Lacy Williams - Wagon Train Sweetheart

And look what he’d done to her. He’d failed.

He burned hotter. Hotter. Until he felt as if he would incinerate from the inside out.

He just wanted the torment to end. Wanted to forget. Wanted blessed darkness.

Wanted to end this.

“I forgive you…”

He turned his head, searching for the source of the almost ethereal whisper.

“Beth?”

Had she come to ease his passing?

But then he felt something through the haze of darkness and heat. Soft fingers gripping his hand so hard he believed she could pull him back from the brink of death.

“I forgive you,” the female voice said again. Not Beth. The cadence was wrong.

But something inside him responded, opening like a flower to the sun. Some of the weight—not all—on his chest eased. No one had ever forgiven him before.

* * *

The first rays of sunlight burst over the horizon as Nathan’s fever broke and he became drenched in sweat.

Emma would never know what woke her in that darkest part of night. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep at all, but exhaustion and worry had overcome her. She’d woken with a cramp in her neck from being bent at a wrong angle. Her left foot had been completely asleep.

But those small pains had disappeared instantly when she realized that his fever must have spiked. His breath had gone shallow, with a rasp that frightened her.

He’d murmured a woman’s name—Beth—several times, finally begging for forgiveness in a tortured whisper.

She’d been afraid he was on the verge of death. Not knowing what else to do, she had grabbed his hand and told him she forgave him.

And his fever had broken.

Now she found a dry cloth and mopped the moisture on his brow.

When her hand passed over his face, in the growing light she watched as his eyes opened.

“Hello,” she whispered, almost afraid that she was dreaming this moment.

“Seems like you’d have given up on me by now, Miss Hewitt.” His voice was raspy and she fumbled for a cup of water even as that awful racking cough took him.

She held his shoulders until it had passed, helped him to take a few sips of water, mopped his brow because the effort had made sweat bead there again.

When he’d settled again, she looked him straight in the face.

“I never give up.” She let the gravity of the moment hold in a pregnant pause and then said, “And after all that’s passed between us in the last days, I think we’re beyond using each other’s surnames, Nathan.”

One corner of his lips twitched, the closest she’d seen him come to smiling. “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly.

Or maybe she imagined the meekness as his illness forced him to whisper.

“Good.”

And it was good. She hadn’t lost this man, who’d become more than an acquaintance. Did she dare to call him a friend?

Chapter Four

Later that morning, Emma was able to leave the wagon and assist Rachel with the breakfast preparations. Her fears had been unfounded. Nathan had revived.

“You’re humming,” Rachel observed.

Emma looked up from where she flipped bacon in the fry pan. “Was I?”

“Yes. You were.” Rachel’s pointed gaze seemed to demand Emma admit to something, but she couldn’t imagine what.

She let her eyes linger on the landscape of tall, brown summer grasses before she returned her eyes to the pot. Did even the sunlight seem brighter this morning? “I suppose I am relieved that Mr. Reed is faring better.”

“He is?” Ben’s voice rang out as he joined them.

“His fever broke just before dawn,” Emma told her brother.

“Good.” Ben reached for the plate Rachel extended to him. “I won’t have to send someone riding after a doctor.”

“His cough still worries me.”

“Sally Littleton said she’s seen pneumonia develop from measles,” Rachel said. The thirtysomething mother was one of their neighbors in the wagon train and had been friendly since they’d left Independence.

Pneumonia. The word silenced the three of them. At the end, Papa had contracted pneumonia and never recovered.

“We’ll pray it isn’t that.” Ben’s voice remained grave. “I can’t spare any men to ride out. We need everyone on guard against the thief.” The last was said quietly, as if to keep the words from prying ears.

Emma set aside her spoon. “It isn’t Mr. Reed.” She had no evidence, but somehow she didn’t believe the man who’d been compassionate enough to comfort her through her fears of the storm could do such a thing. “I think Mr. Reed must have had a difficult life. But I don’t believe he is a thief.”

* * *

Nathan sat upright in the Hewitts’ wagon bed, bracing his hands against the sideboard, panting from just that little exertion.

And completely floored by Emma’s quiet, resolute statement, by her faith in him.

He’d done nothing to deserve it. In the face of her unexpected…friendship, he was ashamed of how he’d acted before this illness, brushing off and ignoring her attempts at kindness.

How long had it been since he’d known someone he counted as a friend? His childhood, twenty years ago. Or more.

And she was wrong. He’d done his share of thieving. When his pa had drunk away any money they would have used for food. As an adult, when his belly had been so empty he’d had actual pangs of hunger.

Having Emma’s faith in him, even if it lasted only for this moment and no longer, made him feel as though he could face whatever punishment the wagon train committee deemed necessary. It made him feel as if maybe there was a chance that he could really be forgiven. Be redeemed.

And that was dangerous thinking. He, more than any other, knew how black his soul was. And that good things didn’t come his way.

But then he heard Ben Hewitt’s next words through his swirling thoughts. “Someone stole a wad of cash out of the Ericksons’ wagon the night of the storm, during the fire.”

“It couldn’t have been Mr. Reed,” Emma’s sister chimed in. “You were with him in the wagon.”

“Yes,” Emma agreed.

“Whoever did it is sly,” Hewitt said. “Every able-bodied man was working the bucket brigade—or so we thought. Mr. Erickson didn’t notice the cash was missing until this morning. He thought his wife had it—she thought her husband had hidden it in their belongings. But it’s definitely missing.”

“How awful for them.”

The three siblings kept talking, but their voices faded out of Nathan’s head as he tried to scoot toward the tailgate.

If he was cleared, then he might still have a paying gig driving the Binghams’ wagon to Oregon. He’d taken the chance of joining up with the wagon train, knowing that if he could earn enough for a stake, he might get the fresh start he needed when the caravan arrived at its destination.

He could drive…if he could get his bearings. His head was swimming. He felt off-kilter, a little afraid he was going to fall out of the wagon if he got too close to the edge.

And then his hopes for a silent getaway went up in smoke as he started coughing. And couldn’t stop.

When he finally got his breath back, he was gripping one of the bows that supported the canvas, and Emma and her brother stood watching him from just outside the back flap.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Emma asked, her words more like a demand. Or those of a concerned sister.

“I thought I would—” A cough surprised him and cut off his sentence, though thankfully this one didn’t last long. “Head back to the Binghams’ wagon. Hitch up the oxen and get ready to pull out.”

Emma’s expression had turned into a thunderhead to rival what they’d seen the other day. Hewitt coughed, but when Nathan’s gaze slid to the other man, Hewitt had his hat off and was hiding behind it. Was he…chuckling?