“Then you’ll need to learn.”
“You offering to teach?”
He gestured to his satchel. “I have some thread and a needle.”
His bag was organized and smelt faintly of oil and nutmeg. I opened a tin, assuming it held thread. Inside rested a jagged piece of ice-blue lace and a miniature of a delicate, blond woman. I flushed and snapped the tin shut.
“Stop nosing about.” He studied me, his gaze on the bones of my wrists.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
Though soaking wet and injured, he seemed comfortable sprawled about my cushions. I found the needle and a spool of white thread, then sat beside him and cleaned his wound with a strip of daisy-printed cotton. He didn’t wince or grimace, but I glimpsed pain in his taut posture. Blood spilled across the fabric, soaking the flowers. My unbound hair fell forward in the gap between us, and candleflame lit the room’s hollows. I bit my lip. I shouldn’t ask. “Saw a portrait of a woman.”
“Mmm.”
I wrung out the cloth in a bowl of water. “You married?”
He frowned. “You think I’ve been hiding some wife in my cabin all this time?”
I braided my hair. His gaze followed my hands as they flicked down to the ends. “That’s not really an answer,” I said.
He closed his eyes. “Not now.”
I poured whiskey over the needle and dug around the muscle of his shoulder. He clenched his fists but otherwise showed no reaction. So did he have some wife back in the Dakotas? A flock of children? Course it wasn’t my business, but sakes alive, perhaps he could’ve mentioned them.
His skin was slick with sweat, his gaze curving along my temples, across my cheekbones. I wiped my neck above my gown with a cloth, tried to grasp the bullet. Finally, it plopped out and pinged in the dish. I sighed, fear seeping out, some relief easing back in. If I could stanch the blood, he’d probably be fine.
I cleaned his wound, threaded the needle, and pressed it through his ripped skin, rendering fairly uniform stitches. He said nothing of the gunfight or the woman. And I didn’t mind overmuch. I was okaywith secrets. After I sewed his wound, I crushed a palmful of dried Thousand Starlight into a tea saucer, smashed the blooms with the heel of my palm, then scanned my shelf for what to use instead of eagle’s down. I knelt beside One Eye, scratched him about the neck and belly.
Stot’s deep voice: “What are you doing?”
“Heaping together some rubbish.”
“You know what you’re doing?”
“Of course.” Well, kind of. I sat beside him, folded my feet beneath my nightgown. Warmth from the fire brushed my bare collarbone and wintry air filled the empty spaces. I held out the yarrow-and-fur poultice. “I’m gonna press this on, alright?”
I leaned forward and smothered the mixture onto his skin. “The yarrow will stanch blood flow,” I said. “Not sure about the fur.”
Firelight cast oxblood and gold across his cheekbones, shadows sinking into the inky waves of his hair. I swallowed and dabbed salve on his wound. After I finished, I washed my hands in the basin and dried with a rag. A draught iced my damp forearms and slipped through my filmy gown. I swept a blanket round my shoulders, then ripped a length of freshly laundered linen, pressing one end to his biceps. He was bulky, but I hadn’t thought he’d have such defined muscles. I tugged at my lace collar and kept wrapping his shoulder, aware of his hand resting on the cushion beside me, of the hot and elusive space between us.
“So,” he said, once I’d tied off the bandage, “what do you do at night? Do you argue with the wallpaper or throw knives at the fire?”
I packed up my supplies, my one-room warm and cold and too dim. He uncapped a jar of sun-dried persimmons. I nodded, indicating he could have some.
He popped a piece in his mouth. “What do we do now?”
I grabbed a persimmon, the dusky-orange fruit tasting like gingerbread. “You go home.”
He settled against my sofa, his hair drying in rough waves, its black color stark against the rose-and-mustard floral cushions. He gesturedto thePopular Science Monthlyperiodical haphazard on the side table. “Read me an article?”
I coughed. I would not bereadingto the man, especially from Magnolia’s beloved periodical. My memories were clogged with Magnolia reading science journals or botanical texts, of her debating evolution or plant classification with Pa until dark hovered round the fire.
“You’re not staying here,” I said.
“All nature, I’m bleeding all over.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re fine.” A pause. “Go home.”
