Blackstone's Bride. Bronwyn Williams

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      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.

      “Coffee, coffee,” she muttered, stumbling toward the kitchen. It was then she saw the big, galvanized washtub in the middle of the floor. As a rule she did her laundry on the back stoop, where she could stand on the ground without having to bend over. But if someone had caught her washing men’s clothing, she would have had a lot of explaining to do.

      Coffee would just have to wait. Before she’d even lifted the garments from the final rinse it occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to hang them outside. Back in Charlotte she had used the attic in rainy weather, but here there was no attic. She would have to dry everything in the kitchen, either that or build up a fire in the fireplace.

      While she was trying to decide where to string a line, she thought of the letter. Should she give it to him when he woke up?

      If he woke up?

      Or should she keep it in case he didn’t recover and someone had to be notified. But in that case, how could she get word out? She could hardly ask any of the Millers to mail a letter or send a wire for her. They had refused every time she’d tried to get in contact with any of her friends back in Charlotte.

      The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that it had to have been Alaska and his whiskey-making friends who had done this awful thing. When they had what Devin used to call a skin full, they liked nothing better than to engage in a fistfight with everyone piling on, making enough noise to be heard halfway to the moon. Devin had called it good-natured brawling, but there was nothing good-natured about beating a man half to death.

      Now what? she wondered, feeling even more helpless than usual. The natural thing would have been to hurry down the hill and ask for help. Under the circumstances, that was out of the question.

      She brought in her clothesline and strung it across the kitchen area, letting the excess line dangle from the nail. She knew better than to shorten a good clothesline, having learned how hard it was to get a replacement. She had asked over and over for more. Might as well have asked for the moon. They must have thought she wanted to use it to lower herself down the backside of the mountain, a sheer drop of more than two hundred feet.

      She turned the Levi’s inside out so that the doubled parts—the waist, the seams and pockets—would dry. If he survived, her stranger would need something to wear. If he didn’t, he would need burial clothes. Either way, she would have them ready for him, but he’d have to do without underwear. There was no way she could piece together his union suit, even if he gave it up. So far he’d refused to allow her to take the bottom half. For all she knew he might still be wearing it. At this rate, her whole bed would be mildewed. Crazy fool. “Go ahead, die of lung fever, see if I care,” she muttered, wringing out his one black sock.

      But of course, she did care. It wasn’t in her not to care.

      After baling out the tub, she turned it down on the back stoop and thought about the next problem. Food. Her rations were carefully allotted for a woman living alone. She could hardly ask for more without inviting questions.

      She tiptoed into the bedroom to see if he was still breathing. He was. Slowly, evenly, and so far as she could tell, without any sounds that would indicate that a broken rib had punctured his lung. “I don’t know who the devil you are,” she murmured, “or what you’re doing on my mountain, but if you survive you’re going to have company when you leave.”

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