“Ladies don’t swear,” he said piously.

Eleanor jerked out another stick and peeled off a length of sheeting. “Gentlemen don’t refer to their—their posteriors in a lady’s presence.”

“Ah, come on now, El, aren’t we beyond all that?”

Her lips twitched as she tried to repress a smile. “Your bruises have turned yellow,” she told him. When he tried to look down, she said, “Hold still. I’m not through yet.”

She was fast and efficient, reaching around him to grab an end, freeing it and then reaching around him again. When her fingers brushed across his navel, he sucked in his breath.

“Sorry. Did I pinch?”

He closed his eyes. “Ticklish,” he said. He didn’t specify which body part was itching now.

Blackstone’s Bride

Harlequin Historical #667

Acclaim for Bronwyn Williams’s recent titles

The Mail-Order Bride

“A setting so vivid it’s almost another character,

intense-but-forbidden attraction and an appealing degree

of humor make this supreme romance reading.”

—Romantic Times

Longshadow’s Woman

“This is a perfect example of western romance writing at

its very best…an exciting and satisfying read.”

—Romance Reviews Today

The Paper Marriage

“From first page to last,

this is the way romance should be.”

—Old Book Barn Gazette

DON’T MISS THESE OTHER
TITLES AVAILABLE NOW:

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Patricia Frances Rowell

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Helen Kirkman

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Jillian Hart

Blackstone’s Bride
Bronwyn Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter One

The paneled door closed quietly behind Jedediah Blackstone, shutting out the noise of the lobby just down the hall. Jed had asked for a room on the third floor, but the hotel had already been full when he’d checked in three days earlier. Something to do with politics, this being the state capitol, the clerk had said.

Crossing to the window that looked out on one of Raleigh’s busier streets, he cast his mind back over the past few hours. Had he left any loose ends untied? The property had been identified on a large plat on the wall of the land office. The deed had been signed both by him and by the agent representing the railway company, the signatures duly witnessed. The money had been disbursed as he’d requested, the largest portion going directly into his new account at the bank in Asheville, with only enough held out to cover his traveling expenses, which would be minimal, considering the way he intended to travel. And he still had forty acres left over.

For another few days—a week, at best—he could consider himself a rich man. Hardly in the same category as a man like Sam Stanfield, the man who’d had him beaten, branded and run out of Foggy Valley eight years ago for daring to court his daughter—but wealthy enough to keep the bastard from foreclosing on George’s farm.

Looking back through the years, Jed had to admit he’d done a damn sight more than court the girl. Not that that had kept Vera from marrying the same sunovabitch who had branded his ass all those years ago.

“Ancient history,” he told the pigeon pacing his windowsill. He had too many more important matters to deal with now to waste time crying over spilt milk that had long since soured. Up until George had wired him about the loan Stanfield was about to call, Jed had been in no hurry to sell the property he’d won in a poker game. Hadn’t even known exactly where it was at the time, only that it was worthless as farmland, therefore good only for what the past owner had used it for—to try and parlay it into something of value.

But before he could find another big stakes game, he’d heard about the railroad’s plans to move farther west, and the same week he’d had a wire from his half brother, George Dulah, describing the mess he was in.

Jed had been in Winston at the time on a meandering trip that would have eventually fetched him up right on the edge of the continent. He’d had a hankering to see the ocean, now that he’d read about it in the encyclopedias. The Atlantic, at least. He had a ways to go before he got to the Ps.

Instead, he’d headed for Raleigh, where the railroad land office was located. He had taken a room, had himself a bath, dressed the part of a gentleman and set forth to convert the deed he’d won into enough cash money to haul George’s ashes out of the fire.

It had occurred to him later that he might have done even better if he’d held out longer, but time was too short. So he’d named a price that was enough to cover the amount of his half brother’s loan with any interest Stanfield might tack on, then added enough to cover his own traveling expenses.

When George had first written to him about the drought that had nearly wiped him out, Jed had offered to go back to Foggy Valley and help out on the farm. He’d been flat broke at the time, but he figured another strong back and a pair of willing hands wouldn’t come amiss. George had assured him he didn’t need help, and that he’d be able to pay off the loan once he got to market with his beef and tobacco.

So Jed had moved on, heading gradually eastward, and continued doing the things he’d enjoyed most: gambling, womanizing and reading encyclopedias. He’d always liked women, ever since he’d discovered them. For reasons that passed all understanding, they seemed to like him, too—a big, rough, uneducated guy who was better known for his skill at cards than any skill on a dance floor.

Before he’d heard from George, he’d been enjoying life, taking it as it came, getting ready to move on to fresh hunting grounds. His half brother had sold his cattle to a drover and come out slightly ahead, but three weeks before the tobacco market opened, his tobacco barn had burned to the ground with the year’s crop of burley inside, forcing him to borrow money from the only man in Foggy Valley in a position to help him.

Sam Stanfield. Moneylender, rancher, politician—the man who now owned all the land between Dark Ridge and Notch Ridge. In other words, the entire valley except for the farm that had been in the Dulah family for three generations. According to George, Stanfield was ready to take possession of the Dulah farm, too, unless George could come up with the money to repay the loan, including the wicked rate of interest the old pirate charged.

“Not this time,” Jed muttered, dragging his saddlebags out from under the bed. He took off the coat he’d bought especially for the closing in an attempt to look more like a gentleman than a rambling, gambling half-breed bastard with a brand on his behind.

Dressed in Levi’s, his old buckskin jacket and his favorite boots, Jed crammed everything else into his saddlebags. As he’d already settled up with the slick-haired kid at the front desk, all that was left was to retrieve his horse from the livery and he’d be on his way.

He would have headed directly for the train station but for one thing. Sam Stanfield’s name was not entirely unknown even as far east as Raleigh. Even in the state capitol, Stanfield had friends that kept him informed and Jed wanted his visit to be a surprise. Stanfield had to have known in advance that the railroad was getting ready to make another move, which was why he’d set out several years ago to gain control of as much property in Foggy Valley as he could by driving honest farmers off their land.

George had held out for as long as possible, but when he’d gone hat-in-hand to the bank in Asheville and been turned away, he’d had no recourse but to turn to the man he knew damned well would pull the rug out from under his feet at the first opportunity. The Dulahs might have settled the valley a hundred years before the Stanfields had come carpet-bagging down to the Carolinas, but tradition meant nothing to a man like Sam Stanfield.

Looking back, Jed could see the pattern all too clearly. Like looking at a hand of cards and foreseeing the way it would play out, he’d taken the news about the railroad’s westward push through the mountains and added to that the way Stanfield had started finding ways to lay claim to the entire valley.

So far the rails didn’t go anywhere near Foggy Valley, but Jed wasn’t going to take a chance that he’d be spotted and word would get back to Stanfield that help was on the way. By now he probably knew about the account Jed had opened in the Asheville bank, knew to the penny how much was in it. The fact that Jed’s last name was Blackstone, not Dulah like his half brother’s, might buy him some time, but not much.

Jed had a mind to travel the back roads. After eight years of wandering, seeking out card games to support himself, professional ladies for entertainment and public libraries where he could further his education, he was well acquainted with the back roads. In the central part of the state the old wagon trails were slowly being replaced by more modern road, but not back in the hills. There were places there where a man could drop out of sight and not be found for a hundred years.

Eleanor sat on her front porch and watched the sky grow light to the eastward. The only way she knew east from west was that the sun rose in one direction and set in the other. She didn’t know what day of the week it was—wasn’t even certain it was still April, for that matter. Her calendar was three years old, and daily, or even weekly, newspapers were only a distant dream.

Cradling a bone china cup in her callused hands, she tried to push away the remnants of the nightmare. She knew it by heart now. It never varied. She was trapped like a bird in a cage, being fed morsels of dried corn by people who spoke a foreign language. She would beg to be released—“Open the cage door, please!” she would cry. Might even yell it aloud, there was no one to hear. Sometimes she woke up with a sore throat, as if she’d been shouting for hours.

“Probably snoring,” she said. She had to stop talking to herself. It was no wonder her throat was often sore, the way she rambled on about everything and nothing at all.

The other day she had stood on the back porch and recited the multiplication tables all the way up to the eighttimeses, which was all she could remember. Except for the tens, of course, but that was no challenge.

Her coffee was cold. She hated it black, but they never brought her any cream, rarely even any tinned milk. Only buttermilk, and that was awful in coffee. She set the cup aside, oblivious to the contrast between the fine bone china with its pattern of violets, and the worn hickory boards.

“Three times three is nine, three times four is…”

She thought of the time one of her third grade students had stood before the class and gravely recited, “’Leven times one is ’leven, ’leven times two is toody-two, ’leven times three is threedy-three,” and on until Eleanor was red in the face from trying to stifle her laughter.

The entire class was in an uproar. She had barely been able to get herself under control, much less control twenty-three unruly youngsters between the ages of six and nine.

Dear Lord, what she wouldn’t give to be back there on the worst day of her brief teaching career, instead of stranded here in the back of beyond, in a cabin on top of a gold mine, a widow, an heiress—and a prisoner.

“I’ll have to try again, of course,” she whispered to herself, her two laying hens and the big, black-winged birds circling overhead. “Next time they won’t be able to stop me.”

Shouldering his saddlebags, Jed took one last look around the plush hotel room to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind, and then he opened the door. The livery stable was no more than eight blocks away, an easy walk if they hadn’t gone and made cement paths all over the damned town. Feet weren’t meant to walk on cement, but try telling that to one of these slick, gold-toothpick types that ran the place.

Halfway to the livery, he shed his coat and crammed it into his saddlebag. Hot as blazes, and here it was only April. Too much cement held the heat so that even after dark things didn’t cool off enough for a good night’s sleep. Time to get back to the mountains. Long past time, Jed told himself half guiltily.

McGee greeted him in his usual manner, by trying to take a chunk out of his shoulder.

“Meanest horse I ever seed,” said the boy who had the care and feeding of some dozen animals.

“That’s his name. Mean McGee. Call him McGee, though. Hurts his feelings if you call him by his full name.”

“I ain’t calling him nothing,” the boy grumbled, pocketing the money Jed handed over. How much of it his employer would ever see was between the boy and whoever had hired him. Jed had a fellow-feeling for any kid who chose to hire himself out instead of stealing to put food in his belly.

Within half an hour he was out of town, headed generally west. Hearing the sound of a distant train whistle, Jed grinned and gigged McGee into a reluctant trot. “That old sumbitch has got a big surprise coming, McGee. Yessir, he’ll blow like one of those volcanoes I was telling you about.”

He’d skipped ahead to the Vs and Ws last time he’d visited the library, knowing that it might be a while before he got to further his education, then leafed through the Z book, where he’d stopped to read about a striped horse. Damnedest thing he ever did see, but other than that, there wasn’t much of interest in the Zs.

They made fairly good time, stopping each night and bedding down in the open. It was cold, but it felt more like home. Over the course of his twenty-five years, Jed figured he had slept out more than he’d slept in. At least sleeping out in the open, away from towns, he didn’t have to worry about any miscreant—now, there was a fine word for you—creeping in and robbing him blind.

Three days later he stopped to buy cheese and soda biscuits and drink himself a real cup of coffee. He was in an unfamiliar area, but as the crow flies, it looked to be the most direct route to Foggy Valley. “What are the roads like to the southwest of here?” he asked the man behind the counter, who appeared to be roughly a hundred and fifty years old.

The old man shifted a wad of tobacco and spat through the open door, splashing the red clay a foot away from McGee’s big, splayed hoof. “Tol’able,” he said. “Old wagon road’s growed up some. Most folks takes the new road now.”

Jed would as soon avoid “most folks.” Surprise was his ace in the hole. One of them. If Stanfield knew money was on the way to pay off George’s loan, he would think of some way to stop it.

“Where will I find this wagon road? You say it heads generally southwest?”

“West-by-sou’west. Switchbacks aplenty once it gits into Miller territory. Wouldn’t go there if I was you. Rough country.”

Switchbacks didn’t bother him. Neither did rough country. “How much I owe you?”

The old man named a figure that was several times what the goods were worth, and Jed paid without comment. From the looks of the place, he might be the only customer all week. So far, his traveling expenses had amounted to a dish of chicken pie in Salem and the cigar he’d bought to take to George, to celebrate paying off the loan.

This time the nightmare was slightly different. This time Eleanor was buried under tons of earth, unable to claw her way free, unable to scream for help. She waited for the dream to fade, and then she whispered, “I am not helpless! I am intelligent, resourceful and…”

Trapped. Still trapped, despite her determination to escape, in a world that lagged a hundred years behind the times, held captive by a people who were obsessed by gold fever. A people who wrote their own laws and lived by them. A soft-spoken people who were distrustful of outsiders, even those who came into the valley by marriage, as Eleanor had.

They were her late husband’s family. Cousins to the nth degree, inbred, uneducated, a few of them even vicious, especially after sampling the product of their own illicit distillery.

Once her breathing settled down, she slid out of bed and made her way to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of cool buttermilk. Back home in Charlotte—in her other life—it would have been warm cocoa. Turning the glass slowly in her hands, she studied the pattern etched into the sides. It was one of only three left of the set of tumblers she’d brought with her. The matched set of china had suffered even more. Two days spent jouncing in the back of a freight wagon, no matter how carefully packed, was lethal on fine china and crystal.

The silver that had belonged to two generations of her family hadn’t even begun the trip. Instead it had been sold by her bridegroom to finance yet another piece of equipment for his damn-blasted gold mine.

His mythical gold mine. No matter how they might carve up the earth in search of a new vein, the Millers were deluding themselves, Eleanor was convinced of it. Just because sixty years ago, Devin’s grandfather had found a lump of pure gold and a vein that looked promising, staked a claim and brought in his entire family to dig it out, that didn’t mean there were more riches still waiting to be uncovered. It meant only that the Millers, her late husband among them, were seriously deranged when it came to the subject of gold.

And just as deranged if they thought they could hold her prisoner here until she married one of them, who would then control what they called “Dev’s shares.” His grandfather’s shares—the major portion of their elusive wealth.

A hundred shares of nothing was still nothing, but try and convince the Millers of that. She’d been trapped in this wild, forsaken place ever since Devin had been killed, and she still hadn’t managed to convince anyone that letting her go back to Charlotte would not bring the world rushing in to steal their precious gold.

Tomorrow night she would try again. After last night’s fiasco, they might not be expecting her to try again so soon.

Later that morning Eleanor looked around the cramped log cabin, taking inventory of what she would be forced to leave behind. There was little left now, certainly nothing she could carry away with her. Devin had sold practically everything of value she possessed, most of it before they’d left Charlotte. He had obviously thought that because she owned her own home and dressed nicely, she must be well-to-do.

Nothing could be further from the truth. She had inherited the house from the elderly cousin who had taken her in after her parents had died, and could barely make ends meet on her meager salary.

But then, Devin hadn’t asked, and she certainly hadn’t told him how little a schoolteacher earned. The irony was that they had both been taken in. Devin’s charm had been no more genuine than her imagined wealth. Not that he hadn’t played his role well. Surprisingly well, considering his background. It would never have passed muster if she’d been more experienced. The proverbial old-maid schoolteacher, she’d been naive enough and flattered enough to swallow his line, bait, hook and sinker.

Looking back, she couldn’t believe how blind she had been. Not only had she invited a stranger into her home, she had practically begged him to make a fool of her. Loneliness was no excuse, nor was the fact that the day they’d met had been her twenty-fifth birthday and there’d been no one to help her celebrate. Cousin Annie had been dead several months by then. Her friends were all married, some with growing families.

The truth was, she’d been feeling like the last cold biscuit in the basket. Then along came Devin Miller, stepping out of the haberdashery just as she walked by with an armload of books. She had dropped the books; he had helped her pick them up, and almost before she realized what was happening he was courting her with flowers, candy and blatant flattery. And fool that she was, she’d lapped it up like a starving puppy.

Oh, yes, she’d been ripe for the plucking, her only excuse being that no one had ever tried to pluck her before. Which was how she came to be in a situation that nothing in her quiet, uneventful life could have prepared her for. Held captive by a bunch of gold-obsessed men—the women were almost as bad—who were convinced that any day now, they would all be rich as kings and never have to work another day in their misbegotten lives.

A place where women were considered chattels; education was the devil’s handiwork, and flatlanders—people from “away”—were looked on with suspicion bordering on paranoia.

Her first attempt to escape after Devin had been killed had failed simply because she hadn’t realized at the time that she was a prisoner. Couldn’t conceive of such a thing. She’d walked boldly down the crooked path to the settlement at the base of Devin’s Hill one morning a few weeks after his death, and asked if anyone was planning a trip to town, and if so, could she please ride with them as she needed to make arrangements to return to her home.

Her polite request had been met with blank stares or averted glances. Finally an old woman everyone called Miss Lucy had explained that as Devin’s widow—she’d called it widder-woomern—her home was up on Devin’s Hill.

For her second attempt, she’d waited until after dark and left a lamp burning in case anyone was watching. Sparing only a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness, she had hurried across the small clearing, her goal being to reach one of the outlying farms she’d seen only from a distance. Devin had once told her that they were not his kin, but they’d been allowed to stay anyway, as their families had been there for generations.

Allowed to stay?

At the time, she hadn’t understood the ramifications.

Now she did.

Like a thief in the night, she’d moved swiftly, slipping between gardens and outhouses, thankful for the moon that allowed her to avoid knocking over woodpiles or stepping in any unmentionables.

She’d made it past the first three houses, past two leaning sheds and an overgrown cornfield. Only a few miles to go and she would have been safe. Exhilarated to have gotten so far, she’d tried to plan—or as much as a woman could when she had no home, no relatives and no money.

As it turned out, all the planning in the world would have done her no good. Before she’d passed the last house, the one belonging to the Hooters, Varnelle and Alaska, whose mother had been a Miller, Alaska had stepped out from behind the outhouse, a jug of what Devin had called popskull in each hand and a grin on his long, bony face.

“Where you goin’, Elly Nora?”

She could hardly say she was going for a stroll, not when she was carrying all her worldly possessions except for her books, her china and crystal and the sofa that Dev had been planning to trade for a Cornish pump when he’d died.

“I’m going home,” she’d told him, knowing she wouldn’t be. Not this time, at least.

“Now, you don’t want to go nowhere. Poor old Dev, he’d be heart-broke, and him not hardly cold in the ground yet.”

By then her husband had been dead nearly two months. After the long, hard winter they’d just gone through, he was as cold as he was ever likely to get. “I just want to go home, Alaska. Back to Charlotte.”

“We can’t let you do that, Elly Nora.”

She’d been so crushed with disappointment she hadn’t bothered to argue, knowing it would do no good. Alaska had escorted her back to the cabin. Neither of them had said another word.

And then, shortly after her second attempt at escape, what she’d come to think of as the courting parade had begun. Even now, she could hardly believe it, but the bachelors of Dexter’s Cut, practically every one of them between the ages of eighteen and fifty, had waited three months to the day after Devin had blown himself up to try their luck with his widow.

She hadn’t laughed—it wasn’t in her to hurt a man’s feelings, not even a Miller. Instead, she had listened to their awkward proposals and then gently declined every one of them, praying she would never reach a point when she would regret it.

Chapter Two

A hand-lettered sign warned against trespassing. Traveling cross-country as he often did, that was one big word Jed had learned to recognize. But roadways were roadways, and while this one was overgrown, the rutted tracks were still visible.

He could hear the sound of rushing water close by. Evidently McGee heard it, too, from the way he picked up his pace. Jed gave the gelding his head and held on to his own hat as the horse broke through a dense laurel slick to emerge on the banks of a shallow creek some ten feet wide.

He could use a break, and this was as good a place as any. He had saved some of the cheese and soda crackers he’d bought earlier that morning—but first a drink. The sight of all that water made him realize how thirsty he was. Dismounting, he slapped McGee on the hindquarters, knowing the horse was going nowhere until he’d drunk his fill. Founder at the trough, if he let him. Damned horse didn’t have a grain of sense.

He was on his knees lowering his face to the rippling surface when a sound and a scent made him glance over his shoulder. One look was all it took.

Ah, Jesus, not now.

Guns and whiskey spelled trouble in any language, but in the hands of a mob of dirty, grinning polecats like the five lining up behind him, the odds weren’t all that favorable. His best bet was to get to the other side of the creek, but something told him he wasn’t going to have a chance. “You fellows want to talk about it?” he asked, his mind reeling out possible excuses for being here.

One man held an old Sharps bear rifle; another one carried a newer Winchester and the tallest carried a spade over his shoulder. That left two men unarmed, which helped even the odds.

But not a whole lot.

“Have at ’em, McGee,” Jed whispered, his hands closing over a river rock.

“We wanna talk about it, boys? ’Pears to me we got us a traipser.” Winchester grinned, revealing a total of three long, yellow teeth.

A traipser? Would that be a trespasser? Jed wondered.

“I might have got lost and—” That was as far as he got before the shovel caught him on the side of the head. From that point on, things went rapidly downhill. Later, he would dimly recall hearing a lot of hooting and hollering, rifles being fired and a gleeful suggestion that they tan his hide and nail it to the side of the barn as a warning to “traipsers.”

His head ringing with pain, he fought back, the fear of death lending him strength. He even managed to get in a few good licks, mostly with his feet, but five against one pretty much settled the outcome. At least they didn’t shoot him outright, but that damned spade was almost as lethal. All he could do was roll with the punches, try to protect his vitals and hope the sumbitches would fall down dead drunk before they managed to finish him off.

His boots… “Ah, Jesus, no!” he yelped, feeling his ankle twist in a way it was never meant to twist.

The smell of whiskey was everywhere. If they doused him with the stuff and set him on fire—

He tried to roll toward the creek. Someone kicked him in the ribs, and then the others joined in, cackling and shouting suggestions. On his hands and knees, Jed tried to crawl toward the bushes, but they followed him, kicking and jabbing him with the butt of a rifle.

“Git that there hoss ’fore he gits away!” one of them shouted.

“Hit ’im wi’ the shovel ag’in, it won’t kill ’im!”

“You git the hoss, them boots is mine!” The voices came from all sides, like buzzards circling over a dying animal.

“I got ’is hat. Gimme yer jug, ’Laska,” someone yelled.

“Go git yer own jug, mine’s empty.”

They seemed to come from a distance now, the voices…but then everything came from a distance. Either they were leaving or his head wasn’t working properly. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, but God, he hurt!

For what could have been minutes, could have been days, he lay facedown in the dirt, hurting too much to move even if he could have found the strength. He could still hear the bastards, but the voices came from much farther away now. Unless his ears were playing tricks on him.

He was afraid to lift his head to look around, afraid that damned spade would connect with the side of his head again. Better to play possum until he felt like taking them on.

Oh, yeah…that would be right after Sam Stanfield apologized for any discomfort he’d caused him eight years ago and invited him to take dinner with him and his family at the Bar Double S ranch.

“McGee?” he rasped. God, even his voice hurt.

No answering whinny. If the damned horse would just move in close enough, he might be able to reach a stirrup and haul himself up. In the bottom of one of his saddlebags he had a Colt .45, but it wasn’t going to do him much good unless he could get to it before they came back.

“Git that hoss.” Had he heard them correctly? McGee would eat them alive if they laid a hand on him. Wouldn’t he?

Jed listened some more. Had little choice, lacking the strength to move. From time to time, hearing the sounds of drunken revelry from farther and farther away, he called to McGee, but either the horse had taken off or he was ignoring him.

Or he’d been stolen.

“Hellfire,” he muttered. Groaning, he rolled over onto his back and blinked up at the treetops.

The sun had moved. He was maybe twenty-five feet from the creek now, and there was no sign of McGee and his saddlebags. Or of his boots.

Sunovabitch. They’d stolen his boots, Jed thought, fighting the urge to rid his sore gut of the only meal he’d had since yesterday.

Now what? Lie here like a lump of buzzard bait until they came back and finished him off? It wasn’t his nature to run from a fight, but five against one, even when the five were drunk as coots, that was just asking for trouble.

Downhill would be easiest. Trouble was, downhill was where the sound of all that hooting and hollering was coming from. The storekeeper had said it was rough country. Like a fool, Jed had thought he meant the condition of the road.

Varnelle set the basket of supplies on the edge of the porch and turned to go without a single word, despite the fact that Eleanor was standing in the open doorway.

“Varnelle? Do you have to leave? I could make us some tea.”

No answer, unless the toss of a mop of red hair could be construed as a reply. Of the entire clan, the shy, peppery Varnelle had always been her favorite. Any sign of friendship had ended when the bachelor parade had begun. “Is it because you’re jealous?” she called after the retreating figure, not expecting an answer, not getting one.

Why on earth would such a pretty girl be jealous of a plain woman nearly ten years her senior? It could only be because they considered her an heiress, the sole beneficiary of Devin’s unwritten will. Unwritten only because the Millers didn’t bother to write their laws, but obeyed some primitive slate of laws all their own.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is beyond absurd,” she muttered. “If I don’t soon get away, I might do something desperate.”

Like shoot her way out. She didn’t even have that option any longer since the men had gone through the house and shed, claiming everything of Dev’s except for his tooth powder. They had taken his guns, his clothes and every bit of mining equipment he owned, most of it bought with the proceeds from the sale of her house and furniture.

She hadn’t argued at the time because—well, because one didn’t argue at such a time, one simply went through the rituals, a few of them rather bizarre, and quietly made plans for the future.

For all the good her plans had done her.

“Help me, Varnelle,” she whispered to the glossy dark rhododendrons. “Come back and tell me what to do. Help me to get away and you can have anything of mine you want, including this cabin.”

Her clothes? Varnelle was short and nicely rounded, while Eleanor was tall and skinny as a walking stick. If anything could be made over to fit her, Eleanor would gladly hand over every stitch she possessed, even the rose-colored silk she’d been married in.

Oh, yes—especially that.

Her books? Varnelle could read and write—just barely. But she had never expressed the least interest in borrowing any of the books Eleanor had brought with her.

They could have found something to talk about, though, Eleanor was sure of it. “You could tell me how you manage to make your red hair so shiny and smooth,” she whispered, touching her own hair, which she managed to tame only by ruthless brushing, braiding and pinning it up before the braids could unravel.

“I’m no threat to you, Varnelle,” she said plaintively, seeing a glimpse of faded pink some five hundred feet below as the younger woman left the laurel slick and hurried past Alaska’s cove. “In my best day, which was too long ago to recall, I was never anywhere near as pretty as you are. Why do you resent me so?”

Dropping down to sit on the edge of the porch, she nibbled a cold biscuit from the basket and wondered idly how close the kinship was between Varnelle and Hector. Hector was easily the best looking of all the Millers now that Devin was dead. He’d been guardedly friendly to her whenever he’d been the one to bring her supplies.

Miss Lucy had explained when Devin had first taken her down the hill to introduce her to his family, that for years she’d been responsible for keeping track of such things in order to prevent inbreeding amongst the clan. The old woman had seemed pleased at the time that Devin had married an outsider, saying that new blood in the clan would make arranging marriages easier in the future.

Come to think of it, she had mentioned Varnelle and Hector at the time. Eleanor remembered thinking that Varnelle was still a child. She was definitely no child now, not the way she had filled out her faded gowns. As for Hector, Devin had once told her that his cousin had gone all the way through the third grade.

My God, Eleanor thought—she had taught the third grade.

“One day, when Heck makes his strike,” Varnelle had confided back in those early days when she hadn’t been quite so resentful, “he’s a-gonna marry me and move to Charlotte or maybe even New York, and we’re not niver comin’ back here n’more.”

“Then who would work Heck’s share?” Eleanor had asked. The gold shares were vitally important to everyone in Dexter’s Cut, whether or not any more gold was ever found.

“They’s plenty that would for a cut.”

Share and share alike, that was the Millers. Hound dogs and chickens, moonshine and occasionally even women, but not the gold. At least not with outsiders.

Looking back—an occupation that filled far too much of her time lately—Eleanor marveled at how any woman who had once been considered intelligent could get herself into such a fix. She’d been a whiz at mathematics, good at literature, history and geography, although not quite so good at the sciences. When it came to the subject of men, however, she was no wiser now than she’d ever been. In other words, dumb as a stump.

Rising, she swept up the covered basket that had been left on her front porch in exchange for the empty one she’d set out that morning, and went inside. The house smelled of lye soap. She’d scrubbed the floors and washed the curtains again that morning, more for something to do than for any real need.

Just last week someone had left her a quarter of salty, hickory-smoked ham. She’d been eating on it ever since. Today’s piece of fried chicken was a welcome reprieve. Still, no matter how hard she worked, she never felt much like eating. Years from now, she thought, bitterly amused, another generation of Millers would be bringing food baskets to the batty old woman who lived alone on Devin’s Hill, leaving them on her porch, dashing back down the hillside, giggling and telling yarns about her.

Probably call her an old witch.

Maybe she would grow a wart on her nose, cultivate a cackling laugh and practice riding her broomstick. Maybe she would send a note down the hill asking for a cat, preferably a black one.

Or maybe she would write a note, put it in a bottle and drop it in the narrow, whitewater creek that churned its way down the mountainside, where it would doubtlessly be panned up by one of the damned Millers downstream, who in turn would guard her closer than ever.

Now she rummaged through the basket again, in case she’d missed some little treat. The last time Heck had brought her supplies she’d been so desperate for someone to talk with that she’d asked him to stay for supper.

“Can’t.” Crossing his arms over his massive chest, he’d looked her square in the eyes. Not for the first time she noticed that no matter what he was saying, whether he was being friendly or noncommittal, his expression never varied. Blue eyes, clear as a summer sky and just as cool.

“Then let me go home,” she pleaded.

“Can’t.”

He didn’t have to explain. By now she knew all the reasons by heart. She’d heard them often enough. As Miss Lucy had explained, “Chile, they ain’t niver gonna let you go. They’re all a-wantin’ Devin’s share and you’re a-settin’ on it.”

“But I offered to give up any claim I might have,” Eleanor had explained countless times. “Besides, you keep telling me I don’t even have a claim.”

The old woman shook her head. “You do and you don’t, that’s just the way things is. We let you go back to the city, next thing we know they’ll be flatlanders a-swarming all over the place, lookin’ for old Dexter’s gold mine. If they’s any gold left, it b’longs to us. My best advice is to take your pick of the men here, hitch up and commence to breedin’.”

And so they kept her here. Knowing she wouldn’t have any one of them, they all watched over her lest she escape, for if that happened, Alaska had told her, the first single man who saw her would want her.

A fallacious argument if she’d ever heard one. A woman wearing gowns that had been several years out of style three years ago, that were now so faded as to be colorless? A woman whose hair had grown wilder than ever for lack of decent care? A woman valued only for her property—a three-room log cabin perched on top of a hill that was riddled with more holes than a gopher farm?

She was twenty-seven years old, for heaven’s sake. Too old to want to attract another man even if by some miracle she could, but far too young to spend the rest of her days in isolation.

In desperation she had offered to deed them all her interest in everything her late husband had once owned. “As a widow, I can certainly do that.”

“Might be, but that’d take a lawyer. Once he got a whiff of gold, he’d move in with his fancy papers, and then first thing you know, he’d be a-holdin’ his papers agin’ us and a-driving us out, just like what happened to the Cherokee.” It had been Heck who had explained it to her, patient and enigmatic as ever. “Short o’ shootin’ him and buryin’ the evy-dence, there ain’t much we could do ’bout it.”

She’d been playing the same game ever since. Trying to escape, and when that failed again and again, trying to reason with the world’s most unreasonable people.

“There has to be a better way,” she told herself. “No one can keep a woman prisoner in her own house, not in these modern times. Not here in the United States of America.”

The trouble was, the modern times had never reached Dexter’s Cut, much less Devin’s Hill.

A bitter laugh escaped her to mingle with the sounds of birds, the soughing of the wind in the trees and the distant yapping of those dratted dogs.

Nice dogs, actually—she’d lured one of them up here a few times for something to do. Something to talk to. He’d even allowed her to scratch behind his long ears. But the dog was free and she wasn’t, and so she railed against the dogs, and against her gentle and not so gentle backwoods prison guards.

Devin’s Hill, every wild, wooded acre of it, including the creek and the three-room cabin, was still a prison, no matter how lovely the surroundings in the springtime.

No matter how cold and lonely in the winter.

At least she was finally learning to control her anger and resentment, knowing it only made her poor company for herself. But on a day like this, when spring was more than a promise, she was frustrated beyond bearing. Was she fated to grow into an embittered old woman here all alone?

Scratching idly at a poison ivy blister on her wrist—her first of the season—Eleanor sat on the edge of the porch again, her limbs spread apart in a most unladylike fashion, and tried to think of some means of escape she hadn’t yet tried. She couldn’t think of a single thing. Lacking stimulus, her brain had ceased to function.

Maybe she could bribe them by offering again to hold classes. The last time she’d offered, Miss Lucy, spokes-woman for the clan, had told her the Millers didn’t want her teaching them any of her highfaluting notions. Miss Lucy herself taught any who wanted to learn how to make their letters; their parents taught them whatever else they deemed worthy of knowing. All the rest was the devil’s handiwork. A more narrow-minded lot she had never met.

It explained a whole lot, to Eleanor’s way of thinking.

And now another winter had gone by. Two years since she’d become a bride, five months since she’d become a widow and a prisoner.

It was spring again, and she was so blasted lonesome she could have howled. Beat her fists on the floor, kicked rock walls—anything, if it would have done her a lick of good.

“A lick of good,” she whispered. She was even beginning to talk the way they did—a college educated woman.

Some days, she questioned her own sanity. What if by some miracle she did manage to escape? Where would she go? She had no money, no relatives—she certainly would never beg from her friends—but unless she managed to secure a position immediately, she would have no place to live and no way to support herself.

Here, she at least had a roof over her head and enough to eat.

But if she stayed here she would eventually turn into that other woman. The Elly Nora who went barefoot and talked to herself—who whistled back at birds and carried on conversations with chickens. The Elly Nora who’d been known to stand on a stump and loudly recite poetry to keep her brain from drying up like a rattling gourd.

She was just plain lonesome, dammit. And growing just a wee bit strange in the head.

Fighting a sense of hopelessness, she licked her fingers, greasy from eating fried chicken. “Miss Eleanor, your manners are shocking,” she said dryly. “Simply shocking.”

She shrugged and stared out at the hazy blue ridges in the distance. “Miss Eleanor, you can take your blasted manners and go dance with the devil, for all the good it will do you.”

She shook her head. “Talking to yourself, Eleanor?”

“And who else would I talk to? Oh, I do beg your pardon—to whom would I speak, if not myself?”

Lord, she missed the sound of another human voice. Days went by between the briefest exchanges. After nearly half a year of living alone, she would even have welcomed Devin’s constant carping again.

From the day a few weeks after they were married when he had rushed in all excited, claiming to have struck a tiny new vein of gold, all pretense of being a loving bridegroom had disappeared. Gone was the handsome, charming young man who had come down from the mountain in search of a rich wife. In his place was a taciturn stranger who came up from his precious mine only when hunger and exhaustion drove him above ground. He even…stunk! No time to bathe, he’d claimed. No time to do more than gobble down whatever food she had cooked and look around for something else of value that he could sell in order to buy more equipment.

She would see his measuring eyes light on the slipper chair that had belonged to her mother, or the little desk where she had once graded papers. Then, in a day or so, one of the Millers would roll up to the front door with a wagon, and Devin would apologize so sweetly.

“It’s just an old chair, Elly Nora,” he’d said when the slipper chair had disappeared. “A few more months and I’ll be able to buy you a whole set of chairs and a table to match. We’ll drive right up to the front door of that factory over in Hickory and you can pick out anything you want. If it don’t fit, we’ll build us another house to hold it all,” he promised.

Soon she discovered just how worthless his promises were. Convinced he was only days away from the vein his grandfather had found and then lost, he had worked day and night. Too tired to eat, drink or sleep, he had soon ceased even pretending to be polite to Eleanor.

Eleanor was convinced that his exhaustion had contributed to his death. Hector said he’d miscalculated the length of fuse. For whatever reason, he hadn’t made it out of the drift in time. In a single moment, Eleanor had gone from being a disillusioned bride to being a destitute widow.

They needn’t worry about her marrying an outsider. Having once been married for her tiny savings account, a small house and a few pieces of old furniture, she would wither up and blow away before she considered marrying another man.

Wiping her fingers on a square of gingham that had been torn from one of her old aprons, she stood in the doorway and tossed the chicken bone outside. “You’re welcome, my friends,” she said, knowing that sooner or later some creature would come creeping out of the woods to snatch up the bounty.

In the distance, the dog barked again. Someone was firing a rifle. She’d heard several shouts earlier, but couldn’t tell what they were yelling about. Drinking again, no doubt. Run a few traps, plant a few rows of corn, pan for hours and dig more holes in the ground—that was the daily life of a Miller of Dexter’s Cut. After that, they would take out the jugs of white lightning and celebrate whatever it was such people found to celebrate.

Evidently they were celebrating now. Perhaps someone had actually discovered a few grains of gold, although the noise sounded as if it were coming from higher up on the hill rather than lower down, where most of the panning was done.

Curious, Eleanor sat and watched the shadows lengthen, watched the lightning bugs come out. She listened to the sounds of the dying day, to the bird that always sang just at dusk, whose name she could never remember. To the sound of some small animal thrashing through the underbrush.

Thrashing through the underbrush?

Not her animals. They crept. They clucked and scratched or browsed. They hopped or flew, and a few even slithered. None of them ever thrashed.

Swinging her bare feet, she continued to watch the edge of the laurel slick, searching for whatever had made the odd noise. It sounded almost like…a groan?

And then her eyes widened and she was on her feet. “Oh, my mercy!” Racing toward the edge of the clearing, Eleanor reached out to catch the battered creature that stumbled through the rhododendrons and staggered toward her. A few feet away, she stopped, suddenly wary.

Chapter Three

He wasn’t one of the Millers. Eleanor didn’t recognize the man as anyone she’d ever seen before. Barely even recognized him as a man, the way he was slumped over, his arms cradling his body as he broke through the laurel slick and lurched shoulders first into the clearing.

She reached him just as he collapsed, nearly carrying them both to the ground. Bracing her feet, she managed to lean her weight against his in a manner that supported them both until she could regain her balance.

“Steady, steady,” she murmured. “I’ve got you now—don’t try to move.” Oh, God, oh, God, what do I do now?

In the dusky light his hair appeared black. Or wet.

Blood? That wasn’t water dripping across his face. It was too dark. “Are you hurt?”

Of course he was hurt! This wasn’t the waltz they were doing!

“They— I—” Clutching her, he swayed, tried to speak and broke off. He tried again. “Damn,” he muttered.

Eleanor replanted her feet and braced herself to support his full weight. “Shh, don’t try to talk, just lean on me. Can you walk at all?”

If he collapsed she could probably roll him uphill to the cabin, but getting him inside would be another matter. Tie him in a quilt and drag him up the steps? Was it physically possible?

It might finish him off. Whatever had happened to him, he didn’t look as if he could survive much more punishment. Both his eyes, his mouth…his entire face was battered and swollen beyond belief. Dear Lord, it hurt just to look at him.

“What happened to you?”

“Mm.” It was more groan than answer.

“That’s all right, you don’t have to talk now. Let’s just rest a bit.”

“Mm!” There was urgency in the single utterance, enough so that she sensed his meaning. He wanted her to…

Hide him? “All right, we’ll try to get you inside, but if you have any broken bones, walking isn’t going to help,” she told him, reduced to stating the obvious. “Lean on my shoulder—steady now. That’s it.” He was a good half a foot taller than she was, and must outweigh her by fifty pounds. Hard as a rock, but a dead weight. “Don’t try to hurry—that’s it, one step at a time.”

Who on earth could have done this awful thing? One of the Millers? God in heaven, she hoped not, but there was no one else around.

It took almost more strength than she possessed, but eventually they made it as far as the porch, moving two steps forward, falling one step back. “How on earth am I going to get you up the steps and inside?” she wondered aloud.

He held up a shaking hand, silently pleading for time to catch his breath.

Just as well, because she needed time to think. There was no way she could drag him inside without his cooperation—at least not without aggravating his injuries.

“What to do, what to do?” she murmured, not expecting an answer and getting none. She had managed to help cousin Annie from her bedroom to the front parlor so that she could watch the passersby, but by that time her cousin had weighed barely eighty pounds. This man was built like…a man.

“Who are you? Who did this terrible thing to you? It wasn’t the work of an animal, I don’t see anything that looks like teeth or claw marks.”

Might as well talk to a rock. The poor man was past answering. It was a wonder he’d managed to get this far.

“Where did you come from?” she asked.

Could he have been coming to help her get away? Had he somehow heard of her plight and come to help, and been caught on his way up the hill?

Lord, she didn’t want to be responsible for this.

She couldn’t even summon help from any of the Millers, not until she knew who had done this awful thing…and why. If it had been Alaska, he wouldn’t even need a reason, not if he’d been drinking.

“Now,” he panted after a few minutes.

“Yes, well—all right—we’ll take it slow and easy.” She eased her shoulder under his arm, conscious of the heat of his body. Aside from the coppery scent of blood, he smelled of whiskey, but something told her he wasn’t drunk. Could he have come to buy whiskey from Alaska and got into a fight over the payment?

At the moment it didn’t matter. He needed help and until she knew more, she didn’t dare call on anyone to help her help him. He was wet and shivering. Dirt and dead leaves were stuck to his clothes, his skin. He was barefoot. One sock on, one sock missing, which told her he hadn’t set out that way.

“Who did this to you?” she asked again as she helped him deal with the last step up onto the porch. Something was wrong with one of his limbs. It was either broken or badly sprained. If it was broken, moving him this way had to be causing irreparable harm, but what else could she do? She certainly couldn’t leave him lying outside with night coming on.

From the valley below came the faint sound of more shouting. Someone fired a gun. She had a feeling they weren’t hunting. They never shouted when they were hunting. At least, not when they were hunting wild game.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, she urged silently.

They made it through the door, and Eleanor took a deep breath and steered him toward the sofa, one of the few pieces of furniture Devin hadn’t sold. “I’m sorry we don’t have a doctor, but there’s a woman in the village below here who’s considered something of a healer.”

He caught her hand in a painful grip. Dark eyes glittered through swollen lids.

“What are you trying to tell me?” she whispered. “You want me to go? You don’t want me to go?”

He shook his head, his look so urgent that finally she got the message. “You don’t want anyone to know you’re here.”

His response said it all. What was it he feared, that this time they might succeed in killing him? “All right, just rest then for now. I’ll do what I can to clean you up, and after that…well, we’ll see.”

She gave him half an hour to rest before she came at him with a basin and cloth. She needed to know the extent of his injuries. If the man died on her…

He wouldn’t. She simply wouldn’t allow him to die.

Cleaning him up was embarrassing for her and painful for him. She was no fainting maiden, afraid to look at a man’s body, for heaven’s sake, it wasn’t that. Not entirely. But no matter how gentle she tried to be, there was no way she could discover where and how badly he was hurt without causing him further pain.

“My, you do have an extensive vocabulary, don’t you?” she said dryly the third time he let fly with a string of mumbled obscenities. At least he was speaking in words of more than one syllable now.

“Sorry.” It was more a groan than an apology.

“Never mind, I’ve heard worse than that from little boys.”

She hadn’t, but he didn’t need to know it. If she didn’t know better she might have thought the twitch of his swollen mouth was a smile.

Later that evening Eleanor lit the parlor lamp. Her guest was still on the sofa, which was not a good fit. As tall as she was, she could barely lie flat on it. The stranger was several inches taller. His neck was bent at an awkward angle that the pillow didn’t do much to alleviate.

She eyed the distance between there and the bedroom door, a matter of less than ten feet. The cabin was basically a square, with one side being taken up by what she termed a parlor, the other with a kitchen and a closed-off bedroom.

“We need to move you to the bedroom,” she said, standing back to survey the damage now that she’d cleaned him up some. He’d been wearing a buckskin coat, but one of the sleeves had been dangling by a thread, almost as if someone had tried to pull it off.

He looked at her. At least she thought he did. With those swollen eyes, it was impossible to be certain. “Do you think you can move if I support your left side?” It was his left ankle that was swollen. “You could use the broom as a crutch.”

He mumbled something and she said, “Is that a yes or a no?”

More mumbling. One hand lifted and she thought he pointed to the window. “Close it? Open it wider?”

More swearing. At least that’s what it sounded like. He could barely move his lips.

Hands on her hips, she said, “All right, I’m going to suggest a few things. If I’m right, nod your head.” Which would probably hurt, too, but they weren’t getting anywhere using words. “You’re hot. You want me to open the window.”

Was that a nod, or a negative? He barely moved.

She tried again. “You want me to hide you in case whoever did this comes looking for you.”

This time there was another stream of curses, followed by a groan. She leaned over and whispered, “Shh, don’t try to say any more, I understand.”

Oh, yes, she understood. The Millers distrusted all strangers. This man was a stranger, an angry stranger if she were any judge. Who could blame him if this was an indication of their hospitality?

“Never mind, I know you can’t talk, but you might as well know it now—sometimes I tend to talk too much. Comes of living alone,” she said as she lifted the afghan she’d spread over him when she’d peeled him down to his long underwear. That, too, was wet as if he’d been caught in a downpour—or dunked in the creek—but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to strip him completely bare.

“All right then, let’s see if you can sit up. It’s only a few steps away—right over there where the door is.” Torn between wariness and sympathy, she studied her unexpected guest and tried to think of some way to make the transfer easier.

There was simply no way. As gentle as she’d tried to be, he had groaned when she’d peeled his muddy blue jeans down over his bare foot. Hopefully it wasn’t broken, but even a sprain could be painful.

She positioned herself on his good side and slid one arm under his, taking most of his weight on her shoulder. He groaned. She grunted. “Don’t worry,” she managed. “I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

Working together they managed to get him onto his feet. Or rather, onto his foot. With her on one side and the broom on the other serving as a crutch, he hobbled toward the back of the cabin.

His body felt unnaturally hot, and she wondered how long he’d been lying out in the woods before he’d found his way to her cabin. If he was already feverish, it could be either lung fever or an infection of one of his wounds. Surely it was too soon for that. But then, she still didn’t know the full extent of his injuries. Wouldn’t until she got him out of his underwear.

Feeling her face flush, she told herself she would worry about that later. For now, she needed to get him onto the bed before he collapsed. Then she could start by cutting off the tight cuff of his long johns. It had to be constricting circulation, with that swollen ankle.

If he had internal injuries, she could only pray that they were minor. She should have paid more attention to biology as a student, but at the time she couldn’t picture a situation where knowing how a frog was constructed would be of any value.

He practically fell across the bed, giving her mere seconds to sweep the covers aside first. Then she had to reposition his heavy limbs until he was lying more or less straight on the feather tick. Her sheets would be wet clean through, but that was the least of her worries.

What on earth was she going to do with him? He was too big to hide under the bed, even if he could crawl under there. There was simply no place else to hide, but if the Millers were to show up—if they were to come inside and discover that she was harboring a strange man…

They couldn’t. Chances were they’d been the ones to do this to him, but even if they hadn’t, they hated strangers. They would drag him away, and in his present condition, he might not survive their rough handling.

“Think, Eleanor, think!”

He focused a bleary eye on her face, and she said, “Sorry—I told you I tend to talk to myself.”

All right, she was thinking. What if he were a fugitive? A bank robber? A train robber? What if the sheriff was after him and had followed him here? In that case, she could be arrested as an accomplice.

On the other hand, if she explained how she’d found him and they took him away, she could insist on going with them. Not even the Millers would risk trying to hold her against her will with a sheriff as witness.

“No. Don’t even think about that now,” she muttered. Whoever or whatever this man was, he was no threat to anyone in his present condition. He certainly didn’t need any lawmen dragging him down the mountain. What he needed was to sleep until he could tell her where he hurt, what to do about it, who did this to him and whether or not they were likely to follow him here.

At the moment, though, she needed to get him up long enough to peel the rest of those wet clothes off his poor battered body. If the parts that were hidden were in as bad shape as the parts that were visible, he might not even survive the night.

And if he died…

“Don’t even think about it,” she muttered as she turned to her sewing basket to find her scissors.

“Mm?”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said hurriedly, fingering the thick knit of his long johns. “That is, I was, but I don’t expect a reply. I think I might have mentioned that I tend to talk to myself occasionally.”

This time when he said, “Mm,” it was without the questioning inflection. In other words, she translated, “I hear you, woman.”

One piece. She would have to cut around the waist and pull them off in both directions. A blindfold might help her modesty, but it wouldn’t help get the job done.

“Be still now, don’t move,” she cautioned, and positioning the scissors, she slit the left leg of his underwear up to his knee, wincing at the way the cuff had cut into his swollen ankle. Between bruises and abrasions, his skin was a lovely golden color, like well-polished maple.

“I’ll be as gentle as possible, but we have to get you out of these wet clothes before you catch pneumonia.” She cut all the way around just under the knee, then lifted the remnant away. Now all she had to do was get the top part off, then she would worry about what came next.

“Here, let me cover you with this,” she said, unfolding the crocheted afghan she had found in Cousin Annie’s hope chest after her cousin had died. She had wept gallons at the time, but being the practical woman she was, she’d packed it in her own hope chest, which by then she had thought of as her hopeless chest.

She covered his midsection and began unfastening the bone buttons that led from the hollow of his throat all the way down to…

Wherever. “You look like you were dragged all over the mountain,” she said, seeing that one eye was slightly open.

No reply. He appeared to be fascinated by the unadorned whitewashed walls. The poor man had to be every bit as embarrassed as she was, letting himself be cut out of his underwear by a strange woman.

She continued to chatter to take both their minds off what she was doing. “I thought at first you might have tangled with a bear, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t any bear caves around here, at least not any longer. I think the mining must have driven them away.”

Accustomed to conversing with herself, she didn’t wait for a response. “There, roll over a little bit so I can cut around your waist. I’m just going to cut the top part loose and pull it off first.” Leaning over him, she tried to roll him onto his side. She got no farther than halfway when he let out a sharp cry.

“I’m sorry!” He must have internal injuries, and here she’d been lugging him around like a favorite doll.

She waited for him to catch his breath, then eased him onto his back again and reached for her scissors. “I think this will be easier, don’t you?” She began to cut. First the right sleeve, then the left, severing it from the body of the garment near the shoulder. There were bruises, but so far as she could tell, nothing was broken. At least nothing visible.

Stepping back, she surveyed the rest of the garment, aware of the beautiful shape of his muscular arms. He wasn’t knotty, the way some of the Miller men were—the way even Devin had been. Instead, he was smooth and golden, his forearms reminding her of Michelangelo’s statue of David.

Mercy!

“All right, here’s what we’ll do then,” she announced. General Eleanor, advising the troops of her battle plan. “I’m going to cut away your union suit.” She was holding the scissors up in her right hand.

His eyes widened so that she actually caught a glimmer of the darkness behind his poor swollen lids. Obsidian was the term that came to mind. “Mm-mm,” he warned.

“Mm-hm,” she countered. “I’ll simply cut it up from the bottom to where it opens down the front, and then pull it out from under you. It has to be done, you know, else you’ll catch your death, lying in a wet bed. I’ll be as gentle as I possibly can.”

With the afghan spread over his middle for modesty as well as warmth, she positioned the scissors. His eyes widened still more, until she could see that his eyes were brown, not black. Topaz, not obsidian. They only looked black because his pupils were enlarged from…pain? Fear?

“I won’t hurt you,” she said softly, reassuringly. “I would never deliberately hurt anyone.” And just as she began to cut away the sodden fabric, the oddest feeling came over her. Staring down at the stranger on her bed, with all his injuries—with his face swollen and discolored—she felt something almost akin to…recognition.

Which was beyond absurd. If she’d ever seen him before in her life, she would have remembered. He wasn’t the kind of man, even in his present deplorable condition, that any woman could forget.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, embarrassed by her own reaction.

Fortunately, he couldn’t see her flaming face. His eyes closed and remained shut until she had cut almost all the way to his groin.

“No.”

The single word momentarily stayed her hand. “We agreed, you can’t lie around in wet clothes. I’m going to cut across to the placket and—”

“Madam,” he said just as clearly as if his lips weren’t swollen like a split melon, “you’re not getting anywhere near my privates with those scissors of yours. Leave me be and I’ll get undressed.”

“Well for heaven’s sake.” She laid the scissors down on the table beside the bed. “I wasn’t planning to do you any harm, I only wanted to make it easier for you.”

Her face must be steaming by now. She knew as much about a man’s anatomy as any other woman who had been married for nearly two years. That is, she knew where it differed from a woman’s, and which parts were more sensitive than others. She hadn’t planned on getting anywhere near those particular parts, but if he thought he could do better, then let him. At least he was speaking now.

“I’ll just go—go and put the kettle on, then. Call me when you’re done.”

Chapter Four

He was asleep when she returned, giving her time to study his face. The horrid swelling around his eyes was already discolored, his lips split and swollen. The square jaw bore not only a shallow cleft in the center of his chin, but two cuts and a darkening bruise.

Suddenly, she had a feeling of being watched. His eyes were closed, his breathing even. Living alone had obviously distorted her senses. “Are you awake?” she whispered.

The shadowy beginnings of a beard darkened his face, which would make cleaning him up more difficult, but the twins had taken Devin’s shaving things. Besides, after the way he’d reacted to her scissors, she wasn’t particularly eager to approach him with a straight razor. “Hello-o,” she caroled softly. “You probably should try to stay awake until we’re certain that lump on your head is only skin-deep.”

Brain damage. My God, what should she do about that? Had he said anything that made sense? Or even anything that didn’t make sense? Head injuries were not to be taken lightly.

Damn the Millers! Throwbacks to the Dark Ages, every last one of them! What did they do when someone was sick or injured, call Miss Lucy to cast a spell?

“Wake up,” she snapped. Standing over him, she couldn’t help but be aware of his powerful body. He was muscular, both his lower parts and his upper parts—she didn’t know about what was in between. Devin, like most of his cousins, had been short-legged, but powerfully built from the waist up, probably as a result of working with pick axes and wheeling barrows full of dirt along narrow underground tunnels.

Or perhaps it was hereditary, she no longer cared. This man was different. His hands, for all the bruised and bleeding knuckles, were without calluses. Square-palmed, long-fingered, with well-kept fingernails. Unlike the Millers, who went barefoot ten months out of the year, his feet were narrow, the arches high, not flat and callused and broad.

“Who are you?” she wondered aloud.

There was no response, not that she’d expected one. Evidently, he had used the last of his store of energy dragging himself up the hill to safety. That alone, she thought as she busied herself filling the kettle and dragging her washtub in off the back porch, was enough to tell her that his presence must be kept secret from those in the valley. He’d come up the hill, not down toward the settlement, when anyone knew that going downhill would have been easier.

His ribs were injured, that much she’d concluded by the way he’d reacted whenever he was forced to move his torso. A broken rib could cause untold internal injuries, which he might already have suffered. After getting him out of his underwear she should have insisted on looking him over for evidence of further injuries, but she hadn’t. He had suffered enough for the time being.

Besides, she’d been too embarrassed.

Sooner or later, though, she would have to examine his body. His back, his sides, his—the rest of him. He might even be bleeding internally, in which case, where on earth did one apply a bandage?

She took out her washboard and tossed a sliver of soap into the tub, making a mental note to request more soap the next time her supplies were delivered.

As the kettle began to simmer, she filled the tub half full of cold water, thinking about the first time she had sent down a shopping list, naively thinking someone would be going to the nearest town to shop. She’d ordered three bars of French lilac soap, hard milled so as to last longer, a tin of lilac-scented talc and a stiff new hairbrush, as her own was all but useless.

Two days later one of the twins had ridden up the hill with her order. Three chunks of homemade lye soap and a box of cornstarch. No brush. Not even a new comb.

That had been the beginning of her awakening.

Shoving back a length of tangled curls that had slipped free of the pins, she went through the pockets of his Levi’s before dropping them into the tub. They were empty. No surprise there. Whoever had beaten him had obviously robbed him as well. Nevertheless, she felt in the pocket of his faded chambray shirt before tossing it in after his Levi’s. Next went his single sock. If his ankle got worse, one might be all he would need, perish the thought.

As for his coat, it could probably be salvaged, but it would never be the same. It was ripped in two places as if it had snagged on something. One of the sleeves had nearly been torn off. It would have to be sponged and dried slowly so the leather wouldn’t stiffen before she could even attempt to mend it.

She slid her hand into the outer pockets. Nothing there, either. Hardly a surprise. It was in the lining that she came across a flat pocket. A money pocket? She knew less than nothing about men’s clothes, only that their hosiery needed darning far more often than her own. Cautiously, she slid two fingers inside…and pulled out a folded piece of paper that looked as if it had been through the wars.

The kettle began to rock just then, and laying aside the paper, she finished filling the washtub.

“I don’t know when you’ll be leaving,” she muttered to herself as she swished the soap around to make suds, “but you’ll want something to wear. Did I tell you that the Millers—they’re my late husband’s family. They live in the settlement down below, and the thing is, they don’t particularly care for outsiders.”

He had already discovered that for himself, she thought, if what she suspected was true.

After a few brisk rubs she left the garments to soak and tiptoed back to the bedroom to see if her guest was still breathing. Whether he was or not, he was going to be a problem. She’d had her next escape all planned. Now it would have to wait, at least until he was on his feet. Then, if he wanted to stay on here, he was welcome to stay, with her blessing. They might even bring him supplies as long as he set the basket on the porch and remained hidden from view.

She told him just that the next time she tiptoed into the bedroom to check on him, neither expecting a response nor getting one. “I’m soaking your clothes. Not your coat—I’ll do the best I can with it, but it’ll never be the same again, I’m afraid. I’d lend you something of Devin’s but his cousins came up right after he was buried and took away all his clothes and his other personal possessions. Devin was my husband, did I tell you? He blew himself up.”

She sighed. Talking to a sleeping man was no more productive than talking to herself, but at least she didn’t feel quite so foolish. He might hear her, even though he couldn’t respond.

Standing there staring down at that poor battered face, it struck her all over again that there was a naked stranger in her bed. One who might or might not be a wanted criminal. “Please don’t die on me,” she begged softly. “I wouldn’t know who to notify, or even how. And I could never dig a hole deep enough to bury you in this rocky soil.”

She leaned over and peered at his face, searching for some sign that he’d heard her. At least whoever had split his lip hadn’t knocked out any of his teeth. He had nice teeth. In fact, his mouth would probably be quite shapely once the swelling went down.

“Hello-oo,” she crooned. “Are you in there? Can you hear me?” She took his wrist and found a slow, steady pulse. His hands were filthy, his hair was almost as matted as her own, but he was still alive. Thank God for that much. Carefully, she laid a hand on his chest. He was warm. Not really feverish, just…warm. And hard. His heart was definitely beating.

She lifted her eyes and sighed. “Lord, you’re going to have to tell me what to do next, because I’ve never done this before.”

Actually, she had. Not the same, but she had nursed her elderly cousin through her final illness the summer before she’d been married.

Gazing down at the stranger, she felt the oddest tingle throughout her body. Whoever this man was, he most definitely bore no resemblance to cousin Annie. Eleanor waited to see if he would open his eyes. When he didn’t, she covered him with a quilt, then tiptoed from the room.

It had to be somewhere near midnight. She was too keyed up to sleep, but perhaps she should lie down for a few minutes.

Jed woke up gasping for air, each breath hurting as if a dozen devils were stabbing him with red-hot pitchforks. Squinting through swollen eyes, he saw lamplight splintering from the woman’s pale hair. Her face was in shadow. For a moment he had trouble placing her. His skull had been rattled enough to shake his brain loose, but then he recognized her as the same woman who had dragged him into her house, stripped off his clothes and come after him with a pair of scissors. That had been…yesterday? The day before?

He’d managed to move on his own then. Now, he couldn’t move if she set the bed on fire. Opening his mouth, he tried to speak but no words emerged. Lips hurt. Everything hurt, from his hair right down to his toenails.

How the devil could hair hurt?

His did. Felt as if someone had tried to scalp him. For all he knew, they might’ve succeeded. He attempted to lift a hand to find out, but the effort was too great. Bald wasn’t so bad. One of his friends was bald as a pigeon egg. Couldn’t think of his name right now, but he could picture him easily enough.

God, he hurt!

Daylight was streaming in through the east windows when next she opened her eyes. She felt as if her bones had been pounded with a hammer. Good thing she hadn’t left her poor stranger here, he’d be worse off than ever.

“Coffee, coffee,” she muttered, stumbling toward the kitchen. It was then she saw the big, galvanized washtub in the middle of the floor. As a rule she did her laundry on the back stoop, where she could stand on the ground without having to bend over. But if someone had caught her washing men’s clothing, she would have had a lot of explaining to do.

Coffee would just have to wait. Before she’d even lifted the garments from the final rinse it occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to hang them outside. Back in Charlotte she had used the attic in rainy weather, but here there was no attic. She would have to dry everything in the kitchen, either that or build up a fire in the fireplace.

While she was trying to decide where to string a line, she thought of the letter. Should she give it to him when he woke up?

If he woke up?

Or should she keep it in case he didn’t recover and someone had to be notified. But in that case, how could she get word out? She could hardly ask any of the Millers to mail a letter or send a wire for her. They had refused every time she’d tried to get in contact with any of her friends back in Charlotte.

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that it had to have been Alaska and his whiskey-making friends who had done this awful thing. When they had what Devin used to call a skin full, they liked nothing better than to engage in a fistfight with everyone piling on, making enough noise to be heard halfway to the moon. Devin had called it good-natured brawling, but there was nothing good-natured about beating a man half to death.

Now what? she wondered, feeling even more helpless than usual. The natural thing would have been to hurry down the hill and ask for help. Under the circumstances, that was out of the question.

She brought in her clothesline and strung it across the kitchen area, letting the excess line dangle from the nail. She knew better than to shorten a good clothesline, having learned how hard it was to get a replacement. She had asked over and over for more. Might as well have asked for the moon. They must have thought she wanted to use it to lower herself down the backside of the mountain, a sheer drop of more than two hundred feet.

She turned the Levi’s inside out so that the doubled parts—the waist, the seams and pockets—would dry. If he survived, her stranger would need something to wear. If he didn’t, he would need burial clothes. Either way, she would have them ready for him, but he’d have to do without underwear. There was no way she could piece together his union suit, even if he gave it up. So far he’d refused to allow her to take the bottom half. For all she knew he might still be wearing it. At this rate, her whole bed would be mildewed. Crazy fool. “Go ahead, die of lung fever, see if I care,” she muttered, wringing out his one black sock.

But of course, she did care. It wasn’t in her not to care.

After baling out the tub, she turned it down on the back stoop and thought about the next problem. Food. Her rations were carefully allotted for a woman living alone. She could hardly ask for more without inviting questions.

She tiptoed into the bedroom to see if he was still breathing. He was. Slowly, evenly, and so far as she could tell, without any sounds that would indicate that a broken rib had punctured his lung. “I don’t know who the devil you are,” she murmured, “or what you’re doing on my mountain, but if you survive you’re going to have company when you leave.”

In the settlement called Dexter’s Cut, Hector paused outside Digger Hooten’s cabin, checked his fingernails, finger-combed his shoulder-length hair, and then called through the door. “Digger? You to home?”

The runty redheaded man appeared at the door, eyes narrowed against the bright morning sun. “’Mon in, Heck. Set a spell.” Digger was a flatlander who’d married a Miller and produced two children—a daughter, Varnelle, and a son, Alaska, the latter named for the dream he’d always had of heading north in search of gold.

When he’d heard about Dexter’s Cut, he’d figured he’d save time and money by filing a claim on Miller land. Couldn’t be done. So he’d filed a claim on one of the Miller women instead, which was less trouble in the long run. He’d never found more than a few grains of gold, hardly enough to be worth his time digging. But then, his luck might not have been any better in Alaska, and he was too old now to start over.

It was common knowledge that Heck had never had much use for Alaska, so Digger said, “I reckon you come to see Varnelle. She’s over to Miss Lucy’s. Gone to get something for my wife’s bellyache. Right useful girl, my Varnelle. Pretty, too, if I do say so as shouldn’t.”

Fortunately, Varnelle took after her mother. Digger was a homely man.

“Nope, I come to see you.” Heck sat on the room’s only chair while his host settled onto one of two wooden benches. “Nice weather,” he added. An educated man, Heck knew when to haul out his company manners.

“Tol’able,” the old man responded.

Heck had thought long and hard before approaching Digger, but the buck-nekked truth was, he loved his daughter. “Hear tell you been panning some,” he ventured. Most of the locals panned the creek on days when it was too hot to work the fields. That way they didn’t have to feel guilty for laying out while their women were firing up a hot stove to cook their dinner.

“Panned some last week. Didn’t do no good. Wore m’knees out, but that there gold’s done washed all the way down to the river and gone by now. Ever’body knows that.”

“Then how come you wasted time pannin’?” This was going to be tricky as a tote sack full of rattlers. Digger wasn’t mean like Alaska. What he was, was crafty. It took a right smart man to get around him, and third-grade education or not, Heck wasn’t sure he was up to the task.

For Varnelle, though, he was bound to try. “About your daughter,” he began when the old man cut him off.

“I seen the way you been lookin’ at her, boy. You ain’t foolin’ me, nosiree.”

“Well now, she’s a right pretty woman for a redhead.” He thought he’d add the qualifier so as not to appear too eager.

“Tell you what I’ll do, boy. You ain’t the onliest man that’s come a-sniffin’ at her heels, but you show up with Dev’s share of the mine and I’ll set you right up there at the top of the list. Can’t say fairer’n that.”

Heck pursed his lips, laced his fingers across his flat belly and looked thoughtful. “Well now, much as I’d like to oblige, I don’t reckon I can do that.” He’d expected some kind of a clinker. Old Digger was a greedy man, always had been. “On the other hand, don’t reckon any of the others can, either, so that makes us even.”

They passed the time of day for a few more minutes, and Heck made a point of mentioning what a blessing an unmarried daughter was to an old man and his woman. “’Course, lacking a husband to keep ’em sweet, a woman’ll turn real sour as she gets older. Some of ’em gets downright mean. I don’t reckon you’ll mind that none, though, seein’s she’s kin.” He paused to let the words sink in. “Have to support her, too, but at least she’ll be around to see you laid out all nice and proper when the time comes.”

He left a few minutes later, the question he’d come to ask still unanswered. Digger Hooten was not only crafty, he was smart as a whipsnake.

If there was any way in the world Heck could get his hands on Dev’s share, he would do it in a minute, yessir, that he would. Trouble was, those shares weren’t like pieces of paper a man could slip in and steal. What they were was twenty-five solid acres of the most promising land in the entire settlement, the very same hill where old Dexter had struck pay dirt sixty years ago. The land had been passed down to his grandson, who had died and left it to his widow. The only way a man could lay claim to it now would be to marry Elly Nora.

Heck didn’t want to do that on account of he loved Varnelle. Besides, if he married Elly Nora, the property would be his, but he’d have to kill her before he could marry Varnelle. And while he’d done his share of killing, he drew the line at killing a woman.

So he figured he’d just study on it some more. That old hill weren’t going nowhere, he told himself, and neither was Elly Nora.

Time passed. Hearing a slight sound, Jed opened one eye and there she was again. The light was different now. More time had passed. How much time? He didn’t have time to waste. George was counting on him.

His thoughts came in batches between painful breaths. He could see her face more clearly now. She was older than he’d first thought…if he’d thought at all. Mostly, he’d just felt and wished he could stop feeling. He studied her some more as she gathered up things from the washstand—a hairbrush that had seen its best days. An ivory comb and a towel. It occurred to him that she resembled a picture of a woman he’d seen in one of the big churches in Raleigh. Hair like a lumpy halo, face like a saint.

She came over to the bedside then, and he saw the shadows under her eyes. He wanted to offer to give her her bed back—it was obviously the only bed in the house—but he lacked the strength to speak. Lacked the strength to move if she took him up on the offer.

So he watched her through aching eyes and wondered who she was, what the devil she was doing here, and which was the best way out of here without running afoul of those gun-toting, hell-raising pig-swills that had jumped him down by the creek.

Her shadowy eyelids were fringed with thick, colorless lashes. With the angle of the light, it was impossible to tell what color her eyes were. Curiously enough, it mattered. He was right partial to blue-eyed women, always had been.

Hers weren’t blue. But then, they weren’t black, either.

He tried to turn over onto his side for a better view. Jesus, that hurt! Those bastards had kicked his ribs in, laughing all the while.

At his gasp, the woman leaned closer. “What hurts?”

“Everything,” he managed to whisper. He said it with a grin. At least he grinned on the inside—didn’t know if it made it all the way to the surface. Never let it be said that Jed Blackstone wasn’t a good sport, even when he was cashing in his chips.

Could those goons that had jumped him have been hired by Stanfield? Why else would they try to kill a stranger who’d done nothing more than stop for a drink of water?

He needed answers and he needed them right damn now.

That wasn’t all he needed, he suddenly realized. Moving restlessly, he tried to sit up.

A pair of gentle hands pressed him back down. “Shh, you just lie still and rest. Would you like a drink of water?”

“No, dammit, I need to p—”

“Tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you. Don’t even try to get up yet, I think you might’ve hurt your ribs.”

Tell me something I don’t know, he thought, angling his head to get a better look at the woman who had either rescued him or dragged him here to finish him off. At this point, he wasn’t certain of anything.

She was tall for a woman—too thin. The kind of hair that looked as if it had never seen a brush. Not exactly pretty, but not what you’d call plain, either.

“Lady, I need to get up and you need to get the hell out,” he said clearly, his voice urgent. Even talking hurt. He must’ve bit his tongue when they’d caught him on the side of the head with that spade.

“Oh,” the yellow-haired woman said, her eyes widening. “I’ll bring the chamber pot. Can you manage by yourself?”

“What if I can’t?” He couldn’t move his lips, but he could make himself understood.

She blinked, and then damned if she didn’t laugh.

Had he said something funny? If so, it had been purely unintentional, because funny was the last thing he felt.

“I don’t think you can make it out to the privy in your condition.”

Come to think of it, neither did he, but his bladder was fit to bust. He needed a pot and some privacy.

She gave him both.

“Here. If you need any help, I’ll be right outside.” Blushing, she drew a white porcelain chamber pot from under the bed and set it on the table beside him. At the door she paused. “If privacy is what you need I have more than enough to spare,” she said with a funny quirk in her voice. “Besides, I need—I need to feed the animals.”

Letting him know she wouldn’t be lurking outside the door, in other words.

She lingered a moment, adding, “Not that I have any animals, just my two laying hens. Hector—he’s one of the Millers—he gave me a puppy for company once, but it followed him right back down the hill.”

He squinted at her through his partially open eye, wondering if she was totally witless. Wild color flushed her cheeks and she turned and fled. A moment later he heard the outside door slam.

He managed to relieve himself, feeling as if his head was floating a few feet above his shoulders. His belly felt funny, too, not sick like he’d been drinking bad water, but sore, like he’d been worked over by a gorilla.

Five gorillas was more like it. “Jesus,” he gasped, and then flopped back onto the bed and closed his eyes. The slightest movement brought on another pitchfork attack. He was dead certain sure by now that he’d cracked a few ribs. The question was, how many and how cracked? Cracked to the point where the slightest wrong movement could kill him?

Or cracked just enough to make lying perfectly still for the foreseeable future his only option?

At least his head was clearer now. For a while there it had been touch-and-go. He’d actually been afraid they had punched his brains out, but he remembered everything now. Remembered signing the deed and arranging to send most of the money home. Remembered giving McGee a piece of cheese and a soda cracker when they’d stopped by that creek…

What the devil had happened to McGee? He and that miserable old croppy had been together too long to part company now. They had a history together, ever since Jed had saved him from the glue factory. Jed had agreed to feed the biting, kicking, crop-eared old sunfisher and in return, McGee agreed not to bite him, kick him or throw him hard enough to break his neck. So far, for the most part, both had kept their word.

He hoped to hell one of those bastards tried to catch McGee. The last time he’d seen them, they’d been lurching off down the road, one wearing his hat, another one carrying his boots, laughing and cussing a blue streak as they tried to keep from falling on their ugly faces.

If they met again he’d be ready for them, if he had to bind himself up like one of those dead Egyptian kings he’d read about. Given better odds—say three to one instead of five to one—he liked his chances just fine. He wouldn’t go looking for a fight, though. Not this time. He had places to go and things to do, and he’d already wasted two days. Or was it three now?

A tap on the door was followed by a soft voice inquiring if he needed assistance. “I’m all right,” he said, lying through his teeth. If he still had any teeth. He could feel with his tongue, but that hurt, too. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Sleepy,” he added, hoping she would go away. From the way his head felt, he must’ve made intimate contact with every rock this side of the Eastern Divide.

Sleep. He’d give himself a day. Two, at most, and then he would find his horse and get the hell out of here, with or without his clothes. The lady could go on talking to her chickens from now till they started talking back, it was no skin off his teeth.

If he still had any teeth.

Chapter Five

An hour later Eleanor tapped on the door again. She’d held off as long as she dared, knowing he needed his rest. But what if he weren’t resting? What if he had passed out? Or worse…

When no answer was forthcoming, she opened the door and peered inside. He was sound asleep, breathing slowly through his swollen lips, but breathing. Evidently exhausted, he had slept through the night, the following morning and most of the afternoon while she’d waited anxiously to see if he was going to live or die. If only there was some way to tell if a body was bleeding internally.

There probably was, only she was no physician—just a third-grade teacher in a small school on the outskirts of a big city.

He was cleaner. At least his hands and face were cleaner. Now she intended to tackle the rest of him. His scalp, for instance. His hair was caked with dried blood, but when she’d tried to examine an obvious lump to see the extent of the damage, he’d started cursing. And then tried to apologize, which had made her feel even worse.

“I know you hurt,” she’d told him earlier when she’d come to collect his ruined underwear to wash it and see if any of it could be used again. “I’ll try to be as easy as possible, but I need to look at this place on your head.”

Scalp wounds bled copiously, she had read that somewhere, but to determine if his wound was more than scalp deep she was going to have to cut away his hair. That would mean another battle. She hadn’t forgotten the last time she’d come at him with a pair of scissors.

“If the rest of you is as filthy as the parts I’ve already bathed,” she told the sleeping man, “your cuts and scratches are probably already infected. With or without your cooperation, sir, I’m going to have to clean you up and put something on your injuries before it’s too late.”

There, let him think about that.

She’d brought in a basin of warm water, two towels and a chunk of soap. Carefully, she set the basin on the bedside table. She would have to work quickly so as not to tire him further. “You need to get well and get out of here,” she muttered under her breath. “Because if it was the Millers who did this to you, and if they follow you here, I’m not sure I can protect you. I’ll try, of course, but they won’t listen to me, they never do. Hold still now, I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

Lowering the afghan so that it covered him from his waist to below his knees, she washed his chest and just beneath. He wasn’t particularly hairy, but a thin streak of silky black hair circled his flat nipples and dissected his torso, disappearing under the flowered purple cover.

“They took Devin’s rifle, did I tell you that? If it were just one man, I might fight him off with a skillet, but if they think you’re here, they’ll come trooping up my hill like a—like I don’t know what. If they’re drinking, things could get out of hand. I’m going to have to turn you over now. I’ll be as easy as I can.”

He gasped during the process, but he didn’t resist. She had sense enough to apply pressure to his shoulder and his hip, in case his ribs were injured. She was pretty certain they were, as there were two fairly deep cuts on his side. A doctor would probably stitch him up, but that was far beyond her skills. If she even dared try she might faint. The best she could do was wash him, smear on some of Miss Lucy’s turpentine and bear-grease salve and bind him up.

But first she needed to finish bathing him while the water was still warm. The last thing he needed on top of everything else was to catch a chill.

She managed to slide one arm under his body to shift him so that she could see his full back, but when she tried to turn him toward her he cried out.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, frozen in a backbreaking position. What now? Finish turning him over or forget about his back? If he had any cuts there they might fester unless she could get to them and treat them. She had already torn a sheet into strips, intending to bind his ribs, but unless he allowed her to move him again, she couldn’t even do that much.

“I’m sorry, this has to be done,” she said firmly. Steeling herself to ignore his groans, she managed to roll him over onto his stomach. He muttered curses; she mumbled apologies. “Actually, you’re not even bleeding here, only bruised. But…” In the process of rolling him over, the afghan had pulled away from his body. Now her gaze swept over his narrow buttocks.

The scar was an old one. It was none of her business, she told herself as she applied a warm, soapy cloth to his shoulders. My God, what on earth…?

She took one more look at the peculiar scar, but except for the parts that needed attention, she avoided looking at his naked body again. One way or another, she vowed silently as she gently cleansed what looked like a knife wound on his thigh, she vowed that whoever had done this cowardly thing would pay for their sins if she had to blow up Devin’s hill and every last tunnel that riddled it.

“In fact, it might be just the diversion we need to make our escape,” she said thoughtfully.

Facing the wall to hide his embarrassment, Jed frowned. The woman rattled on like a dried gourd in a high wind, but…

Our escape? He knew damned well where he was going, and the last thing he needed was a traveling companion.

“The trouble is,” she confided earnestly as she poured liquid fire in his open wounds, “I don’t know a blessed thing about dynamite, do you?”

“Dynamite?” He managed to open one eye just as she stepped away from the bed. That was a bit extreme, even for him. All he wanted was to find McGee and get the hell out of here. He’d leave Satan to mete out any punishment due.

He managed to roll onto his back again unassisted, pulling the tapestry throw over his privates. She looked at him worriedly and asked if he was hurting.

“No,” he lied. Nowhere except for his ribs, his head, his back and his left ankle. Except for roughly two-thirds of his body, it didn’t hurt a bit.

“There, you see? You’re getting better already.” The smile on her face made her look almost pretty. Not as pretty as Vera, but pretty in a different way.

“Now, I’ve decided to bind up your ribs in case any of them are broken,” she announced. “I have the strips right here, but if you’re tired, we can wait a little while until you’ve had time to rest up from your bath.”

“Mm.” Meaning, just go away and leave me for the next few years, I’ve had about all I can take for one day.

She looked as if she wanted to say something. He didn’t want to hear it, whatever it was, but as exhausted as he was by the last half hour’s activities, he owed her that much. She was trying her best to help him, and she didn’t know him from Adam.

“Name,” he said. His voice sounded like rusty water poured over gravel. “Jed—Blackstone.”

Her face brightened until it was…not exactly pretty, but nice. For the first time he noticed that her eyes were all the colors of the forest—green, brown, gold and gray. She said, “How do you do, Mr. Blackstone, my name is Eleanor Mayne Scarborough. At least, I was a Scarborough before I married Devin Miller.”

Ask a simple question, Jed thought, amused in spite of feeling worse than the floor of a cattle car after a five-hundred-mile trip. He hadn’t even asked her name…although he didn’t mind knowing. If he had to deal with the woman for a day or two longer, it might help to know what to call her.

“Could I ask you a personal question?” Holding the basin on one hip, the towels on the other arm, she tilted her head. “How on earth did you get that odd scar on your, um—posterior? I couldn’t help but notice when you were—when I was—that is… Well, it looks just like two snakes, side by side.”

He closed his eyes, feeling fresh anger sweep over him from something that had happened eight years before.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Well, I do, of course—living here all alone for so long, I’ve lost every sense of decorum I ever possessed.”

He didn’t know about decorum—he’d have to look that one up—but she hadn’t lost her sense of kindness, Jed thought as he watched the blushing woman scurry away. If she hadn’t been there—if she hadn’t been the one to find him, he might not have made it through the night. As it was, he had not only made it, he was going to damn well recover in time to get his money from that Asheville bank and shove it down Sam Stanfield’s throat.

Yeah, he was. Just as soon as he could breathe without lightning striking every vital organ in his body. The binding would help, but it would need to be tight to do any good. He was pretty sure his ribs were only cracked, not broken, but he wasn’t about to risk any sudden moves.

As for his ankle, it was probably only sprained. He could already move his foot, although it hurt like hell. The truth was, he didn’t know anything for sure. With a horse or a cow, he could tell at a glance, but when it came to his own anatomy—not to mention a few other subjects—there were still some crater-size holes in his education. He’d managed to patch up a few of them, but he kept tripping over new ones.

She’d been a schoolteacher. She’d told him that while he’d been pretending to sleep. Taught little kids. Just his luck to fall into the hands of a good-looking woman who could see right through what little polish he’d been able to achieve to the big, dumb oaf underneath.

Not that he was in any condition to take advantage of her, even if he’d wanted to. He’d been too busy since George had wired him about the threatened foreclosure to enjoy his usual pursuits, what with handling all the red tape concerned with any land transfer and making sure the deal was kept secret until he could pay off Stanfield. The land agent had insisted on having a paper record dating back to when God invented dirt. Never in all his days had Jed signed his name on so many documents, most of which he could barely read.

But he’d taken his own sweet time scanning all those big words in the fine print as if he knew just what each one meant. Scare ’em out of trying to put anything over on him. Every now and then one of the black-suited men would harrumph and spit toward the cuspidor, meaning, “Get on with it, you dumb-head.”

But Jed hadn’t allowed himself to be rushed. Instead, he had stared at them, lifted one eyebrow and gone back to reading a bunch of meaningless words on the contract. Then he had signed his name—Jedediah O. Blackstone—right above where someone had printed it out in neat black letters. Added a few extra flourishes for good measure.

The O stood for nothing. He didn’t have a middle name, but that was nobody’s business but his own.

“Jed? Are you still awake?”

“Mm,” he said. He’d been awake more than he’d been asleep almost from the first, only he’d let her think he was sleeping. Woman could talk the hind leg off a three-legged jackass. He wasn’t up to answering any questions, so he’d pretended to be out of it. But now that he’d sized up the situation, he needed some answers. Needed to know the best way off this damned anthill, and what the odds were of running into the same stinking redneck weasels again. If the widow Miller could be believed, there was no way down without wading through the middle of their nest.

“Well,” she said, standing beside the bed, so close he could smell her woman’s scent. Smell whatever it was she’d been cooking that smelled like vanilla. “I’m making you some bread pudding. It’s soft enough so you won’t have to chew. And some soup.”

He said “Mm” again, because the truth was, he was afraid if he tried to open his mouth, his lips would split wide-open. He hated the taste of blood, he purely did. Tasted it a few too many times in his younger, rowdier days.

“Well,” she said again, and stood there, the look of bright expectation slowly fading.

“Thank you,” he managed without doing any damage to his swollen mouth. He owed her that much at least. Hell of a lot more, only it would have to wait. First thing he needed to do was get back on his feet, find a way out of here, and settle with Stanfield. He had a long-standing score to settle with that gentleman.

But that would have to wait. First he had to pull George’s acorns out of the fire.

“Well,” she said for the third time. She was tapping her foot like a feisty rattler, but he didn’t think there was any venom in her. “If you’re really awake now, we can start getting you well, and then we’ll talk about how we’re going to get away from here.”

Eleanor forced herself not to hover. Once he was awake enough to take a bit of nourishment she could find out more about him. Things such as what he was doing here, where he’d been going, and how long he thought it might be before he could—before they could travel.

As frustrating as it was to have him sleeping away the hours, she had to admit that after months of stupefying boredom, she felt vibrantly alive again. Standing beside the bed, she continued to study the man. She suspected he wasn’t always asleep when she looked in on him, but if it suited him to pretend, there wasn’t much she could do about it. Both his eyes were closed again. For a minute he’d opened one of them. She thought some of the swelling might be going down, but the color had spread all the way up to his hairline.

“I’ve come to bind your ribs,” she said, watching to see if he reacted. She’d tried before, but he’d groaned and moaned so much she’d offered to wait. “The sooner we get it over with, the sooner you can go back to sleep.”

She waited to see if he reacted. There, that was a twitch, she was sure of it. Almost like a wink, only both his eyes were still shut.

He sighed. “I give up,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”

The only trouble was, he was lying down. She needed him standing, or at least sitting up. Evidently, he knew it, because he rolled over onto one side unassisted, braced himself with his arms, and pushed to a seated position. There was no disguising the fact that he was in pain. She winced for him, but she refused to put it off any longer. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner you can move without its hurting so much.”

I hope, she added silently. Taking one end of a strip of sheeting, she held it against his collarbone and said, “Hold this.”

It took longer than she’d expected, because she had never done it before. Never done anything even faintly like it. By the third strip she’d learned how to secure the ends until she came to the very last one. After a moment of hesitation, she tucked it under, her fingers pressing into the flesh of his waist. While she’d been wrapping him she had run her hands over his torso, front, sides and back, to see if anything was obviously out of place. She could tell by the way he breathed that he was hurting. She’d apologized until he’d finally told her to just get on with it and leave him in peace.

She had two strips left over. The poor man was exhausted. She helped him down again, pulled the covers up over him and left him to recuperate. Closing the door, all but a crack in case he called out, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

Mercy, she’d forgotten how pleasurable the feel of a man’s warm body could be. Had she ever felt that way about Devin’s body?

She honestly couldn’t remember. Probably not. It had all been so new at the time. It had taken her nearly a year to get over her shyness, and by that time Devin had been more interested in digging for gold than he was in bedding his wife.

Absently stroking the cloth draped over her arm, she marveled at the salacious thoughts that had filled her mind as she’d reached around him again and again, so close she could feel his warm breath on her face. She wasn’t the kind of woman to lust after a man, especially not a stranger who was lying helpless in her bed, dependent on her for care and protection.

But she’d thought about him that way, oh yes, she had. Wondered what it would be like to slide her hands down over his chest and move them down over his buttocks….

Shameless. Demented. “That’s what comes of being a hermit. A hermitess,” she corrected.

“Mm?” Evidently he wasn’t yet asleep.

“Nothing,” she said through the crack in the door. “But if you’re still awake—that is, if you’re not too tired—we could have supper. I can have a tray ready in no time at all.”

She could? Using what, pray tell? Her larder wasn’t exactly brimming. She had used the last of her sugar to make a soft bread pudding, but it was barely a teacup full. Hardly a meal for a grown man. “I’ll be back in a little while. Try to get some rest.”

As he didn’t protest, she hurried away, worrying over what to cook that he could eat. It would have to be something soft. Soup, only soup took time, even if she’d had a good soup bone. Besides, she had learned with cousin Annie that trying to spoon soup into a patient who was lying flat in bed was a messy process, at best.

Less than an hour later she shouldered the door open and tiptoed inside with an enameled tray that had belonged to the mother she barely remembered. “Time to wake up,” she caroled softly. “Did I tell you I took care of my cousin? Not that cousin Annie needed binding, but I used to make soft bread pudding for her, too—and soup. All kinds of nutritious soups.”

He was awake. He gave her that slitted look, as if he were wondering if he’d landed among the Lilliputians. She set the tray aside, washed and dried her hands, then ran one finger over the pat of butter she’d brought to go on the cornmeal mush. Leaving the bowl and spoon there, she turned to him. “First, we’ll see about your lips. This should help.”

And before he could protest, she touched his mouth with her buttery forefinger. Gently she moved it over first the top lip, then the full lower. He had nice lips—even with the swelling she could tell that much. The upper one dipped in a nice bow in the center. She hadn’t seen his teeth yet, at least not all of them, but from what she’d seen, those were nice, too. Not too small, not too large—not crooked and not even yellow. He obviously didn’t dip, didn’t chew and might not even smoke cigars.

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