A/N: There's been a bigger response to this fic than I expected and honestly that made my week. Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, followed, faved! You're all wonderful even if you worried about only doing one of those things!
There should have been a reply by now. He knows it, knows it as surely as he knows that the sun will rise tomorrow and Canis Major has the brightest star in all the heavens and De Chagny Junior makes coffee that could strip paint or take grease off a saddle but Aman somehow knows how to make it palatable (Erik suspects a combination of chicory, sugar, and some obscure hitherto forgotten brand of witchcraft). And as much as he knows all of these things, he feels it in his bones that there should have been a reply by now.
It's been nearly three weeks. Even Carlotta (dreadful woman) responded faster than this when she received Philippe's portrait and assumed it to be his.
The waiting is driving him demented, gives his brain space to come up with any number of possible scenarios – she has accepted another suitor; the letter was lost in transit; something has happened to leave her incapacitated; she has decided to see him in person and even now is travelling here unbeknownst to him; the very sight of his mask sent her running.
The mention of his disfigurement has repulsed her.
On and on and on. Terrible possibility after horrible possibility after possible unthinkable reality, and nothing to alleviate any of them because there has been no letter, no word, nothing at all, as if she has dropped off the edge of the world (though of course the world is round, that's just being fanciful) or disappeared into the wind like a ghost.
It was always said the streets of New Orleans are full of ghosts, that the spirits of drownings and accidents and incidents coalesce out of the bayous. Is it so unthinkable one might have written him?
That's almost as fanciful as the edge of the world.
Dammit but he's going to have to go to Cheyenne and find a nice widow woman, isn't he?
He taps out a few bars on the piano but every note is jarring and discordant to his ear. He settles in to play poker but loses and loses and loses consistently and can't think out the cards and the dealing. He paces his office until Trev looks up from a stack of paperwork and insists that he can't concentrate "with that staccato rhythm of your boots" (the man has clearly been dipping into poetry again in his off-time). He locks up cowhands for the smallest infractions until the cells are full. He smokes and drinks and nips laudanum to help him sleep then wakes feeling a hundred times worse with a throbbing headache. He drinks coffee and doesn't eat and forgets to shave the good half of his face, until Philippe's lips pressed together tell him he looks a mess. He rides out the Khanum to keep her exercised and ready but she's always been a high-strung mare and his restlessness makes her edgy. He takes Ayesha for light rides but is nervous about over-stressing her in her condition. He seriously contemplates heading for the Henderson ranch to see if they have any broncs for breaking. Getting tossed around like a rag doll until every muscle and sinew aches might be the cure for what ails him.
He closes his eyes tight and tries to breathe slowly through his nose. In, hold, and out. In, hold, and out. In, hold, and out.
His mood is not doing any good for public opinion, six months out from the election. And he only got this job in the first place because Philippe swore for him during the emergency. It's easier for him to lose it than it ever would be for anyone else, and what then? Back to his old vagabond ways, drifting from town to town and always quietly (secretly) hoping that he might provoke someone into taking a shot at him? Damn but he's tired of that life, was tired of it a long time ago, even before they came here, before Philippe recognised him and gave him a job. Out of pity.
(It wasn't quite pity, he knows that. It was many tangled things. But pity is what it feels like.)
Oh, God. What if she marries him and it's only out of pity? He doesn't think he could stand it.
It's too late for him to be awake, he knows that. But his thoughts just won't stop and he can't bang them out on the piano because Aman would wake and threaten to lock him out, and it's more than his life is worth to annoy Aman at this hour of the night, no matter that they each own half of the house.
(Aman would tell him to be patient, has told him, in fact. Multiple times. In excruciating detail. Would tell him to calm down, these things take time, the girl probably needs time to consider his letter and come to a decision, but it's easy for Aman to preach about patience. He's not the one who has propositioned a stranger for marriage.)
Erik throws himself back on the bed, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as if that might force the thoughts from his head, and tries to tell himself that maybe, just maybe, in the morning there will be word from New Orleans.
She is very close to accepting Marshal Lamonte's offer of marriage. The letter that arrived with his portrait contained it, along with a host of details and ideas that, if she is being honest, are a hundred times more promising than the letter from Tom Robertson in Leadville that she did accept before the whole thing went bad (before she arrived in Leadville only to discover Robertson had been killed mere hours earlier in a dispute over cards, the story relayed to her by a consumptive gentleman with a slow way of talking who was immensely well-spoken. She stayed just long enough to attend the funeral of the man who had, however briefly on paper, been her fiancé, and wasn't she glad that she had enough for the fare back to New Orleans instead of having to stay alone in that terrible place?)
The Marshal has promised her her own private room in his house. He has promised her books and dresses. He has a piano that she may play at her leisure if she so wishes (though she has not told him that it is certainly three years since she played, if not more). He has promised to give her anything she might want, even a garden!, tells her that the only cleaning she might have to do would be light and he looks forward to her baking skills. She should say yes, she knows she should, this is the best offer she is ever likely to get.
But there's a part of her that whispers, say no. Start again. There will be other men. It's a small part, but it's there nonetheless, whispering in the back of her mind, reminding her that she knows nothing of him really, of how he is as a man. He might be violent, he might be crude for all the politeness of his letters. He's a Marshal. He's in danger every day. He might put her in danger, however accidentally. He says that he mostly seeks companionship, but he admits that his friend and Deputy, Aman Hariri, also shares his house so surely he must have enough companionship already. And his face! The half of his face that he wears a mask over! (The mask is black in the picture, covering the right half.) How badly might it be disfigured? It must be terribly, if he wears a mask, if he refuses to show it to the world. He says it came from a shotgun blast, so does that mean he has other scars, terrible scars? He can't be infirm if he's a Marshal, but surely there's other damage? He might have a weaker constitution than other men. She might go out there and find herself widowed within the week!
And if his mouth is damaged, or that half of it at any rate, does that affect his ability to kiss? Surely it would feel strange, if not for him certainly for her and if it affects his ability to kiss what does that mean for—for—for the other things? The affairs between a man and a woman? Sorelli has explained to her, in detail, about it all, about how to enjoy it and how to make sure he enjoys it, and alternative strategies to ensure satisfaction outside of the usual way, but it sounds like an ordeal, to do such things with a man, and if he's as badly damaged as all that then it might be even worse.
Then again, he didn't mention other damage, so maybe that's a good sign. And the undamaged half of his face is appealing, she will admit. High cheekbones and a strong jaw and piercing eyes even if it's impossible to tell from the portrait what colour they are, only light.
He's tall, too. Or at least, he looks tall in his dark suit, silver badge pinned to his chest, beside the other man in the picture, who is of a darker complexion, like Sorelli. The Marshal says that he is his friend Mister Hariri who shares his house, and Hariri is broader than the slim Marshal, doesn't look so gaunt though he is a head shorter. He has a good face too and briefly she wonders if he might also be in the market for a wife, and then she dismisses the thought. What does it matter, if he is or not?
But if she accepts, and the Marshal is killed before she gets there? He might already have been killed, and she would be accepting the offer of a dead man, the very possibility of which makes her shiver even as she tries to dismiss it as far-fetched. It is not half as lawless out there as it was. All the papers say so.
If Sorelli says she should accept, she'll accept.
The resolution makes her feel a little easier.
Which gives her an odd sense of comfort when Sorelli (after setting aside the salacious novel that has had her carefully maintaining a still face all morning) reads the letter and examines the photograph, then looks her in the eye with her stern dark gaze and says, "go for it." The stern face breaks and her eyes twinkle with a grin.
"The man's a marshal." And Sorelli's voice has taken on that old knowing tone. "Presumably he takes his spurs off and knows how to bathe. And I doubt if he wears his gun to bed. Though I'm sure you could request the badge."
This last, delivered with a wink, makes Christine choke on her ill-judged mouthful of coffee. She splutters and coughs and Sorelli laughs that tinkling laugh that sets the world shining and then Christine is laughing too, laughing and coughing, the tears trickling down her cheeks.
"I'm sure…you…like that," she gets out between gasps for air and Sorelli snorts.
"You forget I worked in Dodge." Her lips are twitching, threatening to laugh again, as Christine tries not to think about the implications, about who, possibly, her best friend might have taken to bed.
She knows enough of Sorelli to know what it must have been like, and she fights another laugh bubbling up inside her, afraid if she lets it out she might become hysterical.
It's going to really happen. She's going to go to Wyoming. She's going to marry a man with half a face who she's never met. She's going to leave Sorelli, again. For real this time.
And in a moment all the excitement, all the laughter, ebbs away. She's going to really do it. She's going to go.
She'd thought it might feel easier, after last time.
Sorelli's arms come around her, pull her close and Christine leans into her, closes her eyes. "I'll miss you," she whispers, and Sorelli's lips brush her hair.
"I know."