“It’s fine. You just . . . you can’t go sneaking up on someone like that.”
“I mean about the other day,” she says. “How I asked for details. You were right. It’s not my story to tell.”
Jesse passes by the door, heading back to bed with a candle in hand and Mutt on his heels. When his door shuts, the light dies with it, and I turn toward the nightstand. After rousing the lantern, I twist back to Charlotte. And freeze. There’s a welt on her cheek, and her coat’s hanging open and askew on her shoulders. She’s still wearing the brown dress I last saw her in. There’s blood on it.
I jump from the bed, and my hands push the coat down her arms till it catches at the crook of her elbows. Then I’m inspecting her—brushing her hair back to see her neck, the side of her head—searching for whatever injuries left the dress collar stained.
“It’s yours,” she says. “Reece, it’s your blood.”
From when she helped me into the house. I realize my hands are cupping her face, and I step away quickly.
“Why’d you come back?”
“Kate will need help with the labor,” she says, but she’s looking at me like maybe that ain’t the only reason. “I need to lie low for a few days, also.”
“Yer uncle’s been seen to?”
She nods.
“How?”
“I’m tired, Reece. I’d like to sleep.”
She shuffles for the bed and moves one of the two pillows to the foot of the mattress so her feet will be up near the head. Then she sheds her coat and shoes and crawls beneath the covers.
“You ain’t gonna strangle me with a noose while I sleep?” I joke when I realize what she’s suggesting.
“Do you plan to steal my earrings?”
I smile, and she gives me a crooked, closed-lip grin in return. I douse the lantern and ease onto the bed, staying above the quilt. It’s a cool night, but I don’t got a need for it. Not with her hip just barely grazing my leg, making the bedding between us feel as hot as coals.
“He shot himself,” Charlotte whispers a moment later. She goes on to explain it all. It were a good plan, a sneaky angle. Tie the noose and let the man hang himself. It ain’t all that different than the con I’m pulling on Rose.
“I thought he’d just run, disappear,” she continues. “Maybe try to make a name for himself in a new town where no one knew him and he could change his name. But he’s always been a leech, my uncle. He only knew how to follow a trail already blazed by others.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t help more.”
“You helped plenty,” she says.
“That ain’t true.”
“You said everything I needed to hear. Trust me, Reece.”
“All right, Charlotte Vaughn. If you say so.”
I ain’t got the slightest what she’s really driving at. I been gruff and closed off and judgmental. The things I said to her most recently weren’t exactly kind. She ventured to Kate’s claim ’cus she wanted a gunslinger, and when none of us provided it, she made her own luck, executed her own plan. She don’t owe us nothing. Kate’s tough enough to make do without a midwife when the time comes. I reckon Charlotte knows this same as me, and if she truly needed somewhere to hole up a few days till the papers clear her and her ma’s names, she coulda done just that at the Coltons’ Prescott place. Coming all the way to the hideout after losing the day’s light couldn’t’ve been an easy ride, but perhaps this is just a decency she wants to offer. She’s a good person, Charlotte. She ain’t chasing a story no longer, so maybe it’s like Kate said. Maybe there’s just something more.
Chapter Forty
* * *
Charlotte
I am envious of the speed at which Reece falls asleep. Barely a few minutes after we cease talking, his breathing falls into a peaceful, languid rhythm, and though the house is silent, I can’t find sleep myself.
And Lord am I tired.
Still, my mind keeps reliving the same moment: the look of surprise on Reece’s face when he woke to find me entering the bedroom, then the storm that spread across his features when he thought I might be injured. He was out of the bed in one fluid moment, his hands on my shoulders and neck, then cupping my face.
I hadn’t recoiled.
He moved as quickly—perhaps even faster—than he had in those days I spent in the stagecoach, but I felt no fear from the movement this time, no threat. He was deliberate but concerned, his touch gentle. When I think of it now, the places he touched seem to tingle with heat. His thumbs on my cheeks, his palms on my jaw, his fingers grazing the nape of my neck.
I flex my feet beneath the blankets, clench and unclench my hands.
I try to tell myself I am reliving this moment because it is kind and warm and good. Because it is a welcome change from the nightmares of the bounty hunter’s blood or my uncle’s vacant eyes. But then I’m feeling the ghost of Reece’s touch again—the jacket slipping from my shoulders, his hands tracing my jaw—and I know it’s more than that.
Why’d you come back?
Because I needed to disappear for a little while.
Because Kate will need my help.
And because maybe I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Reece Murphy.
Dreams find me eventually, and they are not pleasant. Uncle’s cooling body. His lifeless eyes. His blood covering the ledgers, seeping into the grain of the desk.
“Charlotte,” someone says, shaking me at the shoulder. “Charlotte!” I jolt awake to find Jesse crouched beside me. “The baby’s coming.”
He looks as though he’s seen a ghost, and suddenly the words come together for me, the fog of sleep rolling off.
The baby. Kate.
I stumble out of bed, reaching for my shoes. Reece is awake now, too, and he watches us leave, concern etched in his features.
In the Coltons’ bedroom, Kate is pacing. Her nightgown is wet from the waist down.
“I told him not to wake you,” she says. “It’s just the waters breaking. I ain’t even felt nothing yet and—oh.” She puts a hand to the bed frame. For a few seconds she is elsewhere; then she looks up at me. “That weren’t half bad.”
“They’ll get . . .” Not worse. What was the way Mother always put it? “More intense.”
Jesse’s energy is tight and frenzied, so I send him to stoke the fire and tell him to get Kate some water. I walk with her in small circles at the foot of the bed, letting her pause whenever a new wave strikes. The rhythm becomes almost peaceful, and we carry on like that, our fingers threaded together as we pace.
By dawn, Kate’s gone into herself, seemingly unaware that the rest of us move about the house. As each new wave builds, she pauses and bends over, moaning through the worst of the pressure.
“What’s wrong?” Jesse keeps asking. “Something’s wrong.”