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Chapter One

Atlanta, Georgia

March 31, 1881

Fleeing the house of Mrs. Aurora Pattinson-Ricci without her knowledge was achieved that morning without any great effort whatsoever.

Lucy Ricci slipped away from the grand Queen Anne Victorian in smart traveling clothes, a matching hat, and hard-soled leather boots which clacked across the paved drive onto the tree-studded sidewalk. Beautiful homes dotted the grand street with dark, sleepy windows and silent owners. The street slept, taking no notice of the events taking place.

Deep brown eyes raised as a cool spring breeze rustled the newly budding leaves of the oak she stood beneath. Her face was dark and slate gray as the coming dawn blurred her features. A smear for a mouth. A dollop of a nose. Two smudges beneath dark winged brows.

This was the first decision in Lucy’s seventeen years that she had made of any import. It was also of considerable risk. If she failed in her goals, she could be lost, ravished, or killed.

Risks were nothing compared to the outcome if she succeeded and escaped her mother’s wrath, men’s scrutiny, and nature’s susceptibility to turning foul. But even death was more freeing than remaining here.

The morning sky lightened from heavy gray to lavender as the sun chased away the night. The stars disappeared, and Lucy tapped her boot.

What was taking him so long? Had he forgotten?

A cold sweat dotted her lip.

What if he didn’t come?

Then, sounds.

A horse’s hooves beat upon the cobblestones, and a murky shape turned the corner.

Relaxing her clenched fists, Lucy burst into motion, flitting from tree to tree until a rented horse-drawn phaeton clattered closer. Its wheels slowed as she dashed into the street, and the man with red sideburns and a low cap tightened the reins just enough for the young woman to alight with the grace of a doe.

“Marvelously done, m’dear,” the man drolled, flicking the lead reins with limp, delicately angled wrists. He wheeled the phaeton around with competent execution.

Eying the coarse, freckled hands holding the leather strips, Lucy murmured, “Did you remember my bag?”

Jimmy reached beneath the bench and tugged at a hidden strap. “I didnae forget a thing, Miss Lucy. We’ve only planned this for nigh on two months.” His nasal gentlemen’s affectation disappeared beneath the harsh Scottish burr of his homeland.

She smiled at him, though it was strained. Only three people were privy to her whereabouts this morning and the next several days. Meggie, Jimmy, and herself.

She was going back to Texas. Back to Papa and Minnie and the hotel. Back to happiness. Three years before, her mother had seized her from her father, and she’d said goodbye to smiling faces and wildflower-lined roads, and hello to paved streets and upturned noses. Her last memory of Papa was of him standing stiffly on the boards of the sidewalk in front of his hotel. His hat had been old, his face filled with lines of pain as a fourteen-year-old Lucy had screamed for him from the stagecoach window.

Three years of belittlement from Mother and her older sister Beth had commenced. Now, she would finally be free.

Reminded of freedom, she reached over and grasped Jimmy’s forearm. “I could not have done this without you, Jimmy,” she said with feeling. “Are you sure Mother will not suspect you?”

“Doon’t be frettin’ none.” He patted the slim, gloved hand on his rough sleeve. “We live beyond the outskirts of the city now, and I get on fine with the boss at the mill. He’s a Scot, ye ken?” He tapped his nose conspiratorially. “And Mary has the run of her own home, no more sharin’ a flat with ten others.”

Lucy listened to Jimmy talk fondly of his wife and their many children, and how country life suited their family much more than in the city. The month before, he’d left her mother’s employment, but not without a promise to Lucy that he’d be back to help her execute her escape. His sister Meggie, also tired of the daily tyranny of working beneath Aurora, was to meet him on the corner once he’d dropped Lucy off at the train station. It had taken Meggie a bit longer to obtain another reputable position in secret outside the city.

“And ye’re sure your da will be there to meet you?” Jimmy was asking.

She cleared her throat. “Yes. He bought a ticket for me just yesterday.”

He nodded, satisfied, and they rode the remainder of the way to the train station without speaking, each lost in their reveries.

The Atlanta Union Station was an enormous red structure built in Second Empire style, sporting many glass windows and black shingles upon the turreted roofs. Trains wound their way along mazes of tracks that had no rhyme or reason to Lucy’s inexpert eye. A forest-green steam engine was currently parked beneath the huge iron and glass pavilion, steam releasing in white puffs from the smokestack. The ticket booth was easy to spot with its single window and a canvas awning. Buggies and horses were parked hither and tither, blocking the roadways between Pryor Street and Central Avenue. Lucy tried to keep her eyes from growing huge with fear at the immensity of the building and bustle of activity.

Once a muttering Jimmy had found a place to park, Lucy halted him from setting the brake or standing from his seat.

“I need to do this alone. The less we are seen together, the better it will be for you. It’s best that Mother believes Papa and I acted alone.”

He scoffed. “Miss Lucy, you know I’m not skairt—”

“Jimmy,” she pleaded, and her eyes began to swim, halting his words succinctly. “We both know how she is. If she discovers you had anything to do with it, it would be nothing to hire a Pinkerton agent to find you. If anything happened to you, what would become of your wife and children? No. I go alone from here.”

Jimmy gazed at her serious face for a moment before turning away, squinting near the ticket booth. “I’d like to see your da come and fetch you before I left you here, at the verra least.”

Tugging her green and pink-flowered carpetbag from beneath the bench to hide the color blossoming in her cheeks, Lucy lied, “Oh, he’s to wait for me in the pavilion. I’ll go ask the ticket clerk if he’s bought our tickets, and wave at you when I see him, will that suffice?”

Sighing hard out of his nose, Jimmy muttered a reluctant agreement.

Smiling wide at him to conceal how sick she felt, Lucy hugged him, quick and fierce, then hopped from the phaeton before he could change his mind and see what an utter fraud she was.

No Papa waited for her.

Her father had no knowledge of her plans at all. She was very afraid if she didn’t leave now, she would be unable to leave at all. It wasn’t just her authoritarian mother that had forced her hand, oh no. It was also the despicable scandal that Lucy had tangled and knotted herself into in the past three months.

She asked the ticket clerk what the time was, hat low, and pretended to walk around the booth as though looking for someone. Pasting a fake smile on her face, she turned and waved at the small figure of Jimmy.

Lucy couldn’t risk Jimmy convincing her to stay.

She was afraid if she stayed in Atlanta even one day longer, she’d become someone she hated, someone even worse than her mother.

***

“HERE’S YOUR TICKET, sir.”

Benjamin Stone took the third-class ticket and cattle car stub from the skinny little clerk at the window, tipped his hat to him, and strolled across the depot toward the pavilion with the high, cathedral-like ceiling.

Should’ve got that damned sleeper car, he thought when the weak morning light outside hit his sensitive, tired eyes. But what was another hard place to sleep when it saved dollars? In the five years that he’d worked steers and led drives, his body should be able to conform to the thin padding of a train bench as easily as it did a bedroll on rocks and dirt. His foul mood followed him to the horse tethered at the end of the station’s long boardwalk.

He halted when he saw a slender, fine-dressed woman crooning to his gelding, scratching that fuzzy spot under Reb’s chin that made the horse’s lips quiver. Ben scoffed audibly at the pathetic animal, but when he made to head the lady off, the woman turned. She grabbed the most godawful ugliest green bag he’d ever seen from her feet and walked away. He got a glimpse of a young, crisp profile beneath a stylish hat before she rounded a building.

Reb’s ears perked when he saw Ben.

“Oh, no you don’t. I saw you flirtin’ with that female. Doesn’t matter to you whether she has two legs or four, you still act like you got a pair of stones to do something about it.” Ben tugged at the bay’s black forelock in passing and whirled with a palm out in warning when the horse bent low to nip at his jacket. “Eh, eh, don’t even think about it.”

In answer, the equine lifted his tail and added his contribution to the many road apples that littered the area.

“Dadgum filthy animal. You act no better than a mule.” Ben shook his head and untethered the horse.

Reb’s manners may have been atrocious, but when the train hooted in the distance, Ben mourned that he had to lose the animal’s company and put him in a cattle car. The black and red steam engine appeared around the corner first, then the remainder of it trailing behind, lithesome as a snake. It hissed, spit, and clattered something awful, bringing with the thousands of tons of black metal the hot smell of oil that blasted everyone within twenty feet.

“Alright old boy, let’s load up.” After the cattle cars were emptied, he showed Reb’s ticket stub to a conductor and led the placid horse up the narrow ramp. They were old pros at this, that was certain, but Ben felt the weariness of six months’ constant travel like a load of bricks. It was high time to settle down.

Once Reb was put away, Ben grabbed the edge of the car and jumped to the boardwalk, nodding once or twice at other passerby and their livestock, unsmiling. The strain of being in a big city had worn him down like an old tooth ground too near the nerves. Every social interaction was a jolt; a talkative old timer could make him sweat, and a young child begging for a sweet closed up his throat. He was a man made for solitude, for long Texas nights where the sky stretched broad and black with millions of stars. Animals in their paddocks and pastures would lay down, nocturnal bugs would rustle and chitter, and the hoot owls would talk to each other. In the big country, it was impossible to feel lonely.

Here, no one was still. People squirmed with the purpose of ants on a disturbed mound, swarming everywhere until every corner you turned, you bumped into a body. He’d drifted here from Texas to Tennessee and Kentucky, looking for the best prices to sell the horseflesh he’d accumulated and trained south of the Mason Dixon. His last stop in Atlanta had proved fruitful; none of those fancy thoroughbreds had the stamina of a good quarter horse, but he’d raked in the coins from training the hotblooded stallions those fancy dudes were so keen on riding, lining his pockets with cold, hard cash. Yesterday, he’d visited the bank and had it wired to his old bank in Texas.

And now, he was tired. He wanted a home.

He felt in his soul it was time to go back.

If he wanted any kind of relationship with his little brother, it was time to stop running.

Once in the third-class passenger car, he chose the area in the back that was the least congested with people. He nabbed the empty seat to the left, sprawled his legs until his rear found comfort on the shallow padding, and lowered his hat onto his face for a bit of shut-eye. The dirty leather pressed over his eyes, more inviting than a silken eye mask. If it kept anyone from making idle conversation, all the better.

***

LUCY PASSED THE conductor with a weak smile as she made her tentative way down the aisle of the third-class train car. Someone was smoking a pipe near the front, and the pungent bite of tobacco was a fragrant layer unable to conceal the more malodorous aroma of mildewed leather seats and body odor.

Her heart hammered at a frantic rate through her legs, arms, and throat, and a clammy sweat of the guilty beaded her forehead and lip.

The car was full of a motley crew of people; families, married couples, and bachelors. No women traveling alone that she could see. She pasted on a mask of unconcern, her nose lifted with confidence, her eyes darting left, right, left, right, trying to find a seat that would be the most bearable to occupy for hours at a time. She threaded past weathered old men, svelte businessmen in suits with gold watches glinting, two husbands with their wives and children.

A baby drew her eye, peeking sleepily from the arms of a young mother who whispered to her husband and their young female relative. The small family had snagged a bench in the very back, perhaps hoping that would disturb fewer people if their baby decided to cry. Across the aisle from them was a seat with a lone man, fast asleep in his worn travel clothes, a faded brown bandana at his collar, and a dusty black cowboy hat perched on an upturned face. As she shuffled closer, she saw a sliver of his neck, tanned a deep brown and almost completely hidden by a stretch of glossy black beard. His sweat-stained shirt had a button missing. Considering he took up half the bench, she reasoned he would be too broad of shoulder to fit anyone next to him larger than a lone lady like herself, and made her decision.

She took a careful seat between the sleeping man and the curious baby at the back of the car and told herself she’d be perfectly content there for the next long, nervous hours. The babe had followed her progress, his small, dimpled fingers splayed on his mother’s breast. The mother discreetly moved the hand to the side.

For numerous, tense minutes Lucy remained rigid, eyes shifting from the window to the door of the train car, waiting for her mother or law enforcement to burst in and take her back home. Her foot jiggled and her bag was heavy in her lap. The conductor shouted something, but her ears weren’t listening, and she held her breath.

What did he say?

The train began to chuff, and its wheels screeched as multiple cars groaned forward. Progress was slow at first, but they eventually gained speed, and she felt her shoulders slump from their set, unyielding posture.

The baby, old enough to crawl and wanting to do so right away, began to fuss.

Loudly.

A glance at her seat cohabitant confirmed that he still slumbered, but the mother and father of the screaming child began to argue with one another. Lucy tapped her fingers, not looking at the troubled couple but also unable to ignore when the little tyke attempted to do backflips from its mother’s arms.

She rummaged in her bag and produced a shiny, bright candy. Lucy flourished a peppermint stick that was thick and wouldn’t easily break off in front of the squalling boy’s red, contorted face. Within seconds, the screaming broke off into cooing. Wet, blue eyes were round, and plump fingers reached.

“I hope this wasn’t too forward,” Lucy murmured apologetically to the relieved mother as the baby commenced a slobbering attack on the peppermint stick.

The woman shook her head in reassurance. “Oh, don’t worry none. I’d rather a mess than a caterwauling. I was scared they’d kick us right off the train.”

They conversed for a good, long while, and made introductions. They were the Stuarts, and their baby’s name was William. Lucy introduced herself as Anne, and it was strangely uncomfortable, like wearing stolen shoes. The fear that she would be found out was a steady trickle adding to a river of paranoia. Little Will had soon fallen asleep not even halfway through the candy, so they let a comfortable stall halt their conversation in the hopes that he’d remain so.

Scenery flew past the window in a colorful blur, mostly trees, and it gave the glass pane the appearance of a smudged green painting. Occasionally, a town or homestead would fly past, and Lucy would lean closer before they disappeared into the trees.

She’d done it.

She’d snuck away in the early morning hours and had crept like a thief to the train depot.

After Jimmy had reluctantly pulled the phaeton away, Lucy had returned to the ticket booth. Buying the ticket under a different name was easy, and she’d made up a story about herself in case anyone asked. Her name was Anne, and she was traveling back home to her husband after a long visit with family.

No one had asked.

A kink in her plan appeared right out of the gate, however, when she was informed that the train en route from Atlanta to Houston was being serviced, and the next one wouldn’t be ready until after noon.

At noon, her mother would be combing the streets for her.

Pretending she wasn’t panicking, Lucy made the swift decision to ride to Jackson, Mississippi.

“You sure?” The wiry clerk had asked. “It’ll take longer. You’ll have to switch trains. Could get expensive.”

“How expensive?”

“Depends on if you grab a Pullman or not.”

In the end, she’d decided on the cheaper, albeit slower route.

Take the train to Jackson, Mississippi, opt for a stagecoach between Jackson and New Orleans, board a sleeper car to Houston, then one last stagecoach ride home. Once settled, the clerk had written down the false name, took her money, and handed her a ticket with instructions, rules, and her arrival time in Mississippi. Her success had been so easy that she’d stood like a mute until he’d frowned at her and called, ‘Next!’.

Now, she was one step closer to Texas. To Papa. To be sure, he’d be furious with her, but she’d make him understand. 

Sighing, she reached into her bag and grabbed an apple. Now that her stomach was no longer in knots, she was famished. She polished the shiny, blushing apple with her cuff and wondered if Papa and Minnie had changed much in her three-year absence. Certainly, their little girl that had been forced away those years ago had changed from a laughing adolescent to a somber woman. Would they be ashamed of her actions?

Lucy bit crisply into the apple, the knot of worry returning. She pictured herself standing before her father. He would tower over her in justifiable anger, shaking with rage, finger pointing in accusation at her rash and ludicrous decision. Excuses bubbled up, arguments of defense her only weapons.

Papa, Mother sent me to a horrible school, so far away…

Papa, she had the preacher make a sermon about me…

The woman is completely unhinged, a raving lunatic…

My sister’s beau proposed marriage to me, and his mother tried to pay me to stay away…

At that, she closed her eyes and covered her face with a shaking hand. Had she become such a vile person? It seemed unbearable to tell him such a shameful truth. He may very well disown her and send her back to Atlanta to mete out the consequences of her actions. She’d thought she’d been so sly, manipulating a man into sending a secret letter that would cure her unhappiness.

It proved her right, she thought savagely. She was knocked clear off her high horse and now she could revel in her place on the hard dirt, covered in the dust of her poor choices.

Even though she chastised herself, that secret part of her crowed that she was on her way home. She’d just have to be smarter, more cautious, or the next time she was knocked off her saddle, she may very well land in a pile of horse manure.

Well, if she was to work smarter, she’d better start thinking. Straightening into a more confident pose, she took another bite of the apple, analyzing every step of her journey, the expenditures, and the amount of money she had remaining. If her calculations were correct, she’d make it home with five dollars to spare.

The man beside her twitched in his sleep, and she paused in her chewing, distracted.

She glanced at the slumbering male that shared her bench.

Men had become infinitely more interesting to her, being such large and hairy creatures full of awesome physical strength so much greater than her own. And he was quite large, this man. What his face looked like beneath his hat, she could but wonder. Probably tanned and weathered like his hands, which were clasped lightly. Thick, rough fingers interlocked just below his waistband. They could probably crush a windpipe without hesitation. The breadth of him was astounding.

Compared to Peter, this man was a Clydesdale to a carriage horse. Compared to her, she was fragile as a yearling. His legs were long and thick, thighs large and muscular under his dark trousers. His shirtsleeves were up, exposing thick, sturdy wrists dusted with hair, and even in repose, his forearms were roped with muscles and blue veins.

Swallowing the half-masticated apple in her slack mouth, she squirmed with guilt and shot furtive looks around like the peeping Tom that she was. No one had noticed her ogling, and she determined to behave like a lady and looked elsewhere. Her next bite was resolute. Even through the constant clattering of the train on the tracks, it was loud. She almost choked on it when the sleeping man next to her stirred, legs tautening, muscles bunching in his limbs and torso as he eased upright from his relaxed slouch. His hands came apart to pluck his hat from his face, twirling the worn leather once before it was jammed on a thick crown of mussed black curls.

The cowboy’s face was haggard with exhaustion, tan from sun exposure with the softest beard Lucy had ever seen. He was as different from Peter as a leather settee to the gleaming buffalo rug at its tapered feet. His beard did put Lucy in mind of a buffalo, all soft brownish-black curls, dense and wild.

Beth would find this man—obviously working class—repulsive, with his worn clothing and body hair. Lucy found him completely arresting.

And then, she found him alarming, because she had woken him up.

Heart beating fast in remorse and fear, she watched her bench mate rub his eyes and blink them open. The delicate skin beneath them was unlined but tinged in the blue bruising of the unrested. He was neither young nor old, but weary, and his eyes were the shade of a dusky blue night sky when the stars were still shy, and the sun went to sleep behind the horizon. She stared at him, nervous, as eyes vivid against his tan registered their surroundings.

Blue reflected the shimmering light from the window.

Then, they skimmed over the people in the rows of seats in front of them.

Lashes, dark and thick as a line of kohl, rimmed eyes that paused for a long moment on her green valise, flickered with something, thick brows twitching together.

Finally, the disturbing scrutiny completed its slow journey to land, in accusation, on her.

***

IT FELT AS though a two-ton steer was pressing down on his head, making it heavy, eyelids burning and tired.

He’d drifted in and out of restless sleep as people filled the seats in front of and around him after he’d boarded the train. Someone had taken a seat next to him with a breath of soap and talcum powder. A woman. A baby screamed forever, and he’d wanted to weep, but he’d ignored it until the crying stopped, and soft feminine voices and the pleasant odor of laundered clothes and soap helped him drift into black dreamland.

In his dream, he smelled apples. He was in an orchard, walking between rows of trees alone. It was early winter but no red fruit loaded the branches, though he could smell them. Someone bit noisily into an apple, and he whirled around. Behind him, his mother snacked on a blushing yellow and pink fruit, cheerful and smiling, brown eyes happy. Ben felt something tug at his consciousness, the niggling sense that he was being watched.

He woke with reluctance, slow, digging his heels in. Sound came back to him in a rush. Clattering train wheels, low voices in conversation, the crunching of what sounded like strong horse jaws making short work of an apple. Reb?

Awareness kicked in and he sighed.

Might as well wake up, he groused.

He was just so damned tired.

Sitting up was an effort, and he jammed his hat back on his head and rubbed his aching eyes. Blearily, he opened his grimy lids and blinked, owlish, at the people in the rows of seats in front of him. Hats with feathers, bonnets, black bowlers, ten-gallon; all were attached to the heads of muttering folk determined to keep him awake.

Now, who in the Sam Hill was chewing so loudly it woke him from a sound sleep only a screaming babe could disturb?

A flash of sickly green caught his peripheral, and he glanced at the familiar ugly carpetbag from the depot. No. Surely God hadn’t become so cruel that He’d planted that little first-class miss that had charmed Reb into the same seat as his own. And yet, there she was, a modern replica of Eve herself with a half-eaten apple in the palm of her hand. He glared at it for a moment before putting himself out of his misery and finally looked at the face of the oppressor of his nap.

He met wide, dark eyes.

Light olive skin, pillowy parted lips the color of red wine, dark arched brows, delicate ears.

Ah, hell, he despaired. It was Eve, indeed.

To his shock, he watched a blush climb out of her high neckline, up her neck, to bloom across her cheekbones. She gave him a sheepish, apologetic smile, and to Ben’s dismay, his heart began to pound in reaction.

He countered her smile with a curt nod and turned away. Spoiling for a fight at an uncharacteristic burst of adrenaline, he struggled not to shift in his uncomfortable seat. He figured his rear was molded permanently into the shape of a saddle, and anything flatter than curving leather would always be a trial to sit on.

Eyes drilled holes into his profile. Did he have a five-dollar piece on his face? Jewelry? The key back to Eden?

Eve cleared her throat. “Good morning,” she offered. “I hope I did not wake you.”

Maybe he could pretend not to speak English. No hablo Ingles, senorita. His Spanish was rusty enough for his mother to turn in her grave, but if it spared him from a forced conversation, he’d make up words if he had to.

Crunch.

His eyes jumped back to her.

In the growing silence, she’d taken a huge bite of her apple, and was now pretending to look out the window. It was awkward as hell. A delicate feminine jaw chewed the apple, and its aroma permeated the air between them, better than any perfume those rich ladies liked to wear. She even looked like a bit of a well-to-do with her erect posture, fancy hat, and expensive wool suit. But he couldn’t remember a lady ever munching on an apple as ferociously as this one did.

“I needed to wake up,” was his non-answer. He picked up his hat far enough to run rough fingers through hair in desperate need of a cut before replacing it. Unable to help it, he watched her surreptitiously. She’d stopped chewing and was considering his hands with the kind of intensity that made a body interested.

Stop lookin’ at me like that, lady.

It wouldn’t surprise him if he was still dreaming. Where were her menfolk? They’d set her pert little behind straight. ‘Don’t look at strange men’ was one of the top unspoken rules of traveling women; looking incited mischief. Especially if the looker looked like her.

The lady was speaking again. Unbelievable.

“I’m Lucy Ricci.” She frowned and bit that maroon lip. Although her voice was low and clear, and she enunciated her words as perfect as any city miss, there was a hint of a southern drawl. The way she spoke suggested intelligence, the surety of her words, the expressions on her face.

“Ben Stone,” he murmured, tipping his hat, which felt ridiculous to do when one was seated. He hoped she didn’t want to shake hands. A man didn’t shake hands while sitting, just like he didn’t put his hat on his bed or the dinner table.

She didn’t.

Instead, she reached into her bag.

“Would you like one?”

He closed his eyes for patience while she joyfully pawed through her God-awful bag until she found what she was searching for. A perfect apple, large as her fist, with a stem and leaf still attached to it.

Yessiree, she came from money.

She wasn’t acting like it. She looked so hopeful, that he couldn’t help his next words.

“You know, I read about this once in the Good Book.”

He watched her eyes register his meaning, and instead of getting offended and ignoring him from then on in a huff, she smiled. Big. It turned her whole face heart-shaped. Its brilliance blinded him, and he felt the corners of his lips curl up despite himself. She looked even younger.

“Ah, found me out, have you?” She laughed and nudged her offering at him.

Forced to accept her munificence or look like a horse’s ass, he held it loosely between his fingers.

“It’s not poisoned, you have my word,” she goaded after a pause, lips twitching. “And we’re far from Eden.”

“Maybe I’m just waitin’ for you to fall asleep before I eat it.” Said in such a serious tone, he was again afraid that she’d get her feelings pricked. And again, he was allowed the pleasure of another smile, this one accompanied by rosy cheeks.

“Oh, I did wake you, didn’t I? Alright, I’ll fall asleep right away so you can exact your revenge.” 

He snorted and shook his head. He really was a horse’s ass, probably turning more and more into Reb by the day. At the thought, he offered, “I saw you at the depot. Before. You were petting my horse.”

Miss Ricci leaned closer. It was only an inch, but he noticed. 

“That blood bay beauty?” she breathed. “I walked by him and could not resist petting him. He’s built like a quarter horse, but his coloring is comparable to any Thoroughbred show horse.

“I couldn’t resist,” she teased, “complimenting him.”

If she’d told him she was a whore in disguise and wanted to rent them a room in Jackson, he couldn’t have been more pleased. His shoulders relaxed a bit, and he twisted the stem on his apple. “Yeah, he’s getting on in age, but he’s decent for an old man. Too bad he was already cut when I bought him.” He stopped. There he went again, talking like a rough cowhand in front of a pure lady—

Nodding, Lucy glanced at his fingers and added, “I thought so, too. He would have thrown some fine foals.” Not such a ladylike thing to say, but a sensible one, and he found himself liking her more by the minute.

They continued their conversation safely on the subject of horses for an hour until his posture was fully relaxed, and his apple was a mangled core. He noticed her own had been neatly consumed and was symmetrical all around. When she glanced in askance for a wastebasket, he didn’t think twice and opened their soot-grimed window, grabbed what was left of her apple, and tossed both of their cores across blurred shrubbery. If she was shocked that he’d touched the fruit that she’d gnawed on for the better part of their conversation, she hid it well.

“So where are you headed, Mr. Stone?”

He wished he had a toothpick. His tongue ran a brief pass over his teeth. “Back home to Texas.”

Lucy’s dark eyes skittered from his mouth and she played with a thread on her bag. “I thought that’s where you were from. Your accent makes me homesick,” she added with an incredulous shake of her head. “I don’t know if it’s coincidence or fate, but that’s where I’m about as well. Back to Dogwood, Texas. What city do you hail from?”

Dogwood. It sounded familiar, then it clicked into place like the cock of a revolver. Suspicious, he frowned at the blue sky outside, wondering why God would place a beautiful woman practically in his lap who just so happened to live a two-hour ride away from the land he intended to buy outright from his father.

“Our ranch is about a day’s ride from Huntsville,” he answered, forceful in the vagueness of his answer.

“Oh, then you’re not so very far from my town,” she smiled, and her nostrils gave a brief flare. “Well, if you ever find your way into Dogwood, be sure to stop by the Dogwood Hotel. Papa just acquired new gas lighting, and I know for a fact that the bedsheets are fresh for every stay. Minnie and I used to do it together.” Her eyes glinted with emotion. “The steak is superb, and so is the pie.” She broke off at the last, and he watched her swallow with the wariness of a miner seated near a lit fuse of dynamite.

His legs shifted, a large, square knee jiggled, then lay still. “Steak and pie are soundin’ real good right about now.”

She pretended to look in her bag, a nervous habit, and her blinks were vigorous. “Then you must stop by one day, just for the food, even if you have no business that way. It will be on the house.”

Feeling a bit desperate, his leg waggled again. “Can’t be too good for business, a free meal to a stranger.”

“Perhaps we could be friends by the end of our journey. I could dearly use one.”

Forthright and candid. He didn’t know how to handle women like those. Not anymore. It felt like a trick. His attraction to her cautioned, because the more she talked, the more interested he felt. It was Trouble with long lashes and a pretty smile. He didn’t need woman trouble right now.

It shook him up.

The last time he’d felt so out of his element, he’d tenaciously brought his mother up to his father. The force of John Stone’s backhand had near about stove his teeth in. Then, his Pa had chased him off the Stone ranch for good measure.

He felt that familiar provoking urge for space now.

So, he did what he always did when he felt cornered. He attacked.

“I’m surprised you’re travelin’ alone, Miss Ricci.” He let disapproval leak into his tone.

“I—”

“Your pa, brother, or husband ain’t worried you’re out and about without a chaperone?”

“Women do not always require chaperones, Mr. Stone. And I have no brothers, nor am I married.” She skirted his question, then looked quietly furious with herself.

“So, your pa is fine with you being all on your own?” he persisted.

“Of course, he is.” Her spine couldn’t have been stiffer if she’d sat upon a railroad pike. “I’m staying with a friend in Jackson. I shan’t be completely alone, I assure you.”

It didn’t escape his notice that her voice had lost all trace of a comfortable accent and was brittle as a city mayor’s during election season.

“That’s good,” he said with feeling, and having erected her walls enough to please himself, he hunched lower into the mildewed leather scent of his seat, legs sprawled, and pulled his hat back over his face. In the dark of the hollow crown, he repeated, “That’s real good.”

---

Chapter Two

Their train screeched to a halt in Jackson, Mississippi just before dusk.

Lucy waited for a conductor to alert the passengers of the runaway status of a girl with her description. She watched with wary eyes when he appeared, but instead of marching down the aisle to detain her, he merely smiled at the people in front and helped them disembark the car in an orderly fashion.

Wishing there weren’t so many steps in this confounded journey home, Lucy peeped at Ben Stone. Choosing to forget the more unpleasant portion of their conversation, she mustered a smile.

“Mr. Stone, it was a pleasure to meet you, and I wish you safe travels.”

When he stood, he towered over her, blocking out the window behind him. He offered an ungloved hand and she took it without hesitation. A hot pulse surged through her, and she was grateful for the glove she wore that hid her clammy palm. His fingers were strong, and his forearm barely flexed at her weight when he helped her stand. Lucy imagined what it would feel like if they were skin to skin. Once at her feet, she was neck-level with him. She hid her surprise that he was of average height. The breadth of his shoulders and intense presence was nonetheless substantial, and she felt very small next to him.

“Pleasure was mine, Miss Ricci. If I ever go through Dogwood, I reckon I’ll take you up on that steak and pie.” She loved that his voice was so deep, and she hated that they hadn’t met under normal circumstances.

Before their handholding became awkward, she turned it into a handshake. His hand shook hers in a warm, firm clasping of delicately gloved knuckles against a calloused thumb, then, he released her, and they made their way down the aisle after the Stuarts. After they stepped onto the boardwalk, he went right, and she straight. The loss was keen enough to hollow her stomach, but Lucy ignored it and assured herself it was hunger.

Theirs was the last stop of the day, and she reached the ticket clerk just as he was locking the depot building’s door, cashbox under his arm.

“Where would I acquire a ticket to the morning stagecoach to New Orleans, sir?”

The clerk didn’t glance up and hooked a thumb to his right and gave her an address. “They’ll be closing soon, ma’am. Best hurry.”

“Yes, sir.”

The stage office was halfway down Main Street, and her back grew damp and sticky from the stressful possibility she’d make it too late. The train station had been notified by a wire from her mother by now, she was sure of it. If she was turned away and given to the local law enforcement, she would die. She’d shrivel into a husk and float into the breeze down Main Street.

For now, however, she steeled her spine and rounded the corner onto Main.

Stars were losing their shyness and peeked through the darkening veil of the sky. A man on stilts lit streetlamps in slow, measured steps. If he fell, at worst he’d break his neck or an arm at best. In the orange glow of his wake, the alleys and smaller roadways grew darker, their depths indeterminate gateways to hellish dimensions where invisible beings with red eyes lurked.

Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to find the stage line. A coach pulled away from a boardwalk on the left and entered a livery a few buildings down to the right. She watched as more and more people carrying luggage left the rather small building. Foremost, she would pay for the ticket under a false name, a different one than the alias she’d used in Atlanta.

And this time she would stick to it!

She blamed giving her real name and background to Mr. Stone as a temporary leave of her senses. It had to have been his pretty eyes. No one should have eyes that distracting, particularly not bearded cowboys.

Ahead of her, a movement caught her eye. A large shadow led a larger, four-legged shadow into the street. The broad shape of the man’s silhouette was instantly familiar.

Speak of the devil.

She took a precious minute to watch the way he walked, like the piston of a well-greased machine in a factory, smooth and rolling. Lucy found herself scurrying in his direction, her bag held before her like armor, and she knew the second he heard her. Ben’s dark silhouette glanced back, then halted. His horse turned his head, delicate ears perking.

“Miss Ricci?” came his dark, low voice. She shivered.

“One and the same,” she admitted, hot and sheepish in the obscuring gloom. The sun had set, and she glanced worriedly at the stage office. “They’ll probably be closing soon,” she speculated, chewing a nail for a weak moment before remembering ladies didn’t do such things. “I should be a bit hastier and pay for my ticket before they’re sold out.”

“You’re takin’ a stage? Train would be faster.” He hadn’t moved from his spot, and in the shadows, the dim outline of his beard moved with his frown.

“Yes,” she agreed, “and far more expensive. I’ll take the through train from New Orleans to Houston and take another stage from there.”

“Outlaws still rob ‘em.” The censure in his voice pricked at her pride. Didn’t he think she’d thought of that? Of course, there were dangers!

“I’ve taken measures for safety,” was all she said. “All I want is to get my ticket and find a room to sleep in.”

“Your friend not here to pick you up?” He’d began walking again, and she followed, as obedient as his horse.

Lucy felt extreme guilt that he’d caught her in a lie and bit her dry lips. “There is no friend. I didn’t want anyone to know that I was alone.” He’d stopped walking, and she felt some dark emotion rolling off him in waves. She wished she could see his eyes. “I am sorry, truly. It was not my intention to lie—”

“If you’re wanting a room alone, you’re probably too late by now,” he interrupted and continued walking. She had to skip ahead to keep up with his long strides. “You’ll have to bundle with someone or find a cot in a hotel kitchen.”

She hated how he spoke to her. Gone was the easy comradery from the train bench they had shared, the sense that they were equals. The impatience in his words, as though he were explaining something to a fool, rubbed at the raw place she thought she’d left behind her in Atlanta. Well, he wasn’t her father or even her brother. And if his eyes were beautiful, she thought inanely, then all the better that they went separate ways. She’d had enough of men to last her a lifetime.

“I am not afraid to sleep on a cot, or even a dusty corner somewhere, Mr. Stone.” She gave a haughty twitch of her chin. “All that matters is getting home, so what is a little discomfort? Where are you sleeping, hm?”

A man’s voice from a black alley to her left startled her, and she moved in animal instinct to the closest source of protection.

She could feel him shrug, so close had she scooted to him. “Probably the livery, if no one’s got a room.”

The livery? She imagined dusty hay, manure smell, and flea-infested blankets draped over a shivering Ben. Contrition wilted her prickliness.

“Oh. Well, you should probably find a room in all haste. Could you—” she paused, then swallowed her pride. “Would you—mind doing me a favor, Mr. Stone? Would you wait while I purchase a ticket to New Orleans, and perhaps walk me to the hotel over there? It’s awfully dark, and I’m alone—” she drifted off, miserable that he’d think her an incompetent traveler, yet needing him to believe it.

“’Course, ma’am.” The formality and forced lightness made her cringe. He tipped his hat at her to precede him, so she acquiesced and struggled not to bound up the wooden stairs cattycorner to the stage office. Her muscles stretched deliciously after being seated on a train seat for so many hours. She reached for the door latch and paused. A quick peek proved that Ben had indeed followed her and was waiting with long-suffering patience in the light from the office window.

Perfect.

She yanked at the door, half afraid it was locked and was gratified when it swung out. There were two men at the counter, and tobacco smoke hung like fog around the room. One man counted a sheaf of money, and the other puffed on a pipe. They both looked up in askance when she shut the door behind her. The younger man counting silver coins and greenbacks was a slender fellow with prominent ears. His eyes shot to his partner, and she couldn’t miss the swift alertness between the two.

“Hello,” she chirped as though her mind wasn’t racing, and her bag wasn’t slipping out of her perspiring palms. “Do you have a spot available for the stage going to New Orleans?”

The older, overweight man with the pipe blinked rapidly and joined his friend behind the counter. He shuffled through papers, and out of the corner of his mouth past the pipe, he murmured something. The younger man with shrewd eyes looked up from a slip of paper, giving her person several lingering passes before going back to his note.

“Name, Miss?” he asked all business.

The name popped into her head and shone as bright as the light at the end of a long and arduous tunnel. “Stone. Eve Stone.” After a pause, she added with a touch of sternness, “And it’s ‘Mrs’. That’s my husband.” She pointed out the tiny window to Ben, who dug through the saddlebags of his pretty blood bay gelding.

“No ticket for Mr. Stone?” the young man asked dubiously, laying his note down. Uncertainty clouded his earlier vigilance.

“He prefers to ride alongside, but I could not possibly be on horseback for that length of time.” She shuddered delicately.

“Hm,” grunted the older man, and his mustache followed his frown around his pipe stem. “We have one that leaves in the morning at seven-thirty sharp, ma’am. How much luggage you have?”

Lucy suddenly didn’t want either man to get a good look at her telling green bag, so she hid it behind her back and thrust her chest forward, smiling with confidence even though her fingers trembled. “A large valise, approximately thirty pounds. My husband will have the rest in our saddle bags.”

He nodded and wrote a few things down. She licked her lips when she couldn’t see what he wrote. Probably WE FOUND HER in bold letters. Her upper lip had just begun to sweat when he wrote a ticket out for her, and she dug a few hidden bills out of the bag she laid at her feet in elation.

“Thank you, Mr….”

“Pettiford, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pettiford.” She was beyond relieved and wanted to jump and shout with joy as she laid her money on the counter and hightailed it out of there before they could call her back.

Only, when she exited the building, her breath of relief froze in her throat and choked her when Mr. Pettiford called out from the wide-open doorway, “Mrs. Stone! Eve Stone? You forgot your ticket!”

***

THE EXPRESSION ON Miss Ricci’s face reminded Ben of the time his pal Sol fell from his horse, dead drunk, and got the breath clobbered out of him from the hard-packed ground.

Wide-eyed disbelief and chagrin.

He almost expected those pretty pink lips to emit wheezing. It was nearly enough to make Ben smile if he wasn’t so damned furious. What he ought to do was give her rear the hiding that it deserved.

Instead, he stood calm and composed while the little fool struggled to transform her face from shock to a placid smile. She turned and plucked her ticket from the outstretched hand with a grateful murmur, then descended the steps to pause beside him in breathless hesitance. She held her breath, and her eyes couldn’t seem to decide whether to meet his or stay trained on her hard-won ticket.

The man that had chased her watched them, hawk-like, from the lit doorway. Unsmiling, he jerked his head to Ben. “You two been married long?” His arms were crossed in suspicion, the light from the office behind him filtering red through ears that stuck out from his face like bat wings.

Lucy was small and still beside him. Her bag had never appeared larger or as ugly as it did now, dangling from her bloodless fingers. Those clutching hands and the smug skepticism of the suddenly unfriendly office clerk decided him.

Ben leaned down and snagged the wooden handles of her bag, ignoring her fluttering hands as he took it away. “Here, I’ll take that, dear.” Then, he stood straight and gave the stage clerk a hard, direct stare. “We’ve been married near to a year now. Reason why you’re askin’?”

Bat Ears uncrossed his arms pretty quick after that and held his hands up with a placating laugh. “Oh, no harm in asking, sir! We’ve had an emergency wire to look out for a runaway from Atlanta. There’s a reward for her detainment to the nearest authorities.” His voice carried in the night air around them.

Lucy came alive then, and turned around, hands clutching at her breast. “Oh, that poor family. We understand the need to authenticate who I am. Here, hand me that bag, darling. I believe I have a copy of our marriage papers in here somewhere. What was her name and age, sir?” She pretended to dig in the bag that Ben held for their imaginary marriage certificate, dropping items on the ground and chatting.

The clerk shifted his feet and brought out his pocket watch.

Ben watched him sigh beneath lowered lids.

“No, no, that’s quite alright, madam. The girl is about sixteen in age, plain and plump of figure. Brown of hair and eyes. Her name is, ah, Lucille Richards, or something similar. I’d have to double-check.” By the snap of his watch face, the hound was off the scent and he was as ready to find a bed as they were.

Sixteen? Ben thought, sick at heart from his earlier errant thoughts from the train. But then he wondered, plain and plump? 

“Oh, dear, if you’re certain,” Lucy frowned. Her hands were poised over the mess she’d made in her search.

The man grunted and backed into the doorway. “Quite sure. If you notice anyone of that description, just make note of where she was, what time, and drop the information off either here or at the sheriff’s office.”

Ben tipped his hat to him while the girl next to him deposited dropped items back into her carpetbag and managed to remain impassive though his mind was reeling. He grabbed Reb’s reins in a loose grasp, then eased a decidedly heavy arm over Miss Ricci’s stiff little shoulders, turning them towards the dim haze of the clapboard buildings to their right. She followed along without a peep.

Anger built in him as it always did when lying women tried to manage him.

He’d been managed since he was ten, thanks to a bored, well-meaning stepmother. Where had that got him, he wondered? Shamed and shunned by the respectable people of the town. He’d found that he did quite well by himself without any housewife’s say-so, and for five years of living alone, had vowed that no one would run roughshod over his wants and needs. Not his Pa. Not the old man’s wife.

And not beautiful little liars like this one.

There was something else in the furious stream of his thoughts as he led her closer to the livery. Some emotion that he refused to admit to himself or give voice to attempt to smother his anger. It had no place in their present circumstances.

It felt suspiciously like worry.

When he imagined runaways, he pictured desperate children forced into thinking like an adult through either poverty or fear. She was neither poor of material things nor bruised of spirit. He tried to remember if she’d acted like a spoiled brat, or if she’d pouted or bragged about her ease in life. There was nothing. She’d been proud of her father’s hotel in Texas and had told him how she’d helped with the wash. Rich women didn’t touch laundry. In the time since he’d met her that morning, she’d been friendly, humorous, and not at all what he would imagine was a girl fleeing her home and worried family.

Even so. The deceit ate at him, withered up his liking for her. It was hard enough to trust people. She’d offered him kindness on the train, and then used it against him for her own deeds, whatever they were. He hardened his heart against the fondness he’d possessed for her. It was time someone gave her a talking-to.

Ben halted their funeral march just outside the livery’s open doors.

“You’re that missing girl. That why you’re lying, telling people I’m your husband?” He took his arm from her shoulders, and cool evening air seeped through the thin material of his worn shirt.

“Yes.” Her voice shook, and she sounded so wretched that he wanted to feel sorry for her. “I did not want strangers knowing my real name. In Atlanta I used ‘Anne’, and here I’m ‘Eve’. I’m so sorry I used—”

“You mean strangers like me? You told me your real name on the train, first thing.” His quiet, wrathful sarcasm slipped out. “Or is Lucy Ricci even your real name?” 

“Yes, it’s Lucy Ricci.” Lucy shot him a challenging look so quickly he would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been so focused on her face. Her efforts to hang her head after that dark look lost their authenticity, and he felt a cruel, knowing smirk twist his face. Little Liar. “I was not purposefully trying to be deceitful, Mr. Stone. I just…I didn’t want…There’s—” She took a deep, bracing breath. It was full dark now, and she gestured to the warm light of the livery doorway. “May I explain myself while we get your horse bedded down?”

We? Just who in the hell did she think she was? They weren’t a ‘we’.

“No.” His mouth pressed into a thin line, uncompromising and stern. “I don’t think you realize what kind of fool thing you did back there.”

That idiotic show of meekness disappeared, and she gawked up at him, offended.

Ben took a looming step toward her, practically breathing down her high neckline. “You can’t be goin’ around, claiming strange men as your husband, little miss. Any other man, and you could be buzzard food in a gully somewhere by morning.”

Her mouth opened and closed, her eyebrows knit, and the elusive spark was back. Better than lying.

“That’s perhaps a bit of a stretch—”

“No, it ain’t,” he growled, leaning further into her space to impress upon her that he was a stranger. She didn’t know him from Adam, didn’t know what type of men there were out there, just waiting for a young, sweet thing like her to come along. “You’re a lone woman, got no family, no menfolk around to protect you. Changin’ your name, tellin’ even one person you’re married to someone, could give a man the power to do whatever he wants to you. If I were an outlaw, a low-down snake, I could’ve used that man’s word back there as proof to treat you how I see fit. If I wanted to beat you, lock you in a room somewhere, I could. ‘Cause I’d be your husband, according to you.”

Lucy’s face was pale and stiff now, and he told himself fear was what he’d wanted from her all along. He needed her to realize the wrong person, at the wrong time, could make her a victim of some unspeakable crime.

“I-I didn’t think—” she whispered, but he cut her off again, warming up to his tirade. That angry, self-righteous frown of hers was gone now.

“That’s pretty obvious. Damn it, girl.” He took his hat off, ran his fingers through his hair, perspiring even in the crisp night air, and replaced it with firm, irate movements. “You gave me power back there, and I don’t know what you’re hidin’ from, but is it worth getting stolen away for? You can get yourself killed, or worse, living in the shadow of a bad man, beddin’ down like you were his wife. Until he tired of you, or the fear that you’d run off and tell, and slit your throat. Men can get away with anything out here. Taking a lone little girl isn’t anything. You’d disappear and no one would know where the hell you went, if you were dead or alive. How do you think your daddy would feel, then?”

To his horror, Miss Ricci’s eyes were full of tears that she tried blinking back. Her mouth was trembling, her breathing desperate and uneven. She wasn’t faking emotion this time.

“Aw, hell,” he muttered, and looked around with an anxious swivel, but no one was near enough to see more than just a couple, having an innocent conversation. She was scouring her face as though trying to hurt herself. Choppy breathing escaped from her damp fingers.

“Everything you said may be true, but I had to leave, I just had to.” Her voice was someone else’s, strained and high-pitched.

Seeing her break down in front of him, another thought occurred to him. She looked awfully alone…and awfully young. Couldn’t be much younger than his bullheaded little brother. And with the memory of Junior’s grinning face, a stalk of wheat the same color as his hair notched between his lips, Ben’s anger disappeared.

“Damn it…come here. C’mere.”

Half expecting her to run screaming, he gritted his teeth when she stepped into him without hesitation. Her body was shockingly hot, sweaty, and shaking. He wrapped his arms around her, tentative and awkward at the start, then more securely. Shushing her, Ben tucked his chin over her elegant little hat and patted her shoulder blades with a free hand. He kept those comforting, platonic thoughts of his seventeen-year-old brother in mind while he calmed her, and when she made to wrap her arms around him, he smoothly stepped back. He wouldn’t cross that line with an impulsive child. She may be a young fool, but he wasn’t.

A sixteen-year-old young fool.

They avoided each other’s gaze.

“C’mon, let’s get Reb bedded down, then you and I will find somewhere to get some shut-eye.”

Walking into the livery with a weeping woman trailing behind gave Ben no little anxiety, and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, waiting for the shoe to drop and someone to demand answers for what he’d done to the poor girl. Inside the large, open barn, oil lamps spread orange light on golden hay, and dusty russet dirt. Miss Ricci was a quiet footstep behind him, her shadow beside his own, bowed and penitent.

“Help you?” an echo asked from the pungent depths of the building. A short, broad man stepped out from a stall, shutting the half-door with a bored, “Two dollars a night, fifty cents extra for hay, another fifty for grain.” Dark eyes glittered from beneath the flopping rim of his hat. It was grimed with stall filth, and he smelled of the manure he shoveled.

Muttering at the highway robbery, Ben took out three silver dollars, and the man led them to a middle stall that was in dire need of mucking. The dirty man irreverently counted and bit the coins with chin tucked, lip bulging with chewing tobacco.

“How many hotels you have around here?” Ben inquired, disconnecting the saddlebags before taking off Reb’s tack and saddle blanket. He swung the bulk of the leather bags and straps over a broad shoulder.

Tucking Ben’s dollars in his shirt pocket, the man slid his eyes in an oily way over Miss Ricci’s figure, who had found a curry comb and was making short work of brushing down a grateful Reb. Eying the female’s swaying hem, he spat a long stream of brown juice and replied, “Got two on this street, one at that end,” he pointed the way they’d come, “and one at that end.” His thumb jerked down the street, towards loud laughter, shouts, and tinkling piano music. “One by the train station might be a bit nicer for you sister, here.”

Ben didn’t appreciate the way this dirty little fellow was eyeballing the impervious Lucy. “My wife,” he corrected with a soft bite, “and I are obliged. I’ll come by in the morning to get my horse. Make sure you give him plenty of grain, we’ve got a day’s ride ahead of us before the next train station.”

He leaned over and scooped up the substantial weight of the ugly green bag, and said with a hint of sarcasm, “Let’s go, Mrs. Stone. We need to see if there are any rooms left.”

***

ALTHOUGH SHE PRETENDED to pay the men no mind, Lucy was wholly aware of the conversation and the eyes that followed her around the horse.

Ignoring people was a practiced art of hers, and she continued to do so with aplomb. She’d never felt so physically and emotionally exhausted, and she let the curry’s teeth glide through Reb’s coarse black mane in a dreamlike state. The lights displayed the blood bay’s shining red coat, vivid against the deep black of his legs and mane. There were old wounds from years past, deep spur marks that showed in black crescent parts in the horse’s hair, thin over the belly and flanks. The notion that Ben had caused those scars hadn’t crossed her mind. He didn’t appear to be that type of owner.

When he derisively summoned her, she told herself she deserved it. Her normal fire had fizzled out. He’d rebuked her with such thoroughness after her lies that it was only normal that he abhorred her now. It was obvious in the mocking twist of his lips as he yanked up her doleful bag, and the action was a blow against a fresh bruise.

Close to tears again, she nodded and hooked the comb over the stall’s tall wooden wall. Patting Reb on the rump, she trailed Ben out the stall door, and only felt the briefest flutter of amusement when the gelding made to follow them. The livery owner shut the stall door behind her and entered a feed room down the row.

Once the man was out of sight, she tugged her bag from Ben’s grip, embarrassed that he was carrying her things when she disgusted him so.

“Thank you, I can manage,” she whispered, eyes on the dirt.

He didn’t reply, but she felt his displeasure burning a hole through her hat.

When they were halfway down the street, he demanded, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t haul you over my shoulder and take you to the nearest deputy.”

Her pulse regained its fast thrumming. Any defensive retorts were quelled at the memory of the dressing down he’d given her not fifteen minutes before. Though he might be a decent man to his core, she didn’t doubt he’d do exactly as he promised.

Licking dry lips, she said, “It’s not just one reason, Mr. Stone, it’s a multitude.”

Repositioning his saddlebags with a careless shrug, he said, “Explain, then. The truth, if you don’t mind.”

Pricked by his tone, she snapped, “I’m not of a mind to lie at every instance, sir. I only did so before for my safety.”

“Yeah, tryin’ to cover your trail from a loving mother worried sick about you, that’s a real good reason,” he jeered.

“You know nothing about my mother,” she spat, but softly, so no one else could hear. “I assure you, it’s not love that made her send the wire. It’s control, Mr. Stone. In every way, she controls my life with no thought to my own hopes and dreams.”

“Sounds to me that you can afford to be that picky. Mamas are always tryin’ to do their best for their daughters. Now, people further west, they do what they can to survive. Not many have the money for a train ticket so they can sneak off to God-knows-where.”

Desperation and fury at his small-mindedness stopped her in her tracks. They’d made it to the door of the hotel at the end of the street, the one furthest from the train depot that wasn’t as nice, but it was beyond her notice. “Don’t preach to me about things you don’t understand. I told the truth before. I’m going to Texas to live with my father. My mother is not a worried mama; she holds the strings, and I’m the puppet. If it were up to her, I’d be sequestered in a finishing school until I moldered, out of sight, out of mind. I want my home, my life back in Dogwood. Please, let me continue my travels so I can get it.”

Dark brows had raised over his eyes, and lashes too pretty for such a stubborn cuss made crescent shadows over the blue of his irises. “And does your Pa approve of this, Miss Ricci? A sixteen-year-old train-hopping from state to state all by herself?”

Fed up, she took a deep breath and gritted out, “I am not sixteen, Mr. Stone, and I am fully capable of taking care of myself if you would just let me!”

He spread his feet further apart. “You’re not lyin’ to me?”

She wanted to either shout at him or shake him. Or both. “No. I was in a boarding school in Boston when I was sixteen. And my father was supposed to fetch me on my eighteenth birthday, but he never received the letter.” Her very real anger at that deception must have displayed across her face because Ben sighed again and scrubbed a hand from his forehead to his chin. Sensing a crack in his defense, she urged, “I can prove it to you, Mr. Stone. I have letters if you’ll look at them. Don’t go to the sheriff. Please.”

A thin, balding man cracked the hotel door open and peered out at them. “Are you coming in? The front desk is closing, and there’s but one room left.”

Ben and Lucy shared a look, and she trembled, praying, Please, please let him believe me. His eyes examined her expression, her breathing, the way she stood supplicant but proud before him. Finally, decision made, he walked forward. The hotel owner opened the door wider.

“One room will be fine.”

“Names?” The middle-aged man sounded tired.

As though announcing terrible news, Ben disclosed, “Stone. Mr. and Mrs. Stone.”

***

BEN SIGNED THEIR names in the registry book at the counter while the owner folded bills and placed them carefully in a small safe in the back room. Lucy watched the money with a keen eye, making a silent vow to repay him as soon as they made it to the privacy of their room.

Their room.

The thought set her teeth on edge. Not because she was afraid that he had designs upon her, oh no. He’d made it perfectly clear that he thought she was an entitled, foolish, and spoiled child. Being alone in the same room with her would be torment for him. She was tight with nerves, and a hot, sick sensation burned in her chest. She couldn’t help but lean in close while he wrote his name. The little man behind the counter cleaned his glasses and replaced them on his short, stubby nose.

Ben had paused after signing ‘Ben Stone’, then after that brief hesitation, he scrawled ‘and wife’, lips flat against his teeth. He muttered something low and foul.

The proprietor grabbed one of his many oil lamps from behind the counter, tired and uninterested in what had been written. He lit it, replaced the glass, and beckoned them to follow his stilted figure into a hallway off to the side of a bare-board staircase.

In the dark, narrow hallway stood four small doors, crooked in their frames with a crack two inches tall at the bottoms. From behind one of those doors emitted snores similar in sound to a hibernating bear with a head cold. Crawling in her skin, Lucy strangled the handles of her bag and followed obediently until they reached the last door on the right. Ben was right behind her, his boots brushing against her hem. The door was unlocked and forced open with a squeak of wood against the doorjamb. Light poured into the smallest room Lucy had ever seen. It would have made a perfect home as a cabin in a sleek ship, saving precious room for cargo and passengers. A narrow, lumpy cot was tucked against the wall on the left, and there was just enough room on the right for a washstand that housed a hidden chamber pot behind a ragged curtain, and a washbasin on top. An oil lamp that the hotel owner lit revealed more of the room so that even the spiders couldn’t hide behind their cobwebs.

Ben stared at the cot, grim and silent, and she set her bag down against the wall so that she could hug herself. One person could hardly fit on that bed, much less two. And there was no bundle board. Asking for one was out of the question. What married couple used a bundle board? Four feet separated the cot from the wall opposite, and with three people inside, all their shoulders brushed. The owner shuffled outside.

“Here’s the key. The room’s not much, but travelers can’t choose to be picky when it’s this or camping outside.” His voice warned them not to make any complaints.

As though this wasn’t a waking nightmare, Lucy consoled, “Oh, heavens no, this is just fine. Thank you.”

With one last grunt from the administrator, they were left alone with their single lamp, a tiny bed, and the awful sawing noises from their neighbor a door across. When their wary eyes met, Ben was the first to look away and dropped his bags on the floor with a muffled thump.

“I’ll take the floor. Unless,” he turned to her as though just considering an idea, “you want to take the room and I’ll lay out my bedroll outside?”

Offended, Lucy put on a brave face and huffed, “Why on earth would you do that, Mr. Stone? If anything, I’ll take the floor. The bed is probably riddled with bedbugs in any case.”

His beard quirked, and his eyes went from grim to twinkling. “So, you’d leave me to be a feast for the little bloodsuckers, huh?”

Turning red, she shoved her way between their bags in vexation. “No, of course not. It’s just that I got us into this-this sharing of rooms, and I’d like for you to take the bug. I mean, the bed—”

Snorting a soft, close-mouthed laugh, Ben shook his head and squatted, unbolting a bag. “I’m just pulling your leg, Eve. And no, no man would ever let a lady sleep on the floor when he could.”

Blinking dry, tired eyes, Lucy turned her back to him and scrubbed her face before taking in the room one more time. Their shadows were cast eerily against the rough, unpainted walls around them. She glanced up and wished she hadn’t. The ceiling was so bowed and low she could stand on her tiptoes and touch it, which she did. “We’ll be lucky if half the hotel doesn’t crush us in our sleep.”

“Good thing we ain’t scared of small spaces,” he said, but she couldn’t tell if he was amused or not.

To kill the oppressive awkwardness, Lucy snagged her carpetbag from the floor and said formally, “I had promised to show you letters from my father, Mr. Stone. I had managed to save some over the years.” She peeked at his stoic expression. His arms were crossed, a looming statue waiting to mete out judgment. She glanced back down, finding a handful of letters in the mess she’d made of her carefully packed bag at the stage office.

The first letter was her favorite. It was one of the oldest, and she read it aloud in a rush, slowing down at the end, at the important part.

“‘…and even though you were taken from here, this hotel will always remain your home, Lucy-Lou. When you’re out of your lady’s school, your mother permitting, I will come by train and whisk you away back to Texas. Be patient, have faith, Minnie and I are going nowhere. All my love, Papa’.” She handed the letter to Ben, who took it grudgingly, but turned it on its back to read the scripted return address.

“This is dated three years ago.”

“That’s when Mother stole me away and took me to Atlanta.” Lucy kept her voice as expressionless as his.

“Got anything newer?”

“I have one from six months ago,” she said, handing him a shorter, more abrupt letter. “The most recent ones are gone.” It wasn’t possible keeping her feelings from slipping out that time.

After a pause at the latter, Ben took the letter to the lamp glow, squinting. “I’m guessin’ he’s not too keen on you comin’ home in this one.”

Lucy sighed. The stress of the day was getting to her, and exhaustion sat heavily on her shoulders. “No. There was a fire on the second floor last September, and he was in the middle of renovations. See where he’s talking about Melvin Graves? That’s the carpenter that was working for him at the time. He was also having trouble with gas installation.”

An endless amount of time went by while Lucy handed him letter after letter, and Ben took his time perusing them. Each time he finished a letter, he checked the addresses on the back. Finally, he waved off the next letter she held up, and took his hat off. She said nothing, familiar with the silence of a man thinking, and thinking hard. He finger-combed onyx curls from his eyes. A wide, pink stripe remained on his forehead from the hat band.

With halting reluctance, he stated, “Looks to me like you’re tellin’ the truth.” When she exhaled a relieved breath, he looked sharply at her. “For once.”

Stifling a sheepish smile, she made a meal of soberly folding every letter again before stowing them lovingly away into her bag. “So…you’ll not alert the authorities?”

“I didn’t say that.”

No. “Mr. Stone—”

He held a staying hand, and his face was as serious as she’d ever seen. “I’m gonna sleep on it, Miss Ricci. I’m entitled to that, at least. It’s not my business to get between a mother and father’s guardianship…troubles. How they raise you is up to them. But,” he cleared his throat, “I did see that last letter that wished you a happy seventeenth birthday from a year ago. You’ll be eighteen soon?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Really.” His eyebrows raised. She wondered if everything she said to him would have that same tone of disbelief. It was infuriating.

“Yes, remember? I’d written Papa to pick me up on my birthday but—”

“—something came up,” he finished for her.

She nodded, then was overcome with a jaw-cracking yawn that she hid behind a fist.

“Why did you leave a day early?” he asked.

Lucy wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I couldn’t wait any longer.”

***

IT WOULD BE the first time he’d spent the night with a female in the same room. Even when he was married, he’d slept in a different room like the stranger he was. Now, he really was with a stranger, and he couldn’t seem to force himself to get on his horse and ride away without looking back.

Hell, he was practically sleepwalking where he stood.

Knowing he was a fool ten times over, he whipped his bedroll out and snapped it open across the floor in an expert move. Unable to help himself, he glanced at the girl. She was examining the bed with a grimace, pacing along its length like a buyer surveying a horse and finding it lacking.

Fighting a smile, he sat at the end of his bedroll and tugged his boots off, aware of every movement from the woman next to him.

Lucy was now examining the ill-fitting sheets, pulling them from the mattress, inspecting the seams for bugs, then sniffing to check for freshness. She gagged and snapped her head sharply to the side.

Snorting, he threw her one of his extra blankets. “Here. Sleep on top of this. It’s big enough to cover up with. I don’t have bugs. Might smell like smoke, though.”

“Thank you.” She draped the hardy travel blanket across the length of the bed and gave him a worried look. “You may have to burn it after this.”

“I’ll just turn it into a saddle blanket,” he chuckled.

“That’s a disservice to your horse.” Her nose was wrinkled and strange, unwelcome thoughts formed. He likened the sensation to turning over rocks and logs in his mind and finding something not wholly unappealing beneath them, like expecting a bug and discovering a gold nugget instead. She may be a liar, but he was finding it harder and harder not to like her. The more they communicated, the worse it got.

Well, sleep would put an end to that.

They made ready for bed in stilted silence, with faint snores and shuffled footsteps from above their only break from throbbing quiet. She took her hat off and set it next to the lamp, and he was impressed with the length of her hatpin. Her hair gleamed where it lay sleek at the sides of the middle part. He was grateful she didn’t take her hair down. His mouth was dry enough as it was.

When she sat on the bed, the ropes creaked so loud that she shot back up in astonishment. He turned his back to her and feigned digging in his saddle bags so he didn’t give in to laughter. The ropes creaked again, just as piercing, but slow and drawn out. He pretended not to hear and settled down on his blankets, hiding his smile with his hat.

***

LUCY SAT ON the bed with a strident creak, leaned over to untie her boots with another creak, then gingerly, holding her breath, she lay back on the vociferous cot. Her body was board-stiff, and it was impossible to ignore the moaning and groaning of the ropes beneath her. It must be especially loud for Ben, who was at ear level with the blasted things near the floor.

After a moment of painful stillness, she saw him lift his hat through her peripheral.

“You done with the light?”

“Er, yes, I believe so.”

He sat up, turned with a lithe twist of his torso, and blew out the lamp, smothering them in the most absolute darkness Lucy had ever had the misfortune of being in. What was worse, a fold in the blanket was digging into her spine. She needed to move. Face damp with nervous perspiration, she shifted closer to the wall onto her side.

Her watch dug into her breast with sharp, stabbing pain. Mortified, she took off the watch and felt around to put it on the washstand, hissing in pain when her knuckles encountered the hot lamp. The watch clattered to the floor beneath the screaming ropes of the cot.

“You alright up there?” Ben asked, whether entertained or irritated, she couldn’t tell.

“I’m fine,” she hissed back in the dark. She was not fine. She was sweating through her jacket even though it was cold enough to make her shiver, and the sorry excuse for the bed she lay on made such a cacophony with the slightest movement, she was sure their neighbors could hear and would be beating down the door at any minute. Unable to stand it any longer, she sat up and began the noisy process of taking off her jacket and corset. Propriety didn’t matter if she couldn’t even breathe, and she flung the offending clothing at the end of the bed and curled into a ball beneath the smoke scent of his blanket, able to expand her lungs, but afraid to.

“Now I’m afraid to even breathe.” Her voice was muffled in the blanket.

Ben started choking, at least, that’s what it sounded like. He was holding back laughter, and at her expense!

“That’s it, you can sleep on this orchestra made of ropes,” she whisper-shouted and made to get up. Creak, creak, creak. She stood beside the bed, mutinous and glaring. When she stepped back, she trod on something firm with her stockinged foot, and he chuckled and pulled his arm out from under her.

 “Serves you right,” she grumbled and gave a feminine snort, close to laughing herself silly at the ludicrousness of the cot debacle. “I am not sleeping on that…thing.”

What they ended up doing, in pitch black, was yank the mattress from its frame, the latter of which they propped against the corner. The mattress was arranged on the bare wood floor, and when she lay down this time, it was to the soft, muffled music of clothes against blankets.

“Thank you, Mr. Stone,” she sighed, closing her eyes and wishing for sleep.

“You’re welcome.”

Her eyes shot open. His warm voice was close, much closer than before now that they were on the same level. If she wished, she could reach out and touch him. Her fingers clenched and squeezed around his blanket, and she drew it close to her face, breathing in its scent, imagining campfires and popping embers reaching a black sky filled with stars.

Teeth worrying her lip, she took the leap and asked a question she strangely, desperately, wanted to know. “Do you sleep outside often, then?”

Ben shifted, settled, and was still. “More often than inside, I reckon.”

“Is it peaceful?”

“It can be. After the drive is over, the cattle’s sold, the hands’re paid, and you’ve left town. Most often it’s just me and Reb, a little fire and coffee, sleeping with nature.”

“Reb?”

“My horse.”

It sounded wonderful and lonely. But sometimes, Lucy craved that kind of solitude. “Do you like to be alone?”

“Most times,” he admitted.

“I do, too.” They were whispering, and she cradled her head with a cupped hand. “In Georgia, I’d ride our carriage horse across our neighbor’s pastures just to be alone. My own company was preferable to Mother’s and Beth’s—that’s my sister—and I would get away from all the noise of the parties, the expectations. If I left early enough, the sun would come up, and I’d stop and watch all the colors spread across the sky.” She smiled. “It’s a shame I’m wretched at painting, or I could have captured them.”

“Ain’t nothing prettier than a Texas sunrise.” He sounded half asleep.

“I agree.” Her own voice was muzzy now, and she drew her knees up. “I can’t wait to see my first Texas sunrise in three years.” Five minutes passed, and her lids grew heavy. She shut them and fought sudden tears. “I am truly sorry about playing you false. For using you. There is no excuse.”

There was only silence for such a length that she was sure he’d fallen asleep. But after a minute, he said, “Reckon I know your reasons, now. Lord knows I’m no one to judge. You seem decent enough, just young.”

She resented that truth and grimaced in the dark. “I’m not decent. Have you ever acted so despicable that you’d rather do something monumentally dangerous, like traveling alone for days, than face the consequences of it? The things I’ve done, they’re unforgivable. I couldn’t face living there for one more day.” Memories of forbidden kisses and fumbling made her chest ache, and she pressed her fingers hard into the sockets of her eyes. Self-disgust made her spill ugly truths. “I used people in Atlanta, too. Even though it was wrong. I played with another man’s feelings, at first so he’d send for my papa for me. And then, just for spite. He was my sister’s beau.” Hot tears tracked across the bridge of her nose at her confession. “Can guilt kill you? Like a poison?”

Movement from his bedroll caught her breath. Was he looking her direction? Or had he turned away in revulsion? Her answer was in the closeness of his voice. “In a way, maybe. Just proves you are a decent person if it’s eating at you this way.” After a minute, he cleared his throat, loud in the diminutive room. “What happened with the man?”

No longer tired, she swallowed and tried to laugh off her discomfort. “You’ll hate me.”

“Naw, I won’t. It might change my mind about going to the sheriff.” He paused. “And after tomorrow, you’ll never have to see me again.”

Her breathing was rapid and shallow. She wiped her nose and eyes with the neckline of her chemise. “Alright.” She’d tell him the whole, ugly truth. “It will not…endear you to me. But maybe you will understand why I had to leave.”

END OF CHAPTER TWO

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