THE HEALING HEART

by Zelda Clemens

  “Get out of the tub,” she commanded. “I'll need to lay him out.”

  It was no easy feat to climb out of the bath, but Travis managed it. His arms were placed at an angle that was going to quickly cut off the circulation.

  “Let me help,” he offered once more. “I give you my word that I will not harm you.”

  She snorted and tried to adjust Angus, but Travis' new position didn't give her enough room for that. “I don't believe you.”

  “You don't have to,” he explained, “but you do need my help, and the room to operate.”

  It was that last word that made her heart sink. She knew she was going to have to do more than just pull out a bullet. There was something very wrong, and there was a very good chance she'd need his help before the end.

  “Fine,” she said, pulling the key out of her pocket. “But I won’t hesitate to shoot you if you try to pull anything over on me.”

  “I believe you.”

  She unlocked him and there was one tense moment where she wondered if he would strike her or run. He did neither. Rather, he knelt by the tub and helped heft his friend out. With more chain available they could pull him out of the tub and lay him out on the floor. He was a tall man, and took up a great deal of space. She knelt to one side, Travis to the other.

  “Wash your hands,” she told him.

  Travis removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He was younger than she originally thought. The mustache made him look more mature, but under the soft lantern light she realized that they were of an age.

  “Would you like something to bite down on?” she asked Angus.

  He shook his head. “Just...just do it.”

  When they were both ready, she began.

  It was hours’ worth of work that left her back aching and her brow wet. Travis, as he had claimed, was an excellent assistant. The beginning was the easiest part, the removal of the bullet. It was barely an inch beneath the skin, and it took nearly nothing to remove it.

  “It's broken.” She held it up, examining the ball. “There is another half of a bullet lodged inside.”

  Travis gave her a long look. “Then let us make haste.”

  She didn't have any tools save for the sharp knife. There was nothing she could do to investigate the wound, save for her own hands. They would have to do.

  “This is going to hurt,” she told Angus. He said nothing, merely gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

  She washed her hand once more and then proceeded to explore the wound. Angus shivered.

  “Hold him still!” she commanded.

  Travis pressed down on his friend’s good shoulder in an effort to keep him from moving.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “One moment.”

  “I'm not sure that he has many moments left to offer you, Widow.”

  “Silence!” she commanded once more.

  She closed her eyes and felt around with her finger. The wound was hot, too hot, burning off whatever had infected it. She probed gently. Then the very tip of her finger found the rounded edge of a bullet.

  “There it is! Give me the knife.”

  Her hand was covered with slick blood when the weight of the handle hit her palm. She gripped it firmly and then pushed it into the wound. Angus' leg jerked, stomping against the ground.

  “Shhh,” she whispered. “I know it hurts, I know, shhh.”

  She turned her wrist and felt the bullet move.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on.”

  “Quickly,” Travis goaded. “He's gone very pale.”

  She turned her wrist again and suddenly, a tiny bit of metal no larger than the tip of her smallest finger clattered against the ground.

  “There it is!” Travis cheered.

  He leaned over and kissed her full on the mouth. His lips were satin as they flattened against hers. Caught up in the triumph of the moment she returned the motion, parting her mouth and lashing her tongue hungrily against his.

  Her body woke to the taste of him. She made a small sound and then ripped away.

  He was grinning, she was not.

  “That was hardly appropriate.”

  “You didn't seem to mind at first.”

  “Shows what you know.” The words held a great deal of heat, but not a lot of honesty.

  She turned her gaze back to Angus. “I'll need to bind the wound.”

  They propped him up and, as a team, they wrapped bits of her cut up chemise around him, binding the wound. It was tedious, but easier than the operation had been.

  “What is your prognosis, Lady Widow?”

  “He'll live,” she said, “but only if he doesn't aggravate it. The wound is quite willing to bleed, and I do not know that he'll be able to survive it opening.”

  “So we will not be traveling?”

  “He's worth a great deal more alive than he is dead,” she expressed. “We can stay for a few days at least.”

  “Back into the cuffs with me, then?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “Into the cuffs.”

  *****

  A few days quickly turned into a few weeks. Whether it was the initial bullet wound, or the fact that half the operation had been done with a knife, Angus did not heal quickly.

  In fact, halfway through his healing process Genevieve tried to move him. The wound split open. Had it not been for quick thinking and a great deal of effort he could have died.

  As she had no desire to kill the man, they were stuck here for the foreseeable future.

  It did not help that they had no horses and very few supplies. One of the few things that had managed to survive the raid, the crash and the subsequent rain (which had gone on for nearly three days) had been the seeds her husband had purchased. Neatly packed in wax lined packages the seeds were relatively untouched. That and her husband's journal.

  She took it as a sign from God, because what few supplies they had were running out.

  She walked into the bathroom on the morning of the second week. Angus was asleep in the tub, a layer of blanket had been tucked around him and the cushion from the stage coach made for a decent enough pillow.

  “I'll need your help,” she told Travis.

  He held up his cuffed wrists. “I am at your disposal.”

  She uncuffed him and led him out to the front yard.

  “He isn't thriving. I can't move him and I can't drag his dead body to the nearest town without potentially killing him.”

  “You aren't the Widow, are you?”

  She paused. “I'm a widow.”

  “But not THE Widow.” He fixed his eyes on her. They were good eyes, a rich hazel shade that ran closer to green. “She wouldn't care if the man lived or died, only that she turned in a body. She is cold that way.”

  She took a deep breath and blew it out. “My name is Genevieve Tavers, my husband was Lord William Tavers and he died on his way out West.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “Make a new life for myself,” she told him. “My first plan was to sell all of the items that my husband had packed and go to Silver Creek to get in touch with a solicitor and see if I could free the funds that my husband gained upon selling our homes.”

  His voice was surprisingly gentle when he asked, “Is that no longer an option?”

  “My husband was a terrible gambler,” she explained. Her eyes stayed fixed on the empty farmland. “The word 'terrible' is the most important in that particular statement.”

  She held up her husband's journal. The page fell open to a series of bank notes and receipts.

  “I had thought it was just a love of frivolity that pushed him to go out West. It seems that even after selling nearly everything we owned, there is still a rather prodigious amount of debt.”

  “What do you plan to do?” he asked looking down at the rain smeared numbers.

  “I plan to take a new name. My husband is dead and I cannot return home without inheriting the culmination of his
stupidity. I plan on making this,” she motioned around her, “my new home.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “A few things,” she admitted. “I need you and your friend alive, but I fear that he needs to be left alone for at least a few more week, perhaps two months. But we do not have the supplies for that.” She held up the sacks of seeds.

  “You want to farm?”

  “It is not my first choice, merely my only one. The closest town is too far and I don't have anything to trade save for you and your friend. I could turn you in now, of course and save myself half my troubles...”

  “But?” he prompted.

  “But...I need your held to start the venture.”

  “So you want me to help you start a farm so that you can keep us alive for a few more months so that you can turn us in at the end of it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I am not seeing how this is helpful to me or Angus at all.”

  “You would be helping a lady in need,” she offered.

  “You seem to forget that we were more than willing to put in that place of need to begin with.”

  She sighed. “I will help free you.”

  “Pardon?” His face lit up with surprise and shock. “I am not entirely sure that I heard you correctly.

  “After I turn you in and receive the reward, I will help you escape so that you can go be capture or killed by someone else.”

  “Why don't you just trade the seeds?” he asked.

  She frowned at him, “Because the food is worth more and I need a renewable source of income.”

  “This place is a lot for a woman to take care of.”

  “I will handle that; will you help me?”

  He eyed her for a long moment, then offered his hand. “Alright, Genevieve Tavers, I will help you.”

  When she took his hand he brought it to his lips and kissed it lightly. It was a gentleman's kiss. Had they been standing in a ballroom rather than the porch of an old house she would have expected him to ask her to dance.

  It struck her that, in a different place, she would have accepted his advances. He was smart, handsome and well mannered. He was everything that an established husband should have been. If you could overlook the robbery and gun slinging.

  “What is going on behind those beautiful eyes of yours, Genevieve?”

  She cleared her throat and took her hand back.

  “I don't know.”

  He smiled, and they both knew that she was lying.

  *****

  The peas went into the ground first, if only because they took nearly no time to grow. The potatoes were next because Genevieve would need as many of them as possible in order to see herself through the winter.

  The plan had been explained to Angus at Travis' insistence. He had sat in the tub, propped up by his pillow, his legs stretched out and listened as Genevieve explained who she was and what she planned.

  “You aren't The Widow?” he had asked.

  “No,” she told him.

  “Then why did you say you were?”

  “Well you had a gun pointed in my direction and it seemed like a grand idea at the time.”

  His lips curled into a grin and then widened into a full smile. Then his shoulders started to shake and a booming laugh echoed out of his chest.

  “Oh yes,” he motioned to the tub he was currently cuffed to, “a good idea.”

  She licked her own lips and blushed, her head tilted demurely. “Well, it would have worked if everything else hadn't gone wrong.”

  “Alright,” he said after his laughter had ended. “I will help you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “On one condition,” he said when she turned to leave the room.

  “Oh?”

  He shook the cuff once more. “My wrists are raw.”

  “You'll try to run away.” Genevieve put her hands on her hips.

  “I won’t be running anywhere.” He was angry. He turned his head away and suddenly she understood.

  “For now,” she said before unlocking the cuffs. “But in a few months you'll be outrunning everyone.”

  He sat up and she tried to stand. Her long skirt caught beneath her shoes and she stumbled. His good arm came around her middle, and steadied her from the potential fall. Suddenly she was against him. Her chest pressed flatly against his. Lust, wild and fierce, pounded beneath her skin.

  His dark eyes fixed on her mouth. He wanted to kiss her. She could feel it in the way his arm tightened around her middle, pulling her closer. She could sense it in the way his head tilted ever so slightly. Yet he made no real move to close the distance.

  Her body hummed with the nearness of him. She hated herself for it. She was newly widowed, and hadn't she felt the same desire when Travis had lain his mouth to hers? Yes, and yet no. Was she so fickle? Had her hardship turned her into a wanton woman?

  Perhaps, but when she felt him releasing her, she made a choice.

  She surged up to it. Her lips savaged against his hungrily. For a moment he didn't respond. She pulled back and cleared her throat bashfully.

  “I'm sorry, I'm not sure what came over me.”

  He said nothing. Why was he always so silent?

  Yet his fingers came up and brushed the fullness of her lower lip. Shock waves tingled down her body, culminating in a place she had no name for. They trailed to the height of her cheek and down her neck.

  “Do not apologize,” he said, and released her.

  She nearly ran from the room.

  ~*~

  “Genevieve, what are you doing?” Travis asked as she poured more water into the washbasin.

  “I am washing the laundry.”

  “Yes,” he said gently. “I can see that. You've rubbed your hands quite raw.”

  She paused and pulled them out of the water. They weren't just red, they were blistered.

  “Oh,” she said dumbly, “it seems they are.”

  He took her hands between his and used his kerchief to dab them dry. “Did something happen?”

  She could have kept it to herself. It would have been the polite and lady-like thing to do. Yet, she couldn't. For all that had happened, Travis had been always been honest with her.

  “I kissed Angus.”

  “Is that all?”

  She blinked. “Is that all? I...in the span of a few weeks I have kissed two men, both of whom are wanted criminals, lost all of my belongings and hatched a plan to help them break the law, all so that I could start a new life under an assumed name.”

  He nodded his head. A single curl of his caramel colored hair fell across his brow. “Well, when you put it like that, it's not surprise that you kissed two men.”

  “Pardon?”

  He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. Her blood still humming from Angus' mouth, roared to life at the single touch. “Genevieve, do you know that I was a lord's son?”

  “I assumed you were...something.”

  His eyes sparkled. “Indeed. I was a lord's son, I was the second, rather than the eldest but I was still well on my way to inheriting a rather fabulous amount of wealth. But I turned, instead, to a life of crime.”

  “Why?”

  “The rules,” he said bringing her other hand to his lips. “I hated the rules. I had to approach everything just so. I had to do things exactly as society expected of me. The West...well it is freedom.”

  “I see.”

  He turned her hand over and laid his lips to the pulse of her wrist. It jumped at the connection.

  “Do you want both of us?”

  She felt his breath as he whispered the words against her skin.

  “Yes.”

  “Then enjoy both of us.”

  *****

  It was late autumn and Angus was nearly healed. He had taken to helping around the farm. He was a decent carpenter and fixed the stairs heading from the first floor to the second.

  The crops were coming in. Peas, radishes, potatoes, pumpkins and turnips. Her diet
would be simple, but would keep her alive. She and Travis had placed the supplies into large wooden boxes; something else that Angus had crafted.

  In a week, maybe two, the men would leave. She wasn't entirely sure how she was going to manage it all on her own. In the most cold and logical part of her brain she knew that she would have to find a husband. The idea of it made her heart ache.

  Over the weeks she had attempted to take Travis' advise. Idle flirtations had turned into affectionate gestures.

  Angus had brought her wildflowers; Travis had recited poetry.

  She poured a seventh and final bucket of steaming water into the bath. Now that it wasn't being used to chain criminals she could cleanse the dirt and grime from herself. She had been sponging herself off for the sake of cleanliness, but nothing was quite as lovely as a real bath. She used a rag on herself first, clearing off the worst of the day’s dirt. She didn't want to muddy the water too much.

  Genevieve let her hair down and then submerged herself in the hot water. She had just finished washing her hair when the two of them walked into the bathroom.

  “What is going on?” she demanded, reaching for her bathing robe.

  “You take too long,” Angus said. He was bare chested and bare foot. His only clothing was a pair of breeches that were tied off at the knee. His long, dark hair was loose. It was so easy to admire the long line of his sculpted body. “We have come to seduce you.”

  “I was planning on being a bit more poetic about it.” Travis said as he slid the jacket of his suit off of his shoulders, “but my friend here has the right of it.”

  “Are you...serious?” she asked, pulling the robe to her chest. The fabric off it floated on the surface of the water.

  “Yes,” Angus pushed his breeches to the ground. He was suddenly very nude. His naturally tanned body glimmered with the day’s work. He took two steps across the bathroom and stepped into the tub. The water splashed around his calves. “Do you want us to go away?”

  She had to swallow twice before she said, “No.”

  His golden hands settled on her hips, pressing the fabric around them. He dipped his head and pressed the fullness of his mouth to hers. He tasted like cinnamon and sunlight. The gentle press of his tongue dipped between her lips and flicked against her own. Her head spun as if she had been drinking wine.