Early Dawn (27 page)

She slid off her mount and ran closer, hoping to get a clear shot. She was trying to take aim when steel flashed in the morning sunlight. Matthew’s hunting knife. He swung it out to the side and, with a powerful thrust, buried the blade in the cat’s neck and then twisted the hilt. For a horrible instant, the lion kept fighting, but then it growled low in its throat and went limp with a whining sigh, pinning Matthew under its dead weight.

Holstering her weapons, Eden sprang forward. “Matthew? Oh, God, Matthew, how badly are you hurt?”

He pushed at the cougar to get it off him. Eden bent to help. Working together, they finally managed to roll the cat away. Eden dropped to her knees at Matthew’s side. His blue shirt was in shreds and soaked with blood. His dark face glistened with sweat, and his blue eyes were glassy. Grabbing the front plackets of his shirt just below the open collar, she gave a hard jerk and sent buttons flying. The sight that greeted her eyes nearly made her pass out. Deep, crimson scores ran at an angle across his well-muscled chest.

“Oh, Matthew. Did he get you on the back, too?”

“Just the front,” he pushed out. “I’m . . . lucky. Could’ve killed me.” His larynx bobbed as he swallowed. “Get the . . . whiskey. Nothin’ worse . . . to get infected. Gotta wash the cuts . . . as fast as you can.”

Eden raced back to the horses. Herman was still braying and trying to break the lead. She took a moment to calm the mule so he would stand still while she dug through the packs. “It’s okay, Herman. It’s okay. It’s dead, sweetie, and can’t hurt you now.”

When she finally found the whiskey, she hurried back to Matthew. As she tugged the cork from the jug, she couldn’t help but think how badly the alcohol would sting. Matthew fixed her with a glassy gaze. “Don’t hesitate. Do it . . . fast, and get it . . . over with.”

She nodded and splashed the alcohol over his chest. He sucked in a sharp breath, clenched his teeth, and lay in rigid agony until the burn finally abated. Perspiration beaded on his face and ran into his dark hair. Struggling to stay calm, Eden examined the cuts.

“Oh, Matthew, some of these will need stitches. They’re deep.”

He closed his eyes at that news. Then, his voice gravelly, he told her where he kept his needles and thread. After finding what she needed, Eden jerked several strands of hair from Smoky’s tail before returning to Matthew. After sterilizing everything with whiskey, she laid the spare strands of horsehair on Matthew’s striated belly and threaded the needle.

“This is gonna hurt . . . like blue blazes,” he told her haltingly. “While you’re . . . sewing me up, talk . . . to me.”

Eden’s fingers were quivering so badly that she feared she would botch the job. She’d watched her mother stitch up her brothers, but she’d never had to perform the service herself. “What should I talk about?”

“Any . . . thing.” He let his eyes fall closed. “Give me something . . . to think about besides . . . the pain.”

Eden could think of nothing. The horrible task that lay ahead of her dominated her thoughts. She fixed her gaze stupidly on a scar near his heart, which she guessed had been put there by one of the Sebastians’ bullets the day of the ambush at the Lazy J.

“There’s a mark . . . on your left ring finger,” Matthew said. “Tell me . . . about that.”

Eden glanced at her left hand, and sure enough, John’s ring had left a faint impression. “Would you like some swallows of whiskey before I start stitching?”

“Better save it for the cuts. Cat claws carry a lot of germs.”

As Eden pushed the needle into his flesh, he clenched his teeth and knotted his fists with such force his knuckles went white. Frantic to distract him, she started talking, her voice trembling with regret at causing him such pain.

“Until a week before the train robbery, I was engaged to a man named John Parrish. The impression on my finger is from the ring he gave me five years ago.”

Matthew unclenched his teeth to ask, “What . . . happened?”

Eden forced the needle through again. She had started to sweat almost as much as Matthew was. The needle was dull. She had to shove on it and could feel the resistance of his flesh with every pass. Knowing how badly she must be hurting him, she felt sick to her stomach.

“Keep . . . talking,” he urged. “Don’t think . . . about what . . . you’re doing. . . . Just talk.”

“But I’m
hurting
you.”

“I’ve felt . . . worse, and I’ll . . . live through it. What . . . happened? Why aren’t . . . you wearing the . . . ring anymore?”

“My origins didn’t measure up to his parents’ expectations.” Eden pushed on the needle again and gulped to keep from vomiting. “Oh, Matthew, I’m so
sorry
.”

“Don’t think. . . . Just talk, I said.”

She swallowed again. “Where was I?”

“His parents didn’t . . . approve.”

Her hands shook as she tugged the needle through. “That’s pretty much it. They disapproved of me, and John’s father threatened to disinherit him if he went through with the marriage.”

“So John . . . backed out?”

“Not for quite some time. Instead he stalled and made excuses to postpone the nuptials. Idiot that I was, I never suspected that he wanted out until he wrote me a letter to end the engagement.”

“Bastard. What the hell’s . . . wrong with your . . . origins?”

Eden had finished sewing up the first cut. While she rethreaded the needle, she told him about her real father, Connor O’Shannessy. “He was a horrible man, a liar, a swindler, a drunk, and a killer. He took cruel advantage of my mother, knowing he wouldn’t spare her husband’s life, no matter how she shamed herself. In short, Matthew,
I’m
the bastard. John’s pedigree is without blemish. I don’t suppose I can blame his parents for not wanting me as their daughter-in-law or as the mother of their grandchildren.”

“Bullshit.” He flinched at a stab of the needle. His lips had grown gray from the pain. “They should . . . have welcomed . . . you into the family with . . . open arms. Did you . . . love the . . . spineless asshole?”

Under any other circumstances, Eden might have smiled. She’d had the same thoughts about John a few times herself. “I thought I did, early on. I was young when we met, only seventeen—eighteen when we became engaged.” Matthew had been wise to insist that she talk. It helped to take her mind off what she was doing. “Looking back on it now, I think I was more in love with the
idea
of being in love than I was with the man. At first, it was so exciting. Choosing my wedding dress, planning our honeymoon, poring over cookbooks so I’d be able to manage our kitchen staff, deciding what costume to wear when John took me to the theater or opera. I was so focused on all the fun things that I had very little time for soul-searching—and to be honest, at that age, I don’t think I understood what true love felt like, anyway.”

As she started to work on the last wound, she went on to tell Matthew how John’s parents had vilified her reputation in order to protect their son’s good name. “My so-called friends would no longer acknowledge me. If they saw me on the street, they pretended not to know me. My mother and I were turned away from homes where we’d been welcomed for years. The situation wouldn’t have improved with time. People have long memories when it comes to a scandal. Bastards and the women who bear them are shunned. I didn’t want to live that way for the rest of my life, and I certainly didn’t wish to see my mother treated that way, so we decided to put the house up for sale and relocate.”

“I’m . . . sorry.”

“Don’t be. Not on my behalf, at any rate. My mother loved living in the city, but I always found the strict social mores a bit stifling. Even though I went to finishing school and learned to say ‘mercy me’ instead of ‘damn it to hell,’ I was still the same old Eden, just a more polished and educated version. Knowing French and Latin doesn’t change who you are inside.”

That earned her a faint smile from him. “Ace taught you to say ‘damn it to hell’?”

“No, I owe Joseph for that. When we were young, Mama had to work to help Ace keep food on the table. It fell to Joseph to watch after me most of the time. He used crass language in my presence, and I grew up not realizing there was anything wrong with it. When Ace started winning big at cards, Mama was finally able to stay home. She set to work polishing away all my rough edges and turning me into a lady.”

With a sigh of relief, Eden tied the last knot and sat back on her heels. “There, it’s done.”

“Not quite. Douse ’em . . . with whiskey again, just for good measure.”

She did as he said, but with no small regret. He hissed in air at the sting. Then she went to find him another shirt so the flies wouldn’t get to the wounds. When she returned, Matthew appeared to be either fast asleep or passed out. As she worked to get the shirt on him, she decided it was the latter, for he didn’t awaken as she tugged, pulled, and shoved to get his upper body covered. When that was done, she laid out the bedding and rolled him onto the pallet. Then she set up camp. By the time she had a small fire going, her injured ribs pained her greatly.

She yearned to rest, but first she needed to bury the cougar carcass. The smell of a fresh kill might bring in other predators. Using Matthew’s spade, she hacked at the hard earth near the cat until she’d dug a deep enough hole. Her heart ached with sadness when she looked at the lion. Even in death, he was majestic. Why, oh, why hadn’t he just run away? Instead, he had attacked and, in the doing, had sealed his fate. Moving him proved to be another daunting task, because he weighed far more than she did. By the time Eden had covered him with dirt, her legs were trembling and her knees felt as if they had turned to water.

Just then, Matthew stirred. Eden hurried over to him. He fixed her with a bleary gaze. “How long have I been out?”

“A couple of hours.”

He grimaced as he sat up. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

Eden could scarcely credit her ears. “You can’t ride in this condition.”

“Damned thing didn’t gut me. I’m just cut up a little. I can ride.”

“You might break open the wounds!”

“They aren’t
that
deep.”

Eden watched helplessly as he staggered to his feet. It took him a moment to get his balance, but as soon as he did, he bent to roll up the bedding.

“I’ll get it,” she insisted.

He shot her a disgruntled look. “I’m not hurt that bad, Eden. Don’t fuss over me.”

Despite her protests, he helped to break camp and determinedly saddled the horses. When she tried to assist him, he shooed her away with, “You’ve got busted ribs, damn it. You’re in a lot worse shape than I am.”

When the horses were trail ready, he mounted up. Eden had no choice but to do the same. Falling in behind the mule, she glared at Matthew’s back.
Foolish man
. He sat the horse as if nothing had happened to him. What was he trying to prove, that he was invincible? Granted, the cuts weren’t that deep, but they still had to hurt every time he moved.

At dusk, they stopped to rest the horses until darkness fell. Then, at Matthew’s insistence, they rode for another two hours to make up for the lost time. Eden was so exhausted when they finally stopped that her feet dragged as she helped Matthew get the animals settled for the night. She couldn’t eat her portion of jerky. Instead she only drank some water.

Evidently Matthew was as weary as she was, for as soon as he’d eaten, he unrolled their bedding, doffed his hat and gun belt, and gingerly settled on the pallet. By his movements, Eden knew his wounds pained him more than he let on. When she joined him under the blanket, she also realized that he had no intention of holding her close to share his body heat. Her admission that she felt attracted to him still hung between them, she guessed. That made her so sad. Matthew had far more wounds than those on his chest—wounds that ran deep and continued to fester.

They lay on their backs, gazes fixed on the heavens. Eden couldn’t remember ever having seen so many stars. Even with inches separating them, heat radiated from Matthew’s rangy body and cocooned her in warmth. Oh, how she hoped he didn’t have a fever. What would she do if his wounds grew infected? They were nearly out of whiskey, and over the last two days, she hadn’t seen an aspen tree, the bark of which could be boiled into tea for treating a high fever. If he fell ill, she guessed she would have to hide him somewhere and go in search of an aspen grove.

Eden tried to close her eyes and fall asleep, but her mind raced. There were things she wanted to say to him, things she felt he desperately needed to hear. “When I was a little girl, my mother would sometimes tell me that out of all her children, she loved me most of all.” He said nothing, but Eden was determined to finish what she’d started. “It bothered me dreadfully,” she went on. “I felt sad for my brothers and more than a little guilty. It seemed to me that she should have loved all of us exactly the same.”

Eden rolled onto her side to face him. His gaze fixed on the heavens, he smelled faintly of bay rum, the scent lingering from when he’d shaved last night. “One day when she said that to me, I couldn’t stop myself from asking how she could love me more than she did my brothers. I told her it made me feel awful.”

His jaw muscle started to tic.

Eden sighed, but she refused to allow his silence to discourage her. “Mama just laughed and hugged me tight. Then she told me about all the different corners of her heart and how each corner had one of her children’s names on it. In Ace’s corner, she loved him most all. In my corner, she loved me most of all. As she named off each of us, it started to make perfect sense to me, and I never worried again when she said I was her favorite.”

Matthew finally turned his head to search her gaze. “Where are you going with this, Eden?”

“I think you know, Matthew. You have many corners in your heart. My name may never be on one of them, but the point remains: You
can
have a life with someone else without breaking your vow to love Livvy forever. She has her own special corner of your heart, and in that corner, you’ll always,
always
love her.”