“Mr. Ryder?” She set Billy down but kept the musket. “Mr. Ryder, are you here?”
She swung the door shut, and gasped when she found him there on the other side, braced against the window’s frame. He was sickly pale and his face glistened with sweat, but the rifle in his hands never wavered as he kept it trained on the last dark speck that was Alec’s retreating figure.
“I would not have let him hurt you,” he said softly when he looked at her at last. “Not you, not the boy. Not for all the world.”
“That—that would not have been necessary,” stammered Rachel, her heart thumping almost painfully within her breast. She didn’t doubt for an instant that he would have killed Alec if she’d struggled or screamed for help, and it terrified her to think of how unwittingly she’d risked Alec’s life. “My husband’s brother can be a bully, true, but nothing more.”
“Nothing?” Slowly the man lowered the rifle, his unflinching gaze never breaking with Rachel’s. “That wasn’t how it appeared to me.”
“Appearances aren’t always what they seem,” she said quickly, too quickly. In all the foolish fantasies she’d woven about this man to pass the hours at his bedside, she’d never imagined him with this kind of deadly, intense calm that came from deep within. “I don’t believe Alec would ever do either Billy or me any real harm.”
“No, Mama, he would hurt us! You said!” piped up Billy indignantly. “Uncle Alec’d hurt you an’ me an’—an’ him! You said!”
“Hush, Billy, no one’s going to hurt anybody,” scolded Rachel, secretly thankful to have a reason to look away from the man near the window. Now, she thought with dismay, if she could only find one for Billy, as well; she’d never seen his face shine with such endless admiration and awe as it did now for this wonderful new champion. She hung the musket back on its pegs and pulled down the narrow ladder to the loft. “You’ve had adventure enough for one day. Now please take Blackie upstairs and play there until supper.”
Billy ducked his chin stubbornly. “Don’t have stairs.”
Rachel sighed with exasperation. “Oh, I know, it’s only a ladder, not a staircase, but regardless I want you up there directly.”
The boy’s chin sank lower, into open rebellion. “Don’t wanna go. Wanna stay here.” He pointed at the man near the window. “With him.”
“Billy,” said Rachel sternly, desperate to forestall the tantrum she felt sure was brewing. “Please go to the loft so I can speak to Mr. Ryder.”
“Don’t wanna go, Mama!” The little boy’s voice shrilled higher, almost to a wail. “Don’t wanna!”
“Of course you don’t, lad,” said the man softly, so softly that Billy immediately stopped arguing so he could hear. “Why should you want to go up there when everything that’s interesting is down here?”
Billy’s brow stayed furrowed, unconvinced, and for extra emphasis he stamped his moccasined foot. “Don’t wanna.”
“Billy Lindsey!” Mortified by the child’s behavior, Rachel took a step forward to haul him bodily up the ladder before he did anything worse.
But before she could the man bent down on one knee, leaning heavily on the rifle, to be closer to Billy’s level. “You don’t want to go, Billy, and I can’t say I blame you. Well and good. But there’s plenty of things in this life that we must do that we don’t want to. While your pa’s away, you’re the man here, aren’t you?”
Miraculously the stubbornness vanished from Billy’s face, replaced by the same unabashed worship that Rachel had noticed earlier. “I’m a big boy,” he announced proudly. “I’m Mama’s best boy, an’ I help her!”
“I reckoned you are,” said the man, nodding wisely as if he’d expected nothing less. “That’s why you won’t want to hurt her the way your uncle Alec tried to.”
“Not Mama!” Anxiously Billy glanced at Rachel. “I’ll never hurt her!”
“You’re hurting her now,” said the man mildly. “Hurting her by being so thickheaded about going to the loft the way she asked. She wants to be proud of you, but instead you’re making her sad and shamed.”
Without stopping to answer, Billy raced to the table to grab his toy horse, threw his arms around Rachel’s knees for a moment of reassurance and apology, then clambered up the ladder to the loft overhead, disappearing with one final grin over his shoulder for the man who’d explained everything so neatly.
“You have a way with him, Mr. Ryder,” said Rachel grudgingly, her arms folded tightly over her chest. She told herself again that she didn’t wish to see Billy become too attached to his new hero, especially since he had a price on his head. But if she was honest with herself she knew she was also a bit jealous of how swiftly Billy had listened to someone other than her. “Though as I told you before, I’d rather you had as little to do with Billy as you can.”
He sighed, glancing up the ladder to where the boy had disappeared. “By my lights, you needed a bit of help.”
Rachel bristled. “I assure you Billy’s not usually so ill-mannered.”
“Ill-mannered or high-spirited, it’s all the same to mamas, isn’t it?” he said. “I was a boy once myself, and it doesn’t take too much to remember how it was.”
He was still leaning on his rifle, kneeling at her feet in a way that she found oddly unsettling. Because she had taken his own shirt to clean and mend, he was wearing an old shirt of William’s, the too-short sleeves turned up over his thick-boned wrists, and that disconcerted her, too. The shirt belonged to her husband, she reminded herself fiercely, yet still she noticed how the worn cambric strained to cover the unfamiliar shoulders beneath it, and tried not to look at the triangle of dark, curling hair framed by the shirt’s open throat.
“You haven’t been a boy for a good long time,” she said, and immediately flushed guiltily, realizing too late how she’d as much as confessed her indecent observations. Lord, how bold would the man think she was? “That is, Mr. Ryder, I meant there’s a world of difference between you and Billy.”
He nodded, saying nothing more. Beneath the ragged growth of beard he might have been smiling up at her, and at her expense, too.
“You don’t have to stay there on the floor, you know,” she said stiffly, her cheeks still on fire. “You can stand now.”
“I’m not sure I can.” What she’d feared was a smile turned into more of a grimace as he tried to push himself back up to his feet. “Seems I’m fit for little more than impressing boys.”
“Oh—oh!” Rachel hurried to his side, slipping her shoulder beneath his arm to help guide him across the room to the bed, then darted back to bring him a cup of water.
“How thoughtless I’ve been!” she said contritely as she watched him drink. “You must forgive me, please, for—”
“Ask yourself for forgiveness, not me,” he said sharply, his eyes suddenly snapping despite the pallor of his face. “Consider what your brother-in-law must have told you about me. Your sympathy could have cost you your life, coming so close to me like that. You should have kept your musket until I’d given up my rifle.”
“Oh, bother and fuss! As if I put any stock in what Alec tells me!” Rachel tossed her head indignantly. “I decide my own mind. You’d never have walked two steps without my help.”
“And