Set Fire to the Rain 2, Ch. 22 "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"

This fanfiction is intended for mature readers due to the vivid depiction of a consensual adult relationship.  The setting is First Season, post-The Preacher.  Do not attempt any of the culinary procedures described within this chapter without first consulting a professional chef.

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 Kitty sat resting in the parlor, waiting for their dinner guests to arrive.  The house was filled with the aroma of Isom’s chicken baking in the oven, along with fresh, yeasty bread and apples canned from the ranch orchard, fried on the stove in butter and sugar and cinnamon.  She’d offered to help, but Isom had promptly shooed her away and said she should rest some more before company came because she was looking a mite peaked this afternoon.

She smoothed her pretty pale orange skirts over her lap and the color reminded her of a fancy dish of peach ice cream she’d seen a little girl eating through the big window of an ice cream parlor one time a few years ago.  She was in Kansas City, and she’d been mighty hungry at the time and would have done anything to have had a taste of that ice cream right then.  The tiny blond-haired girl with a big white bow in her hair and two missing teeth right in front had noticed Kitty watching her and waved timidly, ice cream smeared around her rosy little cupid’s bow lips.  Kitty had smiled and waved back and wondered if she’d ever been so young and innocent. 

But now, as she admired her new dress the color of soft, melting ice cream, her heart swelled gratefully in her chest at the thought of how far she’d come since that bleak day.  Now she had a whole ranch very nearly in her possession, and she could surely afford some of that fancy ice cream if she wanted some.   Yes, indeed, Kitty Russell had certainly come a long way.

Her eyes strayed to a shelf built into the wall near the fireplace.  Kitty noticed a tidy row of books with well-worn covers alongside a pretty pink and green flowered china vase that had surely been a treasured possession of her aunt.  She imagined Océane picking flowers in her garden or maybe even gathering wildflowers on the prairie and placing them carefully in that vase with some cool water from the well.  

Suddenly, she remembered the beautiful poem from the journal, and wondered if it had come from one of those old books.  She walked across the creaking wood floor and ran her finger across the slightly dusty spines, reading the titles as she went:  Bleak House, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, poems by Tennyson…  There it was!  Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  

Kitty slowly pulled the book from the shelf and cracked open the brown leather front cover.  It smelled deliciously musty and tantalizingly aged, a priceless treasure to be discovered.  Inside the cover in faded ink was inscribed the words, “To my sweet Oceane, I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.  Your humbly devoted Solomon.”  Kitty traced her fingertips reverently over the heartfelt words written by her thoughtful uncle many years past and turned to the table of contents.   Her heart skipped a beat when she recognized the sonnet, and she quickly began flipping through the pages to locate it.  Suddenly, several papers folded together fell out from between two of the pages.   Kitty frowned and leaned over to pick them up from the floor, unfolding them as she walked to the settee.  She laid her book of love poems aside and skimmed the contents.  She could tell they were business documents of some sort.  At the top of the first sheet, in fancy script, it said “Orleans Western Railroad”.   

A knock at the door startled Kitty from her thoughts.  She jumped, and on impulse, quickly refolded the bundle and slid them into her dress pocket. 

She hurried to open the door, and her face blanched in surprise.  Standing behind her lawyer, Irving Hepley, stood steely-eyed Dempsey McCray with an oily smile twitching slyly at the corners of his mouth.

tbc

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