Page 46 of Fairest of Heart

“You gonna be all right out here?” Doc appeared at the stall’s opening and leaned against the wall.

Titus finished laying out his bedroll, then pushed to his feet. “I’ve stayed in worse. Probably warmer out here than in the house anyway, with all those cold shoulders aimed my way.”

Doc chuckled. “They’ll get over it soon enough. I told them you realized your mistake and apologized. Most of them are just cartin’ around a bunch of pent-up frustration over the ill treatment that sweet girl has suffered and their inability to do anything about it. Makes us a little cranky.”

“Me too,” Titus admitted.

He wanted to hang Gerard Carlisle and Narcissa LaBelle upside down by their toenails and let them pick at each other until the buzzards took over. But Carlisle was outside his jurisdiction and Madame LaBelle was the lead suspect in his robbery case. As much as he wanted to arrest her for attempted murder, he feared the charges wouldn’t stick. Yes, he could testify to finding Penelope stripped and left for dead in the woods, but Madame had an entire troupe of witnesses who could attest to her being with the company that evening. He might be able to convince Mildred to testify to Madame’s state of mind, but the seamstress hadn’t heard the woman’s threats against Penelope or her orders to Hunt. With Narcissa LaBelle’s power and influence, they would need more than Penelope’s word to get a conviction. Especially if this Hunt fellow was as in love with the actress as Penelope seemed to think. He’d probably take the fall for his lover. That was if Titus could find him.

The man was guilty as sin, having been the one to carry out Madame’s orders, but Penelope had pleaded with Titus not to arrest him since he’d shown her kindness by leaving his knife to aid her escape. The spineless coward had done pitifully little to Titus’s way of thinking. He’d be happy to let Hunt rot in jail, but that would mean the true villain would go free. And that stuck in Titus’s craw. His best chance to take Madame LaBelle down was to prove her guilty of robbery. With hard evidence and multiple men testifying against her—men who were upstanding citizens with their own power and influence—she’d not be able to talk her way out of a conviction.

“Penelope’s an orphan, you know.” Doc dropped that little nugget into the stalled conversation, drawing Titus’s attention. “Found on the back steps of a girls’ school by the cook.”

“That a fact?” Titus moseyed over to join his grandfather at the edge of the stall. Instinct told him the old man wasn’t just telling him this to whet his appetite for supper.

“From what I gather, the woman who raised her was a God-fearing woman who was kind in her own way but not particularly nurturing. I’ve never heard Penny refer to her as mother. Only Edith.”

The woman in the picture Titus had found.

“Penny was raised on the school’s charity.” Doc eyed him over the top of his spectacles. “Educated but never really accepted. Without a wealthy parent to sponsor her learning, she earned her education by cooking and cleaning, even as a child. When I went to town and bought her a new pair of shoes and a few yards of fabric, she cleaned the entire house the next day. Her way of trying to earn the gift she’d been given.” Doc narrowed his gaze. “The girl couldn’t accept a gift freely given without trying to pay for it with the sweat of her brow. Had you asked me, I could have told you that there’s no way she’s your thief.”

Titus raised a brow. “Feel better now that you’ve got that I told you so out of your system?”

Doc sniffed. “As a matter of fact I do.” He pushed away from the support beam, then waved a hand in Titus’s direction. “You young folks like to think you got this world all figured out. It’s the duty of us old-timers to remind you, you ain’t always as smart as you think you are.”

Titus chuckled as he tipped his hat to his grandfather. “Lesson learned.”

Doc clapped Titus’s arm and nodded at him, pride lighting his eyes. “Good. Then come on up to the house. You won’t want to miss Penny’s corn bread. It’s about as close to heaven as a man can get this side of the grave.”

The tension that had hovered between the two men all afternoon lifted as they strolled up to the house. Titus still faced a handful of frosty glares from the other Diamond D men, but by the time dinner had finished, most of them had warmed back up. Partially due to Doc’s example, but mostly due to Penelope’s friendly manner toward Titus. Her ready smile and cheerful demeanor brightened everyone’s mood.

Which was why the atmosphere of the house mellowed when she closed herself in her room to work on a dress she was sewing. She’d taken the vibrancy with her. Over the course of the evening, the men retired one by one until Titus decided he should say his good-nights as well and head out to the barn.

It was too early to sleep, though, so he lit a lantern and went over his case notes, incorporating the new information he’d gleaned from Penelope. After an hour, his neck ached and his eyes burned, and he still had no definitive plan for trapping his thief.

Lucky nudged his hand. Titus took the hint and rubbed the hound’s head. “Ready to turn in, fella?”

The dog whined, then suddenly stiffened. A quiet growl rumbled in his throat a heartbeat before he shot out of the stall. His barks stabbed holes into the night’s silence.

Titus jumped to his feet, grabbed the lantern in one hand and his revolver in the other, then gave chase. By the time he made it out of the barn, Lucky had already reached the house and was barking furiously at a shadowy figure.

A shadowy figure in the process of climbing out of Penelope’s bedroom window.

20

You! Stop!” Titus shouted the demand as he sprinted toward the house, but the prowler raced away in the opposite direction.

Lucky barked but didn’t attack as the man ran past. With distance and darkness working against him, Titus could make out pitifully few details. About all he could tell was that the housebreaker was a male of average height with a bulky build, dressed in dark clothing.

And fast. He was actually pulling away.

“Stop!” Titus called again. “I’ll shoot!”

His quarry paid him no heed, just ran without once looking over his shoulder. Titus raised his pistol and fired into the air, hoping to scare him into stopping. The scoundrel ducked but kept moving toward the trees behind the house.

If the man had returned fire, Titus could have targeted him, but he never reached for a weapon. Just kept running. Probably hoped Titus was too honorable to shoot him in the back. Which he was. Confound it.

Titus continued to give chase and started to gain ground until the man mounted a horse that had been waiting behind the tree line. The sound of retreating hooves drummed defeat against Titus’s chest as he reached the trees. He swiveled the lantern left and right but saw nothing. The man was gone.