“What are you?” Lips that had kissed her passionately, now thinned to a hard unhesitating line.
“What do you think I am?”
His eyes narrowed into slits. “Don’t answer my question with a question. Who are you? What are you?”
Hold it together for a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes.
“I’m a woman who knows a little bit about a lot of things, but not enough to answer your questions. I don’t know who I am. That’s why I’m here.”
His eyebrows furrowed. His hands closed around her shoulders, squeezing muscle against bone. “No more riddles. Tell me who you are then take your red bag full of magic and your menagerie and go back to where you belong.” His words held the stinging power of a thousand wasps.
Tears pushed into her eyes. “I have a magical brooch. It opened the door to your time, and I passed through.”
He laughed a dark, ominous laugh. “I saw your brooch, even thought it was mystical, but open a door to another time—impossible.”
Silence filled the wagon with an impenetrable cloud of doubt. If only she could say more to help him understand. In the face of disbelief, words proved inadequate.
He stood, sneering. They were two people standing on opposite sides of a chasm with a frayed, irreparable rope between them. Without another word, he left, and the last fiber holding the rope together snapped.
Chapter Twenty-Two
KIT WOKE TO the beat of a small hand patting the top of her head. Little brown eyes searched her face.
“Welcome back, sweetheart. How do you feel?” Kit lightly squeezed Frances’s hand, relieved that the plump network of veins beneath the child’s pale skin were no longer shriveled with dehydration.
“The angel told me to go home. She said you were waiting for me.”
“What angel?”
“A beautiful angel. She called me lassie and told me to go back.” Frances licked her lips. “Did I get the cholera?”
“You’ll be fine now.” Kit pushed the child’s Shirley Temple like curls off her forehead and washed her face.
“Anna was alone, but the angel told me she’d take care of her.”
“Is that why you went to the graves? To be with Anna?”
Frances nodded.
“What else did the angel say?”
Frances scrunched her face as if squeezing every thought through a memory sieve. “That’s all I remember.”
The slow, deliberate words gave Kit the impression there was more to the message. “We must thank the beautiful angel.”
Frances mumbled, “I did.” Then she closed her eyes and drifted off.
“Thank you beautiful angel.” Kit fell back to sleep only to wake a short time later. A trace of moonlight filtered into the wagon along with the fragrant smell of wildflowers hidden for days beneath the stench of sickness and death. She heard no voices, music, or hammering.
Must be after midnight.
Then she realized the bed was empty. A swell of panic raced up Kit’s spine, but faded when she remembered the child had been recovering when they both fell asleep. Sarah must have taken her.
Kit stripped and climbed into bed. Then a second wave of panic hit with heart-attack proportions.
Dear God, Cullen knows the truth.
He wouldn’t tell anyone, would he? She didn’t think so. He was angry, but not vindictive. Telling folks would start a riot to burn the witch. No. He needed time to process.
Thoughts of him continued to swirl in her mind, churning up dust and debris, making sleep impossible. A walk and a glass of wine would calm her spirit—a gentle rain for her soul.
She dressed in trousers, slipped on the wig, then headed toward the river carrying a small bag in one hand, a blanket in the other.
Shafts of moonlight lit the path along the water’s edge. If only the moon would shine its light in her heart. Why had she fallen in love with a man from the nineteenth century? She should go home and get out of the mess she’d created. But South Pass was only two weeks away, fourteen more days to reach her goal. With just a smidgen of courage, she could make it unless Cullen did something drastic, like reconvene the Salem Witch Trials. Predicting what he would do was beyond her capability, except that he was predictably overreactive and overprotective, which meant he might have spotted her leaving camp? She stopped and listened. Chirps, lapping water, a snore here and a cough there, but no footsteps or snapping twigs. Relieved? Yes. Surprised? Yes. Disappointed? Yes.
Within a few minutes, she found a quiet and secluded spot. The blanket made a soft bed on the ground. She quickly dosed off with the sound of an oboe—Cullen’s soft, warm voice—playing a concert in her mind.
“I SHOULD TURN you over my knee and whale your backside.” Cullen’s voice was a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite. “Do you know how far you are from camp?”
Kit shot straight up, heart racing. “How’d you find me?”
“I could follow your footprints around the world.” Aggravation hissed between his teeth.
“Not unless you’ve got your own brooch.”
He dropped to the ground beside her. “If you’re going home, why aren’t you gone?”
She scooted away from him. “I’m thinking about it.”
“If you’d been thinking, you’d still be in your wagon, not roaming about in the dark.”
She’d had enough of his accusations and attitude. “Why are you here
?”
“I thought you were leaving.”
She made a fist ready to punch him. “I wouldn’t leave without my animals. You know that. So what do you want?”
“I want to know who you are.”
She bit down hard on her lip. “I told you.”
“You said you didn’t
know
who you were.’”
“So you think I’ve figured it out since then?” She drew in a long breath and blew it out.
“Tell me who you are deep down inside where no one goes, not even you.”
She thought about his question, then thought about it some more. “You don’t want to hear the ugly stuff.”
She pulled off the wig and finger-combed her hair.
An expression she hadn’t seen before came over his features. “Nothing about you is ugly.” He picked up the wig and smoothed strands of hair. “We try on all sorts of disguises to hide who we are.”
“That’s profound.”
He held up the hairpiece. “I don’t know how any man could be tricked by this.”
She snatched it from him. “Don’t ruin the illusion of safety.”
He pointed to the handgun tucked into her waistband. “Is that an illusion, too?”
She handed over the weapon. ”Smith and Wesson 3913 Lady Smith pistol, nine millimeter, eight plus one rounds, made of aluminum alloy and stainless steel. Accurate. Nice shooter. Good trigger. Light recoil.”
He pointed the gun into the night, then flipped it around and handed it back. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You’ll throw me another rope?”
“You didn’t get the scars at the same time. One looks older than the other.”
Her heart raced, causing a burning sensation of fear in her chest. She pointed to the scar on the left side of her neck unable to touch the fine s-shaped line. “I got this one the night of the storm.”
“Go on, lass. Tell me.” His request was a gentle prod.
She cleared her throat. “Five years ago, a bad storm knocked out the electricity in the barn while Shadow Cat was foaling. Dad, the vet, and Scott were in the stall with her. Everything was going fine so my godfather went to another barn to get an emergency generator. Then something happened to the mare and they needed him.”
Cullen steepled his hands and pressed his index fingers against his chin. “What’s a generator?”
“It makes power that lights up our homes. Our main source had gone out.”
Cullen nodded as if he understood.
“When Elliott didn’t come back right away, they sent me to get him. I ran over to the next barn and found him in the tack room lying on the floor in a pool of blood.” A trembling hand rose to her neck as she slid further into the memory. “A man grabbed me from behind and cut me before I knew anyone else was in the room.” She scratched at her neck until she drew blood.
Cullen tried to pull her hand away.
“Don’t touch me.” She went quiet for a moment, sharing only the sound of her shallow breathing. “He threw me on the floor intending to rape me.”
Cullen hissed between his teeth and reached for her, but she blocked him with a stiff arm.
“Scott pulled him off seconds before he could…hurt me.” She tucked into an upright fetal position and tears slipped down her cheeks.
Kit jerked when Cullen touched her shoulder with a gentle press of his fingers. “Here’s a handkerchief.” His voice was calm, neutral, but his body trembled.
She grabbed the tail end of her composure and fought for control. After wiping her eyes, she carefully folded the fabric into a perfect square. The top fold had a monogrammed M exactly like the locket and the shawl. Her heart felt skewed with new emotion.
She gazed into his eyes and wondered again, why he was there, why he’d haunted her for so many years, and why she was sharing something so intimate with him. Maybe she didn’t have to know. Maybe it was enough that her heart knew.
“Everything that happened after Scott rescued me blurred into my nightmare, but I think he beat the man up. He never told me what happened. I never asked.” She unfolded and refolded the handkerchief, this time burying the monogram within the folds. “I had bruises for days. Every time I saw them, I threw up.”
“Did you know the man?” Cullen’s gaze was almost a physical touch.
“His name was Wayne. He’d worked for Elliott. I fired him months earlier when I caught him abusing a horse.” She paused. “I hear his laugh sometimes in the wind, especially on cold days. It makes my teeth rattle.”
“I haven’t treated you much better than Wayne.” There was something bleak in his voice, and her heart quickened, but she had no answer for him. “I looked at one facet of a multi-faceted gem and thought that made up the entire stone.” He held her gaze pointedly. “To let others see all sides of us takes a great deal of trust. I thought I’d destroyed your trust in me.”
“You came close.”
They sat for several minutes beside the river covered in moonlight, motionless, without speaking, and then Cullen asked, “What happened to him?”
“An inmate killed him.” The moment she had heard the news, during a phone call from her attorney, silent relief took her legs out from under her. As she sat on the floor awash in tears, she hated herself for being glad.
“Good.”
For a minute, she just stared at him, thinking about what he’d said. “That’s odd for you to say.”
“It saves me a trip to your century to kill him.”
The thought of Cullen traveling to the twenty-first century seeking vengeance sprinkled shivers up and down Kit’s spine.
“Do you think your father had Wayne killed?” Cullen asked.
“You’re thinking of your client and his victim’s family, aren’t you?”
He gazed at her with deep, thoughtful eyes.
“When I heard Wayne was dead, I wondered if Dad had anything to do with it. He didn’t want me to go through the ordeal of testifying at the trial. Dad could be ruthless, but I don’t think he could have anyone murdered.”
“If you told a jury what happened, they’d have hung him from the nearest tree.”
“American jurisprudence has changed. They don’t hang people anymore. He probably would have pled guilty, taken twenty years for the felonies, and been paroled after sixteen years. He might have come looking for me when he got out.”
“You never would have felt safe again, would you?”
“That’s why I learned to fight. I’ll never be helpless again.”
He patted his gut. “I’ve been on the receiving end of your skills.”
She gave him a tight smile. “I could have hurt you a lot worse.”
“I appreciate your restraint.”
She was glad for the note of humor in his voice, then he surprised her by the tenderness with which he lifted her chin and pressed his lips against hers. A touch at first, then a burst of hunger, as he sought to deepen the kiss.
I will protect you,
she heard his heart say
. But will I let you
, she heard hers reply.
“Cullen.”
“Hmm.” His moan was a request for greater intimacy.
“Are you thirsty?”
He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. “Yes, for you.”
She slipped her hand inside the bag and pulled out a bottle of wine.
He took the bottle from her, and chuckled. “Only you could top off a story like that with a bottle of merlot.” He twisted the bottle in the beam of moonlight and whistled.
“You probably thought me a brazen hussy drinking wine the first night we met.”
“I only thought about this.” He kissed her again.
Tate stuck his nose between their faces, and she pushed him away. “Where’d you come from?”
Cullen patted the dog’s head. “He followed me. You have three animals who think they’re human. Who’s responsible for that?”
Kit uncorked the bottle and filled the wine glass she had brought with her. “Mom’s responsible for Tate and Tabor. Stormy is all my doing.”
“Your horse was born the night of the storm, wasn’t he?”
She closed her eyes for a brief second. When she opened them, she whispered with a shaky voice, “Shadow Cat died. Stormy barely survived. Dad swore the horse would never race even though he’d been bred to be a champion. I don’t think Dad wanted to be reminded every time Stormy raced of what happened that night.”
Cullen’s finger traced the line of the scar on the other side of her neck. “How did you get this one?”
She’d told him half the story. He deserved to hear the rest. She sipped, then handed him the glass. He put it to his lips and gazed at her over the rim of the crystal. “You can tell me later.”
Later?
She thought of their scheduled parting at South Pass, of the emptiness that would follow. “We don’t have later. We only have now.”
He traced a finger across her cheek to the corner of her lips. “Now will never be enough.”