by Jodi Thomas
She had never known loneliness in her bed until he was sleeping beside it. She often inched toward the edge and stayed there, alternately fearing and hoping he would understand it was an invitation. If he knew it, he never acted on it. There were times he only pretended to sleep, and she accepted it because saying she knew otherwise would compromise them both. He was something more than he would have her believe, and something less as well. For all that her father trusted him, Felicity was of the opinion that Nat Church stood dangerously close to the wrong side of gentleman. For her part, she was aware she was flirting with ruination. Her sleep was disturbed by dreams that made her regret waking.
In spite of that, she gave no conscious thought to testing him. If she had, she would have dismissed it as foolish. Instead she searched for common ground and found it was almost always underfoot. They both were seasoned travelers. She, because her education had been abroad; he, because experience had been his education. They often talked during dinner but fell silent when they shared a drink. Quiet suited them. They both read. She knitted. He played solitaire. She plotted her eventual escape. He plotted the route that made escape undesirable, even impossible.
They were twenty-three days living in each other’s shadow before Felicity began to calculate the chances of surviving a jump from the train.
“I’m getting off at the next station,” she told him. “This is not the western tour I had in mind. We are taking a circuitous route to nowhere. Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?”
Nat was reclining on the short sofa with his calves dangling over one arm. He was wearing his pearl gray Stetson except that he had settled it over his face and not on his head. He poked the brim with the tip of his forefinger and lifted it just enough to uncover his mouth. “What do you think I am doing?”
“You’re making sure I have no opportunity to find a suitable position. You have coupled and uncoupled this car at least six times that I know of. I would not put it past you to have had it done while I was sleeping. In a week it is possible to get from San Francisco to New York, and yet we have not been east of the Mississippi nor west of the Great Salt Lake. In ways I cannot begin to understand, you have been successful in bypassing all major cities between here and there and back again.”
“But the countryside’s been pleasant, don’t you think?”
“I want off this train, Mr. Church.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Because I have not seen the evidence for it. You would not goad me as often as you do if that were true.” Felicity ceased pacing when she reached the back of the sofa. She leaned over with the intention of plucking the hat from his face and tossing it to the floor. She even entertained the idea of stomping on it. Nothing like that came to pass. Her wrist was seized in a grip every bit as secure as the leg iron had been. When she tried to pull away, she merely helped him sit up. The hat fell forward, but he caught the brim in his free hand and flicked his wrist. The Stetson sailed toward the table, landed, and slid just as far as the edge and no farther. The ease with which he accomplished it was the end of enough.
Felicity Ravenwood burst into tears.
Nat Church did not believe for a moment that he was hurting her, and that left him at a loss to explain her reaction. He didn’t know many men comfortable with a woman’s tears, and he didn’t count himself as an exception. He loosened his grip but not so much that she could pull free. What he noticed was that she didn’t try. It required little effort to guide her around the sofa. When she was standing in front of it, he tugged once. With no more urging than that, she sat beside him. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and gave it to her. She held it against each eye to stem the tears, but when they continued, he lent her his shoulder. She crumpled the handkerchief in her fist and leaned into him with the ease of someone who belonged there.
Felicity closed her eyes. A few more tears leaked from beneath spiky lashes. She forgot about the handkerchief and knuckled her eyes. A swallowed sob shuddered through her. She hiccupped once and then was quiet.
Nat released her wrist and slipped an arm around her shoulder. He let her rest. She was still and silent for so long that he thought she had fallen asleep, but then he heard her long, indrawn breath and knew she had not.
“I cannot stay inside another day,” she said. “It’s cruel. I need fresh air and sunshine and room to do more than stretch. I need a destination and a purpose.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know. You get off at every stop. You can walk the length of the platform and the length of this train. You talk to passengers. I have conversations with you and the porters. No one else. I see people coming and going at every station, and I can’t be one of them. I don’t understand. Has something changed? Are you making these decisions on your own or acting on my father’s instructions?”
Nat looked down on the auburn crown of Felicity’s hair and thought that if he inclined his head a mere fraction he would know its softness under his cheek. He refrained. Instead, he breathed in the scent of it. She favored lavender in her bathwater. The light fragrance infused her hair and lay lightly against her skin. His nostrils flared. It was the least of his body’s responses.
“When I went to get our dinner that first night, I sent a telegram to your father. I informed him I had found you, that you were safe, and that you were entertaining the idea of becoming one of Fred Harvey’s girls.” He felt Felicity’s head move from side to side. He did not have to observe her face to grasp her disappointment. “I expected he would have objections; what I did not expect was that he would not accept the risk that you might succeed.”
Her brief, husky chuckle held no amusement. “That is because you believed he was resigned to my single state. He’s not.”
“I am not always right,” he said. “But I am not usually so wrong. I misjudged him. I regret that . . . for both of us.”
Felicity believed him. “My father is persuasive because he sincerely believes in the rightness of his arguments. You are not the first person to misinterpret his real motives. He wants me back in New York, but he wants me to believe it is my idea. It is a successful strategy in matters of business. He has a tendency to forget I am not one of his employees.”
Felicity drew her legs up and folded them sideways under her gown. It caused her to lean more heavily against Nat. He accommodated the shift without comment. His arm continued to support her. His hand lay lightly against her upper arm. His thumb brushed her shoulder.
“Why does my father really trust you?” she asked.
It seemed to Nat that Felicity had plucked the question from thin air, but on brief reflection, he realized that it was likely she had only been holding it back. He had demonstrated that first night that her father’s trust had not been misplaced and, at more than a little discomfort to himself, he had been proving it every night since.
Nat knew only one way to answer her question. He said, “I gave him my word.”
“It means so much, your word?”
“Evidently your father thought so.”
Felicity shook her head. “I mean no insult, but I doubt that. There is more to you than your name, Nat Church, so I’ll ask you again and trust you will provide a better answer. Who are you?”
After more than three weeks in her lavender-scented company, observing her grace in circumstances that tested her good nature and his moral compass, the surest way to make certain he continued to sleep beside her bed and not in it was to tell her.
So he did.
“My employer,” he said. “Your father trusts me because I serve at the pleasure of the president.” Felicity pulled away sharply to gape at him. He gently nudged her jaw closed and drew her back into the cradle of his shoulder. “Yes,” he said. “That president. I served his predecessor as well.”
“Those things you told me early on and the crumbs you dropped here and there, were they all true?”
“What things?”
Felicity did not doubt that he knew. The
re were no holes in his memory. He was being cautious, as she had come to learn was his nature. She reminded him so he would know she had not forgotten. “That painting, for instance, the one you said you stole from the Metropolitan.”
“A Renaissance work of art presented to our president by the Italian ambassador. It was already on loan to the museum when the Italians learned their ambassador had exchanged the gift for a fake. They were embarrassed and apologetic and asked for the painting’s return before it was discovered to be a forgery by the museum’s curators. The president decided that in the interest of preserving relations, the best course would be to steal it. That’s what I did.”
Felicity tilted her head so she could look at him. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to gauge how truthful he was being. “I never heard about the theft. I would imagine something like that would cause a stir.” She paused as her gaze slid lower and caught the faint change in the shape of his mouth. “Unless . . .”
“Yes?”
“Unless you replaced the forgery with the genuine painting.” She saw his lips twitch. It was so brief that in other circumstances she might have thought she imagined it. “That’s what you did. I know it.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” She settled comfortably into the crook of his shoulder once more. “What else?” she asked. “You said there were people who would call you a bounty hunter. What about that?”
Nat considered what he wanted to say carefully. “The president receives correspondence from citizens every day. Most are letters expressing a concern. There are invitations, requests, and many that thank him for something he’s done. It might surprise you to know that people write deeply personal things.” He drew in a breath and released it slowly. “Then there are the threats. Too often it’s not possible to know the author of those, but when it is, it falls to me, or someone like me, to find that person and judge their sincerity. Sometimes men who pen those letters are already in prison or have their picture hanging on a wall in a sheriff’s office somewhere. If lawmen get the impression I’m a bounty hunter, I don’t correct them.”
“I’ve read and traveled enough to know bounty hunters are not generally well respected. It doesn’t trouble you to be painted with a black brush?”
“I know who I am. People who matter to me know it as well.”
And now she knew, Felicity thought. Did that mean she mattered to him?
“Is there something else you want to know?” he asked.
The question hovered on her lips. Did she matter? She knew herself to be a coward for not giving voice to it. Her friends thought she was brave, even fearless, but she knew differently. When it came to matters of the heart, it was easier to run from the truth than confront it.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” She thought he might put her away from him or choose not to answer. He did neither of those things.
“Are you certain you want to know?”
Was she? “Yes.”
“Then, yes.” He waited for the question that would inevitably follow. When it didn’t come, he closed the short distance that separated his cheek from the crown of Felicity’s head. Her hair was as soft as he had always suspected. “That’s all?”
“It’s enough.” She did not need to have the specifics explained to her. Whatever small doubts she harbored, they had vanished with this last confession. This was a good man who was holding her, a good man who had been her companion these last twenty-three days. She could admit, at least to herself, that with increasing frequency she had begun to wish he were not quite so good.
Felicity felt his cheek against her hair. His palm still rested against her upper arm. His thumb made an idle pass across her sleeve. She could feel the warmth of his hand through the fabric. She was not merely comfortable; she was comforted. The distinction, and it was an important one, was borne home to her in a way it had never been.
“Where is home when you are not sleeping away from it?”
A quiet chuckle resonated from the back of Nat’s throat. “You’re so sure there is such a place?”
“You have written two letters since you’ve been with me, and since I know you use the telegraph to communicate with my father, I feel safe in assuming you are corresponding with family. Your sister. Perhaps your mother. You’ve mentioned both. I think you are more settled than you wanted me to believe at the outset.”
“Very well. Washington.”
“A boardinghouse?”
“A home.”
“So you have a place you could hang the Pissarro.”
Nat glanced over at the painting. “The library.”
Felicity arched an eyebrow. “You have a library?”
“A crate of books, an old desk, and a scarred leather chair that lists to one side. Library is overstating it.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. Felicity smiled to herself when she felt him offer a careless shrug. “Why don’t you want the painting? You don’t like it?”
“I like it fine.”
“So . . . ?”
Nat sighed, not impatiently, but as one resigned to revealing certain truths. “There would always be regret.”
“Regret?”
“That I was looking at the Pissarro and not at you.”
His words washed over her like a warm and gentle spring shower. The sentiment was novel, refreshing. It touched her heart and nurtured her soul. It did not make her eloquent. What she said was: “Oh.”
Nat gave her shoulder a light squeeze. “Indeed.”
They fell into a companionable silence, neither of them inclined to move or reflect more deeply on the moments just passed. Felicity felt herself fall asleep and did not fight it. It seemed right and proper that she should have the comfort of Nat’s chest against her cheek, his arm around her shoulder. For his part, Nat simply waited her out, and even then he waited long after she was breathing in the even cadence of sleep to ease away and give her sole possession of the sofa.
• • •
IT was late by the time they ate dinner. In contrast to the earlier conversation, the exchanges they had before and during the meal were careful to the point of being stilted. After the meal was over, and the porter had come and gone, they simply ceased to talk. This silence did not pass as pleasantly as the earlier one. Threads of tension drifted in the air like dust motes, tightening their throats, making breathing seem labored.
Felicity selected a pair of hatboxes from storage under her bed and placed them on the table. Nat looked up from where he was cleaning his gun on the window bench to observe her remove two extravagantly adorned hats and regard them critically. He watched, fascinated, as she proceeded to shift feathers, discard fur, rearrange ribbons and braid, exchange pearls for jet beads, and in the end produce two different hats that were still every bit as extraordinary as the ones she’d pulled out of the boxes. She continued to defy natural laws of physics as he understood them by returning the hats to their respective boxes and closing the lids.
Felicity stood, a hatbox string in each fist, and caught Nat staring. “What?” she asked.
“I did not think they could possibly fit,” he said.
“Then it is very good you didn’t make a wager.”
His eyes lifted from the boxes to her. “Why did you do that?” he asked. “Alter the hats, I mean.”
“For the same reason you clean your gun,” she said, moving toward the bed. “It calms me.”
“I see.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” Felicity gave him her back as she began to unfold the screen for privacy while she changed. “I intend to seduce you.”
Whatever conversation was to follow, Nat thought he should put his gun away. He returned it to the holster and set it at his side. “Look at me,” he said as she continued to fiddle with the screen. When Felicity merely gave him over-the-shoulder attention, he motioned with his index finger for her to turn around. She huffed softly to make her objection known, but complied, her defiant stare at odds with the hot color i
n her cheeks. He supposed that meant he had heard her correctly.
“Am I allowed to have an opinion about it?”
“Yes, of course you can, but you should keep it to yourself. Especially if you are in favor of it.” Her chin lifted a fraction. “I know next to nothing about seducing a man. I mention my lack of practical knowledge so you will have a better understanding of the state of my nerves. However, I am well-read and if I can rely on the authors of such informed articles as ‘The Pleasure of His Company’ and ‘In Pursuit of Happiness,’ it is universally accepted that the nature of seduction is one-sided at inception. I believe I have to earn your cooperation, so if you give it at the beginning, then where is the challenge? There should be an element of challenge, don’t you think? You are not alone in finding challenge interesting.”
She had rendered him speechless. Nat required a moment to gather his wits. “Am I allowed to have an opinion now? Or is your question rhetorical?” Nat interpreted her pursed-lip response to mean that the answers should be self-evident. He took a chance. “There is nothing wrong with a challenge, but a proper seduction does not have a winner and loser.”
“I mentioned earning your cooperation, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“What if you succeed?” he asked. “What if my cooperation comes at the expense of my better judgment? What then?”
“Then there will be regrets. Yours, certainly. Mine, quite possibly. And we will live with them as people generally do, but it will be easier than living with the regret of what might have been. That would be inviting cancer to reside in my soul. I think it would be the same for you.” With that, Felicity disappeared behind the privacy screen.
Nat’s dark eyes remained fixed on the spot where Felicity had been standing. He knuckled his chin, first to close his jaw, second to assess the rough state of his stubble. Should he shave? Felicity had fair, delicate skin. He recalled how the weight of the iron shackle had chafed her ankle. He had never apologized for that. At the time, it had seemed more important to assert his authority and make her understand the limits of her freedom. Besides, she had thrown a shoe at his head.