Chapter Thirty-Eight
At first, Aidan was only aware of sounds: Hushed voices, the scrape of a chair, a door closing. He couldn’t make out the words around him, the words all melting together. He was floating in a warm, comfortable dream, one without problems or pain.
“He’s awake,” someone announced in a light voice. He recognized it, but it took him a long time to put a face to the sound.
Gary, he thought drowsily. The little sentinel.
“Aidan? Aidan, can you hear me?” This voice was different, distinctly female. Worried.
He struggled against the weight of his own eyes, trying to find wakefulness, but it eluded him. He settled back into the comfort of sleep.
“Are you sure he hasn’t had too much?” the woman’s voice asked.
“Oh aye, I’m quite sure,” another voice answered. This one was older, masculine, with a strange lilt to the words. “He’s a big lad—took almost enough for a dray horse to get him some relief. Don’t you worry, Mrs. Rawlins.”
Mrs. Rawlins? Aidan thought. But Brendan’s wife is dead, has been for… a year. No, five years. A day. Did she die?
Something cool touched his forehead; a soft hand lay on it. He hummed happily.
“See! He made a sound!” Gary said.
“Aidan, you wake up this minute,” the woman—Mrs. Rawlins—said. “If you’re shamming, you shan’t get any pancakes, and I am not the least sorry about that.”
Pancakes? Who would be making pancakes during a fire? I can smell the smoke, he thought, still more than half in a dream.
Wait. Mrs. Rawlins.
He was married; his brother was dead.
Alexandra, the children, Kevin Black, it all came rushing back to him in a maelstrom. He pushed himself up onto his arms, forcing his body to obey. His eyes were the last to give in, but he forced them open. First a sliver, then more, the world coming into focus.
He immediately regretted this, for a lantern was brought to hover over his face. He winced and grunted, squeezing his eyes shut again.
“Enjoying your beauty rest?”
Aidan opened his eyes again and found Antony leaning over him, his mustache lifted in a smile.
“I was,” Aidan replied, his voice scratchy and his tongue thick and dry, “until I saw your ugly mug looking at me.”
This made Antony laugh. The room filled with sighs of relief.
“Here,” Antony said, stepping back. “Maybe this will cheer you, then.”
Alexandra took his place, leaning over Aidan. Her brow was lined with worry, her eyes tight. She searched his face as he blinked up at her languidly.
“Drina,” he sighed happily.
“Aidan,” she replied, putting her hand on his forehead. “Don’t you ever frighten me like that again!”
It was only afterward, when the fog had thinned a little, that Aidan realized what he’d called her—and that she hadn’t corrected him.
“I’ll do my very best,” he said with as much seriousness as he could muster, which wasn’t a whole lot.
“D’you think ye can sit up there, laddy?” Dr. Bruin asked from the foot of the bed. Everyone seemed crammed into the small room, and he began to recognize it. It was his bedroom in the cabin; his things were where he’d left them.
Aidan grunted and tried, but pain pinned him to the bed, working through whatever the doctor had given him.
“Slowly, now,” the doctor advised. Alexandra put an arm behind Aidan’s back and helped him to sit up. “You should take some water,” the doctor said, touching the skin of Aidan’s cheek. “You’ve been asleep for two days straight.”
“Two days?” Aidan croaked. “Why on earth did you let me sleep that long?”
“Because you needed the rest, you silly man,” Alexandra answered for the doctor. “You’d lost a lot of blood.”
Dumbly, Aidan looked down at himself. His shirt was off, and his ribs were bound up. There was a small stain of blood on the left side. He closed his eyes, remembering. Kevin Black cut me.
“You’re going to be easily winded for the next few days,” Dr. Bruin said. He put his fingers to Aidan’s wrist, feeling the pulse. He nodded, satisfied. “You must take it easy—drink plenty of fluids. I recommend good broths, and eggs if you can get them.”
Alexandra was holding a cup to Aidan’s lips. He took it and drank gratefully, the water sliding down his throat coldly. “If we can get them? Where are the chickens?”
“I let them out of the coop,” Danny said from the doorway. Aidan’s eyes shifted to him. The boy looked older than he was. “It was burning,” he said, more quietly.
“I caught two of them!” Bella announced. She was on the floor next to the bed, peering up at Aidan with large, brown eyes.
“Well now,” Aidan said, his voice less scratchy after the water. “You’re a regular chicken wrangler, aren’t you?” He glanced to Alexandra. “The horses?”
She hesitated, her eyes sad. “Gone,” she said quietly. “Except Cyprus.”
“And Bluebelle,” Antony added, naming his own riding horse.
Aidan lay back against the pillow, groaning. “And your aunt?”
“Worse than she was.” Alexandra’s hands went still in her lap. “She was on her feet the whole of that night, Aidan. She got us all out. She hasn’t been out of bed since.”
“I take it you didn’t have any luck, either,” he said to Antony, rubbing at his eyes.
“I did, and I didn’t,” Antony said. “The miners remembered Longshanks, but none of them could say for certain if he was involved with Black.”
“Surely that’s a moot point by now,” Alexandra interjected. “I mean, after everything that’s happened.”
“Maybe,” Antony agreed. “In any case, the sheriff still won’t make a move against Black.
He held to what he said at the fair—he’d swear in every man in the county the day somebody tells him where the gang beds down.
Trouble is, none of them would give me a name.
I told him to call on the marshal, but… well. You know how that is.”
“The sheriff?” Aidan repeated, lowering his hands. “When did you speak to him?”
“He was here yesterday,” Antony explained. He reached into his vest and pulled out a clay pipe, clamping it between his teeth.
“For all the good it does us,” Aidan muttered. “He’s about as useful as a walking stick to a snail.”
“You think he’s in on it?” Alexandra asked.
“I don’t know,” Aidan admitted. “I only know that for someone charged with keeping law and order around town, he’s awfully loath to do that.”
“That’s all well and good,” Alexandra said. The edge of the bed dipped where she sat on it, pressing up against Aidan’s legs beneath the quilt. “But we need to talk about what to do next.”
“I’m going to go get our horses back; that’s what’s next,” Aidan said, sitting up again. He grunted past the pain in his ribs, trying to get his legs out of bed. Alexandra stopped him with a firm hand.
“You getting hurt again isn’t going to help anyone,” Alexandra said. “You need to rest a few days.”
“Listen to your wife,” Dr. Bruin chimed in. “You made a lucky escape. I don’t relish the idea of having to stitch you back together again.”
Aidan grunted. “Then what next?”
Alexandra exchanged a look with Antony. “The first thing is to make sure everyone’s safe,” she said slowly. “If we’re to take on Black, then we can’t be worrying about who’s in the line of fire.”
Aidan looked from Alexandra to Antony. “What did you have in mind?”
“The children and Lisa will go to stay with Dr. Bruin for the time being,” Alexandra explained.
“Dr. Bruin?” Aidan said, his brows arching.
The doctor, hovering just behind Antony’s shoulder, smiled. “It seems a tidy solution. The missus and I miss having a house full of bairns, and it’s a good way for me to keep an eye on Miss Hampshire.”
“Are you certain?” Aidan asked, sitting up more slowly so that he was leaning against the simple wood headboard of his bed. “That’s quite a bit to take on. There could be further danger.”
“Don’t you worry about it,” the doctor said. “Kevin Black might be mean as a snake, but he’s a coward. I doubt he’d be fool enough to make trouble in town with the sheriff right to hand. The only danger those children are in is being spoiled by Mrs. Bruin.”
Aidan nodded slowly, putting a hand to his aching side. Whatever the doctor had given him was wearing off, and the pain was blooming under his ribs. “You should go with them,” Aidan said to Alexandra.
“What, and leave you alone? That worked out well the last time, didn’t it?” she retorted.
“I’ll just be checking on Miss Hampshire,” the doctor said, snapping his bag closed and excusing himself hastily.
“I’ll go with you,” Antony said. He shut the door behind them.
“I mean it,” Aidan said emphatically. “Drina,” he said, taking the chance that it would hit her in the sentiment. He reached out, wincing, and covered her hand with his. “Please.”
She merely continued to look at him, unmoved. “I know that you haven’t had the education that I have, but I never took you for a stupid man,” she said coolly.
And there it was—she’d let him have the name and given him nothing else with it. He understood, dimly, that he’d just tried to spend something she had only lately let him hold.
Aidan pulled back at that, but Alexandra flipped her hand to catch his.
“Listen to me,” she said, leaning toward him. “Neither of us can solve this alone. We’ve tried it separately long enough.” Her grip tightened. “We’re better together, and you know it, because you watched me prove it in the yard.”
“You know, I really hate it when you get like this,” Aidan grumbled, avoiding her gaze.
“Like what?” Alexandra demanded.
“Right,” Aidan replied. “I hate it when you’re right.”
Alexandra grinned and preened in the corner of his eye. “So that would be all the time?”
Aidan shot a dark look at her without any real ire.
He reached behind his back for the pillow and swatted her with it, and paid for it immediately—the pull under his ribs took his breath and left him hissing through his teeth.
She laughed and caught it, holding it under her arms. Then her eyes went to his side, and the line came back between her brows.
“All right,” he said at last. He put his free hand over their joined ones, lacing his fingers into hers. “We’ll try this together, though I’m sure it will end in disaster.”
“Yes,” Alexandra agreed. “But it will be our disaster.”
This made Aidan huff out an awkward laugh, pulling his hand back to hold his side.
“There was a moment there where I thought I’d lost you,” she said softly, so softly that Aidan could barely hear her.
She looked down at their hands, her thumb rubbing over his knuckles.
“I thought, ‘How am I going to live without this impossible man driving me crazy?’” Her thumb paused.
“Why did you do it?” she whispered. “Why would you go out there on your own like that?”
“It was easy—because I couldn’t live without you,” he answered simply.
Alexandra looked up at him sharply, her green eyes serious behind her spectacles. They were shining, grave but hopeful. “What—what does that mean?” she asked, her voice lodging in her throat.
“And you tell me I’m the foolish one,” he mocked gently. “It’s simple: I love you, and I don’t want to be without you.”
Alexandra stared at him, the sound of her breathing filling the room. “You… love me,” she repeated slowly.
“Yes?” Aidan responded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“You love me,” Alexandra said again. She stared at him for so long that Aidan was concerned that she was having some sort of fit.
“I can’t help but feel that tradition dictates some sort of reply,” Aidan pointed out.
Alexandra blinked and shook herself, her face lighting up with mischief. “Well, I should think it would be patently obvious—I don’t see me running into the middle of a gang of bandits to save anyone else.”
Aidan laughed again. “Well, good,” he said, the ache under his ribs losing some of its grip. “See that you don’t,” he added.
Alexandra laughed. She gave him a shy look, and then scooted closer. Gently, carefully, she laid her head on him, snuggling against his good side. Her hand came to rest on his chest, just over his heart. He covered her hand with his, his other arm holding her firmly in place around her shoulders.
“I do love you, too, you know,” she said quietly.
“Yes, I know,” he sighed, content for the moment. He could have stayed in that moment forever, but the specter of Kevin Black remained just outside of their little world. “I suppose we’d better come up with the rest of a plan.
“I have an idea,” Alexandra said. “You and Antony are going to love it.”