Fifteen
Baron told me to stick close by him; he did. It was a beautiful situation. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes and squeezed my hands into tight balls. The other women seemed to be handling life there better than I was.
Maybe they knew something that I didn’t know, or maybe they were made of tougher stuff than I was. I ought to have been embarrassed at the very notion. I wasn’t. I was ready to be a weak little thing, so long as I lived to see the end of it.
I swallowed and shut my eyes tight and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do here. How I was supposed to get out from under the danger that I’d suddenly, unceremoniously, found myself under.
One idea kept coming to me, over and over again. I pushed it away for what felt like the hundredth time. And it came back to me again, just like it had a hundred times before:
There was one easy way out. I just had to get on my horse and ride out of here.
Once I found another town, which shouldn’t be all that difficult, then I could get a telegram sent to my mother. She’d find a way to get me home. Then I could go back. I’d have to hide my shame at having debased myself with a man like Baron Euler.
But I would have gotten away, and I would have been alive. Which was an improvement over being a poker chip in a high-stakes game between a couple of arrogant, violent men. I shouldn’t have come with Euler in the first place, a voice told me. He’s probably never heard the word Christlike in his life.
It was the right decision, and deep down, some part of me knew that. But I wasn’t going to do it, and I knew it, deep in my gut. Because as much as I tried to convince myself that it was the right decision, as much as I told myself that it would solve all my problems, as much as the fear sat low and heavy in my belly, I couldn’t make myself want to leave.
It was smart. It was the right decision. I tried to tell myself that a hundred times, and a hundred more, I failed to feel like it was what I actually wanted.
I turned to Euler. We were riding out in the badlands surrounding Perdition. Keeping watch was a constant job, I had learned. Everyone took their turns. Today was Baron’s turn, though I thought that he took more turns than most. And I was sticking close by him.
“You should get out of here,” Baron said.
I looked at him a long time.
“You going to come with me?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve got things that need doing here.”
“Then I’m not going. Unless you were planning to try and make me?”
He turned imperceptibly towards me, but I could feel the weight of his gaze on me now. I squeezed the horse’s flanks tighter.
“You don’t need me around. I’m no good for you anyways. You know that.”
“You spoiled me for anyone else,” I said. It was true, even if it wasn’t exactly fair to place all the blame at his feet. I didn’t want to leave, and I wasn’t going to. Not on his terms, at least. He might only have been echoing my own thoughts, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. Because he wasn’t the only one who could be stubborn, and I wasn’t going to let him do something smart for me if I didn’t want it.
His lips pursed, and his jaw tightened. I decided to prod him a little harder and drive my point home.
“You took what you wanted. Now you have to finish what you started.”
He turned away from me and scanned the horizon with a long, sweeping gaze.
“I get worried about you being here,” he said. It had the tone of a confession that he wasn’t happy to have to be making.
“Why’s that?”
“Things are going to go sideways. I don’t want you caught in the middle of it.”
“Then fix it,” I said. It might not have been fair, but I wasn’t thinking about fair. I was thinking that he’d been running scared for too long about this, and there was going to be a reckoning.
“It’s not that simple,” he said. Defensive. Almost weak. It was a strange sound to hear coming from Baron Euler’s mouth. Like he’d decided that he didn’t have to be strong. I pursed my lips.
“You’re going to let Frank talk dirt to me, then?”
“No,” he said harshly. “I’m not.”
“So you’re keeping me close, that right?”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Then what happens when he decides he’s ready to make his move?”
He stiffened in the saddle for a moment. The horses kept moving, but their ears flicked a little, nervously. My mare danced a little to the side. I tried to guide her straight. It felt more like trying to tell her with my mind that I wanted her straight. She seemed to get the message, same as she usually seemed to.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t have a plan.”
“You’re going to want to make sure that you figure it out, and soon.”
He straightened his shoulders, adjusted the hat on his head, and swept the horizon again, turned back to me.
“You’re going to be the death of me, woman.”
I smiled at him as sweetly as I could manage.
“As long as it’s a good death, isn’t that better than you could have hoped for? Some kinda chivalry thing, right?”
He rolled his eyes. “You better be pleased that I let you talk to me like this,” he said. “I’ve got half a mind to turn you over my knee when we get back into town.”
I straightened my neck and lifted my chin in a gesture that I hoped made me look stern and serene all at once. “You wouldn’t,” I said.
But I knew that he would. And I knew that it was a fair price to pay. That was the kind of man that Euler was, and that was the kind of relationship I wanted to have with him, after all.`