Page 16 of The Widow and the Wanted

“Lula Clay,” she says, soft.

“Pardon?”

“My name. Lula Clay.”

I nod, an unexpected pleasure washing over me at the small gesture of trust. There’s a sweetness to it—Lula. Southern.

We can forgive that, I suppose. Though, like the Southern belles I’ve observed, she carries the refined gentility of a woman accustomed to crowds parting for her. The kind of woman that could get a man killed for looking at her wrong, all the while pretending not to know the power she wields.

It fits her somehow. The rosebud and the thorns.

“Ms. Clay,” I say, dipping my head slightly in polite acknowledgement. “I regret the circumstances of our introduction.”

She swipes back a wayward weft of flaxen hair, voice weary. “You’re quite well-spoken.”

I raise an eyebrow.

There it is. The compliment with teeth.

“Yes,” I say. I let it hang for a second. “Educated men often are.”

She claps dirt gently off her hands. “I’ve met men with schooling who do not speak near as well.”

“I attended university back east.”

“Truly?”

“Mm,” I hum in affirmation, keeping my hands busy wiping down my pistol. “Before the war.”

She doesn’t say anything at first. Just watches my hands move, then looks into the fire.

“I studied with a doctor back in my town,” she says. “Helped him with ledgers, medicines. But I never did more than plain school. For girls. It wasn’t formal. I’m mostly self-taught.”

I nod.

“I meant no disrespect,” she says, fumbling a little. “I was told plenty about Indian Territory, and none of it was kind. But I never met…” she says, trailing off uncomfortably.

I half smile, a rare involuntary reflex, but it’s humorless.

“Where is home?” I ask.

“Greenbrier County. West Virginia.”

My eyes shift toward the trees, to the place where Boone disappeared minutes ago.

He is from West Virginia and talks about it often. Though he’s drifted on his own long enough, it is a rare sort of man he hasn’t already met.

I was still a boy, too young to understand the differences between men, when my father spoke of Indian Removal and called it necessary. We sat at our Anglo table, my mother in Anglo clothes, eating an Anglo meal, while he spoke of human lives like poker chips. The memory of it still sickens me, and I cannot keep the bitterness from my voice.

“I’d guess you never met an Indian because most were driven west before you were born.”

She shifts at that.

“My father’s people came from London,” I continue. “He met my mother here.”

“And your mother?”

“They call us Muscogee. Creeks. But we are Mvskoke.”