The “whiskey” was rotgut, which Morrow appreciated, since it meant Joe was letting them off cheap. Missus Kloves—Yancey, he reminded himself, God damn—took only the barest sip, visibly strained to withhold a coughing fit, then slid hers over.
“Your Mister Pargeter . . .” she began.
“He ain’t—” Too fast; he bit the words off, re-thought a bit. Carefully: “I got no real claim on Chess—we travel together, is all. He’s his own, if he’s anybody’s.”
“I truly meant no disrespect. Just that . . . people assume things, I’m sure.”
Pink touched up the apple of one cheek, shading to crimson; her eyes had already flicked away. More blushes all ’round, tonight, than at a church ladies’ sewing circle.
Deny it, right to her face, his nethers suggested meanly, and you still might have a chance. Chess won’t mind—ain’t like he’s Jesus, or you Peter. You don’t owe him everything.
Man’d been first to say it himself, after all: I somewhat think you like that gal, Ed. Like he was all but daring Morrow to do something about it.
“I can’t lie,” he said, finally. “I do count myself his friend, and we have been . . . friendly. But though I maintain there’s more things in him to admire than he’ll give himself credit for, I’m not his kind, which we both well know. So far, there’s been one man only for Chess in this whole world, that I’ve seen—and that man ain’t me.”
“So you don’t love him, then.” When Morrow didn’t answer, she went on, feeling her way: “Or . . . it’s a different sort of affection entirely, like me for Uther—for I did care, enough to honour my vows to the end, no matter what Mister Pargeter might think. Brotherly, perhaps?”
Morrow drained the extra glass fast, muttering, “Be a damn bad sort of brother, if it was.”
Giving thanks to Christ, at the same time he said it, that she’d never yet had occasion to touch his skin the way she had Geyer’s, much as part of him might want her to. Because that meant she wasn’t already privy to a whole host of chancy recollections, each with Chess’s name firmly attached: The flash of sweat between his freckled shoulder blades as Morrow hammered down hard into him, urged on by raucous cries; feel of his red beard’s slide in inconvenient places, mouth blazing a wet trail, as pleasure spilled over into pain. Or even the taste of last night’s breath mingling come morning, turning bad to good, fast as two pricks jerk upwards.
“He’s brave,” she allowed, obviously noting his continued embarrassment, yet blessedly unaware of the specifics. “That counts for something, I suppose.”
“Counts for a whole damn lot, in my book.”
“But is he trustworthy? That’s what I’m asking.”
“So long as other people are, around him . . . I’d have to say yes.” Morrow’s eyes sought hers, held them. “I mean—you’re trustworthy enough. I like to think I am.”
“Some would say you used to lie for a living, Mister Morrow.”
“Couldn’t’ve been too good at it, then. ’Cause I sure lost that job.”
At this, she gave a tiny grin followed by a snicker, and he paid her back in kind. Wondering if she saw anything at all whenever she happened to glance his way, ’sides from a fool twice her age, with unsteady morals and odd habits.
I’m an idiot, Morrow thought.
Yancey sighed. “So he means well at heart, according to you, no matter how rudely he behaves,” she said, as to herself. “Very well: I’ll take that as wrote, if I must. But like I said, if he keeps on spendthrifting that extra hexation we gifted him with on trifles, tossing it ’round like Katy-bar-t
he-door, we’ll be trouble-bound long before Sheriff Love catches up with us.”
“Which you think he will.”
“Think?” Another smile—wider, and far more fixed. “Mister Morrow . . . I pray for such a meeting, devoutly. I count on it.”
Though he’d figured her for being able to take care of herself long before her wedding-rout, the look that came into her eyes as she said this near froze him to his seat. Her initial grief and shock had given way to something darker—a thing he only now realized he’d feared might happen, all along—and Morrow found himself somewhat pitying the next person who might get between her and the next opportunity to work vengeance on Sheriff Love’s salt-cured corpse.
Again, he tried to turn her thoughts in another direction. “We can just pray more power into him, I reckon, we have to . . . you being his high priestess, or what-have-you.”
“Is that what I am?” She considered the idea. “No, I doubt that: anyone’s shed blood would do just as well to feed him, from what we witnessed.”
“Not without you to pray over it, it wouldn’t.”
“But . . . you prayed too, Mister Morrow. So . . .”
“Might be it’s both of us that’s needed, to work that particular trick,” he finished, without thinking. And got another little kick in the ribs from how his heart leaped to see her string the truth together equal-swift, forehead knit in concentration, like somebody’d taken up an invisible stitch between her fine, dark brows and yanked, hard.
“It’s a puzzle, all right,” she said. “And we don’t have much time.”