Softly Falling Read Free Page B

couldn’t tell. You had to stand close to Lily Carteret to see the pain in her eyes.
    His stomach rumbled. “I can tell you about Bismarck, but . . . but how about some chop suey at the Great Wall of China?”
    “Chop suey?”
    “You’ll like it.”
    She seemed to perk up. Maybe she was hungry too, or maybe she was again the adventurous person he had noticed when she stepped off the train. “Nothing would suit me more than a spot of luncheon, Mr. Sinclair.”
    He chuckled to himself over that, wondering how loud his cowhands would hoot if he suggested a spot of luncheon during the cow gather.
    She made no objection this time when he picked up one of her suitcases, and she surprised him by picking up the other one.
    “I can do that, ma’am,” he assured her,
    “I can too, Mr. Sinclair,” she said. “Quite possibly I’ll be doing more of that in future, considering circumstances. What is chop suey?”

C HAPTER 3

    T here was one thing Lily could say for the Great Wall of China café: She didn’t have to fight her way to the counter for a sandwich. No one rushed in, shouldering her aside as they had when the Union Pacific screeched to a twenty-minute stop, all the way across this interminable country. Not until Grand Island, Nebraska, was she brave enough to use her elbows to good effect and actually reach the counter in time for grisly beef and coffee with an oily sheen on it. (Tea was unheard of, and only brought tired smiles.)
    The Great Wall was dim, if not cool. At the moment, she preferred dim to cool, because how long could a lady keep up the pretense that nothing had rattled her with Mr. Sinclair’s wry announcement? She would study him and keep her mind off her increasingly precarious future in this Wyoming Territory.
    But first there was the Chinaman, wiping his hands on an apron that should have been washed weeks ago.
    He bowed to Lily, then turned to Mr. Sinclair. “Boss, where you find pretty lady?”
    “On the train, Wing Li,” Mr. Sinclair replied, without even a blush. “No ladies in Wisner.”
    That seemed to be as far as Mr. Sinclair wanted to delve into the matter. “You got any chop suey?” he asked, motioning away the menu.
    “Always for you, chop suey,” the cook replied. “If you have twenty minutes, I kill a chicken. Whoosh! You have chicken and dumplings.”
    Mr. Sinclair glanced at Lily. She tried hard not to laugh, because she was imagining such a conversation in Carteret Manor. She thought of all the boring meals she had endured with Uncle Niles, who only wanted to get back to his ledgers and avoid his niece. She decided this was better, if more rustic.
    “And you, pretty missy?”
    “I’d like the chop suey, Mr. Wing,” Pretty Missy said. “Or is it Mr. Li?”
    Mr. Wing or Mr. Li giggled.
    “What’s in it?”
    “I’ve never asked,” the foreman said in a low voice. “What is in it, Mr. Li?”
    Mr. Li shrugged. “Some of this. Some of that.” He frowned, perhaps considering better food on another continent. “Comes with soy sauce.”
    “Which hides a multitude of evils,” Mr. Sinclair whispered. “Hasn’t killed me yet, Miss Carteret. Price is right, too—fifteen cents.”
    “That’s the deciding factor,” Lily said, thinking of her thin purse. “Chop suey for me too.”
    “I’ll buy,” Mr. Sinclair said when the Chinaman retreated behind a beaded curtain and started shouting orders to whoever worked there.
    “You needn’t,” she said quickly, not wanting to be obliged to the man who won her father’s ranch in a card game.
    “I asked you if you wanted lunch, so it’s my business,” he told her with a certain dogged air that suggested he wasn’t used to argument.
    “But . . .”
    “No discussion,” he said with real finality this time.
    “Tea, missy?” Mr. Li asked, back from the kitchen.
    “Oh, my word, yes,” Lily said. She couldn’t even remember her last cup of tea. Apparently no one in the United States drank it except