by Amy Faye
A lie spreads fast; it’s hard to correct a false first impression, after all. I let out a breath. “Then…”
“Your people back there, they’ll have seen me.” He pulled up the horse to a stop. “I’m going to grab some firewood. Don’t get any ideas.”
I got several ideas. I knew the way we’d come. I could go back. It was a long way off, but I’d seen a town, off in the distance. Only a few miles back. I tried to calculate how far it would be. Only a few short miles. Perhaps two hours.
And I could be out of sight within ten minutes, in the dark. There was no way that Euler would be able to find me.
He slid out of the saddle as if there was no doubt in his mind that I would slide off after. He turned his back right on me. I didn’t need to walk. I could take the horse. And his rifle was tucked into a saddle-holster. Which left him with only the pistol on his hip.
Within a minute, even less, I could be out of range of that. I could be back home before tomorrow morning dawned.
I thought of Jodie, sitting there, his nose bloodied and his head spinning because of a door catching him right on the nose. I sucked in a breath.
I thought of home. Of Mother, who barely left her bed. Of the fact that if I didn’t find something else, I wouldn’t ever be able to leave her side. Not until it was long past time for me to start a family of my own.
I thought of my father. I never knew him, not as a grown woman. He died when I was six. He left when I was five. In my memories he’s a big man. He could have been twenty feet tall for all I know. But children see things in a strange way.
And I knew, in my gut, that I couldn’t go back. Not if I wanted to have a life of my own. I needed to get away somehow. And eventually, I would. But not at that moment.
I took a deep breath. I would find another chance. But it would be someplace where I could settle down and live my life. Until then, I would be in deep trouble.
Five
I don’t know what I intended at the time. I just know that my original plan was to leave later. When things turned around. But there was a glimmer of hope, at least. It didn’t last long. It had always been a bad plan, but I hadn’t realized how quickly that it would turn around.
I don’t know how far it was precisely; I’d never heard of Patience on any map I’d ever seen. But the maps I had seen were only short in their range. After two days’ ride, we must have been more than fifty miles, and that would put us well off of any of the regional maps I had the luck to see.
So it was hard to say exactly how far it had been. That went double, because I had already started to lose my sense of time. There was food, of course, but I kept myself from eating too much of it. It seemed to me that Baron Euler did the same for himself; there wasn’t enough food to go around, I guessed.
But hunger made me delirious, made it hard to tell the passage of time exactly. Had it been two days? Or three? I was fairly certain it was two. It ought to have been easy enough to count. But what if I’d forgotten one, on the road? Five meals, all the same. Or perhaps more. A little bread, a few beans. It was hardly enough to keep a person fed.
It was the food that Euler had, though. It wasn’t my place to criticize; after all, I didn’t think that he had an intention of taking me with him. I don’t know what he did intend with me. But it was something that I didn’t want to find out.
When we rode into town, he was as silent as ever. He seemed to be thinking some private thought. I guessed that he was either planning to provision for the rest of the trip, or that he was planning on leaving me here, or that we’d already arrived at his home base.
Of the three, the first was the closest to the truth. But even in the years after, I have learned surprisingly little about Baron Euler before we met; he guards his youth too closely.
I leaned back against him, tired. He pushed me forward, not roughly, and slipped a leg around the horse’s back and let himself down. I pushed myself back using the pommel that was unpleasantly close to my pelvis, gave myself a moment to rest, and then did the same.
He tied off the horse to a hitching post, and I followed. Maybe I was supposed to stay outside. Maybe he had some kind of plan. But if that was what he’d intended then he ought to have said something. I couldn’t be expected to read his mind.
He spoke to a man behind the counter, who wear a purple brocade vest and kept his face smooth-shaved. If Jodie had grown up in a different town, as a city boy, then I guessed that he might have looked something like the man behind the counter.
He said something in response. I kept walking closer until I can hear.
“… with you?” The beginning of the sentence was lost to my ears. But the implication was clear from the pointed expression that the man gave me. He wanted to know how Euler and I fit together. I wanted to know that myself.
Euler turned and looked at me critically. Like he was annoyed that I had come up behind him like that and ruined some grand plan.
“Yessir,” he said finally, turning back. “That’s my wife, Marion.”
I was startled to think that he’d bothered to remember my name. He hadn’t called me by it in the days since we’d left. I’d given it once, the first day, and I hadn’t been asked again afterward. Every time since had been girl. It had been natural to assume he’d forgotten.
“I take it that you will be wanting to share quarters, then, sir?”
He looked back at me. I don’t know precisely what I looked like; it’s impossible for someone to see without a looking glass, and there wasn’t one. If there was, I would have avoided looking into it. Because I could feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment, either way. I faced toward the floor and stared at my feet and tried not to think about it.
Euler turned back. “I suppose that would be amenable,” he said. He was planning something, I knew. I had some very specific ideas about what I thought that it was. What I didn’t have was a solid grasp on what my thoughts were on those ideas.
Worse, I had a fairly specific idea what my thoughts were. And I had a feeling in my gut that I should have had different thoughts. After all, I thought, it was downright improper.
Whatever he told that clerk, he wasn’t my husband. I wasn’t his wife. But then, I thought… there were plenty of men in the Bible who fell in love at a glance toward their lovers. Jacob and Rachel. They barely knew each other an hour before he asked her father for her hand.
I had only known Baron Euler a little more than two days. And I should have known by that point that he was a bad fit with me. That he was the kind of man that I ought to avoid. He was nothing like Christ, for one. The one thing I knew about him was that he was a man who never turned the other cheek.
But the heart wanted what it wanted. And I was, in spite of myself, powerless to change that. It didn’t mean that I couldn’t try, though. I could at least pretend for a little while that I wasn’t interested. Eventually, I’d get myself sorted out, and then I wouldn’t have to sit there thinking that I’d done something wrong.
Because by that point, I’d have either talked myself out of it, or I’d have figured out why it wasn’t wrong. But in that moment, with Baron turned back to me and carrying a room key, I flushed with the thought of where things were going. And I shuddered because no matter how much I told myself that I ought to hate the whole idea, I couldn’t make myself feel anything but desire.
Six
Baron’s arm hooked into mine. It wasn’t a violent action by any means, but it felt like a threat in my gut. I hated to admit it, but I was afraid. And I couldn’t even say what I was afraid of.
I was afraid of him, but not in that moment. I wasn’t unduly afraid of him, like some sort of gun-toting boogeyman. He was who he was. I had been with him two previous nights, and neither night had any danger in store for me.
Something about this place, though, put me on edge. Perhaps it was the implication that one bed put in my mind. And perhaps more than that, it had something to do with the fact that in spite of my best efforts, I hadn�
��t yet managed to come up with any convincing excuses why it couldn’t happen.
I had good reasons why it shouldn’t. I had my conviction that it would be improper. But I couldn’t convince myself that I would make that impropriety known, and I couldn’t convince myself that if I were to make a fuss, that he would care about impropriety.
Of course, I didn’t know his feelings about taking a woman to bed without her enthusiastic approval. But I didn’t know that I would explicitly disapprove him if he were to put the question to me. It stirred a nervous feeling in my stomach. What if he tried to ravish me?
He didn’t need to pull hard, or yank, or squeeze me roughly to take me along with him. That was the first sign, I think, in my own gut. The first thing telling me that I was more than seriously considering letting him have his way with me.
But I still wasn’t ready to admit that to myself. I was going to be a good Christian woman. I’d always been one in the past. I’d studied my father’s Bible. I’d memorized plenty of verses. I could recite them at will. And yet…
I sucked in a breath as he put the key into a lock. It fit in perfectly. I tried not to imagine that it was a symbol for something else. The idea came unbidden. Lock and key, indeed. My heart raced. He pushed the door open.
“Go lay down,” he said roughly. My heartbeat surged in my ears, and the pit fell out of the bottom of my stomach. I knew where this was going, and I knew that I wasn’t ready for it.
But ready or not, I knew that it was going to come, and I knew that I wasn’t going to fight him on it. The look in his eyes the first day, and glances throughout our time together, kept playing out in my head. Ideas that he’d had about us. Ideas that I hadn’t been willing to let him realize that I had shared.
I took a shaky step toward the bed and took a deep breath, and then I laid down on it. My body refused to move the way that I wanted it to. I wanted to look cool and calm and controlled, to look like I knew what I was doing with myself.
But I couldn’t. I was in a panic, and my body moved stiffly. I struggled to take a breath. I could feel him watching me. I laid on the bed stiffly. Looked over at him.
He was still standing in the doorway. He was watching me. Thinking something. Judging something. I couldn’t say what it was, but I knew that whatever he was thinking, he was thinking it about me.
And then he pursed his lips.
“I’ve got to go get the horses dealt with. Rest there. I’ll bring you something to eat.”
The air went out of my stomach.
“How long do you think you’ll be?”
“Only a little while,” he told me. The fear had built up in my stomach so much that the very suggestion that he might not be about to take what he wanted from me felt like it let the air out of me.
“Okay.”
He turned, and he was gone. It took me a moment before the world started to speed up again. Before I realized what was going on. I hated myself for being so startled. For the way that I was starting to wonder why he hadn’t. It was what I wanted. I wanted to keep my virtue. That was obvious.
Right?
I pushed myself out of bed. There was something I needed to do. Rest wasn’t one of the things that was on the list. I crept to the door and listened for a long moment. The hallway was silent. Somewhere in the depths of the hotel, I heard the sound of boots thumping on floorboards as someone walked down the stairs.
I didn’t have to wonder who it was. I gave Baron a few minutes to get out, and then I put my hand on the doorknob and gave it a turn. Baron had locked it from the outside. But this side had a simple knob to turn. It thumped as it came undone, and then the door opened easily.
I let out a low breath and stepped out into the hallway. The floorboards had been covered with a rug, which had once been bright red. The color still showed through around the edges, where the middle had been rubbed to a dull brown. I kept to the middle, as if the red edges might leave footprints for Euler to find when he returned.
I crept down the stairs, still wearing my riding clothes.
The man behind the counter was smiling at me. He seemed like he smiled at everyone, in a distant, professional manner. He nodded as I approached.
“Missus Walker?”
“Can you have a telegram sent for me?”
“Ma’am?”
“On my husband’s tab.”
“Of course, we can arrange that sort of thing, but…” A fold appeared between his eyebrows, and then he smoothed his face over. “What should the message say?”
He held a scrap of paper in his hand, and a stub of a pencil. His eyes watched my face. I closed my eyes and composed a short message in my head. The shortest I could make it, without missing anything.
“I am fine,” I said. “Period. Love, comma, Marion. Full stop.”
The man wrote the message down. He read it back to me. It wasn’t a long message, and he hadn’t had much opportunity to screw it up. I nodded.
“Make sure that my family gets that message, back in Tempest. Sarah and Jodie Young.”
“Of course,” he agreed, and nodded.
If I’d realized the trouble that was going to come out of that decision, I might have reconsidered.
But I didn’t realize it. And I didn’t reconsider. As the man behind the desk called over a young boy to go run the message to the telegram office, the pair of them conspired, in a way, to seal my fate. All while they thought of nothing but doing precisely what I’d asked of them.
Seven
The feeling in my gut as I laid in the bed was something close to elation. I’d gotten my message out. I wasn’t expecting anyone to wait for me at that point. Or maybe they would continue to wait. It wasn’t my problem any more, though. They didn’t have to grieve. If they chose to, then that would be their problem. Nothing of my doing.
I laid in bed and closed my eyes. The time that passed after that passed quickly. I didn’t think too hard about anything. I didn’t spend my time doing much of anything at all. Instead, I just waited. And eventually, I was going to have everything go just right.
The footsteps on the floorboards outside started up. They had a gait that wasn’t peculiar in any way. But somehow, I knew in my gut that Baron Euler was going to come through the door any moment. And I knew that it didn’t matter what happened after that.
If anything had happened, I’d freed myself from the guilt of abandoning my family. And that wasn’t going to be that bad at all. So when he abandoned me, at least I’d set myself up with an excuse for not going back.
The key entered the lock. I could feel the warm tingle in my belly get warmer and more present. The door opened. I didn’t look over. It was more interesting to let him think that I was asleep.
He closed the door again. I could hear his boots on the floor. They got closer. Step. Step. Step. He closed the distance easily. I felt the bed sag under the added weight.
“Get up,” he growled.
I opened my eyes. He looked angry.
“What?”
“Up,” he said again.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked at me with a fury I could neither explain nor respond to. There was a vague fear in my gut. A fear that had nothing to do with ravishing.
“Up.”
I did what I was told and stood up. His hand clapped around my upper arm, as rough as it had been when he first took me out of that bank. And then he pulled.
I stumbled as he pulled, and fell. He didn’t react with any surprise. As far as I could tell I had done precisely what he wanted. My weight hung precariously forward, teetering on the edge of throwing me completely off-balance. He pulled again.
That time I did fall, forward, across his knees. My bottom was up high in the air. My father had paddled me, once. When I was a very little girl. But he had been gone since fifteen years hence. Somehow, I still knew what was coming.
“You little girl,” he said. His hand came down hard on my bottom. It exploded in pain.
“I don�
�t know what I did.”
“You sent a message.” He brought his hand down again. It made a loud clapping sound that exploded through the room, and red-hot pain shot up my spine.
“I’m sorry,” I cried out.
“Do you even understand what you did?”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. He pulled on my shoulder and sent me to the ground. To my knees. I was in too much pain to realize the lewdness of position that it put me in.
“You put me at direct threat. They’re going to know now, any minute, where you are. Where I am. And they’re going to send somebody. Not your fat oaf Sheriff, either. No, they’re going to send someone who knows what he’s doing. You little fool.”
“I’m sorry,” I said a third time.
He grit his teeth together and looked at me. He was angry. I was afraid. Worst of all, the fluttering in my stomach, the vague desire to please him in a way that was decidedly improper, hadn’t gone away in the least. If anything it was stronger than ever.
“I know,” he said. “Come here.”
He patted a spot on his thigh. I laid my head down on it.
“You didn’t think at all, did you?”
“No,” I said. Tears were in my eyes. They threatened to fall, and I fought to stop them from doing it. “I just, I didn’t want anyone to worry.”
He let out a breath. “You’re very thoughtful,” he said. “But you need to use your head.”
“I promise,” I said. “Are you angry?”
He closed his eyes. “You didn’t know any better. I brought you along. My problem.”
“I’m sorry that I’m a problem.”
“Whatever you do is my responsibility. You can just make it up to me.”
My heart stopped in my chest. “What?”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me up to my feet.
“Bend over,” he said.
My hands shook. Was he implying… maybe. I wanted to tell myself that he couldn’t mean that. But I wanted to believe that he did, too. I wasn’t ready to unpack what that was supposed to mean.
