much. Or laugh. A sudden empathy filled her, and she had the most ridiculous need to see him smile.
Remember Mac. Remember why this man came here.
Their gazes caught, and again she felt something new and powerful spark a response in her body.
She felt rooted to the floor, though her legs were trembling.
He tried to move, and a muscle tightened in his neck as he fell back. “I was trying to get some water….”
“You were on the floor,” she said. “You must have fallen.”
“Did you get me up…by yourself?”
“Archie and me.”
“Where is he?”
She tried to fight off the intimacy that unexpectedly heated the room. “He had better things to do than nursemaid you.”
He didn’t reply, but suddenly his body tensed. She knew pain had struck again.
She offered him a drink from the tin cup. “I put a little whiskey in it,” she said. He took it in his two hands, but they were unsteady and he spilled some despite what seemed to be an intense concentration. She leaned over and steadied his grip. He drank the cup dry.
She felt his forehead. Hot. He was too hot.
“Trying to get up was a damn fool thing to do,” she said.
“Not as foolish…as shooting a marshal,” he shot back.
“Brave words in your position,” she replied. “I can always finish what I started.”
He tried to move again and succeeded this time, but only a few inches. He sank back against the pillow and closed his eyes as if he was too tired to keep them open. The attempt to stand had taken everything left in him.
His breathing was ragged, then calmed. The whiskey was getting to him, or maybe that drop of laudanum.
She pulled up a chair and sat down. She would wait until she was sure he was asleep. Then she had much to do. They had to be ready to leave as soon as Mac could travel.
But all she could focus on was the figure in the bed, the face tight with pain even in the drugged sleep. She wondered whether those midnight eyes would haunt her forever.
5
TWO DAYS WENT BY in a blur.
On the third day, Sam woke and looked out the window to see pouring rain. At least it should lower the abnormally high temperatures that had tormented both injured men.
She stretched. She’d spent all her time lately caring for the marshal and making preparations to leave Gideon’s Hope as soon as Mac was well enough to ride. That meant cutting what meat they had into long strips and smoking it. She also used much of their remaining flour to make hardtack, a laborious process that produced a tasteless cracker. But hardtack didn’t spoil and lasted forever. It was perfect for a long journey where fuel for the body was more important than taste.
She also started a stew from a venison roast, using carrots and potatoes and a number of herbs.
But uppermost in her mind were the two injured men. Archie stayed with Mac and, except for brief inspections and help with the chamber pot, he left the marshal’s care up to her. The marshal was still weak from loss of blood and still in a great deal of pain. The laudanum she’d been slipping him helped him sleep, but he had a fever that worried her. Several times, she’d heard him call for someone named Sarah. She wondered if that was the name he’d called that first night. She couldn’t help but wonder who Sarah was.
Wife? Lover?
He wore no ring, but that didn’t mean anything. Still, there was no tintype of a woman in his saddle bags. No miniature. If she meant that much to him, wouldn’t there be something?
The idea plagued her, and it shouldn’t. She shouldn’t care whether the marshal loved someone. It shouldn’t matter at all.
And yet in the past couple days of caring for him, the connection she’d felt had grown stronger. She tried to tell herself it was only her usual feelings for a hurt critter. Empathy. That was all. But she was intrigued with the marshal’s quiet stoicism mixed with a rare glimpse of wry humor and self-deprecation. She found herself longing to see a real smile.
Unlikely under the circumstances.
He showed signs of improvement this morning. The redness around the wound was fading.
She dressed quickly and ran a brush through her tousled curls. She checked on Mac first. He was sleeping. So was Archie on a cot near him. Quietly closing the door, she went downstairs. She started a fire in the stove. Archie would want his coffee soon. So would she.
She unlocked the door to the marshal’s room. To her surprise he was awake, half sitting up in bed. She’d provided him with the shirt she’d found in his saddlebags, but it was unbuttoned and his chest was highly visible. The sun creases around his eyes were a little deeper. The dark bristles on his cheek made him look even more dangerous. The sheet was gathered around his waist.
He looked better, though. The last remnants of the laudanum were obviously gone. His eyes were sharp and penetrating. The pain was still strong. She could tell by the muscle working in his cheek. And his face was slightly flushed.
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