by Kristin Holt
“Maybe someone inside knows where the cobbler’s business is now?”
“A fine idea, Darling.”
Before she recognized his intention, he’d swung her into his arms to carry her across the street.
She squealed with laughter. “Put me down. I’m quite capable of walking.”
“The streets are full of muck.”
“Lawrence streets were, too. I’m quite capable of finding my way across without soiling my shoes or skirts.”
He carried her as if she weighed little. The sparkle in his eyes when he looked at her made her feel like she’d become the center of his world.
A good place to be.
“We need to feed you four meals a day. I think your petticoats and suit weigh more than you do.” He bounced her in his arms as if she were a little child.
“You’re a tease, Mr. Taylor.”
They’d just reached the opposite corner when a man approached too fast and too close.
Josie had walked to work and home again, often in the dark. She and Lessie had honed reflexes and learned to pay careful attention to their surroundings.
She recognized danger when she saw it. “Adam— watch out!”
The man charged. Sunlight flashed off his blade.
“Knife,” she yelled. “He has a knife.”
Adam flexed, twisting to put himself between her and danger.
“No.” On impulse, she kicked, desperate to deflect the man’s aim. “No!”
She half-expected the attacker to flee.
Often the threat of exposure ended such threats… but not this man.
He fell back half a step, and lunged again.
She wrenched her outside leg to block the blade. Her boot connected with the attacker’s arm, but ineffectively.
Frustration mounted. Josie bucked to free herself from her husband’s hold.
The villain feinted, thrust, slashed.
Josie screamed.
Adam could not defend himself while cradling her like a little child. But he spun, keeping her away from the knife blade.
Her feet finally touched the boardwalk.
Adam relented even as the attacker shoved free, sprinting back the way he’d come.
Josie shook from crown to toe. She’d seen and survived and experienced plenty like this before… but this seemed… off. Not merely premeditated, but personal. This was no pick-pocket.
Adam’s face lost its color. He clutched his ribs under his left arm. He pushed a hand beneath his suit coat and against the wound.
“You’re hurt.” She grabbed his wrist, needing to know, desperate to see.
His hand came away from his black suit vest, covered in bright red blood.
“My God,” Adam said in shock, his expression one of disbelief and pain. “That man tried to kill me.”
Adam kept his eyes open on the way back to the train car.
No way would a thug jump him again without warning.
His side burned, but best he could tell, the knife wound had grazed his ribs and was shallow. It stung like the dickens but compared to the attacker’s obvious intentions, Adam had come through it blessedly well.
Josie had saved his life.
Back on the private car, Josie called to Karl and Milton. “Are you three safe?”
A quick conversation ensued, Josie insisted they lock the exterior car doors and watch for trouble.
Adam doubted the ruffian would follow them on board the train, but he supposed that would depend entirely on the man’s motivation. Why would a brute in Gunnison attack in daylight?
In the bedroom, he peeled off his ruined suit coat and vest. He pulled his damaged shirt from his trousers and stripped his union suit to his waist. He needed to get a look at the wound, clean it, and stop the bleeding.
Josie gave the staff a hurried list of instructions. “Boil water. I need scissors, Mrs. Bushnell, and your finest needles and dark thread— heavy thread, if you have it. Drop the scissors and needles into the water, the thread, too, and find me tongs or something else to use to fish them out once properly boiled.”
“Josie— it’s not that bad.”
He held a clean handkerchief against the wound and the bleeding slowed instantly. He pulled the gash apart with his fingers to assess the depth and sure enough, a mere flesh wound.
But Karl and Milton apparently believed her more than they believed him, for the men ran for the galley, apparently to boil water and gather her implements.
Josie stormed into the bedchamber, pulling off her new jacket and tossing it at the chair in the corner. She rolled up her blouse sleeves and washed her hands in the sink.
“I doubt I need stitches.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” She tempered her words with a soft voice, so filled with affection and concern he lost his will to argue with her.
“I don’t want you to go back out there while that ruffian’s loose,” Adam told his wife. “Either to find a doctor or to report the ruffian to the law. My priority is keeping you safe.”
“I’ll stitch your wound. We don’t need a doctor. I can handle this.”
“You’ve sewn up injuries?”
“Of course. My sister and I, and some of our roommates, never had money to pay a doctor’s fee.”
He couldn’t imagine what that must be like.
Josie washed her hands, working up a fine lather in the lavatory sink. She dried her hands on a clean towel and then assessed his wound. “Come out here and lie on the bed. I need the daylight to best see.”
He did as she asked.
Josie prodded with care. Took a close look, then pressed the handkerchief to the wound. The bleeding had nearly stopped. “You’re incredibly lucky. Another inch down, and he’d have pierced your bowel. An improved angle, and he’d have sliced between your ribs. I saw the length of that blade, Adam, and he could have destroyed a kidney, or…”
Her voice shook and emotion clamped down on her ability to speak.
He offered her his cleanest hand. She grasped it and held on as if his mortality had truly scared her.
Frankly, it scared him, too.
He met his wife’s gaze, held it… and would have sworn he glimpsed her heart in those coffee-colored eyes.
Not the most comfortable way to win his wife’s affections, but he’d take it.
A knock sounded on the door. “I have water.”
“Come in.” Josie swiped at tears on her cheeks. She issued orders, asked for the help she needed— a table, a wet washcloth, a clean towel— and set to work stitching his wound closed.
Adam held his observations until the staff had left the room. By then, the train was gaining speed and leaving Gunnison behind.
“You saw the man coming. You immediately recognized his intentions— and that scares me, Darling. That you even know that rough segment of the population. But I know one thing with utter certainty.”
She paused in her stitches, and really looked at him, truly listened.
He lost another good chunk of his heart to her.
Like Grandfather in his story, she listened— really listened— not only because she wanted the information but because she cared about him.
She saw him.
“You saved my life, Mrs. Taylor. If you hadn’t warned me, if you hadn’t kicked, fought—” he swallowed hard, love for his bride welling hot and thick and true. “You saved my life.”
How could he not love her?
Chapter Thirteen
That evening, retiring for the night was ever so much more comfortable. She and Adam repeated the decorative pillow removal from the bed in much the same way. He knocked them off the bed with a sweep of his arm and she carefully stacked them on the chair.
But when she joined him in bed and he put out the light, she easily slid into his embrace and rested her head upon his shoulder.
“Will you finish my bedtime story?” He smelled of toothpaste and soap. He’d shaved again, just prior to retiring. The gesture was possibly the s
weetest thing she’d ever seen.
“I’d love to.”
She’d noticed him slipping the word ‘love’ in to every possible usage throughout the day.
Will you assist me in addressing this letter?
I’d love to, Darling.
Would you care for a baked apple for dessert tonight?
I’d love one, Dearest.
“How do your stitches feel?”
“I’d utterly forgotten them.”
“Liar.”
“Darling wife. You must think the best of me. It wounds me to think you don’t.”
But his fingertips found her ribs and he tickled.
“Now, none of that.” She swatted his hands away from her ticklish spots. “I’m curious to know all about this greatest love story of all time.”
“Where did the story end last night?” He nuzzled her temple, trailing a warm tantalizing kiss along her forehead.
She knew precisely how the story had ended, and she rather hoped tonight’s installment of the tale would end in a similar fashion. Especially after the day’s startling realizations, she knew an urgency to hold onto him tightly, with both hands. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.
Thoughts such as those would lead her rapidly toward the cliff and the unstoppable fall into complete love with this man.
Part of her wanted to run at her greatest speed for the edge and leap from the precipice with all her might.
His lips lingered on hers.
His kisses warmed her clear through, made her nearly delirious with a kind of love she now understood was so different than the love she’d always known for her twin. Both were powerful. Both were special. But so very different. Romantic love, she understood, would not be the same as familial love.
She liked Adam’s word, familial.
He’d become her family. She fingered his gold band upon her finger, loved its weight and heft and reminders.
“Do you suppose,” she asked him, “you might one day wear a ring?”
“A wedding ring?”
“Yes. I understand it’s becoming the fashion for married men to wear a ring.”
“I believe I’d love that, Darling.” He dallied with the buttons at the neckline of her pretty white nightgown.
She smiled at his word choice.
“Is it too soon,” he whispered between kisses, to confess I’m falling in love with you?”
Snuggled in bed, flush against her newlywed husband, after a glorious day of courtship, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to accept that his affections for her, as arranged as their marriage but as unique and special as their individuality could very well have blossomed so quickly.
But she anticipated the cliff she stood at the edge of and peered over was a very long drop, indeed.
Adam was a man who could be loved in so very many ways. And the more she really looked at him, the way his grandfather learned to see his bride— the more about him she realized she respected, admired, and genuinely loved.
“No.” She pressed her lips to his jaw. “It’s not too early. But I ask you to say it only if you genuinely mean it. Will you do that for me?”
“Express words of love, only when genuine?”
“Yes.”
The trail of his fingertips along her collarbone was quite possibly the most reverent and exquisite touch that entire day. And that was really saying something.
“I vow, Mrs. Taylor, my Josie, that every time I tell you I love you, it is the most heartfelt and genuine emotion. And I find you are most easy to love.”
Hope unfurled within her. So sweet, so precious. So simple. As if love between a man and his wife were the natural order of things.
How had it come for her so easily? She could only hope her beloved sister had experienced the same precious gift— or would, someday— with Richard Cannon. Life in the presence of romantic love was certainly richer, with depth of texture, and a truly grand experience.
Adam kissed her temple and brought his mouth close to her ear. “Would you mind, Darling, if we finish your bedtime story tomorrow night?”
“Oh?”
“I believe I’d rather show you I love you.”
“He what?”
“Umm… Adam Taylor survived.”
Fury sat like a scalding frying pan in Robin’s gut. “You’re just telling me now?”
The weasel who’d promised his skill with a blade would handle it obviously hadn’t handled it. He flinched. The coward.
“Every day you let pass without telling me is another day you’re gonna do penance.”
He nodded vigorously.
“You’re going to write a story for the newspaper, telling quite the tale about how the new Mrs. Taylor stabbed her husband and poisoned him, too.”
“I am?”
“You are.” Robin took two steps closer and took great satisfaction at the smaller man’s flinch. “And you owe me near a week of other… duties.”
“Like what?”
“Double shifts. Scrubbing latrines. Laundry.” He snapped his fingers. “Go write that revealing letter to the editor.”
Robin watched the rat scurry away and made one solid decision. He was done leaving certain tasks to anyone else. It didn’t matter where Taylor’s rail car was at the moment, Robin would hunt him down.
This time, he’d handle it himself.
After careful planning, much observation, and repeated timing, Robin knew precisely what to do.
He waited waited in the distant shadows surrounding the Las Cruces rail station.
He’d taken his time with planning every single element. The precise length of the slow-burning fuse. Where and how to affix dynamite in place beneath a rail car.
The locomotive and most of the passengers would cross the bridge, safe and sound, one mile beyond the depot.
But before the last cars made it across, the fuse would reach the sticks.
At the right time, he crawled beneath the Pullman Private car, wired the explosives. A quick check of his pocket watch, and at the appointed time, he struck a Lucifer on the seat of his pants and touched it to the end of the fuse.
He stood back in the darkness and watched, as the train gained momentum, its smokestack belching into the dark New Mexico sky.
And grinned.
Behold the work of a master.
Chapter Fourteen
Adam awoke, startled awake by something. Josie slept soundly beside him.
He stared into the darkness, trying to place the nagging sixth sense. The train had stopped at a station for a nighttime exchange of cargo and to take on water and fuel.
Now, the hulking engine began its slow pull out of the depot.
Had he heard something? Perhaps a rustling beneath his coach?
It was probably nothing more than the lurch as the train first moved. Yet those things had ceased to wake him years ago.
The healing skin where the stitches had once been itched and his bladder was full. At least he can do something about the latter.
He made his way to the lavatory, used the facilities, then headed back to bed.
Odd— that flicker of light through the bedchamber window. The station house had been on the other side of the car.
He yawned widely.
Maybe he ought to take a look from the balcony?
He’d learned years ago to trust his gut. So though he wanted to return to bed and slide in beside his soft and sweet wife, he pulled on his trousers and a clean shirt over the underwear he’d happily returned to sleeping in the moment Josie had approved of his choice.
He strolled through the dark car to the back and opened the balcony door.
He caught a whiff— acrid, pungent— he’d know it anywhere.
A burning fuse.
The distinctive odor was present in every active mine.
He bolted to the edge of the railing and leaned over. He’d glimpsed the light from the window beside their bed.
Sure enough, a flash of light bounde
d along at the rail.
A burning fuse.
Tethered to a load directly beneath his window.
At Las Cruces station, someone had rigged a fuse to his car. Fuses always led to an explosive.
Panic, cold and fierce as a December day in Alaska seized Adam by the throat.
Some vile monster had lit a fuse to multiple sticks of Cannon Mining-purchased dynamite— immediately beneath the bed where he and his wife slept.
Fear and determination coalesced.
The fuse— how long was the fuse? Did he have time to dismantle it?
He leaned over the railing, clutching the bars with all his strength, attempting to peer beneath to glimpse the dynamite quantity.
Gah! It didn’t matter— one stick or fifty. From here, zero chance of reaching it on a moving train.
He slammed his palms onto the railing in impotence.
His mind whirled. Just ahead, a cargo-carrying car— not likely any lives at stake. Just behind them, a few more cars. He’d not seen lights on within them from the galley windows— possibly unoccupied.
If occupied, he could do nothing.
Best guess, they had enough fuse for maybe five minutes.
The train gained speed, heading toward the curve in the iron rails that led to the bridge over the river at the bottom of the ravine.
In a flash of insight, he understood.
Timed to blow at the bridge.
This car would explode, buck, drag others with it over the bridge.
The fall alone would kill.
He knew this section of track. Every trip to Silver Queen Mine brought them over that last ravine.
He must alert his wife and staff. Everyone had to get out— now!
He bursts inside, screaming for Josie, Mrs. Bushnell, Karl and Milton. “Wake up, now! Everyone up!”
He banged on his own bedroom door as he bolted past. “Danger. Dress in many layers and do it fast. Tie your shoes on. We must jump.”
At the front of the car, he pounded on Mrs. Bushnell’s closed door. “Now. Move it.”
Tired, grumpy voices complained.
“We have two minutes to get off the train.”
He sprinted for his wife, turned on the lamps and found her wide-eyed and pulling on the closest gown she could find.
