The Ranger's Bride

She felt herself blushing at what she had said, and hoped he hadn’t noticed, but of course the Ranger missed nothing.

He scowled. “What’s the matter, is the virtuous Widow Kelly the sheriff’s secret sweetheart? Are you afraid he’ll find me here and think he has a rival?”

Her temper reached the flashpoint and ignited.

Hand raised to slap his face, Addy took one step toward the bed before she realized what she was about to do and stopped dead in her tracks.

Addy saw in his eyes that he fully realized her intention, and wanted to die of shame. She took a deep shaky breath. “I won’t do it. I won’t slap a wounded man, though you richly deserve it after what you just said.”

He looked away first, scowling again. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business who visits your bed, Mrs. Kelly,” he said stiffly.

“No one—” she started to say, and then stopped herself. He was right. It was none of his business. Let Rede Smith think Asa Wilson was her lover, if it would keep him from behaving improperly toward her. He didn’t have to know Asa was the last man who’d make an ungentlemanly move toward a woman he thought was a six-month widow and whom he considered a lady. But if she expected meekness out of Rede Smith now, she was doomed to disappointment.

“Are you a good liar?” he demanded. “Did they believe you?”

“I think so,” she said, striving for a level tone. Oh, you don’t know how good a liar I am, Rede Smith. I’ve been living a lie ever since I came to Connor’s Crossing.

“All right, good. I need you to get this bullet out, now that you’re back. And I’ll take that whiskey now, if you don’t mind,” he added.

Addy bristled anew at his brisk tone, and again when she had brought in the bottle and a freshly washed glass, only to hear him say, “I need you to boil whatever knife you’re going to use for several minutes.”

She started to bark back a sarcastic reply, then saw the apprehension that lurked within his dark gaze. Rede Smith was worried about how he’d react to the pain of having that bullet removed. The realization rendered him more human and made her stifle her stinging retort.

“Certainly.” She turned on her heel and left the room.

It took her half an hour to get ready. She had to light a fire in the stove, pump a kettle full of water, set it to boiling, and after selecting a knife she normally used for paring fruit, boil it for several minutes. While she waited she washed her hands thoroughly, using the lye soap she used on laundry days.

By the time she returned to her bedroom, carrying the kettle with the aid of two clean cloths, the whiskey had apparently mellowed his mood.

“Will this do, do you think?” she said, holding the kettle so he could see the paring knife in the still-bubbling water.

He darted a glance at it in the steaming water, then quickly back at her. “I guesh sho—so,” he said, his exhaled breath sending a cloud of whiskey fumes in her direction.

He was apparently aware that some of his words were slurred. “Shorry—I mean, sorry I was so gr-grouchy, Miz Addy. I r-reckon I’m not lookin’ forward to this little bullet-huntin’ exspedition we’re ’bout to go on.”

His face was flushed, his dark eyes dulled. She glanced at the liquor bottle, and saw that he’d drunk over half the contents of the bottle, which had been nearly full. Heavens! It was amazing he was still conscious, let alone talking.

“I can understand that,” she said.

He sighed, and said in a resigned tone, “Well, le’sh get thish over with, then,” he said, and sank back in the bed. “D’you have anyshing—thing I can bite into?”

She stepped over to her chest of drawers, pulled out one of her handkerchiefs and rolled it up, but when she stepped back to the bedside, his eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply and evenly. She hoped he was unconscious from the prodigious amount of whiskey he’d drunk so fast, and that he wouldn’t come to until she was done.

She reached inside the pocket of the apron she wore and brought out the lump of lye soap. Dipping one of the clean cloths with which she had carried the hot kettle into the hot water, she rubbed it over the lump of soap until the cloth was soapy. Then she used it to cleanse the remaining dried blood from around the wound’s edges. He winced slightly when she rubbed hard at a stubborn clot, but otherwise did not stir.

Once she had cleansed a wide circle of skin around the raw red edges of the arm wound—making it ooze a trickle of blood, she noted—she touched the flesh gingerly, feeling for the spent bullet within.

For a moment she could feel nothing, but then she closed her eyes and palpated his upper arm again, using just the ball of her index finger, exploring a widening circle around the arm. Finally she found it—a hard lump about half an inch beneath the surface of the back of his arm. She sighed in relief that she would not have to probe blindly with her makeshift scalpel. But the wound was awkwardly situated. How was she to get to it without standing on her head?

After a moment, she tucked Rede’s hand, palm up, under his head, which exposed the posterior of his upper arm perfectly. Movement of the wounded arm made him flinch and mutter something unintelligible, but once she let go of the arm, he seemed to sink back into insensibility.

She turned to retrieve the knife.

But the water was still too hot to dip her hand into. Crossing the room, she raised the windowsill and dumped most of the water onto her kitchen garden below. A couple of radish plants might never be the same, she thought, but it couldn’t be helped.

Now she could reach the knife. Using the other clean cloth to pick up the still-hot handle, she moved back to the bedside, her insides churning within her.

Gently bred ladies did not do such things. Extracting a bullet was a job for a doctor, or at least a tough frontier woman, not Adelaide Kelly of the St. Louis Kellys.

But he didn’t want her to call a doctor or anyone else. He believed it was important for his presence here to remain a secret. If the bullet was not removed he might very well develop gangrene and die. So it was up to her.

Uttering a prayer that God would help her do this without causing him too much pain, she bent to her work.

Her first tentative slice into his skin brought him yelping up off the bed, both fists clenched. “Whaddya think you’re do—”

She sprang back, but before she could say anything, his bloodshot gaze focused on her and he muttered, “Oh. ’S you, Miz Kelly. I…’member. G’wan, finish it.”

She darted close and threw him—much as one would throw a hunk of meat at a vicious dog—the handkerchief she’d gotten out for him to bite. He thrust the rolled square in between his jaws, closed his eyes, and replaced the hand of his wounded arm underneath his head. He gestured with his other hand that she was to go ahead, then grabbed hold of the bedpost. Gritting her teeth and holding back the sob that threatened to choke her, she did just that.

Five minutes later, drenched in perspiration, she straightened, her bloodstained fingers clutching the bloody, misshapen slug.

“I got it, Rede,” she said softly. “It’s out.”

He opened bleary eyes and sagged in the bed, letting out a long gusty breath.

“Quick, pour the rest o’ that whiskey over my arm,” he growled, closing his eyes and setting his jaw. He flinched as she obeyed, but made no sound.

She had done it. The room spun, and she leaned on the bed for support. Then she felt his hand on her wrist.

“You did real fine, Miz Kelly,” he said. “Thanks. Now maybe you better sit down. Oh, an’ you might oughta open up s’ more whishkey. You’re lookin’ a mite pale.”

Rede lay in Adelaide Kelly’s bed, hearing her rooster crow and watching dawn gradually light the square of glass opposite his bed. The ache in his arm—and the matching throb in his head due to the whiskey he’d drunk the evening before—had awakened him an hour ago.

He’d been a fool to think that he could steal back into the area by taking the stage. He should have just taken his chances riding in—traveling under cover of darkness, perhaps, and making cold camps in gullies. Now, because someone had had loose lips, five innocent people were dead. And the sixth had had to dig a bullet out of him and was going to have to play hostess while he laid low here and recovered.

The whiskey had made his memories of last night fuzzy around the edges, but he remembered enough that he could still picture her bending over him, her pale, sweat-pearled brow furrowed in concentration as she clutched the paring knife that had eventually rooted the bullet out of his flesh.

She’d done a hell of a job, he thought, for a refined lady who’d obviously never planned on performing surgery. Captain McDonald couldn’t have done any better, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have bothered apologizing up and down for each and every twist and turn of the knife, as Addy Kelly had done. Yessir, she had grit, Addy Kelly did.

But she did do one thing better than his captain: snore. He’d camped out plenty with the Rangers’ commander when they’d been in pursuit of outlaws or marauding Indians, so he should know, and Addy Kelly could outsnore all of his company any night of the week.

Possibly it was the uncomfortable position she had slept in, Rede thought, eyeing her sympathetically. She hadn’t left the room but had passed the night in the chair next to the bed. She was there still, her head resting against the wall, her hands clasped together in a ladylike primness that was entirely at odds with the buzzing noise coming at frequent intervals from her mouth.

Sometime during the night she’d left him long enough to wash up and change out of her bloodstained dress and into a violet-sprigged wrapper. She’d let her hair down and braided it, and now the thick chestnut plait hung over the curve of her breast.

All at once she gave a particularly rattling snore. It must have awakened her because she blinked a couple of times, then shut her eyes again and still sitting, breathed deeply, stretching long and luxuriously.

The action stretched the flowered cotton across her breasts, and he luxuriated in the sight. Lord, but he loved the shape of a woman not wearing a corset.