The Ruby Brooch (The Celtic Brooch Trilogy) by Katherine Logan Read Free Book Online Page B

put extra stress on Stormy riding him every day.
    A little girl with soft brown curls and big brown eyes chased Tate around a stack of burlap bags. She laughed, the dog barked, and she laughed some more. Kit couldn’t remember the last time she played with him.
    “That’s Elizabeth. She’s ten.” Sarah stood on tipped-toes and stretched her neck, searching the adjoining campsites. Then she pointed toward a child walking in their direction. “There’s Frances.” A note of relief sounded in Sarah’s voice. “She just turned eight.”
    Frances Barrett is a child?
    Kit climbed to the ground and swayed again. Quickly, she grabbed the side of the wagon with one hand then pressed the other against her queasy stomach. I’m here because of an eight-year-old’s journal. The possibility existed now that Elliott had been right when he said, “I call it fabricated.” But Kit had wanted to believe in Frances. And now? She honestly didn’t know.
    Sarah whispered to Kit. “I fainted with each of mine. Let me fix you some fennel tea to settle your stomach.”
    Each of mine. Kit gasped. “Oh, I’m not pregnant. I just haven’t eaten much in the past few days.”
    “You need to eat. Let me—”
    “Thank you, but there’s no need.”
    Sarah pursed her lips.
    “I’ll eat in the hotel dining room tonight.” Kit worked up a smile, but it didn’t relieve the concern written on the woman’s face.
    Frances folded to the ground at Kit’s feet like a marionette when the puppeteer sets the crossbar aside. Tabor jumped into her lap, and she giggled when he danced his long tail in her face. “Adam said you’re traveling with us. Will you be my sister like Elizabeth?”
    Kit sat beside her on the ground, curious about the child. “I could be a sister or a friend.”
    “Do you have brothers?”
    “I’m an only child,” Kit said.
    Frances placed her warm, tiny fingers on Kit’s hand. “Don’t be sad. One day you’ll have a baby and you won’t be alone ever again.”
    What an odd thing for her to say . Not even a baby would fill the loneliness that swam just below the surface of Kit’s life.
    “If we’re going to be sisters, will you help me read the books Adam reads?”
    “I’d love to help you.”
    A smile touched her pretty, heart-shaped mouth. “Will you help Elizabeth too?”
    “We should ask Elizabeth what she wants.”
    “She wants the same as me. To be smart and go to university. Do you think girls can go to university?”
    Intelligent and intuitive . “I suspect you have the tenacity to go wherever you want and knock down doors if they won’t let you in.”
    A frown crossed Frances’s face. “Then I’ll need Papa’s hammer.”
    As a little girl, Kit’s father’s toolbox, full of wooden handles worn smooth and shaped to his grip, fascinated her. Several of the old tools were stored in the wagon with her supplies. “In case he won’t give up his, you can have mine. It was one of my father’s.”
    A hint of mischief gleamed in Frances’s eyes, and Kit realized at that moment, the child was capable of anything.
     
     
    HOURS LATER, KIT entered the Noland House dining room wearing a green silk taffeta dress with a deep neckline and white lace under-sleeves. Tan ribbons edged the matching jacket. Her mother had created the gown for the previous year’s Old Kentucky Farm Days Annual Gala. Kit and Scott had danced the quadrille under a canopy of stars until an emergency called him to the hospital. The next time they’d danced had been during the party on New Year’s Eve. She shivered as thoughts of the crash and the drunk driver who killed her parents and her friend punched through her fragile protective wall, leaving her edgy and on the verge of a panic attack.
    Wearing the dress tonight added to the eerie sensation that she was crawling across a bridge spanning two worlds. The quicker she got to the other end, to South Pass, the quicker she could go home and attempt to rebuild her life—an