“Even now?”
“Especially now. Oh, perhaps if I wanted to be deliberately cruel, I would tell her all of it, but there’s no good reason to do so.”
“She would blame herself?”
“Yes, that’s part of it, but there would also be accusations leveled at my head, and my younger self would always wonder if they were true. It’s hard to defend against charges of any kind when you harbor even a small notion that you might be guilty.” She gave him a significant look, raising her eyebrows and smiling ever so slightly. “If I were to tell her, I would require the services of a very good lawyer.”
“I might know someone,” he said.
Phoebe’s look became suspicious. “Are you being modest?”
“No,” he said, straight-faced. “I was going to refer you to Henry Abrams over in Jupiter.”
She knocked him backward and kissed him soundly on the mouth. “See? Youdoknow what to say. You may only be an adequate lawyer, but I think you are very, very good for me.”
“I’m better than adequate,” he said between kisses.
“Mm.”
Just when he thought they might be heading in a decidedly carnal direction, Phoebe broke the kiss and sat up. He knew what she was going to say before she said it, and oh, how he wished he was wrong.
“It’s past first light,” she said. “We need to leave. You said we would.”
He had, though he hated to be reminded of it now. “All right. Get dressed. There are two eggs left. Do you want one?”
“Aren’t you getting dressed?”
“Eventually. Breakfast first.”
Shaking her head, Phoebe said she would have an egg and then went to take her clothes off the line. She was buttoning the fly of her trousers when Remington held out a peeled egg to her. She ate it in three polite bites. He cheeked both halves like a squirrel and choked them down while he was gathering his clothes.
Phoebe finished dressing first and began gathering their things. She snapped and folded the blankets, repacked the saddlebags, and dragged the mattress back to the bed. Remington took down the rope, coiled it, and slung it over his shoulder, then closed the grate in the stove to extinguish the fire.
“The smokehouse is still there,” Phoebe said, looking out the window. “Listing dangerously, but standing. The stream is back in its banks.”
“Good. Then we should have no trouble crossing when we have to. You ready?” He watched Phoebe take a last long look around Old Man McCauley’s cabin before she announced that she was. He wondered if she believed it, because he certainly didn’t.
• • •
Phoebe expected that Remington would resume instructing her on the ride back to Twin Star, but except for a few corrections regarding her posture and the pressure she was exerting with her knees, he said very little. It would have been encouraging to believe that she was doing that much better—if itwere true—but it seemed more likely that his lack of attention had to do with his thoughts being elsewhere. He stayed close to her. Butter on bread, she recalled, and she had no doubt that if she were to find herself in trouble, he would be quick to respond, but his quiet did not make her easy.
Rather than ask him what was occupying his mind, she decided to tell him what was on hers. “I’ve been thinking about the wedding, Remington. Not my dress or the cake. I’ve been thinking I don’t want to tell anyone. Not yet.” She felt him slow beside her because her horse did the same. There was no better sign that she had his full attention.
“I am compelled to remind you that there’s been no wedding. There’s nothing to tell. Are you saying you want to elope?”
“Hmm. I’ve started badly, I think. I don’t want to tell anyone that there’s been a proposal and an acceptance and a marriage to follow. The wedding is the very least of it. Why? Were you thinking about the cake?”
“I was not.”
Phoebe heard the edge in his tone. Her comment had not amused him. “Remington?”
“Have you changed your mind, Phoebe? Is that what you’re telling me? Very badly, as it happens.”
“No! I amnottelling you that. The idea that you will be my husband is precious to me, and I want to keep it close to my heart awhile longer, savor it, if you will, before I shout it from the rafters.”
“You would do that? Shout it from the rafters?”
“That, and put a full page announcement in theRockyand maybe in theTimesfor my friends in New York. I don’t want to keep it a secret because I have doubts.”
