Bitter and sweet warred every time she looked at it. On one hand, she was glad they’d kept the cabin because of what she’d seen there. Glad for the evidence that it wasn’t all her imagination. Glad that Sir Humphrey rested nearby, for he’d been the only one to believe her.

  Delirious was the word her parents whispered when they thought she was sleeping. She remembered that, but not the fever they claimed had caused it.

  On the other hand—well, that was where the bitter came in.

  A niggling sensation drew her attention over her shoulder and into the hallway. The stranger’s even stranger dog lay across the surgery threshold, head on paws, watching her with hungry, mismatched eyes.

  She pulled the bread dough into a round, plopped it in the bowl, and covered it with a towel. Then she plucked a hard biscuit from the chicken-scrap tin and broke it into a pie pan. A ladle-full of juice from the beans drizzled nicely over the dry pieces.

  The dog made a whimpering noise.

  She and Tay hadn’t had a dog since Sir Humphrey, and she wasn’t inclined to let this unusual animal eat inside.

  Pan in hand, she went out the back door and walked around the side of the house, detouring purposely for a peek through the surgery window. She stepped soundlessly across her hibernating flower patch and peered through the slightly parted curtains, straight past the table to the doorway.

  The dog was sitting up, staring at her.

  She shivered.

  Either she made as much noise as the neighbor’s milk cow, or that creature was too crafty for comfort.

  She continued around to the front porch, stomped off her high-top shoes, and opened the door.

  “Come on,” she coaxed, showing the pie pan at ground level and drawing it through the door. “Come out here and have something to eat.”

  The animal laid back down, ears sharp and skyward, eyes attentive with a vigilant not-on-your-life look.

  “Suit yourself. I’ll leave it out here on the porch. But you’d best be quick about it because the cats and critters around here will get it if you dally.”

  The dog turned its sleek silver head aside and blinked. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear it understood every word she said.

  Leaving the door ajar and the pan on the porch, she walked down the hallway to the kitchen where she filled an old chipped bowl with water. When she returned, the pie pan was empty. A quick turn toward the surgery doorway sloshed water on her skirt.

  The dog blinked again and licked its jowls.

  ~

  That evening at supper, Lena took the chair at the end of the table opposite Tay rather than her usual seat closer to the stove.

  “What are you doing?” He paused, spoon halfway to his mouth, juice dripping into his bowl.”

  “Eating supper.”

  “Why are you sitting there all of a sudden?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  He took the bite and his head cocked the tiniest bit. A guarded movement, nearly imperceptible, but she’d been his sister long enough to catch the mannerism.

  “You don’t trust it, do you?”

  Of course she didn’t. “Of course I do.”

  A quick glance to her left confirmed her sense of being watched.

  Tay chuckled, his mouth full.

  She buttered a warm slice of bread, smoothing the pale, creamy yellow to the very edges of the crust, all the way around.

  “You didn’t say where you found him.” The bread fairly melted in her mouth, validation of the county fair’s blue ribbon in her top bureau drawer.

  “With its owner.”

  She closed her eyes to keep from rolling them. “Not the dog, the man.”

  Tay spooned in another mouthful, took his time chewing, and finally swallowed. “With the dog.”

  So that was how it was going to be.

  He laughed and threw his hand up, warding off her assault. “About halfway out to the Stanleys’. He was leaning against a tree, legs out straight and himself out cold. Looked like someone had propped him up there so I’d see him.”

  A shiver danced feather-light across her shoulders.

  Against every table manner their mother had taught them, she dipped the corner of her bread into her beans and bit it off. Stalling. Waiting for Tay to continue his account.

  “The dog was right next to him. Watched me like a coyote watches a gopher hole. I drove the buggy in as close as possible and sweet-talked my way past its curled lip.”

  He held both hands out across the table, turning them over back to front. “No bites.”

  At the other end of the hall, the dog still lay across the threshold, but its disarming eyes were closed.

  “How’d you get him home?”

  “With great difficulty. Dragged him up against a buggy wheel. Climbed in and pulled him across the floor boards, then drove home with my feet on the dash. The dog must have followed us. I didn’t notice it again until I came back to the surgery with the extension board.”

  He shot her the same look their pa had when warning them not to argue. “Don’t start on the table.”

  The words she’d already lined up rolled off her tongue one at a time and landed on a spoonful of beans she shouldn’t be eating again. Wouldn’t be eating again if people paid their bills in cash money rather than milk and side pork.

  Then she remembered. “He was shot. Sort of.”

  Tay’s spoon clattered to the bowl, and he shoved from the table.

  Lena followed him down the hall, amazed that his racket did not wake their patient as well as every occupant of the town cemetery, including their parents.

  “The right side of his head.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She returned his glare on equal footing. “I just did. Would you rather I left him alone while I ran around the countryside looking for you?”

  As Tay bent over the cot, his fingers probed along the salve-covered bullet crease. “No infection, it appears. No penetration. Just a graze.”

  He flicked a glance her way. “Nice work.”

  Haughtiness was always tempting but never worth the later repentance. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll cast his leg in the morning. Swelling should be down by then. I’ll sit with him tonight since you’re scared of the dog.”

  The fine hair on her neck bristled. “I am not any more afraid of that dog than you are of courting Rebecca Owens.”

  Tay’s brow reddened as if it were a summer day. He didn’t argue with her. Couldn’t argue with her, though she knew it wasn’t fear that held him back, but rather, an unreasonable sense of brotherly responsibility where she was concerned. As if he owed her something.

  The odd-eyed animal watched them both, appearing ready to pounce at its master’s slightest grimace.

  “I’ll take the first turn,” she said. “You need to be rested for your rounds.”

  ~

  The moon woke her to a chilled room, its full face shining through thin curtains at the window, stirring a memory. She tugged her shawl closer and arched her stiff back from the rocker. Its slight creak opened the dog’s eyes. Just as watchful but less challenging, perhaps sensing she was friend, not foe.

  She had, after all, given it food and water.

  If only it could talk and tell her all that had happened to the tall, lean man who’d clearly been dragged. Not to mention nearly shot. His ravaged back and broken leg bore testimony to some of his story, but not to the cause of his injuries. Had he been thrown from his own horse, his foot caught in the stirrup as the animal charged away in a frenzy?

  Had he been driving a wagon when mules broke from their harness and he, fighting to hang on to their reins, flew behind them over rock and ridge?

  No. That wasn’t it. He would have been face down if he were holding onto something. Something had been holding onto him.

  She rose and stepped quietly to the cot. The dog lifted its eyes, watching her silent progress as she leaned low across the stranger to check his breathing—

  His rough hand clamped her mouth, the other the back of her neck. Suspended inches from his dark, threatening glare, she couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t breathe.

  Heart battering her chest, she clawed at his unrelenting fingers.

  The dog stood, hot breath burning through her skirt with a throaty rumble.

  Her compressed cry escaped on a prayer.

  Still holding her, the stranger sat up and flinched. Sweat broke out on his forehead and caught the moon’s light in pearly beads.

  His grip weakened.

  She pulled at his fingers and sucked in a breath only to waste it on a pointless promise. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Something flickered in his shadowed stare and he glanced at the dog, its face nearly level with his own.

  His hand pressed harder, cutting her nostrils with a soapy scent and the inside of her lip against a crooked tooth. The sound of her racing blood whooshed in her ears.

  She forced a finger between his hand and her lips, but still her words were mangled. “We set your leg.”

  ~

  Wil Bergman flexed his left leg for balance. Pain knifed from his ankle to his brain, darkening his vision.

  We? How many, and where were they now?

  The woman filled his view, her pale hair fallen from its pins. She was no product of his nightmares. No wavering apparition. Fear burned in her wide eyes and pulsed beneath his fingers.

  He could snap her fine bones like bird wings.

  In a single sweep, he took in the small washstand, rocking chair, braided rug. A cabinet and long table in the shadows where moon and lamplight were thin.

  The smell of antiseptic.

  She continued digging at his fingers.

  He squeezed. “Promise you won’t scream.”

  She jerked her head down once. Less frantic than before.

  “Where am I?” Slowly he released her.

  A ravaged breath, and her chest heaved. Her hand clutched her throat. “In Dr. Taylor Carver’s surgery—home.”

  “Where?”

  “Piney Hill.” Her gaze traveled the length of the blanket covering him, pausing at his bare feet. “Were you headed here for work at the saw mill?”

  Awareness struck—his clothes were gone.

  Something in her expression pressed him to tell her everything. “No.”

  She was calmer without his hands choking her. So was the dog, and it dropped to its haunches, close to the low cot, eyes shifting between him and the nurse. At least the woman seemed a nurse. That would explain her presence in the room at night and the full apron that covered her simple frock.

  Where was the doctor?

  She straightened, one hand lost in the wide apron, the other gripping the side of her skirt.

  “I’ll get another blanket for your feet.”

  He grabbed her left arm.

  She resisted as though she held a hidden weapon—his reason for the sudden move.

  The dog stood, bared its teeth.

  With a vicious wrench, Wil twisted a cry from her throat and her hand from the white cloth.

  She glared at him. Defiantly.

  Whoa. He let go.

  She moved slowly to a trunk behind the rocker, pulled out a wool blanket, then tented it over his lower legs.

  It caved against his left foot, and even the slight pressure made him wince with pain.

  Anger and compassion wrestled across her face. She took the lamp to the cabinet, where its dim light reflected off glass doors, then returned with a dark bottle and spoon.

  The dog refused to move, so she reached over it with a spoonful. The smell banished all suspicion.

  Wil preferred whiskey to laudanum, but doubted she’d provide it.

  Her hand didn’t tremble but held the spoon steadily in front of his mouth. Her regard was equally steady, and she raised one fine brow. “Well?” it asked.

  If he wasn’t in killing pain, he’d challenge that haughty question. Instead, he swallowed the offering and fell against the pillow, searing his back. Was there no place he didn’t hurt?

  With his left hand, he fingered a narrow piece of wood strapped to his leg, his greatest source of pain. A flash of memory closed his eyes—a gunshot. The ground racing past.

  “What’s your name?” The words clawed out of his throat.

  “Lena,” she whispered.

  “Lena Carver?”

  “Yes.” She leaned slightly forward, the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg in her hair. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Answers.” Everything in him and about him hurt. Moving his mouth hurt. But aside from whiskey, he wanted answers the most. Answers to how he ended up in Dr. Taylor Carver’s surgery with a self-appointed canine guardian. Answers for how Carver’s wife managed to care for someone who had frightened her beyond forgiveness.

  And answers for how she did what she did missing the last three fingers on her left hand.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lena jerked awake at the touch on her shoulder. Tay.

  The moon had fled, and in the flickering lamplight a shadowed groove danced between his brows. “What’s wrong?”

  “You startled me.” She pushed her hair back and stood. The stranger lay as still as before, his chest rising and lowering, no sound of his breathing, no threatening moves.

  Had she dreamed the encounter? A small cut inside her lip said no.

  The dog watched Tay.

  He picked up the laudanum bottle from the washstand. “Our patient came to?”

  She fingered the tender place. “Yes. He was in a great deal of pain. Understandably so.”

  Tay studied her, possibly reading what she didn’t want to tell.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “No.” The answer came reflexively, without intent to deceive. Without thought. She turned to trim the lamp. “How is someone with his injury going to hurt me? He has no gun, no knife, and no ability to rise from the cot.”

  “He still has one good leg.”

  “Which I could kick out from under him.” She looked away, afraid the account of the man’s iron grip would rush out on its own, without her consent.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He asked where he was.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “The truth.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What are you not telling me?”

  The whole truth.

  She pulled her shawl from the rocker and wrapped it around her shoulders on her way out of the room. “It’s cold. I’ll tend to the fire.”

  “Lena—”

  Pausing at the door, she added, “The dog won’t bother you. I’ll bring coffee before sunup. He should be out for that long.”

  A few coals winked on the dining room hearth, and she stirred them before adding bits of kindling, larger sticks, and finally an arm-sized log. Smoke spiraled upward, then the smaller pieces caught and the fire flashed to life. She added two more logs, then set the screen in place and wound the mantle clock. Two-thirty.

  The kitchen cook-stove fire had been well banked, and it took only a few cedar shavings to revive it and start a pot of coffee.

  She twisted her hair into a knot and located three pins still clinging to tangles. They’d hold until she collected the others.

  Too tired to work by lamplight and too tense to sleep, she returned to the dining room and pulled her rocker close to the hearth. The wind had kicked up, rattling Tay’s sign on the front porch, swinging it noisily back and forth. They’d all need laudanum to sleep with that racket.

  Through the cover of her shawl, she gently rubbed her tender wrist and wondered who had been more frightened—the stranger or her.

  It was the uncovering that angered her. The brutal stripping away of her customary concealment.

  The shock on his face betrayed what he thought. What everyone thought when they saw her deformity up close. The result of an uncertain doctor’s attempt to save a little girl’s hand.

  She stared into the fire, seeing again the cabin hearth of her childhood, hearing her mother weep, Tay wretch. Papa held her in his big arms and pressed her head into his shoulder as the doctor eased her left arm from the safety of Papa’s embrace…

  As delayed as a child’s anticipated Christmas, her hands began to tremble and she swaddled them in her shawl, annoyed at her lack of self-control. For twenty years she’d lived and managed. For the last five, she’d helped Tay, relinquishing dreams of her own home, a loving husband, children.

  The older she grew, the more clearly she saw the way men averted their gazes. Polite, but uninterested. Who wanted a maimed wife? One who didn’t even have the finger on which to place a wedding band?

  Always, this time of year brought the heaviest torment. Always in the evenings approaching Christmas, when light fled and cold lurked around the house.

  The smell of scorched coffee roused her, and she hurried to the kitchen and the boiling pot. How long had she huddled by the fire, lost in her musings? She ground more beans, added fresh water, and returned it to the stove.

  Through the glass in the kitchen door, the sky was graying, melting the stars and waking the neighbors’ rooster that seemed to relish rousing the community.

  “Er, er, er-roo,” it cried.

  In a moment an answer rang across the field. “Er, er, er-roo.”

  Papa’s voice shimmered through her memories, interpreting the early morning call from one proud bird to another.

  Lock the barn door!

  Give me the key!

  Some things couldn’t be forgotten.

  ~

  The ceiling was white-washed.

  Wil rubbed his eyes and blinked. White as milk and near blinding to a man accustomed to sky. He pushed up on his elbows and clenched his teeth at the impulse to yell. Moaning wasn’t so easily squelched.

  The dog raised its head over the cot’s edge and studied him.

  A light-haired man entered through the single door in the room and stopped short.

 

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