by Lisa Plumley
“I’m worried about you, that’s all. Ever since…that day, you’ve been like a ghost. You haven’t spoken much, you haven’t eaten, and I know you haven’t slept. You’re up pacing half the night like a brigadier general.” Bonita shook her head. “My bedroom is right next to yours, remember? We set it up that way when we first came here, so we could enjoy our midnight chats.”
They had. Reminded of that, Rosamond gave a faint smile.
“That was nice, wasn’t it? You were so kind to me, right from the beginning.” Newly struck by that, Rosamond glanced at her friend. “Why was that anyway? You’re the most cynical person I know, Bonita. Why didn’t you suspect me of something?”
Maybe, she thought, she should take distrustfulness lessons from Bonita. Then she could be protected from heartache in the future. She’d never have to feel this kind of regret again.
“Pshaw.” Bonita waved. Briefly, she curled up to nuzzle Riley on her lap. “Nobody could suspect you of anything except audacity, Rosamond. You’ve got enough of that to spare.”
“That’s not really an answer. Back then, when Elijah was still alive to lie, steal and cheat, you didn’t even know me.”
A faraway glance. “I knew enough. I knew that you looked at a fallen woman like me and you didn’t flinch once. Unlike other people, you saw me as a person first and a working girl last.”
Rosamond didn’t understand. “You are a person first.” You’re a person who secretly likes puppies. “You’re my friend.”
“Well, I was grateful to you for that, that’s all.” Gruffly, Bonita cleared her throat. “Anyway, I was hoping you would get over that man of yours a lot faster than this—”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“—but since it’s obvious you’re just going to pine away for him until you’re scrawny as a stick, pale as a coal miner’s rump and exhausted enough to nap on a railway track—”
“Bonita!”
“I guess I’m just going to have to come clean.”
“Come clean?” Rosamond didn’t like the sound of that.
Her friend nodded. “I’m going to have to tell you what I did. So you can quit taking it all out on Miles Callaway.”
*
By the time Miles was able to sit himself upright, slowly and creakily in a ladderback chair in his quarters downstairs at Owen Cooper’s livery stable, he’d have thought he’d have a new perspective on things. But the fact was, he didn’t.
He didn’t have anything new except bumps and bruises. He didn’t have a second chance. He didn’t have a valise full of money. He didn’t have Rosamond to make his days complete.
What he did have, improbably, was Dylan Coyle for a nursemaid. Even now, Rosamond’s hard-nosed protector hunted around in Miles’s kitchen cabinets, looking for something.
Coyle uttered a curse word. “Don’t you have anything except crackers in here, Callaway? All I see are piles of hardtack.”
“I like crackers.” With dignity, Miles rested his head on the chair. Damnation, but settling in that chair had tired him out. He felt approximately as tough as Rosamond’s puppy.
“I like crackers, too, but there ought to be limits.” Coyle turned, hands near his gun belt. Upon glimpsing Miles, he issued a new and formidable frown. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I didn’t ask for a damn nursemaid.” If I had, I would have asked for Rosamond. Hellfire. He missed her the way he missed unlabored breathing and able walking. Miles clutched his bandaged broken ribs. “You can leave whenever you want.”
“That isn’t what you said the other day.”
The other day. In the livery stable. When Bouchard’s men had surrounded Miles. When they’d threatened him. When they’d readied their knives and their fists. When they’d knocked him to his knees with their first few blows, because Miles hadn’t cared about defending himself. When they’d gone on pounding away brutally at a defenseless man on the ground. When their ringleader had reared back, his heavy boot blocking the light from the nearest open doorway, and aimed it menacingly at Miles’s head.
When Dylan Coyle had stepped from the shadows and improbably put a stop to it all with that unexpected gun of his.
Bouchard’s roughnecks hadn’t been able to skedaddle fast enough. One of the knifemen had even left his weapon. Miles had watched, foggy with pain, as Coyle had pocketed that knife.
It was almost as if he’d wanted an inexplicable souvenir.
“Yeah.” Miles winced as he tried to get comfortable. His damaged insides made that tricky. Despite the pain, he managed a sarcastic grin. “It turns out, coldhearted thugs get pretty excited about being dared to issue a beating.”
A grunt. “That wasn’t smart.” Coyle kept rummaging around.
“I didn’t have what they wanted.” Now I don’t have anything. Not even money. “Besides, it didn’t matter anyway.”
“It did matter. A pinch.” Unceremoniously, Coyle clattered a bowl of cold tinned beans onto the table beside Miles. He glared at him, all but challenging him to eat them. Surprisingly, he grinned. “That dare of yours is what made me want to help you.”
Miles disagreed. He shook his head. “You helped me because Rosamond made you do it. She sent you to protect me.”
He felt awash with love for her at the very thought.
He was a certifiable fool. No doubt about it.
Coyle tilted his head curiously. “Is that what you think?”
“That’s the only explanation.” Miles ignored the beans. He didn’t care about getting better or stronger. He might never care about anything again, the way he was feeling these days. If not for Coyle—and for the later arrival of Owen Cooper—Miles might have bled to death beside that big black mare’s stall and not given a damn. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
“Not enough time, apparently.” Coyle gestured. “Eat.”
Miles refused, still bothered by what Dylan had said.
“You were there when those knucks jumped me because Rosamond made you do it,” Miles insisted. “That’s why you helped me.” Back when Rosamond still cared if I was alive or dead.
“I was there because Mrs. Dancy hired me to follow you. I happened to follow you to the stable, just like I was paid to do. I was supposed to find out who you might be working with. And why.” Looking exasperated and tough—despite that startling revelation—Coyle jammed a spoon into Miles’s grasp. He waited impatiently for Miles to start shoveling in beans. “Did you really think Rosamond needed a former Pinkerton man to watch her back door?”
Halfway toward digging into the beans—if that’s what would make Dylan shut up—Miles went still. He had to admit…
“You have a point there.” Then, “Rosamond didn’t trust me?”
Coyle actually laughed. “You’re offended? That takes a lot of nerve, considering what Mrs. Dancy suspected you were up to.”
“I wasn’t up to anything,” Miles said mulishly. Except falling harder, faster and ever more foolishly for Rose.
“You got all that money from someplace,” Coyle insisted with typical nonchalance. “It didn’t fall from the sky.”
“That money was a means to an end. I didn’t ‘earn’ it, not the way Bouchard wanted me to. I never intended to do that. Not to Rose.” Miles felt too tired and too broken to go into this. “The money’s gone now anyway. That’s what I told Bouchard’s men, and it’s what I’m telling you. If you don’t believe me—”
“I don’t believe in much of anything. Except keeping my word.” Coyle strode across Miles’s clothing-strewn quarters. He stopped to examine the bandages and medicine and laudanum Doc Finney had left after his visit, seeming oddly adept with those items. With a new wave of apparent frustration, Coyle put down a bandage. “At least I had the integrity to do underhand work for somebody who deserved it.”
For Rose. Miles understood…and couldn’t really blame her. He would have been justifiably suspicious of himself, too. He hadn’t been working for Bouchard,
but he had taken that money from him. Rosamond had been correct to suspect him.
He couldn’t really be surprised she’d hired Dylan to find out more about Miles’s dealings. Rosamond might be kind, loving and capable of making him giddy when they were together beneath a coverlet, but she was hardly a helpless innocent.
She was resilient. She was capable. She was smart.
She was also justifiably infuriated and hurt by him. Not that Miles didn’t have a few legitimate complaints of his own. He did. Rosamond hadn’t exactly been a model of trustworthiness herself. Since the day he’d arrived in Morrow Creek, Rosamond had had him drugged, searched and knocked out. She’d misled him and beguiled him. Worst of all, she’d made him believe that she loved him back.
Rosamond was hardly blameless in all this, Miles reminded himself harshly. She had to have known how he felt.
Even though he hadn’t distinctly explained his feelings for her, she had to have known about them. His unrequited love for Rosamond was plastered all over him, like bandages and ointment.
Another grunt from Coyle broke Miles’s reverie. He glanced up, spoon still in hand, to see the security man frowning.
If Coyle was trying to prod him into confessing…
“I never spied for Bouchard,” Miles felt compelled to clarify. “I never intended to. I needed money, that’s all. Money to find Rosamond.” Something awful occurred to him. “Did you tell her I was working for him?” Coyle must have done, given everything that had happened. “You miserable—”
“I didn’t tell her anything. She’s got eyes of her own. As soon as that citified bastard showed up, she could see—”
“I’m not the one who brought him here!” Miles said. “I tried to throw him off the trail. He must have had me followed.”
“A beginner like you?” A slight grin quirked the security man’s mouth. “Hell, you probably couldn’t help being followed.”
While delivering that offhanded insult, Coyle didn’t so much as look up at him. He was busy checking his guns. That was a habit of his, Miles had observed over the past days.
“Go on.” Miles gave a grumpy wave, still upset to know that Rose hadn’t really trusted him. “Beat a man when he’s down.”
“I’m not the one keeping you down. You’re doing a mighty fine job of that all on your own.” Dylan’s tone remained light. “All I can say is, women like Mrs. Dancy don’t come around every day. If I ever had a chance with her—”
“I’ll break your legs if you try anything.”
Coyle flashed a grin. “Then you do still care about her?”
Disgruntled at the man’s shrewd tone, Miles looked away. He did care. But he didn’t want to. What was the point in caring when there was nothing he could do about it?
He’d already tried everything. He’d loved her. He’d lost.
“Not ready to admit it? Fine. Your loss.” Coyle tucked away his gun with a practiced whirl of his fingers. He didn’t seem to notice Miles’s attentiveness to that inimitable gesture. “All I’m saying is, if I had a chance with a good woman like Mrs. Dancy, I’d crawl on my hands and knees to claim it.”
“I would have to crawl on my hands and knees,” Miles joked, wanting this uncomfortable conversation over with. “My legs don’t work right on account of all the kicking I took.”
Coyle wasn’t amused. “You don’t know what you’re throwing away.” His jaw tightened. “It’s a rare thing, having a woman who knows you clean through. A woman who loves you, all the same.”
New insight struck Miles. “A woman like you had…once?”
For the first time, Dylan stood on the defensive. Despite his gun belt and his tough stance, he seemed almost vulnerable.
If Miles hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it could happen. Dylan Coyle…made defenseless by love?
Or by the loss of it, Miles considered, and felt new commiseration for the man’s struggles. After all, Coyle had lingered there with him for days, caring for an injured not-quite-friend he barely knew. He was a good man. Or he was trying to be. Either way, he kept too much to himself to tell.
Coyle muttered a swearword. His aura of vulnerability vanished, tucked away behind a frown and another hard look.
“If I’d known you were going to footle around like a damn idiot,” he said sternly, “I would have let you get kicked to death.”
Miles didn’t believe it. “I’m glad you didn’t. Thank you.”
“Thank me by not being a nitwit. Go see Mrs. Dancy. Make things right with her. Do it before it’s too late.”
“That’s impossible.” Miles regarded him closely. “But maybe you ought to take your own advice. That’s what I’m thinking.”
He didn’t know much about Coyle’s past.
An instant later, he realized he wasn’t going to, either.
“Maybe you ought to mind your own damn business.”
All at once, Miles wasn’t sure if Dylan Coyle was pretending to have had a grand, long-lost love or if he really had found someone to give his heart to…and then had it stomped to pieces while he watched. Studying the man’s enigmatic expression now, Miles reckoned it could have been either one.
“It doesn’t matter,” Miles maintained. “Rosamond won’t have me. I tried to explain over and over. She wouldn’t listen.”
“Then you’re doing it wrong.”
“If I weren’t wrecked and broken, I’d punch you for that.”
“So…you’re giving up,” Coyle said. “You’re done, then.”
“You make it sound unreasonable. It damn well isn’t.”
He had his pride, Miles knew. He had his reputation.
No Callaway man had ever tried to woo a woman and failed. Miles had learned that legend from his father. He believed it.
Casting a final warning glance at Miles’s beans, Coyle put on his hat. He tugged it down low, then nodded. “I’ve got things to do. Don’t stay out of bed too long. Don’t forget to eat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
That feisty rejoinder earned Miles a glare that would have flattened a lesser man—a lesser man who cared about living, at least. Miles didn’t care about much of anything just then.
“Eat a damn spoonful of beans, or I’m not coming back,” Coyle told him. “Until now, you’ve been too hurt to complain about helping. I felt obliged for Mrs. Dancy’s sake, too. It’s what she would have wanted. But I’m not in the business of giving out charity.” His face grew flinty. “I won’t put myself out—not for a man who won’t even watch out for himself.”
“Then I guess you’ll be finding a new way to spend your afternoons,” Miles retorted, “because I intend to wallow here in misery.” So far, not even Daisy Cooper’s commiserating molasses cookies had helped drag Miles from the slump he was in.
Then he realized the rest of what Coyle had just said.
“Why did you feel obliged for Rosamond’s sake? Why would you think it’s what she would have wanted?” Miles wanted to know. “I already told you, she doesn’t care about me.”
Coyle gave him a perceptive look. “You don’t think so?”
“You do think so?” Idiotically, a spark of hope ignited Miles’s battered-up spirit. “You think she still cares?”
“I think,” Coyle said, “you’ve got thinking to do.”
Then he set his boots in motion, crossing Miles’s newly messy quarters and leaving him behind to wonder and heal and eat and fret and—damn it all—to start in hoping, all over again.
*
“What do you mean, what you did?” Rosamond gave Bonita a cautious look, surprised by her outburst. “The only things I’m ‘taking out’ on Mr. Callaway are the things he’s responsible for.” Like breaking my heart. And destroying my faith.
He was definitely responsible for those things.
“Well…” Bonita shifted her gaze to the unlit fireplace. Inscrutably, she went on stroking Riley. The puppy all but purred with contentment in her arms. “First off, there’s the
matter of that telegram. I guess I ought to get that off my chest right away. You’ll be wanting to know, I suppose.”
“Telegram?” Perplexed, Rosamond considered what that might mean. “You mean the telegram I threatened Mr. Bouchard with?”
Bonita knew all about the confrontation she’d had with her former employer at the front gate, of course. All the women in her household did. Thanks to Rosamond’s system of secret signals, Judah had managed to alert Bonita to clear everyone from the premises—a safeguard lest Arvid Bouchard become even meaner and more vengeful than Rosamond had feared he would.
After they’d all returned, Rosamond had had no choice but to explain a few things about her past. With all of her secrets out in the open, she and her “ladies” were now closer than ever.
Even if none of them quite blamed Miles as much as they ought to have done, as her longtime friends, for this mess.
In fact, some of them had even had the gall to stand up for him. That wasn’t counting the caterwauling the children had done when Rosamond had told them Miles would not be coming back. She sometimes doubted little Seamus O’Malley would ever forgive her.
“That’s the one.” Bonita nodded. “The telegram that’s going to give that bastard his rightful comeuppance. That one.”
At her friend’s merciless tone, Rosamond shook her head. “I didn’t send it, Bonita. It would have ruined him! Bouchard left, just like I wanted. It was only a threat. That’s all.”
“It was your secondary plan, and it was a good one.”
“Yes, but I didn’t send it! I only arranged for Savannah Corwin to send it from her station if I asked her to.” That was one of the things they’d discussed over tea at the Lorndorff the other day. Now, Rosamond tried to soothe Bonita. “I know you’d like to see Mr. Bouchard punished for what he did.” Truthfully, there was a part of Rosamond that would have liked that, too. “But no matter what I do to him, I can’t undo the past. All I can do is go forward. So I didn’t send that telegram.”
For a moment, the only sound was the clock ticking.
Then, “You didn’t send it. That don’t mean I didn’t.”
Rosamond stared at her. Bonita went on petting Riley.