“No. I’m going. I’ll take one of you with me. Do whatever the two of you do to decide these things. Someone stays here with Max.” So there would be no mistaking what he meant, Morgan pointed to the floor. “Here. In the house. With Jane.”
“Jem’s probably playin’ cards. I bet Renee’s working in the saloon tonight. He likes to keep an eye on her when he can.”
Morgan hoped Jessop was right. “If that’s what he’s doing, then I’m not passing on a chance to drag him out by his ear.”
Jessop nodded. “Then I hope I win the coin toss. I sure would like to see that.”
Watching Jessop go, Morgan could only shake his head. Coin toss? He had been so sure they arm-wrestled.
Jane could see that something had changed the moment Morgan reappeared in the bedroom. She was sitting up, her back against the headboard, her hair unwound and finger-combed so that it lay across her shoulders. She was under the covers. Her robe was lying at the foot of the bed. Everything about the way she had intended to greet him was wrong now.
Jane hastily pulled her hair back with one hand and threw off the covers with the other. Leaning forward, she grabbed her robe. Morgan was at her side before she could put it on.
“Stop, Jane.” He sat on the edge of the bed and took the robe from her. Instead of helping her put it on, he covered her with it in place of the blankets she had pushed away. “There,” he said, resting his hands on her shoulders. “I have to go.”
“I knew it,” she said on a thread of sound. “I knew something was wrong. What’s happened? Was that Jem I heard in the kitchen?”
“Not Jem. Jessop. Jem is the reason I’m going out. He’s not returned from town. He’s probably playing cards at the Pennyroyal, but it’s better to know. His horse might have come up lame, or it could be that he’s sleeping off too much whiskey on the lee side of that rocky knoll. If that’s the case, we all want a piece of him, but only one of his brothers is going with me.”
“They could go. Just them.”
“They could, but Jem’s as much my responsibility as theirs. Maybe more. I owe something to the men who work for me.” Morgan’s hands fell away. “Look at me, Jane. I forgot I even asked one of them to come and get me if Jem didn’t show up. I took one look at you curled up in a chair with a thimble on your finger and a needle between your teeth and that pretty much pushed every other thought clean out of my mind.”
“I didn’t have a needle in my teeth.”
He chuckled low at the back of his throat. “All right. It must have been the sharp edge of your tongue that I saw.”
Jane tried to smile. It faltered and then faded. “You’re not well. You haven’t ridden for weeks.”
“I’ll manage. I carried you in here, didn’t I?”
Jane made herself accept what he was telling her because he needed her to. “How long will you be?”
“A couple of hours, I imagine. It’s not a long trip to town on horseback. It will be shorter if we meet Jem on the way.” He looked her over. “Good?”
She nodded, closing her eyes as Morgan bent his head toward her. She felt his mouth hovering just above her lips, but he was a man of his word, and he did not kiss her there. Instead, he slipped his hand behind her neck and lifted her dark cascade of hair. He looped it around his fist and tugged, lifting her chin and exposing her throat.
That was where he kissed her. He left his mark on the soft hollow of her throat where her pulse fluttered like a hummingbird.
Jessop won the toss, so he rode out with Morgan. Between them they had blankets, a flask of whiskey, bandages, and a lantern. They saddled up with the thought that Jem might be in trouble. They each carried a rifle in their scabbard and a gun holstered at their hip in the event they stumbled into trouble when they found Jem.
It was a cold night, not unbearable, just bone-deep cold when the wind gusted. They rode with their collars turned up and their hats angled low and considered themselves lucky that the wind was not steady. Snow on the ground would have been a help to them, provided tracks they could have followed if Jem—or anyone—had wandered away from the road. There was a fingernail moon suspended in the sky, but its meager light came and went as the cloud cover thickened.
Twice, Jessop saw something that was worth investigating, but nothing came of it either time. After the second incident, Jessop admitted to being a little jumpy since his conversation with Morgan back in the kitchen. Morgan said he hadn’t noticed.
Sometimes it took a lie to calm a man.
“What are we gonna do about our guns?” Jessop asked when they reached town. “Marshal won’t like it if we’re strapped when we walk into the Pennyroyal.”
“The only person in danger of being shot is your brother. That’s why you’re going to hold my gun while I go in the saloon and get him.”
“You figure you’ll kick his ass?”
“Depends on how drunk he is. Why?”
“Jake and me talked about it, and we reckon that to do right by our little brother, we should be the ones to kick his ass.”
Morgan looked over at Jessop as they drew abreast of the hotel. Light from the windows bathed the younger man’s broad, square-jawed face. “All this time you’ve worked for me, and I had no idea Jem was the little brother.”
