Much Ado About Madams (31 page)

The sound of footfalls echoed on the plank floor as she heard the door open and close.

Please don’t leave me now.

The door opened again, and she heard someone approaching her.

Someone’s washing me, probably preparing me for burial.

“
Miss Sharpe, wake up!” Holly’s voice echoed in the distance.

Why does she want me to wake up if I’m dead?

“
Come on, talk to me. You have to wake up!”

Maybe she’s dead, too.

“
Miss Sharpe, you simply have to wake up. Fannie said to wake you up, and you know that woman can throw a fit when things don’t go her way.”

So Fannie made it to heaven, too. God certainly has a sense of humor.

“
I’ll go ahead and brush your hair, then. Getting those weeds and stickers out of this rat’s nest oughtta raise anybody from the dead.”

Lucinda felt the sting of a single hair tugged from the nape of her neck. “Ouch!”

“
You’re awake.” Holly gently patted Lucinda on the cheek. “Open your eyes, Miss Sharpe.”

Lucinda put every effort into raising her eyelids, still not sure if she even could. She saw a massive oak bedpost and tried to remember where she’d seen it before. “My room.” She was lying on her stomach on her bed.

“
Yes, you’re in your room at the Comfort Palace.” Holly moved into view, a broad smile on her face and her hands clutched to her breast. “I have to go tell Fannie. Stay right here.”

Lucinda nodded. Pain seared her behind, and she remembered that Reese had been the victim of a lawless lynch mob. Was he dead? She had to know if she’d followed in her mother’s footsteps. “Reese—did I kill him?”

But Holly had already left.

A few minutes later, one of the twins entered the room carrying a bag. “We need to check your wounds and get that buckshot out.”

“
Which one are you?”

“
Titus.” He took tweezers, a wicked-looking knife, and several cloths out of the leather pouch he carried.

“
What wounds? And what buckshot?”

“
You were shot in the...uh, behind when you ran to Reese.”

Shot in the...she’d no more let him check her
there
than, well, she couldn’t think. But
he
had another think coming if he thought she’d bare her…her…Perish the thought.

“
Don’t you
dare
touch me,” Lucinda hissed at Titus. He had the nerve to want to see her backside. She simply wouldn’t, couldn’t, allow it. As she stuck out her hand to push him away, she winced in pain. She felt all right as long as she didn’t move, though.

“
Miss Sharpe, I know what I’m doing. I had medic duties in the war—I’ve seen lots of wounds like yours.”

“
It’s not decent and I won’t hear of it.”

“
Your wounds may putrify if the buckshot stays in there. We have to clean them.”

“
Where do you get ‘we’? ‘We’ refuse to show our backsides to you or anyone else, so forget it.” She buried her face in the pillow.

At the sound of footsteps out the door she triumphantly cast a glare toward his retreating figure, his hands raised in surrender. “You may fetch a doctor from Silver City tomorrow.” Even baring her backside to a doctor would be humiliating enough. She wouldn’t even consider letting Titus do such a deed.

He stuffed his supplies back into the pouch, then stood and stared at her for a moment. Then he pivoted and stomped out. “Stubborn damned woman,” he muttered as he slammed the door behind him.

“
You don’t need to curse!”

No sooner had she rid herself of Titus when Fannie marched to the bedside in all in a huff, wagging her finger in Lucinda’s face. She turned her head to face the wall, knowing it was a childish thing—no, a cowardly thing to do, but Fannie could be overbearing at times. She doubted she had the strength to combat her.

“
Are you aware that Silver City is thirty miles from here?” Fannie demanded.

“
Yes.”

“
And that it would take half a day’s ride just to get there, another day or so for the doctor to cut loose, and at least another half day for him to get to Dickshooter?”

“
I suppose.”

“
And by that time, you’d be so wrought up with the fever, you might die of pure-dee stupidity?”

Fannie never had been overly tactful. Lucinda failed to come up with a witty response, so she remained silent.

“
Titus knows more about buckshot than any ten doctors. I’m calling him back in here, and I better not hear a peep out of you. Do you hear? Not one peep.”

“
No.”

She heard Fannie leave, but knew if Fannie had anything to do with it she’d have to face the humiliation of a stranger examining regions that ought not be seen.

Not two minutes later, she heard several footfalls tromping up the stairs. The door burst open and hit the wall, bounced back on Reese, who slammed it against the wall again, breaking the plaster.

“
What the hell are you thinking, woman?”

“
Oh, Reese, you’re alive!” Pent up tears rolled down her cheeks. She didn’t even care. “I thought I’d killed you.” She raised her arms, inviting an embrace.

He bent over her, gave her a gentle hug and brushed a kiss on her cheek. “You bet I’m alive, and I’m still in charge around here.”

“
What’s going on?” Fannie barged in without so much as a knock. Reese lurched to his feet and smiled guiltily.

Lucinda saw Fannie behind him, and Titus, too, carrying that ominous pouch of his.

Not waiting for her to answer, Reese strode to her bed and ripped the covers from her. “Fannie, you hold her feet. I’ll hold her shoulders down.”

Lucinda started to struggle, but the pain and Reese’s weight stopped her. She felt Fannie grab hold of her feet.

“
Titus, it’s safe. Come on over and start picking.”

A tear of shame escaped to join the tears of happiness sopping her pillow. How could he subject her to such indignity?

“
It’s all right, darlin’,” Reese murmured in her ear, “I just don’t want to lose you.”

She breathed in his bay rum and leather, and remembered the last time she noticed it was in the Idaho Hotel. His voice both comforted and excited her, but the excitement was short-lived when Titus extracted the first bit of buckshot.

She flinched against the searing pain. “Ouch!”

“
There’s really not nearly as much shot penetration as we thought, Reese. Her clothes and corset caught most of it.” Titus picked out another.

Lucinda grunted, then gritted her teeth to prepare for the next one, refusing to lose her composure in such a humiliating situation.

“
Good,” answered Reese. “Less chance of fever.”

Titus must have picked out a dozen or more pellets before he finally quit. Then he sopped up a cloth with alcohol and brushed it all over her backside and thighs. First it was freezing cold, then burned like the fires of hell.

“
Getting shot didn’t hurt nearly as much as this.” She tried to sound brave, but her voice wavered.

“
You two get out of here,” Reese told Titus and Fannie.

Fannie cleared her throat. “You can let go of her now.”

Lucinda’s heart skipped a beat when his weight lifted. She hadn’t realized how much this man had affected her. Weeks before, she’d realized she loved him. She ought to hate him the way he exposed her backside to another man. Still, he wanted her to recover, and he honestly acted like he cared.

Reese replaced the bedcovers over her, ever so gently. “You can lie on either side. The wounds are only in the, uh, back.”

Lucinda mumbled “Thank you,” barely able to talk at all with that big old lump in her throat. She rolled on her left side so she could face him. She winced when she turned a little too far, and it took a moment to find a comfortable spot.

“
Thank you, Lucinda.” He smiled and brushed a stray lock from her cheek. “Your impulsive actions saved my life, I’m sure. They’d have had me dangling by the time the rest of the crew got there.”

She offered her hand and he grasped it with both of his. “I saw the blood on the back of your head and I thought I’d shot you.”

He chuckled. “Naw, you shot the whole damn...uh, pardon me...tree limb off. A splinter of wood grazed my scalp, and scalp wounds bleed like…bleed a lot. That’s why you saw all that red stuff. You did, however, smack my head with that hard noggin of yours when you fell, and we both ended up with hefty lumps on our skulls. Knocked us both out, although I was only out for a few seconds.”

“
Who were those bad men? They weren’t Hannibal Hank’s bunch.”

“
No, they’re a bunch of ranch hands Hank got all stirred up. They think I’ve been rustling their cattle.” He shrugged. “It’s been Hank all along. Tucker’s known about it two months, but hasn’t been able to catch him at it, yet.”

He rubbed her hand with his thumb and tingles coursed up her arm and down to her thighs. She doubted he had any idea what affect he had on her.

* * * * *

Reese couldn’t help touching Lucinda, even if only her hand. Her eyes were wide with wonder, and her lips looked sweet as a sugar lump. He sure did want to kiss her, but he’d already ruined a respectable woman, and he didn’t want to add to his sins. Only one thing could make it right.

He cleared his throat and looked her in the eye. “I’m asking again—will you marry me?”

She went stone still, then blinked a couple of times. “What?”

It wasn’t a question of whether she’d heard—he knew she had—it was a question of a man like him in a shameful business marrying a decent woman like her. But he’d thought about it a lot—constantly. It damn near drove him crazy thinking about her in the hotel room. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since, for all the torment his dreams had given him.

It was his duty to get her to marry him, and he aimed to do so. Besides, he couldn’t imagine spending his life without her.

“
I said, ‘Will you marry me?’ I want—would like you to marry me.” He continued brushing the back of her hand with his thumb, even though it caused him grief.

Chirping sparrows accentuated her silence. He cursed his father, his background, and the Comfort Palace, then made another try at it. “I’ll have a cabin built on my ranch by May or June. We’ve already built a bunkhouse, and corrals are next on the list. I figure if we have a June wedding, we can move right into the house, so you might as well be thinking about how you want to decorate it with all your female frilly stuff.”

She still hadn’t said a word, just stared at him with those beautiful green eyes. His heart sank. She was going to turn him down.

“
I would like to, but I can’t.”

“
Can’t? Are you already married?” Surely not, considering her age, but he couldn’t think of any other reason for her to turn him down, unless she didn’t care for him the way he...loved her. Yes, love. He had to convince her.

“
No, but there’s something you need to know. I’m not who you think I am.”

“
You’re a beautiful, smart woman who knows her own mind. That’s all I need to know.”

“
No, it’s not. And thank you for the compliment.”

“
So what’s holding you back? I already told you the Comfort Palace is as good as sold—I never wanted it anyway.”

“
Reese, my mother was a lady of the evening in St. Joseph. I was raised in a brothel. A brothel, just like the Comfort Palace, even with the same owner.”

“
Same owner? My father?”

Lucinda was quiet for so long, he thought she’d dozed off. “Yes, your father.”

“
I’m not like him.”

“
Not at all. You must have had a wonderful mother. But that’s not why I can’t marry you. Reese, you will hate me when I tell you this.”

“
Nothing could make me hate you. I—” he swallowed a lump in his throat. “I love you. I do. And I hope you love me, too.”

“
Listen to me, please. My mother was lynched.”

He was horrified to hear it, horrified that Lucinda, who couldn’t have been more than eight or ten years old, had to live through such a thing. “I’m sorry.”

“
She was lynched for murdering Fast Hands Stuart. Your father.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “And that’s why we can never be married. You’ll always know and wonder. Did she murder him?” Lucinda shook her head. “I don’t know, but I do know she had good reason to.”

Reese wanted to hug her but he couldn’t because of the open wounds in her back, so he held her hand and patted it. “A man who did to women what that man did—and to my mother, too—didn’t deserve any better.”

She licked her lips, the ones he had so much trouble to keep from kissing. “If you can put it out of your mind, and if you do right by the ladies here, I’ll marry you.”

“
Good.” Restraining the urge to grab her in his arms and dance around the room, he stood and said, “You better get some rest. I’ll be back to check on you in an hour.” He bent down and brushed a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll do my level best to make you happy.”