His widow had a narrow waist beneath her loose-fitting dress, an undeniable length of legs hidden under those flapping skirts, full breasts that swelled from a narrow sweep of ribs.
Frank Wynne had bedded that woman, on this bed.
Rance heard his teeth click together, and he tore his gaze from the four-poster, forcing himself to his feet. He steeled himself against the inevitable pitching of the floor beneath his feet, gripped one of those fat mahogany bedposts, only to find himself staring at Frank Wynne, a dapper, sleekly combed Frank Wynne, framed in gilt and poised in loving memory upon a dressing table directly across the room. There he sat, Frank Wynne, amid several crystal flacons and an ivory-handled hairbrush, all cushy and cared-for upon a delicate sweep of white lace. A most precious spot for a departed husband to be revered from the stool set before that dressing table. A stool where his wife no doubt perched every night to brush all that curling gold hair.
And then Rance met with his reflection in the dressing table mirror. Big and dark, unshaven and smelling like his horse. He didn’t belong here, in this room, in this house. He’d killed the woman’s husband, left the boy fatherless.
Why the hell had he come here?
“You’re bigger than my pa was.”
The boy peered up at him through his bangs. Rance shifted his teeth and released his grip upon the bedpost. Slowly he moved across the room and through the open doorway. He balled his fists, and pain shot through his left arm. He entered a short, dark hall, then ducked into a small parlor when the place started spiraling about him. He took two steps toward the curved settee as Christian scooted around him.
“You can’t go in there,” the boy said, his chin tilted with its characteristic stubbornness. “Mama doesn’t let nobody in the parlor. Not even Reverend Halsey.”
And certainly not a man who smelled like a horse. Rance leaned his good shoulder against the door jamb and willed the spinning to stop. No, he wouldn’t want to disturb her parlor, with its precisely pleated white curtains hanging at the windows, the creamy satin settee and nearby overstuffed armchair. A soft, womanly room. The furnishings were sparse, the knickknacks few, but each had its proper, exact location. And the room bore not a trace of dust, was laced instead with a fleeting lemony scent. Somehow he’d expected the house to be as gray and bleak and dry within as it was from without, not cool and fragrant, smelling of bleach and lye soap, of sunlight and roses, of woman.
Rance regarded tiny, grimy Christian. “Where’s the door?”
Christian jabbed a finger toward the hall behind Rance. “In the kitchen.”
Rance turned about and again ducked into the shadowy hall. Damned ceilings were too low. The whole damned house was too clean, too damned small. He felt like a murderous trespasser. He had to get the hell out of here. He needed air.
Again Christian squeezed past Rance, reaching the sagging back door with a boastful half smile, as if he’d just won a most prestigious race. Yet with every step Rance took toward him, the grin faded beneath a cloud of suspicion descending over that dirt-smudged face. The boy seemed to be peculiarly fascinated with Rance’s bare chest, the bandaged shoulder.
Rance’s boots scraped against white floorboards, and he jarred a table set far too close to the door for a man to navigate with any ease.
“Look what you did,” Christian said, shoving a finger at the water sloshing out of a delicate vase of lavender flowers resting in the center of that table. “You got Mama’s doily wet. And you have to take off your shoes. See? The floor’s all dirty. My mama will be mad at you.”
“Yet another reason,” Rance muttered, twisting his way around the table and chairs. He paused in the sagging door frame, one boot poised upon the stoop. From a good four feet below him, the boy leveled a challenging look at him, which Rance returned before shoving the door wide and lurching through it.
He had to pause beneath all that sun and dusty heat that suddenly filled his lungs and set the blood pounding in his temples. His shirttails flapped in the hot breeze, yet perspiration instantly dotted his forehead and wove thick rivulets down his chest. His shoulder throbbed. Damned woman. She’d nearly killed him.
The boy materialized before him, squinting up at him, one thin arm jabbing at the ground. “Mr. Stark, your knife.”
Rance glanced at the black handle protruding from the dead rattler lying at Christian’s feet. His throat was parched, closing up on him, and the sweat burned his eyes. “Don’t touch it.”
The boy thrust out his lower lip, blond brows diving indignantly over his nose. “I didn’t.”
Rance forced his gaze about. “Where’s your well?”
Christian lingered over that snake, over that knife, and Rance thought he was weighing the risks of disobeying. And then he darted past Rance with such a flourish that he nearly toppled him in the dust. Rance made it to the well and, without hesitation, plunged his head into a full bucket of cool water resting upon the stone ledge. He surfaced, eyes closed, mouth opened to retrieve the water that spilled down his face. The water plunged down his dry throat and washed over his chest and into his waistband. A growl tremored through him, and again he dunked his head, surfacing to sputter and spew water with a vigorous shake of his head. Another growl rumbled through his lungs. That done, he leaned his elbows on the well’s edge and hung his head, listening to the droplets plopping deep into the well and the fading of the blood rushing in his ears. He forced the stones into focus. They blurred, then focused again.
He listened to the lonely creak of the wooden windmill.
There. Now he could ride. He’d be fine. Just fine. He’d been shot before, dammit, and he’d survived, though he vaguely remembered he’d found recuperating a hell of a lot more appealing than mounting his damned horse and galloping off into the barren prairie, particularly when recuperation meant a week spent beneath the gentle ministrations of some soft and eager little saloon gal.
His horse. Where the hell had he left his horse? Why couldn’t he remember?
He gripped the ledge and forced himself upright, then turned. Frank Wynne’s wife stood not two paces from him, an empty bucket in one hand. But no rifle.
A peculiar tightening filled his chest as the wind whipped her hair about her face and her eyes darkened to a deep blue. He wondered if she might try to kill him again. One hit on the head with that bucket could do it.
“Mr. Stark, you should be lying down.” Her gaze darted to Christian and narrowed.
“I didn’t do anything, Mama. He woke up.”
“You don’t look well, Mr. Stark.” He wished she’d stop calling him that. And looking at him like that, as though she feared he might topple into the dust at any moment. She seemed about to move a step nearer, and he gripped the ledge behind him.
“Ma’am, my horse. And I’ll be going.”
She blinked at him and dropped the bucket. “I rather think you won’t be going at this moment, Mr. Stark. You’re not fit to sit a horse. Your eyes are glassy. Your face is white as death, and your wound...” Her full lips compressed, then parted, and Rance was reminded of a pink rose in full bloom. “It’s beginning to bleed through the bandage. You might die out there on the hot prairie, and I would then be a murderess.”
“You didn’t seem to give that much thought, ma’am, when you shot me.”
“I thought you meant to harm my son, sir. I would gladly kill anyone with such a purpose.”