The Ranger's Bride. Laurie Grant

you killed,” she protested. “But don’t you see, I can’t…”

      “Look, lady, whatever you decide is fine by me,” he snapped. “I don’t have the strength to stand here and argue with you. Let’s just get out of here, all right?”

      Startled at his tone—and embarrassed that she’d forgotten how much blood he’d lost and how much pain he must be feeling—she nodded.

      He gave her a wan smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bite your head off. If you can hold the horses steady, I think I can climb in.”

      The leaders shied and sidestepped nervously, obviously smelling blood as he drew near, but Addy went to the head of the nearest one and held its chinstrap, murmuring soothing nonsense to it.

      Addy watched the Ranger take hold of the side of the coach with one hand and grab the window frame with the other, uttering a barely muffled groan as he did so. She wished she could be in two places at once so she could hold the horses and help him somehow. He more or less fell inside, landing on the seat with a thud and a smothered curse.

      “Okay, lady, I’m set,” he announced from within. “You ready to drive?”

      “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she called back, then said, “Addy. My name is Addy—Adelaide Kelly.”

      He made no answer.

      She stared over the empty road again, but saw nothing but a jackrabbit pausing to nibble some gramma grass.

      Chapter Three

      She’d probably never be hired as a driver for the stagecoach company, even if she wanted to be, but she wasn’t doing too badly, Addy decided. It helped that the team was an obedient, willing foursome who seemed to appreciate having a human controlling them again.

      She had to steer to the left when they’d come across the body of the murdered stagecoach driver around the bend in the road. As the coach passed around the corpse, Addy said a prayer for the dead driver and for the other slain passengers she’d left behind. She’d have to let the sheriff know what had happened as soon as possible, so he could have the bodies brought in for burial.

      But first she had to see to the wounded Ranger. She’d heard nothing from within the coach since they’d left the scene of the attack. Had he passed out from pain during the long bumpy two miles to her house? She would soon see. She turned the coach off the main road and into the rutted path that led up to her house.

      Reaching the front of her house, Addy threw the brake on the coach, then clambered down and tied the reins to the porch rail. The two leaders were going to devour the primroses in her flower bed, but that was the least of her problems after what had happened.

      Just as she opened the coach door, the Ranger pushed his hat back off his face.

      “How are you doing?” she asked, her eyes roaming over his blood-soaked shirt, looking for signs of fresh bleeding.

      “Well, the company wasn’t the best,” he said, with a sardonic nod toward the dead man still lying crumpled in a heap on the floor of the coach. “And that’s got to be the bumpiest section of road in the whole state of Texas. I felt every rock the wheels rolled over. But I reckon I’ll keep.”

      She had to admire his grit. “Let me help you out,” she said, extending a hand. “We’ll get you into the house and I’ll put you to bed.”

      Distracted by his haggard face, she hadn’t chosen her words with any special care, but apparently he wasn’t in too much pain to tease.

      “Why, that’s the best offer I’ve had in weeks, Miss Adelaide Kelly,” he drawled, managing a wink. “Just wish I was in good enough shape to take advantage of it.”

      She felt her temper flare, even as the flush flooded her cheeks. “If you were, you wouldn’t be coming into my house, let alone my bed, sir. But for the grace of God, you might be lying dead out there with the others!”

      He sobered instantly. “Sorry, Miss Adelaide. I didn’t mean any lack of respect to you or to them. I reckon I’m purely giddy-headed, realizin’ how lucky I am that hombre who aimed to kill me was such a rotten shot and didn’t bother to check afterward to see if I was breathin’ or not.”

      Addy figured she owed her survival to a similar piece of luck. Drenched in the dead man’s blood and partially covered by his body, she’d probably looked dead to the outlaws, too.

      “It’s probably the loss of blood making you giddy-headed,” she replied tartly as she fitted her shoulder under his uninjured one. “Come, let’s get you inside.”

      “All right, but don’t let me put you outa your bed, Miss Adelaide,” he insisted as he raised his foot to the first stone step. “Surely you have a sofa or a truckle bed or something. Even just a pallet on the floor.”

      She didn’t answer him. He’d have to use her bedroom. Getting him up the stairs to the spare bedroom was out of the question, in his condition.

      They passed the room at the front of the house that had once been her aunt and uncle’s bedroom, but she had transformed it into her shop. There was a rack along one wall full of bolts of fabric, but their bed was piled high with scraps of fabric, cards of buttons, a case full of spools of thread, and rolls of lace and ribbon trim. It was to this room that the misses and matrons of Connor’s Crossing came to get alterations done or new dresses made in the latest styles from Godey’s Lady’s Book.

      Addy had taken over a room off the kitchen for her bedroom. It was small, but had the advantage of facing northeast, making it cooler on hot summer evenings.

      He closed his eyes on the steps leading up to the porch, letting her guide him. Aware of his tightly clenched jaw and the groans he tried to stifle, she moved slowly down the hallway, passing through the kitchen and into her room.

      He sagged against her just as they reached the bed, and she had no choice but to let him down right on top of the calico quilt.

      “I’ll go get some water so I can clean up those wounds,” she announced as she picked up his booted feet and placed them on the bed.

      Ashen-faced, he didn’t answer. Addy wondered if he had passed out again.

      After she had returned and cut away his ruined shirt, and had begun washing the dried, clotted blood away from his upper chest wound, though, his eyes fluttered and opened again.

      “Am I too rough?” she asked. “I’m sorry.”

      “No, don’t worry, you have a real gentle touch,” he replied. And she did. She was far gentler than George McDonald, his Ranger company captain, would have been. Nevertheless, though he’d never have admitted it to her, each stroke of the damp cloth was like a blast of flame. He knew what she was doing was necessary—if she didn’t cleanse the wounds, he had a worse chance of dying of blood poisoning.

      A groan escaped him, however, as she helped him to turn so she could wash the larger wound in the back of his shoulder where the bullet had exited. He felt her hesitate, so he muttered, “Go ahead and finish,” then set his jaw and held on to the mattress until she was done.

      Once she had eased him onto his back, he concentrated on her face, willing the pain to recede. She was so pretty, despite the streaks of blood on her cheeks and neck and the smudge of dirt on her cheek. Her hair had mostly escaped the knot at the back of her slender neck, but its disarray gave her a wild, wanton look that was quite opposite, he guessed, from her normal appearance and personality. She’d be pretty as a silver dollar with her hair up and wearing a dress that wasn’t stained with a dead man’s blood. He guessed she had totally forgotten—if she’d ever noticed—the sorry state of her clothing.

      He watched her tear strips from an old, well-worn man’s shirt to make a bandage, then realized, by the self-conscious way she worried at her full lower lip with her teeth, that his staring was making her uncomfortable. But he was damned if he could stop. After all, it