Tasting the pungent sweetness, she remembered the rancher ordering her to swallow. It was the same remedy her mother had used, and she had downed the cure without arguing.
The whiskey helped her sleep, but she had lost track of time. Days and nights had blurred together in waves of prickly fever followed by violent chills. Had she been here a day? A week? She didn’t know, and the gloomy cabin offered no clues.
She needed to look out the window to see if the snow had melted, but before she could stand, a ferocious cough nearly cracked a rib. Pressing a rag to her mouth, she gasped for breath until the coughing stopped.
The feel of the rough muslin against her lips filled her with memories. In the mix of lantern light and shadows, she had imagined her mother at her side, but then the dream had faded and she’d recognized the rancher’s rough fingers and the smell of snow that clung to him. In near silence, he’d brought her clean rags for her cough, emptied her chamber pot and fed her hot soup for strength.
For strength…
She almost laughed out loud. Pneumonia had made her as burdensome as a baby. It was the most demeaning circumstance she could imagine, and Ethan Trent’s cabin was the last place in the world she wanted to be.
The rancher had taken good care of her, but he didn’t have a kind bone in his body. Lying in his bed, she wondered if he shouted at children and kicked dogs who didn’t get out of his way fast enough.
And yet he could be gentle, too. A plug of mucus had lodged in her throat last night. Close to suffocating, she had raised her hands over her head. The rancher had hurried to her side, braced her chest with his muscular forearm and thumped on her back. When she croaked for water, he’d brought it to her in a tin cup small enough for a child.
The distant ring of an ax and the smell of burned coffee gave the room a distinctly male air. Had a woman ever put wildflowers in a jug just to make the place pretty? Jayne doubted it. A square of rough logs, the cabin had a corner kitchen with a dry sink, a rock fireplace and two small windows, each covered with a sheet of boards instead of glass.
With the exception of the bed, the furniture was roughly made, and there wasn’t much of it. She saw a small table, two chairs, a rocker and a long shelf holding books and a cigar box. Work shirts and dungarees hung from nails on the wall, and he’d left a roll of wire and a pair of leather gloves on the hearth.
Curious, she twisted in the bed and peered into the kitchen where she saw a cookstove and a long-handled spoon dangling from a hook. Jayne’s heart clenched at the picture of the rancher standing at the stove and eating straight out of the pot.
As she turned her head, a heart-shaped mirror hanging above the washbowl caught a ray of sun. The feminine glass shone bright, as if he wiped it every day. The bed troubled her, too. The carved oak frame belonged in a Midwestern farmhouse rather than a mountain cabin.
Had Ethan Trent made love to a wife in this bed? It seemed more than likely, and her cheeks reddened with embarrassment. She had invaded this man’s privacy in the worst possible way.
Beyond the cabin walls, a log groaned as it split in two. Her bones ached with a similar misery and it hurt to breathe. She wanted to curl up into a ball and grieve for Hank and all she had lost, but she had to think about her future.
When she returned to the hotel, she would retrieve her trunk and the tools of her trade. She’d also have the ten silver dollars she’d stitched into the hem of a skirt. The money would be enough for a room in a boardinghouse. She’d find a job, save for a train ticket and go back to the life she’d always lived. It wouldn’t be hard. Her mother had given Jayne the skills to support herself and she had earned a reputation of her own.
“All women like pretty dresses,” her mother used to say. “As long as you can sew, you can take care of yourself.”
Jayne didn’t want to think about her mother’s store and the sweet memories it held. Her father had died in a riding accident, leaving his wife alone to support their baby daughter. It hadn’t been easy, but by the time Jayne was old enough to ask questions, her mother had made a name for herself and their simple needs were met.
Jayne closed her eyes and hugged her knees. She ached to be standing behind the familiar counter, but instead she was in Ethan Trent’s lonely cabin with more questions than answers. Every muscle in her body tensed. The time had come to read Hank’s letter. Still wobbly from illness, she shuffled to the wall where her cloak was hanging. Plunging her hand into the pocket, she found Hank’s papers and turned to go back to bed.
As she took a feeble step, an ominous tickle swelled in her throat. Too weak to cough and stand at the same time, she lurched toward the bed, but her lungs exploded before she reached the mattress. As she collapsed to her hands and knees, Hank’s letter fluttered to the floor, just out of reach.
She heard the door fly open.
“Dammit!” The rancher wrapped his muscular forearm around her waist and brought her upright so that his chest was pressed against her back. As the coughing eased, she smelled pine shavings and male perspiration. His hands shook as he spun her around.
“What the hell are you doing out of bed?”
“I just—” Her chest shuddered again. She couldn’t breathe, much less talk.
Holding her arms, he sat her down on the bed and held her steady as she hacked up something vile. With a growl of disgust, he handed her the rag she’d been using for a hankie and then stepped back from the bed. “Don’t push yourself. I want you well enough to leave.”
She wiped her mouth. “We agree completely.”
He pointed to the envelope on the floor with the muddy toe of his boot. “What’s that?”
“A letter from my husband.”
His eyes turned to agate as he picked up the letter and handed it to her. Their fingers brushed, and on the envelope she noticed a smudge from his warm hands. Wondering if she would see Hank’s fingerprints as clearly, she took the letter and slid it under her pillow.
After he took off his coat, the rancher poured coffee for them both and dropped into the rocker by the hearth. Steam misted the air as he lifted the cup to his lips, giving a damp shine to the whiskers hiding his face. She wondered what he would look like clean-shaven, whether his jaw was square or curved, and what his chin looked like. She suspected it was as hard as the rest of him and just as stubborn.
Stretching his neck and shoulders, he took a deep breath, causing the shirt to gape where a button was missing. He’d also torn the sleeve, probably months ago judging by the ragged hole.
Aside from being in need of mending, his clothes were just plain dirty. He could have passed for the town drunk, but she had never seen him indulge in the whiskey he’d used for her cough. He read dime novels at night, or else he browsed catalogs, making notes on scraps of paper he tucked between the pages. Sober and silent, he spent the evenings ignoring her, just as he was doing now. Except this morning she felt human again, and she needed answers.
Folding her hands in her lap, she asked, “What day is it?”
The rancher shrugged. “What difference does it make?”
It made a big difference. Back in Lexington she had kept a calendar by her bed, marking off the days. Time mattered, even if Ethan Trent didn’t think so. “I need to know how long I’ve been here.”
