He lit the flame and continued his inspection. On the floor near the entrance he found a few strips of rawhide that had first been tied together with knots and then cut open—evidence that someone had been held captive.
Fear surged in him now, sharp and cold, but Thomas pushed it aside. People saw him as a calm, placid person, but they failed to see the effort that went into it. Ranting and wailing did no good when disaster struck but a cool head might.
He eased the door open, stepped outside and held the lamp low, at knee height. On the ground he could see tracks—a scrape mark from a man who dragged his foot. Terror banded around Thomas, squeezing his chest. He sank to his haunches, studied the ground, saw a small depression in the sand, the imprint of a bare foot.
Straightening, Thomas surveyed the darkness around him.
There had been no blood in the cabin. And there were footprints.
If Sam Renner had been desperate enough to steal a cart and risk death from the jolting of the ride, what would he do when he found the woman who had ruined his life? What would he do? What would Charlotte do?
She’d pity him. Try to plead with him. And when that didn’t work, she’d come up with some ruse to stay alive for a few moments longer, gain time to escape.
Something caught Thomas’s eye. A muted light, unmoving, down on the ground. As he strained his eyes, the small sphere of light rose in the air, swung left and right. Then it descended back to the ground and stayed there, unmoving, partly obscured by the clumps of vegetation.
The churchyard. A shudder ran through Thomas. Could it be that Sam Renner was out there in the darkness, digging a grave? Had he killed Charlotte and now had the decency to bury her remains?
Using the lamp to illuminate his path, Thomas strode toward the churchyard. He tried to keep his steps silent, but he knew the sound of pebbles rattling beneath his boots might alert whoever was digging in the night. Anyway, the lamp he carried would give him away, if someone happened to glance his way.
It took him a moment to figure out the faint circle of light did not come from the cemetery, but from the patch of ground where there had once been an apple orchard. The drought had killed the trees one summer when Reverend Eldridge forgot to water them.
When Thomas got closer, the sight that met him filled him with a mix of horror and relief. Charlotte was alive. She was alive. But she was on all fours, with a rope tied round her neck, like a dog on a leash. The only garment she wore, a flimsy nightgown, was torn and streaked with mud.
For a fraction of a second, Thomas took in her slender frame barely hidden by the clinging fabric. Pity and rage at her wretched state welled up in him. Ruthlessly, he clamped down on the emotions and focused on the man holding the rope, Sam Renner.
In his other hand Sam was holding the big skinning knife, and he was staring intently at something down at his feet. But it appeared to Thomas that Sam’s rapt attention was not on the half-naked Charlotte, but on the hole she was digging in the ground.
Thomas cursed himself for not carrying a belt gun. No one in Gold Crossing did. It was the 1880s and civilization had arrived in the West. Most towns had an ordinance that prohibited the carry of firearms within town limits. Men carried rifles for hunting, but he had left his in the saddle boot, an oversight for which he now bitterly blamed himself.
But his saddle was only twenty yards away, and Art Langley kept a shotgun behind the bar. Thomas measured the distance to the Imperial Hotel. Then he caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye and realized Sam Renner had noticed him.
Holding the lamp high, Thomas marched out of the darkness. “Don’t know what you’re digging for, stranger, but you’ll never find it with a woman digging for you. Let me help.”
He shone the light on Sam’s face, but lowered the lamp when he heard Charlotte’s cry of pain and understood Sam had jerked on the leash, tightening the noose around her neck. Thomas stepped back and fought to keep his tone friendly.
“Order your woman to move out of the way and I’ll dig you a hole as deep and wide as you want.”
“What will you use for digging?” Sam asked.
“What has she been using?” Thomas shone the light on Charlotte. She was cowering on the ground. She appeared to be close to breaking point, but she had enough control not to give him away. She held up a metal spoon.
“You’ll need to give your woman a drop of water and a rest,” Thomas said to Sam. “She looks just about done in to me.”
“Go find a shovel,” Sam said. “There’s gotta be one for digging graves.”
Thomas hesitated. He did not dare to leave Charlotte alone with Sam. Sam might decide that he no longer needed her, now that he had someone else to do the digging.
Thomas bent down. “What’s the soil like? Is it firm or soft?” He scooped up a fistful of dirt from the small mound Charlotte had created with her digging. As he straightened, he tossed the dirt into Sam’s eyes and then charged at the man.
The knife flashed, and Thomas felt it plunge into his side, glancing from his ribs. Behind him, he heard Charlotte cry out. Had Sam jerked on the rope? Was the noose tight around Charlotte’s neck? Had her air been cut off? Fear knotted in his chest as he knew he had to fight, not only against Sam Renner, but also against time.
Thomas wrapped his arms around Sam, hauling the man high against his chest and shaking him, the way a hunting dog might shake a rat in its jaws. He felt another slash from the knife, this time a long gash at the top of his shoulder. Gathering all his strength, Thomas tightened his hold like a vise. He heard the sound of cracking ribs, and then Sam snapped taut and emitted an anguished roar. An instant later he went limp, sagging against Thomas, the heavy weight of a lifeless man.
Thomas dropped the body to the ground and grabbed a lamp. He held it high, saw Charlotte sitting on the ground. He sank to his knees beside her.
“Charlotte! Are you all right? Can you breathe?”
“Yes. Yes.” She had already loosened the noose around her neck and was now lifting it over her head.
“Let me help.” Thomas untangled the rope from her hair and tossed it aside.
“Is he dead?” Charlotte asked, peering at Sam’s crumpled form.
“Yes.” Thomas spoke quietly. In all his days he had never yet killed a man, and despite everything the tragic fate of Sam Renner troubled him. “He had a bullet in his spine. It could have killed him at any time. It must have become dislodged when we struggled.”
“Oh, Thomas, it was so awful. He was crazy. He thought I was some woman called Madeleine, and, the one you mentioned that had stolen his gold. He said he’d gut me like a fish but I tricked him into thinking I had buried the gold and he made me dig and dig and dig and I prayed you would come...”
“I’m here now,” Thomas said.
And then Charlotte was in his arms, sobbing against his chest. Thomas bundled her into his embrace and held her tight. She was safe. She was safe. With the night darkness cool and silent about them, Thomas cradled her to his chest and looked up into the sky and thanked the Lord, promising to forgive all the hardships of his life, all the broken dreams, because none of them mattered if Charlotte was safe.
* * *
“I want to see him,” Charlotte said to Dottie Timmerman, who even at midnight looked immaculate with her old-fashioned icicle curls hanging by her temples.
Dottie clucked her tongue with disapproval. “You are filthy, dear. The doctor is sewing up Mr. Greenwood’s cuts. In your current state you are unhygienic. He’ll not allow you into the treatment room until you’ve had a bath.”
Charlotte sighed. She was wrapped up in an old horse blanket and standing in an empty bathtub in the middle of the kitchen. In her unhygienic state she had not even been allowed into the bedroom with pink roses on the wallpaper.
“Is the water hot yet?” she aske
d for the tenth time.
Dottie dipped a finger into the big iron pot on the stove. “Lukewarm.”
“That will do,” Charlotte said.
“No it won’t, dear. You are shivering. I didn’t waste a glass of the doctor’s expensive brandy just to let you catch your death from a cold bath.” With that Dottie poured another slug of brandy into the pair of glasses lined up on the kitchen counter and handed one of them to Charlotte.
Charlotte drank, knocking back the measure in a single swallow, the way sailors did. Liquid fire down her throat. She opened her mouth and let out an unladylike fire dragon breath, and then she burst into a giggle.
“Getting tipsy, are we?” said Dottie. “That’s not a bad idea, dear. You’ve had a wee bit of a shock. But it’s all right now, dear. That farmer of yours came and rescued you just in the nick of time.” Dottie adjusted her curls. “Just like a dime novel, it was, with a beast from the moors—or desert, of course, in this case, for there are no moors here, of course, not like Jane Eyre, or Wuthering Heights, and of course Mr. Greenwood is fair, unlike Heathcliff, or Mr. Rochester, but...”
Charlotte let the prattle roll over her. After Thomas killed that poor demented man, he’d picked her up in his arms and carried her to the doctor’s house. In some odd way, she had almost wished the distance had been greater. He’d carried her so effortlessly, and she’d felt so safe in his arms, so safe after that man... Her eyes misted... That poor man. How terrible his life must have been...
“The water is ready,” Dottie said. “I’ll pour and leave you to your bath.”
Dottie filled the bottom inches of the big enameled tub and retreated. Charlotte hurried through her bath. After Thomas carried her in, the doc had inspected her bruised neck and the scrapes on her knuckles and the pinprick cuts from the tip of the knife on her back, and then he had handed her into his wife’s care and led Thomas away. She had not realized Thomas was hurt. She had to find him. Sew up his cuts, Dottie had said. Sam Renner must have cut him with his knife, and she hadn’t even noticed.
Mud and dirt rinsed off, the stinging in her raw knuckles easing, Charlotte clambered to her feet and dried herself with a linen towel and dressed in the thick cotton nightgown Dottie Timmerman had put out for her. Then she set off to find Thomas in the treatment room.
Masculine voices came through the closed door. Charlotte flung it open without knocking. Thomas sat on the edge of the treatment table, stripped to the waist, only threadbare long johns hiding his lower half. When she burst in through the door, he snatched a towel from the table beside him and wrapped it around his torso, covering himself from armpit to waist.
“Thomas!” she shouted. “You are hurt.” She halted her charge a step before she could hurl herself into his arms. An angry red line, already closed with a row of neat stitches, ran across the top of his shoulder.
“I haven’t quite finished with him,” Doc Timmerman said. Tall, with gray hair, he liked to wear a white coat that marked him as a medical man, something not many doctors in the West bothered with.
Thomas lifted his brows. “Could you give us a moment, Doc?”
Doc Timmerman balanced on the balls of his feet. “Five minutes,” he said. “Then I’ll come and finish. I don’t want to stay awake all night patching you up.” He walked out of the room, but he did not close the door.
“Oh, Thomas.” Charlotte edged closer to where he sat on the edge of the treatment table, looking so big and strong and masculine, and, heavens, so...so...naked. She felt light-headed, from the events, from the liquid fire of the brandy that throbbed in her veins. “You are hurt.”
“It’s only a scratch.”
“A scratch?”
She moved closer still. Her hand crept up and her fingertips traced the curve of his shoulder. Despite his size there was something sleek about him. His belly was flat and his waist trim, which was not obvious through the clothing he wore for the farm chores, and she hadn’t really noticed it before, except maybe when she sometimes stole a peek when he undressed for the night, or got out of bed in the morning.
“You have lovely shoulders,” she said. “Wide and strong. Like Samson.”
“Samson came to a bad end, if I recall. And it was because of a woman.” There was a rueful edge to his tone.
“Oh, Thomas, you are still angry with me.” She peered up at him between her lashes and blushed. Heavens, she was standing so close to him, that broad, naked chest right in front of her face. “Of course, you have a right to be angry,” she added. “I lied and cheated, and now you have been hurt rescuing me. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“How will you make it up to me, Charlotte?”
Heavens, there was a new husky tone in his voice. She’d never heard it before, except perhaps on the day of their wedding, when he’d kissed her. Her lips puckered at the memory.
“A kiss?” Thomas said. “Is that what you are offering?”
She looked up at him. He was so close, she could feel the heat from his naked chest and smell the clean, antiseptic scent of whatever the doctor had used to clean the wound in his shoulder.
“Kissing is for engaged couples,” she said primly. “We’re not engaged.”
“We used to be married.”
His gaze held hers now and, good heavens, his hand came up and slid behind her neck, his fingers tangling in her curls, and then he eased her closer, closer, closer. Charlotte lowered her lashes, and then she felt the warm puff of his breath on her lips.
A fist rapped on the open door. A throat cleared. Charlotte jumped back so abruptly her nose bumped Thomas on the chin. She whirled about, the loose cotton nightdress flaring about her feet, embarrassment burning on her face.
“I need to finish with him,” Dr. Timmerman said, fighting not to smile. “And then you must get some rest, Miss Jackson. You’ll have a busy day tomorrow, with the orphans arriving on the train.”
* * *
Thomas waited until Charlotte was out of the room and then he peeled away the towel he had used to hide the more serious wound in his side. The doctor poked and prodded, pulling the gaping sides of the cut together.
“You are a lucky man, Mr. Greenwood. Although it looks nasty, it is just a flesh wound. If the blade had glanced the other way from your ribs, it would have gone into your belly and might have pierced vital internal organs.”
“I saw the blade strike,” Thomas said. “I had time to shift aside.”
The doc took out more string for sutures and held the tip of the needle over a flame for a few seconds to sterilize it.
“Looks like your marriage is far from over,” the doc commented.
Thomas tensed himself against the pain as the needle punctured his skin.
“I understand you think Miss Jackson is too fragile for life out in the West,” the doc went on. “That hard work and childbirth might send her to an early grave.”
Thomas gave a grunt of pain as his only reply. It was the excuse he had given to Dottie Timmerman to salvage his pride, but somehow in the days that followed he had come to believe the explanation himself.
“That’s what people said about my wife, when I first brought her here.” The doc glanced up from his task with a smile. “And look at her now. She loves it here. I’d be happy to return to the East, where some of our children live, but she won’t go.” He cut the string to make another suture. “Small, fragile women sometimes turn out to be tough and brave. I think that bride of yours proved it tonight.”
That bride of yours. Thomas mulled over the words while the doctor finished his ministrations and left him alone to sleep on the narrow cot in the treatment room. Maybe he should forgive Charlotte. Heck, maybe he already had. Maybe there was a chance for them, if she would be prepared to stay in the Arizona Territory instead of returning to the East.
But one thing Thomas kn
ew for certain. If he ever married again—Charlotte or anyone else—there would be none of that six months from now. If he married, his marriage would be real and for keeps, with his wife in his bed, starting from the wedding night.
Chapter Fifteen
Charlotte tapped her finger on the map of Europe. “What country is this?” She tried her sweetest smile. “Come now, children. Next to France? Right above Italy?” She put a stern demand in her voice. “The little country with high mountains called the Alps? Where they make excellent watches and send soldiers to the Vatican to protect His Holiness the Pope?
Nothing. Eight blank faces stared at her. Charlotte exhaled a sigh. She’d planned to dazzle the population of Gold Crossing with her success as an educator, but it would never happen.
Perhaps the inattention of the children had something to do with the way she sometimes lapsed into silence when she remembered how Thomas had almost kissed her. Or when she recalled the sight of his naked chest right in front of her eyes.
Two weeks had passed since Thomas rescued her from Sam Renner. Up by Hansen’s Creek, the body of a farm boy had been found. He’d been on his way into town in the cart Sam Renner had used to charge up to the schoolhouse. It pained Charlotte to know that although she’d escaped with only minor injuries, Sam Renner’s lust for revenge had cost the life of an innocent young man.
Despite the grief Charlotte felt for the farm boy and his family, the memories of the horror had faded quickly. Somehow, the sense of safety from being carried in Thomas’s arms had left a more lasting impression than the nightmare of a noose around her neck and a madman’s knife flashing before her eyes.
The morning after the ordeal, Charlotte had slept until midday at Doc Timmerman’s house, her exhausted body needing the rest after the shock and all that effort of digging holes with nothing but a spork.
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