A Husband Returned: Men of Wicked Sorrow, Book One

by Wynne Roman

  “But what?”

  “You won’t leave me, will you? Not again?”

  He pressed his lips firmly on her forehead. “No, love,” he whispered. “I won’t leave you ever again.”

  31

  Nathan hated the fact that Gabriel Bonham was providing any assistance at all as he carried Mariah into the house. The Segundo made certain the route into the bedroom was clear, he turned down the bedcovers, and then stood in the hallway as a sentry of sorts, presumably on the pretext of keeping all others away.

  Could the man’s behavior be as altruistic as he pretended, or was there a somewhat more selfish element to it? Nathan considered the questions for a few moments but ultimately dismissed them as irrelevant. Neither answer mattered and both provided the same result: the need to care for Mariah and provide for her comfort.

  If Gabriel Bonham chose to throw in his lot with Nathan, he would be tolerated for the moment.

  Mariah gave a soft groan when he placed her carefully on the bed, but she lay quietly after that. Her breathing remained shallower than he might have liked, but he understood her body’s need to keep the pain at bay. Her eyes were closed, her mouth pinched, and her raven black hair had come somewhat askew from its usually tidy knot.

  He ignored it all. Undressing her so he could assess the severity of her wound was far more important at the moment. Though he tried to pretend otherwise, his fingers still trembled as he began to unfasten the topmost button of her gray-print housedress.

  God, what he wouldn’t do to take this injury from her and suffer it himself. She had been so brave, held herself calm and steady in the face of the madness in which she’d found herself. Pride filled him even as he damned Cruz Pecado for putting her in that situation to begin with.

  Later. He forced back the rage that wanted to fill him. You can think about all that later. Tristan arrived. He has men and horses and guns, and they are coping with Cruz and his band of outlaws. I have Mariah, and she’s mine to take care of.

  Reaching the last of her tiny, somewhat uncooperative buttons, Nathan thanked God for frontier women who had given up wearing multiple petticoats and hoops in favor of more practical attire. Unfortunately, it solved only a small part of his problem. Her bodice gaped open but came nowhere near to providing access to the area where she’d been wounded.

  He pushed the fabric aside, tugged at her blood-stained white chemise, and eyed the place where the bullet had torn into her body. Bile rose in his throat, but he swallowed it back. Closing his eyes for a moment, then two, he searched for a strength that felt entirely new to him.

  Your feelings don’t matter, his conscience told him fiercely. Everything you have must be put into caring for your wife. She deserves no less.

  He filled his lungs with fresh, reviving air and traced a finger lightly around the bullet’s entrance wound. “We need to undress you,” he said softly. “Ethan will need to see how badly you’re injured.”

  She blinked her eyes open and all but felled him with a curious gaze. “Oh,” she said as though she hadn’t thought of such a thing before. She gave him a soft, serious nod that indicated agreement, but she didn’t understand. He knew a moment later when she moved without warning.

  “Oh!” The word came out far differently this time, sharp and staccato, and she fell back onto the mattress.

  “Sweetheart!” His voice came out as a harsh strike, but he hadn’t the will to apologize now. “Stay still. If you need to move, I’ll help you.”

  Her lips had gone tight with pain, and she breathed through her nose. Still, she was listening, and she nodded her head once. Yes. Nathan let out his own breath of relief. She might be stubborn at times, but thank God, it had its boundaries.

  “Now, don’t move again.” He gave her a more specific instruction. “I’ll be right back.”

  He turned toward the doorway, but she called to him, shrill and anxious. “Nathan!”

  He stopped instantly and returned to her side. “Mariah.” He used a soft, soothing tone that came easily when he saw her pale, panic-stricken expression. “Shh, baby. Calm yourself.” He bent down, stroked her hair, pressed his lips softly to her forehead, her eyes. “I just have to go into the other room. Only for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  “Do you promise?” Her breath remained ragged.

  “Of course. I won’t be but a minute. Gabriel is right outside the door. He’ll hear you if you call out.”

  “I don’t want him. I want you.”

  Warmth encircled his heart, despite the seriousness of the situation. “You have me, sweetheart. I’m right here. I promise. I only need to be gone for a minute. Count. See how far you get before I’m back.”

  “Count?”

  “Yes.” He nodded with silly encouragement. “One, two, three.”

  “All right.” She seemed to breathe easier again.

  Nathan eased from the room to find Gabriel still standing next to the doorway. The man remained stoic and expressionless. Had he heard what Mariah said?

  “What happened?” he asked, jerking his head toward the bedroom.

  Nathan shook his head. “She tried to sit up. She wanted to take her dress off.”

  Bonham blinked as though processing the information, and Nathan raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to cut the damn thing off her.”

  The Segundo nodded in agreement. “Gonna give her some whiskey?”

  Nathan hadn’t yet considered anything of the sort, but now he nodded. “She’ll need it.”

  “Before Ethan uses it to sanitize the wound.”

  Nathan nodded again, agreeing with Gabriel’s suggestion. No point in waiting for the doc to make her ready. With that in mind, he went to the parlor. There, he found the scissors that Mariah kept in her sewing box, snatched up the decanter of whiskey and a glass, and took his bounty back to the bedroom.

  Mariah remained just as she had been, her eyes closed and her breathing shallow.

  “How far did you get?” he asked as he placed his things on the bedside table.

  She opened her eyes and offered him a somewhat confused look. “What?”

  “I told you to count. How far did you get?”

  She smiled softly, but he recognized the effort it took. “Not far. Maybe twenty. I gave up.”

  “That’s all right.” He smoothed a hand over her forehead. “I wasn’t gone much longer than that.”

  “Good.” It wasn’t much of a response, but it was enough.

  Nathan busied himself with pouring a splash of whiskey into the glass. “I want you to drink this.”

  Her eyes fluttered open. “What is it?”

  He half squatted and half sat on the side of the bed and showed her the glass. “Whiskey.”

  “Ladies don’t drink whiskey,” she protested as he lifted her head carefully and put the glass to her lips.

  “They do when they need a pain killer.”

  She opened her mouth as though to argue with him, but his declaration must have made sense to her, because she angled her head as though to take a sip. He tilted the glass enough to provide assistance, and then she gasped and coughed after her first drink.

  “More?”

  “No!” she wheezed, holding her shoulders stiffly as though that could prevent any further reaction. “How can a man become a drunkard on that?”

  A tender smile curved the corners of his lips. “It’s an acquired taste.”

  “Not mine.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust.

  “You need to drink more. It’s important, Rye.” He cast her a serious look to be certain she understood.

  “But —”

  He tilted her face with two fingers under her chin so he could look her square in the eyes. “Listen to me, sweetheart. It’s very important that you’re relaxed and have taken something for the pain.”

  She nodded as though she understood, and she didn’t take her eyes from his. He smiled an encouragement that felt uncertain at best.

  “Ethan will be here soon,” he conti
nued. “We don’t know what he’ll find. The wound is bleeding, though not as much as I’d like.” He didn’t mention that he hadn’t felt an exit wound and expected to discover that the bullet was still inside her. “Whatever he does is going to hurt, and that’s why you’re going to take another drink.”

  “You want me . . . drunk?”

  “Yes.”

  She took a breath, as though preparing herself, and then did as he asked. He knew from her expression that she hated every minute of it, but she did it anyway. She did it for him, and he knew it the instant she gave him one simple expression. An explosion tore through him with all the power of a lightning bolt, as though it were striking him once more.

  She looked at him with trust. Pure, absolute, and unequivocal trust.

  The emotion meant everything. In that moment, he knew just how much he loved her and had for a very long time.

  Nathan sat at the dining room table and shared what was left of the whiskey with Tristan and Gabriel. Ethan remained in the bedroom with Mariah, monitoring her condition after he’d removed the bullet from her shoulder.

  Getting her drunk enough to tolerate some of the pain hadn’t been difficult. She’d never had spirits before that first drink, and it hadn’t taken much before she’d gone all lightheaded. Thankfully, she’d fainted soon after Ethan had begun probing the wound. For that, Nathan would be eternally grateful.

  It had all but killed him to watch Ethan operate on his wife.

  “She’ll be fine.”

  Tristan’s words brought Nathan’s attention back to the moment at hand, and he nodded. “I know. I just . . .” He shook his head. “I hate like hell that she was caught up in this at all.”

  “I know,” Tristan agreed, his sincerity unquestionable for once. “I do, too. There seems to be little question that she’s a Fairchild now.”

  “What?” Nathan narrowed his eyes.

  Tristan lifted a shoulder. “I just mean that if she hadn’t become a part of the family when you married her, she would be official now.”

  Nathan nodded. He understood the point that his brother wanted to make, that Mariah Carpenter was one of them, and they would take care of her. But being a Fairchild meant little to him. Jordan had shamed the name with his treatment of his wife and legitimate sons, and then completely destroyed it with his hateful disregard for the woman and child—or was it women and children?—he’d created outside of marriage.

  Was salvaging the name even worth it?

  Gabriel said nothing, his expression unchanged. He had appeared both bleak and impassive since they’d met up after Tristan had arrived. Nathan allowed the man his privacy; he more than deserved it.

  I don’t want him. I want you.

  With those words, Mariah had chosen Nathan. It wasn’t the first time, and he knew it very well. She’d done it starting from the moment their marriage had been arranged, through the ceremony and their wedding night, and then again when he had returned. At every opportunity, she had shown Nathan that she wanted him and only him.

  Mostly, though, when the time had come that she had been the one hurt and in pain, she had turned to the only man who could offer the comfort she needed. Her husband.

  As ill-timed and selfish as it might be, the events of the day had given Nathan some uneasy kind of peace over Bonham’s past with Mariah.

  He couldn’t claim the same comfort with any of the rest of it.

  “Where are Cruz and the others?” he asked as he brought his attention back to the unfinished business of the day’s confrontation.

  “Trussed up and under guard at the Sangre Real. I’ll deal with them tomorrow.”

  “And the one I shot?”

  “You mean the one who shot Mariah?” Tristan shook his head in mock sorrow. “He didn’t make it.”

  Nathan nodded once, unsurprised. He’d known it the moment he’d taken aim. The outlaw had signed his own death warrant the instant he’d dared to fire a gun in Mariah’s direction.

  The son of a bitch deserved whatever he got.

  “Jordan is his father,” Nathan said idly, because they hadn’t touched on the topic yet.

  “Cruz?” Tristan asked. “No question there. I don’t have the story, but we don’t need many details to make some fairly accurate assumptions.”

  Nathan gave his head a shake. “Jordan impregnated Cruz’s mother, sent her away, and when he got old enough, he came back for revenge.”

  “And attention.” Gabriel spoke for the first time.

  “What?” Tristan’s bark was sharp.

  “You’re his brothers. Family, no matter how any of you got your start. He was a damned lousy outlaw, and that tells me he wanted your attention more than he wanted to do any lasting harm.”

  “And Mariah?” Nathan snapped.

  “An accident.” The words came through gritted teeth, as though the reality of it affected Gabriel as much as it did Nathan. “And my fault.”

  His animosity had been wavering, and now it fell aside completely, surprising Nathan to discover that empathy replaced any hostility. Gabriel Bonham might have done a lot of things that Nathan didn’t like, but he would never have put Mariah in harm’s way. There could be no doubt about that.

  “It wasn’t your fault.” He needed to be the one to say the words. “I know you wanted to save Mariah just as much as I did. We—you did your best, and I thank you.”

  Gabriel stared at the last of the amber-colored whiskey in his tumbler, tossed the drink back, and dropped the glass to the table. “I didn’t do enough.” He kept his gaze trained downward, that one piercing eye averting all contact. “They still shot her. I could have—”

  “You don’t know what you could have done or what might have changed,” Tristan interrupted. “I learned it at Shiloh. You rode guerilla with Quantrill and must have learned it a hundred different times and in a hundred different ways. A man takes events as they come and does what he can at any given moment.”

  Nathan couldn’t disagree. He’d learned the same damned lesson at Second Manassas, and he would never forget. None of them would, or could, and for that reason alone, Gabriel had no reason to carry any guilt over what had happened to Mariah.

  Yes, jealousy would always plague him over the knowledge that Bonham had known her in a carnal way. And Nathan would likely always hate that the Segundo had been instrumental in saving her from Cruz and his outlaws. The blessing of it all was that Mariah belonged to him, as unworthy as Nathan might be.

  She had made that choice, and he would never squander her feelings for him again.

  Ethan stepped into the room before Nathan had quite put together more words that would encourage Gabriel. All attention turned to the newcomer.

  “What?” demanded Nathan, a bit more harshly than he meant, but he couldn’t help it.

  “I’m encouraged.” Ethan’s smile was cautious.

  Nathan shot to his feet and shoved his hand into this hair. “She’ll be all right?”

  “Yes.” Ethan nodded. “I’m certain of that. She’ll need rest and time to recover, but the surgery went well. The bullet came out easily, and I even recovered the fabric that surrounded it.”

  The fabric.

  Until that moment, Nathan hadn’t even thought of it. Horror stories of pain and infection teased through his mind. Men had suffered and died from surgeons digging for the material of a man’s shirt. An unclean wound could lead to infection that had killed as many as the bullets themselves.

  “Thank God.” He took a breath to settle himself. “What can I do?”

  “Do you have any laudanum?” Ethan asked.

  Nathan shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  “It would help with pain.”

  Tristan snorted. “Carolyn will have some.”

  “What else?” A different nervous energy urged Nathan to do something. Reassured, anxious excitement now plagued him.

  “I’ll make up a poultice before I leave,” Ethan offered. “Flour, gunpowder, lint. It will h
elp with infection. I’ve seen its effectiveness for myself. Change it three or four times a day.”

  Nathan nodded, knew he should say something more, but other than a heartfelt “Thank you,” he hadn’t the time or attention for it. He had one duty now, and that was to plant himself by Mariah’s side and heal her with his love.

  32

  Mariah slept for the better part of two days. It was due as much to the laudanum as anything else, she decided on the third day. That was when she put her proverbial foot down and refused another dose when Nathan offered it to her.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Absolutely not. No more. It puts me to sleep, and I’ve slept enough.”

  “You need the rest,” he insisted, his mouth set in a surprisingly mulish frown.

  “I have been. Resting and sleeping for two days now. Enough is enough.”

  “Your shoulder still hurts.”

  Yes, it did, but not as bad as it had originally. Nathan had been as diligent as any nurse when it came to caring for her. He changed the poultice and bandage every few hours. It would safeguard her from infection, he’d claimed, and she had no reason to disbelieve him.

  Ethan had also come by to check on her every day. He and Nathan might conspire to keep her coddled and tucked all securely in bed, but Mariah had had enough. Being bedridden had begun to create a nervous anxiety within her, and she hated it. She needed activity and something to keep her mind occupied.

  “My back is sore from being confined to bed, and I’m bored.” She complained in a whiny voice that grated on her ears, and yet it suited her mood perfectly.

  “Mariah,” Nathan said firmly, but his eyes twinkled. Despite the very obvious concern he’d displayed over her injury, he’d also seemed more contented, even lighthearted, since the accident.

  That was how she preferred to think of it. An accident.

  Cruz was Nathan’s brother. Family. He hadn’t been the one to shoot her. Everything had simply gotten out of hand and, therefore, nothing had been deliberate.

  “I should just get out of this bed without your help,” she pouted.