“And what are the women required to do?”
“They must come to us to be interviewed. We make cards listing their qualifications and then match them with a man.” She gave a dreamy smile. “We make people very happy.”
“How do these women get to the men?”
“Stagecoach, usually,” she said, looking down at the dog. When Jamie didn’t say another word, she looked back at him, her little chin set at a defiant angle. “All right, yes, Montgomery money pays their way, but it’s for a good cause. These people are lonely, and they need each other so much. Jamie, you should read some of the letters from these men. They live all alone in places that no one has ever heard of, and they need company so much.”
“Not to mention a good strong back to help work the farm as well as someone in their bed,” he said, trying to interject a note of realism into her dreams of everlasting love.
“Well, the women need that too!” Carrie snapped.
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“And what do you know of such things?”
He was teasing her, and she couldn’t help being annoyed at his attitude. Most of the time she loved being pampered by her big brothers, but sometimes they could be a pain. “More than you and the others think that I do,” she shot back at him. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a little girl any more. I’m a grown woman.”
Sitting there in the tumble of silken bed clothes, her thick hair down about her shoulders, snuggling with the toylike animal, she didn’t look over ten years old. “Yes,” he said softly, “a grand old lady.”
Carrie sighed. As much as she loved her brothers, she also knew them, and not one of them, or her father, wanted her to grow up. They wanted her to stay their adoring little sister whose only thoughts were for them.
“You aren’t trying to find a husband, are you?” Jamie asked, and there was alarm in his voice.
“No, of course not.” She knew better than to tell any of the men in her family that she was someday planning to get married, for they all thought she was little more than a toddler. “I have all the men I want here.”
Jamie narrowed his eyes. “Just what is that supposed to mean? ‘All the men you want’? Since when have ‘men’ been part of your life?”
Since the day I was born, Carrie wanted to say. Since I was fifteen minutes old and looked up from my cradle and saw seven of the most handsome boys on earth peering down at me, a mother and a sister in the background. Since I took my first steps holding onto a man’s hand, since men taught me how to ride, sail, tie knots, curse, climb trees, and flirt to get whatever I want. “Why don’t you come downtown with me? We’re using the old Johnson place as our headquarters. You can see what we’re doing.” She gave him her best, most seductive, through-the-eyelashes look that she hoped was persuasive.
Jamie paled at her invitation. “Willingly walk into that bunch of ugly women?”
Carrie bit her lips to restrain her smile. She knew that what actually scared Jamie was the way her friends fell all over themselves at the sight of one of her unmarried brothers. Carrie thought that she should speak to her girlfriends about their behavior, but it was so amusing to see her handsome brothers ill at ease that she couldn’t resist presenting them to her friends.
“Ranleigh went with me,” Carrie said, looking down, her lower lip protruding just a bit. “But then Ranleigh isn’t afraid of anything. Maybe you’re afraid because you’re my second-most handsome brother, and, too, maybe Ranleigh has more self-confidence than you do. Maybe Ranleigh—”
“You win,” Jamie said, throwing up his hands in defeat. “I’ll go, but only if you swear you’ll not try to match me up with one of your unwanted women.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said as though appalled at the very idea. “Besides, who’d want you after they’d seen Ranleigh?”
Jamie grinned wickedly. “About half of China,” he said, leaning forward to cluck her under the chin, then looked down at the dog when it sneezed again. “What are you going to name him?”
“Choo-choo,” Carrie answered brightly, making Jamie groan at the infantile name, just as she knew he would.
“Give him a name with a little dignity.”
“Tell me about the women in China and I’ll call him Duke,” she said eagerly.
Pulling out his pocket watch and looking at it, he said, “I will give you one hour to dress and for every ten minutes of that hour that you don’t make me wait for you, I’ll tell you a story about China.”
Carrie grimaced. “About the scenery? About the roads and the storms at sea?”
“About the girls who danced for the emperor.” He lowered his voice. “And…they danced for me. In private.”
In a flurry of silk and flying pillows, Carrie was out of the bed in a flash. “Thirty minutes. If I can get dressed in thirty minutes, how many stories will that earn me?”
“Three.”
“They’d better be good stories and worth all the rush,” she said in warning, “because if they’re boring, I’ll invite Euphonia to dinner every night you’re home.”