I’d gone through everyone I knew and dismissed each one again when someone sat down next to me. I would need to get up soon, but my two sleepless nights were catching up to me. Now that I was sitting quietly, I could feel the slight jangling of my nerves beneath my skin, a physical craving for laudanum or morphine. If I concentrated, maybe I could recapture the sensation of floating the morphine gave me. A few minutes more and maybe I could fool my body into believing I didn’t need it, and fool my mind into believing I didn’t want it.
The person next to me shifted on the bench.
“Waiting for someone?”
My heart stopped, but I kept my eyes closed. It wouldn’t have been the first time exhaustion played tricks on my mind. I’d fallen asleep on the bench. It was a dream.
The man placed his hand over mine, lightly, like the touch of a feather, before intertwining his fingers through mine like so many times before. I kept my eyes closed, determined to make the dream last.
“Laura.”
A sob broke through me and my head fell forward. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. My body trembled from happiness and relief. He guided my head to his shoulder and the familiar scent of horse, leather, and sweat hit me. I inhaled deeply, imbued anew with a sense of safety and security missing since being separated from Kindle. I laughed between my sobs, lifted my head from his shoulder, opened my eyes, and found myself holding hands with a one-eyed priest.
CHAPTER
25
When you sat down on the bench, I was trying to decide how to spend the next twenty-four hours until my train.” I rested my chin on Kindle’s bare chest. “Unsurprisingly, spending it in bed with a priest never occurred to me.”
Kindle had long since lost the cassock and collar, so there was only a slight sense of sinfulness being in bed with him.
He ran his hand up and down my arm. “What were your choices?”
“I didn’t have any. With the exception of Rosemond, no one knows I’m leaving. And almost everyone would be angry if I did. A couple will try to kill me.”
“You do have a way of making friends, Slim.”
“Hmm. Tell me everything that’s happened to you since you walked out of our cabin on the riverboat.”
I’d taken Kindle to a new hotel on the edge of the business district where I would be less likely to be recognized. Despite the cassock, with his erect military carriage, eye patch, and beard, Kindle turned heads. Which, now that he’d been in so many papers with this visage, meant he would be recognized as William Kindle, accomplice to the at-large Murderess.
“Lyman turned me in, the bastard. The Army took me to Jefferson Barracks and threw me into the brig. The officers’ brig, so it was nicer than the three-by-six cell I had at Fort Richardson. And I waited. They let me stew for a couple of days before questioning me. It started off with questions about Fort Richardson, my orders, going after Cotter Black, the escape.”
“You didn’t tell them Harriet helped.”
“Of course not. I told them Little Stick did it. He’s dead, and beyond their jurisdiction.”
“What about the bounty hunters?”
“They asked about a few men who disappeared after going in search of us. But the Army didn’t seem too interested in them. What they were interested in was you.”
“Me? The Army?”
“That’s what I thought. It took them a few days, hours and hours of interrogation, before they finally got around to you. I told them you were dead. Had died in Indian Territory.”
“They didn’t believe you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t cry, did you?”
“No,” Kindle said, as if it were a ridiculous question.
“A little emotion and they might have believed you.”
“I’ll save my emotion for private.” He grasped my chin and kissed me in that slow, deep way that made my body burn with desire from head to toe. “I’ve missed you.”
“I suppose I am preferable company to being alone in a jail cell.”
He lifted my bandaged hand gently, but I hissed against the pain. “Can it be fixed?”
“I don’t think it matters.” I told him of my subpar work on Thomas’s amputated foot and about my fear of working on Lily Diamond. “I can practice as a physician, but surgery is lost to me.”
“I doubt it.”
I looked at my hand. “Even I have limitations, William. I suppose I will have to make peace with teaching others to be brilliant doctors instead of being one myself.”
“Nonsense. You’re one of the most tenacious people I’ve ever known.”
“Is that a compliment?”
He kissed my hand gently. “Do you have some laudanum in that carpetbag?”
“No, I used it on my last patient, thank God. I’ve come to crave it, like my father did before he died. I don’t trust myself.”
“How are you feeling?”
There had been only the barest of hesitations on either of our parts when I told him my dark days had begun. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had never imagined intercourse would lessen my pain. “I’ll be fine,” I said. I didn’t know if either of us would be eager to use intercourse as a monthly remedy, though the thought of suffering through the pain every month for the next twenty years was enough to make me take a knife to my stomach.
“I can’t believe you broke Rosemond’s nose.”
“Do you blame me?”
“No.”
I’d couched the story of Rosemond’s broken nose as my reaction to finding out she’d lied to me, which was true. Rosemond’s romantic preferences, and her relationship with Portia, were not my secret, or news, to tell.
I straddled him and ran my good hand through his chest hair, proving to myself this wasn’t a dream. I traced the scar on his cheek, hidden partially by his graying stubble, rubbed my thumb on the cleft in his chin, bent down to kiss him. “I cannot believe you are real.”
“Do I need to prove it to you again?”
“Cheeky man.” I ran my hand lightly over his eye patch but didn’t lift it. Kindle rarely let me see him without it. It didn’t matter that I was a doctor. I was his wife first, and I suspected he was vain about the gaping black hole on the left side of his face. I hadn’t fallen in love with his eyes, and I thought he was as handsome and appealing now as when we met. But a part of me grieved for the unscarred face he had when we fell in love. His deformity was a constant reminder of my culpability in everything that had happened for the last year.
“I’m glad you’ve resolved everything with the Army. Being on my own for the last weeks has made me realize as long as the bounty is on my head, people are going to either turn me in for the money or try to use me for their own ends. I’m never going to be free of it. No matter where we go.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true, and you know it. With your eye patch and scar, there’s no possibility we can blend in.”
Kindle studied me for a while. He sighed. “I hoped we could have more time to ignore the rest of the world.”
“I can’t, Kindle. I have to confront this.”
He disentangled himself from me, rose from the bed, and walked across the room to where his coat had been hastily discarded. I bit my bottom lip as I drank the sight of him in. The dark hair on his pale legs. The scar on his left shoulder from the surgery I performed at Fort Richardson. The scar on his right thigh from the surgery I performed amid the smoldering wreckage of my wagon train. The slender fingers I longed to watch dance across piano keys. My eyes slowly made their way to his sensual mouth, which was turned up into the same self-satisfied smirk I saw on his face after the first time we made love. “Can I walk back to the bed or would you like for me to stand here a little longer?”
I nodded to the paper he held in his hand. “If you’re going to read to me, you can do it from there just as well.”
He raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
“Stop pretending you don’t love when I og
le you,” I said.
He unfolded the paper. “It’s a letter from Pope.”
“That’s one way to douse my desire.”
“Poor Henry would be crushed to hear you say it.”
“Don’t be silly. I love Henry. But I don’t want to think about him while I’m staring at you.”
“You’ll feel guilty soon. Turns out Henry decided to put a portion of his royalties for Sawbones into hiring someone to investigate your case.”
“What?” I jumped from the bed and snatched the letter from Kindle and read it aloud.
“‘Major,
“‘I should have known you’d go and get yourself caught as soon as you emerged from your hidey-hole. There aren’t enough’”—my mouth twisted in the effort to not laugh—“‘one-eyed pirates in the world for you to be able to blend in successfully, for long. Your grave and taciturn demeanor probably doesn’t help, though those of us who know you well know you’re a cuddly little kitten deep down.’”
A laugh burst from me. Happiness, relief, and hope all rolled into one. “Henry would never have the courage to say that to you in person.”
“I know.”
“‘From the accounts I’ve read in the papers here—and we know how accurate papers can be—Laura is in the wind somewhere. I’ll confess to be more worried about her fate than yours. With the reward at $1,000, the clamor to find her will be even higher than in Indian Territory. Of course, this is Laura we’re talking about; a more capable, intelligent woman I’ve never met. But we know it’s only a matter of time before she is apprehended. When you rejoin her with your dark looks and eye patch, her capture will be more imminent still. So it falls on me to clear her name in New York City so you two can have some semblance of a life.
“‘After the publication of Sawbones I was feted by every literary society in town. I came across dozens of people who knew Catherine Bennett, and they were only too willing to give their accounts of her, good and bad. There isn’t enough space in this letter to detail them all, but I knew enough of Laura from my own experience to gauge that at least half were outright lies. But dispersed in the chaff were dribs and drabs of insight into the story surrounding George Langton’s murder and Laura’s flight. The short version: few people believe Laura murdered Langton, and no one wants her to hang. No one felt the need to come forward since Laura was gone, safe from the noose. They think a life of adventure in the West is preferable to life in the city. I’ll confess Sawbones probably cemented the idea of a grand adventure. We know better.
“‘I’ve lost access to the people most concerned with the case. Turns out, fame is a fickle friend. The next installment of Laura’s adventures should open some more doors. In the meantime, I’ve engaged the services of a quite unique investigator. We are determined to clear Catherine Bennett’s name, so you and Laura can live in peace.’”
I looked up at Kindle. “We need to go back.”
He nodded slowly. “Not until we hear from Pope.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“I know.” Kindle opened his leather satchel and pulled out a plain gray robe with one hand and a rosary with the other.
I shook my head and chuckled at the ridiculous turns my life had taken. “You do know there’s a good chance God will strike me dead when I put that thing on.”
Kindle tossed the robe onto a chair and hung the rosary on the dresser mirror. “If I didn’t get struck down for pretending to be a priest, you won’t for pretending to be a nun.” He reached back into his bag and removed a small holstered derringer.
“My, my. You’ve thought of everything.” I pulled the pearl-handled gun out.
“Careful. It’s loaded.” I shot him a withering look. The holster strap was thick and short. “For your leg. Your calf. Here.” He knelt down and put my boot on. He ran his finger along the top of the knife scabbard and looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Men aren’t the only ones who can hide knives in their boots.”
“Where is your knife?”
“In Drummond’s back, last I saw.”
Kindle chuckled and shook his head. He buckled the holster around my calf.
“How does that feel?”
The holster rested on the top of my boot and was snug enough on my leg that I could pull the gun quickly, but not so tight as to be distracting. “Like a second skin.”
He ran his hands up the length of my legs, peppering my lower abdomen with kisses. When he stood, his eye wasn’t the only part of his body filled with desire.
I took him in my hand. “Is this from me wearing a gun or the idea of me in a nun’s habit?”
Kindle’s hands stroked my hips and he pulled me against him. “It’s from being away from you for too long. Once we put our disguises on I won’t be able to look at you like this. Or touch you like this.”
“Then we shall put off the ruse for as long as possible.”
CHAPTER
26
Entering the hotel as a woman and leaving as a nun meant I had to sneak down the back stairs and around the hotel to meet Kindle on the street. A man carrying a sack of feed on his shoulder looked askance at me. I smiled, nodded, and blessed him. I was trying to fix my face into a serious expression when I rounded the corner and saw Kindle standing on the front porch of the hotel, talking to someone. When the man came into view, my smile had no trouble disappearing.
“Lyman.”
John Lyman hadn’t bothered trying to blend in to the rough-and-tumble West. The riverboat gambler wore a navy coat over tan breeches and waistcoat with a faint navy pinstripe running through. His fawn-colored, flat-brimmed felt hat sat at a jaunty angle and the thin mustache on his upper lip quivered in amusement. He laughed. “Well, I’ll be Goddamned.”
I glanced around the street, hoping no one heard the profanity. Across the street, a woman’s step faltered. I smiled and nodded to her. “Keep your voice down,” I said.
“Look at her, taking to the disguise like a duck to water.” Lyman scrutinized me in such a way I knew his thoughts would get him struck down if I were a real nun. The inappropriate proposition he’d made to me on the Mississippi came rushing back to my mind. My face burned with embarrassment. He raised his eyebrows and licked his lips. Satisfied we’d been thinking of the same thing, he moved his assessment to Kindle. “You, on the other hand, are much too stern. Even for a priest. You look like you could murder someone.”
“Just you.”
Lyman grinned. “I always liked you, Kindle.”
Lyman held a small gun to Kindle’s side and for a moment, I thought it was mine. But no; my gun was snugly strapped to my lower left leg.
With his free hand, Lyman patted Kindle’s chest and beneath his arm. He smiled, reached inside Kindle’s coat, and removed his gun. Kindle glared at Lyman but didn’t move.
“Why don’t we have breakfast? I worked up quite the appetite listening to you two fuck all night,” Lyman said. My head jerked around. “I took the room next door. Frightfully thin walls.”
“You’re disgusting.”
Lyman shrugged, took me by the elbow, and shoved Kindle’s gun in my side. “The hotel clerk recommended a place where we could have some privacy. Down the alley there. Kindle, lead the way. We’ll be right behind you.”
“We’ll be recognized. I’m well known in town,” I said.
“Your disguise is better than you think.”
Lyman directed Kindle down an alley to where the new wooden buildings switched to tents and pointed out one of the dirtier ones, and we entered. A swarthy man with a greasy apron tied around his waist said, “Bienvenidos, amigos. ¿Comida? ¿Café?”
“Yes, gracias,” Lyman said. He leaned toward me and whispered, “That’s the only Spanish I know.”
We sat on camp chairs around a rickety table in the back corner of the tent. Through the open flap at the rear of the tent a short, fat woman with two thick braids of hair hanging down her chest cooked over an open fire. The man brought a pot of coffee and
three tin mugs. “¿Desayuno por tres?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Lyman said. “Gracias.”
The Mexican woman cracked eggs into a skillet, stirred them around expertly, and left them to cook. She removed a ball of dough from a cloth-covered pan and tossed it back and forth between her hands until it became a flat circle, which she tossed on the grate covering the fire.
Lyman poured our coffee, sat back, and sipped his. He grimaced and set the mug on the table. He nodded and smiled at us. “It really is good to see you both.”
“What do you want, Lyman?” Kindle said.
“Always in a hurry, Kindle.”
“I don’t like listening to hucksters.”
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“I know it’s coming.”
“We have a lot of miles to talk.”
“You’re taking me back,” I said.
Lyman nodded. “Obviously.”
“I asked Rosemond why you didn’t follow.”
Lyman’s face lit up. “How is Rosemond? I should thank her for stealing you out from under me. A thousand dollars sounds much better than five hundred. How did she ever get you to come out here with her?”
“She told me Kindle asked her to help me. To get me away from you.”
Lyman nodded as if impressed. “I always knew Rosemond was a master manipulator, but I didn’t think you would be so easily taken in. It’s a shame she didn’t want to marry me. We would have been a formidable couple.”
“Didn’t want to marry you? That wasn’t the story I heard.”
“She told you her story?”
“Yes.”
Lyman narrowed his eyes at me. “And you weren’t repulsed?”
“By which part? You pimping her out to officers during the war? Or abandoning her after?”
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