Chapter 6 #2
The door hinges squeal. Lucas and Gideon step in, their boots heavy on the floorboards.
“All finished?” Lucas asks, his attention cutting from the basin to the damp rags, then to me. He lingers a touch too long, suspicion tightening his features.
Arch leans back against the headboard, the faintest smirk tugging at his mouth, as if he’s daring me to blush under their stare.
“He’s clean and bandaged,” I say quickly, forcing my voice steady. “You can see he’s no danger tonight.”
“Mr. Sherman said he’s to be secured,” Lucas replies.
Gideon moves forward with the iron, and it clanks against the brass bedframe.
Arch doesn’t resist. “Don’t worry,” he drawls, tipping his head toward me, hazel eyes gleaming with something unreadable. “I’ll manage.”
When the men leave, I cross to Arch and press my palm to his cheek. He’s warm but not fevered.
“Touch a man’s face that soft, Alice, and he’ll start wonderin’ how the rest of you feels.”
Heat rises from my collar to my ears, and his words land low in my belly. He’d spoken them as if he knew exactly where they would land. My palm lingers half a beat too long before I snatch it away with a gasp, as if burned.
His grin deepens into something wolfish.
I smooth my apron, stepping back under the pretense of giving him space. “I’ll see you’ve water for the night.”
“That star business—superstition of yours?”
“Pardon?”
“You said you’d seen two this week. You reckon it means something?”
“Maybe. I’ve read they can be warnings or signs of hope. I’d rather think the latter.”
“What do you believe?”
“I…don’t rightly know.”
He turns to the window, the sky beyond wide and star-strewn. “The night before—however I ended up here—I seen one myself.”
My hand lingers on the door, though I ought to go.
“Tell me something, darlin’—how’s a woman in a place like this know about fallin’ stars?” He leans forward, elbows to his knees, chain drawn taut. His genuine curiosity holds me still.
“I read,” I say. “And I listen. My father had an old almanac. When I was a girl, I’d sneak out with it, match the drawings to the sky.”
“That so?” His mouth tugs upward. “So you fancy yourself a stargazer?”
I almost smile. “Falling stars aren’t stars at all. They’re stones from the heavens, burning up as they pass through the air. Some folks think they’re omens.”
“Sounds prettier the way you tell it. Me, I don’t care what they’re made of. I just watch ’em fall.”
I move toward the door again, but he goes on.
“I ain’t much for book learnin’. But I know men.
Always have. When I was a boy, I’d ride the train into town just to study folks.
Get ’em talkin’, coax their secrets out on account of pride or the itch to brag.
Funny thing—animals, like a rabbit or a snake, they’ll match the brush or dirt, melt right into it.
But city folks?” He gives a humorless smile.
“They march to the slaughter, drunk on their own pomp.”
“You study human nature, then?”
He scratches his chin as he seems to turn it over. “Suppose you could call it that. I can tell when a man’s lyin’ by the set of his shoulders, when he’s scared by the drop of his eyes. I know when he’s thinkin’ of runnin’ and when he’s thinkin’ of killin’. That’s how I keep alive.”
My pulse quickens, and not from fear alone. “And what do you see when you look at me?”
His reply comes with a bitter certainty, like an irrefutable truth he cannot abide. “I see a little lamb standin’ in a den of snakes.”
“You don’t know me.”
“No. But I know snakes. And I know the look in a lamb’s eyes when she’s wondering how long she’s got. You’re a lamb, Alice. Soft-hearted and sweet. But I reckon you could learn to bite.”
A tightness coils in my chest.
“That mark,” he says softly, nodding toward the fading bruise on my cheek, “don’t belong on you. Your husband, that whole damn clan of Shermans, they ain’t known for their kindness. Help me, and I’ll see to it no one ever lays a hand on you again.”
“Suppose I freed you. What then? You ride off, and what happens to me among snakes?”
“I won’t leave you behind.”
I almost laugh. Why should I believe him? Any man in his position would make the same promises—sweet enough to loosen a lock—then vanish once his boots touched open trail.
And what would he see me as, once free? Not the woman who could cook and sew, tend a fever, manage a house and its accounts. Not the one who could ride a horse hard across open country and read the stars to find her way. No, he’d see a liability. Just as my parents had. Just like Joseph.
“You’ve only known me these few days, Mr. Archer. Long enough to see me carry a tray and change a bandage, nothing more.”
“That’s plenty. Some folks won’t fetch a sip of water for a man laid up, much less see to him proper.
” He huffs a short, quiet breath. “You kept me fed. Kept my mouth from goin’ dry.
Saw to it I was clean and comfortable. That’s more than keepin’ a man alive, that’s kindness.
And I don’t take kindly to seein’ a good soul bruised up. ”
The words settle over me like a blanket fresh off the line. No one had named my care so plainly before. It stirs something I’ve never known—something lovely and fragile, yet mysterious, like a rose blooming in the dark.
“Who are you? Really.”
He studies me a long moment, then says, “I’m someone most folks wouldn’t trouble themselves to treat so well.”