LITMIR.BIZ

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where you came from, in Massachusetts or New Hampshire or wherever you belong?”

      “I’m from Maine, if you must know,” she allowed, suppressing an urge to argue that she “belonged” wherever she wanted to be. “Dara Rose—Clay’s wife—is my cousin. She persuaded me to come out here and take over for the last teacher, Miss Krenshaw.”

      “Dara Rose,” he said, with a fond little smile. “Clay’s a lucky man, finding a woman like her.”

      “I quite agree,” Piper said, softening toward him, albeit unwillingly and only to a minimal degree.

      He studied her thoughtfully in the flickering light of the lantern. “Does it suit you—life in the Wild West, I mean?” he inquired politely. She saw that a muscle had bunched in his jaw after he spoke, knew he was hurting, and determined to ride it out without complaint. Like Clay, he was tough, though Clay wore the quality with greater grace, being a more reticent sort.

      Piper paused, considering her reply. “It’s lonely sometimes,” she admitted, at last.

      “Everyplace is lonely sometimes,” he answered.

      This was a statement Piper couldn’t refute, so she made one of her own. “It sounds as if you speak from experience,” she said carefully.

      He grinned a wan shadow of a grin, lifted his right hand in a gesture of acquiescence. “Sure,” he replied. “Happens to everybody.”

      Even in his weakened state, Sawyer McKettrick did not strike Piper as the kind of person who ever lacked for anything. There was something about him, some quality of quiet sufficiency, of untroubled wholeness, that shone even through his obvious physical discomfort.

      “I do enjoy spending my days with the children,” she said, strangely flustered, sensing that there was far more to this man than what showed on the surface.

      “I reckon that’s a good thing, since you’re a teacher,” he observed dryly.

      A silence fell, and Piper found herself wanting to prattle, just to fill it. And she was most definitely not a prattler, so this was a matter for concern.

      “I might be able to handle some food, after all,” Sawyer ventured presently, unhurriedly. “If the offer is still good, that is.”

      Relieved to have an errand to perform, however mundane, Piper fairly leaped to her feet, took the lamp by its handle. “There’s bean soup,” she said. “I’ll get you some.”

      When she returned with a bowl and spoon in one hand and the lantern in the other, she saw that her visitor had bunched up the pillows behind him so he could sit up straighter.

      She placed the lantern on the night table again and extended the bowl and spoon.

      He looked at the food with an expression of amused wistfulness. “I’ve only got one good arm,” he reminded her. “I can feed myself, but you’ll have to hold the bowl.”

      Piper should have anticipated this development, but she hadn’t. Gingerly, knowing she wouldn’t be able to reach far enough from the rocking chair, she sat down on the edge of the mattress, the bowl cupped in both hands.

      The sure impropriety of the act sent a little thrill through her.

      Deep down, she was something of a rebel, though she managed to hide that truth from most people.

      Sawyer smiled and took hold of the spoon, tasted the soup. Since the fire in the stove had burned low while they were talking earlier, the stuff was only lukewarm, but he didn’t seem to mind. He ate slowly, and not very much, and finally sank back against the pillows, looking exhausted by the effort of feeding himself.

      “Would you like more?” Piper ventured, drawing back the bowl. “I could—”

      Sawyer grimaced, shook his head no. His skin was a waxy shade of gray, even in the thin light, and he seemed to be bleeding from his wound again, though not so heavily as before. “That’ll do for now,” he said. “I might take some laudanum, after all, though.”

      Piper nodded, put the spoon and the bowl down, and reached for the brown bottle Dr. Howard had left, pulled out the cork. “I’ll just wipe off the spoon and—”

      Before she could finish her sentence, though, he grabbed the bottle from her hand and took a great draught from it. The muscles in his neck corded visibly as he swallowed.

      Piper blinked and snatched the vessel from him. “Mr. McKettrick,” she scolded, in her most teacherly voice. “That is medicine, not water, and it’s very potent.”

      “I hope so,” he said with a sigh, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth. Waiting for the opium to reach his bloodstream. “I’d have preferred whiskey,” he added, moments later.

      Soon, he was fast asleep.

      Piper made sure the bottle of laudanum was out of his reach and rose to carry the lantern and the bowl and spoon out of the room, walking softly so she wouldn’t wake him—not that there seemed to be much danger of that, from the steady rasp of his breathing.

      Once she’d set the bowl and spoon aside, along with the lantern, she wrapped one of the extra blankets Dr. Howard had brought around her shoulders, in lieu of a cloak, and marched herself outside, into the snowy cold, carrying the lantern again now, lighting her way to the outhouse. Normally, she would have used the enamel chamber pot tucked beneath her bed, but not this time.

      The going was hard, though not quite as arduous as when she’d gone out for wood and water before, and to take care of Mr. McKettrick’s horse. She heard a reassuring dripping sound—snow melting off the eaves of the schoolhouse roof, probably—and the sky was clear and moonlit and speckled with stars.

      For the time being at least, the storm was over, and that heartened Piper so much that, after using the outhouse, she went on to the shed, where the big buckskin gelding stood, quietly munching hay.

      She spoke to him companionably, stroked his sturdy neck a few times, and made sure he had enough water. Clay had filled the trough earlier, instead of just setting a pail on the dirt floor of the shed, so there was plenty.

      Returning to the schoolhouse, Piper set the lantern down, put the covered kettle of boiled beans on the front step, so the cold would keep its contents from spoiling. Then she shut the door, lowered the latch, and went over to bank the fire for the night.

      The lamp was starting to burn low by then, so she quickly made herself a bed on the floor, using the borrowed blankets, washed her face and hands in a basin of warm water, and brushed her teeth with baking soda. Donning one of her flannel nightgowns was out of the question, of course, with a man under the same roof.

      Resigned to sleeping in her clothes, she put out the lamp and stretched out on the floor, as near to the stove as she could safely get, and bundled herself in the blankets. The planks were hard, and Piper thought with yearning of her thin, lumpy mattress, the one she’d so often complained about, though only to herself and Dara Rose.

      She closed her eyes, depending on exhaustion to carry her into the unknowing solace of sleep, but instead she found herself listening, not just with her ears, but with all she was. A few times, she thought she heard small feet skittering and scurrying around her, which didn’t help her state of mind.

      At some point, however, she finally succumbed to a leaden, dreamless slumber.

      When she awakened on that frosty floor, sore and unrested and quite disgruntled, it took her a few moments to remember why she was there, and not in her bed.

      The bed was occupied, she recalled, with a flare of heat rising to her cheeks. By one Sawyer McKettrick.

      But the sun was shining, and that lifted her spirits considerably.

      She shambled stiffly to her feet, hurried to build up the fire in the potbellied stove, glanced with mild alarm at the big Regulator clock ticking on the schoolhouse wall. It was past eight, she saw, and she hadn’t rung the schoolhouse bell.

      A

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