One brow lifted as he turned to look at her. There was a long moment of silence. “Scalped him maybe?” he said without emotion.
Elizabeth repressed a shudder. Against her will, she felt a rush of sympathy for the man riding at her side. He seemed so hard, but no one could be so hard that hate wouldn’t touch him. She wondered how he’d felt to be persecuted for his race all his life, and then felt another prick of guilt for calling him names. She’d behaved no better than the man who’d cut off his horse’s ear.
Still, he had provoked her.
She turned to him, and found him watching her intently.
“You don’t want to know,” he said enigmatically, deterring her question.
... don’t reckon the man’s laughing any longer.
Elizabeth swallowed. “I suppose not,” she relented, shuddering over his cryptic remark. Shaking off her morbid thoughts, she resolved to keep to herself the rest of the day.
As they rode on, the lay of the land changed very little, and she found herself growing weary of the monotony.
And the silence.
And the heat.
Her shirt was growing damp at her back, and tiny rivulets tickled her flesh beneath her breasts, making her feel impossibly sticky. Surreptitiously plucking her blouse away from her bosom, she silently cursed the unusually warm weather.
What was more, in spite of the shade Cutter’s hat provided, her face was beginning to feel perpetually warm, and she suspected her cheeks and nose were becoming burnt. Instinctively she examined the sensitive bridge of her nose, thinking that on the bright side, she no longer had spectacles to fret over. And then she felt bereft suddenly as she reflected on that loss. Somehow it seemed as though her father had been wrenched away from her all over again... and she didn’t really understand that at all. They had been mere wire and glass, after all. She sighed, a wealth of emotion betrayed by the dismal sound, and it earned her a discerning glance from Cutter.
Elizabeth sat brooding, oblivious to the many glances Cutter directed her way. He was quiet too, but his silence had little to do with anger, or even regret. Foremost in his mind was how to prove himself to her. Could he persuade Elizabeth to see him as other than the heathen savage she considered him? From the moment he’d awakened this morning to find her sleeping so peacefully, curled like an infant on her side, few thoughts other than those had occupied his mind.
Watching her in those quiet early morning moments, he’d tried to muster up the desire to get up off his hindquarters and shave his whiskers, but he couldn’t seem to move. By the time she’d finally gotten round to waking, it had been too late to do anything more than pack—his whiskers go hang.
As he’d watched her, he kept remembering her brief moment of laughter, when she’d told him about Dick Brady’s shenanigans, the curve of her lips as she’d smiled on the verge of drunkenness. Somehow he had the impression that she didn’t smile much—didn’t have much to smile about. And he seemed to crave her smile.
Just couldn’t figure why.
Last night she’d quietly hummed herself to sleep, the sound as woebegone as the whine of a lost pup, and it left him feeling her emptiness sharply.
Why was he so drawn to her? he wondered with another glance her way. When she obviously placed so little worth in him? He’d never thought himself a sucker for prudish misses. He dismissed the fact that she turned all dreamy-eyed in his arms. He didn’t fool himself a’tall over that. Her response to him was nothing less than he’d’ve expected from any innocent miss.
He hadn’t gotten around to telling her yet that he didn’t intend to let her hire on anyone else in St. Louis—wasn’t really sure how to make her see things his way. He only knew that she wasn’t gonna do it—not if he had anything to say about it. Just the thought of some other man lying next to her in bed—any bed—burned like rotten whiskey at his gut.
Hell, maybe that was all there was to it.
Maybe she just didn’t realize that in order to make it look real, she was gonna have to play the part all the way through, right down to the last particulars. And that meant sharing the same room—maybe even the same pillow. Maybe all he needed to do was let her in on that little fact.
Maybe that was all he needed. To satisfy his body’s hunger. Maybe once he got her out of his system, he’d quit thinking of those breasts of hers, the way they’d looked barely concealed by her diaphanous camisole.
He felt a stirring in his britches and rolled his eyes. Chrissakes, not again. He glanced at her sharply. Hell, he didn’t even have to look at her to get himself all worked up.
* * *
By the timethey called a halt for the day, the soreness of Elizabeth’s bottom had worked its way into her limbs. Even her fingers hurt where she’d clutched the reins, but she didn’t dare complain. Flexing them, she determined to be of some help this time, and after deciding just how, she set about gathering firewood while Cutter set off to water the horses at the river.
He returned barely long enough to settle the horses and then remove his carbine from a special attachment to the saddle. He asked her, while unsheathing his army-model Colt from his holster, “Know how to use this?”
Dropping an armload of firewood at her chosen spot, and brushing her hands free of the filth, Elizabeth gave him an exasperated glance. “If I can see it,” she muttered, “I can shoot it.”
He handed her the gun. “Good,” he said, and turned away. “Use it wisely.”
Elizabeth stared at it a moment in offense, then at Cutter’s retreating back, watching it until it became woolly.
“Trouble is, I can’t see,” she bemoaned, but she wasn’t about to admit that failing to Cutter. By the time her target was in her field of vision, it’d more likely than not be too late. Glaring at the revolver with a measure of anxiety, she decided that she just wouldn’t use the blasted thing, is all.
