Page 65 of At Love’s Command

“Stop!” she cried. “I’m here. I’m here.”

“Well, so you are.” Carver glanced her way, then set his jaw and pounded Charlie’s face hard enough to send him sprawling into the dirt.

Josephine flinched, but she didn’t move to help her brother. Charlie wouldn’t thank her for babying him in front of Carver, and her smirking guard looked as if he’d take any softness on her part as an excuse to continue the punishment.

“You weren’t where I expected you to be, Doc.” He turned to face her, his eyes deliberately lingering on the undone buttons at her throat.

Despite the fact that her modesty was completely protected—women showed more skin at country dances than was currently exposed on her person—his gaze left her feeling dirty. Which was surely his intent. As much as she longed to clutch the edges of her collar together to hide herself from his view, she refused to let him shame her when he was the shameful one.

So she kept her hands at her sides and lifted her chin. “Your expectations are not my concern, Mr. Carver.”

His smug grin deteriorated into a scowl. “They should be. Unless you don’t care if little Charlie loses all his teeth.”

She heard her brother rise, heard him spit what she hoped was only blood and saliva and not a tooth onto the dirt. She stared at Carver, letting her disdain radiate without words.

They faced off for a long minute, neither blinking, until finally Carver lurched forward to grab her arm. He started dragging her toward the house, demolishing her momentary sense of victory in their battle of wills.

“Taggart wants to see you,” he growled.

This early in the morning? Josephine grimaced. That didn’t bode well.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

Carver flung Josephine through the open farmhouse door, then released her long enough to shut the door behind them. She stumbled into a narrow hall and had to brace a hand against the wall to keep from falling. Taking advantage of the brief separation from her captor, she scuttled a few steps down the hall, doing up the buttons of her shirtwaist as she went. A much easier task with two hands. Facing Taggart with confidence was hard enough without a set of undone buttons tormenting one’s mind. Carver’s leering gaze earlier had made her feel as if she were flashing her garters, not a prim trio of buttonholes.

She’d just finished pushing the last button through its loop when Carver clasped her elbow and drove her down the remainder of the hall and into the kitchen.

Apparently undone buttons would be tormenting her after all. Just not hers.

Taggart stood waiting for her, leaning against the dry sink, shirt untucked and unfastened, hair damp as if he’d just washed up. His torso was well-muscled and tanned from the sun, but it didn’t maintain her interest. She’d seen better. And on a man who possessed the decency to be embarrassed by his accidental display. Taggart’s blatant flaunting was obviously intended to unsettle her. Either as a distraction for a maiden’s delicate sensibilities or an attempt to stir a woman’s desire. Neither would be forthcoming on her part.

She focused on his smug features and gave the rest of him no more than a flick of a glance. “You wanted to see me?”

He nodded toward the rectangular table to her left. “Sit down, Miss Burkett. You’re going to write a letter for me.”

“You know,” she said as she moved toward the table, where a sheet of paper, a pen, and an inkwell waited, “if you had stayed in school instead of turning to a life of crime, you’d be able to write your own letters.”

“Carver.” Taggart’s tight voice filled the room a heartbeat before a knife sailed past her shoulder to lodge in the tabletop two inches from the edge of the paper.

Josephine sucked in a breath and yanked her arms up against her chest as she watched the hilt vacillate back and forth. The vibrations of the metal blade pulsed inside her head.

Taggart came up behind her. “I’ve had enough of your sharp tongue.”

Josephine swallowed, trying to keep her flapping heart from flying out of her chest.

“Sit down and write exactly what I tell you. Verbatim.” His hands clamped onto her shoulders, and he forced her into the chair. “Which, in case you doubt my literacy, is spelled V-E-R-B-A-T-U-M.”

Josephine nodded and reached a shaky hand toward the pen, her gaze darting to the blade embedded in the table. She knew how to deal with bullies in academic and professional circles, but wit and bravado had taken her about as far as they were going to with Taggart.

He was on edge. She tried to be encouraged by the notion that he was worried about retaliation from the Horsemen, but it was hard to hold that positive thought in her mind with an eight-inch bowie knife impaling the table beside her hand.

She inked the nib of her pen, then held it above the paper. “I’m ready.”

“Your mounts are ready, Captain.”

Doing his best to hide his impatience, Matt nodded to James Portman. The Horsemen had been waiting at the livery since sunup. Portman hadn’t shown until after seven o’clock. Plenty early for normal business, but forty minutes late by Matt’s schedule.