Lucky Penny (23 page)

When the sun was high overhead, Paxton stopped along the stream for lunch. Brianna barely managed to keep her feet when she slid off the horse. Paxton unsaddled the geldings and relieved Lucy of her packs. Then, to Brianna’s acute dismay, the man engaged Daphne in gathering handfuls of grass with which to rub the animals down. Brianna knew a single kick from one of those powerful beasts might seriously injure or kill her child. She limped—yes,
limped
, because every part of her lower body was afire with pain from riding for so long—over to the horses to voice her objections.

“I do
not
want my daughter near these unpredictable creatures, Mr. Paxton!”

Daphne left off rubbing Lucy’s flank, which was as high as she could reach. “But, Mama, they’re sweet. Come see. Papa is teaching me how to be safe around them.”

Papa.
If she heard her child utter that title one more time, she was going to tear at her hair and shriek. “As nice
as they may seem, Daphne, each of them weighs a thousand pounds or more. If one steps wrong, even by accident, your foot could be injured.” Brianna glanced at the child’s patent leather slippers, which were too insubstantial to protect her feet. They were also nearly ruined now. She needed some thick, sturdy boots—preferably reinforced with steel in the toes. Brianna wished now that she’d thought last night to exchange the cute shoes for Daphne’s sturdier play footwear.

Paxton paused in grooming Blue. Meeting Brianna’s gaze for a tension-packed instant, he said, “You heard your mama, Daphne. If she doesn’t want you messing with the horses, her word is the law. Maybe over time, she’ll relax a bit and lift the ruling.”

Brianna shot him a startled look. He was always in control, never giving away an inch of his authority, and yet he relinquished it now. He met her gaze with a humorless glint in his. Had she ever seen eyes that blue?
Yes.
Daphne had his eyes—a deep, summer-sky azure. The mental comparison had Brianna doubling back. Daphne did
not
have his eyes. What was she thinking?

Paxton turned his preparation of the noon meal into an occasion. Daphne joined him at the creek to wash their finds from the morning ride. He referred to their search as a “trip to God’s general store,” which delighted the child. She hung on his every word about the fabulous foods their Maker had provided for them.

“I travel light on the trail,” he told Daphne as they crouched near the fire. “I bring some staples so I can make flatbread, corn cakes, or flapjacks. A little salt, sugar, and bacon are always nice to have. But I’m not like many men I’ve met who carry eggs in bags filled with sawdust and load their poor mules down with all manner of canned goods. If I get a hankering for eggs, I go out to find them if the season is right. If not, I do without. As for canned goods, I’ve got no use for them. The world around us is filled with the makings for salad, soups, and stews if you know how to find them.”

“And I’m learning how. Right, Papa?”

Brianna swung away, wincing at the pain radiating from
her hips to her toes. As she walked, searching for bits of wood and those revolting dry cow patties to fuel her own fire, she nearly groaned. Her rump felt as if she’d bounced repeatedly on a boulder. Her inner thighs burned. The least movement made her leg muscles scream in protest.

When Brianna returned with her skirt filled, Paxton left his fire to saunter toward her with that well-oiled, lazy shift of his hips and long legs that she found so unsettling. Didn’t he ever get saddle sore? Everything about him struck her as being supremely masculine.

“Hold up,” he said. “No point in building a fire only to have it blow out again.”

She noticed that he held a short spade. Dropping to one knee, he treated her to a display of rippling muscle across his shoulders and back as he began digging a pit. He was built like a log-splitting wedge, wide across the chest and narrow at the waist.

“In this country, where there’s no windbreak,” he explained, “you protect your fire with a lip of earth. As long as you insist on cooking your own food, I’ll dig you a spot.”

Job completed, he sat back on one bootheel, nudged up the brim of his hat, and gifted her with a smile similar to the one he’d used on Abigail to rob her of her wits.

“I’m hoping you’ll come around soon, though, and eat my fare. If ever a female needed fattening up, it’s you. If a hard wind came along, it’d blow you away.”

Brianna had often thought the same thing about Abigail, and for an uncomfortable moment, she wondered if Paxton thought she looked like a broom. Then she reminded herself that she didn’t care what he thought. He might be on the fiddle, a seafarer’s term for men who stole extra rations that Brianna had learned as a child growing up near the Boston harbor. On ships, supper plates had a raised edge called a fiddle, which helped to prevent spillage on stormy seas, and those who took more food than was their share had servings that rode that edge. Over time, “on the fiddle” had become a term to describe crooks who stole or committed other reprehensible deeds, and she’d be foolish to forget David Paxton might be of that ilk until he proved otherwise.

She would not be lured in by those melting blue eyes or that crooked grin that always creased his left cheek, making her wonder if he’d once had a dimple there similar to Daphne’s that had deepened and become elongated by exposure to the sun.

“I brought food aplenty. I’ll not have my daughter consuming dangerous plants.”

He shook his head and pushed to his feet. His greater height reminded Brianna once again that he had the physical advantage. Whatever would she do if he decided to exercise his conjugal rights? The marriage last night hadn’t been legal, Brianna felt certain of that, but he still carried the stamped document in one of his bags, which officially made him her husband whether she wanted him to be or not. She was fairly certain he wouldn’t try anything with Daphne sleeping beside her, but what would happen if he caught her alone? Common sense forced her to recognize that she was far too small to fight him off.

“I’d never offer my child anything poisonous to eat,” he assured her. “And the same goes for you. I know what I’m doing.”

“So you say.”

“If I didn’t know what I was doing, I’d have been dead long ago.”

Brianna didn’t answer that, but the sardonic twist of his mouth told her that he knew precisely what she was thinking—that his sudden demise wasn’t a completely unwelcome possibility.

Brianna attempted to walk normally as she went to retrieve her bag of food from the mule packs. Crouching to sort through the contents brought tears to her eyes. Clearly, her body wasn’t fashioned for horseback riding.

“The liniment is in there somewhere, a dark brown bottle wrapped in a white towel. Anytime you’d like to use it, feel free.”

Brianna had rejected the offer earlier, but now she was so miserable that using his potion sounded like a fine idea. Perhaps she could take the bottle to bed with her tonight and apply it to her sore parts under the cover of blankets.

Paxton served the remainder of the breakfast rabbit for lunch, along with a green salad and some sort of cooked tubular. Brianna made Daphne sit with her at the other fire, where they dined on charred ham, cheese, and bread, again sharing a borrowed tin cup filled with water so they might sip as they ate.

“The food we found isn’t making him sick, Mama. Can’t I
please
have tiny tastes?”

Brianna’s mouth was watering for some of that salad. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten fresh vegetables. Last summer, she guessed, when she’d harvested them from Ricker’s kitchen garden. In the off season, the only green food on their plates had been snap beans, which Brianna had preserved each autumn. Paxton had even brought a few lemons in his packs, the juice of which he squeezed over the mixture of leaves and blossoms. Every time he forked some into his mouth, he closed his eyes as he chewed, his expression conveying that the taste was sublime.

“Please, Mama?” Daphne pestered.

Though Paxton seemed to be suffering no ill effects, Brianna was still reluctant to allow her daughter to eat any of that stuff. Just one poisonous plant in the mix could make the child deathly ill. “Just finish your dinner, Daphne. You’ve got ham. That’s a lovely treat.”

“But we found small-flower alyssum, and wild onions, and asparagus, and begonia, and field bindweed! Papa watches to be sure I pick the right things. Sweet alyssum is bad for us, but the other kind isn’t. Did you know we found bitter rubberweed? Papa says it’s poisonous to livestock, so he won’t let our horses or Lucy anywhere near it. That’s how come he hobbled them last night where it was safe for them to graze.”

Brianna always hated having to tell Daphne no, but in this case, she felt it was in the child’s best interest. Drat the man for making the little girl yearn for foods she shouldn’t have. Daphne had been perfectly happy with bread and cheese up until last night, and now she was turning up her nose at ham.

“When you’ve finished eating, I want you to change into your play frock and sturdier shoes. I’ll help you dig them out.”

Daphne took a bite of ham and chewed as if she had a mouthful of leather. Even Brianna had to admit that the meat was scorched and dry. The smell of Paxton’s freshly boiled coffee drifted to her on the breeze. Coffee was yet another item that she’d forgotten, and she yearned to ask him for a cup. Her pride prevented her from doing so. She and Daphne would get along just fine with the rations she had on hand.

For the remainder of the meal, Brianna pondered the gravity of the situation. So far, Paxton had tried nothing underhanded. He’d been pleasant all morning, and he’d been unfailingly wonderful with Daphne. But she was a long way from being convinced that he had nothing nefarious in mind.

She rubbed her forehead. He seemed so sure Daphne was his. She kept remembering that absurd audience with the judge last night when Paxton had displayed that photograph of a female he claimed was his mother.

In Brianna’s mind the question was: Could he be believed? The woman might be his mother, but he could have stolen the picture. Only, if the latter were true, how had he managed to come by an image that so closely resembled Daphne when he’d never even clapped eyes on the child?

Trying to sort her way through this maze was giving Brianna a headache. Each time she reached a conclusion, another thought made her oscillate. Was Paxton precisely what he presented himself to be—an honest man who truly believed Daphne was his child? Or was he a no-account, incredibly clever scoundrel? Brianna was coming around to giving the man the benefit of the doubt. His obvious affection for Daphne didn’t mesh with his taking her across the border.

And if Brianna took that leap of faith, accepting that Paxton was for real, she had to somehow disabuse him of the notion that Daphne was his. The little girl was falling wildly in love with him, and the longer Brianna let this situation
continue, the worse it would be for the child when he finally learned the truth.

Brianna shifted, seeking a more comfortable position. No matter which way she sat, either her muscles howled in protest or something raw rubbed against the hard ground. She stifled a sigh. He hadn’t believed the web of lies she’d told him yesterday, but she couldn’t really blame him. She was a hopeless liar, and she knew it.

If she told him the real story of Daphne’s birth, what were the risks to her and the child? Glory Ridge was far behind them now. There might still be a chance that the authorities would take Daphne away from her because she wasn’t the biological mother, but it loomed far less likely now than it would have last night. If she came clean with Paxton, he would have nothing to gain by exposing her. Instead, he’d probably just wash his hands of her and Daphne, dumping them off in the nearest town to fend for themselves. That would suit Brianna fine. She’d managed before, and no prospective employers could be as bad as Ricker or Abigail.

She watched Paxton with nervous, uncertain regard. If he was up to no good, then nothing she said would have any bearing on the situation. He’d simply carry through with his original plan. But if he was actually David Paxton, marshal of No Name, the truth might convince him to end this insanity now. So far as Brianna could see, she had nothing to lose by talking to him. Perhaps he would recognize sincerity when he saw it.

When the dinner dishes had been rinsed and put away, Paxton dug in the packs and tossed Brianna a couple of blankets. “I always like to take a nap after my midday meal,” he said. “Call me a pansy ass if you like, but I need a break from the saddle.”

Clutching the blankets to her chest, Brianna watched him saunter away. Did he do something special to rope his body with all that muscle? She’d never seen a man so strong, yet limber. He didn’t look tired. In fact, she would be willing to bet he could ride all day and well into the night with no ill effect. Her throat went tight. Was he calling
for a rest period on her behalf? She guessed maybe so, which was completely contrary to the caliber of character that she’d assigned to him. He stretched out on the bare ground, using his saddle for a pillow and his hat to shade his eyes. Brianna stood gaping at him for a moment. Then she turned to make a napping pallet.

Brianna snuggled her daughter close. Daphne thrust her hand into the pocket of her skirt and withdrew the coin that Paxton had convinced her was miraculous. The child held it up to the sunlight, twisting it this way and that.

“See it winking at me, Mama? It truly is magic. Last night, it helped me remember all my recitation.”

Brianna wished that Paxton hadn’t filled the child’s head with such nonsense. It was just an ordinary penny. If Daphne continued thinking the coin had magical properties, she was bound to be disillusioned.

“You should put all your hope in God, dear heart, not in worthless objects.”

“It
isn’t
worthless,” Daphne said fiercely. “You don’t understand.”

Brianna decided to let the subject drop. “Put it back in your pocket, then, so you don’t lose it while you’re napping.”

Daphne gave the penny another turn and did as she was told. Within minutes, her breathing changed, and Brianna felt certain she was asleep. A
pansy ass
? Just when she thought Paxton could say nothing more to shock her, he plucked another crass expression out of his hat. Under her breath, she muttered, “He may be a good man, but he has the filthiest mouth I’ve ever seen.”