One of the sheep in the back of the cart lifted its head and answered.

Sophia chuckled. “You bleat even better than the sheep.”

“You have your own gifts,” Ophelia said in return, no sign of her earlier rancor. “You should be on a stage. No one can do Juliet like you.”

Sophia’s face burned with pleasure. She tilted her pretty face to the sky and placed her hand to her brow. “What’s here? A cup, closed in my true love’s hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end—”

As if in great pain, a sheep bleated loudly while Max the dog shuffled in a circle, obviously anxious to get out of the cart. Ophelia giggled and even Harriet had to stifle a grin.

Sophia’s face suffused with color. “I was not made for such conditions.”

“None of us was,” Harriet said dryly, hawing the horse to a trot. “I was not made to drive a smelly hay cart, either.”

“I know what you were made for,” Sophia said with a smug smile. “Captain John Frakenham.”

Harriet stiffened. “Do not mention that name to me!”

Sophia and Ophelia exchanged amused glances.

“I don’t want to hear another word,” Harriet said firmly. “And if I do, you’ll walk the rest of the way to town.”

Ophelia leaned forward to whisper loudly to Sophia. “Harriet is always ill-tempered when Captain Frakenham is not in port.”

“Indeed. She’s pining for him. For his manly arms and his broad chest—”

“Enough!” Harriet frowned. “What was Mother thinking?”

Sophia sighed. “Oh, she was just trying to save Garrett Park. If she hadn’t convinced the bank that you had a wealthy suitor on his way home from sea with trunks of gold, they’d have never allowed us time to gather the wool for the payment.”

Harriet silently admitted that Sophia was right. Mr. Gower, the new officer at the bank, had unexpectedly arrived at Garrett Park one late afternoon with a rather unpleasantly worded demand for funds. Mother’s usual good sense had been sorely muddled by a large dose of laudanum she’d just taken for an aching tooth, and with a sense of pure panic, she’d launched into a disjointed, but apparently convincing story of how the money would shortly arrive in the form of a wealthy sea captain, who would also claim her oldest daughter for his own.

Harriet was quite certain Mother had stolen the idea from a lending library novel. Still, the colorful fib had served its purpose; the bank had granted the extension.

Sophia clasped her hands together and sighed dreamily. “Captain Frakenham is the most handsome man in the world.”

“And the wealthiest,” Ophelia added with a mischievous grin. “From what I’ve heard, he has as much money as the Prince. Maybe more!”

“Piffle!” Harriet snapped. Mother’s little fib wouldn’t have been so bad had everyone politely ignored it. After all, the family only needed three more months and they’d have the last payment for the mortgage.

What Mother hadn’t thought of—what no one had seen or planned upon—was that the bank officials, given the few details Mother had managed to mumble through her numbed lips, had gone home and repeated every word to their willing wives. And those worthy women had, of course, mentioned the matter to a few women at the Church Fund Meeting. And those women had mentioned it to their friends, neighbors, sisters, and daughters, and so on and so forth until the entire town came to hear of the mysterious Captain Frakenham.