Chapter Twenty-Two
Ihauled Stot inside and kicked my door shut, suffocating the howl of the wind.
“I got it.” He swayed, held his arm against his chest.
He definitely did not have it. I maneuvered him onto the sofa, his chilled body shaking. One Eye padded over and curled up before the fireplace. After stoking the flames, heat searing my skin through my gossamer nightgown, I grabbed some supplies: calico scraps, gunpowder, a pouch of willow bark.
Stot watched, eyes wider than normal.
“Take off your shirt,” I said, pressing my hair back at the temples, heartbeat pulsing against my palms. A tight shiver from the winter chill—and panic.
He dropped his head back against the sofa. “You’re welcome to help, doll.”
His eyes were closed with something like a smirk languid on his face, his wet hair curling all about. My slicker, which looped over his shoulders, fell back to pool across the cushions. He was drowsy and unbalanced.
“You been shot a lot, huh?” I lowered beside him and touched his necktie.
“I will undress myself.”
“You just drawled for some doll to help.” My voice light, my stomach all jumbled in knots. I couldn’t let him die.
“Pestering you.”
I rubbed my hands down my thighs. “Fine. Have at it.” I sat back, crossed my arms.
One thing I’d learned from Ma doctoring folks all those years was to be calm and controlled. But—I needed to check his wound. Now. Not argue about nonsense.
My cabin was shadowed, and I squinted to see.
He fumbled with the tie, fingers slipping at the knot.
Blood soaked his white sleeve, a dirty black edged with carmine and bronze.
I broke a match across the heel of my boot and lit a tallow candle, wax guttering over the brass chamberstick.
He released his necktie, laid his head back.
I leaned forward and touched the button at his throat. “Just let me.”
He was warm, his body still as I unbuttoned his shirt and vest. Beneath, he wore a tank, mostly white with cardinal-feather red blooming across his chest. I lifted his hem, but his hand paused mine, his palm calloused against my knuckles.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Dammit, Stot, you’re dying.”
“Nah.” He raised the edge of his shirt, a glimpse of tan skin. “Stomach’s not winged.”
“Mmm.” I wiped my forehead, my body clenched, fear corkscrewed all throughout. I helped him from his black waistcoat and edged the shirt over his shoulder muscles, the sleeve crunchy with bits of dried blood and sticking to his slick skin. I grabbed my scissors. “I’m cutting off your sleeve.”
“Blazes, that’s my favorite shirt.”
“Not sure red’s your color.”
Crinkles fanned from his eyes. A frantic urgency heated my body—so I breathed, slowed the motion of my hands.
I removed the shreds of his button-down and tossed them on the floor.
His wound was gnarled, but the bullet shallow.
I could get it; he would be fine. In a mug of heated water, I stirred in a scoop of ground willow bark.
Stot lounged on my sofa, one arm free, the other clothed, black tie still knotted, oilcloth slicker rumpled behind him, linens dirty and sticking to him.
I handed him the steeped tea. He glowered at the shards of willow frothed in the water.
“Just drink it.”
He lifted my dainty teacup to his lips. I pushed aside my cabinet curtains in search of supplies, glancing at him over my shoulder. He adjusted his grip on the cup and grimaced. I snatched some whiskey and poured a couple of fingers. “Better, princess?”
I tipped the bottle to my mouth, and the liquid scratched down my throat. I shivered, my damp nightgown chilling me. This was my only decent gown, my other threadbare, with a wide, loose neck. I banged about my shelves.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Looking for an all-fired needle.”
“You’re not stitching me up.”
I lifted my brows. He tried to look at the wound on the back of his arm. “I can do it.”
I leaned against my cedar-plank table. “Alright.”
“I’m more worried about your sewing ability.” He scrutinized an overdress tossed over a crate.
“There’s nothing wrong with my garments,” I said.
“Sure. Just the occasional holes and missing buttons.” He closed his eyes. “You don’t sew. Someone did it for you back home.”
How in Sam Hill had he noticed that? I was careful to cover rips whenever I went into town. And furthermore: What had happened back in Kansas didn’t matter anymore.
“This is my home.”
“Then you’ll need to learn.”
“You offering to teach?”
He gestured to his satchel. “I have some thread and a needle.”
His bag was organized and smelt faintly of oil and nutmeg. I opened a tin, assuming it held thread. Inside rested a jagged piece of ice-blue lace and a miniature of a delicate, blond woman. I flushed and snapped the tin shut.
“Stop nosing about.” He studied me, his gaze on the bones of my wrists.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
Though soaking wet and injured, he seemed comfortable sprawled about my cushions.
I found the needle and a spool of white thread, then sat beside him and cleaned his wound with a strip of daisy-printed cotton.
He didn’t wince or grimace, but I glimpsed pain in his taut posture.
Blood spilled across the fabric, soaking the flowers.
My unbound hair fell forward in the gap between us, and candleflame lit the room’s hollows.
I bit my lip. I shouldn’t ask. “Saw a portrait of a woman.”
“Mmm.”
I wrung out the cloth in a bowl of water. “You married?”
He frowned. “You think I’ve been hiding some wife in my cabin all this time?”
I braided my hair. His gaze followed my hands as they flicked down to the ends. “That’s not really an answer,” I said.
He closed his eyes. “Not now.”
I poured whiskey over the needle and dug around the muscle of his shoulder. He clenched his fists but otherwise showed no reaction. So did he have some wife back in the Dakotas? A flock of children? Course it wasn’t my business, but sakes alive, perhaps he could’ve mentioned them.
His skin was slick with sweat, his gaze curving along my temples, across my cheekbones.
I wiped my neck above my gown with a cloth, tried to grasp the bullet.
Finally, it plopped out and pinged in the dish.
I sighed, fear seeping out, some relief easing back in.
If I could stanch the blood, he’d probably be fine.
I cleaned his wound, threaded the needle, and pressed it through his ripped skin, rendering fairly uniform stitches.
He said nothing of the gunfight or the woman.
And I didn’t mind overmuch. I was okay with secrets.
After I sewed his wound, I crushed a palmful of dried Thousand Starlight into a tea saucer, smashed the blooms with the heel of my palm, then scanned my shelf for what to use instead of eagle’s down.
I knelt beside One Eye, scratched him about the neck and belly.
Stot’s deep voice: “What are you doing?”
“Heaping together some rubbish.”
“You know what you’re doing?”
“Of course.” Well, kind of. I sat beside him, folded my feet beneath my nightgown. Warmth from the fire brushed my bare collarbone and wintry air filled the empty spaces. I held out the yarrow-and-fur poultice. “I’m gonna press this on, alright?”
I leaned forward and smothered the mixture onto his skin. “The yarrow will stanch blood flow,” I said. “Not sure about the fur.”
Firelight cast oxblood and gold across his cheekbones, shadows sinking into the inky waves of his hair.
I swallowed and dabbed salve on his wound.
After I finished, I washed my hands in the basin and dried with a rag.
A draught iced my damp forearms and slipped through my filmy gown.
I swept a blanket round my shoulders, then ripped a length of freshly laundered linen, pressing one end to his biceps.
He was bulky, but I hadn’t thought he’d have such defined muscles.
I tugged at my lace collar and kept wrapping his shoulder, aware of his hand resting on the cushion beside me, of the hot and elusive space between us.
“So,” he said, once I’d tied off the bandage, “what do you do at night? Do you argue with the wallpaper or throw knives at the fire?”
I packed up my supplies, my one-room warm and cold and too dim. He uncapped a jar of sun-dried persimmons. I nodded, indicating he could have some.
He popped a piece in his mouth. “What do we do now?”
I grabbed a persimmon, the dusky-orange fruit tasting like gingerbread. “You go home.”
He settled against my sofa, his hair drying in rough waves, its black color stark against the rose-and-mustard floral cushions. He gestured to the Popular Science Monthly periodical haphazard on the side table. “Read me an article?”
I coughed. I would not be reading to the man, especially from Magnolia’s beloved periodical. My memories were clogged with Magnolia reading science journals or botanical texts, of her debating evolution or plant classification with Pa until dark hovered round the fire.
“You’re not staying here,” I said.
“All nature, I’m bleeding all over.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re fine.” A pause. “Go home.”
“Nah.” He bent and removed his boots. Candleflame wavered beside him, the scent of tallow heady. He settled his boots beside the sofa, polished toes pointed at the fire, spurs a dull glint in the shadows. His socks, undyed wool. “A blanket?”
I picked at the bodice of my nightgown, the newsprint and blue linen scraps papering my walls reflecting firelight.
I should be terrified to have a renegade in my home.
And yet I felt safe. Perhaps more comfortable than normal.
I grasped the ratty afghan spread across my bed, shook it to check for centipedes or scorpions, then tossed the blanket at him.
He caught it, looked me in the eyes, questioning. But—he wasn’t that considerate, was he?
“How do you fill your nights?” I asked.
He pulled the blanket up round his shoulders. “Read. Clean weapons. Whittle.”
“Of course you whittle.”
Something like a smile settled on his face. “When I’m not shooting out the lanterns in saloons and threatening babies.”
“Well, obviously.” I couldn’t imagine Stot wrangling up slapdash chaos about the county—but I’d just stitched up a battle wound. There were reasons for his reputation. I must heed caution, keep my walls up. I liked Stot, but I didn’t truly know him.
I settled on the sofa beside him, scratching my collarbone.
After such an adventure, I wouldn’t be sleeping for a span.
I picked my crossword puzzle up from the credenza, frowned at the riddle that’d eluded me all week.
“At least help with my crossword puzzle,” I said.
“Six letters. Has a B in the middle. To conceal, a refuge.”
The wind cracked against fissures in my walls, and the thick of night oozed about like molasses. He settled deeper beneath the bumpy loops of yarn. “Harbor.”