a shelf that held a china doll and simple embroidery patterns in the general store. Not that there would be many families around Sweetwater who could afford to buy them for their daughters, which perhaps explained why Liesl had been able to "find" them among her things nearly two months after leaving the ranch. Myka was reminded of the toy horse she had bought for Helena every time she looked at them, and the twinge she felt at the comparison was something she didn't want to dwell upon. Just as she didn't want to dwell upon the flash of disappointment she felt when turning from Christina contentedly eating whatever treat Liesl had offered her (today it was fresh-baked bread sprinkled with sugar) and realizing that the face she saw next wouldn't be Helena's. It was a very lovely face, but not the face Myka wanted.

She knew it was silly to harbor such a fantasy, that in some other place, some other time she and Helena and Christina could live together in a house with a warm, clean kitchen and eat slices of fresh-baked bread sprinkled with sugar. But as much as she derided herself for picturing something so sentimental, so unlike Helena and herself, so impossible considering what their relationship had become, she couldn't quite dislodge the image nor the yearning that fed it. Stuffing it as best she could in the Helena drawer, Myka put the papers on the table and took a chair across from Christina, sliding the letter from Tracy into the pocket of her dress.

"Did you finishing proofreading?" Myka asked with mock sternness as Christina reached for the first paper on the top of the pile, saw that it wasn't the Clarion, and lifted the corners of the papers underneath until she spied the Clarion's banner, working the newspaper out from the pile.

Helena wouldn't approve of Christina's reading of the papers, especially the Clarion, which still managed to find "heretofore unknown sources" ready to attest to the lasciviousness of Helena's behavior or her callous disregard for the sanctity of life. When Christina had first started visiting her of an afternoon, Myka had hidden the Clarion from her, placing it in a desk drawer or putting it under a stack of old Journals, until the day she returned from an appointment only to see Christina at the desk, the Clarion spread in front of her. Christina hadn't flinched at the stare Myka gave her, saying with admirable self-possession for a 15-year-old, "I'll ferret them out from wherever you and my aunt try to hide them. If I managed to stow away on a ship to America, I can manage that. And isn't it better if I read the stories about her under your tutelage? You can point out the errors and flaws in their reporting, and I can become a more discerning reader. Isn't that a worthwhile end?" She had looked so much like Helena as she said it, especially the last, her head cocked arrogantly and an amused smile at once underscoring and softening the challenge that Myka had given in, against her better judgment.

"Almost," Christina said, a mischievous light in her eyes. "Proofreading is such exacting work." She blew out her breath in a dramatic sigh of exhaustion. "Liesl saw that I had laid my poor head on the desk, utterly overcome, and she pleaded with me to rest for a few minutes in the kitchen."

"I don't recall pleading," Liesl said, putting more bread on the table, and pushing the plate closer to Myka. "In fact, I think you were at the table even before I took the loaves from the oven." She sat next to Myka and buttered a slice of bread for herself.

"I'm not paid a wage, so I consider this," – Christina took an aggressive bite of the bread, masticating it with deliberate slowness, her cheeks puffing out as she rolled the bread from one side of her mouth to the other – "compensation."

Her eyes bright and her cheeks pouched with bread, Christina resembled an impertinent squirrel, Myka thought, but in all truth, she was a help. She proofread items and updated the subscriber list. Displaying at least some of Helena's flair with machinery, she had already diagnosed and fixed two small problems with Bessie. On the occasions when Myka had taken Christina on her rounds of Sweetwater's merchants, the girl's seemingly guileless appreciation of their businesses had often resulted in more advertisements for the newspaper. When Charles Wells was still escorting his daughter to the Journal's office, Myka had suggested that she pay Christina a (necessarily) small wage, but he had looked at her with such surprise, and not a little disdain, that she had let the offer die in the air between them. She realized that, to him, Christina's visits were nothing more than an amusement to keep her occupied as they waited for Henry Tremaine, like a prince from a fairy tale, to rescue Helena from the dark enchantment of Sweetwater.

But it wasn't an amusement, or only an amusement, for Christina. She didn't have any real interest in newspapers, Myka knew, but she had a genuine interest in her aunt. Every question about the Journal would inevitably lead to a question about Helena. Not immediately, not directly, because Christina was hesitant to reveal the intensity of her interest, but it wasn't difficult for Myka to sense a fascination similar to her own. Christina would ask an apparently idle question, about how many women owned newspapers, and Myka would respond wryly, "I don't know, but not nearly enough," which would then prompt Christina to ask why more women didn't own newspapers. And as Myka tried to shape a response, stumbling over the image of her own father, his relegation of her to unpaid and barely acknowledged assistant, his contempt for the few choices she had been allowed to make in her own life (Sam, Helena), his wisecrack that allowing a woman to run a business was an invitation to run it into the ground, Christina was already on to her next question, which was the one she had wanted to ask in the first place, how her. . . aunt. . . had ended up owning a newspaper.

At first the slight pauses before Christina said "Aunt Helena" or the sometimes sardonic inflection she gave the words didn't register with Myka. She was too busy picking and choosing what she could say to Christina about Helena to wonder why Christina's voice could lose its bounce when she had to say Helena's name. She would lose all focus when Christina would point to a story in the Clarion about Helena and look inquiringly, no, expectantly at her. Myka would find that her hands had severed all communication with the rest of her body, flying to her hair to push back stray curls only to clench and dive into the pockets of her skirt. They would rest there for a moment before emerging to play with a pencil on the desk. Christina would patiently wait through the delaying gestures and press again, "Why would anyone publish such horrible, untrue things about my . . .aunt?" Only after hearing how "your . . . aunt" seemed to hang from her own lips, when she had almost said, far more easily and naturally, "your mother" did Myka realize that Christina knew.

How many girls, no matter how they might dream of adventures in faraway places, would defy their families and stow away on a ship to America to meet a wayward aunt? Especially girls so cocooned by their families' wealth and indulged by doting parents. To have to make arrangements in secret, to bribe and cajole servants, and, not the least of it, to trust that the men who drove her to the station, who operated the train she took to the port, and who readied the ship in which she would hide herself for its voyage to New York wouldn't betray or molest her – those were no small challenges for a 15-year-old girl. Though Myka didn't entirely discount the effect of her letters – she had wanted to provoke the Wellses into demonstrating that they still loved Helena – her impassioned pleas wouldn't have been enough to have launched Christina on her journey unless the desire to see Helena was already there, which brought her back to the question she first asked herself. What girl would do all that she had done simply to meet a woman who existed for her only in veiled references, her father's younger sister? But a girl might attempt a great many things to meet her mother.

Myka never acknowledged, Christina never asked, but as their exchanges nudged and brushed against what couldn't be said, they developed a way to talk about Helena that bordered on honesty. Christina would open one of the newspapers, usually the Clarion, as she was doing this afternoon, dropping breadcrumbs on it as she skimmed through the articles looking for the latest pillorying of Helena. Even the Clarion had had to move its coverage of the investigation of MacPherson's murder off the front page, but there were three separate stories on pages five and six. Christina turned the paper toward Myka, pointing at one of the stories. "It says there 'Like the Samson of old, Henry Tremaine has been shorn of his strength, unable to leave the politically insignificant, and profitless, town of Sweetwater, outmatched by that Delilah of the Plains. Once his mistress and now rumored to be his wife, Helena Wells has an influence over him that cannot be underestimated.'" She frowned, suspended between curiosity and dismay. Reaching for another slice of bread, she shrugged at the ink smudges she left on the dough. Spooning a generous amount of sugar from the sugar bowl, she sprinkled it over the bread. "Aunt Helena was his secretary, not his mistress, and though he makes eyes at her and tries to hold her hand, he's not proposed to her. At least not that she's said."

Those were Christina's words, but Myka heard something different. Was my mother his mistress? Is she still? Feeling a hard knot form in her stomach, right where she imagined the bread she had eaten to have settled like a stone, Myka said, "She was a devoted assistant to him for many years, and he clearly returns her loyalty. Relationships like that between employer and employee can often become deep friendships. Trust what you see, Christina, not what someone thousands miles away from here is imagining in print." She hoped Christina had heard what she meant – It doesn't matter what they were to each other. He cares for her, and if she feels the same, you'll know soon enough.

Myka knew it was reasonable, what she had both said and implied, but a large part of her, far larger than the Helena file drawer, hated having to be reasonable about Henry Tremaine and Helena. She didn't want to think about him looking at her, touching her, so she bent her head more closely over the Clarion's pages, seeking a distraction. One of the articles discussed the removal of the district prosecutor in Pierre in favor of Eugene Blaisdell, a federal prosecutor and former New York district attorney. Her heart beating faster, Myka continued reading, the stone in her stomach becoming bigger and heavier the more she read. She didn't know why a federal prosecutor had been appointed to the case, but it didn't bode well for Helena. The answer became obvious when the article pointed out that, as district attorney, Mr. Blaisdell had faced Malachi Ross as opposing counsel several times. The only defeats that Ross ever suffered in court, the article crowed, came at the hands of Eugene Blaisdell.

Noisily pushing back her chair, Myka said, more abruptly than she intended, "Let's finish up that proofreading." Startled, both Christina and Liesl looked up at her as Myka, lips thinned into a bloodless line, took the Clarion over to the stove and fed it into the fire.

Christina quietly joined her at the desk, and they worked together in silence. Myka could feel Tracy's letter wrinkle as she bent to peer at the spelling in one of her own items, a notice of a social to be held at the schoolhouse that Sweetwater shared with a neighboring town to the northwest. She hoped the letter would have better news than Tracy's last few letters. Their father's health had improved slightly, but in addition to the coughing, which, if it wasn't as wracking as before, was no less constant, there was something new and equally as worrisome. He had taken to wandering the house at night, not sleepwalking exactly, but lost in memories or in a place fashioned in his imagination that had him waving his arms and shouting loud enough to wake the children. Tracy would calm him down and lead him back to his bed, but he wouldn't tell her what had upset him. Tracy had glumly speculated that all the years of drinking were affecting his memory. Either that, she had concluded, or he was suffering from some form of senility. Myka swept her hand through her hair and chided herself for being unable to concentrate on a few lines of print; maybe the behavior her father was exhibiting ran in the family, and she was showing early signs of it.

Grimacing, she got up from the desk and went to the window. It was nearing suppertime, and Sweetwater's main street was almost deserted. She couldn't help her father, and she had been unable to do anything significant toward clearing Helena's name. She wrote editorials exhorting the Journal's readers to make judgments based on facts, not emotion, and to adhere to the principle that the accused were innocent until proven guilty, but her words, she was sure, were crumpled and thrown in with the kindling or stuffed in the toes of boots to provide insulation. She had had grand plans of talking to MacPherson's former servants, the ones who were still in the area, but she had yet to speak to any of them. She could blame the winter or the demands of running the Journal, but neither was a sufficient excuse. The only contribution she had made was to have contacted Helena's brother and daughter, but chances were that Charles would have made some gesture toward his sister once the news of her arrest became known in London. In actuality, she had done nothing. Tapping her finger against the windowpane, she resolved to do better. Now. Whirling away, she strode to the box of leftover stationery that had served her well once before. As Christina twisted around on her chair to watch her, Myka found a sheet of heavyweight cream paper and hurried back to the desk with it.

"What are you doing?" Christina demanded, flattening her palms on the desktop and balancing herself on locked arms as she tried to read, upside down, what Myka was writing.

"Inviting myself to Walter Sykes' home," she said. "I'm going to write a story about his greenhouse and how it blooms in the winter. And while I'm there I'm going to talk to his new housekeeper, who used to be James MacPherson's housekeeper." She bit her lip, realizing she sounded far more bold speaking to Christina than she did in her note, which was an exceptionally polite request to visit Mr. Sykes to discuss 'the tropical paradise you have grown in the midst of Dakota Territory.' She frowned at the language but didn't change it. There were no words that were likely to charm Mr. Sykes into flinging his doors open to a representative of the Journal. He was a man who zealously guarded his privacy as well as his rare flowers. Summoning a smile that she hoped appeared more confident than she felt, Myka said, "There was a man who visited MacPherson at the same time your aunt was at the house, and I'm going to get someone to identify him."

Malachi Ross wouldn't have overlooked the housekeeper – or the man who had tended MacPherson's grounds who was Mr. Sykes' new gardener – in his questioning of anyone with a connection to MacPherson's ranch, but she had to hope that there was something they had forgotten to tell him or, in the case of the housekeeper, something she had held back because she still remembered, and resented, Helena's storming through the house on the night of the grass fire or because she wanted no part of a murder investigation, or both. In the highly unlikely event that Mr. Sykes responded positively to her request, he certainly wouldn't appreciate her chasing all over his property trying to interview the gardener. Given what would be at best a limited opportunity, her better bet would be the housekeeper, although, based on Myka's previous encounters with her, she shouldn't hope for much. The first time Myka had met her had been shortly after Helena had burst into MacPherson's house carrying a rifle; still shaking with fear, the housekeeper could only wish "the hellhounds that drove that woman here might tear her to pieces." The second occasion had been when Pete had led her through MacPherson's home, and the housekeeper's bent form and scowling face had been the only sign the house was still inhabited. The housekeeper hadn't volunteered anything then about there being another visitor that night besides Helena. There would be no reason for her to do so now. Yet thinking that the woman was withholding information was better than the alternative, thinking that the woman had no memory of the visitor.

And if Mr. Sykes turned down her request? Myka supposed she could ask Pete to let her accompany him on "official business" out to Sykes' ranch, if he even had a reason or was willing to invent one for her. Showing up with the sheriff would hardly encourage the housekeeper to divulge what she knew, if she knew anything. Myka was tempted to tear up her note and throw it in the stove, where it would join the Clarion as proof that she was too small, too insignificant to make any change in Helena's fortunes. Not long ago she had faced Helena in her kitchen and, arrogantly in retrospect, claimed that she would swim out to save her. Dogpaddling, that's all it was. Her arms and legs might be working but she was barely keeping her head above water, and she was making precious little progress.

"Would you let me come with you? I could keep Mr. Sykes occupied while you spoke with the housekeeper. I'm very good at asking questions, and I'm terribly ignorant about flowers." Christina's eyes, so much lighter, and unguarded than Helena's, were gleaming with anticipation. "I know that servants place them in vases in the parlor and in Mother's and Grandmother's sitting rooms." The self-mockery was Helena's but lacked the acidic bite, and Myka began to laugh.

"You are very good at asking questions, but this is not an adventure. We won't be sneaking into Mr. Sykes' home and attempting to steal the silver. If he'll let me, I'll take notes and write about his greenhouse. . . and hope that I can steal a few minutes to speak with the housekeeper."

"I'll make sure to distract him with all my questions about flowers, about how to plant them and grow them, which ones are the best for this climate, which are his favorites. I'll have a list ready." Christina left her chair to retrieve her coat and muff.

Myka put the unfinished note aside and started putting on her coat. She didn't walk Christina all the way back to Helena's house, stopping short of the end of the street. It was less painful to stop where she wasn't in danger of seeing or hearing something she knew she wouldn't want to see or hear. While it wasn't necessary to chaperon her, particularly as Christina's father seemed willing to let her walk to the Journal's office alone, it was usually dark by the time Christina was ready to return home, and Myka didn't want to take the least chance that some half-drunken loiterer would sidle up to Christina and suggest something unpleasant. She trusted that Helena wouldn't blame her, but she didn't at all trust that Helena wouldn't find the man afterward and threaten his life. And such an overreaction now would be disastrous.

Christina was taking more time than usual to button her coat. "Aunt Helena has said that she'll take me out to see Mr. Sykes' flowers, but she spends most of her time in the library with Mr. Tremaine and Mr. Ross. Or she and my father will drink brandies and reminisce. Sometimes when they're talking like that, they send me to the kitchen to visit Leena." Eyebrows diving into a familiar vee of discontent, Christina said, "I'm not a little girl, and I know more than they think." It wasn't petulance that was darkening her expression but something unhappier. "My family sometimes doesn't whisper as they should."

At her words, Myka imagined a girl who always looked too much like her mother for her family's comfort passing by rooms as the adults inside them inveighed against the daughter or sister or niece – depending on the relation speaking - who banished herself halfway around the world. "If your father agrees to your accompanying me, I'll take you to meet Mr. Sykes. That is, of course, assuming he invites me. I don't have the acquaintance with him that your aunt does."

As curiosity replaced the sullenness in Christina's face, Myka added quickly, "I think your aunt knows him through the Journal. I don't think they socialize. I've gotten the impression that Mr. Sykes doesn't socialize with very many people at all."

"So he's no rival for Mr. Tremaine?" Christina sighed. "Papa's impressed with Mr. Tremaine's money, but I've heard him tell Leena when he's thought they were alone that Mr. Tremaine is a brawler who dresses above his station. But Mr. Tremaine has always been very kind to me. It's just that he's the same age as Grandfather. He's too old for Aunt Helena." She looked at Myka long and thoughtfully. "If you were a man, I think Aunt Helena would consider marrying you. She says I need to pay attention and learn from you. She's quite admiring of you, you know. She tells me that you're very brave, she says you risked your life to rescue Miss Donovan."

"Foolhardy," Myka corrected, "not brave. Did your aunt also tell you that Miss Donovan wasn't in the workshop? And that she and the sheriff had to pull me from the wreckage?" As she looked toward the kitchen to call out that she was walking Christina home, she saw that Liesl was standing in the doorway, shaking her head.

"Not many people would have been able to go into the workshop, knowing it was in the path of the fire. I'm not sure I would have been able to. Foolhardy you called it, yes, but very brave." Liesl had been directing her glance past Myka at Christina, but as she finished, she turned her eyes on Myka, their customary mildness losing ground to a warmer emotion that had Myka wanting, and yet not wanting, to look away. She heard Christina say laughingly, "I think Liesl might want to marry you, too," but it sounded as though it came from another room despite the fact that Christina was only a few feet away because what she heard was Liesl saying with more gravity than humor, her eyes continuing to hold Myka's, "If Miss Bering were a man, I would." Looking once again at Christina, Liesl said, "You missed a button." And as Christina buttoned the gap in her coat, Liesl said, "See? I would make a very good wife."

Christina nodded agreement as Myka, hopeful that the cold sting of the wind would stop her blushing and clear her head, began ushering her out the door. "Since I'm in no danger of becoming a man anytime soon, despite what some in this town may think, both your aunt and Liesl are safe from me."

She and Christina didn't talk as they bowed their heads against the wind and trudged toward Helena's house. The main street was empty and the storefronts dark, with the exception of the Rusty Spur, which was just getting started for the evening. Through the windows, Myka could see a few men at the bar and, at a table in the corner, a man in a suit playing a desultory game of solitaire as he waited for the remaining chairs at the table to fill. Behind the bar, a woman was trying to tease a man torn between the charms she had on display and the glass and bottle at his elbow. She was wearing a tightly corseted gold dress that squeezed her breasts together and lifted them up and forward, almost over the top of the bodice. If she would put her hand behind the man's neck, she need tip his head only slightly to bury his head between her breasts. It was hard not to think of the bread Liesl had baked earlier in the day, the loaves just as round and their color only a shade or two darker than the woman's skin – and no larger than what Myka could cover with one hand, her fingers spread wide. Although what Myka imagined her hand brushing over was flesh, not bread, and paler and smoother and even more abundantly offered in that gold-colored dress if Liesl were the one wearing it. She swallowed, convulsively, and turned her head away from the saloon, only to realize that she must have stood for several seconds in front of the windows because Christina was already well ahead of her.

Myka had hoped that the briskness of the winter evening would clear her thoughts, but this wasn't the clarity she had hoped for. She didn't want to understand, with sympathy, why men visited the women at the Spur. She didn't want to realize why, after that first time when Liesl had sat at the foot of her bed in her nightgown, she hadn't put a stop to the visits that had become nightly. She could tell herself that she was enjoying the same kind of late night conversations she had had with Tracy when they were younger, but she had never felt herself shiver, as though she had just stepped from a bath into the chill of a room, when Tracy would touch her to underscore a point. She could pretend that what she and Helena had been to one another led her to imagine things in touches and looks and words that weren't there. But she knew what had been in Liesl's eyes and her words, not only tonight but in the days and evenings past. In that jewel-like blue of Liesl's gaze, she saw herself and Helena rolling and laughing under the bed covers. And it wasn't, in the end, the disbelief that another woman could understand that desire that prevented her from seeing it, or the squirm-inducing embarrassment that Liesl might want to share the same intimacies with her, but the shock that some night, not far in the future at all, when Liesl patted her leg as they laughed and talked about nothing in particular on her father's bed, she would encourage Liesl's hand to keep touching her.

Myka ran to catch up with Christina, her worn boots skidding and slipping on icy patches. She paid no attention to the line, visible only to her, that marked as far she would go when she walked Christina back to Helena's house. Although nothing had changed about the house since Helena had left it to go out to MacPherson's ranch, it didn't seem familiar anymore, either. Sneaking into the house late at night, Myka had become accustomed to every creak and groan, and she had counted every stair between the first and second floors. She had discovered that Helena's door could stick on occasion and that the carpet runner on the seventh stair needed to be more firmly tacked down. But in the intervening weeks, months now, since she had last run up the staircase, she half-expected Helena's door to be sanded down and the carpet runner replaced. It wasn't a space they shared any longer, traversed by Helena's brother and daughter and, perhaps, Henry Tremaine as well. He wouldn't tolerate a sticking door or anything that would impede his ability to claim Helena.

"Will you come in and ask my father if I can go with you to see Mr. Sykes?" Christina was tugging at her arm and leading her toward the kitchen door.

Myka didn't protest, the better part of her still standing, gape-mouthed outside the Spur, but as soon as Christina pushed open the door, she came to herself with a sudden, savage clamping of her jaw. Helena was at the large, round table, but so was Henry Tremaine, sitting next to her, putting his head close to hers and murmuring something only she could hear. She was smiling, and her smile grew broader when she saw Christina stamping on the rug and shaking the snow from the bottom of her coat. It faltered only when Myka entered the kitchen. She stiffly stepped to Christina's side and gripped her mittened hands in front of her waist, like a student asked to recite a poem in front of the class. Myka felt the same nervous discomfort she had felt when she was singled out in class, and she noticed that even Leena had drifted away from the stove to see who had come in with Christina, and Helena and Mr. Tremaine in their too-close-together chairs resembled the teachers who had assessed the adequacy of her performance. Mr. Tremaine lifted himself up slightly from his chair in a cursory acknowledgment of her presence, while Helena steadied her smile. It didn't have the warmth of the one she had shown to Christina, it was cool and its welcome seemed held in reserve.

The amusement in her voice was familiar, however, even though the strain in her expression and the fatigue that lengthened the lovely oval of her face hadn't been there the day they had met. "Leena can set another place at the table, if you'd care to join us for dinner." As Christina vigorously nodded her approval, Helena gave her an indulgent look before glancing, less indulgently, at Myka. "My niece would very much like it if you stayed."

His heavy-lidded eyes almost closed, Mr. Tremaine seemed indifferent to whether Myka stayed for dinner. One of his large, powerful hands rested on the back of Helena's chair, close enough to the nape of her neck that he could raise a finger and touch it. The placement of his arm wasn't so much possessive as familiar, as if his hand naturally belonged where it was. Myka tried to look away. "Thank you, but I can't stay for long. I was hoping to speak with Mr. Wells." Her words were sharp angles rubbing against the smoothness of Helena's invitation.

"Charles is resting after an exhausting spate of letter-writing," Helena said with wry fondness. "Though I will admit, he bore down admirably and penned a two-page letter to your grandmother, Christina." She grinned at her daughter. "It's no small task to find topics certain not to offend her sensibilities." Returning her attention to Myka, curiosity glimmering in her eyes, she said, "I can wake him if it's important."

"It's nothing that can't be discussed at a more convenient time." Relieved at being able to put off talking to Christina's father, Myka put a hand behind her, searching for the knob of the kitchen door. After a brief tilt of her head in Helena and Mr. Tremaine's direction, she opened the door, only to hear Christina bubble to Helena, "Miss Bering is going to ask Papa if I can accompany her to Mr. Sykes' ranch."

"Are you planning to educate the Journal's readers about rare tropical flowers or honeybees?" Helena's good-humored question wasn't without a sardonic edge, and Myka felt her shoulders tighten in response. She hoped Christina wouldn't say anything more, but for all of the girl's surprising moments of seeming more mature than her years, she was still very young. Christina viewed the trip to Sykes' ranch as yet another adventure; Helena and Mr. Tremaine would see it as a sorry, wasted gesture, a needless reexamination of well-trodden ground. Others with more experience in these matters had already questioned the housekeeper and determined that she had nothing useful to contribute. How foolish it would look, especially to Mr. Tremaine, that Myka Bering thought the housekeeper might respond differently to her.

"It's a secret mission to speak to the housekeeper," Christina lowered her voice theatrically. "Miss Bering thinks the housekeeper knows more about the mysterious visitor than she's been willing to reveal. Wouldn't it be wonderful if she did, Aunt Helena, and Miss Bering could get her to admit it? This horrible ordeal might be over." Having finally shed herself of her outerwear, leaving much of it draped over the empty chairs, Christina opened the breadbox and took out a dish of cookies. She no sooner had raised one to her mouth than she was returning the dish to the breadbox under Leena's stern gaze.

"It would be wonderful, darling," Helena said softly, gently, patting the seat of the chair on the other side of her. "But the housekeeper has been interviewed many times." Her tone sharpening, she raked her eyes over Myka. "She's not disclosed anything helpful. Besides, I know from past experience that Mr. Sykes is not one for having his passions and hobbies publicized. I doubt very much that he would welcome you to his home for any kind of interview." Christina's face fell, and Helena's darkened when she saw her daughter's disappointment. Glaring at Myka, she said, "I don't appreciate your giving false hope to my niece."

Hating the flush that was rising in her cheeks, Myka tried to keep her voice even. "I wasn't giving her false hope. I'm well aware that Mr. Sykes is a very private man, and even if he were to allow us to visit him, I doubt that the housekeeper has any information to offer." Unable to resist shooting a glance at Mr. Tremaine, she added, "But I also suspect she's been given little reason to volunteer what she may know."

His chair cracked ominously as Mr. Tremaine shifted restlessly against it. "There are few people proof against Malachi Ross' ability to elicit information. If the housekeeper had known anything of value, he would have gotten it out of her." Becoming more admonishing, he said, "If you want to be of service to Mrs. Wells, Miss Bering, use that paper of yours to advocate for her. All I've seen from you are faint-hearted editorials espousing truth and justice. Fine ideals, yes, but they're not going to persuade a jury of farmers and dry goods merchants to free her."

Recklessly Myka said, "No, you and your enemies have seen to that." Not waiting for his response, she shifted her gaze to Helena. "It's not about you anymore. It's become a battle between titans, Helena. But for me, it's still about proving that you're innocent, and if I have to lie my way inside of Sykes' house and humble myself before that old woman, I will."

She felt two arms wrap themselves around her, and she awkwardly patted Christina's shoulders. Christina released her and bounced on the balls of her feet, eyes shining. "I believe Miss Bering can do it, Aunt Helena. Please, please, please help me to persuade Papa to let me go with her. I'm sure she can think of something that will get us into Mr. Sykes' house. She's very clever."

Helena smiled faintly. "Something legal, I hope." The eyes she lifted toward Myka were no longer angry, but baffled and weary and, strangely, a little proud. "Eugene Blaisdell may have bested Mr. Ross, but he hasn't yet met you."

The tension that had clenched Myka's every muscle while she had stood in Helena's kitchen and argued with her about questioning Mr. Sykes' new housekeeper began to dissolve as she struggled against the wind on her return trip to the Journal's office. Only to surge through her again as she neared the back of the building. Liesl would be getting supper ready, the heat from the stove causing the knot of her hair to loosen and her cheeks to become even rosier; Myka would always smile when she saw Liesl push away the strands of her hair with an exasperated huff. Thinking of it now didn't make her smile; it made something in the center of her wobble and sink, and all she could picture was that it was her hand pushing back Liesl's hair.

She entered the kitchen, struck by the quiet as she always was after seeing Christina home. She had never paid much attention to how silent Liesl was as she cleaned and cooked, the only sound, aside from an occasional bang or thump, an off-key humming; she had been too appreciative of the results to care. But she realized as she sat down to the plate Liesl set in front of her, as Liesl took her usual chair, not across from Myka but next to her, as Liesl inquired whether she liked the meal with an earnestness that had acquired a charm it hadn't had previously, that she would no longer be so oblivious. She noticed the dress Liesl was wearing, not just its color this time, which was blue, but how it accentuated the blue of her eyes and deepened the golden tint of her hair. And when Liesl rose to take their dishes, she noticed how the dress hugged Liesl's breasts and flared from her waist to follow the curve of her hips; belatedly she realized that the material wasn't being challenged to encompass her, and that the fabric wasn't a different shade of blue at the seams. The dress was new, it fit her, and Liesl was lovely in it. For the first time, Myka didn't automatically look away or concentrate on an object near at hand, as she had done before when she had had to admit to herself how striking Liesl was.

"You look nice. The dress suits you," Myka said. It sounded clumsy to her, she wasn't used to complimenting women, not like a man would, anyway. She had always found Helena beautiful but had rarely told her, preferring to show her instead.

Liesl didn't appear to mind the stiltedness of the compliment, her eyes growing big with surprise. Her smile, however, was more assured as she fluffed the skirt. "It took you only weeks to see that it's new." She frowned playfully at Myka. "I used the extra money Claudia gave all of us at Christmas to have it and another dress made."

"Have I seen you wear the other one and not noticed it either?"

Another smile, more sly, accompanied by a shake of her head. "That dress is for a special occasion. For the – what are you calling it in the Journal? — the social. I think I shall wear it to the social."

As Liesl rearranged the dishes she had deposited on the counter, Myka's gaze lingered on the gathering of the dress at Liesl's back, a bustle-like bunching that made Myka think of rabbits and the continuous movement of their tails, seeming to jounce and wag independently of the rabbits themselves, except that the folds of the dress didn't jounce or wag, they glided from side to side in rhythm with the swaying of Liesl's hips. Myka blinked and cleared her throat. "I'm sure the sheriff will be all agog when he sees you in it."

"Agog?" Liesl repeated, the frown real, not playful. She twisted her head to look at Myka.

"Um. . . eager, excited. To take you to the social."

Liesl's frown didn't disappear at the explanation. She let her eyes travel down her dress before she looked at Myka again, more soberly than Myka could recall. "I want you to be all agog when you see me in it. I want you to be all agog when you see me, no matter what I'm wearing, whether it's a ball gown or gunnysack. I thought today. . . . When Christina said those things about marrying you if you were a man, she was just teasing. . . but I thought if I said what I felt, you would understand. You do understand, don't you?"

It would be better, for both of them, if she pretended that she didn't understand. But ever since MacPherson's murder, there had been half-truths and evasions and denials, ones she had had to hear and ones, to her shame, she herself had said, and she wanted to say something that was honest, if only to feel its bluntness on her tongue and against her teeth. "Yes, I understand." Seeing the hope build in Liesl's eyes, Myka said gently, "But I would make a terrible husband, Liesl."

"Because you don't smell of sweat and whiskey? Because you thank me for the work I do?" Liesl responded just as gently. "Because you're in love with someone else?"

Myka smiled, but it was a painful crooking of her mouth. "I have feelings, Liesl, but they're not the right ones."

"There are many kinds of love in the world, Myka. I don't pretend to know which are 'right," as you say, and which are wrong." She hadn't moved away from the counter, but Myka was as breathless and lightheaded as if Liesl were standing in front of her. "All I know is that whatever you feel for me, it's not wrong."

In her eyes, Myka could see all the things they could be to one another, and part of her wanted to cross the space between them and give life to one of those images by putting her hands and lips on Liesl's body. But when she rose from her chair, it was to turn away from Liesl and the possibilities that she offered.

Myka spent the evening at the editor's desk in the Journal's office, pretending to write an editorial for the next edition, but there were more cross-outs than words, and Henry Tremaine's scornful reference to "fine ideals" echoed in her mind no less scornfully since she could think only of grabbing Liesl by the hand and leading her from the parlor to the bedroom. She would try to suppress the urge by scratching a few words down about the virtue of maintaining an objective point of view, but the strokes of her pen became the stroking of her hand over Liesl's breasts and down her belly, and she would push the paper away from her. She wondered how long she had harbored it, this physical awareness of. . . no, she would call it what it was, this desire for Liesl, that it could become so insistent so quickly. Was she that frail, that inconstant to use Helena's withdrawal as an excuse to accept the comfort Liesl was willing to give her? Or had it been there all along, even when she had been crossing the fields late at night to climb into Helena's bed? The same driving want she had felt for Helena, still felt for Helena even now, but separate, distinct, locked away in a file drawer she hadn't known existed. She had watched her father hunt for bottles he had hidden in these rooms and smugly considered herself superior because she could never be enslaved to a need so blind and unthinking. Yet she was no more than a half-formed justification away from believing that she owed Helena nothing when it came to the fidelity that, in a marriage, she would owe her husband. Not so very long ago, she had begged Helena not to leave her, and Helena had promised her, over and over again, more in the act of loving her than in the words themselves, though she had said the words too, that she wouldn't. It had been a promise, not consecrated in a ceremony or spoken in front of a minister, but a promise all the same, and despite what she had done and said since then, Helena was still here.

Later, undressing for bed, Myka remembered Tracy's letter. She looked at the crumpled envelope and then shut it away in a dresser drawer. She would read it later, when she didn't feel as if she and her father inhabited the same skin, that his trembling, needy hands were hers. Crawling under the covers, she saw that she had left the door to her bedroom open. Sighing, she pushed herself up, but Liesl was already crossing the threshold. She was wearing a flannel nightgown decorated with rows of pink flowers, and her hair was down, not in a braid but loose, spilling over her shoulders like sunshine. The flowers on her nightgown lifted with each breath, stretching and expanding over her breasts as if ready to bloom.

"This isn't wise," Myka said, her mouth dry.

Liesl shrugged. "What's right, what's wise. . . ." She tilted her head, looking at Myka with fond curiosity. "I almost feel sorry for Mrs. Wells, you are. . . ." She paused, searching for the right word. "Formidable. I think you, Myka Bering, are formidable, in your way. So many rules. Someone could feel. . . undeserving. . . of you."

"But you don't?" Myka sank back into the bed and very thoroughly covered herself with the quilts.

"I don't question whether it's right to care for someone." Liesl lifted her shoulder as if to shrug again, but stopped, lowering it until the rows of pink flowers were even. "But I believe that it should make you happy. Caring for you makes me happy. Can you tell me that caring for Mrs. Wells makes you happy?"

Intensely, once upon a time, Myka thought. But she didn't say it. She wouldn't talk to Liesl about Helena. She could refuse to commit that betrayal, at least. Liesl didn't take Myka's silence amiss, smiling slightly at how Myka was cocooned in the bed covers. "I heard you talking to Christina about going to Mr. Sykes' ranch and talking to the housekeeper. If you go, will you take me with you?" At Myka's puzzled expression, she said, "I don't know her, but she might tell me things she wouldn't tell you. We are the same, she and I, servants. I have no power over her, I can't make her say or do anything." This time Liesl completed the shrug. "Besides, it will look odd to Mr. Sykes if you try to find excuses to talk to his help."

Myka squinted at her, not sure she knew Liesl very well at all, which she found dismaying and intriguing in equal measure. A fairy-tale princess who ought to be living in a fairy-tale castle – and there had to have been men, many men, who had offered her some version of that – espousing a practical morality that, nonetheless, allowed her to make a gesture that was almost noble, considering her dislike of Helena. "Why would you do this? You don't like Helena."

Liesl shook her head. "You don't understand. I wouldn't be doing it for Mrs. Wells, but for you and for her daughter." Wrinkling her nose at Myka's grimace, she cried good-naturedly, "I have two eyes. I can see. Calling that girl her niece is – how do you say it? – a polite fiction." With greater seriousness, she added, "I like Christina, but I care for you, very much, and it makes me happy to help you. So I help." Stepping back over the threshold, she said with an impish grin, "There are other ways I can help you, Myka, and I am very, very eager to help you. But you have to ask me."

"Liesl. . . ." Myka let her voice trail off.

"I have heard Mr. Nielsen tell Claudia that his door is always open, although he doesn't sound as though he means it. And when I have seen his door, it is closed." Liesl gave Myka a long, significant look. "But my door is open, for you, always."

"The alcove doesn't have a door," Myka objected weakly.

"Yes, exactly."

The next morning, after a long, sleepless night, Myka finished her note to Mr. Sykes and went to the livery to ask the livery owner to send his man out to the ranch with it. She waited for Christina to arrive to tell her that they were waiting only for Mr. Sykes' reply, but Christina didn't come that day. Or the next, or the one after that. Liesl, during her visits with Mrs. McCrory and the other women with whom she traded recipes and foodstuffs, heard that influenza had struck the big brick house at the end of town. The next morning Myka helped her bake bread and the cookies Christina loved and they packed a basket that included a little pot of soup, which Myka took to the house and, when no one answered, left outside the door.

Several days afterward, Myka was alone in the kitchen, Liesl having gone to help Mrs. McCrory finish a quilt, when the door rattled under a series of firm knocks. Outside was Helena, carrying an empty basket. She looked small and cold in her coat, and her eyes were bruised with exhaustion. Myka took her by the elbow and nudged her into the kitchen, ignoring the shuffling of her unwilling feet and her thin, querulous protests that she was fine, that she had dropped by only to return the basket and thank her for the bread and the soup and, of course, the cookies. Christina wasn't well enough to eat them yet, but she had claimed the cookies as hers. Myka settled Helena at the table and poured her a cup of coffee. Over another series of protests, that she didn't have time to visit, that she still had three sick people to nurse – even Leena had been felled — although Charles was well enough to stagger down to the library and huddle in sniffling misery under several blankets, Myka ladled oatmeal from a pan on the stove. It wasn't piping hot, but it was warm and filling. Helena looked as though she hadn't digested more than her own worry and concern for days. Helena was still protesting and apologizing as Myka slipped the bowl in front of her, and then she stopped as she devoured the oatmeal, barely looking up from her bowl.

Sighing contentedly, Helena didn't wave the coffee pot away when Myka refilled her cup, and though the dark smudges under her eyes still spoke to worry and fatigue, Myka thought her skin looked less papery and that there might even be a hint of color in her cheeks. "Christina wanted me to assure you that as soon as she's able she will be returning as your editorial assistant." Helena looked over the rim of her cup at Myka, but the indulgent cast of her eyes was turned inward, and Myka knew that she was thinking of Christina.

"Whenever she's able, although I have missed her help."

"She loves coming here." Helena dropped her gaze to her cup. "She's always talking about you. I'm envious, you've excited her admiration; the rest of us, including her father, she seems to take on sufferance." Helena smiled to remove the trace of self-pity in her words.

"I'm afraid I'll drop in her estimation when she learns that Mr. Sykes has yet to respond to my inviting myself to his ranch." Myka had said it lightly, but she knew her face was reddening. She was remembering Helena's cutting tone upon learning of her plan to talk to the housekeeper.

Helena must have been remembering the awkward encounter in her kitchen as well. "I embarrassed you then," she said softly. "I'm sorry." She pushed her cup aside and drew designs in the oilcloth with her fingernail. "I seem to have lost the ability to talk to you like a rational human being. I shout at you or accuse you and then I apologize." She gave Myka a half-rueful, half-mournful look. "My penance for my latest episode has been applying cold compresses and hot compresses, brewing herbs or crushing them into a paste, rubbing backs and chafing feet . . . . I thought Charles was napping out of sheer indolence that afternoon. He started running a fever that night, the next morning it was Christina, and then Leena."

"Mr. Tremaine escaped unscathed?" More lightness when the name felt like lead on Myka's tongue.

She hadn't fooled Helena, who flashed her a caustic glance. "I believe so, but he's been in New York the past several days. He's not a boarder in my house, Myka, and he can afford to buy his own nursemaid if he becomes ill."

"You're not the only one who's forgotten how to speak civilly," Myka said, wanting to touch the red, chapped hand still drawing designs in the oilcloth. Words between them were like gunshots, more often than not, and if she didn't watch what she said, she would flush Helena from the kitchen like a bird from cover. "What does it mean for your case," she asked tentatively, "that Eugene Blaisdell has been named the prosecutor?"

"It means that Malachi Ross's confidence has dimmed, and his walk has lost its swagger." Helena distractedly thrust her fingers into hair that had lost its sheen and was more out of its chignon than in. "Apparently the fact that MacPherson was associated with the railroad was basis enough to bring in a federal prosecutor. Oskar Rasmussen wanted an attorney who could take on Mr. Ross, and he got him."

The only sound for a time was the scratch of Helena's fingernail following the loops it had drawn on the oilcloth. Myka, crossing her arms, realized the kitchen had cooled, and she went to check on the stove. Helena stirred and started to refasten her coat. "I've been gone too long from the Wells Convalescent Home. Christina can barely lift her head from her pillow, but she's been struggling the past two days to climb out of bed to 'assist' me. She's told me that's what you would do."

"Not after a bout of influenza," Myka said dryly.

Helena skeptically flicked an eyebrow. "You were able to ride a horse after being thrown several feet when Claudia's workshop exploded. I told her that, and you may live to regret that I did." She paused. "I can talk to her about you and what she does for the Journal and how marvelous a cook Leena is, and that may be it. Otherwise I gawk and gape at her, astonished that I could have given birth to someone so lovely, so sweet, so unlike anyone in our family. There's so much I want to say to her that it wedges my throat shut." She laughed unhappily. "You'd be surprised how much a whore has to talk. Not in the way you might think," she amended hurriedly. "Small talk, the weather, his ailments, my dress, anything that might relax him. I could carry on conversations with men who would . . . never mind what they would do. But when it comes to my daughter, I stammer and stare."

"Helena," Myka said, moving toward her before she realized what she was doing. She halted, awkwardly, in the middle of the kitchen, arms still outstretched. She let them drop to her sides.

With the toss of her head that was so familiar, Helena said briskly, "About Mr. Sykes, once Christina and Charles are returned to full health, we'll be going out to his ranch to see the wonders of his greenhouse. You are more than welcome to join us, but not in your professional capacity. Mr. Sykes insisted that he wants no publicizing of his treasures." She made a derisive mouth. "He has no fear of cattle rustlers, but he's deathly afraid that someone will break into his greenhouse and steal his orchids."

Myka grinned, wagging her head at the pretense Helena was maintaining that this trip to Mr. Sykes' ranch was something she had been planning all along. "Just when did you arrange this?"

"Not every moment was taken up with acting the part of Florence Nightingale," Helena conceded. "Mr. Sykes was more than willing to give us a tour when I informed him that Mr. Tremaine is fond of orchids."

The grin left Myka's face. "He doesn't strike me as a man with much time for flowers," she said quietly.

"He has a man's limited appreciation for a 'pretty bloom,'" Helena said with such a sure knowledge of his preferences that Myka bit down on the inside of her lip.

But she needed to be practical. This was her entry into Mr. Sykes' house, her chance at interviewing the housekeeper, likely her only chance. "Would it be all right for Liesl to join us?"

Helena stiffened, and though she smiled, it was small and tight and sarcastic. "Has she become that essential to the functioning of the Bering household that you can't do without her for a few hours? Surely there are more curtains she can put up or a few more trinkets," she said as she glared at the ceramic pitchers on the table, "that she can find to beautify your rooms. I'm sure she's not completely made herself at home yet."

Myka thought about explaining why she wanted Liesl to come with them, but the lines around Helena's mouth seemed cut into her skin and her eyes, bloodshot though they were, weren't too tired to spark with anger. It would be easier on the both of them if Myka retracted the request. She raised a hand to stop any additional invective, although Helena appeared to have finished for the moment. Her head was bowed, and her hand was rubbing her forehead. Wearily she said, "That was petty of me. I know who baked the bread and the cookies, and it wasn't you, Myka. Of course, she may come with us, although it will be close quarters on the ride out there." She straightened her shoulders, as if readying herself for a ruler to be cracked across her knuckles. "You obviously value her, so I will speak more respectfully of her in the future."

She had said the last with the dogged resolve of a child trying to be good, and Myka laughed, just a little. Helena smiled before her expression turned pensive. "The Wellses have a talent for driving away those they want to keep closest to them. Thankfully, Christina seems to be missing it." The corners of her eyes drooped and her gaze slid from Myka. "There's so much I want to say that isn't angry or contemptuous or hard, but I can't . . . ." The firm line of her shoulders sagged in defeat. "I'll let you know, or Christina will, about the day we'll go out to visit Mr. Sykes."

Myka leaned her back against the door once Helena had left, hugging herself, but not against the cold. Caring for Helena didn't make her happy, but trying not to care for her would only break her heart.