His white teeth flashed in a brief smile. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Still, I hope you’ll accept my apology.”
“Like I said earlier, you did nothing you need to apologize for.” The firelight played over his face, delineating with shadows the sharp bridge of his nose and the chiseled cut of his cheekbones above his beard. As he met her gaze, his eyes glinted like molten silver. “The whole mess was my fault, not yours. I should have told you I was riding in a circle and explained why.” He rubbed his whiskery jaw. “Just didn’t occur to me.”
“Because you mistakenly believed I couldn’t tell north from south?”
He shoved the cork back into the mouth of the jug and set it on the ground near her feet. “I guess that’ll teach me never to judge a book by its cover.” Gesturing at the whiskey, he said, “Help yourself to more if you’d like. I still have work to finish up. Then I’ll get busy cooking those fish.”
A few minutes later, when Matthew returned to the fire to erect a spit for the trout, he found Eden huddled on her side, sound asleep. Good. A nap might make her feel better. He went to get his bedroll, which consisted of a quilted pallet and a wool blanket. He hated to let her lie on the cold ground, but unless he woke her, he had no choice. Instead he carefully covered her with the bedding and then hunkered at the opposite side of the fire to stave off his hunger with some jerky.
He allowed her to sleep until his belly started to rumble again. Then he set to work on their evening meal, being as quiet as possible, no easy task when he was pounding on a stick with a rock. She stirred awake and blinked sleepily at him.
“Sorry I woke you.”
Stifling a yawn, she hooked an arm tightly over her side to sit up. The gesture wasn’t lost on Matthew. She’d been favoring her ribs all day, giving him cause to wonder if Pete Sebastian had busted a couple of them with the toe of his boot.
Hesitant to admit that he’d seen Pete kick her, because then she’d know he’d also seen everything else the bastards had done to her, he settled for asking, “You hurt?”
She winced as she shifted to get comfortable. “Just very sore. It’ll get better with time. How long was I asleep?”
“Three, maybe three and a half hours. I figured you needed the rest, so I held off on cooking for a while.”
“Thank you. I truly did need the rest.”
Her gaze fixed on the flames, her expression grew distant. She barely glanced at him as he speared the fish and suspended them over the fire. It reminded him of the way she’d looked last night while the Sebastians had bedeviled her. He could only hope she wasn’t recalling what they’d done to her. He wasn’t sure how he would handle it if she started crying again. Not that he would blame her if she did. Most of the females he knew would be off balance for months after going through something like that. Even his mother, one of the strongest, most resilient women he’d ever known, might have had trouble coming to grips with it.
“You feeling okay?” he asked.
Her eyes still swollen and puffy from weeping, Eden met his gaze and nodded. “Better than I was. I’m sorry I fell apart that way.”
“No worries. You were taken hostage by a bunch of brutes and mauled, most likely ever since they took you. If anyone has a right to fall apart, I reckon it’s you.” The instant the words left his mouth, Matthew wanted to call them back. “Sorry. I don’t mean to remind you of things best forgotten. It’s just that I think you’re being a little hard on yourself. Most women and a lot of men couldn’t handle what happened as well as you have.”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug, then watched as he drew the mixings for corn bread from a pack, measured out the dry ingredients, then added water. After giving the concoction a good stir, he spread some coals at the edge of the fire and set the pan on them. His campfire bread wasn’t the best-tasting stuff, but it would be warm and fill their empty spots. Along the trail, that was about all a body could hope for.
Rocking back on his boot heels, he fixed Eden with a long look. She was gazing into the fire again. Under the remaining streaks of dry mud, her sunburned face still managed to look pale. His heart twisted at the pain in her eyes. He leaned forward to give the fish a turn and then sat back on his heels again, uncomfortable because she was unearthing emotions within him that he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get you away from them sooner.”
“How did you even know I needed to be rescued?” she asked.
Matthew wondered why his first reaction to a question was always a reluctance to answer. It was natural for her to ask what had led him to that camp and motivated him to risk his life getting her out.
“I had been following the Sebastians’ trail for several days and happened upon the train shortly after it was robbed.”
“You were there?” Her blue eyes quickened with sharp interest. “At the train, I mean?”
He nodded. “I followed the Sebastians’ tracks straight to it. The conductor—at least, I’m guessing that’s what he was—told me you’d been abducted.”
“Did you . . . did you see my mother?” she asked. “An older, well-dressed lady with blond hair?”
“I did.”
“Was she all right? Please tell me they didn’t harm her.”
“Aside from being very worried about you, she looked fine.” Matthew turned the bread pan again. “I don’t think they hurt her.”
Eden released a taut breath and blinked tears from her eyes. “Thank God.” Her mouth quivered at the corners. “And the others? Was anyone else killed?”
“The train fellow said they had three dead and one man wounded. His ribs got busted up during the collision.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she pressed a hand to her mouth for a moment. “There were already three dead when Wallace Sebastian carried me off the train. I was so afraid his brothers might let fly with more bullets. Every time anyone opened his mouth, he got shot for his trouble.”
Matthew hated that she’d witnessed the killings. He almost uttered a curse but managed to bite it back in the nick of time, knowing it was an unsuitable word to use in mixed company. The thought no sooner passed through his mind than he backed up to analyze it. How long had it been since he’d worried about or even considered what was appropriate to say in front of a lady? Three years, he guessed. No big surprise. He hadn’t been around a real lady since leaving Oregon.
He turned the fish, feeling ill at ease. His social skills had become so rusty that a simple conversation made him feel as if he were treading on a thin layer of ice and might fall through into deep water at any moment.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” she said shakily.
Matthew shot her a surprised look. He almost told her, flat out, that rescuing her had been forced upon him by circumstances, but for the second time in less than a minute, he managed to hold his tongue until his brain caught up with his mouth. “You’re welcome. I’m just sorry I didn’t get there sooner. They were pushing their horses way too hard, and I couldn’t bring myself to do the same.”
She shoved at her hair, which had come loose from its pins and lay over her shoulders, the copper curls gleaming in the firelight. “None of what happened was your doing, and I lived through it.” She shivered and rubbed her arms through the jacket sleeves. Matthew made a mental note to add more wood to the fire as soon as their meal was cooked. “I was lucky, actually,” she said faintly.
Lucky? Matthew tried to school his expression, but the statement bewildered him. After all that they’d done to her, how could she say that? Most people would be shaking a fist at heaven and crying, “Why me?”
She caught his questioning look and shrugged again. “They are terrible men.”
Matthew knew as well as she did how terrible they were. He’d been coming upon their bloody leavings for three endless years. “Yes, they are,” he agreed.
“It could have been much worse for me,” she said, her voice so soft he almost didn’t catch the words.
“If not for Wallace’s plan to sell me across the border to an old Mexican who will pay only for virgins, my trials would have been far more horrible. He allowed them to have their fun with me, and he participated as well, but he wouldn’t allow them to rape me. He was afraid the old man would refuse to buy damaged goods.”
Most of the women back home in Oregon shied away from using the word rape, especially in front of a man. But Matthew was quickly coming to realize that plainspoken Eden Paxton didn’t conform to all the usual norms. She was a woman of more contrasts than he’d ever encountered. “I wondered why the bastards stopped short.”
She sent him a startled look. Then her eyes went bright with tears again—tears of humiliation this time. “You saw?”
In that moment Matthew wished he’d been born without a tongue. No wonder he didn’t talk very much. He grabbed the square of leather he used as a pot holder and moved the pan of corn bread to the edge of the coals, where it wouldn’t scorch.
“Yes, I saw some,” he finally admitted. “After I found their camp, I had to lie low until they drank themselves stupid and passed out. Once I realized what they were doing, I stopped watching, though.” It was the truth; he had stopped watching—not so much because he was a gentleman but because he hadn’t been able to stomach it. “I wanted to shoot the sons of bitches, but I was afraid you’d get caught in the cross fire. I had to wait until it was safe to go in and get you.”
Matthew realized, too late, that he’d let fly with a curse in spite of himself. For several minutes she said nothing. During the silence, he tried to imagine how he might feel in her position. It was one thing to endure such degradation and quite another to know someone else had witnessed it. He wanted to tell her that, despite all he’d seen, he’d come away with only high regard for her, but for the life of him, he couldn’t put his thoughts into words. If he tried and made a mess of it, he might make her feel even worse.
When she finally spoke, her voice was pitched so low he could barely hear her. “While they did those things, I pretended I was somewhere else.” She squeezed her eyes closed, her mouth quivering at the corners again. “I’d stare into the fire and imagine myself far away, walking with my mother to pick wildflowers or having good times with my brothers. It was the only way I could stay sane.”
Matthew gave the spit a half turn. Anger as hot as the embers burned low in his belly. No woman should ever have to endure such treatment. That Eden had survived it and maintained her sanity was a miracle. It also gave testimony to her mettle. He wished he knew how to tell her that.
Instead, he settled for saying, “When I get you to a town, I’ll double back and find them again. And when I do, I’ll send every last one of them to hell.”
A muscle twitched in the hollow of her cheek. She slowly lifted her lashes to meet his gaze. To his surprise, he saw that the tears he’d glimpsed had already burned away. “I wish I could be there to help send them off,” she said, her voice hoarse with emotion. “Pete, especially. All of them are the scum of the earth, but he’s the very worst.”
“I know. I’ve seen his handiwork more times than I want to count.”
She tipped her head to give him a questioning look. “Why have you been following them for so long? When I asked you earlier today, you didn’t answer.”
Matthew found it difficult to talk about Livvy and wanted to evade the question again. But the bruised look in Eden’s eyes wouldn’t let him take the easy way out. She had been honest with him, and he supposed she deserved the same frankness in return. “They raped and murdered someone who was very dear to me,” he managed to say. “I swore over her grave that I’d hunt them down and make them pay. It’s my bad luck that they’re a slippery bunch. Except for once, when I ran one of the younger brothers to ground and sent him off to meet his Maker, last night is the closest I’ve ever come to catching them.”
“And then instead of killing them, you had to rescue me?”
Matthew remembered how upset he’d been about that and felt ashamed. “I’ll find them again. It’s just a matter of sticking with it.”
“Even if it takes you another three years?”
“Even so,” he admitted. “There are some things a man has to do, no matter how long it takes.” Other feelings pushed up from inside of him—as hot as lava from a volcano and just as eruptive, but he squelched them and only added, “Sometimes you can’t turn your back, and for me, the Sebastians are a blight I have to wipe out. Until someone stops them, they’ll just keep hurting people.”
He drove two sticks in the ground near the fire and hung her boots over them to dry. Then he fetched his canteen, a dented washbasin, a bar of soap, and a towel so each of them could wash up before partaking of the meal. Eden knotted her long hair at the crown of her head and carefully washed the mud from her sunburned cheeks, which still bore purple bruises from the abuse she’d endured. When she drew the square of linen from her face, her delicate countenance caught his gaze. How a woman could still look so pretty after all she’d been through, he didn’t know. He forced himself to look away.
After washing up himself, he tested the fish for done-ness and fetched them each a plate. “Damn. I meant to make coffee and plumb forgot.”
“We’ll make two pots tomorrow to make up for it.” She accepted the food that he handed across the fire to her, sniffed the fish, and made an appreciative sound low in her throat. “Yum. I haven’t had a decent meal in six days.”
“I don’t know how decent it is by your standards, but it’ll fill up your hollow spots.”
“And just what do you think my standards are, Matthew Coulter?”
“Beats me, but they’re bound to be more highfalutin than mine.”
“Or so you think?”
Matthew felt off balance for a second. It had been so long since anyone had joked with him that he’d forgotten how to respond. She gave him a teasing look, once again making him admire her pluck. Eden Paxton was one hell of a lady. A rope burn marred her slender neck, and the vivid marks on her face told him that she’d endured punishing blows from the Sebastians’ fists, but there she sat, less than twenty-four hours after escaping them, smiling slightly in the firelight.
She tucked into the meal, using her fingers without complaint and spitting bones into the fire with the expertise of a cowpoke who’d been spewing tobacco juice at flies most of his life. Matthew had forks and spoons in the packs, but fish and bread didn’t call for either. Watching her eat, he nearly grinned. Considering that she’d asked for “utensils” earlier, he’d figured her to be fussy and prim; she was proving to be everything but.
“So tell me, how did you learn to handle a rifle?” he couldn’t resist asking.
Cheek bulging with fish, she said, “My brother Ace taught me. He’s of the opinion that women should be as proficient with weapons as men are.”
“I agree,” Matthew said. “It doesn’t take a lot of strength to fire a rifle. A woman who knows her way around a weapon has a good equalizer at hand.”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste, her expression reminding him of when she’d sniffed his jacket sleeve, which made him feel self-conscious and embarrassed again. “Ace took it to the nth degree, making me target-practice nearly every day after school. He also stood over me many a night after supper while I disassembled weapons, oiled the parts, and put them back together. Sometimes he even timed me.”
The frustration that edged her voice made Matthew want to smile, which struck him as really strange. Normally he never felt like smiling anymore, but being in her company was rekindling the urge. “He’s a smart man, your brother.”
“Yes, well, at the time, I resented him for making me do all that stupid stuff. I was far more interested in becoming proficient at other things.”
When she said the word proficient, Matthew thanked God his mother had insisted upon schooling him and his siblings at home after their formal education ended. At least he had a halfway respectable vocabulary. Eden had thrown only a couple of wor
ds at him today that had baffled him, reticent and miscreant. He’d known what utensils meant. He’d just never heard the term used in reference to a cup.
“Proficient at what other things?”
A pink flush crept up her neck. “Silly things—fixing my hair and kissing an imaginary beau in my bedroom mirror. When it happened for real, I wanted to do it exactly right. Boys may not worry about things like that, but most girls do.”
His gaze caught on her sweet mouth. Any woman with soft, full lips like hers could get it exactly right without half trying. He shifted and rubbed the back of his neck. “Pardon me for pointing it out, but I think the target-practicing was more important.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her tone laced with regret. “Now that I’m older, I’m grateful for the knowledge and skill. If I’d been wearing my Colts when the train was held up, I might have saved several lives and spared myself a lot of heartache.”
His gaze went to hers. “Did you say Colts?”
She took a bite of bread and once again spoke before swallowing. “My weapon of choice. Unfortunately, a lady in a silk traveling costume looks rather silly wearing a gun belt, so I packed my Colts and derringer in our camelback trunk. A lot of good the weapons were stowed away in the baggage car.”
Matthew shook his head. “You truly are full of surprises. How good are you?”
“With a gun, you mean?” She shrugged slightly. “Good enough to get by.”
“Which means?”
She graced him with another faint smile. “I’m not as fast as my brothers, but my aim is true. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve never met a lady who can slap leather. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around it, I guess.”
“In my family, the oddity would be if I couldn’t slap leather. Have you ever heard of Ace Keegan?”
“Most people have. He’s a legend with a gun.” He searched her gaze for a long moment, then narrowed his eyes. “No way. Your brother Ace is Ace Keegan?”
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