Wicked Temptations by Patricia Watters

for some unexplainable reason, Adam did not see her the way everyone else did, and it was baffling and disturbing and confusing. It was also heartbreaking. She had at last found a man who looked at her through rose-colored glasses, but if he aligned himself with her, he'd be laughed at and ridiculed by the voters he needed to help him get elected as mayor. And although Adam might think she was pretty, his mother would be a constant reminder of how the world really saw her.
    ***
    The following week, to a great burst of cheers from Priscilla, Trudy, Alice and the four women, Jim Jackson pulled the first edition of The Town Tattler off the press and laid it on the copy table. As Priscilla stared at the five-column folio, she was so excited she had to remind herself to breathe. A banner headline set in large flourishing foundry type, and occupying the width of the page, heralded the establishment of The Town Tattler , and on the top of the page, an ornate nameplate embellished with attractive calligraphy, stated: Volume 1, Number 1, July 31, 1885, Serving Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory . The editorial below the banner headline invited women writers to visit the office of The Town Tattler and chat with Miss Priscilla Phipps about submitting poems, short stories, viewpoints, and opinion pieces for possible publication. Readers were encouraged to write to Miss Manners with questions about proper etiquette , and to Miss Valentine for advice for the lovelorn. As a bonus, all new subscribers would receive a lovely engraving suitable for framing.
    Priscilla looked at the small decorative wood engravings set above each editorial column, pleased with what she saw. The cut for Miss Manners showed children gathered around a table, the one for Miss Valentine displayed a couple sitting on a loveseat, and the one for her Women's Suffrage column, was of Esther Hobart Morris, a suffragist whose efforts were instrumental in passing the equality laws that governor Campbell signed into law in 1869, granting the women of Wyoming Territory the right to vote, along with the right to hold public office, own land, and retain property from their dead husbands, making Wyoming's government the first to do so. Priscilla had been twenty-two at the time, but it stirred a longing back then to move to the place where she could hold property in her own name.
    Her eyes returned to the woodcut of the romantic couple and the fact that Miss Valentine was a middle-aged maiden lady who had never been in love. Although now, she did know what it was like to be infatuated. Oddly, she felt qualified to give advice to the lovelorn because it would not be muddled up with senseless female emotions.
    Edith, who had not read the Miss Valentine column until now, peered over Priscilla's shoulder, and commented, "I can't imagine ARJ, whoever she is, even asking if she should allow a man to court her who left her sitting alone at the Picnic Social to go off with some other woman. But you set her straight. Do you know who she is?"
    Priscilla realized Edith had been off with young Frank Gundy during the time when she'd told the women that the questions and answers for Miss Valentine would be fabricated until readers began to write in. "ARJ and the others are made up for this issue," she said. "After the women start sending in questions, I won't have to do that."
    Edith's smooth brow gathered with a frown. "But... was the incident based on something that really happened to... someone?"
    On the way home from the picnic social, when the women asked about her time with Lord Whittington, Priscilla had been vague about what happened after Adam bought her basket. She hadn't wanted to explain where they'd gone, or what they'd been up to. Now, she suspected Edith thought she was ARJ, and Adam had left her to go off with another woman. Perhaps it was best left at that, because the truth made her blush, and it would later be an embarrassment, when Adam lost interest. If, in fact he was actually