Into the Light (25 page)

“And you aren’t worried about having spent hours in my company and walking me home.”

“I am. I’m being selfish and self-indulgent. Surely we can enjoy one evening without guilt.”

“Sneak it in, you mean?”

“I’m sorry. I was upset.”

She laughed and hugged his arm tighter, unable to pretend anger over his worry about her. “You were, and you missed Mr. Rostovtzeff.”

“I heard enough to write something that will keep Mrs. Tindell happy. Maybe we’ll get a chance to hear him together some day. He’s very good.”

“As good as Ned Green?”

“It’s a close call, but I’d say yes.”

A buggy passed in the street and then another. One family from the recital walked half a block ahead, and another could be heard laughing and talking behind. “This can’t be that bad a neighborhood,” Deborah said. “We aren’t the only ones walking home.”

“None of the others are beautiful young women walking alone, and you wouldn’t want to meet that fellow across the street by yourself.”

He had noticed her new red dress. He’d just called her young and beautiful. She wanted to skip like Judith with the pleasure of it, and she couldn’t argue his point. The man across the street leaned against a light pole as if he needed it to hold him up and had a hand under his coat doing something that didn’t look quite like scratching.

Another ragged fellow staggered down their side of the street. As he reached the family ahead, the father pushed his wife and children almost off the walk away from the street and made a human barrier of himself until the drunk passed by.

Trey disengaged Deborah’s arm with a pat on her hand and pushed her the same way, swinging his cane on the street side. The drunk muttered and swayed, seeming oblivious to everything around him until he was on top of them and stepped in Trey’s path.

Deborah saw the flash of metal, heard a grunt of surprise and pain from Trey, and screamed. The men grappled for the knife. Trey’s cane rolled on the ground. Deborah picked it up and hit the man struggling with Trey across the back with all her strength.

Footsteps pounded toward them. Men yelled. Women and children screamed. Deborah raised the cane again, but the drunk broke free, crossed the street at a run and disappeared around the corner.

“Are you hurt?”

“Are you hurt?” The families that had been ahead and behind surrounded them now, their questions drowning out Deborah’s.

Trey stood very straight, his right arm clamped to his side, his face white under the streetlight. “I’m fine. He was just a belligerent drunk, and he frightened Miss Sutton.”

Deborah yanked his arm from his side. “You are not fine. He stabbed you. That’s blood.”

The crowd around them broke out in buzzing chatter.

“He didn’t stab me,” Trey said. “The knife glanced off a rib. I wouldn’t be standing here if he stabbed me, would I?”

A carriage drew up beside them in the street. The Greens. Deborah almost sobbed with relief. In less than a minute she and Trey had squeezed inside with the family, and Mr. Green sent his horses flying toward the doctor’s home.

Relief ended on the doctor’s doorstep. A sleepy housekeeper informed them the doctor had been called to a farm two hours west of town to deliver an uncooperative baby.

“Let’s get Miss Sutton home,” Trey said to Mr. Green, “and if you’d be so kind as to drive me to the hotel, they’ll have bandages and disinfectant there.”

When the carriage pulled up in front of Judith’s, Deborah refused to get out without Trey. “You’re coming in with me. The hotel may have disinfectant and bandages, but no one there is going to treat you. Judith can do it.”

The fact Trey didn’t argue worried Deborah even more. Blood wasn’t dripping, but the stain on his coat had spread. Mr. Green helped them down from the carriage, walked them to the door, and left.

“I bet he wishes his wife never thought of trying to get Ned his first newspaper clipping,” Trey muttered.

Judith heard them and rushed to the kitchen. “Oh, my goodness, am I happy to see you in one piece. Mr. Richmond said you were at some children’s recital?”

“Never mind that, Trey’s been stabbed, and the doctor’s out of town. We need.... I need....” Deborah couldn’t catch her breath. She leaned on the table for support.

“I haven’t been stabbed,” Trey said. “The knife just sliced a little. Calm down. Take a deep breath.”

Deborah did take a deep breath, and it did help.

“Another,” he said. “There, that’s better. A little bit of bandaging, and I’ll be on my way.”

“You’re not going out on the street again tonight!”

“Stop shouting. Didn’t you promise you wouldn’t shout any more?”

“No, I didn’t. You promised not to get killed.”

“I don’t remember promising that, and anyway, I’m not dead.”

Judith flew around the kitchen, disappeared, and returned. She banged a basin, carbolic, and bandages down on the table. “Stop arguing and let’s see this stab wound.”

Trey removed his coat with a grimace. The blood stain on his jacket had spread, his vest and shirt were soaked. Deborah wanted to weep at the sight.

Once he was bare to the waist, Judith swiped blood and peered at his side. “You’re right it’s just a slice, but it’s deep and should be stitched. The reason William and I came home early is Emmy has a stomach ache and a fever. If William has to deal with her alone much longer, he’s going to leave me. Deborah, you’ll have to stitch this.”

Judith couldn’t mean it. Deborah stared at the wound in horror. “I can’t stitch a person.”

“Pretend he’s a calf. You’ve stitched cuts on calves.”

Judith whirled away again and returned with needle and thread and a folded nightshirt. “Since your clothes are all either ruined or wet, wear this tonight, and we’ll find you a shirt in the morning,” she said to Trey. “Emmy is crying. I have to go.”

Deborah tore her eyes from Trey. A man who looked so elegant in a suit should not look so — male — unclothed. A puckered starburst of scar tissue marred his right shoulder. The rest of his bare skin curved smoothly over muscle and bone.

She swallowed and swallowed again, wanting to stare, afraid to look. She filled the basin with hot water and prepared to clean the wound. “He wasn’t drunk, and he tried to kill you.”

“No, he wasn’t, and yes, he did. He could be the same man who came at me with the pipe. He didn’t seem as big hunched over and stumbling like that, so I can’t be sure.”

“Can you stand up?”

“In a minute.” He sounded tired.

“Never mind.” She knelt beside the chair and washed the blood away.

“Have you really stitched up calves?”

“And pigs. My uncles held them down.”

“Pigs are reassuring, but you don’t have anyone to hold me down.”

She wanted to lean her forehead against his arm and cry. Instead she disinfected the wound and the needle and thread and started stitching. “I’ll marry you if you’ll go far away.”

“Just me? You won’t come along?”

“Yes, I mean we’ll go far away.”

“Thank you for the offer, but I don’t want you to marry me so I’ll run away. I like it here.”

“But you asked me. You said you would go if I married you.”

“You turned me down and gave me time to reconsider. I don’t want you to marry me to get me to rabbit off to Alaska. I want you to marry me because you can’t live without me.” He sucked in a breath and held it as she started the first stitch, let it out while she tied the knot. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you can’t live without me?”

She dropped the needle. It hung swinging from the thread running through his skin until she picked it up again. “No.”
I can live without you. It will be more like dying than living, but I can do it.

“I was afraid of that. Then there’s the fact that if someone wants me dead in Kansas, they’ll still want me dead in Alaska. And if they can pay men to try to kill me here, they can find men willing to kill anywhere. More in Alaska maybe. It’s still as wild up there as Kansas was before you and I were born.”

“They wouldn’t find you.”

“Notice how you say they wouldn’t find me, not us. It’s a good thing I said no, or I’d find myself in Alaska, hiding out with a new name, and missing my wife because she escaped and left me a note the first chance she got.”

Deborah ignored the teasing and concentrated on bandaging over the stitches, enjoying the warmth of his skin, the firmness of muscle. Long ago she had learned to endure the touch of people other than her sisters when she had to, but she had never learned to like it.

What made him different? He had always been different, a man she sought out instead of avoided. She could enjoy this much, just these small touches of her hands over his ribs.

“You hit him, didn’t you?” Trey said.

“Yes, with your cane, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.”

“It did. He almost had the knife until then. Ladies are supposed to stand back, scream, and faint, you know.”

“I did scream.”

“Aah. Well then that’s the best of both worlds. Clever lady.”

Finished with all she could do, Deborah rose to her feet and for the first time saw the scar that covered the entire back of his shoulder. Lower down, a smaller scar beside his spine disappeared under the waistband of his trousers.

“Your back.” She pressed her palm over the large grayish white blotch, wanting to hide it from sight, wanting to touch him even more.

“It’s a mess, isn’t it? Since I never have to look at it, I forget sometimes. The shoulder looks worse, but it was that little hole in the back that crippled me.”

“Crip.... I heard someone say you came home on crutches.”

“I did. Considering I was never supposed to walk again, getting out of the wheelchair was a triumph, and Jamie was glad enough to stop lifting and pushing.”

“I didn’t know. Does anyone know?”

“Jamie, and now you. We met in the hospital and went through it together. He was dying of fever, and I was dead from the waist down.” Trey reached back and covered her hand with his own. “It’s not something to talk about, is it? There’s something embarrassing about admitting I needed Jamie to lift me from the bed to the chair for months. My left arm was about the only thing that still worked.”

“There’s nothing embarrassing about being shot!”

“There shouldn’t be, but there is. Being one of the wounded just isn’t noble somehow, is it?”

He turned his head and looked up at her, his eyes full of knowledge. And understanding. Not pity or revulsion but understanding. Even so, she pulled her hand out from under his and carried the basin to the sink to wash.

Behind her, his chair scraped on the floor as he rose. She sensed rather than heard his footsteps. One hand on her shoulder, one on her waist. She turned in his arms, closed her eyes when his hand cupped her face, his fingertips stroking into her hair, his thumb caressing along her cheekbone.

“Look at me.”

Her eyes obeyed. He leaned close, closer. His lips brushed hers, warm so warm. The sensation shivered right down to her toes.

“Breathe.”

Her lungs obeyed. She pressed the side of her face to his palm, happy to have this one moment, wishing it could last, knowing it could not.

“Touch me.”

Her hands obeyed, curving over his shoulders. This kiss was no quick brush of lips. His mouth moved against hers, his tongue along the inner surface of her lips. The hand still at her waist slid to her back, urged her closer, and her body obeyed the unspoken command, arching into him. Her arms slipped around his neck. She no longer felt warmth but heat — his, hers.

Her breasts flattened against his chest, a hard ridge of male arousal pressed against her stomach. Her body reacted in strange ways, her nipples hardening to an ache, places low and inside softening and melting to liquid.

Fear ripped through the pleasure and left it in shreds.

She had no chance to panic or struggle. He lifted his head, his hands gone from her before she could drop her arms to her side.

“Too much?” His voice was still Trey’s but deepened by emotion, his eyes darker and hooded.

Beyond speech, she nodded.

He turned and picked up William’s nightshirt. “You’d better show me where I’m supposed to spend my night safely out of harm’s way.”

After showing Trey to the guest bedroom and leaving him there, still wordlessly, Deborah hurried to her own room. Instead of reaching for the light in the wall sconce, she crossed to her bed in the dark and sat there, fully clothed, her fingers pressed across her lips.

H
ER OWN MUDDLED
feelings about the kiss haunted Deborah. Trey’s attitude infuriated her. Except for a single wink over breakfast the next morning at Judith’s, he went back to avoiding her and behaved as if nothing had happened.

Which made it easier for her to do the thing she had avoided so far — ask Caleb for help. Caleb and Norah lived far enough from Hubbell that their trips to town were two-day affairs, a day on the road to town, supper and an overnight stay with family, a morning buying supplies and a second day traveling home.

The morning after a family supper made awkward by Miriam’s aloof presence, Deborah poked her head in the
Herald
’s office only long enough to tell Trey and Mr. Richmond she had someone to see and promise to sit at the desk in the afternoon. After that, she hurried to the general store, arriving only moments after it opened, but still after Caleb and Norah. Jacey had stayed home to take care of the farm this trip, and Ginny was thankfully nowhere in sight.

“I need to talk to you alone,” she whispered to Caleb.

“How alone?” he said, putting down some tin contraption with a handle he’d been examining.

“Just you or you and Norah.”

“All right.”

Minutes later, Deborah faced her cousins over Miriam’s kitchen table.

“Miriam took Ginny to her dressmaker,” Norah said, putting the coffee pot back on the stove. “We’re supposed to stop by there when we’re ready to start home, so you don’t have to worry about being interrupted.”

Deborah looked around the familiar room, sparkling clean, with new flowered wallpaper in reds and yellows, and wished things were different with her youngest sister.