Page 17 of The Widow and the Wanted

She grants me a small smile at that, polite, and dips her chin as though I’ve just offered an interesting fact over supper.

The fire settles low between us, snapping now and then. Wind moves through the cedar above, shaking loose a dusting of snow. She keeps my coat over her lap, one gloved hand resting on the suitcase, the other turned toward the heat.

I tell myself it is enough. She is temporary company, nothing more. Boone will come back with meat or he will not. We will keep moving west or we will be caught. Whatever business put her on the Verdigris is none of mine.

My knees ache too much, my shoulders far too heavy to give a damn.

But curiosity is a hard thing to starve once fed.

I glance at her. “This expedition,” I say. “Why were you on it?”

Her eyes lift to mine. For the first time, there is something like teasing in them. “Why?” she asks. “Because I am a woman, you mean?”

I blink at her, the corner of my mouth twitching as I hold back a smile. “Yes. Precisely because you’re a woman. This is a dangerous place.”

“And yet here I am.”

“Here you are.”

She studies me a moment, as if deciding whether to take offense or pleasure in it. “I was engaged as an assistant,” she says at last. “Copying notes. Organizing specimens. Keeping records no one else cared to keep properly.”

“For scientists,” I add.

“You sound surprised.”

“Only curious.”

She draws my coat a little closer around her knees. “Curious that a woman might be useful for something besides sewing up stockings and pouring coffee?”

“Curious what kind of woman joins an expedition into dangerous country.”

She looks pleased with herself a moment, dragging out the silence if only just to wield some power over my curiosity. “I plan to open an apothecary. For medicines.”

“So you’re a herbalist then?”

“Yes,” she says, a smile cracking, as if impressed I knew the proper word. “And midwife.”

“That’s something,” I say. “Bringing life into the world. Men like Boone and me, we’ve seen more of death. War.”

Her eyes flick to mine, a spark of interest catching fire.

“Birth is not all grace,” she says. “It’s blood. Panic. Screaming.”

“So is war.”

That quiets us both for a moment. There’s steel in her. Grace beneath the grit. Fire crackles. Wind rustles the branches overhead.

She shifts her skirts, sitting closer as sparks pop in the campfire between us. “You were in the army?” she asks.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My husband too.”

I stop breathing for a beat. I hadn’t estimated she would be married. She never mentioned a husband, and being out on an expedition like this with a man waiting at home seems like an unusual thing. But then she says, “He died at Chickamauga,” and the battlefield falls into place, the bodies pile in muddy trenches, and the stench of death returns sharp and bitter on my tongue. I force the memory down until it turns to ash in my belly, then manage a restrained, “Sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

“Thank you. But please, call me Lula.”

“Thank you. And you may call me Okee.”