by Jodi Thomas
Nat gave her full marks for putting her wits to good use. “I should probably get clarification from your father.”
“I know what that means, Mr. Church. My father did not anticipate that I might want to stay in my car but change trains. He made no provision for it; therefore, I believe I am playing well within the rules. You think so, too. I can tell.”
Nat wondered what he had done to give himself away. He would think about that later, preferably while he was soaking in a hot bath. “All right. I won’t ask him about it. There is no point in alarming him.”
“Exactly.” Felicity pointed to the hip bath. “The porters can fetch you hot water. You reach them by pulling on that cord by the forward door. I assume it’s been properly connected. You will find soap, sponges, and towels in the washstand. The wardrobe to the right of the bed still has Jon’s clothes in it. It is very small of me, but I was waiting to see if he would request them.”
“It’s only been three weeks,” said Nat.
She nodded slowly. “It seems much longer. I’m not sure why.”
“Perhaps it was the night in jail that changed your perspective.”
Felicity chuckled. “Perhaps. Tell me, how did you get me from the jail to the depot? Surely you didn’t carry me.”
“I slung you over my shoulder long enough to get you to the back of a buckboard and drove it here. I had to leave my horse with Joe, but he’ll get a good price for it and wire me the money.”
She regarded him curiously. “I know it means something to you to have my father in your debt, but don’t you think you should have asked for advance money as well?”
“I don’t decide who I will and won’t help by how much they can pay me. I have nothing against being paid, and getting paid a lot is better than a little, but it matters more if the assignment interests me.”
“Stealing interests you?”
“Stealing from the Metropolitan interested me. It hadn’t been done before.”
“So it was a challenge?”
“Yes.”
“Am I challenging you, Mr. Church?”
“I think you know you are.” He pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m going to have that bath now.”
• • •
FELICITY sat on the padded window bench alternately thumbing through Peterson’s Magazine and looking out on the broad, flat plain of high grass and meandering streams. She ignored—or tried to—the sounds of water lapping against the sides of the tub. It meant Nat Church was shifting, stretching, sluicing, and there would be water sliding over his shoulders and chest in rivulets. Soapy droplets would cling to his collarbones. Steam would curl and spike the ends of his dark hair. Her first impression was that it was overlong and badly in need of cutting. When she saw him again, without his hat this time, she amended her opinion. It suited him perfectly, and she decided that the change in her thinking proved she could be flexible. Jon had accused her of being intractable, and while he framed it as a tease, she knew it was not. She could even allow that there was some truth in it, but she was also aware that intractability in a man was considered principled, while a woman was thought to be willful or stubborn.
Nat Church had said she was a challenge. He had not said it with his usual directness, but she could infer it from their exchange. More importantly, he did not seem to mind. If she understood him correctly, it made her interesting. He could mean that she was a curiosity, a specimen to be poked and prodded and pinned to a board for further study—she had not forgotten his cat-and-mouse remark from earlier—but she did not think that was so. He was intrigued.
Felicity wondered why.
• • •
DINNER was beef stew and biscuits. The stew was rich with meat and potatoes but had few vegetables and very little seasoning. The biscuits were hard. Felicity and Nat softened them by dipping them in the stew and washing them down with beer.
“You’re very quiet,” Nat said. He eyed her half-eaten plate of stew and compared it to the one he had wiped clean. “And not very hungry.”
She pushed her plate toward him. “Help yourself.”
He did. “What’s on your mind?”
“If you’re certain you want to know, I’m wondering how I am going to repay you for dinner.”
“Is that why you ate so little? Do you think I’m going to charge by the bite?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t discussed it.”
“You offered me the Pissarro.”
“You didn’t say you would accept it.”
“Didn’t I? Well, I will. It will be a pleasure to look at now and again, and it will square your debt and pay for your meals for a very long time. Does that improve your appetite?”
Felicity stopped him from pushing the plate back to her. “It’s all right. I’m still not hungry.” She raised her beer and regarded Nat over the rim of the mug. “Where will you hang it? The painting. You said it would be a pleasure to look at. Where will you hang it?”
Nat’s gaze narrowed on the painting as he studied it. “The Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
“You mean you’ll visit it?”
“Sure. So will lots of other people, I expect. I don’t exactly have a place for it.”
“Why is that? Where do you live?”
“Depends on what I’m doing. Hotels mostly. Boardinghouses occasionally. Outdoors when what I’m after is living there, too.”
“Are you a bounty hunter?”
“Some folks might say so. I wouldn’t.”
“What would you say?”
“I don’t mostly.” He held up a hand, palm out. She pressed her lips together and gave him a chance to swallow and think. “Repossession,” he said finally. “Repossession and recovery.”
“That does sound better than theft, abduction, and bounty hunting.” She sipped her beer. “Your employer makes unusual demands, Mr. Church.”
“Nat,” he said.
“Nat,” she repeated. “Nathaniel?”
“Only if you’re my mother. I’m Nat to everyone else.”
“Nat, then. Since you will be sharing this car with me for the foreseeable future, you may call me Felicity.”
He repeated her name and watched her eyes dart away. He even thought she might have blushed a little. He wondered about that. “Did your Jon Harding call you Felicity?”
“Of course.” She knew she had answered quickly, too quickly, judging by the way Nat was watching her. Quietly, in the manner of a confession, she amended her answer. “Sometimes. Not often. Jon was fond of using endearments.”
“Did you like that?”
The question startled her. Jon had never thought to ask her. She was not certain what she would have told him if he had, but she had the sense that nothing less than the truth would satisfy Nat Church. “It seemed careless,” she said. “As if he couldn’t be troubled to use four syllables when two would suffice. Darling. Dearest. Sometimes I wondered if he simply forgot my name. So, no, I didn’t like it.” Her smile was a trifle wistful. “Jon was frequently occupied with matters of business. It was important to him to continue to impress Edward Ravenwood.”
“He works for your father?”
“He does. It was one of the reasons Father was so delighted by our engagement and hopeful about the marriage.”
“So your father wanted a son. Anything else?”
Felicity sighed. “Grandchildren.”
“And you, Felicity? What do you want?”
“Something different.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ll know it when I find it. And when I find it, I will seize it with both hands and not let go until the breath leaves my body.”
Nat believed her. She made him believe her. He understood why the Falls Hollow Ladies Temperance League had followed her into jail. He even understood why they didn’t leave her there when they had the chance. What he did not understand was why his arrangement was with her father and not Jonathan Harding.
Night fell like a velvet curtain o
ver the countryside. When Felicity looked up from her knitting to mark the railcar’s progress, she saw very little beyond her reflection in the window. Nat had lit every lamp, and the effect was to make their car visible to anyone standing along the route, but to make the route invisible to her. She had often done the same in the evening, and it had never bothered her. Now she wondered about the towns she could not see and what opportunities she might be missing.
Felicity’s gaze moved slowly from the bank of windows to where Nat Church was sitting at the table playing solitaire. From where she was sitting in one corner of the small sofa, it was his profile that presented itself to her. She had looked over many times to study him and never surprised him studying her. It was difficult to know whether to be relieved or insulted and finally concluded she was a little of each.
At dinner he had worn a jacket he’d selected from Jon’s wardrobe. Because it was a bit snug across the back and perhaps an inch too short in the sleeves, it was an adequate, not perfect, fit. Felicity thought he probably wore it as a concession to some sort of formality that he believed she required. He had removed it after the porter took away their dishes and the remnants of their meal, and now he played cards in one of Jon’s crisp white shirts with the sleeves rolled up to three-quarter length and a dark satin vest embedded with flourishes in silver thread. The shirt and vest were a better fit than the jacket, and he looked as comfortable in them as he did in his own skin.
She watched him gather up the cards and begin to expertly shuffle them, his lean fingers deftly snapping the cards and squaring off the deck. She wondered if he played poker and supposed there was not a man alive who didn’t.
“Are you married?” she asked. Felicity managed not to drop a stitch, but only just. She had not known she was going to ask the question until she heard it, and upon hearing it, marveled that her voice had pitched itself in a soprano’s range. When he looked up from his cards and regarded her thoughtfully, Felicity made sure she returned that regard steadily while pretending that a tide of warm color was not washing over her face.
“I am not,” said Nat.
“Oh.” The click-click cadence of Felicity’s needles did not falter, but she had no idea where she was in the row. She startled herself with another question, though it seemed to her that Nat Church expected it. “Have you ever been engaged?”
“No.” He set the cards down and absently flicked the deck with his thumbnail. “There was a girl once, but nothing came of it.”
“You didn’t propose?”
“No. She saw it was coming and gently headed me off. It wouldn’t have worked. I know that now. There were too many years between us.”
“She must have been very young.”
Nat shook his head, his slim smile edged with amusement and regret. “The opposite. I was twelve. Miss Templeton was a little more than twice that.”
“About my age, then,” said Felicity. “I imagine she was flattered.”
“I don’t know about that. Embarrassed and uncomfortable probably better describes it.”
“I would have been flattered, even charmed.”
“In other circumstances perhaps she would have felt the same, but she was my younger sister’s governess, and if either of my parents thought she had encouraged me, she would have been dismissed from her position.”
“Of course. I didn’t realize.” Felicity’s eyes darted toward the bed. She had straightened the linens and smoothed the blankets while Nat was gone to get their dinner. The rumpled bedclothes had called attention to themselves in a way that Felicity found disturbing. When she looked back at Nat, she saw his slim smile had deepened. There was nothing to do but say what was on her mind.
“Have you determined where you will be sleeping this evening?”
Nat’s smile did not waver. He looked deliberately toward the bed and then back at Felicity. He thought she might have stopped breathing. “Are you really harboring some doubt about the answer to that?”
“I wish you weren’t amused,” she said after taking a careful breath. “Or rather, I wish I did not amuse you. I wouldn’t have posed the question if I knew the answer.”
The narrow lift of Nat’s mouth that defined his smile vanished. “Of course. I intend to sleep here.”
“In that chair?”
“In this car.”
“Yes, but where?”
Nat raked his fingers through his hair. “Well, I figure I asked for that. I don’t suppose I’ve given you much reason to think I can act the gentleman or even that I was raised to be one.”
“You did drug me.”
“Carried you off and shackled you, too.”
“You did all of that.” Felicity saw him nod, acknowledging the truth of it. What she did not see was regret. Without regret, there would be no apology. She did not wait for one and was not entirely sure one was warranted. “So?” she prompted.
“I plan to sleep on the floor,” he said. “That’s assuming you won’t begrudge me a few blankets. If that’s the case, I’ll sleep in the bed and you can have the floor.”
Now that her mind was eased, humor tugged at Felicity’s lips. “You may have as many blankets as you like. A pillow also.”
“Easily better accommodations than I had these past two nights.”
It was not said accusingly, but Felicity knew she was responsible. “When did you realize I asked for this coach to be put on a spur in Falls Hollow?”
“When I received a wire from your father while I was en route from Denver to Cheyenne. I had to get off and take another train going south, and then when I couldn’t get a connecting train to Falls Hollow, I had to ride for three days to intercept you before you left.”
“So Father is following my progress.”
“Every mile.”
“Of course. When I was traveling in Europe with friends, he sent two men to watch over us. It would have been better if he had told me. I wouldn’t have reported them to the gendarmes. There was a lot of fussing before we straightened it out.” Felicity offered up a Gallic shrug and moved her knitting from her lap to the basket at her side. “He could have had this car returned to him at any time. There isn’t an engineer on a rail line anywhere that would not have cooperated. Instead, he sent you because he has conceived this lesson for me, and it doesn’t seem that he wants me back until I’ve learned it or surrendered. I do not believe he will waver. It is like him to see a thing through to the end.”
That was Nat’s impression also, but he refrained from commenting. He asked, “Are you tired? I can put the screen in place if you would like to ready for bed.”
“Please.” Felicity rose at the same time he did and went to help him. She liked that he accepted her assistance without comment even though he was quite capable of managing alone. She would rather be an ally than an albatross.
Nat returned to the table and took up the cards again. He made a point of keeping his eyes on his game. He could imagine what was going on behind the painted silk screen without looking at it. When Felicity emerged, she was wearing a white linen shift beneath a dressing gown of ruby silk. In contrast to the delicacy of her sleepwear, she favored heavy gray woolen socks to more fashionable slippers.
Felicity caught Nat staring at her feet as she approached the bed. She stopped, lifted the hem of her shift as she looked down, and wriggled her toes. “They get cold,” she said.
He raised both hands in a gesture of innocence. “I didn’t say anything.”
Felicity made a small sound at the back of her throat and dropped her hem. She opened the trunk and set some blankets on the floor beside the bed and then dropped a pillow on top of them. “You can have any part of the floor that you like,” she said. “I’m not assuming you will want to sleep here.”
“There is just fine.”
She nudged the stack of blankets a bit farther to the left. “In the event I get up in the middle of the night,” she said. “I don’t want to step on you.” Turning her back on him, Felicity swept the bedcove
rs aside and sat down on the edge of the mattress. When she extinguished the lamp secured to the wall at her bedside, she saw Nat get up to take care of the other lamps in the coach. He left one lamp flickering on the table so he could resume his game and prepare for bed when he was ready.
“Good night, Felicity,” he said when she stopped turning under the covers and lay still. “Pleasant dreams.” He chuckled when his words were immediately followed by a distinctive thud. Metal crashed against wood as Felicity kicked the leg iron out of her bed.
• • •
ONE day passed without incident. Then two. On day three Felicity paced the length of the railcar so often that Nat threatened to shackle her. She eyed his gun but never revealed if she was considering shooting him or herself. Nat would not have blamed her for attempting either, but only because the real target of her frustration was her absent father. Nat restrained the impulse to point it out and invited her to play cards instead. She won more games than she lost until he introduced liquor into their play. After that she won them all.
Nat woke with a sore head on day four. Felicity was relentlessly cheerful. As a strategy, Nat decided it was diabolical. And, as he had an appreciation for the diabolical, he liked her more for it.
A week in, Felicity presented Nat with her plan to find work in a dance hall. She was only marginally discouraged when he told her the steps she had mastered for the ballroom would not serve her on the stage. That night, behind the privacy screen, she practiced fan kicks. Nat watched the shadow play, the flutter of her petticoats, and imagined he could see up the length of her bare leg all the way to the Promised Land. He took out his gun and began cleaning it.
Day to day, Felicity wondered at the patience of her jailer. She had not tortured him with variations on “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as she had done to Joe Pepper, but she had rearranged every piece of unsecured furniture several times, cheated at cards on three successive evenings, and read aloud to him from at least one article in every ladies’ periodical he procured for her. It was hard not to appreciate, even admire, the man’s equanimity. Whether it was his intent or not, he helped her make peace with her situation, at least until night bore down on them.
