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Later that evening Eleanor lit the parlor lamp. Her guest was still on the sofa, which was not a good fit. As tall as she was, she could barely lie flat on it. The stranger was several inches taller. His neck was bent at an awkward angle that the pillow didn’t do much to alleviate.
She eyed the distance between there and the bedroom door, a matter of less than ten feet. The cabin was basically a square, with one side being taken up by what she termed a parlor, the other with a kitchen and a closed-off bedroom.
“We need to move you to the bedroom,” she said, standing back to survey the damage now that she’d cleaned him up some. He’d been wearing a buckskin coat, but one of the sleeves had been dangling by a thread, almost as if someone had tried to pull it off.
He looked at her. At least she thought he did. With those swollen eyes, it was impossible to be certain. “Do you think you can move if I support your left side?” It was his left ankle that was swollen. “You could use the broom as a crutch.”
He mumbled something and she said, “Is that a yes or a no?”
More mumbling. One hand lifted and she thought he pointed to the window. “Close it? Open it wider?”
More swearing. At least that’s what it sounded like. He could barely move his lips.
Hands on her hips, she said, “All right, I’m going to suggest a few things. If I’m right, nod your head.” Which would probably hurt, too, but they weren’t getting anywhere using words. “You’re hot. You want me to open the window.”
Was that a nod, or a negative? He barely moved.
She tried again. “You want me to hide you in case whoever did this comes looking for you.”
This time there was another stream of curses, followed by a groan. She leaned over and whispered, “Shh, don’t try to say any more, I understand.”
Oh, yes, she understood. The Millers distrusted all strangers. This man was a stranger, an angry stranger if she were any judge. Who could blame him if this was an indication of their hospitality?
“Never mind, I know you can’t talk, but you might as well know it now—sometimes I tend to talk too much. Comes of living alone,” she said as she lifted the afghan she’d spread over him when she’d peeled him down to his long underwear. That, too, was wet as if he’d been caught in a downpour—or dunked in the creek—but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to strip him completely bare.
“All right then, let’s see if you can sit up. It’s only a few steps away—right over there where the door is.” Torn between wariness and sympathy, she studied her unexpected guest and tried to think of some way to make the transfer easier.
There was simply no way. As gentle as she’d tried to be, he had groaned when she’d peeled his muddy blue jeans down over his bare foot. Hopefully it wasn’t broken, but even a sprain could be painful.
She positioned herself on his good side and slid one arm under his, taking most of his weight on her shoulder. He groaned. She grunted. “Don’t worry,” she managed. “I’m a lot stronger than I look.”
Working together they managed to get him onto his feet. Or rather, onto his foot. With her on one side and the broom on the other serving as a crutch, he hobbled toward the back of the cabin.
His body felt unnaturally hot, and she wondered how long he’d been lying out in the woods before he’d found his way to her cabin. If he was already feverish, it could be either lung fever or an infection of one of his wounds. Surely it was too soon for that. But then, she still didn’t know the full extent of his injuries. Wouldn’t until she got him out of his underwear.
Feeling her face flush, she told herself she would worry about that later. For now, she needed to get him onto the bed before he collapsed. Then she could start by cutting off the tight cuff of his long johns. It had to be constricting circulation, with that swollen ankle.
If he had internal injuries, she could only pray that they were minor. She should have paid more attention to biology as a student, but at the time she couldn’t picture a situation where knowing how a frog was constructed would be of any value.
He practically fell across the bed, giving her mere seconds to sweep the covers aside first. Then she had to reposition his heavy limbs until he was lying more or less straight on the feather tick. Her sheets would be wet clean through, but that was the least of her worries.
What on earth was she going to do with him? He was too big to hide under the bed, even if he could crawl under there. There was simply no place else to hide, but if the Millers were to show up—if they were to come inside and discover that she was harboring a strange man…
They couldn’t. Chances were they’d been the ones to do this to him, but even if they hadn’t, they hated strangers. They would drag him away, and in his present condition, he might not survive their rough handling.
“Think, Eleanor, think!”
He focused a bleary eye on her face, and she said, “Sorry—I told you I tend to talk to myself.”
All right, she was thinking. What if he were a fugitive? A bank robber? A train robber? What if the sheriff was after him and had followed him here? In that case, she could be arrested as an accomplice.
On the other hand, if she explained how she’d found him and they took him away, she could insist on going with them. Not even the Millers would risk trying to hold her against her will with a sheriff as witness.
“No. Don’t even think about that now,” she muttered. Whoever or whatever this man was, he was no threat to anyone in his present condition. He certainly didn’t need any lawmen dragging him down the mountain. What he needed was to sleep until he could tell her where he hurt, what to do about it, who did this to him and whether or not they were likely to follow him here.
At the moment, though, she needed to get him up long enough to peel the rest of those wet clothes off his poor battered body. If the parts that were hidden were in as bad shape as the parts that were visible, he might not even survive the night.
And if he died…
“Don’t even think about it,” she muttered as she turned to her sewing basket to find her scissors.
“Mm?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said hurriedly, fingering the thick knit of his long johns. “That is, I was, but I don’t expect a reply. I think I might have mentioned that I tend to talk to myself occasionally.”
This time when he said, “Mm,” it was without the questioning inflection. In other words, she translated, “I hear you, woman.”
One piece. She would have to cut around the waist and pull them off in both directions. A blindfold might help her modesty, but it wouldn’t help get the job done.
“Be still now, don’t move,” she cautioned, and positioning the scissors, she slit the left leg of his underwear up to his knee, wincing at the way the cuff had cut into his swollen ankle. Between bruises and abrasions, his skin was a lovely golden color, like well-polished maple.
“I’ll be as gentle as possible, but we have to get you out of these wet clothes before you catch pneumonia.” She cut all the way around just under the knee, then lifted the remnant away. Now all she had to do was get the top part off, then she would worry about what came next.
“Here, let me cover you with this,” she said, unfolding the crocheted afghan she had found in Cousin Annie’s hope chest after her cousin had died. She had wept gallons at the time, but being the practical woman she was, she’d packed it in her own hope chest, which by then she had thought of as her hopeless chest.
She covered his midsection and began unfastening the bone buttons that led from the hollow of his throat all the way down to…
Wherever. “You look like you were dragged all over the mountain,” she said, seeing that one eye was slightly open.
No reply. He appeared to be fascinated by the unadorned whitewashed walls. The poor man had to be every bit as embarrassed as she was, letting himself be cut out of his underwear by a strange woman.
She continued to chatter to take both their minds off what she was doing. “I thought at first you might have tangled with a bear, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t any bear caves around here, at least not any longer. I think the mining must have driven them away.”
Accustomed to conversing with herself, she didn’t wait for a response. “There, roll over a little bit so I can cut around your waist. I’m just going to cut the top part loose and pull it off first.” Leaning over him, she tried to roll him onto his side. She got no farther than halfway when he let out a sharp cry.
“I’m sorry!” He must have internal injuries, and here she’d been lugging him around like a favorite doll.
She waited for him to catch his breath, then eased him onto his back again and reached for her scissors. “I think this will be easier, don’t you?” She began to cut. First the right sleeve, then the left, severing it from the body of the garment near the shoulder. There were bruises, but so far as she could tell, nothing was broken. At least nothing visible.
Stepping back, she surveyed the rest of the garment, aware of the beautiful shape of his muscular arms. He wasn’t knotty, the way some of the Miller men were—the way even Devin had been. Instead, he was smooth and golden, his forearms reminding her of Michelangelo’s statue of David.
Mercy!
“All right, here’s what we’ll do then,” she announced. General Eleanor, advising the troops of her battle plan. “I’m going to cut away your union suit.” She was holding the scissors up in her right hand.
His eyes widened so that she actually caught a glimmer of the darkness behind his poor swollen lids. Obsidian was the term that came to mind. “Mm-mm,” he warned.
“Mm-hm,” she countered. “I’ll simply cut it up from the bottom to where it opens down the front, and then pull it out from under you. It has to be done, you know, else you’ll catch your death, lying in a wet bed. I’ll be as gentle as I possibly can.”
With the afghan spread over his middle for modesty as well as warmth, she positioned the scissors. His eyes widened still more, until she could see that his eyes were brown, not black. Topaz, not obsidian. They only looked black because his pupils were enlarged from…pain? Fear?
“I won’t hurt you,” she said softly, reassuringly. “I would never deliberately hurt anyone.” And just as she began to cut away the sodden fabric, the oddest feeling came over her. Staring down at the stranger on her bed, with all his injuries—with his face swollen and discolored—she felt something almost akin to…recognition.
Which was beyond absurd. If she’d ever seen him before in her life, she would have remembered. He wasn’t the kind of man, even in his present deplorable condition, that any woman could forget.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, embarrassed by her own reaction.
Fortunately, he couldn’t see her flaming face. His eyes closed and remained shut until she had cut almost all the way to his groin.
“No.”
The single word momentarily stayed her hand. “We agreed, you can’t lie around in wet clothes. I’m going to cut across to the placket and—”
“Madam,” he said just as clearly as if his lips weren’t swollen like a split melon, “you’re not getting anywhere near my privates with those scissors of yours. Leave me be and I’ll get undressed.”
“Well for heaven’s sake.” She laid the scissors down on the table beside the bed. “I wasn’t planning to do you any harm, I only wanted to make it easier for you.”
Her face must be steaming by now. She knew as much about a man’s anatomy as any other woman who had been married for nearly two years. That is, she knew where it differed from a woman’s, and which parts were more sensitive than others. She hadn’t planned on getting anywhere near those particular parts, but if he thought he could do better, then let him. At least he was speaking now.
“I’ll just go—go and put the kettle on, then. Call me when you’re done.”
Chapter Four
He was asleep when she returned, giving her time to study his face. The horrid swelling around his eyes was already discolored, his lips split and swollen. The square jaw bore not only a shallow cleft in the center of his chin, but two cuts and a darkening bruise.
Suddenly, she had a feeling of being watched. His eyes were closed, his breathing even. Living alone had obviously distorted her senses. “Are you awake?” she whispered.
The shadowy beginnings of a beard darkened his face, which would make cleaning him up more difficult, but the twins had taken Devin’s shaving things. Besides, after the way he’d reacted to her scissors, she wasn’t particularly eager to approach him with a straight razor. “Hello-o,” she caroled softly. “You probably should try to stay awake until we’re certain that lump on your head is only skin-deep.”
Brain damage. My God, what should she do about that? Had he said anything that made sense? Or even anything that didn’t make sense? Head injuries were not to be taken lightly.
Damn the Millers! Throwbacks to the Dark Ages, every last one of them! What did they do when someone was sick or injured, call Miss Lucy to cast a spell?
“Wake up,” she snapped. Standing over him, she couldn’t help but be aware of his powerful body. He was muscular, both his lower parts and his upper parts—she didn’t know about what was in between. Devin, like most of his cousins, had been short-legged, but powerfully built from the waist up, probably as a result of working with pick axes and wheeling barrows full of dirt along narrow underground tunnels.
Or perhaps it was hereditary, she no longer cared. This man was different. His hands, for all the bruised and bleeding knuckles, were without calluses. Square-palmed, long-fingered, with well-kept fingernails. Unlike the Millers, who went barefoot ten months out of the year, his feet were narrow, the arches high, not flat and callused and broad.
“Who are you?” she wondered aloud.
There was no response, not that she’d expected one. Evidently, he had used the last of his store of energy dragging himself up the hill to safety. That alone, she thought as she busied herself filling the kettle and dragging her washtub in off the back porch, was enough to tell her that his presence must be kept secret from those in the valley. He’d come up the hill, not down toward the settlement, when anyone knew that going downhill would have been easier.
His ribs were injured, that much she’d concluded by the way he’d reacted whenever he was forced to move his torso. A broken rib could cause untold internal injuries, which he might already have suffered. After getting him out of his underwear she should have insisted on looking him over for evidence of further injuries, but she hadn’t. He had suffered enough for the time being.
Besides, she’d been too embarrassed.
Sooner or later, though, she would have to examine his body. His back, his sides, his—the rest of him. He might even be bleeding internally, in which case, where on earth did one apply a bandage?
She took out her washboard and tossed a sliver of soap into the tub, making a mental note to request more soap the next time her supplies were delivered.
As the kettle began to simmer, she filled the tub half full of cold water, thinking about the first time she had sent down a shopping list, naively thinking someone would be going to the nearest town to shop. She’d ordered three bars of French lilac soap, hard milled so as to last longer, a tin of lilac-scented talc and a stiff new hairbrush, as her own was all but useless.
Two days later one of the twins had ridden up the hill with her order. Three chunks of homemade lye soap and a box of cornstarch. No brush. Not even a new comb.
That had been the beginning of her awakening.
Shoving back a length of tangled curls that had slipped free of the pins, she went through the pockets of his Levi’s before dropping them into the tub. They were empty. No surprise there. Whoever had beaten him had obviously robbed him as well. Nevertheless, she felt in the pocket of his faded chambray shirt before tossing it in after his Levi’s. Next went his single sock. If his ankle got worse, one might be all he would need, perish the thought.
As for his coat, it could probably be salvaged, but it would never be the same. It was ripped in two places as if it had snagged on something. One of the sleeves had nearly been torn off. It would have to be sponged and dried slowly so the leather wouldn’t stiffen before she could even attempt to mend it.
She slid her hand into the outer pockets. Nothing there, either. Hardly a surprise. It was in the lining that she came across a flat pocket. A money pocket? She knew less than nothing about men’s clothes, only that their hosiery needed darning far more often than her own. Cautiously, she slid two fingers inside…and pulled out a folded piece of paper that looked as if it had been through the wars.
The kettle began to rock just then, and laying aside the paper, she finished filling the washtub.
“I don’t know when you’ll be leaving,” she muttered to herself as she swished the soap around to make suds, “but you’ll want something to wear. Did I tell you that the Millers—they’re my late husband’s family. They live in the settlement down below, and the thing is, they don’t particularly care for outsiders.”
He had already discovered that for himself, she thought, if what she suspected was true.
After a few brisk rubs she left the garments to soak and tiptoed back to the bedroom to see if her guest was still breathing. Whether he was or not, he was going to be a problem. She’d had her next escape all planned. Now it would have to wait, at least until he was on his feet. Then, if he wanted to stay on here, he was welcome to stay, with her blessing. They might even bring him supplies as long as he set the basket on the porch and remained hidden from view.
She told him just that the next time she tiptoed into the bedroom to check on him, neither expecting a response nor getting one. “I’m soaking your clothes. Not your coat—I’ll do the best I can with it, but it’ll never be the same again, I’m afraid. I’d lend you something of Devin’s but his cousins came up right after he was buried and took away all his clothes and his other personal possessions. Devin was my husband, did I tell you? He blew himself up.”
She sighed. Talking to a sleeping man was no more productive than talking to herself, but at least she didn’t feel quite so foolish. He might hear her, even though he couldn’t respond.
Standing there staring down at that poor battered face, it struck her all over again that there was a naked stranger in her bed. One who might or might not be a wanted criminal. “Please don’t die on me,” she begged softly. “I wouldn’t know who to notify, or even how. And I could never dig a hole deep enough to bury you in this rocky soil.”
She leaned over and peered at his face, searching for some sign that he’d heard her. At least whoever had split his lip hadn’t knocked out any of his teeth. He had nice teeth. In fact, his mouth would probably be quite shapely once the swelling went down.
“Hello-oo,” she crooned. “Are you in there? Can you hear me?” She took his wrist and found a slow, steady pulse. His hands were filthy, his hair was almost as matted as her own, but he was still alive. Thank God for that much. Carefully, she laid a hand on his chest. He was warm. Not really feverish, just…warm. And hard. His heart was definitely beating.
She lifted her eyes and sighed. “Lord, you’re going to have to tell me what to do next, because I’ve never done this before.”
Actually, she had. Not the same, but she had nursed her elderly cousin through her final illness the summer before she’d been married.
Gazing down at the stranger, she felt the oddest tingle throughout her body. Whoever this man was, he most definitely bore no resemblance to cousin Annie. Eleanor waited to see if he would open his eyes. When he didn’t, she covered him with a quilt, then tiptoed from the room.
It had to be somewhere near midnight. She was too keyed up to sleep, but perhaps she should lie down for a few minutes.
Jed woke up gasping for air, each breath hurting as if a dozen devils were stabbing him with red-hot pitchforks. Squinting through swollen eyes, he saw lamplight splintering from the woman’s pale hair. Her face was in shadow. For a moment he had trouble placing her. His skull had been rattled enough to shake his brain loose, but then he recognized her as the same woman who had dragged him into her house, stripped off his clothes and come after him with a pair of scissors. That had been…yesterday? The day before?
He’d managed to move on his own then. Now, he couldn’t move if she set the bed on fire. Opening his mouth, he tried to speak but no words emerged. Lips hurt. Everything hurt, from his hair right down to his toenails.
How the devil could hair hurt?
His did. Felt as if someone had tried to scalp him. For all he knew, they might’ve succeeded. He attempted to lift a hand to find out, but the effort was too great. Bald wasn’t so bad. One of his friends was bald as a pigeon egg. Couldn’t think of his name right now, but he could picture him easily enough.
God, he hurt!
Daylight was streaming in through the east windows when next she opened her eyes. She felt as if her bones had been pounded with a hammer. Good thing she hadn’t left her poor stranger here, he’d be worse off than ever.
