“Might you be so kind as to let me in on your plans, or should I expect to ask you moment to moment?”
At that, he turns—his full body this time—tweed straining at his bent knee. A leather suspender peeks out from under his waistcoat, stretched taut across his shoulder. On the desk lie piles of notes, bags of coins he’s been rolling, and a neat stack of paper slips. Checks, perhaps.
“Sugarplum, it’s best you?—”
“Where did you get all that money?”
He exhales sharp, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “Best you ask me somethin’ else.”
A weight sinks into my gut.
Stupid woman.Ran off with a criminal, now you feign surprise at his plunder. And yet, as he sits there like a bank clerk with more money than I’ve ever seen in my life laid before him, the thought of holding my tongue is impossible.
“I thought you were a man of your word. That you’d be honest with me.”
The words must strike a match in him, because he lowers his mask, brow furrowed in a flash of concern. “Alice, if you’re hauled off by the sheriff, your soft hands won’t sweat and your pretty face won’t twitch. You can tell God’s own truth that you don’t know a thing of what I done without so much as a tremble in your sweet voice.”
Although he has a point, it turns my stomach all the same. “Did…did anyone die?”
He shakes his head. “No. Made it nice and easy. Now that’s all I’ll say, and you quit askin’.”
I give in with an exhale and cut across the room to the washroom and fill the tub. Perhaps a bath will silence the alarm bells. They first flared the night we escaped and have since grown too loud to ignore. Slipping out of my shift, I sink into the hot water.
What had I done but escape from one life beyond my control into another, chained to the whims of men? I close my fingers around my wrist. There’s no shackle here.
What is holding me?
There’s survival to start. How would I keep from starving? There are few respectable positions for a woman like me. No formal education to speak of. Without Joseph, I’d still be a poor farm girl, learning from old almanacs in my father’s collection. As much as I cursed my husband, if it weren’t for his wealth, I wouldn’t have been comforted by the old stories behind the stars.
I suppose I could return to the inn, the story Gideon promised to tell the others offering me some semblance of protection. Though, I fear the Sherman family might assume the worst even if the law did not. They would abandon me.
No money. Nowhere to go. Nothing but a pistol to my name. Yet here I sit in a porcelain bath, pouting over my imperfect blessings.
What can I do but make Kodiak better? Perhaps I could set him on a truer path, but how? Only God knows what he’s done. But whatever it was, it is over now. One cannot unring a bell.
The ideas turn over in my mind until the water cools and I emerge, wrap myself in a cotton robe, and find Kodiak at the desk logging his fortune.
“For someone who claims he keeps secrets, you’re awful bold with your bounty.”
He doesn’t look up, writing a number down in a ledger. “Don’t usually have company.”
“How much is all that?”
He sighs. “Thought I told you to stop askin’.”
“You did, but I’ll ask all the same.”
That earns me a cross expression that cracks with an amused smile. Without warning, he seizes my waist and hauls me into his lap. I yelp, steadying myself on his shoulders.
“Mouthy little brat, ain’t you?” he says. “That kind of back talk just makes me want to put that mouth to better use.”
I stiffen like he’d slapped me, clutching my robe shut for dear life. Good Lord above. I’ve never heard anything so vile. For a moment, I can’t speak.
Joseph would make me do that. Said it was a husband’s right. I would weep after, begging the Lord to cleanse me. And yet…for Kodiak, the thought of giving him such pleasure makes me clench around nothing, a sinful ache blooming inside.
“You mustn’t say such things,” I say, my protest weak.
He’s grinning when he nudges the ledger, drawing my attention to it, his handwriting tidy for an outlaw. Bank notes, gold, silver—all laid out in their denominations, added up into a sum he’d underlined twice.
