Chapter Six

H e needed to focus on why he was here. He couldn't remember the last time he had let his emotions control his actions or let his anger overtake his sense of control. Emotions and anger led to actions taken out of reason and to greater mistakes.

He couldn't afford to make mistakes.

She said, "You are in danger here."

He snorted. "From you?"

She stiffened. "You said you wanted me to give you updates. If you do not want to hear what I have to say, then I would go home."

He clenched his hands to keep from gesturing at her, or worse, touching her. "You would go home so more accidents can assault you?"

Her lids flickered over her eyes and he could see her fitting thoughts together. Something in what he had said meant more to her than he knew.

The ugly truth was that he did know. He knew how vile the men in her household were.

He said, "You are to marry Dawson."

She nodded. "His mother wants me to marry him. She thinks that because I own nothing and have nowhere else to go, I will be a mistress of the manor who will stay under her thumb. I suppose Mr. Dawson agrees with his mother. He thinks I will be a submissive wife, too."

He gestured to her cheek and didn't bother holding back the bitterness in his voice. "So far you are proving them correct."

She startled, turning wide eyes to his but her gaze quickly narrowed, honing in on him. "Maybe, then, I should consider my options. I could always take to the roads." She paused and made a big deal about putting her hands to her chin. "Hmmm. Except I do not have any money to travel. Well, I suppose if I do not have the money to travel, I could just steal it."

She meant the comment to be cutting. She thought she was taking a verbal stab at him but she was just lashing out because she was angry that his words struck true. He said, "Do you regret the things I have taken? Do you think your cousin is worse the wear for them? If not, I can stick around and easily rectify that situation. Perhaps, while I had a lovely, little gem terrified and trembling in her carriage, I should have taken my dues of that situation."

She clasped her hands in front of her chest, watching him, her head leaning away from him. A little breathy, she muttered, "You smiled at me."

He crossed his arms and stared at her. He remembered smiling at her. He remembered every moment of their short interaction in the carriage.

She went on, "I was terrified. But then you smiled at me."

She was lovely. She had looked so scared and in the moment, between handcuffing Mr. Dawson and thieving rings off wrinkled fingers, he hadn't wanted to scare her. Through all his callous decisions, she called to his humanity like a siren tempted sailors.

And if he had been any less of a man, he would have crashed on the rocks.

He uncrossed his arms, letting them hang at his sides. "You didn't fit the puzzle I had in my head of the situation. Take down Dawson, I could do that. Intimidate his mother, I expected that. I did not expect to open the door to you." He shook his head. "You didn't fit."

She lifted her eyes, studying him. "I didn't fit with what?"

She wanted clarification. He had bared the fringes of his weakness for her and she wanted more. He couldn't give it.

He sat down, thumping his weight onto the log. "What information do you have for me today?"

She pinched her lower lip with her fingers and stared at the small campfire. Then she folded her arms in front of her and rested her elbows on her knees. "Well, I know that Mr. Dawson and Mr. Thompson will ride around tomorrow to try to find you."

He nodded. "And?"

"And Mr. Dawson has already questioned quite a few people. Since the innkeeper warned us of you in the first place, I think Mr. Dawson means to go question him further. Start from the source."

He reached out and slid his fingers around her dainty wrist, pulling her hand down from her face. "Why are you nervous to tell me that?"

She blinked at him and then looked away. "I am not nervous."

He gripped her wrist tighter. "You are avoiding looking at me and you are fidgeting. What are you not telling me?"

She inhaled, a breathy sound rather like a quiet gasp.

He asked again, "Why are you nervous?"

"They," she paused and licked her lips, "They could find you tomorrow."

Her thoughts were like following a trail in the woods, trying to put all the pieces together to reach an endpoint. They could find him tomorrow but he wasn't worried about that.

She was.

He cleared his throat. "You think they will find me and that," he meant to finish his thought with a final note but he instead questioned her, "worries you?"

A small, warm feeling, like a tiny campfire illuminating inside of his chest, caught him unaware. His first impulse was to shove the comfortable feeling away but he couldn't. He didn't want to. She cared about what happened to him tomorrow and he didn't know why, but it felt nice.

Slowly, she said, "I have a lot of questions about you. You should be mean and scary and I admit I was afraid of you at first, but the more time I spend with you, the more I feel something else."

She pulled on her wrist and he let her go. Folding her hands in her lap, she said, "I know what it feels like to be around a brute. This past year, not only have I been coping with the death of my father, I have been living in a cold, hostile household. Mr. Dawson scares me. I know exactly how trapped I am in a life I do not want." She looked up at him with her large, dark eyes. "And he is the one who has trapped me."

She was the prey who knew she was caught. He had seen that moment of panic and fear in an animal's eyes countless times but it sliced at him to see that expression on her face. "Why don't you leave?"

She stared down at her fingers, twisting them together in her lap. "I do not have any money to leave. I can't pay a coach and I have no references for a job. I cannot seek employment anywhere where Mr. Dawson could find me and I cannot pay to get myself far enough away from him."

He heard in that all the things she wasn't saying. She wasn't saying that she felt alone. She wasn't saying that she was exhausted. She wasn't saying how the feeling of defeat gripped her heart and squeezed all the life out of her.

He knew those feelings.

Now he understood why she was here.

But it wouldn't be long before that hate dwindled into that sluggish, resigned feeling that would trap her to Mr. Dawson forever.

He said, "I am sorry for your loss."

Her head tilted down, she fluttered her eyelids. Then she sniffed. Then her shoulders shook and she sobbed.

She was crying, leaning forward over her knees, her hands over her face while she bawled, tears slipping down her cheeks.

What was he supposed to do about that?

He pulled his log right next to hers, put his arm around her back, and patted her. His throat scratchy and clogged with memories, he meant to say, "There, there," but all that came out was a couple of grunts.

She turned into his shoulder, hiding her wet face in his coat. He stroked down the back of her head, her hair silky underneath his fingers. He didn't want to think about the dirt he was probably smearing in her hair from his filthy hands.

For now, he could hold her. Sucking in a deep breath to steady himself, then inwardly cursing when he got a whiff of her perfume, he told himself that was all he should do.

Tomorrow night he would leave, but he could hold up his end of the bargain. Before he left, he would hide enough money for her so she could travel as far away from Timothy Dawson as she wanted.