“Hush,” she scolded, not even trying to hold back her own smile. “I know, I know, I probably told you a dozen times, but when nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes, there’s not a lot to talk about.”
He nodded, wondering how she ever got a comb through that mop of hers. He could still remember seeing his mother brush her long, iron-gray hair every morning before braiding it.
“Well, anyway, as I was saying, the first time I didn’t even know I was a prisoner. The next few times I tried to sneak past without anyone’s knowing it, but there’s always someone around doing something, even if it’s only throwing scraps to the hogs.” She scowled, obviously recalling her failed attempts. “I hated it,” she whispered, “I felt like a—a felon, being captured and brought back to my prison cell.”
And he thought he’d had a run of bad luck all those years ago? Compared to what she’d been forced to endure, he’d led a charmed life. At least he had once he’d grown up and had some of the wildness beaten out of him a time or two.
“You see, I didn’t think things through before. This time I did. That’s why this time I’m sure we can get away without being discovered. We’ll use the chickens.”
The chickens again. Carefully, he set his empty cup aside. Eleanor squared her shoulders. She was a pretty woman. A scowl didn’t take away from her prettiness, it only rearranged it. She said, “Of course, something could still go wrong. Some of the old folks are deaf as a post—they might not hear the ruckus.” As if she were blundering through the wilderness and suddenly came to a trail, she beamed. “But then, they wouldn’t hear us, either, would they? And as long as no one saw us—”
“You want to start at the beginning and tell me what your plan is? All I know is that it has something to do with chickens.”
Reaching for his dishes, she stacked them with her own. “Yes, well—I explained about the animals, didn’t I? I’m pretty sure I told you how Mr. Hooter tends the oxen for when there’s new ground to be broken or stumps to pull, and someone else keeps the mules they use to haul heavy loads. One of the older widows tends the milk cows because hers is the best pasture and she has five children to help with the milking and churning, and she trades milk and butter for other supplies. Several families keep hogs—it’s easier to feed them that way—but they all pool together when it’s time to slaughter, and—”
“The chickens?”
“Oh. Well, that’s the lovely part of my plan. You see, except for a laying hen or two, all the chickens are kept by this one family that happens to live on the far side of the settlement. There must be a hundred chickens there. They trade fryers for corn and milk and butter and whatever anyone has to trade, and that way, everyone gets what they need. It works out surprisingly well because there’s very little cash money available, only what Alaska gets when he sells a load of whiskey to outsiders, or Varnelle, when she sells seng—that’s ginseng—to the buying man who comes by once a month.”
Slowly, bracing himself against the pain, Jed leaned forward and laid a hand over her lips. “Eleanor. Stop. Now think back to the chickens.” Her eyes widened, but he held her gaze. “You said the chickens were going to help us get away. Would you mind explaining how?”
The wild urge came from nowhere—at least, nowhere that made sense—to replace his hand with his mouth. To kiss her until either she started making sense or he ceased to care.
Slowly, he removed his hand. He was hurting bad, but he refused to give in to pain. She took a deep breath and it occurred to him that she wasn’t quite as lacking as he’d first thought in the bosom department.
“Well,” she said. God knows, he thought, amused, where this was going, but he had nothing better to do than listen.
So he listened. “Dogs always bark at chickens. There are lots of dogs. There are lots of chickens.” She looked at him as if to say, Are you following all this?
He nodded.
“So if the chickens were to get loose, all the dogs would race over to the far side of the village, yapping their heads off. Everyone able to get out of bed would rush out to see what was wrong. They all do that, like when there’s a fire or something.”
God, tell me she’s not planning to burn them out, he thought.
“Then, while everyone’s trying to catch chickens and dogs, you and I will be racing down the hill to the old wagon road on the other side of the settlement on our way to one of the outlying farms, one that doesn’t belong to a Miller.”
He was silent for so long she probably thought she hadn’t made herself clear. Granted, it was a simple plan—but sometimes simple was best. She leaned forward, cheeks flushed with color. “Don’t you see—?”
He nodded. “I see. Tell me this, though—how will you know when it happens?”
“We’ll know when it happens because we’ll hear it. Once, when a weasel got in the chicken house, the chickens set up such a fuss every dog in the valley howled for hours.”
“So we wait until a weasel gets in and we hear the dogs howling?” He tapped the knot on the side of his head, diminished now, but still there. “Help me out here, I’m not up to speed.”
“No, no—you see, that’s the best part. All we have to do is arrange with someone in advance, and then we can be waiting halfway down the hill, ready to run. I know a good place where the deer have made a track through the bushes.”
Apparently she was waiting for him to congratulate her on having come up with such a brilliant plan. “You work with the tools at hand,” she said. “I read that somewhere.”
Moving carefully, Jed leaned back. Leaning forward, even for so short a time, had left him breathless and hurting. With a pitying look he said, “I hate to spoil your fun, but I’m not going anywhere until I’m pretty sure I can outrun a passel of rifle-toting men high on rotgut whiskey.”
Her face fell. She was so easy to read, she wasn’t even fair game. “Listen, Elly,” he said.
“Don’t call me that. They call me that, and I hate it. It’s hard enough to remember who I am. Sometimes I think it would be easier just to forget, but I can’t. Cousin Annie didn’t sacrifice all those years to send me to college just so I could turn into a—into a—”
“Barefoot, backwoods nobody,” he said softly. “I know what that’s like, Eleanor. I came from a valley even farther back in the hills than this one, with even fewer people.”
The difference was that there’d been a man in Foggy Valley who had showed them all that another way of life was possible. They had all hated Sam Stanfield, but he was responsible for any success Jed had achieved.
“If you can just be patient a little longer,” he said, “we’ll both get away. I have business to attend to, and I’m sure you have plans, too.”
What plans, he couldn’t have said. He knew she had no family. She’d mentioned the fact more than once. Evidently it had been several years since she’d seen her friends. He didn’t know if mail was even delivered this far off the beaten track. Before he had had the misfortune to run afoul of the Millers, he’d never even heard of a place called Dexter’s Cut. He was pretty sure it wasn’t on any map.
She sighed. He wished he could gather her into his arms and offer her comfort, but he was in no shape to comfort anyone. The best he could do was work at getting in shape to escort her out of this forsaken place. Heiress to a gold mine or not, she didn’t belong here any more than he did.
Chapter Nine
Two days later Jed was on his way back from the outhouse when he stepped on a holly leaf and let out a yell that echoed out across the valley. Eleanor, cooking spoon in hand, rushed outside. The moment she spotted him and realized that he wasn’t seriously hurt, she glanced apprehensively toward the path.
“Sorry,” he said, knowing it wasn’t enough. If someone had heard him, he wasn’t sure he could move fast enough to get inside and out of sight.
“You stubborn man, I warned you—” she said, moving in to support him while he picked the little sticker out of the tender sole of his foot.
“I know.” She’d reminded him more than once not to go outside, as she never knew when someone might come up the hill bringing supplies.
He had replied that he wasn’t going to use her damned chamber pot one more time, and if she locked him in the bedroom and barricaded the door, then she’d be to blame when his bladder burst.
She’d looked so woebegone, he’d instantly regretted his words, but dammit, enough was enough. It had been five days now. Probably. He’d asked her and they had both tried to count it up, using small milestones. How many times she’d had to spoon-feed him before he could feed himself. How many times she’d had to bathe him—at least the parts he would allow her to bathe—before he had taken over the task himself. She was a lady. Ladies didn’t bathe gentlemen, much less discuss their bladders.
But then, he was no gentleman.
Sometimes it felt as if he’d been here forever.
“Lean on me,” she said now, positioning herself under his arm.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking,” he said, ignoring the twinges when he set his left foot on the ground.
He allowed her to help him, though, because she needed to feel useful, and because he liked having her so close. She smelled good, she felt good and thinking about what she would be like in bed took his mind off a few other problems.
And that in itself was becoming a problem.
It had been three days since she had changed his bindings. The weather had turned off warm. Hot, for late April. “I can do without all this bandaging now,” he’d told her earlier when she popped her head in to ask if he wanted one egg or two for breakfast.
He’d said one, knowing that one was likely all she had.
“Boiled, fried or poached, and no, you can’t take off your binding. I don’t know how long it takes ribs to mend, but if you undo all the good we’ve accomplished, we might never get away from here.”
“Fried, and I promise not to twist, bend over or turn any cartwheels. Believe it or not, I’m as anxious as you are to get off this hellish mountain.”
Yesterday they had argued about whether it was a mountain, a foothill or only a bump on the side of a ridge. They had argued about a lot of things to pass the time. Sometimes he won, sometimes she did. Forced to concede a point, she was surprisingly good-natured. He tried not to feel too smug, but he couldn’t help but take satisfaction in besting a schoolteacher.
What would she say, he wondered, if he admitted that his education, such as it was, had come from a circuit preacher who’d spent a few days every month in Foggy Valley, teaching anyone who was interested, child or adult, how to read the word of God.
Thanks to the preacher’s patience, he’d been able to take advantage of public libraries once he’d discovered them, but that had been years later. Then, too, experience had taught him things no classroom ever could. But he was forced to admit that there were holes the size of a buffalo-wallow in what passed for his education.
Come to think of it, he owed a lot to various preachers. One of these days he might even take up churchgoing, but not quite yet. First he had a couple of debts to settle.
She insisted on helping him up the steps, which at this stage of his recovery, was more hindrance than help. He thanked her, though, and said, “I’m fine now. Go do whatever you were doing.”
“I will as soon as I’ve had a look at those ribs of yours.”
His eyes widened in mock horror. She couldn’t always tell when he was teasing, and that made it even more tempting to tease her. “You planning on skinning me out?”
“If I have to,” she shot back without a moment’s hesitation.
Tell the truth, he was itching like crazy. Had been for days, but scratching didn’t do a speck of good through all those layers.
Bracing his feet apart, he insisted on standing while she unwrapped him. She called him stubborn, which he easily admitted.
“I need to practice being on my feet,” he said. “Besides, my bum hurts from sitting so much.”
“What’s a bum?” she asked, all innocence, and then she caught his meaning, rolled her eyes, and muttered something under her breath that sounded almost like an oath.
“Ladies don’t swear,” he said piously.
She jerked out another stick and peeled off a length of sheeting. “Gentlemen don’t refer to their—their posteriors in a lady’s presence.”
“Ah, come on now, El, aren’t we beyond all that?”
Her lips twitched as she tried to repress a smile. “Your bruises have turned yellow,” she told him. When he tried to look down, she said, “Hold still, I’m not through yet.”
She was fast and efficient, reaching around him to grab an end, freeing it and then reaching around him again. When her fingers brushed across his navel, he sucked in his breath.
“Sorry. Did I pinch?”
He closed his eyes. “Ticklish,” he said. He didn’t specify which body part was itching now.
“That feels good,” he admitted when she finished unwrapping him. He flexed his shoulders. “How about scratching while you’re back there.”
“Scratch what?”
Lady, don’t ask. “My back, what did you think? I can reach my front.”
So she scratched his back, gently dragging her short fingernails over his tingling skin. “Harder,” he said, wanting her to dig in, knowing she would dig only so far. He could have done better using a long-handled cooking fork, but he didn’t tell her so. No point in hurting her feelings.
She stepped back and gathered up the rags and sticks. “I’ll bring your shirt,” she said.
“No hurry. It feels good.” The air on his skin. Being able to scratch freely. Being able to breathe without being jabbed by a stick of kindling. Had any man ever had such unorthodox treatment for cracked ribs?
Or such a temptress for a nurse?
“Just don’t move suddenly,” she said. “Wait right here and let me bring a basin of water. We’ll rinse you off and then I’ll dust you down with cornstarch, that should help your itches.”
A few of my itches, he thought wryly, but not all of them. “Why don’t I go out to your rain barrel and dipper myself off instead? It’d be faster and save you the trouble.”
“Well for one thing, you don’t need to tackle those steps again. For another, my basket is due today or tomorrow and I don’t want anyone seeing you out there, that’s why.”
He couldn’t argue with that. It was a pain in the butt, though, having to sneak around. He couldn’t even go to the outhouse without her standing guard at a front window, ready to signal if someone came up the path. Once he’d narrowly missed getting caught by that Goliath in bib overalls she called Hector. He’d had to duck behind the outhouse and wait until the oaf took a notion to leave.
He’d made it back inside, but Eleanor had been furious when she’d found out. He’d defended himself by saying, “I thought you said no one ever stayed long enough to visit.”
“Usually, they don’t, but for some reason, Hector seemed to want to talk.”
That had been yesterday, maybe the day before. It was easy to lose track of time. He hadn’t been able to hear their conversation, but all manner of things had run through his mind. He had questioned her about it later.
“Was he suspicious? Is he trying to court you?” She’d told him about the parade of bachelors, all wanting to marry her for her inheritance.
“He was asking me if I’d seen any strangers, or heard anything unusual. He said he’d seen a lot of buzzards circling overhead the past few days.”
“Godamighty,” Jed had said reverently. “McGee.”
“McWho?”
“My horse. I told you I had a horse when they caught me, remember? We were taking a drink from the creek when they jumped us. Last I remember, McGee was high-tailing it down the road.”
“They’ve probably caught him by now, then. He’ll be all right. The Millers would never mistreat an animal. Not a domestic animal, at least.”
Jed tho
ught McGee hardly qualified as domestic, but he’d nodded, still thinking about those buzzards. Not that buzzards weren’t a common sight here in the mountains. Something was always dying.
She had lain a hand on his arm then and hastened to reassure him. “I’m sure they would never hurt him. They might catch him and try to sell him, but they would never shoot a valuable animal. Not even Alaska.”
“Shoot Alaska?” he teased. But by then he’d heard all about the bootlegger with the beautiful sister.
McGee, you old devil, he thought now, wherever you are, I’m not leaving here without you. Idly, he scratched his belly, the marks left by his fingernails blending with the horizontal crease marks left by his bindings.
“Let me get the basin, I’ll be right back,” she said, and reluctantly, he gave up on the notion of dousing himself from head to toe with the water from her rain barrel.
Eleanor hurried away, exasperated, but encouraged that Jed was able to move about so easily now. Well…hardly easily, she amended, but at least he was no longer bedridden. He’d slipped outside to the privy half a dozen times and hadn’t fallen yet. Another few days—a week, at most—and he should be ready to travel. All she had to do was keep him hidden until then.
With the feel of his firm, warm body still tingling on her hands, the scent of him, all earthy and male, in her nostrils, she hurried through the house and dropped the rags in the tub to be dealt with later. With any luck they’d be left behind with almost everything else she possessed, but she had learned the folly of premature chicken-counting.
Mercy, he was an attractive man, she mused as she went about filling a basin with warm water and gathering up what he’d need for bathing. Stubborn, but then, all the men she’d ever known were that. Devin had been stubborn, too, only, he’d managed to get away with it for the first few weeks they were married by couching his demands in sweetheart language. “Honey, we can’t do this,” or “Sweetheart, we’re going to do that.”
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