At the rear door, the man fell back, allowing Celia to enter first. The kitchen was small, with a row of white-painted cabinets beneath the window and a square table with a pair of chairs along the opposite wall. She’d opened the shutters to let in the moonlight, but she had not yet lit the stove. To cook her supper, she preferred to wait until past midnight, when the thin column of smoke through the chimney had a better chance to remain unnoticed.
Celia waited for Roy Hagan to step across the threshold and close the door behind him. Then she faced him, making no effort to hide her scar by turning to one side. Her fingers fisted into her calico dress—she’d abandoned her rustling skirts and layers of petticoats—and for the third time she asked, “Why are you here?”
“I came to see if you are all right, Miss Celia.”
Just like that, he had taken the liberty of calling her by her given name. Even though no one called her Miss Courtwood, apart from Mr. Northfield and Mr. Selden, both sticklers for formality, the sound of her name on the stranger’s lips and his intrusion into the safety of her kitchen put another crack into Celia’s rigid self-control.
“I wish you hadn’t come,” she blurted out.
“No, you don’t, Miss Celia,” he replied. “You’re glad I’m here.”
There was no arrogance in the man’s tone, only understanding and compassion. Knowing that he had spoken the truth caused the gates of restraint to fling wide-open inside Celia.
“How can I be glad that you’re here?” The words poured out of her, but despite her agitation, her voice didn’t rise from its even pitch. “You may have protected my father, saved him from a bullet, but had you not robbed the bank in the first place he would not have been put in danger. You were the danger and the rescue, the peril and the protection. I owe you no gratitude for saving him from a danger you brought upon him yourself.”
She paused to draw a breath, then went on with a burst of anguish. “What eats me up inside is that I knew what you were planning to do. Secretly, I gloated over my cleverness, having figured out that you’d come to rob the bank, and I did nothing to stop you. Nothing.” She stared at him, a plea in her eyes. “Do you understand how that makes me feel? I could have stopped it, but I didn’t, because I wanted to pay back the town for ostracizing me.”
“Don’t beat yourself up so, Miss Celia.”
“Beat myself up?” A bitter groan wrung from her. “You haven’t heard the half of it. The bank manager, Mr. Northfield, got it into his head that my father had been in cahoots with the robbers, and he shared his suspicions with the sheriff. My father refused to defend himself, and now he is serving five years in Yuma prison. He’ll die in prison, alone and neglected, for nothing but the noble misconception that by accepting the blame he’ll set me free, relieve me of the burden of supporting him while he grows too weak to work.”
Tears burned in Celia’s eyes but she refused to let them fall, just as she had refused to let them fall during the long years of her mother’s illness, or when every birthday trapped her deeper into spinsterhood, with no prospect of love, no prospect of a family and home, nothing but loneliness and the struggle to earn her living looming in the future.
“And you know what, Mr. Hagan?” Celia let the words form on her tongue, admitting to the guilt that pressed like a vise against her chest. “Deep down inside me there is this awful feeling of relief.” She lifted her chin in a gesture of defiance. “So don’t tell me that I must not beat myself up. I contributed to placing my father in danger, and when he takes on the blame for a crime he didn’t commit, I feel relief because it spares me the trouble of nursing another dying parent and leaves me with only my own mouth to feed.”
* * *
Always on guard, Roy observed his surroundings while he listened to the girl unburden her mind. Again, the long-forgotten smells tugged at his memory—crisp, clean laundry, flowers in a vase on the table, the lingering scents of home cooking.
Celia’s last words pulled him back to the present. Earlier, he’d wondered if she had been in on the crime, but it had never crossed his mind that she might believe her father to be innocent. Rapidly, he reviewed all the possibilities. No. It could not be. Everything pointed to the man’s guilt, including what the girl had just explained. Roy opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her the truth.
“Why are you hiding?” he asked.
Barely had his voice faded away when a thud echoed from the front of the house. In a flash, the heavy Smith & Wesson revolver appeared in Roy’s hand. On soundless feet, he inched past the girl and opened the connecting door to the parlor.
“Don’t.” She reached out and tugged at his arm. “It’s just youngsters. They throw clumps of manure at the house. It does no harm.” When Roy glanced back at her, he could see a shadow of a smile hovering around her mouth. “Manure is good fertilizer for my garden. Saves me from sneaking out to the hitching rails on Main Street to collect some.”
He returned his gun to the holster, eased back into the kitchen and closed the door to the parlor. Before he had a chance to collect his thoughts, the girl burst into speech again.
“Does that answer your question about why I’m hiding in my house?” Bitterness sharpened her tone. “Before, the town was suspicious of me. Now they believe I’m evil. According to their thinking, I drove my father into betraying them. Nobody lost anything in the robbery, the gold was fully insured, but they hate me all the same, as if they were facing financial ruin.”
“No,” Roy said. “That does not answer my question.”
Her lips pursed as she considered his comment. Then her chin lifted in the proud tilt he was beginning to recognize. “You think I’m a coward? That I should have the courage to ignore them and sashay down the street as if nothing was wrong?” She flapped a hand to indicate his guns. “It’s easy for someone like you to shake off the weight of public disgrace. I haven’t quite gotten used to being an outcast. It still hurts.”
It never stops hurting, Roy wanted to tell her. You just learn to accept it.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Your food will eventually run out.”
“I have a gun. A Winchester rifle. I can hunt game.”
“In the darkness? On foot? You’ll have to go a long way out of town to find game.”
“I...” She hung her head, darted a glance at him from beneath her brows. “My father said he has some money put aside and he’ll arrange to have it sent to me. I’ve been waiting for it to arrive. Without the money, I can’t leave.”
There it was. The final proof. Her father must have been talking about his cut from the take. And if Roy knew anything about Lom Curtis, a prior agreement bore no weight with the outlaw leader. If a man could not make a demand in person, he had little chance of collecting his cut. The only way Celia could get her father’s share was to ride up to the outlaw camp and ask for it.
“I doubt your father can send instructions from Yuma prison.” Roy glanced out through the window. A cloud had drifted across the moon, deepening the darkness. They needed to get going while they could rely on some moonlight. “I’ve come to take you with me,” he told the girl. “Pack what you can carry on a horse. You’ve got fifteen minutes. I want to be out of here before the clouds thicken.”
“You expect me to go with you?”
“You can’t stay here.”
“At least I’ve got a roof over my head. A place of safety.”
“What will you do when your food runs out?”
She didn’t