“I know today’s your wedding, but I’ve got something to say. Kane knows all too well that the personal safety of the people connected to a man as wealthy as he is is often in jeopardy.” He looked at her. “What I’m saying is that Kane’s had me follow you a couple of times in the last week.”
Houston could feel color leaving her face.
“I don’t like what I’ve seen,” he continued. “I didn’t like that a young woman, unprotected, was going into a coal camp, but this Sisterhood of yours—.”
“Sisterhood!” Houston gasped. “How . . . ?”
Edan grabbed a chair and put it behind her.
Feebly, Houston sat down.
“I didn’t want to do it, but Kane insisted that I . . . ah, hide in a closet and be there during your tea party in case you needed protection.”
Houston was looking at her hands and didn’t see Edan’s slight smile at the words “tea party.” “How much does he know?” she whispered.
Edan took a seat across from her. “I was a
fraid of that,” he said heavily. “How could I tell him that you’re marrying him because of his connection to Fenton? You’re using him and his money to further your crusade against the evil of coal. Damn! but I should have known better. With a sister like yours who’d steal her own sister’s—.”
Houston stood. “Mr. Nylund!” she said through clenched teeth. “I will not listen to you impugn my sister, and I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say Kane is connected to the Fentons. If you believe my purposes are evil, we’ll go now and tell Kane everything.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, standing, grabbing her arm. “Why don’t you explain—?”
“Don’t you mean that I should try to convince you that I’m innocent, that I’m not leading Kane Taggert down the aisle only to be slaughtered? No, sir, I do not answer such accusations. Tell me, did you plan to use your knowledge of me as blackmail?”
“Touché.” he said, visibly relaxing. “Now that we’ve both shown our anger, could we talk? You’ll have to admit that your actions aren’t exactly beyond suspicion.”
Houston also tried to relax, but it was difficult. She didn’t like to think of how he’d come to know of The Sisterhood.
“How long have you been doing your Wednesday masquerades?” Edan asked.
Houston walked to the window. On the lawn below were workers looking as if they were preparing for the siege of an army. She looked back at Edan. “What we women do, we’ve done for generations. The Sisterhood was founded by my father’s mother before there even was a Chandler, Colorado. We are merely friends who try to help each other and anyone else we can. Right now, our major concern is the treatment of the people in the coal camps. We do nothing illegal.” Her eyes fastened on his. “Nor do we use anyone.”
“Why the secrecy then?”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Look at your own reaction to your knowledge, and you aren’t even a relative. Can you imagine how the husbands and fathers would react if they found out their delicate women spent their free afternoons learning to drive a four-horse wagon? And some of us have . . . ” She stopped talking.
“I see your point. But I see theirs, too. What you’re doing is dangerous. You could be—.” He stopped. “You say you’ve been doing this for three generations?”
“We take on different problems at different times.”
“And the . . . ah, tea parties?”
In spite of herself, Houston blushed. “It was my grandmother’s idea. She said she went to her own wedding night knowing nothing and terrified. She didn’t want her friends or her daughters to have the same experience. I think perhaps the pre-wedding celebration has evolved slowly into what you”—she swallowed—“saw.”
“How many women in Chandler belong to The Sisterhood?”
“There’re only a dozen active members. Some, like my mother, retire after they’re married.”
“Do you plan to retire?”
“No,” she answered, looking up at him, because, of course, her participation could depend on him.
He turned away from her. “Kane won’t like your driving the wagon into the coal fields. He won’t like your being in jeopardy.”
Houston moved to face him. “I know he wouldn’t like it, which is truly the only reason I haven’t told him. Edan,”—she put her hand on his arm—“this means so much to so many people. It took me months of work to learn how to act like an old woman, to be able to really become Sadie. If I stopped now, it would take more months to train someone else and, in the meantime, so many miners’ families would go without the little extras I give them.”
He took her hand. “All right, you can get off your pulpit. I guess it’s safe enough, even though it goes against everything I believe.”