An Outlaw in Wonderland

by Lori Austin

  “Whiskey.”

  “Mix it with water—half and half. She should use that to bathe her private area, as well as the child’s umbilicus until it falls off.”

  “All riiii-ght,” Major agreed skeptically. “Is the baby—?”

  “Marbh,” Ethan muttered, and blinked. Why had he said the child was dead?

  Major’s eyes narrowed, as Annabeth’s widened. “I’m sorry, Doc. I don’t—”

  “He’ll be fine,” Ethan blurted. “Keep him swaddled. Place him on his belly to sleep so his legs get used to being straight and not up by his ears.”

  “Will he walk?”

  “He might have a bit of trouble at first. Might not.” Ethan set his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “But there’s nothing wrong with him that time won’t heal.”

  Annabeth choked and ran for the creek.

  “Women,” Major muttered. “Babies always make ’em cry.”

  “Apparently,” Ethan agreed. When Major joined his wife, Ethan did the same.

  Annabeth kept her gaze on the gurgling water. “I hate that platitude.”

  “There isn’t anything wrong,” he said. “Not like there could be.” She laughed, and the sound was full of tears. “Beth—”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  Memory fluttered, like a ribbon from a tree, waving to him from high and away.

  “Only Yankees shorten names,” he murmured.

  She spun, and as she did, her ruined dress pulled tight across her flat, empty stomach.

  The world shimmied once, and he vomited, narrowly missing her shoes.

  CHAPTER 19

  I’ll take you back to town,” Major said.

  “You’ll tend your wife,” Annabeth snapped. “I’ve dealt with men in far worse condition than this.”

  “I’m all right,” Ethan insisted, and except for his pale face, set jaw, damp brow, and the fact that he’d deposited everything he’d eaten in the last decade on the ground, he seemed to be.

  When she attempted to clamber up behind him so she could hold him in the saddle if need be, he glared and refused to allow her to mount anywhere but in front. Then he put his arms around her as if she required help and protection.

  When Annabeth tried to question him about what had made him so ill, he growled, “Not now.” From then on, nothing but the clop of the horse’s hooves and Ethan’s own harsh breathing echoed in the descending night.

  Once in Freedom, he tossed the reins to the stable boy and headed home. Annabeth had to hurry so she wouldn’t be left behind.

  She stepped inside and knew they weren’t alone. Her hand went to her hip. The smooth cotton of the ruined dress was all that met her grasping fingers. She’d left her Colt upstairs and, occupied with the Tarkentons and Ethan, hadn’t missed it until now.

  A shadow separated from the darkness, and in the instant before the face appeared in the tiny glow of moonlight, Annabeth relaxed. There’d been no guard on the porch because the guard was within.

  “Would you like to explain why two of you were needed to deliver one child?”

  “Difficult birth,” Annabeth said.

  The marshal’s gaze cut to Ethan. “Everything okay?”

  Annabeth moved between them. “Fine. Now, if you don’t mind—”

  “As the two of you were out wandering the countryside, begging for a bullet in the brain, something I’ve been trying to prevent, I do mind.”

  “Sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t. Not about that.

  She hadn’t even considered the danger; she’d been too concerned with getting to Josie Tarkenton before she died and then with Ethan’s odd behavior. However . . .

  “As no one took a shot at us while we were very easy to shoot, I’d say whoever wanted to is long gone. You can probably stop posting a guard.”

  They were starting to annoy her. He was starting to annoy her. If any guarding needed to be done, she would be the one doing it.

  Eversleigh’s lips pursed. “I don’t—”

  “It’s not as if the guards are much good. I left; then Ethan did.”

  “I wouldn’t call the Cantrells any kind of guards.”

  “Who is?” Annabeth threw up her hands. “The best ones for the job are the ones you’ve got the townspeople guarding. Ethan and I will be all right, Marshal.”

  “Why is there a marshal?” Ethan asked.

  Annabeth’s heart took one hard thud against her chest. She’d hoped his behavior at the Tarkentons’ had meant he was beginning to remember.

  “The sheriff died,” she said.

  Ethan tilted his head, as if he’d heard distant glass breaking. Then he pulled the laudanum bottle from his pocket, took a few sips, and set it on the counter.

  “Don’t disappear again,” Eversleigh said.

  Annabeth urged him to the door. “We can’t hide in the house when someone needs help.”

  “Then don’t blame me if you get shot.” He stepped onto the porch.

  “I won’t. You gonna remove those guards?”

  Eversleigh glanced at Ethan, shrugged, nodded. She shut the door, but she didn’t turn. She was tired; she was sad. She needed a few minutes to herself. “I’m going to wash in the bedroom. You can wash down here.”

  She ran up the stairs before Ethan could agree or disagree. As she reached the landing, the medicine cabinet opened, bottles clinked, and the cabinet closed. She felt an instant of guilt that she’d left Ethan to put away the supplies alone, but she just wasn’t up to helping him.

  Annabeth slid the ruined dress from her shoulders. Too large, it slithered straight to the floor. The moon shone so brightly, she had no need of a lamp to determine her chemise was ruined, too.

  Standing in nothing but her drawers, Annabeth drew a damp cloth over her neck and arms. She was bone tired; she ached so deeply, she wasn’t sure where the pain ended and she began. She hadn’t felt this way since—

  A snuffle escaped. She caught her breath, pursed her lips, and refused to let another break free.

  Downstairs, nothing but silence. It wasn’t until Annabeth’s chest grew tight and her face hot that she realized she still held her breath. She let it out on a rush. The air she drew in hitched a little, and the next thing she knew, she was sobbing. She covered her mouth, her nose, pressing hard, trying to keep the sound, the pain within. But tears flowed over her fingers, dripping off her wrists like rain.

  The birth. That child. Ethan.

  So much blood.

  She dropped her hands, lifted her brimming eyes, and saw him in the doorway. He was naked to the waist, his usually bronzed skin gleaming silver in the light of the moon.

  He crossed to her, one dusty boot landing atop the pile of equally dusty clothes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Ethan,” she whispered. “What isn’t?”

  Confusion flickered in his gray eyes, and she shook her head. One of her tears struck his belly. He jerked as if the drop were scalding, and his gasp split the night.

  They stood so close that when he leaned in, her unfettered breasts, still damp from her ablutions, brushed his chest. His lips touched first one cheek, then the other.

  Though she meant to hold him away, to tell him to stop, her hands curled around his biceps, and she was just holding him, not telling him anything at all.

  His muscles bulged against her palms as he took her mouth. She tasted tears. Hers? His? Did it matter? This was a mistake. There’d been so many lies, other people, secret lives, responsibilities that did not include each other, as well as shared pain, guilt, and sorrow that had never truly been put behind. She should stop this. She nearly did. But she needed him too badly.

  Yes, touching him was a mistake, but it wasn’t one she hadn’t made before.

  She slid her hands across his shoulders, her thumbs trailing his prominent collarbone before locking behind his neck. Her breasts crushed to his chest; she rubbed herself against him, and together they moaned.

  He tore his mouth free, and she feared he woul
d speak, stop, run. Instead, he walked his lips to her neck, suckled the curve, licked her own prominent collarbone, and then nipped her shoulder. She tangled her fingers in his hair.

  He carried her to the bed, depositing her in a pool of moonlight. She should have felt exposed, embarrassed. She hadn’t seen this man for five years. She’d left him with no intention of ever coming back. She didn’t know him anymore; he certainly didn’t know her.

  But he remembered none of that. He remembered his wife—whom he still loved—not a woman who had torn out his soul and spit on it.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, and she smiled.

  She was no beauty. Her hair was too red, her freckles too many, her body too large to be anything but awkward. However, Ethan had always insisted she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Or at least the most beautiful woman in his world. He’d always been the most beautiful man in hers. Ethan Walsh would be the most beautiful man in any world.

  He might be thinner, paler, but he was still Ethan—so handsome, he turned heads. His dark hair made his light eyes gleam; his sharp cheekbones gave him an exotic appearance. His long legs, taut chest and stomach were an unexpected surprise in a man who made his living as a healer.

  The moon turned his skin to alabaster—smooth and sleek. Would he be cool to the touch, or would he feel on fire as she did?

  Annabeth sat up and placed her hand against his belly. The muscles fluttered like the gentle lap of a creek against the bank. Fascinated, she traced their path with her fingers, then with her tongue.

  He tasted of saltwater—both hot and cool. She used her teeth on the jut of his hip, and he groaned. Leaning back, her gaze caught on the ridge beneath his trousers. She brushed a palm over it, and he grasped her wrist.

  “You’ll unman me.”

  “Wouldn’t want that.” What she wanted was him.

  She tugged on her wrist. He released her, and she unbuttoned his trousers, not an easy task considering the pressure from the other side. When she finished with the last button, he sprang free.

  Falling back on the bed, she opened her arms, and after kicking off his boots and pants, he dealt with hers. Her boots hit the floor. Then he slid her drawers from her hips, down her legs, off her feet. After an openmouthed kiss to the arch, he drew his tongue across the opposite ankle. Several nibbles at the calf, a long scrape of teeth to the thigh, his tongue at her hip. He hovered at her center, blowing on the already-damp, swollen flesh. Desire caused her to shift and squirm.

  He grasped her waist, and she waited for him to taste her as he had only a single time before. Instead he kissed her stomach, traced his lips across the expanse, pressed his cheek against her skin.

  He’d done that many, many times. Then he would whisper: Hello. I love you. I’m here.

  Annabeth’s eyes burned again with tears. “Ethan—”

  “Shh.”

  He followed the ripples caused by the hush with his tongue, using his teeth along the ladder of her ribs. He spent an inordinate amount of time on her belly—mouth, lips, teeth, tongue, fingertips, thumb, and palm. At first she had to fight not to push him away. If he continued, he would know how empty she was.

  But his ministrations took her back to a time when the only thing good had been this, the only thing right had been them. She tangled her fingers in his too-long hair and rubbed her thumb along his ear until he shuddered.

  She should put a stop to this, but how would she explain? Modern medicine advised her not to tell him the truth, and if there was one thing Annabeth was very good at, it was not telling the truth.

  She was selfish; it was wrong. Nevertheless, she tightened her lips and said nothing.

  Until he nuzzled her breast with his cheek, licked the underside, then latched on to her nipple. The press of his tongue, the draw of his lips made her gasp, then tug on his hair as one word slipped free. “Now.”

  His eyes shone like the moon on the water; his smile was like the sun emerging from the clouds. “You always were impatient.” He flicked her nipple with the tip of his tongue.

  When he entered her, she shattered like the windows of a house—of this house, lately—into a hundred shiny shards.

  “Impatient,” he repeated, then began to move, in and out, friction and heat, a familiar rhythm—both as old as time and as new as . . .

  “Now,” she repeated.

  As if in answer, he drove deep and pulsed, his head thrown back, the line of his neck, his chest, shimmering white. She ran a fingertip down that line, using her nail, tracing his bones, wishing she could be part of him like this forever.

  He buried his face in her neck; his hair brushed her cheek. His weight was both heavy and welcome. She stroked his back, marveling that while she’d seemed to shatter instead, she felt almost . . . whole.

  “It’s been so long,” he whispered as he rolled his weight to the side.

  The steady rasp of his breath and the beat of his heart soothed her toward sleep in his wake. It had been so long.

  Her eyes opened. What had he meant by that?

  A noise downstairs had Annabeth sitting straight up in bed, her feet already meeting the floor as her ears strained to identify the sound. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she didn’t like it.

  The marshal’s down there, she thought. Or some other poor soul assigned to watch the door.

  Except the marshal had walked away after agreeing to remove the guards. Why on earth had she asked him to do that? Now she had to investigate for herself.

  Ethan hadn’t moved. In the past, any sound would have brought him as awake as she was. But his injury, followed by the journey to the Tarkentons’, the birthing, the trip home, and then this had exhausted him.

  Annabeth donned another of Ethan’s shirts and shoved her legs into a pair of his pants. She left her boots but picked up her Colt from the nightstand and quickly, silently navigated the stairs.

  The porch lay empty, the silhouette of Marshal Eversleigh, or anyone else, no longer framed in the window. If a patient had arrived, they’d not only be standing in plain view but they would have shouted for help.

  The scuffle of a shoe had Annabeth spinning to the right, finger tightening on the trigger. She didn’t shoot; she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because she’d known before she even came down here whom she would find.

  “Moze,” she said.

  Moses Farquhar leaned against the counter in the examining room. “You were expecting someone else?”

  Annabeth joined him. “I wasn’t expecting you. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “A better question might be, what are you?”

  The moon gave Annabeth enough light to see his face. She didn’t need to answer; he already knew. Or thought he did.

  Knowing was his business. It was how he’d stayed alive throughout the war; it was how he’d continued to stay alive this long after it despite his seemingly irresistible attraction to danger. Moze made it his mission to discover everything about everyone, and therefore he could never be surprised.

  For a spy, being surprised was a very bad idea. Annabeth had learned that the hard way when Ethan had fallen into her trap.

  Surprise!

  “What happened to your hair?”

  “I cut it,” she snapped. “Better me than someone else.” Though she’d survived being marked as a Union sympathizer, she’d never quite gotten over it.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Annie Beth Lou.”

  The moon sparked off his sea-green eyes. He was lucky he hadn’t been born a Phelan. Those eyes would clash with the bright red hair.

  “What if someone recognizes you?”

  “Everyone’s recognized me.”

  “I meant as an outlaw.”

  “I’m not wanted,” she said.

  “Not for lack of trying,” he muttered. “I’ve had to stifle reports of a red-haired woman robbing a stage in Missouri, a bank in Iowa, and a train in Colorado.”

  “Only one of those was me.”

  “W
hich one?”

  “Does it matter? Lass isn’t going to trust me unless I prove myself trustworthy.”

  “By stealing?”

  “Among other things.”

  She could feel Moze’s gaze on her, waiting for her to say what “other” entailed. She wasn’t going to. He was a smart guy; he’d figure it out. If he thought a man like Lassiter Morant allowed a woman into his gang just because she’d asked, he was dumber than dirt. Moze knew she’d slept with Lass; he just didn’t want to hear it out loud any more than she wanted to say it.

  Moze had many talents, and when she’d left here and taken the job for Pinkerton, he’d taught most of them to her. Or rather, he’d refined what she’d already learned as the only girl among so many boys about riding and weapons, stealth and skullduggery. He’d even taught her how to pick locks, a skill that had been useful more often than she cared to count.

  “You need to leave,” Moze said. “Before Lass comes looking.”

  As she’d had the same thought, Annabeth didn’t contradict him. She’d told Lassiter she’d be gone a week, half of which was already gone.

  “Any idea yet where his hideout is?”

  “Besides down a rabbit hole?” she muttered. “I wish you’d just shoot him.”

  “Bring him where I can see him and I will.”

  She’d tried, but Lassiter was the most careful outlaw Annabeth had ever had the misfortune to meet. Not only was he paranoid about the location of his hideout, but he went nowhere without a posse; he avoided areas that might be a trap with the instinct of a hunted wolf. His men were loyal, or they were dead.

  A fate that awaited her if he ever found out who she really was.

  • • •

  Ethan woke from a dream of whispers in the night to more of the same. His wife was gone. The murmur of her voice from downstairs explained why.

  Ethan found his clothes and followed that murmur as he had once before. And as he had once before, Ethan hovered outside the examining room and listened to things he did not want to hear.

  “I wish you’d just shoot him.”

  “Bring him where I can see him and I will.”

  Rubbing his forehead, Ethan frowned. Were they talking about him?