Chapter Twenty-Three
Golden sunlight feathered through my curtains.
I kicked at my sheets, bunched below the quilt.
I needed to milk Mrs. Dawdle and feed the rest. I flopped onto my back, covers falling about my waist. Winter air speared the naked skin of my collarbone.
That zing, the subtle pain of coldness, a reminder that I could feel something.
It was calm, predawn light, the crackle of woodfire, the fluting song of winter chickadees.
Another moment and I’d get at it. Then the rumble of a throat clearing.
I lurched up. Stot.
He sat at my table, coffee mug dangling from his hand, a few days’ beard smoking his jaw.
I gawked at him, surely with wide eyes. He peered beyond the curtains, peacefully studying the oncoming light.
But there was no peace about the man. He was wild emotion, a whirlwind debate at a precipice.
But hell if I didn’t relish the thrill of standing at a cliff’s edge.
He raised his mug in a salute. His shirt was tugged beneath his waistcoat, buttons askance.
The fabric was wrinkled and stained, one arm missing, calico bandage roped round his biceps.
So unlike the tidy Stot I’d come to know, instead the likeness of a gruff, sultry outlaw. I pulled at a mauve thread on my quilt.
“Made myself at home.” He adjusted his necktie. Wool socks against my oak floor, the heel of one well darned with cobalt thread. “Hope that’s alright.”
The fire crackled. The scent of coffee and timberwood and other things deep and brown drifted across my shack. I swung to the edge of the bed, blankets pooling at my waist, my square collar falling off one shoulder. “How’s your arm?”
“It’ll keep.”
I scrounged for my morning robe. Last night I’d thrown my muddy, high-necked nightdress in the corner and donned my gauzy nightgown, pearl-embroidered neck stretched, billowy cuffs sheer.
He stared into his mug, a flush about his skin.
This whole affair had been outrageously improper, but of course neither of us cared overmuch about senseless rules anyhow.
He flicked his hand, gesturing where my robe hung from a chair.
I moved across my shack, wood planks creaking, and swung the fabric round my shoulders, tied the emerald ribbon at my waist. I poured some Arbuckle’s and lifted my mug, watching him above the rim.
He cleared his throat, gaze on the fire.
Which he’d built up. And my water bucket was full—guess he’d already been to the creek.
All with an injured arm. I bent to rub One Eye, who slept before the fire.
“You’ve been to the creek,” I said. “Thank you.”
He sprawled in my chair, gun belt removed and hanging behind him from a hook. “Your brothers still not dig your godforsaken well?”
I grunted. They hadn’t, weeks passing right on by. I gulped coffee, the coarse grinds breaking apart across my tongue. I chewed, swallowed.
“That’s disgusting,” he said.
Amused, I sipped from my cup. “What do you do?”
A smirk threaded from his eyes. “Spit them out.”
I leaned my hip against the wall. “That’s disgusting.”
“A matter of debate.”
“When’s it not, with you?”
“Right,” he said. “I’m the one always arguing.”
I gasped. “You are.”
He glanced out the window. “Mm-hmm.”
I plopped in the chair beside him. “You are the most disagreeable man I’ve ever met.”
He rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward, green eyes unnerving. “You ever wonder why?”
His scent of spices and weapon oil right there. I wouldn’t become unsteady round this man, no matter how much space he took up in my home.
“Because you’re disagreeable,” I said, my voice wispier than I’d like. “I just said that.”
“Nah. I think it’s you.”
I jabbed my finger at him. “That right there. You’re being quarrelsome.”
“You’re the one judging my character. Disagreeable.”
I leaned forward, bit my lip. “Maybe try not being disagreeable then.”
The flames moaned and snapped. My coffee warm and fragrant. He straightened the lapel of his vest. “You like crosswords?”
“What’s this? Changing the subject?”
“You’re doing it again,” he said. “You like quarreling with me.”
I rubbed my mouth. “What else is there to do?”
He scratched his jaw. “We could plan it.”
“How’s that?”
“Perhaps on Tuesdays we debate some text in our own literary society. Wednesdays it’s your crossword. Maybe on Thursdays we torture each other in a shooting contest.”
“You want a weekly schedule.”
“I like routine, like what’s predictable.” He stood, riffled through the hardbacks on my shelf.
A laugh caught in my throat—when I realized he wasn’t joking.
There was so much performance and big walking with cowboys, but this was something real about him.
He pulled out my Vanity Fair hardback with the green floral motif, flipped open the book, and frowned at the inscription from Magnolia.
And then I saw him as something altogether different.
Part of him was undomesticated, but another part of him, perhaps buried under long ago tragedies, was traditional.
His classic black trousers, old-fashioned cowboy boots, shined with perfectly spaced laces, the monochrome biled shirts and simple tie.
Most cowboys flashed jeweled spurs, beaded hatbands, and slick mustaches.
He pulled out my ma’s black hymnal, the book tiny in his hands, and sat back at the table.
I tugged my sleeve over my wrist, feeling altogether too exposed.
I’d thought his subdued guise clever, that it helped him blend in, when perhaps he just liked what was classic.
If life had come another way, maybe he’d have been the sort of man to be happy with a simple life.
He flipped through the pages, brow slightly lifted, unspoken commentary on such a book in my home. What had happened in his past? There must be much desolation to have remade Stot into the Lawman. It was foolish, but I’d stopped believing in tall tales.
Perhaps Stot did prefer predictability in life, but I certainly didn’t. “I don’t want a schedule.”
“Then how about now?”
“I can’t thwart you in some shooting contest this morn—I’ve gotta keep digging my well while this spell of warmer weather holds.”
He scanned a page. “I can help you with that.” It felt violently familiar, his hands curved round Ma’s hymnal—all those moments Ma had deftly turned the pages, her fingers rawboned and graceful.
“What about your claim?” I asked.
“It’ll keep.”
“What about your dratted shot shoulder?”
He turned the page, fingers calloused but clean. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know I said I’d prefer settling debts, but you don’t have to stay and help—don’t have to repay me.”
“I like being here.” He closed the hymnal, rested his arms on my table. “I want to be here, helping you. You can’t build a homestead all by your lonesome, nor can I. Your brothers aren’t helping; I’ve got no one. We get along well. Just let it be.”
I stood and pulled on the ties of my robe, looked beyond my curtains, my gaze unfocused, just colors: taupe, ivory, evergreen, gold. “Okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Calm your britches.” I tossed back the last dregs of my Arbuckle’s, chewed. “If you’re foolhardy enough to work with that wound, I’ll take advantage of you.”
A leer grew across his face. That rogue, he knew what I meant.
“And, um.” I scanned the corners of my one-room. “I’ll bake you a pie.”
He shuddered. “No, thanks.”
He stood and strode toward me, the wood floors swaying with his movement.
I crossed my arms. “I can cook.”
“Mmm.”
His body before mine, gaze on my lips, cheeks, collarbone. He reached out, fingered the ends of my braid. I couldn’t breathe.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” he said.
I stepped back. “I need to change.”
He released the strands. He held the pause a moment, then turned.
I tossed off my nightgown, tugged on my long underwear and flannel petticoat, all sorts of wind caught in my throat.
“But,” he said, “if it suits, you could join me helping the Browns prepare for their barn bee.”
“Deal.” I straightened the band of my petticoat. “You’re friendly with Asa now?”
He shrugged. “He’s practical. I like him.”
“Practical.”
“Sakes alive, you want a sermon? He’s got a good soul.”
A good soul. What in tarnation was that? And that was what he sought in companionship? I buttoned up my shirtwaist, tucked the ends, and shrugged into my slicker. I pulled on my wool stockings, slipped into my boots.
“I’m decent.”
He turned. “Are you now?”
I snorted and thrust my hands into my mittens. “And you’re preparing to dig,” I said, gesturing at his armless shirt, “like that?”
I stalked over to my brothers’ laundry, grabbed one of Willie’s gaudy red dress shirts, and tossed it at him. Stot scowled, looked up. I smothered a smirk. I’d never seen the man in anything but white, gray, black. “It’ll camouflage your dripping blood.”
He studied the fabric in his hands. “Your brother’s?”
I faltered tying on my gun belt. “Whose else would it be?”
“I don’t know.”
Was he actually asking whether I’d had some random feller over? “It doesn’t matter to you whose it is.”
I whistled for One Eye to follow, yanked open the door, and stalked out into the bleached winter sunshine.