Free Stephanie Grace Whitson - [Quilt Chronicles] by Shadow on the Quilt Page B

after. To give Sterling children. To grow old together. The original plan was out of reach. Lost forever.
    “Mrs. Sutton? May I walk you to Miss Thornhill’s?”
    Juliana took his arm and let herself be led away. Goldie’s was just out of sight when she stopped and looked back. “You were there last night. I saw you.”
With one of those women.
    “I heard the fire bell. My rooming house isn’t all that far away.”
    So perhaps he was just being … gallant when it came to the redhead. “The fire bell carried all the way to the house. When I came out on the porch and saw the flames, it seemed like it could have been the lumberyard.”
    “You must have been terrified.”
    She took a deep breath and barely managed not to say it aloud.
Actually, I think I was disappointed. I thought maybe—if he lost everything—maybe he’d come back to me. Of course I didn’t realize…. I didn’t know I’d lost him to more than the business.

    Later that afternoon, Cass stood in what would, by fall, be the impressive entry hall to the Sutton mansion. He gazed through the doorway as the last of the supply wagons trundled past, headed back into town. Jessup raised a beefy arm in salute. Cass returned the gesture, then turned in a slow circle, imagining polished finials, gleaming marble floors, and crystal chandeliers reflecting candlelight onto the massive dining table that, at this very moment, sat beneath a heavy tarp in the warehouse in town.
    “Don’t tell my wife,” the boss had said, when he sent Cass with Jessup and three other men to hoist the table off the freight car and deliver it to the lumberyard. “I want to surprise her.”
    Cass went to the arched doorway leading into the dining room. And he worried about Mrs. Sutton. He’d thought of little else since leaving her with “the aunts” at Miss Thornhill’s. She’d been calm enough, but a couple of times there’d been an edge to the things she said. Like when she said that she’d seen him at the fire. Had she seen him with Ma and Sadie? He could just imagine the assumptions a woman like Mrs. Sutton would make about that. And if she suspected her husband, what might she think of him, now? The idea made him uncomfortable.
    Cass wanted her to trust him. Especially after his meeting with Mr. Duncan this morning. She might need a friend in coming days, and he was in a unique place to help her. At least he thought so. He understood more about the business than anyone else. That might prove fortunate at some point. When it came right down to it, George Duncan reminded him of a vulture circling until the time was right to dive in and savor the spoils of death.
    The minute he thought of the analogy, he could almost hear Sadie teasing him.
Aren’t you the dramatic one?
Sadie. What would become of her, now?
    Climbing down from the entryway—Jessup would begin the steps up to the front door in a couple of days—Cass whistled for Baron. An answering whinny led him to the other side of the stone cottage they’d built first on the site. At the moment, the house served as an office and center of business for the massive undertaking that would result in the biggest house in Lincoln. Someday it would house a groundskeeper. A hobbled Baron was grazing contentedly beneath one of the mature cottonwoods growing near the house. Before long, Cass was headed back toward town and supper with Ma, Sadie, and Ludwig Meyer.
    At the far edge of the Sutton property, he pulled Baron up and looked back at the house. The tops of the chimneys glowed red, reflecting the last of the day’s sunshine. From this distance, he might be looking at all that was left of a once fine home gone to ruin, or at progress toward the realization of a dream. As he nudged Baron into an easy lope, Cass wondered which version of the site would prove to be true.

CHAPTER 7
    Above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

1 P ETER 4:8
    H ave I sprouted