"There aren't going to be any leftovers when I get through with dinner," she said, aware that her stomach was beginning to growl insistently.
Leah wrinkled her forehead. "There aren't gonna be what?"
"Leftovers," Addie said, and as the girl continued to look confused, she realized the word wasn't familiar. "Extra food."
"Oh." Leah's brow cleared. They neared the dining room and the sound of easy conversation and clinking dishes. As they came to the doorway, all sound vanished. Everyone was staring at her. Even Cade had paused in mid-bite. The room was filled with people, most of whom seemed to be family members.
Addie's attention was drawn to a pair of icy green eyes, and she saw that Ben Hunter was seated at Russell's right hand. Ben was looking at her with subtly veiled contempt. His glance encompassed every detail of her appearance, the loose hair and flushed face, the warm and tumbled picture she presented, and a cynical smile touched his mouth. What was wrong? Why was everyone looking at her like that?
The silence deepened, and she stumbled forward to sit at the first empty chair she saw. "Don't you want to sit at your usual place, sugar?" came May's quiet voice. Addie stopped and went to the other side of the table, sinking gratefully into the chair beside May. Her appetite had vanished completely.
"Caroline, fix a plate for your sister, please," May directed, handing Addie's empty plate to a pretty blond woman across the table. Caroline… that was the name of Leah's mother. Does that mean she's my sister? Since she'd been cast in the part of Adeline Warner, it probably did. You'll know you're really insane when all of this starts making sense to you Addie.
"Heard you had quite a day today," Caroline said, giving Addie a teasing smile. "I also heard you're not tellin' a thing about it. Since when have you started to keep secrets from us? If it weren't for talkin' about your latest exploits, dinnertime conversations around here would be as dull as a Sunday stroll."
"It was quite a day," Addie said cautiously, her eyes darting to Ben Hunter's face. His mouth twisted sardonically before he picked up a roll and broke it apart.
She was relieved as everyone began eating again, and her tension faded a little. Her appetite came back with a vengeance as she received a plate heaped with fried chicken breasts, steaming potatoes, and string beans glistening with butter. It was difficult to eat slowly when she was this hungry, but Addie didn't want to attract any more attention to herself. As the conversation around the table resumed, May leaned over and whispered in her ear.
"You're too old to be wearin' your hair down, Adeline. It's too late to change it now, but tomorrow night I want it pinned up like always."
Addie looked at her with round eyes. Was that why everyone had acted as if she had walked in the room with her dress unbuttoned? Just because her hair was hanging down? "Was that why everyone was looking at me like that?" she whispered back, and May gave her a wry, reproving glance.
"You know the answer to that."
So that was why Ben had looked at her so contemptuously. He thought she was trying to attract attention to herself. A knot of embarrassment and resentment tightened in her chest. Addie kept her eyes on her plate for most of the meal, only looking up to risk short glances at the people around her. The heavyset man with the gentle face who was sitting next to Caroline had to be her husband. He was completely unassuming, the least dynamic of all the men. Cade was quieter around the family than he'd been with Addie. Russell liked to control the conversation, and the only one he would tolerate interruptions from was Ben. What kind of position had Adeline Warner taken in all of this? Silently Addie watched, listened, and wondered.
Since Ben Hunter was indifferent to her glances, she had the freedom of studying him unnoticed. He was not handsome in the way Leah had led her to imagine. "Handsome" was Douglas Fairbanks or John Gilbert, with their well-polished faces and aristocratic elegance, men who looked like the prince in a fairy tale. Ben was rougher-cut than that, too swarthy to be a fairy-tale hero. The lower half of his face was shadowed with dark stubble. He needed a good shave, and it would help his looks if he weren't tanned so dark. But she had to admit he was attractive in a distinctive way. Of course there were those green eyes. And the force of his personality was powerful. He had a talent for wry understatement, and a gift for cutting honesty, as well as an immeasurably high opinion of himself.
He had the muscular build of a man accustomed to long days in the saddle, exposed to physical danger and backbreaking work. But why, when it was obvious he was educated, was he working as a ranch foreman? She knew enough about cowboys to be aware that most of them were unqualified to do anything else. Where had he come from, and why had he decided to settle here? He was hiding from someone or something. She would have bet a fortune on it.
As Russell Warner spoke at length about the ranch, all heads were turned in his direction, but Addie stared at Ben's profile instead. For the first time she began to understand the situation she was in, and she felt all the blood drain out of her face. Russell was still alive. Ben Hunter hadn't killed him yet. And she was the only one who knew what was going to happen.
2
THE SOUND OF LEAH'S ADDIE, I NEED MY MEDICINE
She sat up with a wide-eyed start as if a loud alarm had just gone off, her heart thumping at a frantic pace. Her eyes darted around the room. She was still here. Another world away. What's happened to me? What's happened to everything?
Her surroundings were entirely different from what she was accustomed to. The ruffly little pink bedroom was not hers. It didn't suit her taste at all. She wanted her own blue-and-white bedroom at home, with Leah's painstakingly stitched needlework on the walls and the clutter of rouge pots and lipsticks on the dresser, the posters over her dresser-Valentino as The Sheik and Mary Pickford in My Best Girl. She missed all of it. She missed the familiar shape of the radio in the corner.
"Radio," she said out loud, stunned by the realization that here there would be no radios, no electric light bulbs, no Kodak cameras or ready-made clothes. They didn't know anything about the Great War or Model T's, Charlie Chaplin or jazz music. Dazedly she pondered the possibilities. She might as well have found herself in the Dark Ages. It was that different from the world she was used to.
Flying to her closet, she flung open the door and stared at the dresses that hung there. Nothing that looked familiar. No short, jaunty skirts, no little cloche hats. She saw only long dresses, frilly blouses, and flowing skirts. The closet was overstuffed with a rainbow of garments, of shining silk, patterned batiste and thin floral-striped lawn, clouds of netting and satin roses. Obviously Adeline Warner had worn the very best money could buy. It took a minute to realize that most of the clothes were pink, in shades varying from the brightest carmine to the palest coral. "Acres of it, " she said out loud, stunned as she looked from dress to dress. "Acres of pink. " It was a nice color, but this… this was a nightmare.
On the right side hung cotton and cambric dresses, simpler in design, that must have been intended for everyday use. Beautiful to look at… but to wear? She had a feeling that everything in that closet would be just as uncomfortable as the dress she had peeled off her body last night. Addie turned to the plump chair by the dresser to regard the soiled dress and the pile of white undergarments, and her face wrinkled with distaste. It had taken forever to get out of that mess.
Skeleton hoops, with a ladder of tapes up the front. A corset, and a cover that extended far over the hips, to which a short underskirt was fastened. It was inconceivable that a woman's body could endure being bound and compressed for so long. There were stays made of bone or metal, or something equally as painful, stitched into the tight corset. It had made deep red marks on her skin. Could she manage to get into any of these clothes without first squeezing herself in that contraption? It was doubtful.