After we left Father Ryan and Henry Pope to their wine and lies, Kindle hired a hack to take us to his sister’s orphanage. As we left the city behind, the forest thickened and civilization thinned; a bit of trepidation snuck into my breast. I hadn’t realized until that moment how crowds of people had made me feel safe since we’d arrived in Independence a week earlier.
The hack pulled into a driveway bordered on each side by tall oaks that canopied the road in darkness. Wild honeysuckle grew between the trees and filled the air with their sweet scent. A smaller, somewhat overgrown lane broke off from the main one and disappeared into dark woods. In the distance, I heard children’s laughter.
The drive opened up to a semicircle in front of an old plantation house that was pockmarked with bullet holes and on the seedy side of good repair. Girls ranging in ages from babies to young women stopped their play in the side yard and watched the hack stop at the front door. Kindle jumped down. The driver got our bags and placed them on the ground next to Kindle, who paid him.
A woman in a light gray habit walked out the front door and stared at us. Her expression was serene and without question, as if strange people driving up to her house was an everyday occurrence. I took Kindle’s hand and had barely disembarked when the driver slapped the reins against the horses’ backs and the hack lurched forward, and was on its way back to Saint Louis.
With our saddlebags in hand, Kindle climbed the steps. The nun furrowed her brow at Kindle’s eye patch, which made him look more dangerous than he was. If Kindle noticed her expression, he didn’t let on. Instead, he smiled and said, “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize your favorite brother.”
My head jerked to Kindle. His sister is a nun?
Her eyes widened and her face cleared. “Billy?” She threw her arms out and Kindle picked her up in a big hug. “What in heaven’s name happened to your eye?”
Kindle set her down and held her at arm’s length. “Don’t you like it?”
“You look infamous.”
“Precisely the look I was going for.”
“Why are you out of uniform? Are you on leave?”
“Of a sort.”
“Stop being enigmatic.” The nun remembered I was there and stared for a moment. Her eyes flickered to my décolletage and a shadow of disapproval crossed her brow. “Introduce me to your friend.”
Kindle stepped aside and pulled me forward. “Sister Magdalena, this is my wife, Laura Kindle.” The nun’s eyes widened again and she covered her mouth in surprise. “Laura, this is Sister Magdalena, nee Mary Margaret Kindle. My older sister.”
“Oh, Billy.” I stood dumbly while Sister Magdalena embraced me. She held me at arm’s length. “She’s lovely,” she said, though her eyes and expression told of deep-seated reservations.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “He didn’t mention you were a nun.”
Sister Magdalena leaned toward me and whispered, “Billy always did like his surprises. Come inside. I’ll put a pot of tea on.”
We followed Sister Magdalena inside and through the entrance hall. A staircase swept up the left side of the wall and around to the landing above. A young mulatto woman walking through stopped upon seeing us. Her mouth gaped open in astonishment. “Mr. William?”
Kindle looked at the girl in puzzlement, before his expression cleared. “Sophia?”
The girl blushed and dipped her head. “Yes, sir.”
“But, you’re all grown up.”
Sophia smiled, shyly. “I’m almost sixteen.” Her gaze landed on me. I stepped forward and held out my hand.
“I’m Laura. William’s wife.”
The girl was too young and inexperienced to hide the emotions that flickered across her face, but she had enough composure to shake my hand with a strong grip. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Sophia is one of our longest wards,” Mary said. “She will be ready soon to leave us.” The proclamation was welcome on one side, but not the other. “Will you bring us a tray of tea, Sophia?”
“Yes, Sister Magdalena. Sister Mauriela Joseph sent me to find you. She’s in the chapel.”
“Billy, you know where the library is. Excuse me.” She and Sophia walked off on silent feet.
Kindle motioned for me to precede him through a door set under the stairs into an airy room with tall ceilings. One wall was taken up entirely by floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on a vegetable garden in the distance. The other three walls were bookshelves bursting with books. I went to the nearest shelf and ran my hand along the spines.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Kindle said.
“Yes.”
“I tried to read my way through it when I was here.”
“It would take decades.”
“I managed one row of one shelf.”
“I’ll have to see how many I can read while we’re here.”
“You’ll be too busy to read, Slim.”
“Hmm,” I said. “So you’re Catholic and your sister’s a nun?”
“I told you she ran an orphanage.”
“Nuns aren’t the only people who take care of orphans.”
“Does it matter?”
“No. It would have been nice to know. I should have probably told you: I’m not particularly religious.”
He pulled me into a light embrace. “I’m not much of a Catholic. Mary got all of the spirituality in the family.” Though Kindle was paler than the vibrant, healthy cavalry officer I’d met four months earlier, the ride from Saint Louis had put some color back in his cheeks, and diminished the starkness of the bruise under his missing eye.
“You also didn’t tell me you had an admirer here,” I teased.
He rolled his eyes. “Sophia was a sweet-tempered girl and uncommonly intelligent. I started practicing Latin with her. By the time I left, she was correcting me. I’m surprised she’s still here.”
Magdalena breezed into the room, sat behind the desk, and motioned for us to sit. Kindle removed a letter from Father Ryan from his inside pocket and gave it to his sister. Her eyes brightened, which she quickly masked behind indifference. “I suppose Patrick married you?”
“Two hours past,” Kindle said. He settled into his chair, stretching out his bad leg and holding his cane across his lap.
Magdalena raised her eyebrows. “Indeed?” She sat back. “This should be an entertaining story.”
“First, may I ask, what is this place? I gather it’s a home for girls?” I said.
Magdalena nodded. “It began as a home for girls orphaned by the war. Over the years, those girls have aged out. We receive orphans, but the majority of our girls have been arrested for various crimes, indigence mostly, though some for theft and prostitution. They come here instead of prison, and we teach them useful skills so they may support themselves, or find a husband.”
“And, this house?”
“Was a plantation. Most of the family died in the war. The remaining son is an inveterate gambler, and a poor one. He put his birthright up and lost. His loss was the church’s gain. Ah, here’s the tea.”
Sophia carried the tea tray in and set it on the desk in front of Magdalena. She curtsied as if she was about to leave, but stopped. “What happened to your eye?”
“Sophia, that is none of your business. I’m sure you have tasks that need to be completed. Please see to them,” Magdalena said.
Though Sophia hadn’t been able to quickly disguise her surprise and jealousy of me, she was able to extinguish the brief flash of disdain for Sister Magdalena that flashed through her eyes. Sister Magdalena had dismissed Sophia from her notice when she dismissed her from the room and was ignorant of the young woman’s reaction. Sophia caught my eye as she turned to leave, and I arched my eyebrow to let her know I’d seen all. She lifted her chin and left the room silently.
Sister Magdalena poured the tea and handed me my cup. “Impudent young girl.”
“It seems a natural question,” I said.
“But, inappropriate for a servant to ask.” She served Kindle.
“I never understood why she wasn’t adopted,” Kindle said.
“Unfortunately, few families want a mulatto girl, and then only for a servant. Sophia has been placed and returned twice for just such breaches of propriety.” Sister Magdalena sipped her tea as if for fortification and sat back, holding the teacup lightly between her hands. “I’d like to know the answer to her question.”
Kindle told our story in great detail, but with noticeable gaps.
When he told about their brother’s role in our saga, Sister Magdalena paled, reached into her desk drawer, pulled out a flask of whisky, and fortified her tea. She offered me some, which I refused. I glanced at Kindle, expecting him to blanch at not being offered a drink, but he continued with the story as if the flask had never appeared. Sister Magdalena’s hand shook when she lifted her cup.
“John is dead by your hand?” she said, looking directly at Kindle.
“Yes.”
She took a shaky breath and smiled weakly. “Please, continue.”
Kindle elided over the bounty hunters killed during our flight, and downplayed Aénhé’ke’s attack, but the evidence of its violence was clear by the eye patch and the pus that continued to seep from beneath it, which his sister could hardly stop looking at. When Kindle finished, silence fell. A clock ticked on the fireplace mantel and a gray tabby cat jumped onto Sister Magdalena’s lap, startling me, but comforting our hostess.
“You told Pat everything?”
Kindle nodded. “I doubt he would have married us so quickly if I hadn’t.”
“No.” She turned her attention to me. “Did you kill the man in New York City?”
“Mary!” Kindle said. “Of course she didn’t.”
Sister Magdalena didn’t acknowledge her brother’s exclamation of my innocence, but waited for my response.
“It’s fine, William. If she’s going to shelter us—me—she has to ask. The answer is no. I didn’t kill George Langton.”
“Why did you run?”
“I thought it was the right decision at the time. It was a bold, somewhat impulsive decision, I grant you. But, the specter of the noose was too strong to deny.”
“And what you’ve been through since. I cannot imagine.”
“Please, do not try. I know how it must seem, knowing Kindle for such a short period of time. Knowing we would marry at the end of my journey is, truthfully, the one thought that got me through.”
One corner of Sister Magdalena’s mouth quirked up. “Wait until you live with him for a while.”
“If I didn’t know I was your favorite, I would say you’re not very charitable,” Kindle said.
“He snores like a locomotive.”
I feigned surprise. “Does he? I don’t suppose you have wax I can shove in my ears?”
“I do, as a matter of fact, in the kitchen. You are welcome to go ask the cooks to help you. I would like to speak with Billy alone, for one moment.”
“Of course,” I said easily, though I was taken aback. I stood and put the cups on the tray. “Let me take this on my way.”
“No need,” Sister Magdalena said. “Sophia will clean it up.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
I lifted the tray and shot Kindle a look when I turned my back to his sister. His face remained placid, but the corner of his good eye twitched, slightly. I wondered if Sister Magdalena was going to lecture her little brother. Or ask him for more details about John Kindle’s death. As I closed the door behind me, I hoped it wasn’t the latter.
Sophia stood at the stove, absently stirring something in a pot and staring out the window.
“Hello,” I said.
She jumped, turned, and hurried to take the tray. “Let me, ma’am.”
“I’ve got it.” I placed it on the counter next to the sink and gazed around the kitchen until they fell on what I needed. I smiled at the young woman. “My husband speaks highly of you.”
She blushed, prettily, and dropped her hazel eyes to the floor. It was a coquettish mannerism which certain men would read as purposefully alluring. I suspected Sophia had no notion of her natural attraction, or the effect the mannerism would have on people.
“He was kind to me.”
Emotion swelled within me. Of course Kindle would be kind to children. I moved close to Sophia and dropped my voice. “Would you like to know how Kindle lost his eye?”
“Yes.”
“You cannot tell anyone you know. If you do, Sister Magdalena will find out.”
The same flash of disdain shot through her eyes. “I can keep a secret.”
The girl’s skin was flawless, her lips full and pink, her eyes full of intelligence and wariness. “An Indian woman cut his eye out in retribution for the death of her son.”
Sophia’s eyes widened to an alarming degree, then narrowed as quickly. “You’re making that up.”
She nodded and I reached into the neck of my shirt and pulled out the small leather pouch hung around my neck. Sophia reached out and touched it in awe. “What is it?”
“A medicine bag. A Cheyenne chief gave it to me after a vision I had.”
“An Indian? But, one took Mr. William’s eye.”
“I was given this before.” When Sophia looked skeptical, I said, “They’re a complicated people. Just as white men are.”
She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “White people aren’t that complicated to me.”
“No?”
She seemed to consider for a moment before dropping the subject and saying, “What’s inside?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid it will lose its medicine if I do.”
“Medicine? You mean like quinine?”
“No.” I chuckled. “It’s spiritual medicine. It is supposed to protect me from evil spirits.”
Sister Magdalena called out for Sophia from the other room. “Can one protect me from nuns?”
I laughed, and tucked the pouch into my shirt. “I don’t know.” I grasped Sophia’s arm as she started to leave. “Remember, this and what happened to William is our secret.” The girl nodded and left.
I walked to the pantry, picked up a small, corked bottle of oil, and slipped it into the pocket of my skirt.
“Do you realize it’s been almost a week since either of us have been stabbed, shot, beaten, or abused?”
I lay on my side next to Kindle, our naked legs entwined, my head pillowed on his bare chest. I traced the scar on Kindle’s thigh with my finger and lightly brushed past the hair around his groin before repeating the circuit.
Since my cleansing in the sweat lodge we had regained the connection we found the first time we lay together, much to our great relief. The events on the Canadian and in Palo Duro now seemed like they had happened to another person, a woman only slightly connected with the one who lay in a secluded groundskeeper’s cabin for a Catholic orphanage in the Missouri woods. This disconnection made it easier to push away the memories sparked at random by a scent or a sound, but at times physical touch was still a struggle. What Kindle thought of as me being sexually adventurous was really my attempt to not be pinned beneath him. As a result, our lovemaking was passionate and, at times, playful. It was so different from what had happened to me it was easy to separate one act from the other and allow myself to be lost in the pleasure it gave me.
I lifted my head from Kindle’s chest. His eye was closed. “Kindle, are you asleep?”
“Hmm?”
I pushed against his chest. “Wake up.”
He opened his eye. “Why?”
“Because I want to talk.”
He inhaled and pulled me closer. Rubbing his hand up and down my arm, he closed his eye. “You talk. I’ll listen.”
“Why didn’t you tell Mary I killed your brother?”
“I wanted her to like you.”
“She was close to him?”
“No, she hated him as much as I did. But, she would never be able to understand a woman killing a man.”
“What did she talk to you about when I left?”
“Nothing important. Sibling stuff.”
“You’re lying to me.”
His eye opened and fixed on me. “No, I am not.”
“I should go see her.”
“Why?”
“Because we haven’t left this room in three days. It’s unseemly.”
“There’s nothing unseemly about newlyweds being alone.”
“But, she’s a nun. She’s probably judging us.”
“Mary isn’t judging us.”
“How would I know? I didn’t know until three days ago your sister was a nun.”
I disentangled myself from Kindle, rose, and walked to the dresser. I brushed my hair and watched him in the mirror, felt the almost ever-present tug of desire at the sight of him. He put an arm behind his head.
“You’re angry.”
“Not angry, precisely. It feels as if there are large chunks of your past you haven’t told me about.”
“There are. As there are large chunks of your past you haven’t told me.”
“Nothing interesting, I assure you.”
“The London scandal?”
I set the hairbrush down. “It seems so ridiculous now. I went on a carriage ride unchaperoned.”
“That was the scandal?”
“He was a rogue, and I had done very little to conform to the ladylike activities Aunt Emily wanted me to perform. I was more interested in attending talks by Florence Nightingale and reading Charles Darwin. That is the extent of my mysteries. Now you know all. Do I know all about you?”
“No. It isn’t as if we’ve had time for those types of conversations. We’ve been too busy trying to survive. We will spend the rest of our lives telling each other stories.”
“Let’s start now.”
“Okay.”
“Tell me about the woman you brought to meet your sister before me.”
Kindle paused. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t be dense, Kindle. You saw the expression on Mary’s face when you introduced me. Who did she think I was?” I’d thought more about Mary Kindle’s initial expression at the sight of me than I should have.
“I didn’t see the expression on her face. I remember the way she embraced you and said you were lovely. Which you are. Come back to bed.”
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Which you’ve been doing nonstop for three days.”
“You haven’t complained before.”
“I am not complaining now. But, I do wonder why you’re so interested in not talking.”
Kindle laughed. “I know of no man alive who would rather talk than fuck.”
“Kindle!”
“It’s true.”
I picked up my thin gown from the floor and put it on before cracking open the door. No one in sight, but a tray of fruit and a carafe of wine sat next to the door. I picked it up and shut the door.
“I suppose she isn’t judging us.”
“She’s taking care of her baby brother.”
“There’s nothing baby about you.” I placed the tray on the dresser and poured two glasses of wine. “Do you think this is sacramental wine?” I teased, and handed it to Kindle.
He drank. “It’s watered-down wine.”
“Are you committing some sort of sin drinking a nun’s wine while stark naked and smelling of sex?”
“All sins are equal in the eyes of God.”
“Hmm.” I made no secret of letting my gaze roam over Kindle from head to toe. I rubbed my hand across his chest, my fingers leaving lines in his dark chest hair like furrows in a plowed field. His upper arms were hairless and white, his forearms muscular, brown, and covered with dark hair. I stood and returned to the dresser.
“Watered-down wine and she didn’t offer you whisky when we arrived.” I stared at him in the mirror. “Why is that?”
“Mary was an abolitionist.”
“Like your wife.”
“Mary introduced me to Victoria, as a matter of fact. When the slaves were free Mary was a crusader looking for a cause.”
“Seems like that was going around at the time.” I pulled my gown over my head and let it fall to the floor in a heap of white cotton. “Mary chose temperance?”
“And orphans. Come back to bed.”
“I thought we were talking.”
“You cannot stand in front of me like that and expect conversation.” I felt a tug of pride at his obvious arousal, and so soon after a long, energetic bout of lovemaking.
I picked up the small bottle of oil I’d filched from the kitchen, sprinkled a couple of drops in my palm, and rubbed my hands together. I crooked my finger at him.
Kindle rose from the bed and stopped before me. We stared at each other while I stroked him with my oiled hands. His moan vibrated through his body. I turned and leaned forward on the dresser. He settled his hands on my hips, pulled me to him. In the mirror, I watched him close his eyes and smile in satisfaction.
“Are you going to tell me where you learned this?”
“I didn’t think you wanted to talk.”
His gaze met mine as he pulled away so I would feel the void he left.
“You’re a tease, William Kindle.”
“As are you.” I pushed back against him, but he moved away. “Tell me.”
“When I opened my practice in New York, only whores would let me treat them. I learned quite a lot.”
He gripped my hips almost painfully and pulled me back against him hard. I gasped with pleasure. “So it would seem.”
“Though I never thought I’d get to use my knowledge.”
“Is there more?”
I grinned. “You have no idea.”