Chapter 24
“I’m sorry,” Ben said quietly as they hovered in the doorway, examining the small and strange accommodations. “I didn’t ask her about the details, but I guess I should have.”
“You said it was all she had,” Hattie reasoned. The room was truly awful. She wasn’t a snob, and she hadn’t balked at sleeping in the back of the wagon. After spending a month under a building, she had no reason to complain at all.
Ben stepped into the room. He picked up a match from the table and lit the oil lamp. The orange glow highlighted the dirt and picked out the rough patches on the wooden walls. “At least it’s out of the elements.”
“That’s true. And we’ll have clean clothes soon.” She couldn’t wait to finally put on a clean dress. It felt good to be positive about something for a change, when so much of her life over the past several weeks had been one horrible thing after another.
Hattie tested the mattress with her hand. Hard ends of straw stuck through the ticking, and the wool blanket was tattered around the edges. “It’s no feather bed, but it’ll do.”
Ben hung their bags on a couple of the hooks that hadn’t been broken and leaned the rifle in the corner. He gestured to the least dirty spot on the floor. “You can have the bed. I’ll sleep here.”
The floorboards under the pegs were the cleanest, but they weren’t clean. “No, you won’t.”
“Right. I’ll just sleep in the common room.” Ben gestured toward the hall. “I’m sorry. I should’ve thought.”
Hattie shut the door before he had a chance to walk back out of it, leaving the two of them closed into the room together. “Ben, stop being such an ass.”
“What? What did I do?” His eyes widened, and he looked like a wild animal trapped in a cage. “I was trying to give you your privacy.”
She rolled her eyes. For a man who’d served in the war and robbed his way across the country, he was awfully innocent. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m saying you should share the bed with me.”
“Hattie, I--” He shook his head vehemently as he tried to find the words. “I’m not going to do that to you.”
“So you’re just going to make me feel guilty for taking the only halfway decent place to sleep in this place?” she retorted, putting her hands on her hips. “You’re going to let me toss and turn all night, wondering if you’re comfortable or not?”
“That’s not what I mean,” he mumbled. “I was just trying to be a gentleman.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” she replied, a bit more softly. Hattie hadn’t intended to be so forceful. “The thing is, you’d probably be more comfortable in the back of the wagon than on this floor, and it doesn’t feel right to be the only one who gets a bed.”
“It’s small, though,” he pointed out.
“It’ll be fine. I promise I don’t bite.” She flashed him a smile and then pointed to the door. “Why don’t you go see if the food is ready? I’m starving.”
Ben went down the hall, which left Hattie to settle into the room.
There wasn’t much of anything to be settled, though.
Her extra clothes were washed and hanging up.
She untucked the little pistol from her belt and put it on the table.
She didn’t have any other belongings besides the sad canvas bag that hung on a peg.
Hattie swiped a windowpane clean with her shirt sleeve and peered outside.
Behind the inn, there was a much smaller barn than the one across the street where they’d stabled the horses.
The snow between the small barn and the inn was smooth, unmarked by any recent footprints. She wondered what anyone used it for.
She tried to remind herself that Ben wasn’t just a former soldier. He was an orphan, a boy who’d been raised by a priest and a nun. He wasn’t that child anymore, but that still affected who he was.
Her own childhood had affected her, but Hattie had spent all of it running away from the lifestyle that her mother and the rest of society seemed to think she ought to have. Hattie hadn’t listened to her elders or said her prayers at night. She and Ben just weren’t the same.
When Ben returned with two bowls, she sat on the edge of the bed and suggested that he join her.
Hattie glanced at Ben every now and then out of the corner of her eye, but the soup was so hot and rich that she couldn’t concentrate on much else.
Hattie didn’t want to think about how clean the kitchen might be compared to the bedroom, so she simply ate.
“That was just what I needed,” she said as she put the bowl on the table. “I think it’s time to turn in.”
He put his bowl next to hers. “I really don’t think it’s right, Hattie.”
“Please.” She put her hand on his arm. “I don’t want to be in here alone. I’ve been running and hiding for what feels like an eternity now. It’d be nice to just rest for a while and know that someone is with me.”
Ben nodded. “All right. I’ll sleep on the outside.”
Hattie got into bed and scooted over against the wall, trying to give him some room. A bed! A real bed! It was probably full of fleas and would leave her sore in the morning, but it was still a bed.
The frame groaned unhappily as Ben got in next to her. He lay stiff as a board on his back, staring purposefully at the ceiling.
Hattie’s knee brushed the outer part of his thigh as she pulled the blanket over them.
When Ben had first discovered her in the wagon, Hattie wanted him to like her so that he’d let her travel with him.
It was about safety more than anything. Otherwise, he could hand her over to Cutter or throw her in front of the next bandits to come along, letting her be a distraction.
Now, though, she realized just how much she actually wanted him to like her. Not just for the sake of survival, but because she liked him. She was coming to think of him as her friend.
Didn’t friends tell each other the truth, though? Hattie frowned.
“What is it?” Ben seemed to have a talent for noticing the slightest downturn in Hattie’s mood, even when he wasn’t looking at her.
“I was just missing Oscar.” Hattie hadn’t quite realized it until it came out, but it was true. She missed him terribly.
“That was your fiancé?” Ben asked. He kept his arms firmly at his sides, clenched against his body.
“Yes.” Oscar would surely be laughing at her if he was alive to see such a scene, with Ben trying so hard not to let a single bit of his body touch Hattie’s. Perhaps he wouldn’t be any more comfortable in the bed with her than he would’ve been on the floor, after all.
“Tell me about him,” Ben invited.
Hattie sighed a little as she thought about her better days with Oscar, before their fathers had been locked in a feud, before they’d even decided to get married. “He was wonderful. He wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before.”
“How so?” Ben tried folding his arms over his chest. His right elbow hung off the edge of the bed.
“Well, all the people that my parents knew were very stuffy. They came from old money, and they had very certain ideas about how everyone should think and behave. Some of them were rather scandalized by the idea that my mama did so much of the cooking and cleaning herself instead of hiring a maid.”
“That does seem kind of unusual for people with money,” Ben commented. “I’ve never lived in a household like that, though.”
“No, you’re right,” Hattie admitted. “Mama wanted us to be ladies, and she wanted to fit in with the other rich people, but she never really did. Papa didn’t, either.
He was very much into his business, and he dressed the part when he had his meetings, but he was interested in more than money. At least at first.”
It wasn’t until Papa’s disagreement with Mr. Davies that he’d begun obsessing over every penny, spending hours in his study to analyze and reanalyze his contracts.
“So, Oscar wasn’t one of the stuffy, rich people?” Ben urged, bringing the subject back around to where it’d begun.
“Technically, he was. His father was wealthy. He’d grown up with all the best clothes and fine horses.” Hattie pursed her lips, thinking. She had to be careful. If anything, she said conflicted with her earlier tale about the hot springs, Ben would notice. He was a very observant man.
“He was just much more down-to-earth,” she tried to explain.
How could you really get someone else to understand what a person was like in just a few sentences?
“Oscar had the fine things, but he also liked to just be alive out in the wilderness. He liked to joke and laugh. He put more value on a good conversation than anything else.”
“He sounds like he was a good man,” Ben said softly.
“Yes. He had money, but it wasn’t the only thing he lived for.” Her voice cracked. That was what she’d always thought about Oscar, but had she been wrong? What had truly happened that day in Papa’s study?
Oscar said he was going to negotiate the deal on his father’s behalf so that they could put it all behind them. Had it gone wrong because Papa wasn’t willing to have a mature conversation about the subject, or was it simply that Cutter had lost patience and wanted to do things his way?
She’d never truly know. Oscar hadn’t done anything to stop it, though. He hadn’t even kept the Kincaid brothers from killing Mama and Ingrid. He’d only tried to save Hattie. The more she thought about it, she couldn’t even be sure that was true.
“Your parents must’ve been happy with the match,” Ben noted. “A wealthy man who’s good to you. That doesn’t seem easy to come by.”
“No, they weren’t happy at all,” Hattie groused. Even with her parents dead, she still found the capacity to be angry with them. “I loved them, but they were very controlling.”
Ben adjusted his shoulders so that they were both on the mattress. It moved him slightly closer to Hattie. “What didn’t they like about him?”
“He was…from the wrong family.” There was more to the story, of course, but it was still the truth. Her throat tightened as tears welled up in her eyes. “It felt like they just didn’t want me to be happy. I know that’s not what they meant, but…well, you know how parents are.”
“I don’t, actually,” Ben said with a laugh.
“You didn’t know them at all?” she asked.
He shook his head, the fine blonde hairs catching in the mattress ticking. “I don’t know anything about them, and I was too young to remember them.”
“Maybe that’s a blessing.” Hattie sobbed, ashamed of herself as she felt her eyelids swelling and her cheeks reddening. “Then you can’t miss them.”
“I’m sorry, Hattie.” Ben rolled on his side so that he faced her. He put his hand gently on her arm, his thumb rubbing the soft spot just above her elbow. “It’s got to be so hard.”
“It is,” she confessed. “I have to live with it every day, though. I miss them, and I miss Ingrid. Most of all, I miss Oscar. I wish—”
She tried to turn away from Ben, but there wasn’t much room to do so. She wished she hadn’t killed Oscar. That was what she’d almost told him. Ben was too easy to talk to, and he nearly got the truth out of her without even trying.
“It’s okay,” he murmured softly as he kept rubbing her arm. “It’s not fair, and it’s hard, but it’s okay to feel that way.”
“Oh, Ben.” Through the blur of her tears, he could very well have been Oscar. That kept happening, but it was so easy.
She needed little imagination to believe that she and Oscar had run away like they’d talked about, that they were heading through the mountains to start their life together without any interference from their families.
They lay facing each other, and it took only the slightest movement of her head to press her mouth to his. Ben’s lips were chapped but soft. He smelled of pine needles and the outdoors. His breath was warm inside her mouth.
But he pulled back quickly, his eyes wide and his body stiff.
“What’s wrong?” she gulped, her lips still tingling.
He looked down at the few inches of mattress between them. “It’s not right, Hattie. I’m not…We’re not…”
She propped herself up on her elbow so that her face was above his, and she pressed her body against him. “Don’t you want to feel something, Ben? Something other than regret and guilt and fear?”
“Sure, but…” He swallowed and ran his hand through his hair.
She ran her fingertips up his arm and into the hollow of his shoulder. Then she wrapped her hand around behind his neck and tickled the fine hairs that grew back there as she looked into his eyes. “We could be each other’s escape. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Ben closed his eyes, and his mouth clenched tight. When he opened his eyes again, sorrow and regret mixed in those sky-blue depths. “I’d want it to mean something, Hattie. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us if it didn’t.”
Hurt hollowed out her chest, and she pulled away slowly until her back was against the wall. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should sleep on the floor.” Her life had become nothing but pain and survival. She only wanted to find some refuge from that, to feel like she was truly alive.
“No, it’s all right.” He reached out and touched her arm again. “We can still be each other’s comfort. Come here.”
He was surprisingly strong as he pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her.
Hattie melted into the warmth of his body. Her eyelids grew heavy. All of her muscles had been tensed and ready for action since she’d left her family’s estate, but they began to unwind and relax.
“Is this all right?” Ben’s breath brushed through her hair.
“Yes.” It was the most honest thing she’d said to him so far, and answer that came from deep within herself. His embrace brought her the comfort that she could no longer get from Oscar, the interior warmth that she’d been craving but had no idea how to find. “Yes, it is.”