into his pocket. “Here’s five,” he said, flipping a gold coin onto the counter. “Make sure we get some hot water and clean towels.”
“Yeah. Sure thing.” The boy pushed a brass key toward him. “Up those stairs and down the hall on the right,” he said, angling his head in that direction.
“Dance hall stay open all night?” Gideon asked him.
The boy looked at the sleeping female, shifted his gaze back to Gideon’s face, then winked again. “All night. All morning. All the liquor you can tuck away. All the women you can—”
Gideon cut him off. “You want me to sign a register or something?”
“Dad-blast, I almost forgot.” The boy dipped a bent-tipped pen in an inkwell and passed it, dribbling, across the stained counter. “Just scribble anything,” he mumbled. “It don’t matter.”
Slowly, with his left hand while balancing his sleeping cuff-mate on one hip, Gideon printed his name, then turned the book so the boy could read it. “How’s that?”
“Yeah. Sure.” The boy’s bored, half-open eyes skimmed the page, then widened and bulged. “Its fine, Mr. Summerfield.” His throat crackled as he attempted to swallow. “It’s just fine, sir. I’ll be sure and get those clean towels for you. Hot water, too. Anything else I can do for you, sir?”
“Nope. Towels and water will do fine. Much obliged.” Gideon shifted the soft burden in his arms, then headed up the stairs, all the while feeling the boy’s amazed gaze on his back. Five years in prison, he thought, hadn’t dimmed his reputation all that much. Good thing, too. He was going to need every bit of it to accomplish what he had to do.
The room was small and spare and no doubt flyspecked, but to Gideon’s eyes anything with four walls and a bed was sheer heaven compared to iron bars and a wooden pallet. He closed the door with his foot, then lowered the sleeping woman onto the mattress.
She didn’t wake, but Gideon hadn’t expected her to. The ride from Santa Fe had been long and hard. Twelve hours in the saddle under a relentless sun. He’d offered her his hat, but she had refused with a proud stiffening of her shoulders and a cluck of her tongue that told him pretty clearly where she thought he could put his hat. She had ignored him for the most part, staring ahead, stewing, fretting, plotting Lord only knew what as her teeth worried her lower lip.
By moonrise, though, she hadn’t been able to fight exhaustion anymore, and her proud chin had dipped wearily onto the high-buttoned bodice of her dress. Gideon had tucked her head onto his shoulder and pressed his cheek to the soft fall of her hair, easing back on the reins and slowing the big roan to a lullaby walk. He wasn’t in such a hurry for cold revenge that he couldn’t savor the warmth of Miss Edwina Cassidy for a quiet little while.
He sat beside her now, watching as the light from a three-quarter moon glossed the dark tangle of her hair. With his free hand, he reached to smooth it away from her sunburned face, thinking maybe he could scare up some vinegar to take some of the sting out of that delicate skin. Lord knew his own was smarting from the harsh New Mexico sun.
Sighing, he reached in the pocket of his shirt and withdrew a quill toothpick. While his mouth twitched in a grin, it took him all of a minute to jimmy the lock on his half of the cuffs. It took him a tad longer, though, to wrestle the limp lady out of her rumpled dress.
“Stupid,” he muttered softly as he felt the dampness of her underskirts. Damn stubborn female would have let her insides explode rather than lose her confounded dignity. Only total exhaustion and sleep had finally relieved her.
With a gruff curse, Gideon proceeded to strip her of the wet underthings. He swore again when he discovered she wore a combination. Corsets and drawers came off easy, but these damn one-piece garments were hell on a man in a hurry, or one with a decent purpose and trembling fingers such as his were now while they worked the buttons down the front then slipped the soft cotton from her shoulders.
Moonlight silvered the pale skin beneath his fingertips and gleamed in the deep valley between her lovely breasts. Their crests bloomed like roses in a night garden. As he beheld her, Gideon realized he wasn’t breathing. His mouth had gone dry as sand, and his hands had clenched into tight fists as his leaden, shuttered gaze failed to respond to his wish to turn away. His lips moved soundlessly, once again damning the banker for planting this innocent flower in his path. It was more than a sane man could stand.
Almost more. Gideon stood up and stared at the wall as he whisked the garment from her hips and legs and tossed it into the sodden pile beside the bed. He folded her gently into the bed linens then and raised her arm to clamp his half of the cuff onto the iron bedpost.
“Sleep tight, Miss Edwina Cassidy,” he murmured. He gathered up her clothes and walked softly out of the room.
* * *
The string band stuttered in the middle of its tune when Gideon pushed through the batwing doors into the dance hall. He felt the keen appraisal of every eye in the smoky room, and he heard the telling shift in the rhythm of everyone’s breathing, the way voices stilled a second, then softly rose again as he crossed to the bar.
A perverse pride welled in the back of his throat, and his gut tugged a little as he thought of so many other rooms he had entered with his cousins—with Jesse and Frank and Dwight. The young desk clerk had done his job just right. The word had been spread. The name of Gideon Summerfield had gotten around. And its magic was still there. But it wasn’t magic, as Gideon well knew. It was fear that was rippling through the room. It was the rush from the wings of the angel of death.
“Name your poison, Summerfield,” the bearded bartender said.
Gideon leaned an elbow on the carved sweep of walnut and lifted a boot onto the rail. “Rye, if you’ve got it, otherwise anything’ll do.”
As the barman turned to retrieve a glass from the wall behind him, Gideon surveyed the dimly lit room. A dozen men. A sprinkle of whores, including the one who was sashaying toward him now.
“You’re a hell of a long way from Clay County,” she purred, fitting her hip against his, slipping her fingers between the buttons of his shirt.
“You, too, darlin’, judging from the sound of you.” Gideon immediately recognized the flat border state drawl. He tried to ignore her inquisitive little hand as it traced over his belly. He tried and failed to ignore the tightening in his groin.
“Born and bred in Liberty,” she said. “How ‘bout you?”
“Colton.”
“Never heard of it.”
Gideon’s mouth twitched. “It wasn’t much, even before the Yankees burned it. I’m looking for somebody from home. Maybe you can help me.”
“Maybe.” She slipped a button on his midriff to allow her hand freer, warmer access.
Gideon reached back for the glass on the bar top, tilted his head and downed the liquor in a single swallow. He tapped the empty glass on the counter, raising an eyebrow to signal a refill. “And one for the lady,” he drawled, returning his gaze to the painted, fine-handed redhead.
“Who’re you looking for, honey?” she asked him, angling her blue-lidded eyes up to his. “Other than me, of course.”
“My wife,” he said in a low,
