Author's Note: You're in the right place, this is the new chapter! A reviewer offered a wise idea: post a synopsis of previous chapters when there are lengthy delays between updates. (Thanks, WilburScurries!) If anybody about fell over when the new chapter notification arrived, I don't blame you. :guilty face: I was horrified when I realized how . . . long . . . it'd been. :( I haven't abandoned this story. I'm baaaaaack and I'll be updating as regularly as possible. Sam/Lillian are my babies and you better believe I'm gonna finish their story! :wink:
I've been preoccupied completing a new story—"Snowflakes Over Manhattan"—featuring Allie Grant pursuing a newspaper reporter career in 1916 New York City (and maybe finding love along the way w/a certain Scotsman? ;) and an established Nathan/Elizabeth who travel to visit her at Yuletide w/their preemie baby girl. Sam/pregnant Lillian as well as Gabriel/Astrid—all long-married w/children (and did I mention . . . babies? :D )—will feature heavily in latter chapters of "Snowflakes." If you like those couples, you might enjoy a sneak peak into one version of their happily-ever-afters. Expect cozy Christmas vibes, romance for all couples, and new adventures w/a return to Hope Valley at the end. :)
Lately I've been studying the art of writing, paying particular attention to filter and filler words, immersive writing, psychic distance, deep POV. I'm an eternal student—I'll never be done learning, but the process is sure fun! Removing (most) filler/filter words = strengthened writing was a revelation. Gamechanger! I spent 6 hours over two recent days editing Ch. 12—"A Battlefield of Love and Bullets"—to put what I'm learning into practice. 6 hours well spent . . . I hope, LOL! Once you see these things in your writing, it's hard to un-see them. I'll edit other chapters/works as time permits.
Now, that recap (for those who need a refresher). :)
• Nathan and Sam collapsed from wounds at the end of Ch. 11.
• Ch. 12 opened by rewinding 15 minutes, showing in detail (from Lillian's POV) what happened once N-S arrived at the orphanage after racing back from the robbed stagecoach, where Gabriel had—quite unceremoniously—met Astrid Larsen.
• Astrid gave Sam the clue they needed to confirm that the gang who'd robbed her stagecoach was the same gang the recently-escaped-from-Mountie-custody Ch. 4 intruder belonged to, and that the gang was headed in the direction of the orphanage, sending N-S racing back. G was delayed w/Astrid.
• Gang's suspected in the brutal murder of a young woman at another stagecoach holdup. Their identities were unknown to law enforcement due to clever tactics. When S captured the one who tried to rob the orphanage in Ch. 4, the gangster was unmasked; his face exposed to law enforcement, with 'If Anyone Knows the Identity of This Man' wanted posters going up throughout the territory, threatening the gang's fiercely guarded anonymity. Driven by desire to send a public warning to others who might think to do the same, and by revenge on who they saw as primarily responsible—Sam—they headed for the orphanage. S wasn't there, having left w/N-G. But Lillian, Eleanor, the children were.
• Chuck was guarding the orphanage. They knew it was under threat. When N-S tear back on horseback, they find the orphanage under siege by the gang.
• Lillian's brought out as hostage, which brings Sam out from cover, all per his plan w/N. Before N's in place for plan's 2nd step, Lillian's throat is cut. Sam's badly wounded in ensuing fight. Nathan's shot. S drags L to safety behind the cottage, returns to gunfight.
• G arrived shortly before this w/Astrid, riding Apollo.
• Men from town arrive on horseback to defend the orphanage. Joe Moody's wounded, but joins Chuck, Gabriel, and others who take off after the 4 able-bodied gang members who'd fled after a shouted promise to S that they'd "make him pay for this." Of the remaining gang members, one's dead, two captured wounded.
• Chapter closed w/the raven-of-ill-repute meeting its demise, courtesy of bullets from S-N's weapons. #AdiosRaven
. . . And that's where this chapter picks up. OK, onto the actual story now! Enjoy!
— Chapter 13 —
New Realities
IN A TABLEAU of frozen silence, the somber assemblage stared at the downed raven. There was a smell in the air, gunpowder and the metallic tang of blood.
Like an obsidian fog rolling in, a sprawling silence blanketed the property in the aftermath of the creature's plummeting death spiral. It lodged inside Lillian's throat, black and hard as a chunk of coal.
Still flush against Sam's side, his arm was locked tensely around her waist, residually tight after yanking her away from talons and beak. Against the cusp of her shoulder, his rib cage expanded and contracted, and with each breath she thanked God, heart aquiver.
Every rise and fall of his chest meant he was alive. Breathing. Fifteen minutes prior—fifteen of the longest minutes of her life—she'd not been certain she would ever see him draw breath again.
Her stomach revolted, churning with nauseous onset at the memory.
Tiny convulsions shuddered through her in waves, weakening her lower back and quivering her legs. A numbing cold pressed needle-like swaths above her ears.
Her hands—blood-crusted, nails caked with dirt—were lost in fistfuls of Sam's mangled shirt, one curled to the middle of his back, another at the front of his shoulder. Across her palms an icy clamminess seeped, jittering her muscles. The fabric of his shirt strained under her deepening clutch.
Sam looked down and it was hard to find any trace of the cold-eyed fighter he'd been moments before. He was solid against her, eyes liquid-blue. Their color rushed, an ocean tide pulling her under, and the safety promised in them stole around her. A soft whooshing filled her ears and the world turned to muted hollowness. Swirls of warmth flowed in dizzying eddies from feet to temples, wrapping her into a world where only two existed, and from the haze she wondered if he felt it.
His head leaned down toward hers, and his eyes told her he did. Two long breaths the quiet held between them. A slight but deliberate change took over his hold. "It's gone now," he whispered with slow gravity.
It took her a minute. The raven.
"Thank God," she managed. "And you." For everything. Gratitude pulsed, stark, from her eyes.
His mouth made no response. But around her waist, his arm squeezed slightly before loosening—a fraction. "Come," he murmured above her head, breath warm but erratic as it brushed her temple. "Let's get you inside."
Pain creased his mouth as he lifted his head to check on Nathan and she could see the sweat coating his brow. She gave an incoherent whisper of acquiescence, but her compliance had an entirely different purpose. His concern might be for her, but hers was solely for him.
He helped her toward the back door of the orphanage, leading her in a wide swath around the raven's carcass when a numb buzzing whirled and her leg muscles tilted under her. Off-balance, she wobbled into him. He adjusted with a raw exhale, sinew shifting as he took the brunt of her weight.
"S-sorry!" she gasped, stiff with alarm, struggling to right herself. He didn't let her. Seeming to sense her legs weren't sturdy enough on their own, he refused to let her pull away. Rickety, her footsteps slowed, hesitating at the base of the back steps.
The last time she traversed these steps, passed through this doorway, there had been a knife at her throat and a terrorizing masked criminal at her back.
Now there was a supporting arm at her waist, and a man by her side wounded in her defense.
The thought of the children and Eleanor locked in the basement, likely wild with distress, gave her wavering leg the boost it needed. Before her foot landed on the first step, Maggie barreled into the yard at a gallop, sliding off almost before the horse stopped, eyes snapping as she took in the scene—the wounded, the dead, the civilians and law enforcement, the bullets and the blood. Her look stuttered, doubled back to the dead raven, then flew to where they stood.
"Merciful heavens!" Alarm flared across her face and she started forward at a run, weathered medical bag jolting against her legs.
Lillian dropped her hand, clenched against Sam's shoulder, as the nurse rapidly moved aside the strips of his filthy shirt, quickly assessing the damage with a practiced eye. Her face was that of a consummate professional, but Lillian read concern in the tightness of her lips. She gave Lillian's throat a swift exam.
"Right. Inside, the both of you. I'll be in directly after I assess the other wounded out here." Maggie looked at Lillian more closely. Her voice sharpened as she pointed. "Lillian? This blood?"
Bloodstains littered the front of Lillian's dress, jagged flowers whose petals dripped crimson. "Sam's," Lillian breathed weakly. "Mostly."
The nurse nodded briskly, eyes compassionate as she looked between them. "I'll be in quick as I can. Lillian, make sure this man"—she stabbed a finger at Sam, whose mouth ticked up wryly—"gets off his feet. Immediately."
"I'll try," Lillian managed, vocal cords twinging.
"Start disinfecting his wounds, please. The sooner they're cleaned, the better. Infection is an enemy we don't want to contend with."
A wobble was the closest resemblance to a nod Lillian could muster, fingers freshly tangled in Sam's shirt.
"And now we'll stop talking about you as if you're not present, Sam." Maggie's humor was dry, and against Lillian's side, Sam's chest expanded as if trying to laugh, but all that emerged was a soft huff as Maggie strode away, heading to a wounded man propped against the side of the house.
Lillian recognized him as the townsman who had toppled from his saddle as he charged into the yard earlier. He'd looked dead. She was beyond relieved he wasn't. A moment was all Maggie spared checking the wounded townsman before turning her attention to Nathan, busy handcuffing a bleeding gang member who was spitting curses at him.
Nathan coolly ignored the tirade until a vile utterance had him growling a low-toned warning as he wadded a handkerchief into the man's mouth, gagging him into silence. One knee between the outlaw's shoulder blades, Nathan continued working handcuffs around the man's wrists, hampered slightly by his own arm, bloodied across a bared right bicep by a bullet wound.
Behind them lay a second felon, mask a concealing swath across his face, hands and feet bound, and feral anger in the way he strained against his restraints. But wisely, silent.
The third gangster was unmoving—and, quite clearly, very dead.
She should shudder at the sight.
All she felt was a creeping numbness.
A flutter of white at the front of the house caught her eye. The flutter grew into a figure in white that wavered, out of focus in her exhausted vision, before sharpening to reveal a small-boned woman in a disheveled wedding gown, filmy white veil trailing from one hand as she surveyed the destruction before her with quiet eyes.
"Wh-who in the world?" Lillian shook her head to clear it.
"Astrid Larsen." Above her head, Sam's voice was tired. "Finnish. Sole survivor of a stagecoach ambush we ran into leaving here. It's her we owe for getting tipped off so quickly that it was this gang who'd ambushed her coach—and that they were headed in your direction."
His voice grew tight, as though he were reliving that moment. "She mentioned the facial scar of one whose mask she'd torn off in the melee; I recognized it as our escaped intruder. Also, she's our new schoolteacher, come to replace Miss Poe."
Our.
There wasn't any part of that tiny word she didn't like.
But the rest of the story needed to wait. She shook uncontrollably. Cold lanced her, chills vibrated from her ribcage into the bones of her neck. And he was in worse shape than she was.
"More later," she whispered. "Let's go inside. Please, Sam?"
His gaze swept her face and his assent was a little rough as it left his lips, and there was a part of her that wanted to sink to the ground once inside and cling to his existence, feel the warmth of life against her hands, know they had survived this madness.
She could not.
·oOo·
Once inside, she found the cellar door locked shut. Her tremoring hands fumbled unseeingly with the latch as she looked back to where she'd insistently pushed Sam and told him to stay. His hips were braced against the kitchen table in as much of a resting position as she'd been able to convince him into.
The door finally swung open. A blast of cool air hit her face, then . . . nothing. No voices. No movement. Silence greeted her.
"Eleanor?"
Silence.
She thought she heard a soft shuffling sound below and strained, listening.
Slowly, white little faces materialized through the darkness on the steps below and her breath left her, whooshing in weak-kneed relief. "Children!"
Their headlong rush overwhelmed her, the pressure sweeping her across the room and pushing her down onto a kitchen chair.
Then they saw Sam. Lacerated shirtfront in tatters. The wounds. The blood.
Everything stopped.
No one moved. No one spoke.
Eleanor's gasp was loud in the quiet.
Then Christian said, "Mr. Sam?", in a thin, uncertain tone, something injured in his eyes, voice cracking across the last syllable. His gangling frame twitched spastically, the vulnerable boy underneath unmasked.
Sam reached out. His hand, streaks of blood and dirt marring its surface, cradled the back of the boy's head, his touch so potently, gently, reassuring that Lillian blinked suddenly blurred eyes. "All will be well, Christian. You're all safe now."
He seemed steady, and the look he gave Christian and the children mirrored that impression, but beads of pain were again dampening his face. She pushed to her feet and moved through the children, pausing only to lean over and press a shaking kiss to Freddie's hair before she reached Sam's side.
"I'm sorry you were so frightened, children, but the bad men are being rounded up"—her eyes looked up to Sam for confirmation, received it—"and we all need to thank God in our prayers tonight that good men were here to help us today."
"Like Mr. Sam," Freddie's trusting little voice piped up, big brown eyes staring at Sam with something approaching wonder.
Sam's eyes gentled on the little boy even as his breathing seemed to momentarily labor in his chest. "And Mountie Nathan. And Mr. Chuck, and Mr. Joe, Mountie Kinslow, Mr. Henson, Mr. Hoskiss . . . we had a lot of help today."
"Sam, please sit," Lillian whispered. She reached out to him with fingertips delicate, soundlessly pleading.
His mouth softened. Without another word, he lowered himself into a chair.
The children stared at them. "Miss Lillian, your throat . . ." Sofia trailed off, but her hands burrowed in the pockets of her pinafore.
Lillian blanked. The realization made her head whirl. How could something like that melt from her awareness, even momentarily? She fingered her neck gingerly, where only a sting and the stiffness of drying blood against the pads of her fingers reminded her of what had happened. "It's not as bad as it appears, I promise."
One of Sofia's hands reappeared, fidgeted with a seam of fabric. "Truly? It looks . . . there's so much blood."
"Truly," Lillian assured her firmly.
"Is anybody dead?" Vincent's voice was toneless.
Lillian's hands tightened on the back of Sam's chair. He straightened, shoulders slowly settling back to rest against her fingers. The warmth and reassurance of it fluttered her stomach.
Eyes truthful, he spoke in even, realistic tones. "Yes. One of the men who attacked the house was killed."
"It was them or us." Ever sensible, Mary Louise spoke rationally as she came to stand beside Sam's chair.
Vincent didn't say anything, but a fire burned in his steady eyes.
"Vincent," Lillian began impulsively, moved to concern by the look. "Are you . . ."
"I'm alright, Miss Lillian," he said sturdily. But, his back a straight line and lips pressed tight, there was resolve in his eyes as he looked at Sam's holstered pistol, strapped down to his thigh.
Sam noticed. He looked up quickly as hers eyes leapt forward in unspoken communion.
Sam. SAM.
I know. We'll talk with him. He'll be alright, Lillian.
The tension in her shoulders relented. It was a different feeling, this having someone to share burdens with; one she was unused to. And more than that, trusting someone else's involvement with her burdens.
But she liked it. Liked this.
Eleanor had made herself busy in the background and now approached, placing a basin of steaming water on the table. Strips of clean cloth, a bar of soap, and an iodine bottle joined it. Deliberately, she leaned to where Sam sat and cupped his strained face wordlessly in plump, maternal hands. A grave look passed between them.
She took away a hand and reached up to cup one side of Lillian's face where she stood alongside Sam's chair. Eleanor stayed there, a hand to each of their faces, connecting them in a half-moon of stressed adulthood.
No words were spoken.
None were needed.
"I'll take the children to the other room," Eleanor said at length, tenderly. Seconds later, she had done just that, shepherding the subdued children into the fireplace room and closing the connecting doors, though they only slightly hampered visibility, replete as they were with hands-width glass panes.
Curtains were still drawn over the windows scattered around the first floor, and a part of Lillian was glad. The children did not need to see what was outside in the side yard.
She made it to the sink, numbly staring at her hands. There was still blood under her fingernails. Hers or his, it was impossible to tell.
She plunged her hands into soapy water to wash them, but even as she scrubbed them, she knew it would be a long time before she saw her fingernails as clean. Slowly, she raised and lowered her hands in the rinse water, feeling Sam's intense gaze of silence on her back as she let the water slide over her fingers till it ran clear.
Her legs were no more stable on her return, retracing her steps to bend over his seated figure, all without meeting his gaze.
Wobbly, she grasped the cleansing cloth, dipped into the water, and wrung it out, heat pinking her palms before she rubbed a thin smear of soap over the cloth. Trying to control the shaking of her hands, she guardedly peeled back the tattered strips that comprised Sam's shirtfront.
The mutilation sickened her.
Triple wounds slashed across his torso, scoring into flesh, bisecting chest and abdomen. Blood curled from the ragged edges, slowly seeping down the wall of slowly-drying crimson that marked him—a morbid waterfall splashing down his abdomen. Soil and pieces of grass, startlingly green amidst the mangled mess, clung to damaged skin, mementos of his belly crawl dragging her to safety. Flattened against his ribs were the beginnings of a large circular bruise, nasty coloring already mottling through.
Unsteady, she brought the cloth against him, attempting to wipe away blood that soon smeared darkly across the cloth's formerly pristine surface. She watched, eyes blinded, as tiny curls of steam rose where the hot dampness of cloth met bloodied skin.
Her legs wavered sickeningly under her at the unfettered view of his injuries; the bloody splits of flesh, edges of broken skin angry and irritated.
It was all just too much—
Her hand flapped in the air behind her, blindly searching for the chair—anything!—as her vision went spotty and sound began to fade.
Don't let me faint, please don't let me faint. Must . . . be . . . brave.
But she saw nothing except a blurred dance of black-and-white spots.
Sam's leg shot past her skirts, hooked a foot around the leg of the closest chair and yanked it forward, just in time to catch her sagging figure.
"Easy, easy. You're alright, you're safe, Lillian. Breathe. Just breathe for me." Through the buzzing in her ears, his tensely concerned words reached her. His hand covered hers where it lay on his chest, easing the cloth from her fingers. "Allow me?"
Eyes broody with worry, he lowered her wet hand to his knee, holding it there with fingers only just steadier than hers. She dropped her head, clamped her mouth closed, tried to force nose-breathing to slow her heartrate. Bits of vision began to clear. Find something small to focus on . . .
She stared fixedly at their hands on his knee. His blood stained both their hands. Red. Wet.
Smaller. Focus on something smaller.
Her eyes latched onto his fingers, blurry but there. She blinked rapidly. Her lips formed numbers, silently counting his fingers over and over. When she reached ten for the third time, they swam into full focus.
It was the sight of his knuckles that hit like a battering ram.
Raw, broken, bruising.
His knuckles looked how she felt.
Battered.
Those hands of his moved, gathered a clean cloth, swished it into the basin, and bringing it to her throat, began to wash away—with excruciatingly modest care—the rivulets of dried blood that trailed from her wound down onto the high neckline of her shirtwaist. Lillian closed her eyes at the sensation and leaned into his ministrations, feeling something seep through her at his achingly light tending.
Boots scuffled. A masculine throat cleared discreetly.
She nearly jumped. Unthinkingly, she shied closer to Sam as she whipped her head to look in the direction of the noise. Nathan was just inside the back doorway; disheveled and dirt-smeared in his bloodstained white undershirt, hair as rumpled as Sam's.
"Apologies for the interruption." Voice direct, but eyes tactful, he spoke. "Do either of you have something we could use"—he hesitated, dropping his voice with a glance at the child-filled fireplace room—"to cover the deceased? My blanket roll is already in use, I'm afraid."
Lillian made as if to get up, thinking of their blanket supply, but Sam forestalled her, getting to his feet with a wince, masked as quickly as it appeared.
"Don't use your good blankets," he urged her. "I've got an old work blanket out in the cottage."
"That'll do." Nathan was turning away. "You want to tell me where to find it, or . . . ?"
"Or," Sam confirmed. "It'll be quicker if I get it."
"Nathan, your arm—" she began, knowing better than to try stopping Sam. Nathan paused long enough to assure her it wasn't a serious injury—just impactful enough to throw him off-balance to the ground when it hit—before he disappeared outside in Sam's wake.
In the silence that fell, she placed her palms flat against the edge of the table. The need for stabilization was overwhelming. She focused on the in-out function of her lungs. Forced deeper breaths. Gradually her breathing responded, slowed.
Closing her eyes felt impossible.
The images that filled the darkness behind shuttered lids were the things nightmares were made of.
Talons and hungry beaks. Crimson blood. Bullets, their whine lethal, missing her by inches. A wounded timber wolf unmoving on the ground.
She didn't know if the images would ever leave.
Something had shifted inside her regarding the man who lived in her cottage, like gears on a clock finally notching into place. What had been subtle had flared to life. What had been camouflaged was exposed. New realities laid bare by the day's brutal events.
Where do we go from here, Sam? The warmth of possibilities flooded her. Her breathing knotted inside a ribcage gone tight. The only thing her limbs wanted after today was to curl themselves into the solidity of his presence and never let go. Wholly inappropriate. Utterly true.
The outline of the man who so occupied her thoughts filled the doorway, and the tightness in her chest eased.
Maggie's figure was a shadow behind Sam. "Lillian, I thought you were supposed to get this man off his feet?" she chided, but her tone held no sting.
Lillian's eyes clung to him. "Everything . . . went well?" She didn't quite know how else to phrase it.
"It did." Tension framed his eyes as he rubbed his forehead. "Nathan is taking the captured gang members to the jail, then he'll transport the deceased."
She handed a fresh cleansing cloth to Maggie, feeling a flush of pride in the newfound semi-stability of her hands. "How many were there in total?"
"Seven. Three are outside; the other four Constable Kinslow and the other men went after." He seemed to stifle a flinch as Maggie began to clean his wounds, deeply disinfecting. "Lillian? How many came inside the house?"
Her hands moved without thinking, rubbing her forearms in rapid, short movements. "Three. Two were at the back, and the third—" A shiver ratcheted through her.
His eyes slid black as midnight with something she wasn't sure she understood. But all he said was, "It's alright", his voice low and more than a little rough. "We don't have to do this right now."
The next twenty minutes passed in what seemed like flashes. She didn't think she could have handled much more than flashes during the terrible moment when Maggie began to sew shut the slices marring his chest, moving top to bottom, one wound at a time.
Maggie's hands were quick and adept, but the sight of the flashing silver needle and black thread pulling through Sam's flesh was more than Lillian could bear after the trauma already endured. She held his hands—or perhaps it was he that held hers—and the flashes of pain across his sweat-dampened face had her clutching them with a grip whose strength she knew not.
She held out for as long as she could, but after ten minutes, watching what was causing him such pain became unbearable and she transferred her attention to his face, keeping her gaze fixed on his with dazed determination as Maggie finished.
Lillian wasn't sure whose face was more white. His. Or hers.
Finally it was over, and she released the trapped, ragged little breath that felt more like a sob. Tingles of restored blood flow began to prick her palms even as her hands lingered, reluctant to release him. The inside of her lip stung. She'd chewed it raw.
Sam's finger brushed against her palm comfortingly. Tension bled out into that connection point as she soaked up the silent concern offered.
Light-headed, as though floating outside her body, she wondered who was the wounded and who the healer here.
·oOo·
"Maggie." With a discreet finger, Lillian snagged the sleeve of the nurse's serviceable shirtwaist as they stood at the sink, washing blood out of cloths and basin. She lowered her voice so Sam, across the room from them, wouldn't hear. "If Sam's injuries aren't as bad as they could have been, why did he collapse directly after receiving them?"
"I rather think that had more to do with your cow." The other woman's brows, drawn straight when Lillian pulled her aside, relaxed.
Blankly, Lillian stared.
The Englishwoman's gaze sharpened. "He didn't tell you?" The incomprehension on Lillian's face was her answer. "Ah. I see." She sighed and settled the basin to dry. "Sam was hit with a kick from your cow in the melee that occurred, Lillian. Her hoof caught his side. The area is bruising badly and it'll get uglier before it gets better, I'm afraid. It was a stroke of grace it didn't break ribs, which could've punctured his lungs. There's no sign of internal injury or bleeding yet, but to be safe let's go over the symptoms you must be alert for."
Lillian's head swam in a woozy circle. Ribs? Lungs? Internal bleeding!? A head shake from Maggie, with a swift look back at the man in question, tensed her neck as she tried to steady spinning senses.
A frown marred the otherwise unlined surface of Maggie's forehead. "Mind you, I'd like him overnight in the infirmary with the other wounded, but he'd never agree as that would mean leaving you," she stated as candidly as one would affirm the sun rose in the east.
Blood rushed through Lillian's rattled limbs, a warm throb of life, as the man in question shifted on his chair and looked to her.
Maggie coughed, and despite the situation, there was a sliver of laughter as her knowing gaze followed Lillian's eyes. "About those symptoms you should look out for . . . ?"
"Y-yes, of course." Hastily, she attempted to compose herself, fingers pressing into her heated cheeks for an instant before she tried to focus on the cautionary symptom checklist Maggie was cataloguing.
" . . . and if there's any emergency, come and get me at the infirmary," Maggie finished. "It doesn't matter what time; my lamp will be lit throughout the night."
Lillian squeezed her hand with silent gratitude. But she needed to tell Maggie something, something she was fairly certain Maggie was as yet unaware of. She eased her voice, as if to soften the blow by sheer influence of her tone, but the words were inevitably bald as they came out.
"Maggie, I need to tell you . . . " She tightened her grasp on Maggie's fingers. "Joe was hit."
The fingers against hers went cold.
The nurse said not a word, but the smile dropped from her face as it paled, and she fell back a step.
Maggie gave a little cough-choke. "J-Joe was hit?" Her tone became oddly uncertain.
"I don't think it was a bad hit," Lillian tried to reassure. "He was well enough to ride out with Constable Kinslow's group." She knew how it felt to be in the other woman's shoes, having only to look over at Sam to feel it all over again. She tried to smile but it was more pallid than she wanted. "I heard him firmly announce that he could still shoot and be of help to them. That makes me think that despite the bullet wound, he was fully functional."
Maggie's eyes swirled with what Lillian could only imagine were medical realities left unsaid. "Surely, being wounded, he will have the sense to come back soon."
There was a flash of vulnerability, and Lillian's heart ached for this vibrant, intelligent woman whom Joe had been instrumental in making feel welcome in their tiny, remote frontier town so far from her own country and the comforts of home.
"I'm sure he will."
The other woman's eyes lowered. When she looked up, her eyes were clearer, shoulders squared. "Thank you for telling me, Lillian." A hint of her old briskness entered her tone. "Now come here so I can see to your neck, then I'll put the finishing touches on Sam's bandaging."
Maggie's efficient fingers worked smoothly at her neck where the knife wound was beginning to throb softly, and Lillian swallowed, looking around the kitchen with a shudder as she remembered how short a time it had been since she'd been pushed through this very room in terror, a knife to her throat.
How long would it be before the memory faded?
Would it ever?