David Robertson’s sister Ashton is dying of consumption, and he yearns to make her last dreams come true, by finding her a husband and giving her a wedding day. He couldn’t have known what a cruel favor this would be to ask of his friend, Fortune, Texas Marshall Kit Montgomery, who has already experienced what it’s like to watch a beloved woman die. But when Kit gets to know Ashton, he feels compelled to grant her dying wish, even knowing that he risks losing everything once again.Saying that a Lorraine Heath book is too sentimental feels kind of like complaining that creme brulee is too sweet, but this one does occasionally cross the line from touching to maudlin. One dying angel in a book is more than enough for me and here we have two; I would have liked to see some growth in Kit’s character, some acknowledgment from him that his angels are just mortal women with mortal faults. Also, there’s a lot of plot crowded into a fairly small space in the last half of the book. I felt glad to have read this mostly because I’ve read all the other books connected to it and it was good to have the holes in the story filled in, though this also gave the book an even more melancholy air, since I knew the tragedy that awaited the characters later, in The Outlaw and the Lady . Other than that, it was a decent read but didn’t enthrall me.
