His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (18 page)

"Nope."

"Can you say why?"

He snorted. "What difference would it make? You wouldn't listen. Womenfolk get all mushy-headed after kissin'. Can't see the bees fer all that honey."

Amusement trickled through her—amusement, and a poignant sense of embarrassment as she remembered Paul. "Is that a fact?"

"Yep." He licked the orange goo that had plopped off his knife onto his fist. "Don't say I didn't warn you," he added, wagging the knife at her.

"I wouldn't dare," she murmured.

He set the utensil down and reached for his cup. She caught her breath—a big mistake. Those canny eyes snapped back to hers.

"It's medicine, ain't it?"

Her whole body blushed. "What makes you think that?"

"Nobody drinks tea 'cause they like it."

Arguing that point, she realized, wouldn't win her the war.

"I won't lie to you, Collie. Some folks drink tea as a tonic."

He recoiled as if burned.

"But not always. I'm drinking it, and I'm not sick."

"That's 'cause you wanted
me
to drink it."

She sighed, half resigned, half exasperated. "Well, you don't have to drink it."

"Good."

"Only..."

He pressed his lips together.

"It'll stop the stomach pains you've been having. And the burning in your behind."

His jaw jutted. She held her ground quietly, compassionately.

"How come you know about them?"

She realized she was about to venture into embarrassing territory for him. "You've been eating bad food," she said carefully. "Maybe even drinking bad water. And you're thin. Too thin. A boy as tall as you shouldn't have to double cinch his belt."

He absorbed her answer in silence, suspicion flickering across his features. It vied with an almost pathetic need to trust. "You know about medicines, huh?"

"Yes."

There. I said it.

She drew a shaky breath. The admission felt good, unbelievably good, as if someone had lifted a hundred-pound yoke off her shoulders.

"And this tea's gonna make me feel good?"

"Good enough to eat here every night and grow some meat on your bones."

He sniffed the cup again and made a face. "What if I don't like it?"

"Then we'll find something you do like."

He still didn't look inclined to swallow.

"You could add some honey," she suggested.

He raised his chin, the very picture of a proud man standing before an execution squad. "Naw. You drank it, right?"

She nodded.

Her heart went out to him as she watched his struggle between the longing to be well and his abhorrence for bad-tasting medicine. Finally, he squeezed his eyes closed and gulped.

His eyes popped wide again. "Hey, that's not so bad fer tea." A sheepish grin spread across his face, and he drained the cup, setting it back on the saucer with a clatter.

"Am I better now?"

"Well..." She was hard-pressed not to laugh. "You may have to drink several cups, spread out over several days. But I'll try to have some cherry pie or blueberry cobbler waiting here to make it worth your while."

His disconcertingly insightful gaze met hers with a new kind of respect. "I reckon that'd be all right, s'long as that old woman ain't around to raise a ruckus."

He busied himself with stacking his dishes, a gesture of help that completely surprised—and charmed—Eden.

"I got another problem fer you to fix too, mebbe."

She wrapped the last muffin in a linen napkin and braced herself for the worst. "You do?"

He nodded solemnly, cast her a sidelong glance, then took great pains to scrape a splotch of marmalade off the table with his spoon. "The only reason I'm telling you is 'cause... well, you ain't like the other Sammurtuns."

She knitted her brows. "You mean Good Samaritans?"

"Yeah. Them ones that try to cut my hair and change my talk and make me sit in a hot stuffy schoolhouse all day when I could be out hunting and fishing and jumping in the swimming hole."

She cleared her throat. From Collie's perspective, if from nobody else's, she suspected she'd just received a huge compliment. "Thank you."

"But you don't lie so good. And that could mean trouble."

"Uh..." She wasn't sure this observation was quite as flattering. "Why would that be troublesome?"

"'Cause you ain't allowed to tell nobody."

"I see." She did her best to match his gravity. "I assure you, Collie, I believe in keeping healing matters private. They shouldn't be anybody's business but your own."

He dismissed her assurance with an impatient shake of his head. "Yeah, but do you
promise?"

Her chest warmed with a feeling she recognized as maternal.
Whatever ails the heart of a boy,
Talking Raven once told her,
becomes a sickness in the man.

And Collie's heart had more reasons than most to be troubled.

"Of course I promise," she said softly.

His breath expelled in a rush. Apparently satisfied, he sat back, looked her square in the eye, and jabbed his forefinger at his cup. "What kind of teas do you got for coons?"

She blinked. "C-coons?"

"Yep. Hounds and rabbits, too. We got a whole passel of them, and they've got worms."

Chapter 6

Michael's first inkling that trouble was brewing came when he heard youthful voices squabbling ahead of him somewhere beyond the sun-spangled mists of the forest. Spurring Brutus through the tangle of blackberry bushes that carpeted Blue Thunder Mountain, Michael strained his ears above the alarm cries of blue jays and scampering fox squirrels. The feud appeared to be escalating.

"A girl? You brought a
girl
to our hideout?" Jamie sputtered.

"Listen here," Collie snapped back. "Yer the one who started it all, giving that puppy to Amanda Jean Buchanan."

"That's not fair! Mandy
followed
me up here. What was I supposed to do?"

"Pay more danged attention, that's what."

Michael's lips quirked. He supposed he should have paid more attention, too. On and off over the last six weeks, Jamie had quizzed him about medicines, bandages, and splints. Amanda had asked about fevers, colds, and mites. They'd always had some reasonable excuse: Amanda, for instance, claimed her doll had a runny nose, while Jamie insisted he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. Since both children were in the pink of health, Michael had dismissed their questions as idle curiosity. He supposed if he hadn't been so preoccupied with the measles quarantine at the county orphanage, he might have been more suspicious.

But it had never occurred to him that the children were sheltering orphaned animals. Nor had he guessed that Jamie had defied his mother's orders regarding the orphaned fawn he'd found starving in the woods. When Michael had examined the animal ten weeks ago, the fawn had been suffering from a malformed knee, which, apparently, had been a birth defect. He'd tried to explain to Jamie that shooting the fawn would be a kindness, since it would never be able to run from its predators. Jamie had cried, refusing to let Michael near the animal again, and Bonnie, at her wit's end, had asked Berthold Gunther to remove it from her stable. Strangely enough, the fawn's carcass had disappeared from the taxidermist's compound.

Last night, Michael had learned why. Jamie had confessed that Collie stole the fawn for Jamie to bury. Just as Collie had stolen the dozen or so other animals that Jamie had determined must be rescued from Gunther.

"Jamie, honey."

The liquid strains of a familiar alto snared Michael's attention more thoroughly than a bear trap.

"I thought we were friends," Eden coaxed in a tone that would have made castor oil bearable. "Don't you want me to help your animals? The way I helped Georgie?"

"Heck, no. That dried up old plant you gave Georgie turned him into a
girl!"

"A... girl?" Eden sounded bemused.

"That's right! He laid eggs!"

Michael smothered laughter beneath his riding glove. He could see the three of them now, silhouetted against the backdrop of flaming morning, dew-laden conifers, a half dozen cages, and the dilapidated remains of a pioneer cabin. During the 1760s, so the story went, Daniel Boone came across Blue Thunder Valley while he was blazing the Wilderness Road, and he grew so fond of the region that he built himself a home amidst the mountain laurels and scented pines.

Michael suspected that the chimneyless shack, with its half-hinged door and crumbling roof, had really been constructed by some long-forgotten mountain man who'd grown weary of his solitary life and had traded his beaver traps for a plow. Nobody but Collie thought about these ruins anymore, and the only reason he did was because his father had made a life for himself here nearly thirty years ago after running away from an orphanage.

"Uh..." Eden's face had grown a charming shade of rose in the dappled play of mist and morning. "I don't believe a pinch of parsley can make boy toads turn into girl toads."

"Well, something did." Jamie raised his chin, and his coonskin—or rather, Claudia's coonskin—fell across the bridge of his nose. "Ma says it's your fault. She said when you came to our town on the stage, God sent us a plague of warts, just like he did the locusts in Egypt!"

"Your ma's got sawdust for brains to say somethin' so stupid," Collie retorted, flipping his shaggy locks off his face. Michael noticed they actually looked grease-free for a change.

Come to think of it, so did Collie.

"Don't you be saying nothing bad about my ma."

"You can't get warts from toads, Jamie," Eden interjected diplomatically. "Dr. Jones said so himself."

"Told you, brat."

"Quit calling me brat!"

"Then quit actin' like one."

Jamie scowled at Collie's taunt. If Michael hadn't already suspected the eleven-year-old had defied doctor's orders last night, sneaking out of his bedroom to finish stringing wire mesh across the cabin's windows, he might have wondered at Jamie's uncharacteristic rudeness. The child had gotten no sleep. And he'd undoubtedly skipped breakfast. As selfish as Bonnie could be, she was a good enough mother to notice when her son was missing.

Michael wondered how long it would take before she waxed hysterical enough to convince Sheriff Truitt and a posse of sawmill workers to comb the forest for Jamie's corpse.

"Well, this animal orphanage was my idea," Jamie said. "So whatever I say here goes."

"You wouldn't
have
no danged animals fer yer stupid orphanage, if it weren't for me," Collie flung back. "'Sides, this here land belongs to my pa."

"It does not!"

"Does too!"

"Jamie." Michael ducked beneath a cascade of pine needles. "If you want to keep this place a secret, then I suggest you quit hollering at the top of your lungs."

Eden's features registered shock, even a faint uneasiness, when she spied him. Collie tensed, half squatting, reaching for his knife. Michael was gratified to see the boy's hand hesitate at the sight of the doctor's bag in his fist. Nevertheless, Collie grew as rigid as a railroad tie when he realized just who had invaded his pa's sanctuary.

"You told
him
about us?" he hissed at Jamie. "You said you'd only ask 'bout the medicine!"

"That was before last night's storm. Someone had to patch the roof in a hurry, 'cause your straw didn't work."

Collie's cheeks mottled.

"It is a bit of a surprise to have Dr. Jones join us," Eden said, placing a gentle hand on Collie's shoulder, "but I'm sure he only means to help."

"We don't need his kind of help," Collie snapped.

The boy tried to glare Michael down. Not for the first time did the base of his skull prickle when the boy defied him. Collie reminded him too much of Rafe. Their eyes were the same color; their hair was nearly the same shade.

But most troubling of all, Collie was just about the age that Rafe had been when he and Michael had brawled on their mother's fresh grave. The memory of that fistfight, which Michael had provoked out of grief and jealousy, was one of the greatest shames of his life.