If they met again he’d be ready for them, if he had to bind himself up like one of those dead Egyptian kings he’d read about. Given better odds—say three to one instead of five to one—he liked his chances just fine. He wouldn’t go looking for a fight, though. Not this time. He had places to go and things to do, and he’d already wasted two days. Or was it three now?
A tap on the door was followed by a soft voice inquiring if he needed assistance. “I’m all right,” he said, lying through his teeth. If he still had any teeth. He could feel with his tongue, but that hurt, too. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Sleepy,” he added, hoping she would go away. From the way his head felt, he must’ve made intimate contact with every rock this side of the Eastern Divide.
Sleep. He’d give himself a day. Two, at most, and then he would find his horse and get the hell out of here, with or without his clothes. The lady could go on talking to her chickens from now till they started talking back, it was no skin off his teeth.
If he still had any teeth.
Chapter Five
An hour later Eleanor tapped on the door again. She’d held off as long as she dared, knowing he needed his rest. But what if he weren’t resting? What if he had passed out? Or worse…
When no answer was forthcoming, she opened the door and peered inside. He was sound asleep, breathing slowly through his swollen lips, but breathing. Evidently exhausted, he had slept through the night, the following morning and most of the afternoon while she’d waited anxiously to see if he was going to live or die. If only there was some way to tell if a body was bleeding internally.
There probably was, only she was no physician—just a third-grade teacher in a small school on the outskirts of a big city.
He was cleaner. At least his hands and face were cleaner. Now she intended to tackle the rest of him. His scalp, for instance. His hair was caked with dried blood, but when she’d tried to examine an obvious lump to see the extent of the damage, he’d started cursing. And then tried to apologize, which had made her feel even worse.
“I know you hurt,” she’d told him earlier when she’d come to collect his ruined underwear to wash it and see if any of it could be used again. “I’ll try to be as easy as possible, but I need to look at this place on your head.”
Scalp wounds bled copiously, she had read that somewhere, but to determine if his wound was more than scalp deep she was going to have to cut away his hair. That would mean another battle. She hadn’t forgotten the last time she’d come at him with a pair of scissors.
“If the rest of you is as filthy as the parts I’ve already bathed,” she told the sleeping man, “your cuts and scratches are probably already infected. With or without your cooperation, sir, I’m going to have to clean you up and put something on your injuries before it’s too late.”
There, let him think about that.
She’d brought in a basin of warm water, two towels and a chunk of soap. Carefully, she set the basin on the bedside table. She would have to work quickly so as not to tire him further. “You need to get well and get out of here,” she muttered under her breath. “Because if it was the Millers who did this to you, and if they follow you here, I’m not sure I can protect you. I’ll try, of course, but they won’t listen to me, they never do. Hold still now, I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
Lowering the afghan so that it covered him from his waist to below his knees, she washed his chest and just beneath. He wasn’t particularly hairy, but a thin streak of silky black hair circled his flat nipples and dissected his torso, disappearing under the flowered purple cover.
“They took Devin’s rifle, did I tell you that? If it were just one man, I might fight him off with a skillet, but if they think you’re here, they’ll come trooping up my hill like a—like I don’t know what. If they’re drinking, things could get out of hand. I’m going to have to turn you over now. I’ll be as easy as I can.”
He gasped during the process, but he didn’t resist. She had sense enough to apply pressure to his shoulder and his hip, in case his ribs were injured. She was pretty certain they were, as there were two fairly deep cuts on his side. A doctor would probably stitch him up, but that was far beyond her skills. If she even dared try she might faint. The best she could do was wash him, smear on some of Miss Lucy’s turpentine and bear-grease salve and bind him up.
But first she needed to finish bathing him while the water was still warm. The last thing he needed on top of everything else was to catch a chill.
She managed to slide one arm under his body to shift him so that she could see his full back, but when she tried to turn him toward her he cried out.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, frozen in a backbreaking position. What now? Finish turning him over or forget about his back? If he had any cuts there they might fester unless she could get to them and treat them. She had already torn a sheet into strips, intending to bind his ribs, but unless he allowed her to move him again, she couldn’t even do that much.
“I’m sorry, this has to be done,” she said firmly. Steeling herself to ignore his groans, she managed to roll him over onto his stomach. He muttered curses; she mumbled apologies. “Actually, you’re not even bleeding here, only bruised. But…” In the process of rolling him over, the afghan had pulled away from his body. Now her gaze swept over his narrow buttocks.
The scar was an old one. It was none of her business, she told herself as she applied a warm, soapy cloth to his shoulders. My God, what on earth…?
She took one more look at the peculiar scar, but except for the parts that needed attention, she avoided looking at his naked body again. One way or another, she vowed silently as she gently cleansed what looked like a knife wound on his thigh, she vowed that whoever had done this cowardly thing would pay for their sins if she had to blow up Devin’s hill and every last tunnel that riddled it.
“In fact, it might be just the diversion we need to make our escape,” she said thoughtfully.
Facing the wall to hide his embarrassment, Jed frowned. The woman rattled on like a dried gourd in a high wind, but…
Our escape? He knew damned well where he was going, and the last thing he needed was a traveling companion.
“The trouble is,” she confided earnestly as she poured liquid fire in his open wounds, “I don’t know a blessed thing about dynamite, do you?”
“Dynamite?” He managed to open one eye just as she stepped away from the bed. That was a bit extreme, even for him. All he wanted was to find McGee and get the hell out of here. He’d leave Satan to mete out any punishment due.
He managed to roll onto his back again unassisted, pulling the tapestry throw over his privates. She looked at him worriedly and asked if he was hurting.
“No,” he lied. Nowhere except for his ribs, his head, his back and his left ankle. Except for roughly two-thirds of his body, it didn’t hurt a bit.
“There, you see? You’re getting better already.” The smile on her face made her look almost pretty. Not as pretty as Vera, but pretty in a different way.
“Now, I’ve decided to bind up your ribs in case any of them are broken,” she announced. “I have the strips right here, but if you’re tired, we can wait a little while until you’ve had time to rest up from your bath.”
“Mm.” Meaning, just go away and leave me for the next few years, I’ve had about all I can take for one day.
She looked as if she wanted to say something. He didn’t want to hear it, whatever it was, but as exhausted as he was by the last half hour’s activities, he owed her that much. She was trying her best to help him, and she didn’t know him from Adam.
“Name,” he said. His voice sounded like rusty water poured over gravel. “Jed—Blackstone.”
Her face brightened until it was…not exactly pretty, but nice. For the first time he noticed that her eyes were all the colors of the forest—green, brown, gold and gray. She said, “How do you do, Mr. Blackstone, my name is Eleanor Mayne Scarborough. At least, I wa
s a Scarborough before I married Devin Miller.”
Ask a simple question, Jed thought, amused in spite of feeling worse than the floor of a cattle car after a five-hundred-mile trip. He hadn’t even asked her name…although he didn’t mind knowing. If he had to deal with the woman for a day or two longer, it might help to know what to call her.
“Could I ask you a personal question?” Holding the basin on one hip, the towels on the other arm, she tilted her head. “How on earth did you get that odd scar on your, um—posterior? I couldn’t help but notice when you were—when I was—that is… Well, it looks just like two snakes, side by side.”
He closed his eyes, feeling fresh anger sweep over him from something that had happened eight years before.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Well, I do, of course—living here all alone for so long, I’ve lost every sense of decorum I ever possessed.”
He didn’t know about decorum—he’d have to look that one up—but she hadn’t lost her sense of kindness, Jed thought as he watched the blushing woman scurry away. If she hadn’t been there—if she hadn’t been the one to find him, he might not have made it through the night. As it was, he had not only made it, he was going to damn well recover in time to get his money from that Asheville bank and shove it down Sam Stanfield’s throat.
Yeah, he was. Just as soon as he could breathe without lightning striking every vital organ in his body. The binding would help, but it would need to be tight to do any good. He was pretty sure his ribs were only cracked, not broken, but he wasn’t about to risk any sudden moves.
As for his ankle, it was probably only sprained. He could already move his foot, although it hurt like hell. The truth was, he didn’t know anything for sure. With a horse or a cow, he could tell at a glance, but when it came to his own anatomy—not to mention a few other subjects—there were still some crater-size holes in his education. He’d managed to patch up a few of them, but he kept tripping over new ones.
She’d been a schoolteacher. She’d told him that while he’d been pretending to sleep. Taught little kids. Just his luck to fall into the hands of a good-looking woman who could see right through what little polish he’d been able to achieve to the big, dumb oaf underneath.
Not that he was in any condition to take advantage of her, even if he’d wanted to. He’d been too busy since George had wired him about the threatened foreclosure to enjoy his usual pursuits, what with handling all the red tape concerned with any land transfer and making sure the deal was kept secret until he could pay off Stanfield. The land agent had insisted on having a paper record dating back to when God invented dirt. Never in all his days had Jed signed his name on so many documents, most of which he could barely read.
But he’d taken his own sweet time scanning all those big words in the fine print as if he knew just what each one meant. Scare ’em out of trying to put anything over on him. Every now and then one of the black-suited men would harrumph and spit toward the cuspidor, meaning, “Get on with it, you dumb-head.”
But Jed hadn’t allowed himself to be rushed. Instead, he had stared at them, lifted one eyebrow and gone back to reading a bunch of meaningless words on the contract. Then he had signed his name—Jedediah O. Blackstone—right above where someone had printed it out in neat black letters. Added a few extra flourishes for good measure.
The O stood for nothing. He didn’t have a middle name, but that was nobody’s business but his own.
“Jed? Are you still awake?”
“Mm,” he said. He’d been awake more than he’d been asleep almost from the first, only he’d let her think he was sleeping. Woman could talk the hind leg off a three-legged jackass. He wasn’t up to answering any questions, so he’d pretended to be out of it. But now that he’d sized up the situation, he needed some answers. Needed to know the best way off this damned anthill, and what the odds were of running into the same stinking redneck weasels again. If the widow Miller could be believed, there was no way down without wading through the middle of their nest.
“Well,” she said, standing beside the bed, so close he could smell her woman’s scent. Smell whatever it was she’d been cooking that smelled like vanilla. “I’m making you some bread pudding. It’s soft enough so you won’t have to chew. And some soup.”
He said “Mm” again, because the truth was, he was afraid if he tried to open his mouth, his lips would split wide-open. He hated the taste of blood, he purely did. Tasted it a few too many times in his younger, rowdier days.
“Well,” she said again, and stood there, the look of bright expectation slowly fading.
“Thank you,” he managed without doing any damage to his swollen mouth. He owed her that much at least. Hell of a lot more, only it would have to wait. First thing he needed to do was get back on his feet, find a way out of here, and settle with Stanfield. He had a long-standing score to settle with that gentleman.
But that would have to wait. First he had to pull George’s acorns out of the fire.
“Well,” she said for the third time. She was tapping her foot like a feisty rattler, but he didn’t think there was any venom in her. “If you’re really awake now, we can start getting you well, and then we’ll talk about how we’re going to get away from here.”
Eleanor forced herself not to hover. Once he was awake enough to take a bit of nourishment she could find out more about him. Things such as what he was doing here, where he’d been going, and how long he thought it might be before he could—before they could travel.
As frustrating as it was to have him sleeping away the hours, she had to admit that after months of stupefying boredom, she felt vibrantly alive again. Standing beside the bed, she continued to study the man. She suspected he wasn’t always asleep when she looked in on him, but if it suited him to pretend, there wasn’t much she could do about it. Both his eyes were closed again. For a minute he’d opened one of them. She thought some of the swelling might be going down, but the color had spread all the way up to his hairline.
“I’ve come to bind your ribs,” she said, watching to see if he reacted. She’d tried before, but he’d groaned and moaned so much she’d offered to wait. “The sooner we get it over with, the sooner you can go back to sleep.”
She waited to see if he reacted. There, that was a twitch, she was sure of it. Almost like a wink, only both his eyes were still shut.
He sighed. “I give up,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”
The only trouble was, he was lying down. She needed him standing, or at least sitting up. Evidently, he knew it, because he rolled over onto one side unassisted, braced himself with his arms, and pushed to a seated position. There was no disguising the fact that he was in pain. She winced for him, but she refused to put it off any longer. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner you can move without its hurting so much.”
I hope, she added silently. Taking one end of a strip of sheeting, she held it against his collarbone and said, “Hold this.”
It took longer than she’d expected, because she had never done it before. Never done anything even faintly like it. By the third strip she’d learned how to secure the ends until she came to the very last one. After a moment of hesitation, she tucked it under, her fingers pressing into the flesh of his waist. While she’d been wrapping him she had run her hands over his torso, front, sides and back, to see if anything was obviously out of place. She could tell by the way he breathed that he was hurting. She’d apologized until he’d finally told her to just get on with it and leave him in peace.
She had two strips left over. The poor man was exhausted. She helped him down again, pulled the covers up over him and left him to recuperate. Closing the door, all but a crack in case he called out, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.
Mercy, she’d forgotten how pleasurable the feel of a man’s warm body could be. Had she ever felt that way about Devin’s body?
She honestly couldn’t remember. Probably not.
It had all been so new at the time. It had taken her nearly a year to get over her shyness, and by that time Devin had been more interested in digging for gold than he was in bedding his wife.
Absently stroking the cloth draped over her arm, she marveled at the salacious thoughts that had filled her mind as she’d reached around him again and again, so close she could feel his warm breath on her face. She wasn’t the kind of woman to lust after a man, especially not a stranger who was lying helpless in her bed, dependent on her for care and protection.
But she’d thought about him that way, oh yes, she had. Wondered what it would be like to slide her hands down over his chest and move them down over his buttocks….
Shameless. Demented. “That’s what comes of being a hermit. A hermitess,” she corrected.
“Mm?” Evidently he wasn’t yet asleep.
“Nothing,” she said through the crack in the door. “But if you’re still awake—that is, if you’re not too tired—we could have supper. I can have a tray ready in no time at all.”
She could? Using what, pray tell? Her larder wasn’t exactly brimming. She had used the last of her sugar to make a soft bread pudding, but it was barely a teacup full. Hardly a meal for a grown man. “I’ll be back in a little while. Try to get some rest.”
As he didn’t protest, she hurried away, worrying over what to cook that he could eat. It would have to be something soft. Soup, only soup took time, even if she’d had a good soup bone. Besides, she had learned with cousin Annie that trying to spoon soup into a patient who was lying flat in bed was a messy process, at best.
Less than an hour later she shouldered the door open and tiptoed inside with an enameled tray that had belonged to the mother she barely remembered. “Time to wake up,” she caroled softly. “Did I tell you I took care of my cousin? Not that cousin Annie needed binding, but I used to make soft bread pudding for her, too—and soup. All kinds of nutritious soups.”
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