Here and Then. Linda Miller Lael

would be, if anybody ever took the time to clean her up.

      Considering that task made one side of Farley’s mouth twitch in a fleeting grin.

      He saw her blush again, then lift the mug to her mouth with both hands and take a healthy swig.

      “God, I can’t believe I’m actually drinking this sludge!” she spat out just a moment later. “What did you do, boil down a vat of axle grease?”

      Farley turned away to hide another grin, sighing as he pretended to straighten the papers on his desk. “The Presbyterians are surely going to have their hands full getting you back on the straight and narrow,” he allowed.

      

      Rue stared at Farley’s broad, muscular back and swallowed. She was exhausted and confused and, since she hadn’t had anything to eat in almost a century, hungry. She kept expecting to wake up, even though she knew this situation was all too real.

      She sat on the edge of the cell’s one cot, which boasted a thin, bare mattress and a gray woolen blanket that looked as though it could have belonged to the poorest private in General Lee’s rebel army.

      “Did you ever get around to having your supper?” Farley’s voice was gruff, but there was something oddly comforting about the deep, resonating timbre of it.

      Rue didn’t look at him; there were tears in her eyes, and she was too proud to let them show. “No,” she answered.

      Farley’s tone remained gentle, and Rue knew he had moved closer. “It’s late, but I’ll see if I can’t raise Bessie over at the Hang-Dog and get her to fix you something.”

      Rue was still too stricken to speak; she just nodded.

      Only when the marshal had left the jailhouse on his errand of mercy did Rue allow herself a loud sniffle. She stood and gripped the bars in both hands.

      Maybe because she was tired, she actually hoped, for a few fleeting moments, that the key would be hanging from a peg within stretching distance on her cell, like in a TV Western.

      In this case, fact was not stranger than fiction—there was no key in sight.

      She began to pace, muttering to herself. If she ever got out of this, she’d write a book about it, tell the world. Appear on Donahue and Oprah.

      Rue stopped, the nail of her index finger caught between her teeth. Who would ever believe her, besides Elisabeth?

      She sat on the edge of the cot again and drew deep breaths until she felt a little less like screaming in frustration and panic.

      Half an hour had passed, by the old clock facing Farley’s messy desk, when the marshal returned carrying a basket covered with a blue-and-white checkered napkin.

      Rue’s stomach rumbled audibly and, to cover her embarrassment at that, she said defiantly, “You were foolish to leave me unattended, Marshal. I might very well have escaped.”

      He chuckled, extracted the coveted key from the pocket of his rough spun trousers and unlocked the cell door. “Is that so, Miss Spitfire? Then why didn’t you?”

      She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be so damn cocky,” she warned. “For all you know, I might be part of a gang. Why, twenty or thirty outlaws might ride in here and dynamite this place.”

      Farley set the basket down and moseyed out of the cell, as unconcerned as if his prisoner were an addlepated old lady. Rue was vaguely insulted that the lawman didn’t consider her more dangerous.

      “Shut up and eat your supper,” he said, not unkindly.

      Rue plopped down on the edge of the cot again. Farley had set the basket on the only other piece of furniture in the cell, a rickety old stool, and she pulled that close.

      There was cold roast venison in the basket, along with a couple of hard flour-and-water biscuits and an apple.

      Rue ate greedily, but the whole time she watched Farley out of the corner of one eye. He was doing paperwork at the desk, by the light of a flickering kerosene lamp.

      “Aren’t you ever going home?” she inquired when she’d consumed every scrap of the food.

      Farley didn’t look up. “I’ve got a little place out back,” he said. “You’d better get some sleep, Miss Claridge. Likely as not, you’ll have the ladies of the town to deal with come morning. They’ll want to take you on as a personal mission.”

      Rue let her forehead rest against an icy bar and sighed. “Great.”

      When Farley finally raised his eyes and saw that Rue was still standing there staring at him, he put down his pencil. “Am I keeping you awake?”

      “It’s just…” Rue paused, swallowed, started again. “Well, I’d like to wash up, that’s all. And maybe brush my teeth.” In my own bathroom, thank you. In my own wonderful, crazy, modern world.

      Farley stretched, then brought a large kettle from a cabinet near the stove. “I guess you’ll just have to rinse and spit, since the town of Pine River doesn’t provide toothbrushes, but I can heat up some wash water for you.”

      He disappeared through a rear door, returning minutes later with the kettle, which he set on the stove top.

      Rue bit her lower lip. It was bad enough that the marshal expected her to bathe in that oversize bird cage he called a cell. How clean could a girl get with two quarts of water?

      “This is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention,” she said.

      Farley looked at her over one sturdy shoulder, shook his head in obvious consternation and went back to his desk. “If you hadn’t told me you and Lizzie Fortner were kinfolk, I’d have guessed it anyway. Both of you talk like you’re from somewhere a long ways from here.”

      Rue sagged against the cell door and closed her eyes for a moment. “So far away you couldn’t begin to comprehend it, cowboy,” she muttered.

      Farley’s deep voice contained a note of distracted humor. “Since I didn’t quite make out what you just said, I’m going to assume it was something kindly,” he told her without looking up from those fascinating papers of his.

      “Don’t you have something waiting for you at home—a dog or a goldfish or something?” Rue asked. She didn’t know which she was more desperate for—a little privacy or the simple comfort of ordinary conversation.

      The marshal sighed and laid down his nibbed pen. His wooden chair creaked under his weight as he leaned back. “I live alone,” he said, sounding beleaguered and a little smug in the bargain.

      “Oh.” Rue felt a flash of bittersweet relief at this announcement, though she would have given up her trust fund rather than admit the fact. Earlier, she’d experienced a dizzying sense of impact, even though Farley wasn’t touching her, and now she was painfully aware of the lean hardness of his frame and the easy masculine grace with which he moved.

      It was damn ironic that being around Jeff Wilson had never had this effect on her. Maybe if it had, she would have a couple of kids and a real home by now, in addition to the career she loved.

      “You must be pretty ambitious,” she blurted out. The sound of heat surging through the water in the kettle filled the quiet room. “Do you often work late?”

      Farley put down his pen again and scratched the nape of his neck before emitting an exasperated sigh. “I don’t plan on spending my life as a lawman,” he replied with a measured politeness that clearly told Rue he wished she’d shut up and let him get on with whatever he was doing. “I’ve been saving for a ranch ever since I got out of the army. I mean to raise cattle and horses.”

      At last, Rue thought. Common ground.

      “I have a ranch,” she announced. “Over in Montana.”

      “So you said,” Farley replied. It was plain enough that, to him, Rue’s claim was just another