The Beloved Woman by Deborah Smith

Author:Deborah Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307796714
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2011-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

WIND SIFTED THROUGH spots in the cell’s log walls where the chinking was poor. Justis shifted painfully on the rough straw mattress of his cot and cursed in disgust. Why didn’t somebody just cut a window in this drafty grave and be done with it? At least he’d be able to see out while his arse froze off.

Two days gone. Fifty-eight left. Christmas, two weeks away, would find him here with nothing but the rats and a mean-tempered sheriff’s deputy for company. Not that he was eager to celebrate the holiday. It would only make him wonder where Katherine was celebrating it. Probably in Philadelphia.

He hoped she’d been forced to go to the dandy for money. He hoped the dandy had made her suffer to get it. That’d be a right proper revenge—Katie Blue Song, who’d been too proud to accept a backwoods miner, forced to spread her legs for a dandy who wouldn’t treat her half as well. He hoped she regretted what she’d given up. He hoped she choked on her Christmas pudding.

“Visitor,” the deputy called. He swung the heavy plank door open and quickly peered inside to make sure Justis’s booted foot was still chained to the wall.

At the sound of soft crying, Justis raised his head. Amarintha swept into the tiny cell, her voluminous pink skirt making her look like a human bell. She dabbed a handkerchief to her nose, and one gloved hand plucked nervously at a fur-trimmed cloak.

“I have fretted so because of you!” she exclaimed.

He sat up slowly, his back throbbing, and removed his hat. “I appreciate your worries, but I think you’d best go. If the judge—”

“He knows that I’m here. He agreed to it. I … I have a negotiation to make.” She came to him and laid a folded sheet of paper on the bed, then stepped back and clasped her hands together. “You know how deeply I hold you in my affections.”

He cleared his throat. The last thing he wanted was crazy Amarintha mooning over him. “I’ve given up on bein’ respectable. I’m done with it. You better look elsewhere for a husband.”

“Oh, no, I won’t do it! You can be saved, I’m certain.” She shifted awkwardly. “If you’ll demonstrate that you have a humble spirit, my father will reconsider your sentence.”

Justis looked at her warily. “How so?”

“Would you agree to leave town? To be, in effect, banished for sixty days?”

“Hell, no!”

She shook her clasped hands at him. “I implore you. That paper I gave you is a decree written by my father. It says that you’re to be released from jail if you agree to leave town temporarily. Go to Auraria. Or go down to Terminus and watch people build the railroads. In two months you can come back.”

“And have every man in town say that I was too soft to serve my time in jail? No.”

“But—but you’ll not be fit for anything if you stay in this place!” She flung her hands about her. “You’ll just keep

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