It took him a while to pick up his fork. His knife.
He ate because it was industry. Because cutting the food, eating it, washing it down with coffee—it kept him here. With her.
Instead of with the ghosts.
That was dumb.
Anne scolded herself as they left the hotel, Steven having paid their bill and grabbed their coats.
They walked side by side on the boardwalk, but they were miles apart.
She shouldn’t have brought up the war. Or talked about her father—she hadn’t meant to do that. The memories of those nights with him, frantic, wild-eyed, kneeling at her bedside, made her uncomfortable. They made her stomach feel like it was in the soles of her feet.
My poor father.
Talking about Sam had been a mistake too. Clearly. Steven didn't want to talk about these things.
But she sensed Steven, as if he were hiding beneath his skin. Beneath his rare smiles and conversation about railroads. His subtle ambition.
When she was a girl, her family went once to visit her uncle who lived on the coast, several days’ journey from Georgia. Her uncle, a bit of a madman, had taken her out on the ocean on a small sailboat so they could practice being fishermen. It had sounded like a grand adventure, but it was boring and hot and the sun burned her despite her bonnet. But at one point he’d told her to look down over the side of the sailboat, where a giant shadow swam beneath their boat.
“What is that?” she asked, backing away from the edge. Wishing she’d never said yes.
“A shark,” her uncle had said, as if there was nothing to be scared of.
Steven was like that, swimming dark and dangerous under the surface of his own waters.
And she was scared for him.
Clouds had rolled in, and it was colder as they walked home. Anne found herself missing her sister more than usual. It would be nice to have Melody here, to bring her into the parlor by a cheerful fire. They could have tea. Tea with her sister sounded like a dream.
Her decision to come to Denver by herself had been the right one. She would have suffocated in that clearing, watching her sister’s happiness and feeling so utterly unfulfilled at the same time. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a cost.
And the cost was that for the first time in her life she had no one to talk to about the things that mattered. No one to lie facing in bed and whisper to.
She wanted to talk about her proposal. Her kiss. Steven.
Freedom without her sister often proved lonelier than she could bear.
“The soldier from earlier,” Steven said, his hands behind his back as they stepped onto the dirt off the end of the boardwalk.
“Sam?”
“Does he see the doctor often?”
"Often enough."
“Is he always drunk?”
“Always,” she said with a sigh.
“And the doctor? What condition is he in?”
Stunned, Anne’s step faltered for a moment. “I…I don’t know what you mean?”
“I know the signs, Anne. You can't stay in Denver very long and not know the signs of an opium addict.”
She was silent, painfully tense. It would be a relief to say the words out loud. To tell someone how worried she was. To tell Steven, who was safe. Who would listen.
“I think you've been keeping the doctor's secret for a long time,” he said.
And that was just the nudge she needed.
“It's chloroform,” she said.
“God damn him,” Steven said through his teeth.
“No, no Steven, it's really all right. He’s harmless. And I am able to do so much more as his assistant. It's worked out quite well, actually.”
“Do you hear yourself?” he asked. “It's worked out well that you are living with and working for a chloroform addict?”
Her lips tightened, and her own complicity in the doctor’s secret chafed. She continued walking. “If you're going to scold me like a child, I wish I hadn't told you.”
“I’m worried about you, Anne. I'm worried about what you’re being exposed to, what people will think.”
“Why is everyone so concerned about what people will think?” she snapped. “My reputation—please. As if that’s all that determines my worth, how proper I’ve been.”
“I know your worth, Anne. And I don't care about proper. I care about you being in danger.”
“Did you know there were women who dressed up as men and fought in the war?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Perhaps it has nothing to do with my being a female but that I’m in the wrong costume. I should wear pants. No one would question whether or not it was proper or dangerous for me to do something if I were wearing pants.”
“Anne, this isn’t about your clothes!” Steven was yelling at her. Actually yelling. “If Doctor Madison is allowing you to lie for him and do his work for him, I don't think he is as harmless or cares as much as you think.”
“He asked me to marry him.”
The words landed like stones in a puddle. Steven gaped, for just a second, and she wouldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt. And for once she didn’t feel like swallowing her hurt. “Your shock is insulting.”
“I’m…I’m sorry. What have you said?”
Because she was feeling perverse, she shrugged. “I haven’t decided.”
“Do you… care for him?”
“He’s handsome.”
“You cannot convince me that is all that matters to you.”
“Why? Because I am so plain?”
So small. So insignificant. So strange and off-putting. All the things she'd overheard in ballrooms back home. All the things men said about her.
She's like a mouse. A strange bird. All frizzy hair and limp.
Steven stepped in front of her, not touching her—no, never touching her—and she stopped in the mud, not even caring for her skirts.
“Anne,” he said, his voice low and dark. “This is me you are talking to. And I thought we were friends.”
Right. Steven. Whose life she’d saved. Whose body she’d cared for. Whose smile, in those few weeks up in the clearing with her sister and his brother, she’d lived for.
“We are,” she breathed.
“Then please talk to me.”
“Like you talk to me?” she asked, arching an eyebrow, and he smiled, reluctantly.
“Better than that. You have always been the better of the two of us.”
Oh, that he thought that she could not stand.
“Dr. Madison worries for me as well, and in an effort to protect me from gossip or harm, he proposed marriage,” she said.
“You have never been keen on protection.”
“The loan you have given me has offered me plenty of protection. The boardinghouse makes a good income.”
“Then why are you still considering his proposal?”
Boldness was like a wind sometimes, one of those sudden gusts in the mountains that came up out of nowhere to bend the saplings and make animals cower.
“There are other aspects of marriage that I find… interesting.”
It took him a moment to realize what she was saying and in that moment she wished she could suck back her words, but then his eyes went wide and his mouth fell open and she stepped around him to keep walking, the bottom of her cane sinking into the mud.
“Anne, wait!”
No. She would not wait. She would not slow down so he could catch up. She'd done that with such skill her entire life that she'd gotten stuck. Grown roots, that kept her in place so everyone else could race past her.
“Anne!” He trotted around her, forcing her to stop, which she did with a jerk and a sniff and as haughty a look as she felt she could muster with the cherries bobbing with such force on her hat.
It was once her favorite thing—now she hated this damn hat.
“What?” she asked at his gape-faced silence.
“I don't... I don't quite know what to say.”
/>
She huffed and stepped wide to get around him, the mud making a mess of her skirts, but he stood in her way.
“You're being a child,” she snapped.
“Do you love him?” Steven asked in a whisper.
“I don’t think that’s as necessary an ingredient as my mother would have me believe. Do all those men love the girls at Delilah’s?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why not? Why shouldn't I?”
“Anne, this is… shocking.”
“Well, maybe I am shocking.”
I am. I am very shocking, and no one ever noticed because I was so busy being invisible. And I love you. I love you so much and it hurts to be caught like this. Stuck like this with you. If I don't change things, they will never change.
I will be like this forever with you.
“Marriage is a very permanent step to satisfy curiosity,” he said.
“Are you suggesting another arrangement?”
“Do you understand what you are asking?”
“Yes,” she said, because what did she really have to lose? He would never approach her like this on his own, and she would spend the rest of her life being invisible to him in this way. She was wild with this sudden need to be seen by him, if for no other reason than that it would end these feelings for him. Tear them out at the root so she could be done with it. “I am asking you, if my marrying Dr. Madison in order to satisfy my curiosity about sex bothers you so much—are you volunteering to be my lover?”
A cold wind blew down the road, making her skirts billow.
“I guess you do know what you’re asking,” he muttered.
“And your answer is?”
He was nearly stone standing there. White-faced and still. Stuck, really. And it pained her. Physically made her hurt.
Before he could stop her or step away, she put her hand to his face. On the north end of Market Street, in front of the opium addicts and the drunks, she, Anne Denoe, daughter of Mellissa who would not approve, touched a man’s face in broad daylight.
He flinched so hard he nearly staggered backward.
Oh. She’d expected that, known he’d do it, but that did nothing to change the awfulness of it. Not interested in wounding him further—or torturing herself—she dropped her hand. But he caught it in fingers that squeezed too hard.
“Please,” she breathed, staring at their fingers. “Let me go.”
“It’s… it’s not you,” he said, ignoring her plea. “I can’t… anyone touching me makes me feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.”
His panic destroyed her. “I know, Steven. I do. It’s all right. I am not your concern,” she said. “You have repaid me handsomely for saving your life. And our friendship need not stretch any further.”
She patted his shoulder and walked away from him, feeling as if she’d left something behind. Something small and heavy. What was left of her concern for her reputation. Her heart. Those girlish fantasies she liked to pretend she didn’t have.
Yes. She was leaving those behind.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Anne busied herself taking the laundered bandages off the line. They were stained pink, most of them. Their origins—either as sheets or shirts, or even filched from the surgery of Massachusetts General—long behind them.
“Isn’t this why we have two housekeepers?” Doc stepped around the side of the house to where she was working, shoving bandages into the bag she wore over her shoulder.
“There is plenty of work for all of us,” Anne said, not quite looking at him. Because she couldn’t quite look at him. She was furious. With him. With her. With this lie they told the world.
To her surprise, he started at the other end of the line and began taking down the bandages, rolling them in his wide hands. “You’re avoiding me.”
“I’m busy.”
“Yes, doing the work of servants.”
She yanked a bandage clear of the line so hard it bobbed, sending all the strips of fabric waving like they were saying goodbye to loved ones off to sea.
“Anne.”
He was right behind her—she could feel his shadow over her shoulder.
“Don’t you have a drugged stupor waiting for you?” she snapped.
His laughter made her hair move. She reached for another bandage, and he grabbed her hand. His large palm swallowing hers up whole. There was simply no way to contain her gasp.
“Anne?” She felt his breath against her neck, down the worn collar of her work dress. She shied away, turning slightly and nearly tripping thanks to the uneven ground and her foot. He grabbed her elbow, holding her still.
He was very nearly embracing her. Out here in the open.
It had been a rather alarming few days. She could admit that. And though she could talk about being bold and brave and not caring what people thought of her, she’d had a long many years before the war of being conditioned to feel otherwise.
And the truth was, she was scorched with embarrassment.
Embarrassed by Dr. Madison's offer. Embarrassed by her own offer to Steven.
Hurt by Steven's rejection. So hurt that she couldn’t think about it, for fear of realizing how hurt she was. Like the soldiers she’d heard about who limped off the battlefields only to realize they were missing the better part of a hand or a foot. An ear even. If she looked down, she feared there would be a hole where her stomach should be. Her heart having been pulled out through her body.
But now Dr. Madison was holding her hand, and it was alarming. Confounding, even.
She turned and found him looking at her, his dark hair an inky sweep over his high pale forehead. His eyes were clear this morning, but he looked ill. As if the sunlight hurt him.
“I don’t want there to be awkwardness between us,” he said.
“I’m not awkward,” she said, and he smiled at her, letting her know what a terrible liar she was.
“Steven Baywood—”
“What of him?” she asked, too fast.
His smile was hundreds of years old. “You have feelings for him.”
Other women, practiced women, might have been able to control their flinch. But she could not.
“I saved his life.”
“I’ve saved quite literally hundreds of lives, and I don’t look at anyone the way you look at him.”
“Because your soul is dead. And Steven and I are friends,” she said, reaching for her next excuse.
“No. You and I are friends, and you berate me and watch me with stern, disappointed eyes. You watch him…”
“How?’ she asked, unable to resist knowing what sort of fool she looked like when it came to Steven Baywood. Yes, she thought, tell me, so that I may add to my mortification.
“The way Shakespeare tells us Romeo looks at Juliet.”
“Shakespeare, Dr. Madison?” She arched an eyebrow at him.
“You look at him the way my parents looked at each other. Gives a cynic like me hope.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, freeing her hand from his so she could pull another bandage off the line.
“Does Steven know how you feel?”
She felt her blush creeping up across her chest. “I am done speaking of this,” she said, turning to get away from him, but he stood in her way.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed.
“It is none of your business.”
“He’s hurt you.”
“It’s not his fault.” Steven was one of those unclimbable mountains to the west of Denver. It wasn’t his fault he was too steep and covered in ice and unreachable. This pain—it was her fault. For wanting him to be something different than he was. “The war has simply taken too much from him.”
“The war has not taken too much from me,” he said, his grin boyish and handsome.
No, Doc simply left all his doors unlocked and allowed chloroform to take what it wanted from him.
“My offer still stands,” he said. “Marriage. The freedom to continue worki
ng as you do with more safety, and—”
“I am not interested in ‘and.’”
“I think you're lying,” he said, his voice pitched low.
I think I am, too.
“Marry me, Anne,” he said. “Marry me and I will satisfy all that curiosity.”
He leaned down, and she didn't move. She didn’t push him away. No. She waited. Waited for his lips to touch hers with a red-hot hope that what she would feel in his touch would diminish how she felt about Steven.
Please, let it be enough. Let it burn Steven right from my mind.
“Anne?”
She jumped back and bashed her head against the post behind her and dropped the handful of bandages into the mud at her feet.
It was Steven. Standing beside the house, his hat shading his eyes.
Her heart thundered in her chest, so hard she could not see properly. It was all sparks and lights.
“Pardon me for interrupting,” Steven said, but there was an edge to his voice. Something hard that she hadn’t heard from him. Ever. And it was directed at Doc Madison.
“It’s all right,” she said, edging past the doctor. The mud sucked at her boots and she lurched. Both men jumped to her aid, and she shook them both off. “I’m f...fine. What are you d...doing here?”
Oh, Lord, her stammer. She hadn't stammered in months.
Steven gestured over his shoulder and she saw a carriage in front of the house. “I thought you might want a tour of the site for the new train station. There’s a crew there now, breaking ground.”
Of course she wanted to. Of course she wanted to go anywhere with him. But it was unwise.
For her heart it was unwise. It had been stabbed. Beaten. And it needed rest. It needed a dark room and loneliness so it could recover.
“I’m afraid there's t...too much w…work here today,” she said. Behind her, Dr. Madison picked up the bandages she’d dropped.
“I can hold the fort,” he said, coming to stand beside her with his hands full of muddy bandages. “You go.”
“I need to stay," she told both men, hoping her voice did not sound as rattled and desperate to them as it did to her. She took deep breaths, trying to control the stammer. “Thank you, Steven, for the offer. But I must decline. I wish you a good d...day.” She walked around both men, her arms full, her head down.
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