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This was wrong. All of it. His vision blurred into darkness and back again. He tried again to tell her to leave him be, that dying alone was better than this disgrace, but he couldn’t form the words. His lips were too numb to speak.
“That’s it. I’m almost done with this one. That bear sure got you good.” Her voice was like poetry, like the sweeping cadence of Shakespeare’s sonnets. “I’m so glad you’re still with me. I’ll have you patched up, and then I’ll make a good hot soup. My ma says there’s nothing a good bowl of soup can’t cure.”
Great. Just his luck to be trapped with a talker. He liked his women silent—in fact, he liked his women to be absent. Was there any way to be rid of her?
A horse’s whinny pierced the darkness and even though the thick walls muffled the sound, he knew it was not one of his. He withered at the faint clomp of steeled shoes on the hard packed earth outside his front door. A light flared in the window, bobbing up and then away.
“What the—” The laundry lady set aside her needle and thread and the bed rope groaned as she stood. Her slender shadow fell over him.
With an ear-splitting crack, the door broke open, wood splinters flying into the air as wraiths and ghosts emerged from the night. Eerie dark shapes that became men as the light touched them. Wide-shouldered angry men, with rifles in hand and a lantern shining suddenly into his eyes. Onto the bed. Where Betsy Hunter stood, her hair tangled, her undershirt and skirt covered with spots of blood.
He knew what was going to happen next. He’d been surly and rude and horrible to this prim and sheltered woman, and now he was going to pay for it. He knew how this was going to go.
His mind leaped forward and he saw what was to come in a flash, but it was really the past. The murderous rage, the shouted accusations, the noose closing off his air. He would lose everything. His life, his home, his work, his freedom.
He remembered Ginetta Green’s tears as she’d spoken to the sheriff and how Duncan had had hope then, hope that reason would rule and it was all a big mistake. What else could it have been? He’d never hurt Ginetta. He’d never hurt anyone. Ginetta had used him, she’d lied about him, and she’d betrayed him for reasons he would never know.
Betsy Hunter stood in the shadows, radiant as a midnight star in a moonless sky, but he was not fooled. Not by a woman’s beauty. Not by her seeming goodness. Not by her kindness. She wanted something. What? How was she going to use this to her advantage?
Duncan saw the barred door close on his future once more. Her rescuer with his search party stormed through the dark main room. Beefy hands closed around his throat and Duncan knew the sting of a woman’s betrayal twice in his life.
At the edges of his vision he saw her. Perky Betsy Hunter, ready to condemn him. No one was going to believe him, a man convicted of rape. Defeat curled around his soul and from a distance he heard the men shouting, the flare of lantern light on a rifle barrel as it aimed directly between his eyes. He felt stitches at his neck tear, felt the hot rush of blood.
“No!” Suddenly she was there, her calm touch against his face, she was splaying the flat of her free hand against his wound. “What is wrong with you, Joshua? Put him down before you kill him.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Stop it. Didn’t you see the bears dead in the road?” Men. She would never understand them. She’d grown up in a houseful of brothers, she’d been married, and all the time in the presence of the species she could never figure out why they were so downright bullheaded and pushy and all male temper. “What’s wrong with you? I said, put him down.”
Her oldest brother kept right on choking the dying man. Duncan might be the bigger of the two, but he’d lost more blood than Charlie had, at least it seemed that way, and she couldn’t bear it, she simply couldn’t. “James! You get over here and help me. His stitches are torn. Isn’t that just like a man to rip out half an evening’s work.”
Joshua gaped down at her, some of the wild male protective rage leaving him. A small glint of intelligence came back into his eyes. “But he hurt you. Don’t try and defend him.”
“He saved me. Think, would you? Look at the wounds. Doesn’t that look strangely as if a bear clawed him?”
Betsy gave her brother a kick in the shins, and grabbed her other brother by the wrist. “That’s no way to treat the man who nearly died for me. Ease him down gently… That’s right.”
Her heart was breaking, that was it. It was a lost battle from the start, she knew that, but now all her work was nearly undone and fresh blood wet his chest.
The image of him standing tall against the great black bear—no man fought one of those creatures and lived to tell about it—he’d known he was forfeiting his life from the start. From the moment he must have heard her gunshot. And yet he’d come anyway, to save her.
His hand flailed, that’s how weak he was. His big fingers were cold as they closed over hers. “T-thank you.” He coughed, blood staining his bottom lip. “For the truth.”
Whatever could he mean? She watched his eyelids flicker. As silence filled the room, it seemed as if his life force was disappearing.
“You’re my very own hero,” she whispered in his ear. “You can’t leave me now, when I’ve only found you.”
But his breath rattled and his fingers went slack.
In the silence, Betsy waited for his chest to rise with his next breath. It didn’t, but she kept waiting.
“Come away from him now.” Joshua’s hand settled on her shoulder, a comforting weight in the darkness broken only by the lantern hung on a nail over Duncan’s bed. “You’ve done all you can.”
“It isn’t enough.” It could never be enough. She was banged up and bruised and bandaged, and without her favorite dress, but it was nothing—nothing—at all. The bear attack had been terrifying—beyond terrifying.
Now, safe in the cabin with her brothers at her side, the shock had worn off and horror clawed at her soul. The images of the huge man battling an enemy at least twice his strength tormented her. Images of how the predators gathered, drawn by the scent of spilled blood. Duncan, his life force rushing out of him and pooling on the dusty wheel tracks. Duncan, so still that death hovered in the room above him like an invisible smoke cloud, draining the brightness from the lantern and making the night seem more hopeless.
She could have died, and in terrible pain. She’d seen the damage on Duncan’s neck and chest and shoulders. He’d saved her from that fate and chose it for himself. She’d never met a braver man. What did a person do for someone who had not only saved her life, but also sacrificed his?
Thanks was not nearly enough. She’d made a promise that she wouldn’t leave him—the very least she could do was to keep her vow. No man should die alone, without someone to care.
“The doctor will stay with him.” Joshua, her sensible big brother, presented her with his coat. “We need to get you home. You can’t stay the night here, Bets. You have to think of your reputation.”
“I’m thinking of my honor.”
“Folks won’t understand. You know how some people can get. Quick to judge and quicker to condemn. I don’t want you to be hurt, Bets.”
“You are the best brother a girl could have.” She didn’t take his coat. She squeezed his hand that remained on her shoulder, a comforting presence.
For as long as she could remember, Joshua had watched over her and protected her, and she loved him for it, but sometimes the right choice wasn’t the easiest one. Some folks might hear about her staying the night with a mountain man. Then they would know what Duncan Hennessey did to defend her. They would have to see how noble he was.
It was that simple. How could this be mistaken for anything else?
“Go home, if you have a mind to.” She gently waved away the offer of his coat. “And thank you, for fetching the doctor.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“You have responsibilities to tend to. Go home, get some sleep and see to them. I’ll be fine.”
“Mother would box my ears if I did.”
“Mother isn’t tall enough to reach your ears.” It was an old familiar joke, grown fond through the years, of how their tiny Irish mother had birthed such a collection of fine, strapping and tall sons. All of her children had looked down on her since they were eleven years old, including Betsy. “This is something I must do.”
“And how am I supposed to leave you?” Joshua straightened, losing the argument. For all his deep booming voice and big hulking presence, he was really not so fierce at heart. “I can see you owe this man the courtesy, but surely he has family.”
“I don’t see any evidence of it, do you?” She gestured at the bare walls and empty tables. Not a single tintype or photograph anywhere. No hints of birthday or Christmas gifts from a mother or sister. “Do you know what would help? Send Liam tomorrow with a change of clothes. I can’t ride back to town wearing naught but my drawers and Mr. Hennessey’s flannel jacket.”
“You’d cause a scandal, that’s for sure.” As if relenting, Joshua ruffled the top of her hair, as he always used to do when she was little. “I’ll be back. Let me know if you need anything. You know I’ll be ready to help with any…arrangements.” His gaze traveled to the bed.
He meant for the man’s burial. Betsy took a shaky breath. Joshua was only being practical, it was his way. But she couldn’t give up hope. Not as long as Mr. Hennessey drew one breath and another. It seemed an eternity between them, but her tough savior was still alive and so there was hope.
“You’d best go on with your brother, ma’ am,” Doc Haskins told her as he packed his stethoscope into his medical bag. “I’ll stay on here until the end. It won’t be much longer now.”
“No, I will stay with him.” Sadness choked her. She said nothing more. There was nothing left to do but to hope her presence gave him some comfort. He’d never seemed to like her much. Well—to the point—he’d been extremely clear how much he didn’t want to be anywhere near her. But deep down, she didn’t believe him. Why would a man who hated her trade his life for hers?
Already grieving him, knowing that even her most fervent, optimistic thought could not spare him from the inevitable. She could feel it, too, how still his big body was, taking up so much room on the bed. And now, the space between breaths seemed a longer eternity. The doctor was packing up the rest of his things. It would not be long now.
She lifted his hand, lying so still at his side, onto her thigh and covered it with her fingers. Felt how cool he’d become. She moved away to find another blanket. She found a lined buffalo robe and added that to the top of his bed, smoothing it with care. When she returned to her chair to sit and took his hand in hers again, she was surprised when his fingers gripped hers. Strong. With need.
Something broke apart deep in her chest, like a shattering pain she’d felt once when she’d broken her wrist when she was eight. It was like that now, sharp and jagged pain centered so deep within her, it hurt to breathe.
There, where it had been as if dark, a small warmth glowed.
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