My hands twist in my skirt. “I would if I could. But I don’t have the key.”
“Then get it,” he says. Not threatening, simply tired of waiting.
“I’m sorry. I must speak to my husband first.”
Before I can turn to leave, he grabs my wrist, grip hot, strong. After a moment, he eases—just enough to show me the choice in it.
“Alice.”
My body stiffens.
“Free me, and I promise I won’t let harm come to you. You have my word.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I pull free and flee the room.
Chapter 5
KODIAK
Ican hear Pa now, sobbing at the kitchen table. Servants long gone. Cupboards bare.
“You are a blight,” he said, voice steady as a minister even with the whiskey. “This—our ruin—is your doing.”
I was a small boy then. Now I understand a man might turn sour left alone, his one love in the ground, saddled with the reason she’s there. But that boy didn’t know better.
“I should say you are ill-suited to bear the name Randolph,” he went on, setting the bottle down just so. “Yet the name is of such little account, you may keep it.”
Ladies who once took his arm on a Sunday—Miss Carter from St. Mark’s, Mrs. Hale’s widowed sister—had found better suitors once the town learned he’d gambled off what was left. He wouldn’t have fallen so low if I hadn’t been born.
“Hope,” he said, folding his handkerchief into a neat square beside his pistol on the table, “is a rope to hang yourself. All my best days are behind.”
I’ve spent half my life trying to prove that bastard wrong. But sure as hell, life always sides with him in the end. Seems like Iwas wrong about where I’d landed. Thought maybe some Good Samaritan hauled me out of the dirt, trussed me up here for my own keeping till I could prove myself no threat. But the more I turn it over, the more it stinks. It was the Sherman brothers who stuck me, no doubt in my mind now. If that’s the case, then this room ain’t no sanctuary. It’s a cage.
And the only key is Alice.
I regret scaring her. Truth is, she’s jumpy enough without me baring my teeth. What I can’t make sense of is what a woman like her’s doing tangled up with the Shermans. When she spoke of them, I got the feeling she don’t see herself as one of them, and I don’t blame her. Sweet thing like that never could belong in a nest of snakes.
Maybe she could use saving too.
I been riding alone too long, doing business my way with no soul beside me to question it. Saving her ain’t part of the plan—it’s a burden, truth told—but in my gut, I feel like it was meant to be.
It started with that star.
Saw it drop clean out the heavens a day, maybe two, before the Shermans come tearing into my camp. Last time I seen a falling star, I was a boy. Same night I stood over my old man’s body, blood warm at my feet. Learned my lesson then: world don’t hand you nothing. You take, or you die.
And yet, here I am, thinking on signs like some stargazing dandy with his tarot cards and tea leaves. Maybe I’ve gone soft. Maybe I’m losing my damn mind. But something in this chain of events, something in Alice herself, keeps whispering there’s a piece of work laid out for me.
I just don’t yet know what it is.
Chapter 6
ALICE
The quiet plea behind Arch’s eyes looms.
The supper I prepared—cold ham and succotash—lies untouched on my plate while Joseph’s silver knife and fork go busily to work. We sit at the long, gleaming table in our private dining room. The air is thick with summer heat, and yet, my skin crawls.
Joseph didn’t bring Arch here to protect him. He never does anything without expecting his due in return. This is madness, and to sit idle makes me no better. No less guilty. But what can I do?
