“No.” Morgan eased into a sitting position. He leaned against the headboard and stuffed the pillow behind the small of his back. His foot no longer rested comfortably on the folded blankets, but Jane began repositioning them before he could point to the problem. He accepted the cup when she handed it to him, folding his hands around it. He did not realize until then how cool his palms felt or that a chill was creeping under his skin.
“Are you cold?” asked Jane.
Morgan had no idea what she had observed to prompt her question. His teeth hadn’t chattered. His skin was not prickled. He had not pulled the coverlet over him. “Are you a witch?”
Jane responded by placing the back of her hand against his forehead and resting it there for several seconds. “Just as I thought,” she said, drawing back. “You’re clammy.” Without giving any indication of her intentions, she left.
Morgan’s eyes followed her until she disappeared. She looked as fine going out as she did coming in, so he did not waste a breath asking her what she was doing. The thing to do, he decided, was enjoy the view. All would be explained when she returned. In the meantime, he drank his tea and waited for the laudanum to take effect.
Jane came back with a kettle of hot water, which she added to the basin on the nightstand. After testing the temperature, she soaked the washcloth in it, wrung it out, and then sat beside Morgan on the edge of the bed.
He finished off his tea and gave her the cup. She put it aside but did not surrender the washcloth. Morgan shook his head. “You are not mopping my face with that.”
“What should I use?”
“That’s not what I—” He stopped when he glimpsed one corner of her mouth curl ever so slightly. “Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”
“All right.”
Morgan took the washcloth and wiped his face and neck with it. He rolled up his sleeves while Jane soaked it again, and then he ran it along his arms from wrists to elbows. At her insistence, and because there was no point arguing, he unfastened three buttons on his shirt and union suit and used the warm cloth on his chest.
When he was done, he dropped the washcloth into her overturned hand. “Satisfied?”
“I am, yes. Would you like to lie back or remain sitting?”
Morgan ignored the question. “You can stop trying to impress me.”
Jane’s delicately feathered eyebrows pulled together. “Is that what you think? That I’ve been trying to impress you?”
“Haven’t you? Hotcakes all around for breakfast. Sunday dinner on a day that isn’t Sunday. Moving the clothes cupboard on your own. Telling me you’ve got plans to organize the pantry and beat a year’s worth of dirt out of the rugs. Firing up the dragon without instruction. Pretty much putting me to bed and attending to me like you’re Clara Barton in a field hospital. Yeah, I’d say you’ve been trying to impress me with your competence and concern.”
Jane looked away. She said nothing. Her face was a mask, unreadable.
Morgan sighed. “That probably sounded as if I were ungrateful. I’m not. I appreciate all of it.” He paused, rethinking this last. “Well, most of it. I guess I’m saying it still feels a little awkward what with you doing so much right out of the gate, like you think I might put you on the next train out of Bitter Springs. That’s not going to happen, not unless you decide to go. That would be your choice.”
Jane kept her face averted.
“Look at me.” When she didn’t, he said, “Say something then.”
“I am not fearless.”
“What?”
She turned her head to look at him then. “You said I was fearless. I am not. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am trying to convince you I can be a good wife. Certainly I have been trying to convince myself.”
Frowning, Morgan said slowly, “That’s not exactly what I said.”
She did not argue the point. “It’s what I heard.” Her faint smile faltered. She brushed away a tendril of hair that had fallen across her cheek. “I want to stay here, but not so much that I would take a role for which I have no talent or regard. I do not mind terribly that you see me as trying to impress with my competence, but it is disturbing that you think it is the same for my concern. I am concerned. You might have been killed.”
Morgan started to object, but he allowed her to cut him off with a shake of her head.
“No, you will never convince me differently, and you should not try to. You know very well there are dangers you face every day. They are part of your life and that makes them part of mine. So, yes, I am concerned that you are properly rested and healed before you lead that animal around the corral again. Because I know you will.”
“You know that, do you?”
“Yes.”
Morgan plowed his fingers through his hair and regarded her thoughtfully. “That sounds like something a good wife would say. She might add a couple or three words about not making her a widow before she’s lost her virginal blush, but everything else about that speech seemed right.”
