“Cathy,” the Sergeant said when he opened the door of his quarters late that night. It was long after lights out. I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was thick with sleep. He caught himself and demanded, “Private?” loud enough that anyone passing in the night could hear.
I told him straight out, “They mean to kill you.”
He pulled me into the dark room and shut the door. He wore only his muslin drawers. His shoulders and chest were bare. Still honoring his promise, he quickly stepped away from me.
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard Carter and Grundy in the stables. Sheridan has ordered Drewbott to go after the renegades. Drewbott, he’s going to kill you while we’re in the field.”
“Drewbott?” he scoffed. “That pansy? I’d half respect him if he had the sand for such a thing.”
“Listen to me. I’m serious. Drewbott already requested you be transferred.”
“Transfer, huh?” the Sergeant asked with a casualness that worried me.
“The man hates you. He’s eaten up with it.” My words seemed to make no impression on him and my voice went shrill as I warned him again, “He will kill you if he gets the chance.”
This caused a little smile to play across his lips and I had to ask what on earth was wrong with him.
“Nothing,” he answered. “I just like hearing your real voice. Especially like this. Full of emotion and…” He paused before adding, “And worry. You’re worried about me.” He sounded like he barely believed it possible.
“I am. Of course, I am. Every second of every day.”
The smile he gave me had a sweetness to it I hadn’t seen before. “Don’t worry, Cathy, Ednar Drewbott is not what’s going to put me in my grave.”
We stood in silence. I’d said my piece. The moment came for me to leave, to hold to the promise that I’d forced him to make, but it passed and I did not turn from him.
“You should leave,” he said. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t leave. Couldn’t not touch him. Wager. The forbidden name hummed through me. My head grew heavier until, of its own accord, it leaned over and came to rest on Wager’s warm, bare shoulder. I pressed my lips against his neck and breathed in his scent like I hadn’t had air for all these past weeks.
“Cathy?” he said, making my name into a question.
“Wager,” I said, giving him my answer.
Dim light from the new-risen waxing crescent moon streamed in through the window. He took off my jacket and shirt, angled me so that the light fell across my face, untucked the end of the binding that held it in place and unwound the strips of fabric. Gently, he peeled the long loops away, gathering them up in his free hand like a wilted bouquet then let the loops uncoil and fall to the floor. Moonlight dappled my throat, my shoulders. As soon as my scars were bared, Wager licked each pearl like it was a gumdrop. He lapped at my bare shoulders, throat, breasts as though he could lick the silver glow from my skin.
He laid me upon his bed. We faced each other, the eagerness of his body touching mine. His hands rounded over my cheeks, shoulders, hips. I was grateful to the ones who’d taught him to love so tenderly. Beneath his touch, I felt small and dainty and feminine.
“Did you think of me?” he asked, his need to talk winning over the other need. He wasn’t the one Mama had warned me about, the man, any man, all men, who’d do me wrong. She’d never met his like. Neither had Clemmie. Nor, maybe, had any other woman ever except me.
“Wager, I never stop thinking of you.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” he asked, his finger tracing the curl of my ear.
“I hope so,” I answered. “I told you the biggest one I will ever have.”
“I was drawn to you, from the start. I didn’t know why. I sure didn’t want to be. Some part of me, though, knew. Knew you were a woman. Knew you were the woman who’d saved me.”
“Didn’t stop you from trying to run me off, telling me I was a ‘divisive element’?” Small laughs puffed between us.
“You were. You are. But I still favored you over the others, didn’t I? Found reasons to be alone with you. It worried me. Wanting to be alone with a man. But it was there. Right from the start.”
“Wager, I loved you from the moment I saw your bandaged face in the back of that wagon. It wasn’t peeling away those bindings made me a woman, it was you.”
He didn’t say the words back, didn’t say he loved me. But I hadn’t expected he would.