Chasing the Sunset(23)

“Doctor Fell told me that I could get up for short periods, and I wanted to see how you were.” He crossed the room to stand at her side. “He also told me that Tommy is not any better,” he said quietly.

Maggie refused to look at him. “He is not any worse, either.”

Nick put a hand on her shoulder. “Go and take a break, Maggie. Ned can watch Tommy for you. There is no sense in killing yourself.”

“No,” she said, and set her lips together mulishly. “I will not.”

She heard his gentle sigh.

“Maggie.”

She cut her eyes toward him. Nick had seen eyes like that once on a mountain lion he had cornered by mistake. He wanted to back slowly away, just like he had done that time. He would not have been surprised to see a tail behind her that twitched slowly and dangerously, just like the one that had been on the cat.

“You cannot keep him from dying singlehandedly,” he said anyway, knowing as soon as the words left his mouth that they were a mistake. Maggie surged to her feet and faced him defiantly, trembling.

“Do not say that,” she warned between clenched teeth.

“Say what?" he persevered despite his instincts. "That Tommy is sick enough to die?” He scrubbed a hand over his face, and Maggie noted dispassionately that he needed a shave badly. “He is, Maggie, and pretending that he is not is not doing anybody any good, least of all you.”

Maggie felt something give way in her chest. The days without sleep, the dreadful fear that she had lived with for days, her own inability to do anything for Tommy all rose up in her and combined to form the purest, hottest rage she had ever felt. Her heart pounded and her hands shook with the force of the wrath that snaked through her whole body. She had not felt this angry in years, not even when she had her whole life stripped from her by that worm who had called himself her husband. She had not had a temper tantrum since she was a small child.

But she was about to have one now.

She reached blindly for the closest object and hurled it at him. Nick ducked, and the pitcher exploded into a hundred shards as it hit the door behind him. The bowl that had been beside it was destined for the same fate, only it hit the wall as Nick moved and she adjusted her aim. At any other time, Maggie would have laughed at the comical expression on his face.

“He is not going to die! He is not!” she screamed. “Don’t you tell me that, you . . . you . . .” and Maggie screamed the dirtiest, vilest word that she knew at him, her fury a palpable thing.

“Maggie,” shouted Nick, and then they both turned incredulously as a small voice spoke behind them.

“Miss Maggie, you threatened to wash my mouth out with soap when you heard me say that after that horse stomped on my foot.”

The voice was hoarse, and weak. Tommy’s eyes shone at her from the bed, glassy and crusted with sleep, but they were open, and he was coherent. Maggie ran for the bed, putting a shaking hand on Tommy’s forehead. He was warm, not hot, and he was sweating.

“Do you feel sick to your stomach?” she asked anxiously. “Does your head hurt?”

“No,” he said, and smiled wanly up at her. "I heard you, Miss Maggie," he whispered. I heard you talkin’ to me all night. I heard you the whole time, telling me to get better."

Maggie sank to her knees, feeling her energy run out of her like water from the pump. She began to cry, great, wrenching sobs that shook her whole body with their force. She lay her head on Tommy’s stomach, her hands clutching great fistfuls of the blanket, his small hands awkwardly patting her back and stroking her hair, his weak voice entreating her not to cry. That only made her cry harder, and she did not stop crying even when Nick lifted her to her feet and escorted her to her room.

She cried when he ordered her to go to sleep. She cried as she took off her clothes and put on her nightrail. She cried as she crawled underneath the coverlet and laid her head upon the pillow. Even after her exhausted body had succumbed to sleep, her chest jerked with occasional spasms and more tears spilled down her cheeks.





SIX



Maggie sat utterly still, hardly breathing, her gaze riveted on the scene before her. She had gone for a walk just after Nick and Tommy’s bout with yellow fever, and had found this fox den with their out-of-season litter of kittens. She had needed the solitude that day, and Tommy was well enough to leave alone for a little while, so she had wandered the woods alone and had almost fallen into the fox den. She had sat here for an hour that first day, entranced, and she had come here every day since then.

It had been more than a month since the community’s bout with the yellow jack, and it seemed every household had been hit in some way or other. The quarantine was now over; everything could go back to normal now.

Doctor Fell had been quick with the quarantine and that had surely saved lives, but it had been bad enough, anyway. Two of the men who worked for Nick had died, one along with his two children, leaving only a grieving widow. Ned had told her that the woman was going back to her family in St. Louis. Kathleen’s family had been left untouched, but one of the neighboring farms had lost half their slave population. Kathleen had told Maggie, her full mouth pulled into a tight line of fury, that the owners had left the slaves who were sick untended, and quarantined themselves with only a few house servants. Nearly one hundred slaves had died, some of them just from pure neglect. Maggie had a hard time understanding that; how could you just not care about so many people dying? Kathleen told her it was because the slave owners thought of their slaves as cattle. It was a tragedy to lose so much livestock, but it never touched their heart, only their bank balance.

The fox den was in the side of what appeared to be a dried up river bank. Maggie sat on the opposite edge of the bank, hidden partially by foliage, seated on the stump from a long-dead tree. The foxes had become used to her smell, she thought. At first, they had run back into their den whenever the wind would shift and they caught scent of her, the mother fox giving one sharp bark and the kittens running quickly into the den. Now, even when the wind turned and they caught her scent, like now, they stayed out of the den and continued playing.

She hoped that the kits would survive the winter; most foxes were born in the spring and were nearly grown by the time winter came again. She smiled at the antics of the two red fox kittens as they hissed and mock-fought over a stick. Their mother lolled on the ground, not far from where they, seemed not to pay the least bit of attention to the kits. They rolled over and over, growling and batting at each other. One of them finally gained possession of the stick and ran to barricade itself in a natural hollow in a nearby tree. It gnawed on the stick complacently while the other kitten stalked a grasshopper instead. After a while, the kitten with the stick grew bored, and came out to try and take the grasshopper away from the other.

“That stick must not have tasted as good as he thought,” said a quiet, slow voice from behind her.

Maggie gave a small scream, jumped to her feet and whirled around, her heart beating furiously in her chest. The kittens rushed for the den with their mother right behind, her indolent pose just a pose after all.

A man who seemed as big as a mountain stood behind her, one brawny hand resting on a carved wooden cane. He was wearing buff-colored breeches that clung to his heavily muscled thighs and a fringed leather shirt that fit like a glove to his massive chest. His pants were tucked

into form-fitting boots of soft leather that came nearly to his knees. Maggie had never seen boots like these before; they were elaborately beaded and decorated with some kind of painted symbols.

Maggie studied him unabashedly, and he stood waiting patiently while she did so. Something about his pose relieved most of her fear, though she was still watchful. Her gaze traveled up to his brown face and she caught her breath. A wicked scar bisected the right side from his ear to just above his mouth. The scar was obviously an old one; it was whitish and flat, not the angry red of a new injury.

His hair was a flat black and fell straight to his collar, a little longer than she was used to seeing men wear their hair. He had a high forehead, and broad, rather flat cheekbones with a nose that looked like the curved edge of a scimitar, a pronounced, firm chin . . . and a lush mouth that made one think of sin and seemed out of place in that hard face. Until one looked at those eyes, of course. They were crystal blue and piercing . . . and the kindest eyes Maggie had ever seen. His eyes spoke to her. They stared into each other’s eyes, crystal blue to emerald green, and as suddenly as that they were friends. Maggie knew beyond certainty that this man would not hurt her, not ever, and that he would be her friend forever.

“Maggie,” she said, holding out her hand. The hand not holding the cane engulfed hers in a gentle, firm grip.

“Duncan,” he said in a deep, rumbly voice. “Duncan Murdoch.”

Her gaze traveled over him again. “Nice to meet you,” she said with a saucy grin and a toss of her head. “Never seen a man as big as you before.”

His chest shook, and it was a second before Maggie realized that he was laughing without sound.