The silence accused him of being a coldhearted son of a bitch. Had she wandered into the storm to die? He knew how it felt to fight that temptation. Only his pride and a sincere fear of hell had kept him from eating a bullet when Laura and the children had died. If Jayne Dawson had chosen that path, the decision was hers. They would both have to live with the choices they had made.
The thought gave Ethan no comfort. He made his voice louder. “Mrs. Dawson!”
A low moan drew him to the back of the barn. Peering into an empty stall, he saw a filthy horse blanket and the bottom edge of the widow’s navy-blue cloak.
“Lady, get up.”
She stirred beneath the blanket, then bolted upright as a chest-deep cough erupted from her throat. She covered her mouth with both hands, but the air still shook with the ferociousness of the coughing spell. Fever burned in her cheeks.
Ethan wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Her eyes were the color of the sky at high noon, and her straw-blond hair had frozen into a tangle. Remorse burned from his heart to his head. He treated his two horses better than he had treated this woman. What if it had been Laura in need, or his daughter?
He cleared his throat to soften his gravelly voice. “Ma’am, you need help.”
Struggling to breathe, she clutched at the blanket. “I am so sorry…to do this to you…I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t waste your breath.” He couldn’t bear that high-pitched wheeze. “Can you wait while I do chores?”
Nodding, she struggled to her feet and stood while he filled the feed bins and used an old broom handle to poke through the ice covering the water buckets. He needed to muck out the stalls, but it would have to wait. Mrs. Dawson looked ready to faint.
He leaned the stick against the wall. “We need to get inside.”
Instinctively he held the door for her, just as he had done a thousand times for his wife. The widow’s skirt brushed across his boots, then she waited for him to take the lead. Her eyes barely reached his shoulder. She’d never be able to match his stride, and so he swung his boot from side to side to kick a path for her.
He couldn’t hear her footsteps, only a light wheezing and the swish of her skirt. When she fainted, he barely heard the thump of her body sinking into the drift.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered.
Dropping to his knees, he yanked off one glove and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. Feverish heat burned straight through to his bones, and he saw that the collar of her shirtwaist was wet with perspiration. He shook her shoulder and called her name, but she didn’t make a sound.
The last thing in the world he wanted to do was to carry her, but what choice did he have? Sliding one arm beneath her shoulders and the other under her knees, he rocked back on his heels and lifted her from the snow.
As her face rolled against his chest, he saw bits of straw stuck in her hair and sleep creases on her cheeks. He wanted to scream at the heavens as he trudged to the cabin, pried the door open with his elbow and carried her to his bed. The unwashed sheets still bore the mark of his body and the torment of his dreams. It seemed wrong to set her down in such a private place, but he did it anyway.
She moaned and muttered how sorry she was, whispered Hank’s name and called for her mother. He had to get her into dry clothes, but the cabin was barely warmer than the barn, and it made sense to leave her in the cloak until he had a fire roaring in the hearth.
He poked the coals and added two handfuls of kindling so it would catch fast and burn hot. The scrap box he kept by the rock fireplace held next to nothing and he kicked himself for being lazy about filling it. Hunching in his coat, he made a quick trip to the woodpile behind the cabin, stacked the logs on the hearth and laid a piece of dry pine on the embers. It caught with a whoosh, pushing heat into the room as Ethan looked at the woman on his bed.
She hadn’t moved a muscle, and he honestly didn’t know which would be worse—undressing a live woman or burying a dead one. All he knew was that he didn’t want to touch her, and he would have to do just that if she didn’t wake up. “Mrs. Dawson?”
No answer.
Ethan took off his coat and rested his palm on her forehead as if she were a child. Her fever shamed him. He imagined burying her next to her husband and waiting for the spring grass to wipe out the graves so that he could forget this moment, but he knew he would never forget.
He couldn’t see her chest moving beneath the cloak, so he touched her throat in search of a pulse. He found it in an instant, a strong beat that told him she wasn’t a quitter. “Lady, wake up,” he said.
Moaning, she struggled to open her eyes.
“Your clothes are wet from the fever. Can you get undressed?”
“This can’t be happening,” she said, almost whimpering.
“Here, let me help you, love.”
Love. His pet name for Laura. Horrified, Ethan shot to his feet, snatched his nightshirt off a nail and tossed it on the bed. “Wake up now. You’ve got to get out of those damp things.”
“I’ll try.” She raised her head and tugged on her cloak, but she didn’t have the strength to pull it free. Weaker than before, she fell flat against the mattress.
Steeling himself against the heat emanating from her body, Ethan wrapped his arm around her shoulders, removed the cloak and dropped it on the floor. “We have to get your shoes off, too.”
Nodding, she pulled her feet to the side of the bed. Her soles brushed his thigh, and he stepped aside as he unbuttoned the fancy boots and slid them over her ankles. Gritting his teeth, he rolled her stockings down her slender calves and tugged the cotton over her toes. They were small and pink and pretty. His stomach clenched, but he touched them anyway, just to be sure they were warm.
The woman was shivering now, struggling to undo the front of her jacket with her half-frozen fingers.
“Here, let me,” he said.
“I can do it—” But a racking cough stole her breath.
Forcing himself to look down, he slid his fingers beneath hers and undid the buttons. He pulled at the jacket sleeves until her arms broke free, revealing a white silk shirtwaist blotched with perspiration. Bravely, he worked those buttons, too, this time discovering rosy-gold skin and a chemise made transparent by a feverish sheen.
He tried not to look directly at the widow’s breasts, but he couldn’t stop himself from taking in the differences between her body and Laura’s. His wife was the only woman he had ever known in that way. She had been soft and round, a dark-eyed beauty with a complexion like cream. Mrs. Dawson’s skin made him think of the summer sun. On its own, his gaze roamed downward, where he saw her firm breasts and the shadow of brown nipples beneath the cotton.
A rush of desire made Ethan hard and angry. That ache belonged to Laura, and he didn’t want to feel it ever again, especially not now. He wanted to get the widow undressed, in bed and out of his head as fast as he could.
Her damp underthings needed to come off, but a man had his limits. He’d help her with the skirt, but that was all he could manage. Growling, he said, “Raise up your hips.”
Strangling on a cough, the widow did as he ordered, though she failed miserably to work the button at the waist. Ethan took over, looking at the ceiling as he maneuvered the skirt down her thighs and past her knees. As she curled into a tight ball, he dropped the garment on the floor, covered her legs with his quilt and shoved an old nightshirt in her face. “You can finish without me.”
Turning his back, he added a log to the fire and poked the coals. Only when the bed stopped creaking did he dare turn around.
What he saw shattered his lonely world like a splitting maul in a round of pine. The woman sleeping in his bed was beautiful.