Carla Kelly
Authors: Borrowed Light
© 2011 Carla Kelly
All rights reserved.
The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Cedar Fort, Inc., or any other entity.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the author's imagination, and are not to be construed as real.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, whether by graphic, visual, electronic, film, microfilm, tape recording, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.
ISBN 13: 978-1-59955-466-2
Published by Bonneville Books, an imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc.,
2373 W. 700 S., Springville, UT 84663
Distributed by Cedar Fort, Inc.,
www.cedarfort.com
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Kelly, Carla.
Borrowed light / Carla Kelly.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59955-466-2
1. Single women--Fiction. 2. Women cooks--Fiction. 3. Ranch life--Fiction. 4. Wyoming--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3561.E3928B67 2010
813'.54--dc22
2010026382
Cover design by Angela Olsen
Cover design © 2011 by Lyle Mortimer
Edited and typeset by Melissa J. Caldwell
Printed in Canada
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed on acid-free paper
To the memory of Doc and Ora Simons,
Torrington, Wyoming,
and to my dear friends Kathryn and Neal Kelly,
Torrington, Wyoming.
Contents
O
THER BOOKS BY
C
ARLA
K
ELLY
F
ICTION
Daughter of Fortune
Summer Campaign
Miss Chartley's Guided Tour
Marian's Christmas Wish
Mrs McVinnie's London Season
Libby's London Merchant
Miss Grimsley's Oxford Career
Miss Billings Treads the Boards
Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand
Reforming Lord Ragsdale
Miss Wittier Makes a List
The Lady's Companion
With This Ring
Miss Milton Speaks Her Mind
One Good Turn
The Wedding Journey
Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army
Beau Crusoe
Marrying the Captain
The Surgeon's Lady
Marrying the Royal Marine
The Admiral's Penniless Bride
N
ON-FICTION
On the Upper Missouri: The Journal of Rudolph
Friedrich Kurz
Fort Buford: Sentinel at the Confluence
he time will come when no man or woman will be able to endure on borrowed light. Each will have to be guided by the light within himself. If you do not have it, how can you stand?
—Heber C. Kimball, 1856
ulia Darling slid the last little rose onto her sister's wedding cake and then pressed her hand into the small of her back. “I will be sore all night, Iris,” she said out loud as she admired her work.
She walked around the cake, decorated with enough flowers to satisfy a Babylonian. Hadn't Papa joked that Nebuchadnezzar would be quite at home with that cake? “Don't tell Iris this,” he had whispered to her. “Because she'll get all small-eyed and jittery.” He had then looked around cautiously. “But I'm a little relieved to be turning her over to a husband.”
It was their private joke in the kitchen that morning, far from the upstairs bedroom where Iris had insisted on tighter lacing, and Mama had insisted that if the laces were any tighter, Iris would faint in the Garden Room.
“I told your mother last week that it would be better to bury Iris and dig her up right before the wedding,” Papa had confided.
Julia added more royal icing to one last spot.
When I marry,
she thought,
I intend to be totally serene and in complete control of my faculties.
The house was empty now. She sat down and pulled up her skirt and petticoat to look at her feet. What a relief they were not puffy from the last two days of moving steadily from cooking stove to sink to counter. There were days at Fannie Farmer's Cooking School when she could scarcely move after hours of working at the granite-topped tables, creating edibles good enough to suit Miss Farmer. She smiled at the memory of Miss Farmer zooming around in her wheelchair, not missing a thing.
It was better in Mama's kitchen, where she could pull up her skirts and fan herself. Only someone besotted with love would ever get married in Salt Lake City in August, and the summer 1909 had proved to be a scorcher. Still, it had been fun to come home in May from Boston, knowing she had kitchen skills her younger sister could put to use.
Julia glanced through the open door into the dining room with its genteel mounds of mints, plates of petit fours, bowls of nuts, and stuffed raisins nestled on Mama's best candy plate. The glacé fruits were cooling in the icebox along with the raspberry ring, which was frozen in the copper mold.
She looked back at the cake, remembering how wonderful the kitchen had smelled last night as she removed the pans from the oven under Iris's anxious eyes. Soon Iris and her new husband would come home from the temple and cut the cake.
