A Touch of Camelot (18 page)

"It's all right."

He shifted position to get comfortable, even though he knew it was useless. The pain in his shoulder had returned, pulsing dull and hot. He wasn't cold anymore. He was warm. Too warm. He suspected the beads of sweat breaking on his brow were not all due to misspent passion.
Fever
, he thought, closing his eyes wearily. The tiny slug of lead embedded in his flesh had already started to poison his body.

He offered up a few more empty words. "I lost my bearings. It won't happen again."

Gwin buried her face against his chest with a sigh. "I did too. We’re tired, that's all. It makes people do stupid things."

"Oh, yes," Cole agreed, "stupid." His breathing had finally begun to slow. His heart rate had fallen back to something like normal. He just wished that his favorite lower extremity would get the message that the show was over.

"I'm sorry," he said again, feeling miserable. "I'm sorry, Gwin, I just ... I don't know what's the matter with me. It won't happen again."

"It's all right," she said again.

But it wasn't all right. Cole stared up at an open night sky where a blanket of stars, millions of them, winked down at him. The crickets chirped, Arthur snored, and Gwin continued to lie unnaturally still as he pondered the enormity of his professional misconduct.

Gwin didn't say anything more. Neither did he. Except for Cole's fingers, which continued to stroke her hair, neither of them moved. After a bit, he sensed a slackening of tension about her shoulders and he heard her breathing revert to the soft, rhythmic cadence of slumber.

It wasn't until much later, when the first peach-colored rays of dawn strained over the mountainous horizon, that Cole was finally able to surrender to a fitful sleep of his own.

Chapter Fourteen

Virginia City, Nevada

"Yep, you got an infection brewing, son, but it's my best guess you're gonna live anyhow."

Dr. Julian Price, a skinny old codger, bald except for a fringe of closely cropped gray hair, wiped his bloodied hands on a towel. He was surveying Cole Shepherd's battered body, a body that was still sweating on his examination table.

"Oh, you poor thing!" Mrs. Price, as stout as her husband was thin, made a series of clucking sounds as she dipped a cloth into a washbowl and wrung it out to dab gently at Cole's forehead.

The doctor peered at Gwin from over a pair of gleaming spectacles. "You hear that? Sometime soon, I reckon this young man will be walking out of here intact." He cracked a teasing smile, winked, and thumped the nub of his wooden leg against the floor for added effect. "And that's more than you can say for his doctor, ain't it, now?"

With the clumsy reflexes of one rising from the depths of a deep sleep, Gwin blinked and focused, realizing that the doctor was trying to put her at ease. It was also then that she realized she gripped the edge of her chair so tightly that her hand had begun to cramp. She relaxed her grip and smiled weakly.

Gwin hadn't been to Virginia City in almost two years, but not that much had changed. She'd nosed out the elderly doctor's house like a pup returning to its home. The two-story white-framed structure stood looking out on E Street just as it had two years ago. Gwin had been glad to see that Mrs. Price still kept the colorful flowerboxes that adorned her homey front porch. Petunias, marigolds, violets, and geraniums burst forth from their planters in tiny explosions of cheerful color.

The house, much like the garrulous couple who owned it, oozed a come-on-in-and-set-a-spell hospitality that seemed out of place in this fast-moving, oftentimes hardhearted boomtown known as the Queen of the Comstock Lode.

Upon turning the corner of E Street this afternoon after traveling many miles in the back of a prospector's wagon, Gwin had been almost moved to tears at the welcome sight of Mrs. Price’s flowerboxes. She recalled dragging Clell up those porch steps two years ago, threatening to never speak to him again if he didn't act like a man and get his bum tooth taken care of.

No, nothing much had changed here, Gwin thought sadly, but things had certainly changed for her. Today, she sat in the same chair she had sat in after poor Clell had submitted to the sure cure for a toothache, but Clell was dead now, and in his place lay another young man.

After their straggling trio had arrived on the Prices' doorstep, Cole had insisted that the doctor take a look first at Arthur's tender feet. Gwin had excused herself then to wash up, and by the time she got back, Arthur was already in the cozy parlor, his feet bandaged and propped up on a tasseled hassock. Gwin left him like that, munching on a plate of gingersnaps and thumbing through a medical book.

Gwin had gone back into the examining room, where the doctor was cutting off what remained of Cole's bloodstained shirt. Even from where she stood in the open doorway, Gwin could see the angry red swelling around the entry wound and her heart caught in her throat.

"Sorry, but this is going to hurt like the devil, son," Doc Price had warned Cole as he'd set to work on his shoulder, using a probe and a sharp-toothed metal extractor to remove the bullet.

Two years ago, Gwin had sat calmly by Clell's side, holding his hand and encouraging him. This was different. Today, Gwin had been forced to sink into the nearest chair, not trusting her wobbling legs after catching sight of that first rush of bright red blood. She wondered dazedly why she hadn't elected to wait in the other room.

Even though Cole had not cried out from the pain, Gwin figured she probably started gripping the edge of her seat just about then. She even feared for a moment that she would faint, landing like a child's rag doll on the polished hardwood floor of the doctor's office.

Now, it was all over. And thank God for that. Mrs. Price helped Cole over to one of two cots that were set up in a room behind the examining area. His eyelids were already starting to droop. The laudanum was taking effect. That was good. He needed to sleep.

As the doctor turned to wash his hands, Gwin rose shakily to her feet. She spoke in a hushed voice. "He
is
going to be okay, isn't he?"

The doctor dried his hands on a clean towel. "Right as rain, young lady. It’s just a flesh wound. They can hurt like hell, but all he needs is some rest, good food, and some recuperation time."

Gwin nodded and followed Mrs. Price and Cole into the adjoining room. She gazed down at him as he stretched out on his back, bare-chested, his long legs sprawling the full length of the cot.
My heavens, he's exquisite
, she thought dreamily, admiring the broad expanse of his chest and the smooth, curving line of muscle in his arms.
He looks the way you always dreamed he would look
, a voice whispered in her mind.

"And how's that young man of yours doing?"

Caught off guard by the doctor's question, Gwin glanced up to see that he'd followed them from the examining room. "My ... my young man?"

"The one with the bad tooth. I'm surprised to see there's no ring on your finger. I'm not usually wrong about such things, and judging by the way he was looking at you..."

Gwin's eyes fell once again on Cole's reposing figure. "Oh, you mean Clell. He was ... I mean, he wasn't my young man."

Doc Price chuckled. "Oh, so it was that way, was it? Poor fella. Take it from me, young lady, and I'm a doctor, he had it bad for you, but I guess a pretty thing like you has left more than one broken heart in her wake."

Gwin didn't answer. Her gaze lingered on Cole's hands, fine-looking hands for a man, long fingers, neatly trimmed nails. Those hands were slack and empty at the moment, one slung across his midsection, the other resting at his side, but they hadn't been so slack and empty last night.

He touched me
, she thought, the memory of it rising in a hot flush to color her cheeks. Oh, and
how
he had touched her. She had tried not to think about it, but with so many hours of traveling, she'd had little else to dwell upon. She was painfully aware of what had almost happened between them, and even more painfully aware that, had he been just a little more persistent, she would have given herself to him.

And there it was, the plain and naked truth. Gwin Pierce, the girl who for years had privately vilified her own mother for her loose morals, had been ready to surrender herself to a man she had known for less than a week. This was not a truth about herself she cared to examine too closely in the light of day.

She turned away. "If you're sure he's all right, I've got some things to do."

"Things? What things?" Mrs. Price sounded horrified. "You, young lady, have rest to do, that's what!"

"There will be time for that later."

"I never heard such stuff and nonsense! There's an extra bed waiting for you in our daughter's old room upstairs. Julian! Talk some sense into her."

"Lil," the doctor admonished wearily, "if I were any good at talking sense into people, my business wouldn't be nearly as brisk as it is."

Gwin gave the doctor a weak but grateful smile. "Just take care of Mr. Shepherd for me, and make sure he doesn't try to—"

Before she could finish, she saw out of the corner of her eye that Cole was already pushing up onto one elbow. "Gwin, wait."

Mrs. Price frowned at this, her second rebellious patient, and pulled his elbow out from under him.

"Ahhhh!" Cole fell back onto the cot with a heavy thump.

"That'll teach you," Mrs. Price said sternly.

"Don't mess with her, son," the doctor warned. "She can be a bear when her Florence Nightingale instincts are up."

It was clear to Gwin that Mrs. Price had the situation under control and so she moved to leave. "It might be late before I get back."

"Gwin! Damn it!"

She turned back.

Cole raised his hand and beckoned her closer. "Where do you think you're going?" His words were starting to slur.

Gwin knelt by his side, satisfied that he was in no shape to thwart her plans. She spoke close to his ear so that the Prices wouldn't catch her words. "I'm going to get us some money. Arthur needs shoes. And we both need new clothes."

He shook his head. "No. I can get money. Just wait."

Gwin fought the urge to smooth the hair from his forehead. She tried to sound firm. "I'll be back." She rose to her feet.

"Don't ..." His fingers brushed feebly across the folds of her skirt, missing purchase.

"Don't what?"

She could see that he was losing his battle with the painkilling drug that was invading his system. His eyes were already closed. "Don't ... don't do anything I wouldn't do," he mumbled.

And then, she was relieved to see, he was finally asleep.

*

San Francisco

"Ah, yes! Few of life's pleasures can surpass a truly delectable repast!" Jasper exclaimed, sipping the burgundy that sparkled in his crystal wineglass from where he sat at the end of a long, lace-covered mahogany table in the main dining room. He set down his wineglass and changed the subject. "You've heard from the Pinkerton Agency?"

From his seat at the other end of the table, Sidney looked up. The ever-present behemoth Alphonse Ringo sat to Jasper's right, midway between them, ominously silent and apparently oblivious to the dinner conversation that flowed around him.

"How did you know?" Sidney asked, trying to mask his irritation.

Jasper chuckled. "The walls have ears."

The walls have ears.
Sidney picked up his spoon and tasted his chicken giblet soup. He had fired and hired every member of his household staff three or four times over in an attempt to purge it of Round Table spies, and still Jasper managed to have his "ears."

"Yes," Sidney replied, "I did receive an answer to my telegram this morning."

"And?" Jasper prodded, dipping his spoon into his bowl.

"Their operative has not reported in for over twenty-four hours, and they found—"

Jasper finished for him. "They found a dead man in the baggage car of the four twenty when it pulled into Wadsworth." He made a disgusting noise as he slurped some broth.

Sidney stopped, his spoon poised over his bowl. "Why do you ask if you already know the answer?"

Jasper grinned. "Just comparing notes, Sidney. It's always good policy to compare notes, isn't that right, Mr. Ringo?"

The laconic bodyguard shifted in his seat, causing it to creak. "Unequivocally, Mr. Barnes."

Jasper's dark eyes danced. "Yes, unequivocally. Helps to forestall any errors that may crop up due to bad communication."

Sidney was not amused. "There was no sign of the girl or her brother."

"Yes, it does appear that they've managed to slip away, and at the expense of one of our finest employees, I'm sorry to say. No doubt the Pinkerton had something to do with that. In retrospect, it might not have been the best thing to involve that agency. It served its purpose in locating them and keeping track of their whereabouts, but this operative of theirs seems to have taken his obligation to protect them a bit too seriously."

Sidney fought a smile. "I told you it was a mistake to bring them back here, and trying to take care of them along the way was overeager and sloppy. Perhaps it's for the best that they've escaped. They'll be on the run. I predict that our troubles are over."

"Oh, I don't know." Jasper set down his spoon and picked at his teeth. "This Pinkerton who takes his obligations so seriously just might deliver our pigeons yet."

"I told you, his agency hasn't heard from him. That's highly unusual. Either he's dead or sulking somewhere because he let a woman and a child get away from him."

"It's never wise to assume."

Sidney looked at the gilt-framed painting on the wall above Jasper's head. It was one of Sidney’s favorites,
First Kiss
. Lancelot and Guinevere indulged in their first indiscretion beneath the watchful eye of Galehot. In the distance, three ladies huddled beneath a tree in the garden.

"Sidney! Did you hear what I said?"