Page 25 of The Scot Beds His Wife
But during moments like this, when she wasn’t working, her mind ceaselessly churned with a thousand disturbing unknowns.
And every one of them hurt.
During her engagement, Bennett had come home with Boyd and Bradley a week late from selling the Smiths’ herd with extra cash in hand. Had he really stayed to help with the slaughter of the herd, as he claimed? Was the blood she’d washed from their clothes even bovine?
Or had their butchery been more insidious?
The prior night, Samantha had lain awake and thought of the day she’d shoved her husband’s shirt, reeking of perfume, beneath his nose and demanded answers. They’d been married four months at the time. He’d laughed at her, and then praised her possessiveness. He’d explained patiently that she was well aware that every hotel in Renosupplied whores, and that whores all drenched themselves in perfume.
Can’t walk down Main Street without coming out the other side smelling like a French dandy.He’d laughed, picked her up, and tossed her onto the bed.Can’t all women smell as sweet and clean as you do, darlin’.
Another time, when she’d found the smears of what she knew to be rouge on his collar, he’d admitted sheepishly that he’d lent his best shirt to Bradley so he could go to a saloon and have his pick of the working women.
It had never occurred to her that he was a liar.
When he’d convinced her to elope on her twentieth birthday, she’d only seen him as her knight in shining armor, saving her from becoming the third wife to a disgraced Mormon elder.
When he’d stolen the Smiths’ cattle, she’d helped him, thinking they’d deserved it for working her fingers to the bone since she was seven only to sell her to an old, lecherous man.
When he’d become an outlaw, forcing her to do the same, she’d truly believed it was because the cattle business was overrun by government-subsidized land barons, and there was no more work left for men like them. The Masters brothers had claimed that their way of life was not only threatened, it was dead. She’d believed them when they spoke of tyranny. That they were like Robin Hood taking their oppressors’ ill-gotten gains to start something that would employ displaced homesteaders, and people whose jobs were now done by machines.
“You might be slim and sassy, Sam,” she muttered to herself. “But you’re none too smart.”
An intelligent woman wouldn’t have landed herself in this unholy mess.
“Who’s Sam?”
“Jesus Jehoshaphat Christ,” she gasped, pulling her pistol and aiming it at the interloper before the curse had completely escaped her.
Down the sight of her gun, Callum put up his hands. “Sorry to startle you, lassie,” he said with a conciliatory grimace. “I thought an entire regiment could have heard me canter up here, but I didn’t notice that you were conversing with your ghosts until I got closer.”
Not for the first time, Samantha was struck by the chilling perception in his golden eyes. She found herself wondering if, beneath the layer of black sand on his face that he claimed protected him from the sun and cold, he was a young man. A handsome man, even. Beneath those skins and furs, she knew he had a lean, predatory ranginess to him that indicated a long life. His gaze held a haunted, secret pain that suggested the soul beneath had witnessed all there was, and wanted to see no more. However, something about him seemed so… vital, for lack of a better word. Perhaps the way he moved? With the loose-limbed ease of a man in his prime.
“Ghosts?” she queried, looking at him askance as she holstered her pistol.
“You were talking to someone named Sam,” he reminded her simply.
Was she a ghost? Had Sam also died when she’d pulled that trigger?
No.
“No,” she repeated out loud with confidence. “IamSam. It’s what I’m called back in America.” She smirked. “I was talking to myself.”
“Sam?” he repeated skeptically. “How do you get Sam from Alison?”
“How do you get Bill from William?” she volleyed back. “Or Dick from Richard?”
“Fair point.” His eyes traveled the length of her dress with more curiosity than masculine notice.
Typical.
“Thank you for the fish you left.” She remembered her manners. “I’d have to slaughter a cow to survive without your little deliveries, and I’d like to avoid that.”
He nodded, and she got the sense that he understood her meaning as well as her words. She appreciated the offer of sustenance that appeared on her doorstep in the morning, but would not be beholden to him for any favors he might ask in return.
“I was on my way to Inverthorne to visit my da, and noticed you were traveling toward Gairloch dressed for church… or a wedding?”
Samantha found that she liked this lonely man. He had more social graces than one would expect from your typical hermit. She liked the way he communicated. If he wanted to know something, he outright asked it. If he thought you might want to be left alone, he’d open a door and let you decide if you wanted to walk through it.
