If only she wasn’t a lady, and he just the son of an outlaw!

But she’d seen his smile, and apparently taken it for condescension. “You think it’s funny, don’t you?” she fumed. “That I would want to do something besides sit and sew all day! Ohhh! Men like you make me so angry—!” She whirled away from him. “Well, good night to you, Rede Smith. I shall leave you to your insufferable dreams of male glory!”

Addy turned on her heel and began to stalk out of the barn, but he didn’t want her to go away angry at him, so he reached out and caught her by her wrist.

“Now, Addy, there’s no need to get your feathers all ruffled—”

“I’m sure you don’t think so,” she snapped, trying to wrench her wrist loose, but he held it fast. “Let me loose, you arrogant sidewinder!”

But he couldn’t…!

Dear Reader,

Harlequin Historicals is putting on a fresh face! We hope you enjoyed our special inside front cover art from recent months. We plan to bring this “extra” to you every month! You may also have noticed our new look—a maroon stripe that runs along the right side of the front cover and an “HH” logo in the upper right corner. Hopefully, this will help you find our books more easily in the crowded marketplace. And thanks again to those of you who participated in our reader survey. Your feedback enables us to bring you more of the stories and authors that you like!

We have four incredible books for you this month. The talented Shari Anton returns with a new medieval novel. Knave of Hearts is a secret-child story about a knight who, in the midst of seeking the hand of a wealthy widow, is unexpectedly reunited with his first—and not forgotten—love. Cheryl St.John’s new Western, Sweet Annie, is full of her signature-style emotion and tenderness. Here, a hardworking horseman falls in love with a crippled young woman whose family refuses to see her as the capable beauty she is.

Ice Maiden, by award-winning author Debra Lee Brown, will grab you and not let go. When a Scottish clan laird washes ashore on a remote island, the price of his passage home is temporary marriage to a Viking hellion whose icy facade belies a burning passion….And don’t miss The Ranger’s Bride, a terrific tale by Laurie Grant. Wounded on the trail of an infamous gang, a Texas Ranger with a past seeks solace in the arms of a beautiful “widow,” who has her own secrets to reveal….

Enjoy! And come back again next month for four more choices of the best in historical romance.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell, Senior Editor

The Ranger’s Bride
Laurie Grant

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Available from Harlequin Historicals and LAURIE GRANT

Beloved Deceiver #170

The Raven and the Swan #205

Lord Liar #257

Devil’s Dare #300

My Lady Midnight #340

Lawman #367

The Duchess and the Desperado #421

Maggie and the Maverick #461

My Lady Reluctant #497

The Ranger’s Bride #550

To Christoval, Texas, home of my grandparents,

the late John Lee and Sally Hill. When I’m writing about

a small town in Texas, I’m thinking of the time I spent

there as a child. And always to my own hero, Michael.

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 Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter One

Texas, 1874

He looked like an outlaw on the run, she thought, with his lean, sun-bronzed, beard-shadowed cheeks that hadn’t seen a razor in at least two days, his wide-brimmed hat pulled down low enough so he could see, but no one could really see him. She couldn’t determine whether his eyes were brown or as black as his soul inevitably was.

Or maybe he wasn’t an outlaw, but a gunslinger, a man who made his name by the speed of his draw. There was no gun belt around his waist, but the battered saddlebags he kept on his lap looked heavy and lumpy enough to conceal a pair of Colts. His long legs intruded into space in the crowded stagecoach that was rightly hers, causing her to sit slightly sideways so their knees didn’t bump. Sitting sideways, however, forced her either too close to the big sweaty man who kept giving her avid sidelong glances, or the weary-looking old woman who hadn’t said a word all the way from Austin. It was too hot on this early June midday to sit too close to anyone.

What would either an outlaw or a gunslinger be doing on the stage that ran between Austin and Connor’s Crossing? Wouldn’t such a man have his own horse and keep to himself, except when he was robbing or gunslinging or whatever such men did?

Perhaps, though, she was wrong about the man slouched opposite her on the swaying seat. God knew she had been wrong about men before—especially about her husband, Charles Parker. Ex-husband, she reminded herself. After the divorce she’d had her surname legally changed back to her maiden name, so it was time she remembered to think of herself only and always as Adelaide Kelly. It was imperative that no one in Connor’s Crossing ever discover that she was—gasp—a divorced woman. If they did, the respect that had been automatically extended to her as the widowed niece of the late Maud and Thomas Connor would automatically vanish.

Charles—her gambler ex-husband took himself way too seriously to refer to himself as Charley—was nothing like the man seated across from her. A head shorter than the enigmatic stranger and fanatically neat, Charles would never have appeared in public without the benefit of a shave. He would smell of bay rum, and his watch chain, a wedding present from Adelaide, would gleam across his brocade waistcoat—or it would have, if he hadn’t lost it in a game of monte. He’d get it back, he had assured Addy. By that time, though, she no longer believed his promises.

Addy knew now Charles had sniffed out the information that her family had money before he’d ever asked for that introduction three and a half years ago. But at the time, her head had been so turned by his fervent courtship that she had been deaf to her father’s skepticism and blind to Charles’s faults. It was only after she was Mrs. Charles Parker that she’d discovered that her husband had no assets of his own to speak of and that he’d only married her to get ahold of hers. The honeymoon had barely begun when he’d started going through her bank account at such an alarming pace that Addy’s father had counselled Addy to leave him. “It’s the only sensible thing to do, Adelaide, dear,” her father had said.

However, Charles was always promising he’d make it up to her if she just continued to have faith in him. Addy would see—he’d settle down and become a diligent employee at her father’s shipping firm and an excellent husband. But there was always another game, and he’d need to borrow her diamond and ruby earbobs as a stake. Oh, not that she’d need to fear their loss, for he would win this time.

She’d have saved time and heartache if she had left him early on, but pride prevented her from admitting her mistake. So she’d stayed with him for three years even after her inheritance was gone and they’d lost the house her parents had given them for a wedding present. There followed a succession of rented rooms, each one dingier than the last.

The last straw had been when he’d filched her plain gold wedding band off the nightstand while she was bathing and had lost it at poker. She’d gone back to her parents then, and allowed them to pay for her divorce. After all, it was not only the sensible thing to do, it was the only thing left to do.

But she couldn’t stay in St. Louis, Addy had decided. However glad she was to be free of Charles, a divorced woman was still a pariah in society. No, she needed to start over somewhere new.

Her widowed Aunt Maud had written offering her a home with her in Connor’s Crossing. Addy, who had visited there as a young girl and remembered both the house and locale fondly, accepted with gladness and relief. She would have to work for a living, but she had discovered, during those hard times with Charles, an unexpected talent as a seamstress.

She’d been packing to leave St. Louis when word arrived of Aunt Maud’s unexpected death. She had left Addy her house and its small acreage in Connor’s Crossing, on the Llano River on the western edge of Texas’s hill country.

Addy had lived in Connor’s Crossing for a few months now and had been accepted without so much as a ripple of suspicion, for her aunt and uncle had been liked and respected. Today she was returning to the town after a brief trip to Austin, where the selection of fabrics and sewing notions for sale was plentiful.

Suddenly, the stranger across from her straightened in his seat, interrupting her recollections. Lifting the heavy leather flap that kept out most but not all of the road dust, he peered outside, his eyes narrowing as the brilliant afternoon sunlight bathed his lean face. He was unaware of the obvious displeasure of the derby-hatted drummer next to him, who had been peacefully snoring until the lifted flap flooded him with blinding sunlight, and the bony middle-aged woman on his other side, who’d been whining about a migraine all morning.

Angling his head, the stranger peered around curiously. Addy could not see out the stage window because of the way he was holding the flap. He kept it shut on her side, but she supposed she should be grateful, for at least the dust wasn’t coming in on her. But the stranger stared out for so long with a vigilant, narrowed gaze that she finally asked, “Sir, is something wrong?”

It was the first thing she had said to him. A lady was not supposed to speak to a man to whom she had not been properly introduced, even if they were traveling many miles in the same uncomfortable small box.

He sat back and let the flap fall back in place before he answered. “Nope, not that I can see.”

She didn’t believe him, for he had shown no interest in their whereabouts heretofore.

“Oh. Well, did you hear something, then?” she persisted.

“Just wanted to have a look at the countryside, ma’am.”

She studied him for a moment; then, giving up on getting the truth out of him, said, “Excuse me, sir,” to the florid-faced big man sitting next to her and leaned forward to lift her side of the flap.

Rede Smith took advantage of her momentary distraction to appreciate the sweet line of her bosom as she bent from a trim waist to look out the stage window. He’d been covertly looking at her ever since she’d climbed into the stagecoach just ahead of him in Austin. He’d first been transfixed by the graceful sway of her silk bustle, but that was before he had been able to get a good view of her classic oval face with its soft, lush lips, pert little nose and round, green eyes.

He was careful not to leave his gaze on her long enough that she noticed. He had no desire to make her uncomfortable. There was already a wariness about her that didn’t subside except for a brief period when she had fallen into a doze, just outside of Round Mountain. Then he had let his eyes drink her in and savor her rosebud lips, the slenderness of her neck, the rich chestnut hair that framed her forehead and was evidently caught up at her nape in some sort of a twist.

He wished he had been sitting next to her, instead of across from her. Then he could have stolen closer while she slept. It would have been torture to feel the length of his thigh against hers, but still damn well worth it.

Rede, there’s just no use putting yourself through that for a lady. Ladies had no time for a man like him, a man with no permanent home and with a job that could put him on the receiving end of a bullet at any time. A lady wanted a man who was settled, with a little bit of land and maybe a thriving business to boot. A man who didn’t feel he had something to prove. A man who had not been already disgraced by the last name he’d been born with—a name his mother had changed as soon as she’d finally left James Fogarty.

He hadn’t answered the lady truthfully when she’d asked him what was wrong because he could not have said what had made him uneasy and given him that prickling along his spine. He’d been unable to identify its cause as he’d gazed out over the rocky landscape of the Texas hill country. He had seen nothing unusual—not even the telltale flash of metal that could indicate the presence of horsemen hiding in ambush.

He preferred the flatter terrain of farther south—it was harder for Indians or white rascals to hide in that country, where the tallest things in it were scrubby mesquite and knee-high clumps of prickly pear. Anything or anyone could hide in this rolling country of wide, juniper- and mesquite-covered hills and limestone outcroppings.

For the hundredth time he wished he wasn’t in this swaying, rattling box, and had his good roan gelding under him. But he’d known he had a better chance of sneaking into the area without the news reaching the Fogartys if he wasn’t seen riding into town on his roan. Word had a way of spreading fast, as if the wind whispered the news.

“Three Mile Hill,” the woman murmured as she let go of the flap and sat back on her seat. “I’ll be home soon.”

She had a pretty voice, Rede thought. Not high and shrill, or mannishly low, but pleasantly pitched. Not twangy-Texan, either, though it wasn’t nasal or clipped like a Yankee’s. She’d been raised somewhere else, somewhere in the Midwest, he guessed. He wished he could ask her, but knew he wouldn’t.

“You live in Connor’s Crossing?” the big man between her and the window asked her, exhaling down on her so gustily that a loose tendril at her forehead fluttered for a moment.

Rede saw her nostrils flare involuntarily, and guessed she had gotten a potent whiff of the man’s beer-and-onion scented breath. But her smile was polite as she nodded.

“Well, ain’t that nice,” the big man said. “Happens that’s where I’m headed. Gonna set up a business there. Mebbe I could come callin’ sometime, mebbe take you drivin’, soon’s I get me a rig and a hoss.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m a widow,” she said, with a meaningful glance at her clothing.

Rede had been so intent on the sweet curves of her body, he hadn’t noticed she was dressed in half-mourning, a gray dress banded in black. Such shades indicated the death had been some time ago, didn’t it? Several months, or was it a year or more?

He wondered how she had felt about her husband. Had she been devastated by his death? Did she still grieve? A man couldn’t judge by her answer to the big smelly man—most women would have used any excuse not to have that one come calling.

Rede felt a flare of anger, not only that the man had been such an insensitive idiot, but also, he recognized, because the man had made overtures to the very woman Rede wanted himself. A part of him already thought of the woman as his.

If only things had been different. Idiot.

But not as bad an idiot as the big man. He couldn’t imagine the green-eyed woman would have consented to let the malodorous big man call on her even if he’d been the only gent left in Texas.

“Sorry, ma’am,” said the other man. “I jes’ saw you were wearin’ half-mournin’, and I thought maybe it’d been long e…” His voice trailed off, as Rede purposefully intercepted his gaze and narrowed his eyes in warning. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Ain’t this the road the Fogarty Gang used to rob the stage along, back before the war?” the drummer asked just then.

The woman’s eyes widened with alarm, and her face paled. Rede longed to slam his elbow into the skinny drummer’s ribs hard enough to make him lose his dinner, just for frightening her.

“But I heard they hadn’t been robbing stages around here for years,” she said. “Ever since—”

“They haven’t,” Rede said flatly, wanting to banish the furrow of worry from her forehead. “Not since m—since Jim Fogarty was hanged.” My father. My father died at the end of a choking rope—years ago.

James Fogarty’s execution for the killing of a stagecoach driver should have taught the rest of the gang a lesson, and it had—for a while. They had lit out to the wild Pecos country for several years. But recently they’d been inching back to their old locale, the limestone-studded hills of central Texas.

“Harrumph. They better keep their eyes peeled and the shotgun ready,” the drummer said, jerking his head to indicate the driver and the stagecoach guard riding up on top.

A lot of good that would do, if the Fogartys wanted to rob this stage, Rede thought, watching the color slowly ebb back into the woman’s face.

He wondered what her name was. Something prim and fancy, he thought. Not harsh, like Harriet, or dowdy-sounding, like Ethel.

Elizabeth, he decided. He wondered if she went by Beth or Liza.

Then all hell broke loose.

Chapter Two

A rifle cracked suddenly from somewhere behind the stoop, followed closely by a sharp cry from the stagecoach driver. Addy heard a thud, then suddenly the team of horses was plunging off the road at a full gallop.

The thin woman with the migraine screamed.

“Bandits! The driver’s shot!” cried the shotgun guard. Addy could hear him scrambling around on top. No doubt he was struggling to grab the dropped reins while still holding the shotgun. Had the thud she’d heard been the sound of the driver’s body hitting the road?

The drummer yanked up the leather flap. “We’re ’bout to be held up!” he shouted.

Many things happened at once. The stranger grabbed for his saddlebags, thrusting a hand into one and coming out with the Colt revolver Addy had suspected was there. The older woman on Addy’s left began to whimper in chorus with the other woman across from her.

Addy was sick with fear. She felt a scream bubbling up inside herself, but the knot of terror in her throat wouldn’t let it out. She wanted to look out the window, but bullets whizzed past and she knew it wouldn’t be wise.

“Get down on the floor!” the stranger ordered Addy and the old women. Then, when the old woman seemed frozen to her seat, he yelled, “Do it! Right now!”

Addy heard him cock his gun, and for a single panicked second, she thought he was in league with the outlaws. Then she decided it was more likely he was trying to get a clear shot at the robbers and didn’t want the two women in the line of fire.

“Get down with me, ma’am!” she cried, pulling at the resisting old woman’s hands. “He’s just trying to help us!” But the woman yanked her hands out of Addy’s, clenched them into a fist at each ear and screamed.

“Whip up those horses there!” she heard the big man yell to the man on top. “We can outrun—”

He never finished his sentence. There was another loud crack, and suddenly he slumped over across Addy. She couldn’t tell where he was hit, but a warm crimson fountain instantly bathed Addy, running down her cheek in a warm, sickening flow.

It was too much. She felt a black mist descend over her, and suddenly there was nothing.

The buzzing of flies at her ear woke her, how much later Addy had no idea. She only knew there was an enormous weight lying against her back, hampering her breathing so that she couldn’t take a full breath. Her nostrils were full of the horrible coppery stench of blood.

She could feel no rise and fall of breathing from the body lying against her, but just to be sure, she took hold of the wrist dangling over her back and felt for a heartbeat. None. The big man who had leered down at her so recently was dead.

Struggling against the horror that was welling up into a scream—which might put her in danger if the outlaws were still around—Addy forced herself to listen, to concentrate on something else besides the corpse partially pinning her down on the stagecoach floor. None of the other passengers remained inside. Where were they? Were the outlaws still outside?

She could hear no voices, neither outlaws calling out orders nor those of the passengers. Nothing but the humming of the flies and the endless soughing of the hot summer wind as it echoed around the limestone hills. Holding her breath so she could hear better, though, she could hear the soft tearing sound horses made as they cropped grass.

Where was everyone else? Were they all dead, too? Would someone shoot her the moment she showed her face outside the coach?

Determinedly, she pushed and wiggled until she had worked herself out from under the dead man and stealthily lifted the flap, pushing herself up just enough to see over the edge.

The hem of a fluttering skirt on the grass was all she could see.

Pushing open the door, she stood at the door for a minute, peering out at the scene before her.

The outlaws were gone. Five bodies lay in the dusty road—the shotgun guard, flat on his back, the old woman, lying on her side as if napping, the drummer, sprawled in an ungainly heap as if he had been kneeling, the thin middle-aged woman who’d had the migraine, looking like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and finally and most horribly, the man who had been sitting opposite her in the stagecoach. He lay prone, his arms outflung in the dirt.

Stifling a moan of anguish, she ran to each of them in turn, finding in each a fatal bullet wound either in the chest or the head.

Addy left the stranger’s body until last, knowing that when she proved to herself he was as lifeless as the others, she would very likely succumb to hysterics. For then she would be truly alone.

She was so shaky she couldn’t be sure if his chest was rising or not. The back of his shirt was streaked with blood. What would she see when she turned him over?

When she took hold of his shoulder and pulled him gently back toward her though, she lost all hope. Blood spread over his shirtfront like a horrible scarlet blossom. No one lived after being shot through the heart.

And then he groaned.

Addy, who had been crouched over him, fell back on her extended elbows.

He groaned again. He was alive! But for how long?

“Mister! Can you talk to me? Wake up! Where are you hit?” Addy cried. His eyes flew open even as he tried to wrench away from her, then settled back with a grunt.

“Easy, now, easy!” she soothed him. “I’m not one of the outlaws! Seems like they’re gone now. I need to know where you’re hit,” she said as she pushed back his rawhide vest and began to unfasten his shirt.

She saw him relax fractionally at her words.

“F-Fogartys,” he muttered.

“You mean you think it was the Fogarty Gang that did this?” she questioned him, as she reached the last button. “Weren’t you the one who said they hadn’t been operating around here since their leader was hanged, years ago?”

He opened his eyes again and looked at her, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She just knew that the eyes she’d thought might be black were brown, but the deepest shade of it she’d ever seen.

Wrenching her gaze away from those fathomless pools, she pushed aside his shirt.

The bullet hole was higher than she’d expected, just over his collarbone. It must have gone in higher than the lung. That’s why he still lived, then. But if the bullet was still in him, he could die of blood poisoning. Reaching down his back, though, she felt a larger, bloodier wound in the back of his shoulder, and breathed a sigh of relief. The bullet had apparently exited there.

He’d shuddered even at her gentle touch, but now the stranger’s eyes drifted shut.

“We’ve got to get you some help,” she said urgently. Then, when he seemed reluctant to reawaken, Addy shook him by his left upper arm.

That brought instant results.

“Judas priest, woman, let go! That hurts like fire!”

Looking down, she saw a bullet hole she’d missed before in the cloth of his sleeve. Easing the shirt down from his shoulder, she saw another wound in the fleshy part of his upper arm. Probing the muscle with careful fingers, she could not find a second hole. That bullet must still be in there.

A horse whinnied behind her, and Addy darted a look over her shoulder, half expecting to see the outlaws had returned to finish them off. But it was only one of the team, still hitched to the stagecoach.

“Fogartys…they’ll come back….” he muttered.

They had to get out of here, and get him to a doctor, but how? It wasn’t as if she could carry him, and from the pallor beneath his sun-bronzed face, he sure couldn’t walk the two miles to her place.

There was only the stagecoach—and of course she’d never driven one. The body of the dead man was still inside it. But what other choice did they have?

Addy touched the man’s other shoulder to rouse him. “Mister, we’ve got to get you out of here, get you to some help,” she said, nervously eyeing the horizon lest the outlaws come galloping over it.

He didn’t open his eyes. “Everyone’s dead….”

She nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see her. “Yes, everyone’s dead, except you and me.”

“Just…witnesses. ’Sposed to be me….”

She didn’t know what he meant by that, and at the moment, she didn’t care. “Look, we’re going to have to get you into the stage. That big man who was sitting next to me is lying dead in there, but I can’t move him, and neither can you.”

He shrugged, a movement that instantly made him groan in pain. “I’ve been around dead bodies before.” He opened his eyes, and pierced her with his dark gaze. “You ever driven a stage team?”

She fought the urge to laugh hysterically. “No, of course not. But looks like I’ll have to try, doesn’t it?”

His mouth twisted wryly. “Don’t think I could climb up on top if I had to….”

“No, of course not.” She squared her shoulders. “Well, you’re going to have to help me get you to your feet.”

He’d closed his eyes again. For a moment he was so still, she thought he’d passed out; and then he reached inside his vest and fumbled at something for the longest time.

“Whatever you’re trying to find can wait,” she said. “We need to hurry and get you to a doctor.”

Opening his eyes again, the man shook his head. “No doctor…” He held out his hand, the one that had reached inside his vest. His fingers were folded around something. “Here—put this…on one of the men. The shotgun guard.”

Her eyes locked with his, Addy allowed him to drop the object into her hand. Its hard coolness told her it was metal before she looked down.

When she did, Addy was startled to see it was a lawman’s badge. She squinted in the strong afternoon sunlight. It was the badge of a Texas Ranger.

Her eyes flew to his face. “You’re a Ranger? I thought…” She shut her mouth before she could say, “I thought you were an outlaw or a gunslinger,” but his raised brow and the wry twist of his mouth told her he’d guessed exactly what she’d been thinking.

He was too pale, and the sun above, too fierce. She had to get him to shelter. “Well, never mind. I’ll do as you said.” Later, she would find out why he wanted her to make it look as though the dead shotgun guard had been him.

Addy avoided the sight of the dead guard’s staring eyes, but couldn’t help flinching as she pierced the blood-caked cloth with the pin of the badge.

She came back to find the Ranger struggling to his feet, his left arm dragging. He swayed, and she was just in time to put her shoulder underneath his arm to brace him.

His face had gone gray with the effort, but his gaze was direct as he spoke. “From what you said earlier, sounds to me as if you live a ways outside town?”

Puzzled, she nodded. “About a half mile this side of Connor’s Crossing. We’re just a couple of miles away.”

“That’ll do. You can take the bullet out there.”

“I can’t remove a bullet—I’m no doctor!”

“Lady, there’s men lookin’ t’ kill me, and they will if it gets ’round that the doctor’s been called to tend some fellow wounded in a stage robbery. I reckon if you don’t care about that, you can take me on into town.”

“Well, of course I don’t want you killed,” she protested. “But don’t you see, I can’t…”

“Look, lady, whatever you decide is fine by me,” he snapped. “I don’t have the strength to stand here and argue with you. Let’s just get out of here, all right?”

Startled at his tone—and embarrassed that she’d forgotten how much blood he’d lost and how much pain he must be feeling—she nodded.

He gave her a wan smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bite your head off. If you can hold the horses steady, I think I can climb in.”

The leaders shied and sidestepped nervously, obviously smelling blood as he drew near, but Addy went to the head of the nearest one and held its chinstrap, murmuring soothing nonsense to it.

Addy watched the Ranger take hold of the side of the coach with one hand and grab the window frame with the other, uttering a barely muffled groan as he did so. She wished she could be in two places at once so she could hold the horses and help him somehow. He more or less fell inside, landing on the seat with a thud and a smothered curse.

“Okay, lady, I’m set,” he announced from within. “You ready to drive?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she called back, then said, “Addy. My name is Addy—Adelaide Kelly.”

He made no answer.

She stared over the empty road again, but saw nothing but a jackrabbit pausing to nibble some gramma grass.

Chapter Three

She’d probably never be hired as a driver for the stagecoach company, even if she wanted to be, but she wasn’t doing too badly, Addy decided. It helped that the team was an obedient, willing foursome who seemed to appreciate having a human controlling them again.

She had to steer to the left when they’d come across the body of the murdered stagecoach driver around the bend in the road. As the coach passed around the corpse, Addy said a prayer for the dead driver and for the other slain passengers she’d left behind. She’d have to let the sheriff know what had happened as soon as possible, so he could have the bodies brought in for burial.

But first she had to see to the wounded Ranger. She’d heard nothing from within the coach since they’d left the scene of the attack. Had he passed out from pain during the long bumpy two miles to her house? She would soon see. She turned the coach off the main road and into the rutted path that led up to her house.

Reaching the front of her house, Addy threw the brake on the coach, then clambered down and tied the reins to the porch rail. The two leaders were going to devour the primroses in her flower bed, but that was the least of her problems after what had happened.

Just as she opened the coach door, the Ranger pushed his hat back off his face.

“How are you doing?” she asked, her eyes roaming over his blood-soaked shirt, looking for signs of fresh bleeding.

“Well, the company wasn’t the best,” he said, with a sardonic nod toward the dead man still lying crumpled in a heap on the floor of the coach. “And that’s got to be the bumpiest section of road in the whole state of Texas. I felt every rock the wheels rolled over. But I reckon I’ll keep.”

She had to admire his grit. “Let me help you out,” she said, extending a hand. “We’ll get you into the house and I’ll put you to bed.”

Distracted by his haggard face, she hadn’t chosen her words with any special care, but apparently he wasn’t in too much pain to tease.

“Why, that’s the best offer I’ve had in weeks, Miss Adelaide Kelly,” he drawled, managing a wink. “Just wish I was in good enough shape to take advantage of it.”

She felt her temper flare, even as the flush flooded her cheeks. “If you were, you wouldn’t be coming into my house, let alone my bed, sir. But for the grace of God, you might be lying dead out there with the others!”

He sobered instantly. “Sorry, Miss Adelaide. I didn’t mean any lack of respect to you or to them. I reckon I’m purely giddy-headed, realizin’ how lucky I am that hombre who aimed to kill me was such a rotten shot and didn’t bother to check afterward to see if I was breathin’ or not.”

Addy figured she owed her survival to a similar piece of luck. Drenched in the dead man’s blood and partially covered by his body, she’d probably looked dead to the outlaws, too.

“It’s probably the loss of blood making you giddy-headed,” she replied tartly as she fitted her shoulder under his uninjured one. “Come, let’s get you inside.”

“All right, but don’t let me put you outa your bed, Miss Adelaide,” he insisted as he raised his foot to the first stone step. “Surely you have a sofa or a truckle bed or something. Even just a pallet on the floor.”

She didn’t answer him. He’d have to use her bedroom. Getting him up the stairs to the spare bedroom was out of the question, in his condition.

They passed the room at the front of the house that had once been her aunt and uncle’s bedroom, but she had transformed it into her shop. There was a rack along one wall full of bolts of fabric, but their bed was piled high with scraps of fabric, cards of buttons, a case full of spools of thread, and rolls of lace and ribbon trim. It was to this room that the misses and matrons of Connor’s Crossing came to get alterations done or new dresses made in the latest styles from Godey’s Lady’s Book.

Addy had taken over a room off the kitchen for her bedroom. It was small, but had the advantage of facing northeast, making it cooler on hot summer evenings.

He closed his eyes on the steps leading up to the porch, letting her guide him. Aware of his tightly clenched jaw and the groans he tried to stifle, she moved slowly down the hallway, passing through the kitchen and into her room.

He sagged against her just as they reached the bed, and she had no choice but to let him down right on top of the calico quilt.

“I’ll go get some water so I can clean up those wounds,” she announced as she picked up his booted feet and placed them on the bed.

Ashen-faced, he didn’t answer. Addy wondered if he had passed out again.

After she had returned and cut away his ruined shirt, and had begun washing the dried, clotted blood away from his upper chest wound, though, his eyes fluttered and opened again.

“Am I too rough?” she asked. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t worry, you have a real gentle touch,” he replied. And she did. She was far gentler than George McDonald, his Ranger company captain, would have been. Nevertheless, though he’d never have admitted it to her, each stroke of the damp cloth was like a blast of flame. He knew what she was doing was necessary—if she didn’t cleanse the wounds, he had a worse chance of dying of blood poisoning.

A groan escaped him, however, as she helped him to turn so she could wash the larger wound in the back of his shoulder where the bullet had exited. He felt her hesitate, so he muttered, “Go ahead and finish,” then set his jaw and held on to the mattress until she was done.

Once she had eased him onto his back, he concentrated on her face, willing the pain to recede. She was so pretty, despite the streaks of blood on her cheeks and neck and the smudge of dirt on her cheek. Her hair had mostly escaped the knot at the back of her slender neck, but its disarray gave her a wild, wanton look that was quite opposite, he guessed, from her normal appearance and personality. She’d be pretty as a silver dollar with her hair up and wearing a dress that wasn’t stained with a dead man’s blood. He guessed she had totally forgotten—if she’d ever noticed—the sorry state of her clothing.

He watched her tear strips from an old, well-worn man’s shirt to make a bandage, then realized, by the self-conscious way she worried at her full lower lip with her teeth, that his staring was making her uncomfortable. But he was damned if he could stop. After all, it kept his mind off the fiery ache above his collarbone.

“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly.

He hesitated. Could he trust her not to tell even one person when she went into town about his presence here?

“You gonna tell anyone I’m here?” he asked.

She looked mildly indignant at the question. “For now, no—I know you said it was important not to. Though I can’t see how it would hurt for the sheriff to know you’re here. Surely he’d be your ally in capturing the Fogartys.”

Miss Adelaide Kelly would probably be surprised at just how often a sheriff could be hand in glove with desperadoes, he thought. “Some small-town lawmen flap their jaws too much,” he said. “I don’t want to bet my life on whether this one does or not while I’m lyin’ here weak as a poisoned pup.”

“Sheriff Wilson doesn’t strike me as a gossip,” she said, coloring a little, “but I’ll respect your wishes.”

Something about the way she defended the man was a bit too enthusiastic, and his heart sank. Was she sweet on the sheriff?

He supposed he owed her honesty, after she’d brought him to her house and put him in her own bed—he’d guessed it was hers by the flower-sprigged wrapper and hat that hung from hooks on the door. “It’s Rede…Rede Smith,” he said.

“How do you spell it? R-E-E-D? Or R-E-I-D?”

“R-E-D-E. It’s short for Redemption,” he admitted sheepishly. “I guess you could say my ma had a Biblical bent when it came to names.” To make up for my father’s lawlessness. She’d taken the surname of Smith to hide their connection to the outlaw who’d been her husband.

Rede wondered what Miss Adelaide Kelly would think if she knew the leader of the band of killers who’d attacked the stage today had been his uncle, his father’s youngest brother.

“Redemption Smith,” she said experimentally. “A bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? I see why you go by Rede.”

He liked the sound of his name on her lips. “Rede will do. Or just plain Smith.”

Her nose wrinkled at his last sentence. “I’m not calling you Smith. Sounds like I’m some rich lady and you’re my butler. I suppose I should properly call you Mr. Smith.”

“Please, call me Rede. Can I call you Miss Addy? Adelaide’s kind of a mouthful, too. And it’s too stuffy a name for a pretty woman like you,” he added, purely for the pleasure of seeing her blush again.

Which she did, enchantingly, though she tried to put on a severe expression to counter it. “Horsefeathers,” she sputtered, after a moment. “I suppose it’s all right for you to call me Miss Addy. Most of the town calls me that or Miz Addy. Since I was widowed,” she explained.

He nodded obediently.

“But you needn’t think that means I’ll stand for any monkeyshines from you while you’re here, Rede Smith.”

Again, he nodded, trying to look lamblike.

“Which will be for as brief a time as possible, is that clear? I’m a respectable widow with a business to run, which will be difficult enough while you’re here. Just as soon as you’re well enough to ride out of here, you’ll be leaving, is that understood?”

This wasn’t the time to tell her he’d decided this was the ideal place to stay, not only while he recovered, but while he looked for the Fogartys’ hideout.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, with all the meekness he could muster. Judas priest, but she was even prettier when she was riled, if that was possible.

“And now I had better get that bullet out of your arm, before you get blood poisoning,” she said. “I’ll just go and get a knife—”

The thought of her digging that bullet out made him queasy all over again. Ignoring the pain that lanced through him at the sudden move, he took hold of her arm before she could step away from the bed.

“Not just yet,” he said. “I mean, it’s gettin’ pretty late, isn’t it? You’d better go report the attack so someone can go out and pick up those bodies before the varmints get to ’em.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said, looking down at his hand.

Reluctantly, he let her go. “Remember now, when they ask you about the dead folks, tell ’em Rede Smith is the one lyin’ out there with the star on his shirt.”

She shuddered. “But how would I know he was Rede Smith? We didn’t all introduce ourselves while we were traveling. I couldn’t tell them the names of the others. If I just knew your name, it would make it look as if we were…well, carrying on a flirtation or something. And I’m a respectable widow—I have a reputation to maintain here,” she told him tartly.

She had starch all right, Addy Kelly did.

“All right, just be sure and mention you noticed the man was wearin’ a Texas Ranger badge.”

She nodded her assent, started to walk out of the room, then suddenly asked, “Who wants you dead, Rede? Why don’t you want anyone to know you’re alive?”

“The Fogartys. The same bast—Excuse me, ma’am, the same outlaws that attacked the stage today.” He’d been trying to come into the area secretly, to find their hideout before they knew he was here, but somehow the word had gotten out.

Which meant someone in his Ranger company had talked. He’d have to find out who that was, preferably before the company joined him to capture the Fogarty Gang. It could be that one of them had just babbled too much while drunk. He didn’t want to think that a Texas Ranger could be bribed.

She seemed to want to discuss it further, but he wasn’t ready to trust her that much yet. “Are you up to drivin’ that stage into town?” he asked, to divert her.

Addy nodded. “I think so. I—I don’t like to think of that man lying dead in there, right in front of my house.”

He was glad she felt that way, because that meant the sheriff wouldn’t be nosing around here right when Addy was about to dig that bullet out.

His stomach clenched all over again at the thought. “Say, Miss Addy, maybe you’d better buy some whiskey while you’re there. Sure would be easier to stand you operatin’ on my arm if I could get good and drunk before you start.”

“Now how am I going to explain a sudden fondness for whiskey?” she demanded.

He hadn’t thought of that. Good Lord, was he going to have to go through this ordeal sober?

He must have looked as uneasy as he felt, for she smiled. “Don’t worry. Fortunately for you, there’s still some of my uncle’s supply here. My aunt didn’t dispose of it when he died—I think she used to sip it herself. There’s one bottle left. You want it now?”

Rede shook his head. He didn’t know how long it’d be before she could start her digging, and he’d have a better chance of passing out and avoiding the pain if he drank a whole lot of it right before she started.

He’d drink the whiskey while she was boiling the knife before she went to work on him. He didn’t know why it was, but from what he’d seen, a wounded fellow just seemed to do better when the bullet-digging instrument was boiled first.

“Oh, Miss Addy—before you leave, will you bring in my saddlebags?” he called after her retreating form. “They’re still inside the coach. My pistols and gun belt are in ’em.” Since he was still alive, he figured, he might need them again.

Chapter Four

If it hadn’t been for the tragedy that had necessitated her driving the stagecoach into Connor’s Crossing, Addy would have been amused by the reaction that greeted her as the coach rolled onto Main Street after crossing the bridge over the Llano River.

Dogs barked and scurried out in pursuit of the stage. A pair of ladies strolling onto Main Street—ladies she recognized as two of her best customers—stared in slack-jawed amazement, one of them dropping her parasol. The town ne’er-do-well, lounging outside the barbershop, turned to run inside—no doubt to tell the barber what he’d seen—and ran right into the support pole holding up the roof that jutted out over the shop. As the horses trotted farther along Main Street, cowboys loitering outside the saloon shouted questions at her and the news of a woman driving the stage to patrons inside.

Addy ignored them all, determined not to be delayed. She wanted to tell the story only once. Approaching Miss Beatrice Morgan’s trim cottage, she spied a towheaded, freckle-faced boy of five staring between the slats of the white picket fence. It was Billy, the sheriff’s son, whom Miss Beatrice looked after during the day while his widowed father served as Connor’s Crossing’s sheriff.

“Billy!” she called, “run ahead and find your father for me, will you? Tell him to come to the jail, that I need to speak to him right now!”

If he had no prisoners to guard, Sheriff Asa Wilson spent little time in his office at the jail. Usually, at this time of day, he was ensconced in the general store playing checkers, but there was no guarantee of that, and Addy didn’t want to spend valuable time looking for him. She was eager to turn the coach and its dead passenger over to him as soon as possible so that she could get back to the wounded Ranger in her house.

Still paying no attention to the questions called out by every soul she passed, Addy had just reined in the team in front of the jail and was setting the brake when Asa Wilson catapulted out of the general store with Billy on his heels.

“Miss Addy! I thought Billy had lost his mind when he told me you were driving a st—Dear God, what’s happened to you? You’re all bloody! Are you—are you shot?”

Belatedly, she gazed down at her dress and saw the blood that had dried into dark-brown splotches and streaks across the front of her bodice and skirts. Dear God, indeed! But her appearance was of no concern to her right now.

“No, Asa,” she said, as she took hold of his hand and allowed him to help her down. “I’m unharmed. But…I’m afraid we were robbed back there.” She gestured back up the road that led past her house into town.

“Wilson, there’s a dead man in here,” called the barber, who had apparently been peering inside the coach while she spoke. “He’s all shot up.”

Asa’s eyes flew to her face, and he seized her other hand.

Addy nodded in confirmation, feeling her knees starting to turn to jelly now that she had accomplished her mission of bringing the coach—and the news—to town.

“Th-that’s how I got so bloody,” she told him, aware that more than half the town was clustered around the coach and hearing every word. “I was crouched down in the floor of the stage…and he fell over on me.”

A buzz arose from the crowd at her words, but over it she could hear Asa murmuring, “Dear God,” once again.

“You could have been killed,” he added in a hoarse whisper. “Oh, Miss Addy, I knew I shouldn’t have let you go by yourself!”

Her eyes dropped, uneasy at the naked devotion in his eyes. His kindness and caring made her feel guilty. Ever since she had come to town and made his acquaintance he had always been a gentleman. He’d said he understood that she couldn’t return his feelings just yet since she had only been a widow for half a year. But she couldn’t think about the way she’d been deceiving this good man, not now.

“Asa…there’s five more people dead out there, about three miles out, where we were attacked. The driver, two women—”

“Women?” someone cried. “They killed women?”

Suddenly feeling more weary than she ever had in her life, she nodded and went on. “Another man who was a drummer, and the sh—” She shut her mouth. She had almost said, “the shotgun guard.” Quickly she corrected herself and told the lie. “And a Ranger.”

“There was a Ranger aboard? They killed a Texas Ranger?”

“Where was the shotgun guard? The stage company usually has a shotgun guard riding up top with the driver.”

“I—I—” Addy stammered. Was her lie to be exposed so easily? She thought fast. “The Ranger was riding up on top…I guess he was acting as the shotgun guard?” Then she thought it would be best to mix in as much truth with her lie as she could. “The stagecoach driver was killed first, and he fell off the top. Then I think the—the Ranger grabbed the reins and tried to fire back at them…but they caught up and then the man…inside there—” she shuddered as she gestured at the interior of the coach “—was shot and fell over on me. I guess I must have fainted, for when I awoke and managed to get out from under…the body—” she closed her eyes, and her shudder was not the least put-on “—I found everyone else lying dead outside the coach.”

“Sweet heaven,” someone muttered.

“Sounds like the Fogarty Gang,” someone else said.

“Didja see their faces, Miss Addy? Any of them buzzards?” someone else asked.

Addy shook her head. “Not really,” she said, though the image of a face half-concealed by a red bandanna as he stuck a pistol in the window flashed through her brain.

She shut her eyes again, suddenly feeling more than a little dizzy. She swayed.

“Miss Addy, didja—”

“Shut up! Can’t you see she’s about to swoon?” snapped Asa. “Back away, gentlemen, back away. I’m gonna take Miss Addy inside so she can sit down where it’s cooler.” Asa Wilson inserted an arm bracingly around her and guided her firmly but gently toward the door of the jail. “You men, stick around,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re going to have to form a posse—and if someone can drive a buckboard out there, those bodies have to be brought in for identification and proper burial. Oh, and Miss Morgan, would you have any smelling salts with you?”

“Oh, dear me, no,” Addy heard Beatrice Morgan say. “But I could run back to my house….”

Beatrice Morgan was a plump old maid of perhaps sixty years who had already come to Addy once for the making of a new black bombazine dress. Black was all she seemed to wear, though who she was in mourning for was a mystery to Addy and the rest of the town.

“No smelling salts, Asa,” Addy protested. The stinging scent of hartshorn always nauseated her.

“Never mind, Miss Morgan, perhaps it would be more helpful if you’d come in and be with Miss Addy,” Asa said. “A feminine presence, you know…just Miss Morgan,” he said, as a handful of Connor’s Crossing ladies moved to follow them. He pushed open the door and ushered Addy and Beatrice Morgan inside.

It felt good to sink into Asa’s big chair while he bustled about, pouring Addy a drink of cold water from the pitcher he always kept on his desk. The cool dimness of the jail office was restorative, too, after the heat of a Texas summer afternoon.

“Here, my dear, let’s elevate your feet on this,” Beatrice said, lifting Addy’s feet and shoving a stack of unread newspapers underneath them. “Addy,” she whispered, “surely we had better loosen your stays, too? Sheriff,” she called in a coy voice, “would you please step out while I…ahem!…assist Miss Addy to breathe better?”

Addy had no need for tight-lacing and had had about enough of Miss Morgan’s fluttering, well-intentioned though it was. She opened her eyes. “Never mind, Miss Beatrice, I’m breathing just fine, truly I am,” she said with as much firmness as she could muster.

Beatrice Morgan looked disappointed. “Well, if you’re sure, dear.”

Asa Wilson cleared his throat. “Well, Miss Addy, I’ll be leaving for a little while anyway. I’ve got to go out there now and organize a posse. I won’t be gone any longer than it takes to capture those no-good bas—Pardon me, ladies, those outlaws,” he amended. “In the meantime, Miss Morgan can stay with you here. And then I’ll take you home in my buggy.”

Addy knew there wasn’t a chance in a million that the outlaws would still be in the area, but she didn’t want to deflate his pride by arguing with him. She couldn’t stay here, though, not with the wounded Ranger awaiting her return!

“But it could take you hours to find their trail and capture the outlaws, and then you’ll be much too busy guarding them to be worrying about me, Asa—though I thank you for your concern, of course. I’m feeling much better, truly I am,” she insisted. “Let me just sit here for a few minutes, and then I’ll just walk on home—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Beatrice said, clucking disapprovingly. “It’s out of the question for you to be alone tonight. After your grueling ordeal, you need the company of another woman. You’ll come to my house and stay the night. You’ll have a hot bath while I wash the bloodstains out of that dress, and you can wear an old wrapper of mine while it dries.”

“I’m much obliged, Miss Morgan,” Asa said, looking relieved as he strode to the door. “Miss Addy, you do just what she says. I’ll call on you there in the morning.”

If it hadn’t been for the presence of Rede Smith at her house, Addy would have been tempted to allow Beatrice to take her to her home and fuss over her. Addy had already been invited for supper twice and knew that Beatrice Morgan was a legendary cook, and she was sure she would feel much better for a bit of the kindly older woman’s pampering. But she had to get home to the Ranger. Every minute she delayed increased the Ranger’s chance of developing fatal blood poisoning.

“But I’m afraid I can’t—”

The sheriff let the door slam shut behind him, a man on a mission of justice.

“Miss Beatrice, I appreciate your kindness,” Addy began, “truly I do, but I’m fine. I’ll just walk on home. I have so much to do—”

“Addy Kelly, all that stitching can wait. You’ve had a dreadful shock. Walking on home by yourself, indeed! You wouldn’t make it five yards beyond the barber shop! If you won’t come to my house, I’m coming to yours!”

Oh, dear, now she had truly made things worse. She could just picture Beatrice Morgan discovering the wounded man in her bedroom!

She could see there was no use arguing with the determined spinster. But the excitement appeared to have taken a toll on the old woman, for she looked suddenly fatigued. That gave Addy an idea.

“Miss Beatrice, I suppose you’re right,” she said meekly. “I shouldn’t think of going home right now. In fact, I’m suddenly so tired I can’t even move beyond this jail. I think I’ll just go lie down in there for a few minutes,” she said, pointing to the cot in one of the jail’s two cells. As soon as I’ve rested, we’ll walk down to your house, all right?” She wasn’t worried about using the same cot on which lawbreakers slept. The cells rarely had occupants, and Asa was so fastidious that the whole town teased him about having the sheets laundered after a cell had been occupied.

“Now you’re sounding more sensible!” Miss Beatrice crowed triumphantly. “You do just that! I’ll sit right here and wait. Don’t you get up a single moment before you’re ready.”

As soon as Addy rose and moved toward the cell on the right, she plopped herself down in the same chair Addy had been sitting in. Already, the plump older woman’s eyelids were sagging over her watery, pale eyes. “I’ll be right here, dear,” the older woman murmured.

Addy made a great show of settling herself down on the narrow cot, yawning elaborately while she said, “I declare, I’m suddenly so tired…don’t let me fall asleep, Miss Beatrice….”

Beatrice Morgan’s eyes had already drifted shut.

Addy lay on the cot in the jail cell, listening to the horses’ snorting and stamping of hooves, the creak of leather and the jingling of spurs and bits as the men of Connor’s Crossing prepared to ride in pursuit of the Fogarty Gang.

It took about half an hour, but finally they were ready and Addy heard Asa Wilson call, “All right, men, looks like we’re ready to move out. Sooner we hit the trail, the sooner we catch those no-account bastards and bring them to trial. Now, there’ll be no talk of lynching, is that clear?”

Dear Asa, Addy thought. As upright and steadfast as the day was long. He truly believed that he and his little Connor’s Crossing posse were going to come upon the outlaws, milling around out there among the hills, just waiting to be caught.

Asa was a good man, and Addy was fond of him, and even fonder of his little boy Billy. Billy’s mama had died two years ago during a cholera epidemic, and Addy knew Asa wanted to give the boy a mother again. And so Asa had decided he was in love with Addy, and perhaps he really was. But Addy knew she didn’t love Asa, and probably never would, and that her assumed widowhood functioned as a sort of shield from his ready devotion. She realized that when the year was up since her husband’s supposed “death” she was going to have to either accept the proposal of marriage Asa would undoubtedly offer, or admit that she didn’t love him.

She also knew that all it would take to discourage Asa Wilson was the truth—that she was a divorced woman, not a widow. Shock would widen those clear blue eyes, and then he would look sad. He would say he understood, and of course he would not trouble her with his attentions again. And he would never tell anyone in town that she had deceived them all in order to retain their goodwill, and that she was no honest widow, but a woman who was beyond the pale of respectability—who had actually divorced her husband.

Addy couldn’t tell him, or anyone, the truth. No one must know that her former husband still lived back in St. Louis—assuming, of course, he had not fallen afoul of some liquored-up gambler who caught him cheating at cards.

All sound had died away outside. Carefully, moving slowly to minimize the rustling of the straw-stuffed mattress beneath her, she sat up and then tiptoed to the shuttered window.

By the desk, Beatrice Morgan snored, her mouth slackly open, her head sagging on her thick neck.

The shutter creaked on its hinges as she pulled it open, and Addy froze, but the old woman did not awaken.

Cautiously, she peered out.

The streets were deserted for as far as she could see in either direction. The stagecoach had been moved down the street and parked in front of the undertaker’s shop, no doubt to make removal of the big man’s body easier. Someone had unhitched the four horses that had pulled it. She couldn’t see the livery from here, but she was sure the horses had been put into the corral with hay and water and would remain there until the stage company claimed them.

She had to leave Asa a note, or he’d worry, and perhaps come looking for her at her house. She’d better include Miss Beatrice too, who would be distraught when she woke to find her gone. Careful not to make a noise that would wake the still-snoring woman, Addy grabbed a wanted notice lying on the desk and a stub of a pencil, turned the stiff paper over, and wrote:

Dear Asa and Miss Beatrice,

Thank you for your kindness. I’ve gone on home, as I’m sure I’ll be more comfortable in my own place. I’m going to go to bed as soon as I get there. I’ll be fine, don’t worry. I’ll see you both tomorrow.

Gratefully,

Addy Kelly

Then she tiptoed to the back door and stealthily lifted up the latch and let herself out. So that no one would see her, she would go down the back street, which connected up with the main road at the edge of town. Once she crossed the bridge over the rocky-bedded Llano, it was just a short walk to her house.

Chapter Five

The house was quiet—much too quiet—when Addy entered it. Dear Lord, had his wound somehow started bleeding again? Had Rede Smith bled to death?

The thought pierced her with guilt for having left him, even at his direction and for so brief a time. Addy hurried down the hall and through the kitchen to the back bedroom.

“Judas priest, woman, where have you been?”

Rede Smith was sitting up in bed, propped up by her two feather pillows, his color pale but no paler than when she had left him.

She let out the breath she’d unconsciously been holding.

“It took considerable cunning to escape a woman like Miss Beatrice Morgan, I’ll have you know,” she informed Rede tartly, and then explained how the sheriff and the old woman, determined to coddle her after her ordeal, had conspired to keep her in town.

He frowned as she described Asa Wilson’s concern for her.

“Don’t worry,” she said, assuming he was just worrying about the bandits’ trail getting cold, “he didn’t remain any longer than he had to, once he’d gotten the facts and seen to my welfare. He’s already out there with a posse, looking for the Fogartys. It was the Fogarty Gang, you think?”

He gave her a baleful look. “I don’t think, I’m sure of it,” he said. “You didn’t tell him about me, did you?”

She was already exhausted from the day’s events, and his scornful tone sparked her ire. “No, I most certainly did not, though it felt despicable to be lying to that good man, not to mention the whole town—telling him the Ranger was dead, when you’re lying right here in my bed!”

She felt herself blushing at what she had said, and hoped he hadn’t noticed, but of course the Ranger missed nothing.

He scowled. “What’s the matter, is the virtuous Widow Kelly the sheriff’s secret sweetheart? Are you afraid he’ll find me here and think he has a rival?”

Her temper reached the flashpoint and ignited.

Hand raised to slap his face, Addy took one step toward the bed before she realized what she was about to do and stopped dead in her tracks.

Addy saw in his eyes that he fully realized her intention, and wanted to die of shame. She took a deep shaky breath. “I won’t do it. I won’t slap a wounded man, though you richly deserve it after what you just said.”

He looked away first, scowling again. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business who visits your bed, Mrs. Kelly,” he said stiffly.

“No one—” she started to say, and then stopped herself. He was right. It was none of his business. Let Rede Smith think Asa Wilson was her lover, if it would keep him from behaving improperly toward her. He didn’t have to know Asa was the last man who’d make an ungentlemanly move toward a woman he thought was a six-month widow and whom he considered a lady. But if she expected meekness out of Rede Smith now, she was doomed to disappointment.

“Are you a good liar?” he demanded. “Did they believe you?”

“I think so,” she said, striving for a level tone. Oh, you don’t know how good a liar I am, Rede Smith. I’ve been living a lie ever since I came to Connor’s Crossing.

“All right, good. I need you to get this bullet out, now that you’re back. And I’ll take that whiskey now, if you don’t mind,” he added.

Addy bristled anew at his brisk tone, and again when she had brought in the bottle and a freshly washed glass, only to hear him say, “I need you to boil whatever knife you’re going to use for several minutes.”

She started to bark back a sarcastic reply, then saw the apprehension that lurked within his dark gaze. Rede Smith was worried about how he’d react to the pain of having that bullet removed. The realization rendered him more human and made her stifle her stinging retort.

“Certainly.” She turned on her heel and left the room.

It took her half an hour to get ready. She had to light a fire in the stove, pump a kettle full of water, set it to boiling, and after selecting a knife she normally used for paring fruit, boil it for several minutes. While she waited she washed her hands thoroughly, using the lye soap she used on laundry days.

By the time she returned to her bedroom, carrying the kettle with the aid of two clean cloths, the whiskey had apparently mellowed his mood.

“Will this do, do you think?” she said, holding the kettle so he could see the paring knife in the still-bubbling water.

He darted a glance at it in the steaming water, then quickly back at her. “I guesh sho—so,” he said, his exhaled breath sending a cloud of whiskey fumes in her direction.

He was apparently aware that some of his words were slurred. “Shorry—I mean, sorry I was so gr-grouchy, Miz Addy. I r-reckon I’m not lookin’ forward to this little bullet-huntin’ exspedition we’re ’bout to go on.”

His face was flushed, his dark eyes dulled. She glanced at the liquor bottle, and saw that he’d drunk over half the contents of the bottle, which had been nearly full. Heavens! It was amazing he was still conscious, let alone talking.

“I can understand that,” she said.

He sighed, and said in a resigned tone, “Well, le’sh get thish over with, then,” he said, and sank back in the bed. “D’you have anyshing—thing I can bite into?”

She stepped over to her chest of drawers, pulled out one of her handkerchiefs and rolled it up, but when she stepped back to the bedside, his eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply and evenly. She hoped he was unconscious from the prodigious amount of whiskey he’d drunk so fast, and that he wouldn’t come to until she was done.

She reached inside the pocket of the apron she wore and brought out the lump of lye soap. Dipping one of the clean cloths with which she had carried the hot kettle into the hot water, she rubbed it over the lump of soap until the cloth was soapy. Then she used it to cleanse the remaining dried blood from around the wound’s edges. He winced slightly when she rubbed hard at a stubborn clot, but otherwise did not stir.

Once she had cleansed a wide circle of skin around the raw red edges of the arm wound—making it ooze a trickle of blood, she noted—she touched the flesh gingerly, feeling for the spent bullet within.

For a moment she could feel nothing, but then she closed her eyes and palpated his upper arm again, using just the ball of her index finger, exploring a widening circle around the arm. Finally she found it—a hard lump about half an inch beneath the surface of the back of his arm. She sighed in relief that she would not have to probe blindly with her makeshift scalpel. But the wound was awkwardly situated. How was she to get to it without standing on her head?

After a moment, she tucked Rede’s hand, palm up, under his head, which exposed the posterior of his upper arm perfectly. Movement of the wounded arm made him flinch and mutter something unintelligible, but once she let go of the arm, he seemed to sink back into insensibility.

She turned to retrieve the knife.

But the water was still too hot to dip her hand into. Crossing the room, she raised the windowsill and dumped most of the water onto her kitchen garden below. A couple of radish plants might never be the same, she thought, but it couldn’t be helped.

Now she could reach the knife. Using the other clean cloth to pick up the still-hot handle, she moved back to the bedside, her insides churning within her.

Gently bred ladies did not do such things. Extracting a bullet was a job for a doctor, or at least a tough frontier woman, not Adelaide Kelly of the St. Louis Kellys.

But he didn’t want her to call a doctor or anyone else. He believed it was important for his presence here to remain a secret. If the bullet was not removed he might very well develop gangrene and die. So it was up to her.

Uttering a prayer that God would help her do this without causing him too much pain, she bent to her work.

Her first tentative slice into his skin brought him yelping up off the bed, both fists clenched. “Whaddya think you’re do—”

She sprang back, but before she could say anything, his bloodshot gaze focused on her and he muttered, “Oh. ’S you, Miz Kelly. I…’member. G’wan, finish it.”

She darted close and threw him—much as one would throw a hunk of meat at a vicious dog—the handkerchief she’d gotten out for him to bite. He thrust the rolled square in between his jaws, closed his eyes, and replaced the hand of his wounded arm underneath his head. He gestured with his other hand that she was to go ahead, then grabbed hold of the bedpost. Gritting her teeth and holding back the sob that threatened to choke her, she did just that.

Five minutes later, drenched in perspiration, she straightened, her bloodstained fingers clutching the bloody, misshapen slug.

“I got it, Rede,” she said softly. “It’s out.”

He opened bleary eyes and sagged in the bed, letting out a long gusty breath.

“Quick, pour the rest o’ that whiskey over my arm,” he growled, closing his eyes and setting his jaw. He flinched as she obeyed, but made no sound.

She had done it. The room spun, and she leaned on the bed for support. Then she felt his hand on her wrist.

“You did real fine, Miz Kelly,” he said. “Thanks. Now maybe you better sit down. Oh, an’ you might oughta open up s’ more whishkey. You’re lookin’ a mite pale.”

Rede lay in Adelaide Kelly’s bed, hearing her rooster crow and watching dawn gradually light the square of glass opposite his bed. The ache in his arm—and the matching throb in his head due to the whiskey he’d drunk the evening before—had awakened him an hour ago.

He’d been a fool to think that he could steal back into the area by taking the stage. He should have just taken his chances riding in—traveling under cover of darkness, perhaps, and making cold camps in gullies. Now, because someone had had loose lips, five innocent people were dead. And the sixth had had to dig a bullet out of him and was going to have to play hostess while he laid low here and recovered.

The whiskey had made his memories of last night fuzzy around the edges, but he remembered enough that he could still picture her bending over him, her pale, sweat-pearled brow furrowed in concentration as she clutched the paring knife that had eventually rooted the bullet out of his flesh.

She’d done a hell of a job, he thought, for a refined lady who’d obviously never planned on performing surgery. Captain McDonald couldn’t have done any better, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have bothered apologizing up and down for each and every twist and turn of the knife, as Addy Kelly had done. Yessir, she had grit, Addy Kelly did.

But she did do one thing better than his captain: snore. He’d camped out plenty with the Rangers’ commander when they’d been in pursuit of outlaws or marauding Indians, so he should know, and Addy Kelly could outsnore all of his company any night of the week.

Possibly it was the uncomfortable position she had slept in, Rede thought, eyeing her sympathetically. She hadn’t left the room but had passed the night in the chair next to the bed. She was there still, her head resting against the wall, her hands clasped together in a ladylike primness that was entirely at odds with the buzzing noise coming at frequent intervals from her mouth.

Sometime during the night she’d left him long enough to wash up and change out of her bloodstained dress and into a violet-sprigged wrapper. She’d let her hair down and braided it, and now the thick chestnut plait hung over the curve of her breast.

All at once she gave a particularly rattling snore. It must have awakened her because she blinked a couple of times, then shut her eyes again and still sitting, breathed deeply, stretching long and luxuriously.

The action stretched the flowered cotton across her breasts, and he luxuriated in the sight. Lord, but he loved the shape of a woman not wearing a corset.

Something—perhaps the groan of pleasure he had not succeeded in altogether smothering—must have alerted her she was not alone, for Addy’s eyes flew open and she caught sight of him watching her.

She uttered a shriek and jumped to her feet.

“Whoa, easy, Miss Addy,” he murmured, and put out a hand in an attempt to soothe her. He tried to relieve her embarrassment by making a joke. “I don’t look that frightenin’, do I?”

He watched her face change as she reoriented herself.

“No! That is…well, you do look a bit haggard…but I expect that’s natural after what you’ve been through! I’m sorry—I couldn’t think where I was!”

“That’s natural, too,” he assured her. “A day like yesterday would buffalo anyone.” He knew she couldn’t feel very rested after sleeping in a chair, but no lady wanted to be told how tired she looked.

Addy blinked as if surprised by his understanding.

“Did you…that is, are you having much pain?” she asked.

He remembered to shrug with just his uninjured shoulder. “Well, I wouldn’t say I feel like running any races,” he admitted. “But it’ll get better.”

“I should examine your wounds.”

He lay still while she pulled back the makeshift bandage, trying not to look at her while she bent close to him so she wouldn’t be self-conscious. He couldn’t help but breathe in her womanly scent, though. She must wash with rosewater.

“How’s it look?” he asked when she straightened again.

“Well, I’m no doctor, but it looks all right to me…as well as can be expected the very next day, anyhow,” she said, then laid a soft, cool hand on his forehead. “Good. You don’t seem to have any fever, either.” Then she added brightly, “How about some breakfast? Bacon, eggs, biscuits?”

The thought of anything fried hitting his still-queasy stomach made that organ threaten to revolt. “No thanks, Miss Addy. Just coffee, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“Oh, come now, you need good, nourishing food to recover your strength,” she coaxed. “It’s really no trouble, and I am accounted a good cook, if I do say so myself.”

He could tell nothing less than the truth would discourage her. “Miss Addy, I don’t reckon you’ve ever drunk an excess of whiskey before—”

“No, of course not,” she interrupted, startled. “I don’t even know what it tastes like.”

He pretended he didn’t hear her. “The thing is, the headache a fellow gets afterward kind of deadens the appetite. Really, coffee’s the best thing you could give me, ma’am.”

“All right then, coffee it is,” she agreed, looking sympathetic. “Just give me a few minutes—”

Just then a knock sounded at the front door.

Chapter Six

The knock came again, harder this time.

“Yoo-hoo, Addy! Are you there, Addy?”

“Pretend you’re not here!” Rede whispered.

Addy wished she could do just that. The very last thing she needed this morning was one of Beatrice Morgan’s long, chatty visits.

“I can’t!” she whispered back. “If I don’t answer, she’ll think I’m still sleeping and come around and knock at the back. She might even look in a window!” she said, pointing frantically at the two low windows, one to the left of the foot of his bed, the other facing the foot of his bed. The lantana bushes on the side of the house would probably keep Beatrice from getting close to the first window, but she could easily look in the back one. And if she did, the old woman would be able to see Rede Smith sitting up in Addy’s bed, even through the sheer muslin curtains.

“All right, but get rid of her!” Rede growled, gesturing toward the sound.

She glared at him before turning to dash down the hallway. She called, “I’m coming!” in hopes of keeping Beatrice from starting to go around to the back.

How dare Rede Smith try to order her around in her own house? She didn’t intend to encourage Beatrice to stay long, but being polite was the very least she could do after sneaking out on the older woman the way she had yesterday.

She was barely in time. Beatrice was just stepping off the porch when Addy threw open the front door.

“Why, there you are! I was just fixin’ to go ’round to the back,” the old woman said. “Sleep late, did you?” she said, eyeing Addy’s creased wrapper and braided hair. “I shouldn’t wonder, after all that commotion yesterday!”

“Yes, I’m afraid I did,” Addy admitted. “Sorry to take so long getting to the door.”

After bustling back up onto the porch, Beatrice shook a plump finger at Addy. “You were a naughty girl yesterday, not to let me know you were leaving. The next thing I knew, Asa Wilson was shaking me awake! I was so worried about you!”

Addy had to smother a smile at the picture the woman painted. It must have been hours later by the time Asa had returned—no wonder the old woman was ashamed to have been caught dozing.

“I am sorry, Miss Beatrice. You looked so tired, and were sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Didn’t you see my note?”

“Harrumph,” the old woman snorted. “As if a note could make me rest easy about you. And you look awful, Addy Kelly. Perhaps you should rest in bed today. Why don’t you let me stay here and look after you?”

“Oh, thanks, but I couldn’t possibly go back to bed,” Addy said quickly. “I’m fine, Miss Beatrice, really. I’m expecting customers today. But why don’t you have a cup of coffee with me? I could bring it out on the porch, and we’ll enjoy the sunshine—”

“I’ll take the cup of coffee, and thank you, Addy, but I’ve been ‘enjoying the sunshine’ all the way here, and it’s already hot enough to wither a fence post out there,” she said, pointing at the sun-baked road. “So I’ll drink it in your kitchen.” Without waiting for an invitation, she let herself in.

Addy worried the whole time Beatrice sat in her kitchen that Rede would make some noise that would betray his presence. She was achingly conscious of him lying in the bed just on the other side of the thin wall between the back bedroom and the kitchen, waiting while the old woman chattered about every inconsequential thing that came to her head.

An hour passed before Beatrice at last rose to go. Addy was just letting her out the front door, when she heard hoofbeats.

She looked up and saw Asa Wilson reining in his bay gelding. Tarnation! Now it would be even longer before Rede got his promised coffee.

Remembering that she was still wearing just the violet-sprigged wrapper, she quickly snatched up a black crocheted shawl from the peg by the door and threw it around her.

“Sheriff, maybe you can talk some sense into her head,” Beatrice Morgan said, pausing by his horse as Asa dismounted. “I told her she needs to rest in bed today and she won’t listen to me. But perhaps you can exert some—ahem!—influence with her, Asa,” she said in a coyly insinuating tone.

Addy felt herself coloring at the implication. Clearly, Beatrice Morgan had discerned Asa’s adoration for Addy and assumed the feeling was mutual. She probably figured Addy and Asa were just waiting for Addy’s year of mourning to be up before they declared themselves.

“Asa, I’m fine,” she said firmly. “Just tired, naturally, after yesterday. I—I couldn’t sleep very well.”

“Well, of course she couldn’t, Asa,” Beatrice Morgan interjected, before Asa could speak. “My heavens, it isn’t every day of the week a gently bred lady is nearly murdered and has to drive a stagecoach with a corpse inside it to town!”

Asa gave Addy a rueful smile before taking his hat off to Beatrice. “I’ll surely do that, ma’am.” Then he reached into his saddlebag and brought out a couple of wrapped parcels, and Addy remembered the fabric, patterns, laces and other sewing notions she had purchased in Austin and brought with her on the stage. She had entirely forgotten about retrieving them yesterday.

“I found these on the top of the stagecoach,” Asa said, holding out the parcels, “and assumed they were yours. There were some bolts of cloth, too, but I’ll have to bring them out another time when I have the buggy.”

“Thanks, Asa. It was good of you. And don’t bother about bringing the rest. I can always hitch up Jessie and come for them.”

“Oh, it’s no bother, Miss Addy,” he assured her. “But right now, if you’ll allow me, I need to talk to you some more about the outlaws’ attack.”

Beatrice started to follow them, obviously eager to hear the horrid details, but Asa put out a hand. “I wouldn’t dream of detaining you, Miss Beatrice. Miss Addy and I will just sit out here on the front porch, so we won’t need a chaperon.”

“But—”

“I promise not to stay too long, Miss Beatrice,” Asa said, and this time Beatrice got the hint.

“I’d about given up on this,” Rede said, when Addy finally handed him the long-awaited coffee.

He was sitting in a chair next to the window, and the curtains were drawn. They had been open when she’d left the room.

“You shouldn’t be up. What if you had started your wounds bleeding again?” she scolded, figuring he’d arisen as soon as she’d left the room to shut the curtains.

He glanced at his shoulder and arm. “I didn’t.”

His matter-of-fact tone was a splash of cold water on her worrying. “I’m sorry you had to wait,” she said as she handed him the mug. “I got rid of them as soon as I could without acting suspicious, but I know it must’ve seemed like forever.”

He took a long sip, then closed his eyes for a moment. “This was worth the wait.” He took another sip, then barked out, “What’d the sheriff have to say?”

Addy shrugged. “The posse didn’t find them. When they got to the site, the outlaws’ trails led off in several different directions. They followed each, but eventually each trail petered out, either at the river or on stony ground.”

“Your sheriff surely didn’t expect them to be hanging around the bodies, counting their loot, did he?”

“He’s not—” she began hotly, then stopped herself from reacting to Rede’s needling. “No, of course not—Asa’s not an idiot, Rede. But I’m sure he was hoping to be able to trail them to their hideout.”

“He won’t find it,” he said, staring out the window rather than at her. “No one ever did before. The reports always indicated that they seemed to vanish into thin air.”

“And you think you can, if no one ever could before?” she challenged, still irritated at his scornful attitude.

He nodded. A half smile played about his lips.

Suddenly she was very conscious of still wearing a wrapper and her hair still lying on her shoulder in its night braid. “Well, if you’re sure you don’t want any breakfast and think you’ll be all right for a little while by yourself, I have chores to do.”

He nodded. “I reckon I’ll be right here,” he said with a wry twist to his lips.

An hour later, she had washed, dressed, and been out to the barn, where she scattered some feed for the chickens clucking in the yard. Next she poured out a measure of oats for Jessie and curried the horse while Jessie munched on them, then turned her out to pasture.

Stopping in the small vegetable garden just in back of the house, Addy picked some black-eyed peas and salad greens, holding them in her apron as she made her way back to the house. She cast an eye at the sun, which was almost directly overhead. Just about time for dinner. She decided she’d stop in the springhouse for a jar of cold water, then mix up some corn bread to serve with the peas and greens.

She’d checked on Rede, and found him dozing, and was just mixing up the corn bread dough when she heard the sound of a buggy halting out front.

Oh dear, another interruption, Addy thought as she hurried to the front of the house after pulling the door to her bedroom quietly shut. Who could that be?

An imperious rapping greeted her ears. “Mrs. Kelly!”

Addy recognized the booming nasal twang of Mrs. Horace Fickhiser, the wife of the mayor. Olympia Fickhiser was the self-appointed social arbiter of Connor’s Crossing and the mother of sixteen-year-old Lucille. The girl fancied herself a belle, but unfortunately she took after her short, thickset father and had too dumpy a build for true elegance.

Forcing a smile onto her face before opening her door, Addy said, “Good morning, Mrs. Fickhiser, Lucy. What can I do for you?”

“Lucille!” Olympia Fickhiser corrected Addy frostily in an overloud voice. “I did not name her Lucille to have it shortened into something so common, Mrs. Kelly.”

“Oh, Mama, she’s forgotten, I can just tell!” cried the girl, a pout forming on her Cupid’s-bow mouth.

“Have you forgotten we were to pick up Lucille’s gown for the cotillion today? I certainly hope it’s completed. It would be most inconvenient if you haven’t finished it.”

Fortunately Addy had completed the gown before her trip to Austin, but after what had happened yesterday, she had totally forgotten they were to pick it up today. But she was not about to admit that to Olympia Fickhiser.

“Naturally Lucille’s gown is ready, Mrs. Fickhiser,” Addy said smoothly. “All but the waist seam, which is only basted. I always leave that till the last minute, because that measurement has a way of changing, even for the best of us. Lucy will need to try it on, so come on in, ladies.”

Lucy must have been stuffing herself with sweets again, Addy thought, for she looked at least two inches bigger around the middle.

“Well, I suppose we should spare some time for this,” Mrs. Fickhiser allowed.

Addy led the way into her sewing room in the front of the house and took down the gown of lavender peau de soie with a white lace trim and a white bow over the bustle. Stepping behind the three-paneled screen to assist Lucy out of the dress she had been wearing and into the new one, she saw that her guess had been right. The bodice that had fit perfectly a week ago was now straining at the waist seam.

“I’m going to have to let out the waist just a little bit,” Addy called out to Olympia Fickhiser. “Don’t worry, it won’t take but a few minutes, so I can do that while you wait,” she added, sighing inwardly at the thought of delaying dinner even longer. Since the Ranger hadn’t wanted any breakfast, she hadn’t bothered to eat anything herself this morning, and now her stomach was growling.

“Nonsense. Just tighten her laces a bit more!” Olympia ordered in her wake-the-dead voice. “Lucille, I told you you shouldn’t have consumed that entire lemon pie!”

Lucy’s face went brick red with embarrassment, and Addy felt sorry for her.

“All right,” Addy called, but she had no intention of complying. The stocky girl was already so tightly laced she could hardly breathe.

Catching Lucy’s eye and putting a finger to her lips, Addy undid the back buttons, then moved to the laces at the back of the corset, but instead of tightening them, she loosened them just a bit.

Lucy gave her a grateful, conspiratorial smile.

After serving Mrs. Fickhiser the rest of the coffee and Lucy a glass of cold water from the springhouse, she set to work on the waist seam while the mayor’s wife chattered nonstop.

“You had quite an ordeal yesterday, didn’t you?” the woman asked, then, without waiting for an answer, droned on. “No wonder you look so fatigued. I’m certain you didn’t sleep a wink last night! Imagine, surviving because a dead man fell over on you! How ghastly! Why, if that had not happened—you could have met with a Fate Worse Than Death,” she intoned. “Didn’t I warn you it was dangerous to travel alone?”

“But Mama, what could be worse than dying?” Lucy asked, her round face all innocence, but there was mischief in her eyes.

“Never you mind!” Olympia snapped.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly alone,” Addy felt compelled to point out. “There were several other passengers…but perhaps we should speak of something else?” she said, darting a meaningful glance toward Lucy.

Olympia’s lips thinned, but she could hardly argue that the murderous assault on the stagecoach was a fit subject to discuss in front of her daughter.

“Of course,” she sniffed. “I merely meant to express sympathy. To change the subject, then, did you happen to hear of the couple that dared to try to buy the lot across from the mayor’s manse? No, of course you did not. This took place, I believe, while you were gone to Austin.”

Only Olympia, Addy thought wryly, would refer to her own house as a manse. “Were they not suitable in some way?” she inquired, keeping her eye on her needlework.

“Unsuitable?” the mayor’s wife crowed. “Why, that’s the understatement of the year, Mrs. Kelly! They had moved here hoping that no one would know what the woman—I shall not call her a lady—really was. But my sister in Houston—that’s where they came from, Houston—wrote and warned me.”

“Do you mean that the woman was a criminal?” Addy inquired, wondering if what Olympia Fickhiser was about to say was any more fitting a subject for an innocent young lady’s ears than murder had been.

“My dear Mrs. Kelly, perhaps not in the eyes of the law, but certainly in the eyes of decent folk. The woman had been divorced,” Olympia Fickhiser intoned in a stage whisper behind her hand.

Addy flinched at the distaste in the woman’s voice. If Olympia Fickhiser even suspected the truth about her, she would gather her skirts and sweep out of Addy’s house, telling everyone in Connor’s Crossing that the widow Kelly was actually a fallen woman whom no decent lady should patronize.

“But even if the woman had been divorced, weren’t they a married couple, or did I misunderstand?” she asked mildly.

“Supposedly, though one only has their word on that,” Olympia Fickhiser muttered in an acid voice. “I sent them running from Connor’s Crossing with their tails between their legs, I can tell you!”

Addy, imagining how the couple must have felt, said nothing.

“But surely you can understand why I could not possibly bring myself to tolerate such a scandalous couple living across the street from my innocent daughter, can’t you?” Her tone indicated Addy’s answer had better be yes, if she hoped for continued business with the mayor’s wife.

Addy would have loved to say that Lucy would probably be better off living with the supposedly scandalous couple than with such a judgmental woman as her mother, but she could not afford to. The disapproval of a pious busybody like Olympia Fickhiser could make Addy’s living on her own in this town financially impossible.

“Of course I can see why you would feel that way,” she hedged. It was women like Olympia Fickhiser who would have made Addy’s life in St. Louis hell after her divorce.

And what on earth would Olympia do if she knew Addy was harboring the Ranger in her bedroom, a man she had just met on the stage yesterday?

As if to echo her thoughts, just then a thud sounded from the back of the house, followed by a muffled sound that Addy thought might be a groan.

“What was that?” Olympia demanded suspiciously. “Is someone here?”

Good Lord, had Rede fallen out of bed? Addy leaped to her feet, throwing the gown on the chair she had just vacated.

“No, of course not,” she called over her shoulder. “I was moving a stack of books to my bedroom when you came, and it sounds as if they’ve fallen over. Let me just check—”

“But that second noise—it sounded like a cry of pain.”

“I thought so, too, Mama,” Lucy said, obviously eager to get back into her mother’s good graces by agreeing with her.

“No, I’m sure you’re mistaken,” Addy assured them, eager to run to the bedroom, her mind full of visons of Rede hemorrhaging from a reopened wound while Olympia Fickhiser babbled on. “It’s an old house, and it makes all sorts of odd noises, especially in hot weather like this.”

“Nonsense, this house isn’t that old. Your uncle built it only ten years ago.” It appeared that the mayor’s wife had every intention of following her back to the bedroom.

She had to get to Rede, but she had to stop the woman from coming with her! “I—I—I hesitate to tell you this, Mrs. Fickhiser,” Addy said desperately, “for I’m sure you’ll think it’s too silly for words, but my aunt wrote me that she’d seen the ghost of my uncle in the house. Of course, I don’t believe such a faradiddle, but my family is Scots-Irish, and you know how fanciful the Irish can be….”

Mrs. Fickhiser turned as white as the lace trim on the high neckline of her dress. “I—we have to be going,” she said, rising unsteadily to her feet. “You may deliver the dress when you’re finished with it.”

Addy watched out the window as Olympia Fickhiser, her daughter in tow, ran out the front door and into her waiting buggy.

She could barely suppress a groan of her own. Now the mayor’s wife would tell everyone the seamstress’s house was haunted, or if she feared to appear foolish, that Adelaide Kelly was mentally deranged enough to believe it was!

But she couldn’t worry about that now. She had to find out what had caused the loud thud in the back bedroom.

Chapter Seven

Addy came bursting into the room, her eyes wild and anxious, calling, “Rede, are you all right? I heard a noise—” She stopped short when she spied him sitting on the bedside chair, his feet propped comfortably on the bed.

“Sorry, Miss Addy. Didn’t mean to alarm you none. I was just a mite clumsy the first time I tried gettin’ up, and knocked the chair over on the floor. It hurt some, makin’ sure I didn’t go over with it.” He put a hand on his ribs, hoping to engage her sympathy, but her expression didn’t change. “Is that loudmouthed old biddy gone? I could hear every word she said, clear back here. I swear she could talk the hide off a longhorn bull.”

Her green eyes kindled and her lips tightened. “You shouldn’t have gotten up without help anyway, Rede Smith! You’re lucky you didn’t fall and tear open your wound! And that ‘loudmouthed old biddy,’ as you call her, is one of my best customers—or was,” she corrected herself while glowering at Rede. “Now she probably won’t ever come again, and she’ll tell everyone in Connor’s Crossing I’m demented, and then no one else will have their dresses made here, and I’ll either starve to death or have to beg my parents for my fare back to St. Louis—”

Rede held up a hand. “Now, just hold your horses! What on earth are you talking about, Miss Addy? Why will they think you’re demented? And why are you goin’ to starve to death?”

Some of the fire died from her eyes. “I—I jumped when I heard the thud, fearing you’d fallen or something,” she began. “That got Mrs. Fickhiser suspicious, and she demanded to know who was here. I tried to…cover up…by saying a stack of books I’d been moving must’ve fallen over, but she didn’t act like she believed me, and…” Now she bit her lower lip and twisted her hands together, looking away from him.

“And what?” he demanded. Lord, had Addy Kelly already given away the secret of his presence to the woman with the biggest mouth in the town?

“And I…oh, heavens, you’re going to think I’m such a silly goose…I implied it might be the ghost of my dead uncle.”

He stared at her, realizing he’d read embarrassment as guilt. He threw back his head and let out a hoot of laughter. “You told her your house might be haunted, yet you want to blame me for ruinin’ your business?”

She stiffened. “I didn’t say it was haunted, just that my aunt had told me that she had seen the ghost of my uncle in here. Oh, it was a complete lie, of course—my uncle was much too kind a man to frighten my aunt by appearing like that—but it was the first fib that popped into my head. I suppose I’m not a very good liar. It was wrong of me to blame you.”

He started to grin at the admission, but then he realized Addy wouldn’t have to be lying about anything if he wasn’t here hiding out at her house.

“I reckon it’s probably better for a person not to be a good liar,” he murmured. “But what kind of business are you in?” he asked, curious.

“I’m a seamstress,” Addy told him, raising her chin a little as she said it. “I sew dresses and do alterations. That’s the reason I was in Austin—buying supplies I couldn’t get at the mercantile here.”

“And you run your business out of your home? Why don’t you have your shop in town?”

“I inherited this place, not a place in town,” she said, a bit defensively. “I can’t afford to rent a shop in town—at least not yet,” she added. “It’s not so far beyond town that people mind coming here—or at least, they didn’t, until I convinced Mrs. Fickhiser the place was haunted, or that I was crazy.” Her brow furrowed in obvious anxiety.

“Your late husband didn’t leave you very well off, I take it?”

Rede was sorry as soon as the question left his lips. Her mouth tightened again, and she looked down at her lap.

“I’m sorry, Miss Addy,” he said quickly. “It ain’t any of my business.”

She raised her head, meeting his gaze squarely. “Indeed it isn’t. But since you asked, no, Charles did not leave me very well off. And I have not been in Connor’s Crossing very long. So I do depend on my good reputation to get my business established and keep it going.”

“Miss Addy, next time someone comes I’ll be so quiet you can hear a hummingbird’s heartbeat,” he promised, his hand over his heart. He was trying to make her smile again; and she started to, but then she got that worried look again.

“Well, hopefully you’ll be well enough to leave before too much longer,” she said briskly. “How long before you’ll be able to ride?”

“Oh, a few days,” he said, deliberately vague. He’d wanted to extend his stay, using her place as his base of operations, but it sure didn’t look like it was going to be easy to talk her into that. And that was too bad, because from what he’d been able to determine, Addy Kelly’s house was perfectly situated—far enough out of town that folks didn’t drop by without a reason, near enough to keep in touch with the news. And once he’d found the Fogarty hideout, Connor’s Crossing was surely big enough to have a telegraph office he could visit to summon his Ranger company.

He’d just have to convince Addy she had nothing to fear from his continued presence. But first, Rede, you’d better convince yourself. If he was allowed to stay, it was going to be awfully hard to keep his hands off the tempting young widow.

Just then he heard the distinct growl of her stomach.

Addy pressed a hand against her middle and blushed. “Excuse me! I was just about to fix dinner when Mrs. Fickhiser came—now it must be the middle of the afternoon! Could you eat a little something, Rede?”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.