She stuffed her hand back in her pocket. “I think we’d best go outside to the garden, away from little ears. I’ve got some cucumbers to pick.” Without meeting his eyes, she grabbed a pail from the floor and her straw hat from a hook.
He exhaled and followed. Trouble.
She strode ahead with purpose, too much like her stride the day he first laid eyes on her. On that day, she’d marched out of Mr. Coffin’s office with her head held high, determined to hold onto her land at all costs. Was she preparing for a battle of some sort now?
He trailed behind her past the peppers, beans, and squash until they were deep on the other side of the garden by the cucumbers. She pivoted to face him. The hard, sunbaked clay cracked beneath the heels of her shoes.
“What’s wrong?” He braced himself.
She closed her eyes and flexed her hands. A hot breeze rippled her hat brim, tossing its red checkered ribbon aside.
“Talk to me, Cora.” His shoulders tensed.
She scuffed her shoe against something hard. Bending down, she picked up a piece of broken pottery and handed it to him.
“What’s this?” He turned it over in his fingers.
Her voice trembled. “It was my father’s from one of his jugs. After he died, and we came back here, I’d run across one of his hidden stashes, and I’d smash the jugs. I found this piece here today while I was weeding.”
His eyes narrowed. “And what does this have to do with me?”
She flicked a strand of loose hair from her face.
He repeated himself, his voice taking on an edge. “What does your father’s whiskey have to do with me?”
Her face scrunched up as if she might throw up. Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew a piece of paper and shoved it toward him.
The shard slipped from his fingers. Defenses on full alert, he unfolded the letter from Mr. Keeley, the druggist. His stomach dropped to his knees as he read. The man might as well have paraded him naked up and down the street…sickly and used up…hands trembling…in bad need of his medicine.Cora might as well have run over him with a horse.“You spied on me? You had so little trust in me…that you spied on me?” Spit flew with his words.
“Not me. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want it. Arthur?—”
“Oh, yes, the good doctor. Muttering his diagnosis in the middle of the street in broad daylight for all to hear. A real man of honor, let me tell you.” He crumpled the letter in his fist. “And now he’s got Keeley in league with him? And you?” He turned his back on her and kicked a clod so hard that it flew into the air and toppled a beanpole.
“I told Arthur not to spy on you, not to talk to the druggist.”
“And when did you do that?” He pivoted back toward her. “At the café? Or have you seen him since? Has he been out here?”
“How can you even ask if he’s been here since the fight? Of course not. You and I are…courting. I don’t want anything to do with that man. But he came up with the idea about the druggist weeks ago on his last visit when I told him he wasn’t welcome to come calling anymore. I told him I wanted no part of his plan, and that’s the last I heard of it. Until he sent a messenger five days ago with this letter.” Tears trickled down her cheeks.
Ben clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides. “Are we?”
“Are we what?”
“Still courting?”
She sucked in a breath and another, as if struggling for control. She pointed to the crumpled letter. “Did you?”
“Did I buy laudanum?” His throat tightened.
“Yes.” She hugged herself, her brow furrowed deeper than a garden row.
“Does it matter what I say?” He snorted. “It looks like you’ve already judged me.”
“I’m asking for the truth.” Her voice shivered.
He jabbed his fingers through his hair and paced down the row. Why had he ever set foot in the druggist’s? He’d been stupid.
After the fight, he’d been concerned LeBeau might retaliate by challenging him to a gunfight. But he’d inadvertently handed LeBeau a much more potent weapon.
