by Jo Goodman
Molly took care of Rachel’s house in her absence and brought her whatever she needed, but Wyatt had always known it wasn’t a practical arrangement for her. More interesting, at least to him, was that everyone seemed to accept it without raising an eyebrow or posing a single question. He remembered telling Rachel that Reidsville embraced “live and let live,” but this was extraordinary even for them. Gracie Showalter couldn’t be moved to explain it. He pressed Estella and Molly and Ann Marie Easter, and they gave him nothing in return. Pastor Duun’s wife wouldn’t hint that there was any sort of impropriety in Rachel’s presence. Rose LaRosa and Adele dropped in and neither made suggestive remarks. The women had nothing but praise for her, and even the men were unsympathetic of his objections. When he complained that she wouldn’t allow him to drink whiskey, not one of them offered to bring him a flask. He organized a poker game, and his friends left the first time she hinted that he was getting tired.
He supposed it was a natural consequence of her owning half of the town’s mine and all of the spur. The Calico Spur. That name had always seemed a little disparaging when Clinton Maddox had control of it, but now that it was Rachel’s it was an exact fit, perfectly tailored to suit.
It was late. He’d heard the clock in the sitting room strike ten, and he thought it was probably closer to eleven now. She was still working at the dining table. He could hear the shears clicking as she cut fabric. Sometimes he could hear her moving around the table, humming softly to herself. He didn’t recognize the tune, but that was probably because she couldn’t carry one with a pack mule.
He tried to remember if Sylvie had ever hummed. The problem was that he couldn’t recall that she’d ever worked. Sylvianna Hammond planned parties, attended parties, and invented reasons for parties. She loved choosing her gowns, her jewelry, her shoes, and the combs and feathers for her hair. She married him believing they would remain in Boston, that he would be successful in her father’s law offices or part of his own family’s banking business.
He hadn’t been fair to her, he’d always known that. She thought he’d lied to her, but he hadn’t. It was truer that he’d lied to himself, convinced himself that he could live in Boston, a city he found too narrow, and work for his family, which he also found too narrow. He was dying there, and in the end, he’d made the same choice his father had—to save himself.
Wyatt set the book he’d been reading on the nightstand and turned back the lamp. When he looked up, he saw Rachel was standing in the doorway.
“Am I keeping you awake?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
She studied him a moment longer, her head angled to one side. “All right,” she said quietly. “I’ll just shut the door.”
“No. Don’t.” He spoke just as her fingers closed around the crystal knob. “I like it open.”
“Well, I’m almost done.” She started to back away, but she paused when she saw his hand come up. “What is it?”
“I’m not tired,” he said. “Just the opposite. Would you mind if I sat out there while you work?”
“Of course not.” His question was curious because he’d sat with her on other evenings, although never as late as this. She wondered why he asked now when he had never asked before. “Would you like something? Perhaps some warm milk?”
He came close to growling at her, and he had to be satisfied that his look was enough to send her into full retreat. Throwing back the covers, he sat up and reached for his robe. He shrugged into it, belted it loosely, then padded barefoot into the sitting room. There was a comfortable damask-covered chair next to the stove. He sat there and rested his feet near the firebox to keep them warm.
Rachel was poised over her open sketchbook. The tip of her pencil tapped lightly against the paper. There was a vertical crease between her dark eyebrows and a pink sliver of her tongue peeping out from the corner of her mouth.
Wyatt’s gaze shifted from Rachel to the couch. She’d already covered it with a couple of sheets, blankets, and the quilt from her own bed. The pillow had a lace sham over it. It still didn’t look very inviting, but it was where she had been sleeping since she’d moved into his suite. Every morning since he’d started to improve she cleared away the linens, removed the lace sham, and stored all of it in the bottom of his armoire. He couldn’t remember what she’d done in those early days of her stay, but he didn’t think she’d attended to those details. It seemed to him that the maids had been in and out more frequently than they were now.
It was almost as if she didn’t want people to know they weren’t sharing—
The footstool tipped and thudded on its side as Wyatt bolted upright. Rachel jerked at the suddenness of his move and straightened herself. She flinched when she met his reproachful stare.
“What?” She dropped her pencil and took a step back. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You told them. That’s why no one’s saying anything. You told them the truth.”
Rachel started to skirt the table as he approached, keeping distance and a barrier between them. “You’re accusing me of telling the truth? About what?” She thrust out her hand as if it would stay his advance. “And why is that a problem?”
Wyatt was unconvinced by the questions she lobbed at him. He was learning something about how she mounted her defenses, and they were entirely made of question marks. “We discussed it, Rachel. We both agreed that we weren’t going to tell anyone. You were the one who insisted on it, and now you’ve gone back on your word without even consulting me. You know what this means, don’t you?”
She continued to circle the table. “Did you hit your head? Has something happened that—” She felt a little jolt akin to alarm, but not alarm exactly. Wyatt’s smile matched the cool and cunning of his eyes. He was watching her so carefully that she couldn’t move. It was easy to imagine that he would stop circling, forget his injuries, and leap across the table at her.
“All right,” she said, lowering her hand a fraction. “They know.”
“Say it all,” he said.
“They know we’re married.”
He dropped back on his heels, relaxing his ready-to-pounce posture. “Well, how about that?”
“But I didn’t tell them,” she said, folding her arms under her breasts and giving him the steely end of her sharpest stare. “You did.”
“What?”
“You told them, Wyatt. You were half out of your head with pain when the ether began to wear off. You started talking about your wife. Where was your wife? You wanted your wife. Gracie, Will, Dr. Diggins—even I—thought you were talking about Sylvianna. That’s why Gracie was so sure you were going to die. Will was holding on to the bucket, whispering about Sylvia being dead and how you shouldn’t think about joining her, and Doc was trying to spoon laudanum down your throat to ease the pain. He was repeating some of what Will was saying and some of Gracie’s prayers. His hands were shaking, and he still hadn’t finished sewing you up. That’s when I decided that he could attend to the laudanum and I would attend to your stitches. As soon as you saw me, you started to quiet. I was your wife now. That’s what you said, and when I tried to make light of it, humor you so no one would take what you were saying seriously, you just wouldn’t let it rest.”
Rachel sighed deeply. “You convinced them I was your wife because you also convinced them that you knew Sylvie was dead. You told them they were fools if they couldn’t see that I was nothing like Sylvie, and then you told them the truth—or at least a version of it—about our marriage.
“I stopped trying to deny it. I knew I wasn’t going to allow anyone else to look after you, so what would have been the purpose of pretending you were lying? No one’s said a thing to you because I asked them not to.”
“Didn’t anyone think that was strange?”
“I explained you meant to keep our marriage a secret for a while, just until people got used to the idea that I was hal
f owner of the mine and you had a chance to court me properly. I don’t know why that made sense to them. I can only suppose they’re used to your lawyer way of making things complicated so they accepted it. I imagine, too, that no one wants to remind you that you blurted it all out while you were under the doctor’s knife.”
“But I wasn’t.”
Rachel bit the inside of her lip and said carefully, “Some people think you were. There’s no accounting for how a story changes with each telling.”
Wyatt was fairly sure he knew how the story changed, and he was itching to get his hands on her. “And what do you mean about my ‘lawyer way of making things complicated’? It was your idea to keep our marriage secret.”
“Well, yes, it was, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. I couldn’t think of how to say it that wouldn’t make me seem foolish.”
Wyatt plowed through his hair with his fingers, his look almost a caricature of incredulity. “Make you seem foolish?” he repeated slowly. “Didn’t it tug on your conscience just a tad to put me in that position?”
Rachel had the grace to blush, but she was also quick to point out that no one would ever think he was a fool. “People think you walk on water.”
“Well, I damn well don’t.”
She blinked at the sharpness in his tone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be—”
He dismissed her apology with an abrupt, impatient gesture. “Don’t.” He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes narrow and remote and unexpressive; then he turned away and retraced his steps to the bedroom.
Watching him go, Rachel couldn’t fathom why she was suddenly fighting the urge to cry. She hardly knew what she’d said that had shuttered his expression. Until that moment, there had been an undercurrent of humor, of tolerance. He didn’t necessarily like everything she told him, but she could tell that he was calculating how to use it to favor him. His retribution would have been swift and fierce, but not frightening.
It was his retreat that frightened her, not his advance.
She pressed one hand to her temple and massaged lightly. Her vision blurred. The bold colors of the tartan fabric in front of her bled at the edges. She sat down, closed her eyes, and determinedly began to compose herself.
In bed, Wyatt lay with his head cradled in his palms and stared up at the ceiling. His posture was too rigid for relaxation or sleep. He had to consciously unlock his jaw to keep his cheek from twitching. There was still a tightness in his chest, and it had nothing at all to do with his injury.
He was weary of being cooped up like a damn chicken. The farthest he’d managed to stray in the last week was Sir Nigel’s suite on the floor above him, and he’d done that when Rachel had gone to the depot. It wasn’t that she was against him moving around, taking in several walks each day up and down the corridor, but that she wanted to hold the reins. He’d had just about as much of that as he could stand. He needed to get outside, fill his lungs with fresh air and his vision with a view that was mountains and sky, and she was barring the way.
The fact of it was, Rachel Bailey was a better jailer than his deputy.
Wyatt considered going back in the sitting room and telling her that. He’d make certain she understood it was no compliment. There were any number of things he wanted her to know, all of them guaranteed to relieve her of the notion that he was some sort of paragon.
“People think you walk on water.”
He grimaced as he turned over the phrase in his mind, grimaced more deeply as he considered how easy she made it for him to be annoyed with her. She certainly was a clear target, setting herself in his path no matter which one he chose. She knew his aim was true, yet she never wavered, never stood aside.
It finally occurred to him to wonder why she would do that. Self-preservation should have ensured that occasionally she would duck or dodge. Instead, she faced him down. It was true that she possessed an uncanny ability to deflect his shots, parting or otherwise, with a logic that defied his own sense of reason, but it was also true that he was able to wound her.
What made her stay when she knew she was vulnerable to that?
The clock in the sitting room struck the half hour. Eleven thirty. Wyatt realized he’d been lying awake for better than forty minutes and that Rachel hadn’t stirred in all that time. It was her habit to slip into his room when she thought he was sleeping, make use of the bathing room to prepare for that bed of nails she slept on, then slip out again, this time like a wraith in a white linen nightgown and red kid slippers.
Half an hour later, he was still awake and she was simply still. Wyatt favored his left side as he rolled out of bed. He didn’t bother with a robe this time, loosely tucking the tails of his shirt into his drawers instead. Conscious of frightening her with a sudden, silent appearance, he made no special effort to be quiet as he crossed the floor and even rattled the knob as he opened the door.
When he saw Rachel slumped in a chair at the table, her head bent so far forward that her chin rested on her chest and one of her arms dangled over the side, he realized he could have tossed firecrackers in the stove and she wouldn’t have moved. He didn’t see a bottle on the table, nor an empty glass, which meant that she was just bone weary.
Tuckered, they called it here. Plain tuckered out.
Wyatt bent beside her chair and carefully looped one of her arms around his shoulders. He straightened slowly, lifting her at the same time. He felt a twinge of pain in his chest at the site of his wound, but it disappeared quickly when he shifted his weight and got a better hold on her.
“It’s bed for you, Rachel,” he said quietly. “The bed you should have been in all along.” She murmured something that almost sounded agreeable, and Wyatt was encouraged. “Can you help me?”
“Mmm.”
“Good.” He knew she never really woke, but some memory for motion existed in her sleeping brain, and she matched his steps, though never took the lead.
Wyatt maneuvered her to the bed and set her on the edge. She immediately lay back and began to draw her legs up. “Oh, no,” he said, tugging on her ankles. “You’re not sleeping sideways, and you’re definitely not sleeping in these clothes.”
“Go away.” She brushed ineffectually in the direction of his hands as he began to remove her shoes. “Go. Away.”
Because her next breath was an abrupt little snuffle, Wyatt ignored her. He tossed her stockings beside her shoes, then regarded her gown with a critical eye. There were at least a dozen tiny cloth-covered buttons at the front of her close-fitting jacket. He could find no better place to start. She batted at his hands when they reached her waist, but there was no intent in the gesture. He imagined that if she was aware of him at all, she found him more of a nuisance than a threat.
He struggled with the jacket, finding it difficult to ease off her shoulders, and when he was done he felt a sense of satisfaction that was out of all proportion to his actual achievement. He made relatively short work of her skirt, shirt, underskirt, and bustle, and then he confronted her corset. It looked as hard as a carapace and covered her just as closely.
“You’ll thank me,” he said quietly. And he hoped it was true. He unfastened the tabs and closures, pulled it out from beneath her, and flung it away. It landed on the chair on top of her other clothes.
Now that she was finally down to her chemise and drawers and looked as if she might have prepared for bed herself, Wyatt lifted her legs back onto the bed, turned her gently so she was positioned lengthwise, and wrestled with the sheet and blankets until they covered her. He plucked the combs out of her hair and set those on the nightstand; then, as an afterthought, he returned to the sitting room and retrieved the quilt she’d brought from home. It gave him another opportunity to survey the couch, measure it against his height and requirements for comfort, and reinforce all the reasons he wouldn’t be sleeping on it.
It was only as he was covering Rachel with the quilt that he realized he’d surrendered his side of the bed to her. He considered pushing
her out of the way to secure his place, primarily so there’d be no doubt that he didn’t walk on water, but then he felt another twinge, this one on account of conscience, not injury, and walked around the bed to the other side.
The sheets were cold. He yanked on part of Rachel’s quilt for added warmth and burrowed deeper under the covers. In moments, he was asleep.
“You drugged me.”
Groaning softly, Wyatt turned his face into his pillow. He put out an arm to stay the attack he felt certain was coming. Rachel had wakened with an accusation on her lips, just as if she’d been entertaining this argument all night.
“You drugged me,” she said again. “Because the only other explanation is that you lost your mind.”
“Pick that one.” He compressed the pillow near his mouth to make certain she could hear him. “Is it morning?”
“Just.”
“Go back to sleep, Rachel.”
She jabbed him on the shoulder with the heel of her palm.
“Ow!”
Her hand went to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I forgot. Are you all—” She lowered her hand and jabbed him again. “That’s your right shoulder. You’re lying on your left. And if I’d really hurt you, you would have grunted. That’s what you do.”
He grunted.
Rachel’s lips twitched. “Too late.”
In every way possible, Wyatt thought. He slipped one arm under his pillow and eased more fully onto his side. Opening his eyes, he was startled to see how close she was. She was also lying on her side, her position mirroring his. The quilt covered her up to her shoulders, but her heavy sable hair lay on top of it, not under it. Her eyelids were at half mast, and she stared at him through a fan of dark lashes. She did not have the vulnerability of sleep about her, but neither was she guarded and prickly.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Mmm.”
There was no longer any lamplight in the room, but a narrow band of the pink and mauve colors of daybreak slipped through the drapes and spilled across the floor. “You fell asleep in the chair.”
