The Ranger's Bride

Just as she opened the coach door, the Ranger pushed his hat back off his face.

“How are you doing?” she asked, her eyes roaming over his blood-soaked shirt, looking for signs of fresh bleeding.

“Well, the company wasn’t the best,” he said, with a sardonic nod toward the dead man still lying crumpled in a heap on the floor of the coach. “And that’s got to be the bumpiest section of road in the whole state of Texas. I felt every rock the wheels rolled over. But I reckon I’ll keep.”

She had to admire his grit. “Let me help you out,” she said, extending a hand. “We’ll get you into the house and I’ll put you to bed.”

Distracted by his haggard face, she hadn’t chosen her words with any special care, but apparently he wasn’t in too much pain to tease.

“Why, that’s the best offer I’ve had in weeks, Miss Adelaide Kelly,” he drawled, managing a wink. “Just wish I was in good enough shape to take advantage of it.”

She felt her temper flare, even as the flush flooded her cheeks. “If you were, you wouldn’t be coming into my house, let alone my bed, sir. But for the grace of God, you might be lying dead out there with the others!”

He sobered instantly. “Sorry, Miss Adelaide. I didn’t mean any lack of respect to you or to them. I reckon I’m purely giddy-headed, realizin’ how lucky I am that hombre who aimed to kill me was such a rotten shot and didn’t bother to check afterward to see if I was breathin’ or not.”

Addy figured she owed her survival to a similar piece of luck. Drenched in the dead man’s blood and partially covered by his body, she’d probably looked dead to the outlaws, too.

“It’s probably the loss of blood making you giddy-headed,” she replied tartly as she fitted her shoulder under his uninjured one. “Come, let’s get you inside.”

“All right, but don’t let me put you outa your bed, Miss Adelaide,” he insisted as he raised his foot to the first stone step. “Surely you have a sofa or a truckle bed or something. Even just a pallet on the floor.”

She didn’t answer him. He’d have to use her bedroom. Getting him up the stairs to the spare bedroom was out of the question, in his condition.

They passed the room at the front of the house that had once been her aunt and uncle’s bedroom, but she had transformed it into her shop. There was a rack along one wall full of bolts of fabric, but their bed was piled high with scraps of fabric, cards of buttons, a case full of spools of thread, and rolls of lace and ribbon trim. It was to this room that the misses and matrons of Connor’s Crossing came to get alterations done or new dresses made in the latest styles from Godey’s Lady’s Book.

Addy had taken over a room off the kitchen for her bedroom. It was small, but had the advantage of facing northeast, making it cooler on hot summer evenings.

He closed his eyes on the steps leading up to the porch, letting her guide him. Aware of his tightly clenched jaw and the groans he tried to stifle, she moved slowly down the hallway, passing through the kitchen and into her room.

He sagged against her just as they reached the bed, and she had no choice but to let him down right on top of the calico quilt.

“I’ll go get some water so I can clean up those wounds,” she announced as she picked up his booted feet and placed them on the bed.

Ashen-faced, he didn’t answer. Addy wondered if he had passed out again.

After she had returned and cut away his ruined shirt, and had begun washing the dried, clotted blood away from his upper chest wound, though, his eyes fluttered and opened again.

“Am I too rough?” she asked. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t worry, you have a real gentle touch,” he replied. And she did. She was far gentler than George McDonald, his Ranger company captain, would have been. Nevertheless, though he’d never have admitted it to her, each stroke of the damp cloth was like a blast of flame. He knew what she was doing was necessary—if she didn’t cleanse the wounds, he had a worse chance of dying of blood poisoning.

A groan escaped him, however, as she helped him to turn so she could wash the larger wound in the back of his shoulder where the bullet had exited. He felt her hesitate, so he muttered, “Go ahead and finish,” then set his jaw and held on to the mattress until she was done.

Once she had eased him onto his back, he concentrated on her face, willing the pain to recede. She was so pretty, despite the streaks of blood on her cheeks and neck and the smudge of dirt on her cheek. Her hair had mostly escaped the knot at the back of her slender neck, but its disarray gave her a wild, wanton look that was quite opposite, he guessed, from her normal appearance and personality. She’d be pretty as a silver dollar with her hair up and wearing a dress that wasn’t stained with a dead man’s blood. He guessed she had totally forgotten—if she’d ever noticed—the sorry state of her clothing.

He watched her tear strips from an old, well-worn man’s shirt to make a bandage, then realized, by the self-conscious way she worried at her full lower lip with her teeth, that his staring was making her uncomfortable. But he was damned if he could stop. After all, it kept his mind off the fiery ache above his collarbone.

“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly.

He hesitated. Could he trust her not to tell even one person when she went into town about his presence here?

“You gonna tell anyone I’m here?” he asked.

She looked mildly indignant at the question. “For now, no—I know you said it was important not to. Though I can’t see how it would hurt for the sheriff to know you’re here. Surely he’d be your ally in capturing the Fogartys.”

Miss Adelaide Kelly would probably be surprised at just how often a sheriff could be hand in glove with desperadoes, he thought. “Some small-town lawmen flap their jaws too much,” he said. “I don’t want to bet my life on whether this one does or not while I’m lyin’ here weak as a poisoned pup.”

“Sheriff Wilson doesn’t strike me as a gossip,” she said, coloring a little, “but I’ll respect your wishes.”

Something about the way she defended the man was a bit too enthusiastic, and his heart sank. Was she sweet on the sheriff?

He supposed he owed her honesty, after she’d brought him to her house and put him in her own bed—he’d guessed it was hers by the flower-sprigged wrapper and hat that hung from hooks on the door. “It’s Rede…Rede Smith,” he said.

“How do you spell it? R-E-E-D? Or R-E-I-D?”

“R-E-D-E. It’s short for Redemption,” he admitted sheepishly. “I guess you could say my ma had a Biblical bent when it came to names.” To make up for my father’s lawlessness. She’d taken the surname of Smith to hide their connection to the outlaw who’d been her husband.

Rede wondered what Miss Adelaide Kelly would think if she knew the leader of the band of killers who’d attacked the stage today had been his uncle, his father’s youngest brother.

“Redemption Smith,” she said experimentally. “A bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? I see why you go by Rede.”

He liked the sound of his name on her lips. “Rede will do. Or just plain Smith.”

Her nose wrinkled at his last sentence. “I’m not calling you Smith. Sounds like I’m some rich lady and you’re my butler. I suppose I should properly call you Mr. Smith.”

“Please, call me Rede. Can I call you Miss Addy? Adelaide’s kind of a mouthful, too. And it’s too stuffy a name for a pretty woman like you,” he added, purely for the pleasure of seeing her blush again.

Which she did, enchantingly, though she tried to put on a severe expression to counter it. “Horsefeathers,” she sputtered, after a moment. “I suppose it’s all right for you to call me Miss Addy. Most of the town calls me that or Miz Addy. Since I was widowed,” she explained.

He nodded obediently.

“But you needn’t think that means I’ll stand for any monkeyshines from you while you’re here, Rede Smith.”

Again, he nodded, trying to look lamblike.

“Which will be for as brief a time as possible, is that clear? I’m a respectable widow with a business to run, which will be difficult enough while you’re here. Just as soon as you’re well enough to ride out of here, you’ll be leaving, is that understood?”

This wasn’t the time to tell her he’d decided this was the ideal place to stay, not only while he recovered, but while he looked for the Fogartys’ hideout.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, with all the meekness he could muster. Judas priest, but she was even prettier when she was riled, if that was possible.

“And now I had better get that bullet out of your arm, before you get blood poisoning,” she said. “I’ll just go and get a knife—”

The thought of her digging that bullet out made him queasy all over again. Ignoring the pain that lanced through him at the sudden move, he took hold of her arm before she could step away from the bed.

“Not just yet,” he said. “I mean, it’s gettin’ pretty late, isn’t it? You’d better go report the attack so someone can go out and pick up those bodies before the varmints get to ’em.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said, looking down at his hand.