“You were in a sorry state,” Victoria informed him. “You may have been hallucinating a touch.”
“Were you the one who was singing to me?”
Victoria’s face turned scarlet, but she lifted her chin another inch and said, “You need food.”
The man shook his head, wincing as he did so, and seized the decanter she had left on the table. Yanking out the topper with his teeth, he spat it onto the floor and tipped the amber liquid into his mouth.
“I have glasses,” Victoria admonished sourly. “There is no need to behave like a heathen.”
There was no response except perhaps an increase in the avid slurping of her less-than-mannerly companion. When at last he sat the decanter back on the table, he belched loudly. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he said. He attempted a half-bow and turned himself around. “I’ll be off now.”
Victoria chuckled in spite of herself as the man tottered across the kitchen. She stepped forward and seized his massive arm to keep him from falling.
“Fool,” she uttered irritably. “You will be quite dead before you make it down the back steps, and then all of my efforts on your behalf last night will be for naught. Come here.”
He came willingly, much to Victoria’s surprise. Judging by his continual grunting and wheezing, he was in a good deal of pain. She would have felt quite sorry for him if he hadn’t been tracking mud and blood all through the house.
“Wait here,” she told him, and she leaned him against the sitting room wall. “I’ll not have you mucking up the settee. It is a Frambrogue.”
“Fram—what’s it?” growled the man as Victoria tugged out a sheet and tossed it over the cushions.
“Never mind,” Victoria waved off her words and went to help him out of his coat. Her eyes widened as he shucked his shirt and his bare chest was revealed. His abdomen was flat and his hardened muscles contracted as he moved. Victoria couldn’t help the jolt of interest that shot through her. She could have lain both her palms flat against his ribs and not spanned the front of his body.
The man met her eyes, and her cheeks flamed a brilliant red once more. She hadn’t been this close to a man since her husband had died.
Averting her gaze from his nauseatingly pleased grin, Victoria took hold of his arm and hobbled him toward the couch.
“I’ll find you something to wear,” she said hurriedly, and she exited the room without looking at him.
At the top of the stairs, she paused to catch her breath, one hand against her breast. “For shame,” she muttered, and she glanced at the portrait of Jaxsom on the landing. A thief her husband might have been, but he had been her husband never the less, and Victoria still thought that his memory deserved more respect than that. How could she have stood there ogling that man’s chest like an imbecile?
Her fingers fluttered, and she pressed a cool palm to her cheek before proceeding to the room at the end of the hall. Here, she stopped, her hand on the door knob, and took a deep breath. She hadn’t entered the bedroom she had shared with Jaxsom since his funeral, but she could hardly allow that stranger to parade about her home without any clothes. She shuddered, and to her chagrin, it was not from disgust.
Shaking her head, Victoria turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Her breath caught in her throat. For a fraction of a moment, she seemed to see the room as she remembered it, with the windows thrown open and full of light, and her husband fussing with his tie in the wardrobe mirror.
“Can you straighten this, darling?” he said with a frustrated grimace. “The blasted thing flat-out refuses to match up.”
“A bit of asymmetry never hurt anyone,” Victoria chuckled at his side, and she smiled at him in the mirror…
Victoria backed out of the room with a gasp, shutting the door softly as tears pooled in her wide eyes. He had been there. Just there. She had straightened his tie before he’d left home that morning. And now…
A throaty cough from the floor below jogged her senses. She was here for a reason. Victoria took another deep breath and pushed the door open once more.
It was empty, and very dark.
Just as she had known that it would be. The windows were closed, and the air that wafted out to meet Victoria smelled stale and musty.
She did not glance at the large mahogany bed frame as she crossed the room and made directly for the wardrobe.
Once upon a happier time, she had purchased a shirt for Jack that had arrived from the mercantile two sizes too large. He had insisted on keeping the thing, saying it’d be a fine riding shirt. He’d also teased that it would allow him some growing space, as if the man ever gained an inch in any direction.
Smiling sadly, she located the shirt and held it up to the light. It might just cover the vast form of the man lying downstairs on her settee.
Chapter Four
Luther grunted as the pretty little woman moved back into his line of sight, carrying a frilly brown shirt with laces at the collar. He was lying on her fancy cushions in her rather fancy room in her rather fancy house, and not a whit pleased about it.
His vision was still natant and blurry, and he had a difficult time bringing her prissy little nose into focus as she made to hand him the blouse.
“This should fit,” she murmured, still avoiding his eyes with her own hazel ones. Luther’s attention caught at the sight of those eyes. Like deep pools in a sunlit forest, they were. Green one moment, a deep brown the next. Overt male interest rose up inside him, poking out its head from the dark cave Luther had abandoned such things in years ago. He’d no time to deal with women these days. Not in his line of work, anyways.
He took the shirt that she held out to him between his thumb and forefinger and held it up to the light. “This a dress?” he asked quizzically. She looked affronted. At least, he thought that she did. Her pretty face was rather stern and pinched, as though she’d never smiled before in all her life.
“No,” was her biting response. “It was my husband’s.”
“Was?” Luther noticed the past tense as he clumsily tugged the awkward garment over his head with his good arm.
She lifted her pointed little chin at him again. “My husband passed earlier this year.”
Luther’s head popped out of the blouse.
“Shame that,” he said. “Mind you, I don’t fancy his taste in clothes.” He eyed her. “His taste in women is debatable as well.”
She crossed her arms over her bosom at the insult, drawing his gaze. He tried not to notice the rise and fall of her breath… but his irritability increased as he struggled to pull his eyes away.
“Well, sir, this particular woman spent the better part of her night attempting to keep you alive on her kitchen floor!” she huffed. “And I am now quite beginning to regret that act of generosity.”
Luther would have laughed if he did not think that his head might split open in the attempt. Instead, he grimaced as he made every effort to maneuver his fist through the last lacy cuff. Each time he moved, pain lanced through his shoulder as though he was being shot all over again.
“Have you any idea where my horse might have run off to?” he asked, wincing as he made to tug the collar of the shirt away from his neck.
The woman shook her head. “When I came upon you, you were already half way to Heaven’s door,” she said. “I am afraid that your horse might have been frightened by the storm.”
He nodded. He was sure that she was correct. Georgia had never been fond of loud noises. The thunder had likely caused her to throw him.
“What should I call you Mister—”
“Garrison,” grunted Luther. He flinched as he spoke. The liquor was dimming some of the pain, but not nearly enough.
“What’d you do with the bullet?” he asked suddenly.
“The one I dug from your back, you mean?” the woman asked innocently. “I tossed it in the bin.”
“I’ll be needing it back,” said Luther. “I’d like to hang on to the thing, if it�
�s all the same to you.”
The woman looked deeply unnerved by this statement. “What on Earth for?”
Luther smiled ruefully. “Could have killed me with it, he could have. I’d like to hang on to it until I can pay him back in kind.”
“The man who shot you?”
Luther glanced up at her, then back down, and nodded sharply.
“Who was he?” she asked, and Luther saw a flicker of curiosity ignite in her enchanting hazel eyes. “Why is it that you were shot?”
“He was my cousin,” said Luther. For a moment, he considered telling this woman that his cousin was Mace Thorne, the notorious outlaw. She ought to know what sort of danger she was in. But if he told her, she was sure to go to the marshal, and Luther knew he couldn’t outrun the law in his current state.
“Did you deserve to be shot?” she asked, cocking her head to the side with a distinctly annoying expression on her full lips. It was almost a smirk.
Luther frowned at her. “No, I certainly did not,” he said.
She chuckled.
“You need food,” she repeated, and she stood up. “I must insist that you stay right where you are, Mr. Garrison. I haven’t the time to scrub every item that you touch along the way if you move.”
Luther scowled after the woman as she left the room, her hips swinging tantalizingly at him as she went. He cursed and let his head sink back against her fancy cushions. What a ridiculous situation to have landed himself in.
He tried to move his right arm, but the sharp pain in his shoulder screamed out at him and Luther pursed his lips against it, breathing heavily through his nose. He needed to get moving. He couldn’t stay here. What if Mace tracked him to this woman’s home? His heart leapt with fear at the idea that Mace might slaughter her the way he had so many others. Something had to be done about his cousin. Mace Thorne had to be stopped.
“I should have pulled the trigger,” he muttered to himself.
“What was that?” the woman had returned. She was eyeing him suspiciously, and Luther noted that she was extremely nice to look at, even if she was glaring at him. To complete this vision of perfection, she was carrying a heavily laden tea tray, which she sat before him on the ornately carved coffee table.
“What did you say?” she repeated, positioning herself gracefully in the empty chintz armchair opposite him.
“Nothing,” Luther muttered. “What is this?”
“Food,” she said icily. “You simply must eat something. Your body needs to heal. The faster you heal, the sooner you can remove yourself from my sitting room.”
“Trust me,” grumbled Luther, bending forward carefully to take a slice of bread from the tray. “Nothing would give me more pleasure.”
She fidgeted with an invisible speck of dust on the arm of her chair.
“What did you say your name was?” he mumbled at her through a mouthful of bread.
She wrinkled her little nose at his rudeness. “Missus Rhyan, to you,” she said, her expression growing more and more sour by the moment. He wondered if her angular eyebrow could climb quite high enough on her forehead to display her sense of utter disapproval.
“Well, Missus Rhyan,” he smirked at her, and raised the bread in his left hand as though toasting her. “I owe you my thanks.”
“Yes, I quite think that you do,” she responded stiffly. He thought he saw her flinch as a smattering of crumbs cascaded from his hand down onto the fine antique rug beneath his feet. “This is not a long-standing situation, you understand,” she said. “I expect you to recuperate for a handful of days and then be on your way. I am highly uninterested in the gossip it might cause if anyone were to find out I have a strange man living under my husband’s roof.”
He belched in response.
She wrinkled her nose at him once more.
He chuckled and immediately wished he hadn’t. The movement caused his head to spin. He sat back against the couch cushions.
“Water,” he said. “Do you have some?”
She promptly climbed to her feet and returned moments later with a glass.
“I suspect that the amount of whiskey you downed has addled your senses,” she said.
He accepted the glass with a word of thanks and smiled at her. His eyes had gone bleary again. “Best sort of addelation if I do say so myself,” he murmured.
“Addelation is not a word,” she reprimanded, standing over him. She suddenly reached out and laid a palm against his forehead, and her touch was cool against the heat of his skin. “You’re quite flushed.”
“It’s the whiskey,” he said, waving her off.
“It may be a fever setting in,” she said. “You must finish eating and lie directly down. You need to rest and drink plenty of fluids.”
“Has anyone ever mentioned that you’re a bossy sort of woman?” grouched Luther, but he drank a second glass of water without any complaint, finished off his bread, and did as he was bid.
“I shall come back and check on you in a few hours,” said the woman. She left the tray on the coffee table and began to move away from him, but before she had gone, she bent over the back of the couch to fix him with her fierce hazel eyes. “Please do your very best not to die on the settee,” she instructed.
He grunted at her and flung his good arm up to cover his face as she doused the lights.
∞∞∞
Luther awoke to a stiffness in his body the likes of which he had never known. The pain in his right shoulder was so severe, it was as though someone had taken a flaming torch to the wound. His every attempt to draw air felt constricted, and the lights shining between the gaps in the curtains were like twin swords in his eyes.
He squinted around the room, allowing his eyes to adjust. He’d noticed the night before that he was in a fine manor house of some sort, but it was only now that he was truly able to take in his surroundings.
He was lying in the center of a very grand sitting room. Above him, a magnificent crystal chandelier was casting glittering patterns over the carpet. In the corner of the room, beside the entrance to the kitchen, sat a large grand piano. On the other side of that, a brick fireplace sat empty, as though a fire had not been burned in it for several months. In the opposite corner of the room, a fine writing desk reposed below a large painting of a duck swimming across a pond. The closest that Luther had ever come to being in a room like this was when he had had to visit the Dean’s office at Carolina State when he was nineteen.
He sighed and stretched his good arm over the side of the couch.
When a sudden knock sounded on the front door, Luther’s head jerked around.
What kind of woman entertains guests at this abominable hour? He shouldn’t be spotted here. Where could he hide?
Just then, his pretty young savior of the night before crept down the stairs. She placed a finger against her lips, and Luther saw that she was wearing yet another fine gown. It was blue this time, and the color made her hazel eyes sparkle. How many dresses did this woman have?
She stepped forward and tugged open the door, and Luther ducked his face down behind the sofa, hiding himself from view.
“Missus Rhyan,” said a voice.
“Good morning, Mr. Foswick,” she responded, and Luther saw her shoulders droop. “This is very early for a call. What can I do for you?”
The sound of a throat clearing, and then, “I wondered… if I might have a private word?”
The woman hesitated. “I am rather… indisposed this morning,” she murmured. “I am afraid that I cannot invite you inside.”
“That is just as well,” said the mysterious Mr. Foswick. “I have merely come to inform you that I will be setting off tomorrow. I must bid you adieu and wish you luck in your current… situation.”
“You are leaving?!” Missus Rhyan’s voice rose higher than before. “Now? But, sir! I was under the impression that you intended to stay in Silverpines and assist me in preparing a case!”
“I am afraid that is no longer possible,”
said the man’s voice. There came the sound of a briefcase snapping open, and Luther was put in mind of a crab clicking its pincers decisively. “As you can see here, these accounts have been emptied.”
“Emptied?!” she exclaimed. “Emptied by who?! That money belongs to the town of Silverpines! I must return it to them!”
“That is the thing, Missus Rhyan,” and the man’s voice sounded very uncomfortable now. “It shows here that these accounts were emptied… by you. I am afraid that I cannot be party to such deceitful behavior. Good day to you.”
Luther heard the click-clacking of heeled boots against wood as the man departed. He glanced up over cushions to see the little Missus Rhyan standing in the entryway, looking very lost and desperately sad. His heart gave a sudden throb.
She stood there a moment longer, and then, as though she had suddenly realized what she was doing, she stepped back into the hall and shut the door. Luther heard the lock click into place.
He cleared his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was harsh with disuse. “Are you all right?”
“Oh yes,” she murmured, her back straight as a fire poker, but she did not turn her head to fix him with her extraordinary eyes. “I am quite well,” and she moved away from him down the hall. A moment later, Luther saw her shadow flitting about in the kitchen.
What was all that about?
He peered around at the fine furnishings surrounding him. Had this woman somehow managed to empty the entire town’s accounts? He chuckled. Perhaps this little spitfire was more of an outlaw than he was.
Chapter Five
Victoria was breathing hard as she fussed about in the kitchen. She could not pretend now that she was not afraid. Where had the money gone? Who had taken it? What would happen when the rest of the town discovered what had happened? And Mr. Foswick had said that her name was listed as the withdrawer?! How was that possible?!
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