Chapter Five
When Dean returned from the barn, he took one look at Lydia’s face and knew she’d figured out the truth about him. He had planned to talk to her, to let her know his involvement in the holdup slowly and with plenty of explanations and apologies, but it was too late for that now. She knew.
He sat on the stool and removed his boots, racking his brain on what to say. When he looked at her again, her hands were clutched to her chest, her eyes wide. He knew that look. She’d had the exact same expression on her face when he’d stolen her bag.
“Lydia,” he said softly. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“What do you mean?” she said, her voice an octave higher than normal. “Of course I’m not afraid of you!” She laughed the falsest laugh he’d ever heard. “I’m quite tired is all. Can I sleep here on your sofa?”
Dean felt terrible. Perhaps it would be a kindness to let her think he didn’t know she knew, at least for tonight. “Sleep on the bed, I’ll sleep on the sofa,” he said.
“Oh, no, I find this very comfortable!” she exclaimed in a shrill voice. She lay down on her back, stiff as a board, and closed her eyes.
He didn’t like her decision to sleep on the sofa. In any other circumstance, he would insist that she took the bed and he the sofa, but doing so now would appear brutish, not gentlemanly. He walked to the bed, where he retrieved one of his quilts. When he laid it over her, she bolted upright and let out a tight scream.
“Lydia!” Dean exclaimed, chagrined by her fear. “I’m only giving you a blanket.”
“Of course, I don’t know why I’m so jumpy.” She laughed tightly and lay back, pulling the quilt to her neck. “Must be tired from all the traveling.” Her voice was pinched with the effort of sounding casual.
She pretended to sleep while Dean readied himself for bed. He could feel her eyes on him when his back was turned, watching him like he was a predator and she captured prey. It did nothing to help him feel less guilty about the situation.
After he dimmed the lamp and lay in bed, he wondered whether he should say something to her. What would be the right words to put her at ease? He knew she couldn’t sleep, nor could he. Everything he thought to say felt wrong, but he kept thinking. Then somehow, amid trying to find the right words to say, he fell asleep.
???
Dean awoke at daybreak to eerie silence. It took a moment to remember the events of the previous day. He gradually recalled that Lydia had come home with him and had figured out he was the stagecoach bandit. He knew before opening his eyes that something wasn’t right. He shot upright, hardly even needing to glance at the sofa to know that she was gone.
Dean dressed himself hastily as he looked out the window, seeing exactly what he feared. The snow continued to fall. Though the storm made it impossible to see even a few feet ahead, it appeared Lydia had attempted to escape to town.
He shrugged into the small coat he’d borrowed from the miner and sat on the stool by the door to pull his boots over his feet. He retrieved the rope that was looped into a circle on a nail by the door and slung it over his shoulder, hoping it would be long enough to trail Lydia, but he had his doubts.
He pulled the loud, creaking door open, inviting inside a flurry of snowflakes. When he examined the ground outside, he saw none of her footprints. That left two possibilities. Either Lydia had made her escape hours ago and the snow had filled in her prints, or she’d escaped out a window to make less noise. He desperately hoped it was the latter possibility. He shoved the door closed and rushed to the window on the opposite wall, which would be the most obvious window to use. It was the largest and she could use his desk as a perch to assist her. He noted that his papers were disturbed and the one directly under the window was dirtied by a small shoe print.
He opened the window quickly. Finding her was urgent—a matter of life or death. There was no way she could make it to town in the storm. She would be lost in a matter of minutes.
Dean tied the edge of the rope securely to the window’s hinge, then squeezed out and jumped to the snow-covered ground. He inspected the ground quickly until he saw her boot prints. He would have to hurry before the falling snow made them invisible.
He followed the prints, covering each one with his own as he loosened the rope behind him. He hadn’t taken the time to put on a scarf or hat, so his hair was wet in no time, and the cold wind nipped at the exposed parts of his face and neck. He shivered and his teeth chattered, but he barely felt it.
The prints were growing fainter. He tried to walk faster, but his boots sank deep into the snow with each step, making anything faster than anxious trudge impossible. His heartbeat quickened with exertion and fear as he reached the end of his rope without finding her. He looked around. He could see nothing but white.
“Lydia!” he roared. “Lydia, can you hear me?”
Dean listened, but heard nothing but the shrill whistling of wind through willow trees.
He cursed, knowing he had a terrible choice to make. Continuing to trail her without use of the rope could lead to his death. Not doing so would certainly lead to hers. It didn’t take long for him to decide to sacrifice himself. He tied the rope to a tree and left it behind, continuing to curse as he did. He should have tied her to the sofa. Then neither of them would be in danger of freezing to death.
Her prints were so faint now. They would soon be filled with snow and tracking her would be impossible. He continued to cover her tracks with his, knowing that if he didn’t find her soon, his prints too would become impossible to track back to the rope tied to the tree.
Dean yelled Lydia’s name in between each step, and silence answered him at every call. Anger surged through him, increasing with his despair. He didn’t know who he was angrier with—himself or her. He couldn’t see her prints anymore. He didn’t know which way to go.
“Lydia! Answer if you can hear me!”
He strained his ears and waited a few seconds before calling her name again. “Lydia!”
He turned back and looked at his boot tracks. They were filling quickly. The ones closest to the tree with the rope might be filled already.
“Lydia!”
What sounded like a whine reached his ears. It could have been the wind or an animal, or was it her? He yelled her name again. The same whine answered.
“Lydia, come toward my voice. Hurry! Hurry! I’ll keep yelling. Keep walking, don’t stop. I’ll take you to safety, but you must hurry. Walk now.”
He stopped yelling only for a moment to listen, and he heard her voice, as quiet as a whisper, “I’m coming.”
“I heard you! Good. You’re getting closer. Don’t stop,” he repeated. He yelled at the top of his lungs, urging her to keep moving, to walk as fast as she could. He didn’t want to tell her they were running out of time. If she had half a brain, she knew.
After what felt like hours of him yelling, she appeared before him suddenly, like a black shadow against a white wall. She collapsed to the snowy ground at his feet like she had used every bit of her energy to get to him, and he reached down, grabbing her arms and lifting her to her feet. “I’ve got you, darlin’.” He had never felt more relieved in his life, but he knew they weren’t out of danger yet. “Just a little more to go now.”
Dean fastened a tight arm around her and turned back toward his boot prints. He dragged her more than she walked. In less urgent circumstances, he would have stopped and asked if she was alright. But soon it wouldn’t matter if she was or wasn’t. Soon neither of them would have a hope in the world of survival.
He strained his eyes for every print, stamping over them. He reached the last visible print and swore an oath under his breath. Now it was guesswork. Now a single degree in the wrong direction would lead to death instead of the tree with the rope. He hitched Lydia higher and stepped forward, waving one hand in front of him. Nothing. He stepped twice more. His spirits sank. If he didn’t reach the tree in the next few steps, he was likely lost for good.
He thought about the reason for Lydia being out here in the first place—because he’d frightened her by holding up the coach and stealing from her. He recalled his words to John about how he didn’t want anyone to get hurt during the holdup. But if Lydia died now because of what he’d done, it was as good as murder.
Despite his newfound understanding of his wretchedness, God was on his side that morning. After the next step, his hand brushed the bark of a tree, and when he stroked down it, he felt the blessed rope he’d tied to it. “We’re saved, Lydia. We’re going to make it,” he told her.
He looked at her face for the first time. Ice crowned her face and eyelashes, and her lips were a shade of purple. Alarm threaded through him as he realized she might still be in danger of succumbing to hypothermia.
He needed both hands to follow the rope. “Can you ride on my back?” he asked. “Do you have strength to hold on?”
“Yes,” she mouthed, no sound coming from her lips.
He untied the rope from the tree, then squatted as low as he could to the ground, pointing backward to indicate she should climb up him. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and he took hold of her legs as he stood, positioning them around his waist. “Hold on,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
He could feel her weakness in the loose hold she had on him, so he bent forward to try to give her a better chance at staying on. He walked with purpose, putting one hand in front of the other on the rope as he followed it back to the window of his cabin.
Even when they arrived, Dean did not take time to feel victorious. He wouldn’t celebrate until her lips were pink and he made sure blood still flowed through her fingers and toes.
Since no one had tended the fire for hours, the inside of the cabin was nearly as cold as outside. He set Lydia on a chair by the fireplace and worked to bring the glowing red embers to life. Soon a fire roared and crackled as he fed it more logs.
Lydia stared straight ahead at it. Her teeth chattered violently as Dean knelt in front of her. “You’ll be warm in no time,” he told her. “You’re going to be just fine.” He untied her boots and tossed them aside, then rolled her stockings down until he could tear them off her feet. It was a good sign that her stockings were mostly dry, and when he saw her perfect ivory toes, he allowed himself to let out a sigh of relief.
“Your feet are dry. Let’s make sure the rest of you is alright,” he said, helping her to stand on her bare feet. He peeled the coat off her, revealing her yellow taffeta dress, the same dress she’d been wearing since he met her. It didn’t look like it offered much in the way of warmth, and when he felt the sleeves of it, he discovered it was wet.
“Let’s get this off of you,” he said, reaching for the top button. He wasn’t thinking of anything but getting her warm, so it came as a surprise when she shrieked and pushed him away.
“I’ll take off my own dress!”
He raised his hands in surrender. Though her words were sharp, they brought him further relief. If she had the strength to yell at him and unbutton her dress, deadly hypothermia and frostbite had eluded her. He turned toward his dresser. “I’ll find a long shirt of mine for you to wear. I know you don’t have anything else.”
“Because you stole my other clothes from me,” she said through chattering teeth, as though he needed reminding.
He searched the top drawer of his dresser. He found a cotton shirt. He also picked up the quilt on the sofa.
“I’m not looking,” he said, walking to her with his eyes averted. He held out the shirt and quilt. “Remove everything from your body and cover with these.”
After she took the materials from him, he turned and walked back to the dresser, where he undressed and clothed himself in a dry shirt and trousers.
He pulled up a chair across from her in front of the fire and observed her. She’d wrapped her entire body with the quilt and overlapped the edges in front of her. Her teeth were no longer chattering. Her lips were pink. Her gaze was focused on the fire, and flames danced in her eyes. Her hair was still damp and clung in tight tendrils around her face. He was struck by her beauty. Even in the aftermath of a terrible ordeal, the soft contours of her face and the delicate curve of her neck spoke to her natural loveliness.
Dean felt a weight off his shoulders. He didn’t think he would have been able to live with himself if she’d died. He tried to find the right words to express this to her, but he didn’t know where to begin, so he stayed silent.
“Something to drink,” she said to him through a hoarse voice. “Please.”
“Of course,” he said, rising to his feet. He pumped water into a glass and handed it to her. “I should have thought of that. I’ll make coffee for you too.”
She extended a slim, trembling hand from between the quilt’s edges and took the glass of water from him, not touching his hand in the exchange. She brought the glass to her lips and drank from it.
He walked back to the kitchen area to boil water over the stove to pour through the coffee grounds.
“Thank you for saving my life,” she said softly. He turned to find her staring at him, her brows furrowed. “I would have died out there.”
“Yes, I’m afraid you would have.”
They didn’t speak further. He poured steaming coffee into two mugs, one for her and one for himself. He exchanged her glass with the mug.
She cupped both her hands around it tightly and took a tentative sip as he returned to his chair to drink from his own mug of coffee.
They drank in silence while Dean formed what he needed to say in his head. Finally setting the coffee aside, he leaned forward with folded hands, resting his elbows on his knees.
But before he could say anything, she asked, “Were you ever going to tell me you were the stagecoach bandit?”
Her question caught him off-guard. He leaned back. “Yes, but you figured it out before I had the chance.”
She wrinkled her nose and pushed stray locks of hair away from her eyes. “You had plenty of chances to tell me before I discovered it. You could have told me in town while you were saddling the horses, or during the journey here to your cabin, or before you went to sleep last night.” Her tone was accusatory.
“You’re right, I could have,” he admitted. “I was waiting for the right moment. It never seemed to come because I knew no matter what I said, you would feel betrayed. You must understand, I never intended for you to be part of this. You weren’t supposed to be on that coach.”
She scoffed. “I’m glad I was. If I hadn’t been, I would have married you not knowing the truth that you’re a thief.”
He winced. “No, I planned to tell you even if you hadn’t been on the coach. But I would have had the opportunity to explain without you feeling so betrayed. Robbing the coach is not something I regret, but I regret causing you such fear.”
“I saw no such regret when you ripped my bag from my hands,” she retorted.
Dean raked his hand through his hair. “That was awful of me. You’re right to be angry.”
“I should say so! You’re not who you say you are. Is Dean Hunter even your real name? Are you really a miner? Or did you pay for all this by stealing from others?” She waved her hand around the cabin.
“I didn’t lie about anything. Like I said, I had a good reason for holding up the coach. Whether you’ll understand it remains to be seen.”
“Well, why did you?”
He drew a deep breath and proceeded to tell her about the gold that had been stolen from the miners. He explained about how his partner had received information that the money from the stolen gold would be stitched into the carpetbags of the travelers on Friday’s coach. The only way they could see to retrieve it was to steal it back. He explained that they were desperate to recover the money for the miners who would go without their bonuses for the winter if they didn’t.
She listened intently, her eyes never veering from his face. By the time he’d finished the tale, her beautiful face was twisted into a snarl. “You can’t expect me to believe this rubbish.”
“It’s the truth!” he exclaimed. “Look, Lydia,” he said, leaning forward, desperate for her to understand. “Before that day, I’d never stolen before in my life, and frankly I don’t see what I did as stealing. I was only trying to get back what rightfully belonged to my employees. You don’t understand life out here. The marshal is corrupt as the day is long. We couldn’t rely on him or his violent posse. My partner and I could rely on only ourselves to make it right.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” she said slowly, sarcasm lacing her words. “You, inventor of the mining girder, who will be receiving more than ten thousand dollars in March, thought the best course of action to get money for your employees would be to rob a stagecoach. You didn’t think to secure a loan from a banker, who would surely allow you to borrow every penny using your incoming royalties as collateral. You thought Barnaby, who doesn’t have a mean bone in his body by the way, somehow sneaked our luggage away from us in the middle of the night and stitched money into our carpetbags. Did he somehow become adept at using a needle and thread in between driving horses?” She paused and then ground out her final declaration. “I’ll tell you one thing I know, Mr. Hunter, if that’s your real name. Either you’re the stupidest man alive or you’re a liar and a thief.”
Dean was struck dumb by her scathing review. He shook his head, trying to figure out which of her misunderstandings he should address first.
Finally, he said, “The information my partner received was wrong. Barnaby didn’t hide money in your bags, but that’s what we thought. I understand that you’re angry, but please calm down,” he said, hoping to bring down the temperature of the room. His words had the opposite effect.
“You understand nothing!” she growled, throwing the quilt to the floor and rising to her feet. She stood in front of him, immodestly dressed in only his long shirt, looking as vulnerable as she did angry. She pointed an accusing finger at his face. “I believed your letters. I believed you were a man who would never lie or steal from me. I let myself believe it even after having been ruined by my scoundrel of a husband. Foolish of me. Now I’m stuck here with another scoundrel until that blasted snow stops falling.” She pointed at the window.
“Look,” he said, rising to his feet as well, causing him to tower above her. The shadow of fear that passed over her face made him furious with himself. She still believed he might injure her. “I won’t hurt you,” he said hurriedly, as though merely saying the words might convince her. “Perhaps I should have tried to get a loan. I never considered it a possibility. I’m a miner with a knack for planning and drawing. I have little knowledge of business. I didn’t even know about patents until my partner convinced me to apply for one after he saw the success of my invention.”
“You say you cooked up this stagecoach heist with your partner, a former lawyer?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“And you expect me to believe a lawyer who helped you secure a patent didn’t think to suggest you might secure a loan from the bank to pay your miners? You expect me to believe he thought robbing a coach was the best course of action?”
“He never mentioned getting a loan. I doubt it occurred to him either.”
She scoffed and sank to her chair. “Perhaps I could be convinced that you’re stupid. But you just told me your partner is business savvy, so I believe nothing you’ve said. The only thing you’ve convinced me of is that you’re not entirely evil because you saved my life. Actions speak louder than words, and that’s the only thing I believe.”
Dean shook his head and took the mugs and glass to the basin, where he washed them in silence. He then retrieved their wet articles of clothing from where they lay scattered all over the floor and methodically hung each item in front of the fire. When he came to her undergarments, he asked, “Do you mind?”
She waved her hand in assent, the expression on her face communicating surrender. He’d already wronged her. What did it matter if he continued doing so by handling her unmentionables?
Weariness and hunger slowed his movements. He realized neither of them had eaten breakfast, so after he hung the clothes, he prepared eggs and bacon for them both.