The Law and Miss Penny Read Online Free PDF

marsh—" She corrected herself, "—dear Cousin Cain to see if he needs any more salve or a fresh bandage."
    "Careful in there." Oda warned her daughter before Mariah disappeared from her sight.
    Once inside the wagon, Mariah stood very still in the darkness, listening to the lawman breathe, and picked out his strong masculine scent in the normally floral aroma of her tiny quarters. Although the wooden walls stretched to accommodate a ceiling of just over six feet, the actual bed of the wagon was ten feet long, the width not quite seven, and every inch of space had to be used in the most efficient manner possible.
    A narrow aisle only wide enough to allow one person to pass split the room in half. On one side, the wall was a checkerboard of shelving fashioned with high "thresholds" to keep the contents from toppling down to the floorboards as the wagon bounced from town to town. These shelves were laden with Kickapoo Wizard Oil, Princess Tanacoa's Special Vegetable Compound, Sagwa Worm Syrup, and every manner of salve and tonic imaginable.
    Across from the medical supplies, Mariah's narrow bed filled just over six feet of wall space. The area beneath it served as storage for the kettles, vats, ingredients, and empty bottles used in the preparation of the medicines. The remaining space between the bed and the back wall was taken up by a built-in combination dresser/water closet.
    Mariah lit a candle sitting in a saucer on top of the dresser and glanced down at her new "cousin." His head was butted up against the back wall of the wagon, and his feet were pressed against her dresser. The marshal's big body wasn't so much lying on her bed as filling it, consuming every square inch of a space she'd always thought of as quite adequate, until now. That he was a man of the law, added to the fact that no other man had ever known the softness of her mattress, made the sight startling, if not downright... arresting.
    Stimulated by the thought and all it implied, Mariah moved on down the narrow aisle, and then eased her hip onto the edge of the railing which supported the mattress. Finally, she thought, grumbling to herself, a man between her sheets, and look who it turned out to be. A self-righteous, arrogant marshal who would just as soon hang her as bed her. It was yet another obstacle for her potion to overcome in order to gain the fame it so richly deserved. To get this mean-spirited, hardheaded bastard to so much as smile at her would be testimony enough to sell her product worldwide.
    The lawman stirred then, groaning noisily, painfully. Mariah brushed her hand across his forehead. He was warm, but not hot or feverish. She took his pulse. It was strong and regular. She slid farther up the railing, nudging his big body aside with her right knee and thigh as she moved, and when she was able to reach his head, she carefully lifted him off of her pillow and removed the bandage. The linen came away fairly clean, suggesting that he had stopped bleeding. He began to moan as she laid him back down on her pillow, tossing his head from side to side, and Mariah caught his face between her hands to keep him from thrashing about and splitting the wound open again.
    "Take it easy," she whispered, staring down at him as he quieted, really looking at him for the first time. The marshal was not what she would call a handsome man. He was masculine, certainly, virile and powerful, but too cruel of mouth and narrow of thought for her to consider him attractive. Although he looked to be less than ten years her senior, he bore the ruts of a deep and unrelenting anger beneath his high cheekbones, and the fine lines etched into his brow suggested that he was a man who never went out of his way to smile, much less laugh. Even his otherwise classic and aristocratic nose looked angry, the smooth, straight lines marred by a few knots and bumps, evidence of his many fights.
    Mariah remembered the way he'd spoken to her and her family back in Bucksnort. Cain