Nebo looked over at Rosie. ‘She’d have found Zeke, for sure, by now.’ He tossed the remains of his tea into the small campfire. The sun overhead wasn’t as warm as it had been the day before, but intermittent cloud cover brought humidity. Sheens of perspiration had appeared on them both and he wiped a hand down his neck.
He stared at her, wondering if she’d regretted last night. He hoped not. But what did he know of ladies? She was real keen—it had been her idea. Shit, maybe he shouldn’t have … but what fella wouldn’t have? He corrected himself. A fella who knew better. Wait a minute. Hadn’t he said as much? That he knew better, and that he’d court her and— But then she got herself all breathless and urgent, and then somehow they were lying down beside each other and she was sidling closer to him, talkin’ of not wasting any more time. Next thing, a few kisses, and she was taking his hand, lifting her skirt—
‘She’s very capable, is Elsa,’ Rosie replied, and sipped from her cup.
‘Those directions were good. She wouldna got lost.’ He sat on a log close to where she sat.
He rubbed his hands on his pants. Maybe he shouldna done it with her, long after dark last night. Long after he could hear Glen and Tillie’s snores chorusing. After he could no longer hear Fred and Alice’s murmurs. He’d heard nothing from Wally and Sal. They’d all moved their camps a little further away to let them cry in peace. Poor bastard, Wal; he didn’t know what to do.
Nebo had been lying on his swag, hands behind his head, star gazing but not seeing stars, when Rosie had crept over to him, sayin’ she needed to be close after the dead babe an’ all, an’ poor Sal.
When he’d woken just before dawn, she was back under her cart and had appeared to be asleep. ‘More tea?’ he asked her now.
She shook her head. ‘No.’
He leaned towards her, keeping his voice low. ‘Rosie, I meant what I said last night. I’m very much taken with you, and I don’t want to think we made a mistake.’
‘Was no mistake, Mr Jones,’ she said and her face coloured red as if a bloom had opened on her cheeks.
That gladdened him. ‘I’m happy you think that. I also think you can call me Nebo.’
There was silence between them for a few moments, then she spoke. ‘It was no mistake because I wanted to know … I wanted to feel—’ She stopped again, glanced at him and shifted her shoulders. ‘Oh, I was being selfish, that’s all, and because of what I wanted, I let Elsa go by herself.’ Rosie checked where the others were, as if to be sure they wouldn’t hear her. ‘And then with Elsa gone, and the way you were looking at me,’ she said, glancing at him again. ‘I—wanted to see if things would be different, other than what I’d known before.’
She stopped, which was good. He was having trouble trying to take it all in. There were a lot of words.
She went on, ‘To be with my husband, in the marital bed, was always a duty to be endured.’ Her face got even redder.
He didn’t think she’d been enduring duty last night.
When she’d first told him that she was married, Nebo hadn’t been overly concerned. A smart man would’ve guessed she’d been married—she was of an age. She could have been a widow. He’d listened to her reasons for leaving this Frank fella—it had all come out in a jumbled rush, and his head hurt trying to keep up. It irked him that Frank had not appreciated a good wife. Nebo had been looking for a woman to make his wife, and if Rosie was to be that woman, he would take her as she was, married to another or not, and be good to her. He looked over to Glen and Tillie. She was laughing in his arms, happy, carefree, married to someone else, not Glen. It didn’t matter to them. Why should it matter to him?
‘So you are under no obligation to me.’ She twisted her ring finger, but there was no ring on it, only a pale mark where one might have been.
‘I’d like to be.’ Sitting beside her on the sturdy bench seat that Fred and Alice had put together, he bumped her shoulder very slightly. ‘We’ve just taken a shortcut in the courtship; moved to a more interesting stage.’ He noted the beet-red flush was still in her cheeks.
Looking away, she said, ‘You are a man without prospects, and I am now well and truly a fallen woman.’
He thought for a moment. He wanted to hear her sigh again, like she had last night. He wanted to hear her voice in his ear, urging him harder and deeper. ‘Nobody but you and I need know any of our private business. Ever.’
‘I would need to survive.’
‘I’ll look after you. Besides, I do have prospects. I can go see my brothers, work for them. They each have small farms.’ He hadn’t told her yet why he hadn’t already done so. He hadn’t said that he was a petty thief, a layabout, jealous of one brother and ignored by the other. Well, today was the day he would change his ways. He could do it. He hadn’t held up the coach, he hadn’t done that last job even though it had been the intention. His little band was breaking up, so he had the opportunity now to … try to make good.
‘People would talk if we lived together.’
Again, he took his time before he spoke. ‘Nebo Jones has been gone from high society for years.’
A ghost of a smile was on that mouth of hers. ‘Would your family accept me?’
He laid a hand over hers yet when she made no reaction, he took it away. ‘I’m the only one who needs to accept you.’
‘I can’t have children,’ she blurted.
He shrugged. ‘Zeke has children. The way I feel right now, it doesn’t matter to me that you can’t have any.’ How—why he felt so strongly, he didn’t know. He’d had women before, women he’d taken when they offered, women he’d let go, or who’d let him go. None had affected him like this woman had, and it had been real fast.
She reached for his hand and her fingers squeezed his. ‘It’s very quick, this courtship,’ she whispered.
‘We were in a hurry,’ he said, matching her whisper. The thought of her lush breast in his hand, her taut nipple in his mouth, and the warmth and wet between her legs … The surprised little sigh that escaped her as he slipped in there to stroke and push, and touch and own.
‘It was never like that for me before,’ she said and ducked her head. ‘Never.’ She took a deep sigh. ‘And I am so lewd to be discussing these things with a man, in the daylight, in the open air.’
‘In that case, I’m impatient for the night.’
She shook her head, a worried laugh escaping. ‘Will we get along, do you think? I’ve been a wife before, and I don’t—’
‘But you’ve not had a husband like me before.’
Rosie looked down at their hands. ‘Elsa and I, we came looking for your brother, so that we could learn more about what happened to our George. And then we were to have our father’s will read. Though now that I’ve left my husband, I don’t know what that would mean for me. Or for Elsa.’ She glanced at him.
Nebo shut up. Was she asking him to take on the sister as well? He moved on the seat, uncomfortable. ‘I can’t have—’
‘She is all I’ve got to rely on,’ Rosie went on.
Didn’t seem to matter when you let her go yesterday. Nebo felt a prickle of shame. He didn’t want Rosie to lose her sister, but nor did he want to look after the sister.
‘Until we find what else George had with him.’
Nebo frowned at that. ‘The locket, a few buttons.’
‘Nothing else?’ Rosie was very intent.
‘Not that I saw. Zeke has everything I found.’ Then he remembered a look that passed between the sisters yesterday. ‘What else is there?’
‘I’m trusting you, so you better tell me the truth. It was a tin of sovereigns. Thirty sovereigns, perhaps more.’ Rosie stared at him.
Shit. Thirty sovereigns. ‘There was no tin.’
‘If we find that tin, it’s half Elsa’s and half mine. That way Elsa could live independently, to start, anyway. We could live without the farm, and I could live without—anything from my old life.’
‘What farm?’
‘The farm we had back near Robe. It would be in my father’s will and Elsa has it with her. So as soon as we find the tin, we can hire a solicitor and find out who administers. If I’m not with my husband any longer, it won’t matter, will it?’
He shook his head slowly. Thirty sovereigns. He let that swirl about in his head; he needed a plan. The petty thief was at work. He looked at Rosie, couldn’t read her. No, he couldn’t let this layabout Nebo sneak back in.
He squeezed Rosie’s hand again. ‘It won’t matter, don’t you worry,’ he said, although it didn’t sound like his voice. ‘We’ll find a way around things.’ He wanted to believe his words, he did, but unease settled in his gut, oily, something akin to fear. He didn’t know what he’d just agreed to. Even to his own ears, it had sounded like it had come from someone else—from someone who was a grown-up.