A whiff of sunshine and fresh air flitted through his memory. Mrs. Maggie Fannin might look and talk like no-account trash, but she smelled like a spring morning. She was nothing at all like the frilly, perfumed belles who’d decorated his arm and his bed before the war, but he had to admire her spunk.
He surveyed the cabin. Twenty years of torrential rains, blasting heat, and neglect had taken a toll. Even the lean-to running the length of the south wall was about to collapse. Like as not, Maggie and her husband, on the run to escape death and destruction somewhere else, had stumbled across the place, stopped to rest, and decided to stay. Sheer desperation…not unlike his own.
Why don’t you just go home? The squatter’s words landed in his gut with a thud. What little dignity he had left growled at both the heartsick yearning that had brought him to the edge of Collier land and the cowardice that wouldn’t let him go any farther. Five long years after storming from Dumont, cursing everyone in the mansion and the land itself, he’d be lucky if they didn’t shoot him on sight.
And then there was that little matter about adding a Collier voice to the push for Texas to secede.
Ben stowed both revolvers in his saddlebags and dropped the leather pouches across a rail. After leaning the empty carbine and dull saber against an upright beam, he trudged into the lean-to, eyeing the structure’s drooping overhang in case he needed to make a run for safety. The blood-bay gelding stood muzzle to the wall, dozing. Despite the bones jutting against its hide, the animal’s coat gleamed. Maggie. Ben shook his head on a deep sigh. She’d even curried his horse. Thin as she was, the woman would blow away in a stiff breeze if not for all that grit anchoring her to the earth. Her husband had married a handful…and then left her to fend for herself. How long had she been alone?
He patted the gelding’s withers. “Come on, Saber. You should be eating, not sleeping.”
The horse rumbled and stamped a forehoof, but he marched from the lean-to like an obedient puppy. Ben hooked an arm under the bay’s neck and patted a bony cheek. He’d picket his trusty steed in some tall, tasty grass well away from the water and dunk himself in the bayou.
“If a gator doesn’t get us, how ’bout we see what we can forage for that underfed woman in the cabin?” Saber lipped Ben’s cheek. “I think we owe her that much…even if she is a squatter.”
Squatter. How would she come by a legitimate deed, unless… No. Dumont was too strong, too permanent, too far from the war to suffer like the rest of the South. The lifeblood of the kingdom his father had built flowed through Ben’s veins. If Dumont had fallen, he’d have bled to death by now.
Still, a niggling doubt dug in at the back of his brain. What if she’s telling the truth?
Chapter Three
Maggie severed the thread with her teeth, and then ran her fingers over the line of fine stitches beside the bodice buttons. Worn so thin in spots she could almost see through it, the calico wouldn’t hold up through many more repairs. Why had she burned Declan’s clothes?
Because she didn’t want the reminders. She bore enough of her husband’s patches on the inside without wearing them on the outside, as well.
Maybe the boys would bring a bolt of cloth on their next visit. A shudder rippled through her as she slipped the dress over the raggedy chemise and petticoat and fastened all but the top few buttons. Fanning her throat with the loose edges of the collar, she stepped onto the porch to escape the cabin’s heat.
The Reb and that big, bony red horse of his approached from the bayou, parting the tall grass as they came. He set a bucket of water on the top step at her feet before fixing her with a haunted gaze. An odd little jiggle kicked up in her pulse as she waited for the question that had become a morning ritual.
“Any sign of your husband?”
“You seen any sign of him?”
His gaze never leaving hers, the Reb shook his head.
“Then what makes you think I have?”
A quirk touched his lips—not quite amusement, but something similar. Ducking his head, he raised two fingertips to the brim of his buff-colored hat, and then he and the horse disappeared around the corner of the cabin.
The span of his shoulders, slightly slumped, the remnants of confidence in the way he carried himself, the weariness he tried to keep from his face…all had become too familiar in the week since he awoke. There was no menace in the man, only persistence. Maybe that pure cussedness was what set him at chores as though demon-possessed. Light no longer leaked through the mortar in the walls, and the roof of the shelter along the south side of the cabin bore fewer ripples. She had to admit the Reb’s presence, polite and vaguely protective, provided a measure of comfort while riling her innards.
Surely, the lure of home would drag him away soon, and he’d leave her in what passed for peace. Answers from Declan would be a long time coming.
One of these days, she’d pay for that lie.