A Touch of Camelot (11 page)

Cole jotted down the score. Sixty-one to a dismal twenty-two in this, their sixth straight game. Arthur had won four out of five so far and seemed well on his way to yet another victory.

Now that Gwin was out of earshot, Cole decided to try an experiment to confirm the suspicions he harbored about the ragamuffin perched so innocently across from him.

He flipped the page of his tally book and scratched out a random arithmetic problem. "Arthur, I bet you a nickel that I can figure the answer to an addition problem faster than you can. Are you up to it?"

Arthur scooted forward in his seat. "You got yourself a bet."

"What's four hundred sixty-three plus two hundred ninety-six plus six hundred eighteen plus eighty-nine?"

Arthur's forehead didn't so much as wrinkle. Cole barely got a chance to carry the first two. "One thousand four hundred sixty-six."

Even though he knew Arthur's answer was correct, Cole finished the problem. "Okay, you earned yourself a nickel. Let’s try multiplication. Are you ready?"

"Double or nothing?"

Cole stifled a smile. "All right. Ready? This is going to be a hard one."

"That's what you think." Arthur placed his hands on the table and furrowed his pale brow in a scholarly manner. "Go."

"Twenty-six times forty-two times sixteen times nine."

Cole watched Arthur carefully. There was no screwing up of the face, no biting of the lip, no squinting eyes, certainly no sweating. His stubby fingers drummed the table staccato-quick. His mouth opened and the answer dropped out. "One hundred fifty-seven thousand, two hundred forty-eight."

Cole worked out the problem and looked up at Arthur. He couldn’t disguise his amazement. "I guess I owe you at the next whistle-stop."

Arthur beamed. "Easiest money I ever stole."

Cole closed his tally book and tucked it into his coat pocket. "So, Arthur, where did you go to school?"

"I never went to school. We moved around too much."

"Who taught you to read and write and figure?"

Arthur pulled out his slingshot, raised it to eye level, and pulled the strap, back, back, back. "Emmaline was a schoolteacher before she took up singing. She taught me some, but Gwinnie taught me mostly. That is, until I got smarter than her." He released the strap.
Snap!

"Who's Emmaline?"

"She was my ma."

Cole dealt them each ten cards. It struck him as odd that the kid referred to his parents by their Christian names. Then again, he came from a background that was nothing if not unconventional.

"Gwin's been looking out for you for a long time, hasn't she?"

Arthur tucked his slingshot back into his pocket and reached for his cards. "Gwinnie acts like a mother hen. She still checks behind my ears and like that. She's got what they call maternal instincts."

"That's probably because she's so much older than you."

"Yeah, well, our ma was always real busy with her own stuff."

Cole drew from the deck and discarded. "What was your mother like?"

Arthur grinned. "Oh, she was great fun. She could sing like a nightingale, and, holy crow, could she ever tell a story!"

"It sounds like she was very special."

"She could shoot the ashes off a burning cigar at twelve paces. How many ladies do you know who can do that?"

"None."

Arthur looked down at his cards, his grin fading. "You bet your boots."

Cole watched the boy rearrange cards in his hand. "Did your mother pass away?"

"Yeah, a couple years ago." He threw down a card and picked Cole's from the discard pile.

"And Silas, was he real busy, too?"

"Sure, but he still played with us and stuff. He always treated Gwinnie like his own kid, even after—" Arthur stopped, clearly troubled.

"After what?"

"It's a long story."

Cole picked a six, laid down a trio of the same, and threw an ace. "We've got time."

Arthur stared at his cards, but Cole could tell he wasn't thinking about the game. "A little while before she died, Emmaline left us in Dodge City. She had a terrible fight with Silas and told him Gwinnie wasn't his real kid. That hurt his feelings pretty bad. And the way she told him was kind of mean, right before leaving like that."

"You mean, Gwin wasn't Silas's natural daughter?"

Arthur nibbled at his lower lip. "Well, see, Gwinnie explained it to me. It all happened a long time ago in New Orleans before Silas and Emmaline got married. Emmaline was with Sidney then."

"Sidney?"

"Silas's brother."

Cole wasn't sure he understood Arthur correctly. If the boy was saying what Cole thought he was saying ... "You mean, Gwin's father was Silas's brother?"

Arthur nodded, drawing a card and laying off a six on Cole's original trio. "Emmaline and Sidney must have, uh, you know, done the thing to get a baby, but before Gwin could be born, Sidney and Silas had a big fight. Sidney got so mad he left for California."

"What ever happened to him?"

Arthur shrugged. "I don't know. No one ever heard from him again." The boy fell quiet as Cole drew from the deck and discarded, then, "Cole?"

"What?"

Arthur's face was pink. He didn't speak.

Cole straightened. "What's the matter? What's wrong?"

The kid swallowed hard. "Could you answer me a question?"

"I can try."

"Well, did you ever do the thing? You know, with a girl?"

Cole was taken aback by the question. He debated whether or not to lie. Seeing the strained, earnest expression on the boy's face, though, he decided against it. "Yes, Arthur, I have."

Arthur's face went from pink to scarlet, but he forged ahead nevertheless. "Did she get a baby?"

"No, she did
not
get a baby."

"Why not?"

Cole shifted position, uncomfortable with this line of questioning. "Because not every act has that outcome. It only happens sometimes."

The boy contemplated this. About the time Cole began to hope that the subject would be dropped, Arthur cleared his throat. "How do you know when it'll happen?"

Why had Arthur picked Cole to deliver the birds and bees sermon? Cole glanced toward the rear of the car where Gwin still waited her turn. He caught her eye easily even though there were over a dozen other passengers moving around in the fifteen feet that separated them. She was watching him, looking guilty as original sin, and Cole wondered what was going on behind those beguiling blue eyes. Was she planning another escape?

Cole returned his attention to Arthur. Gwin was the boy's only family now, and she was a woman. Cole had to sympathize with Arthur. The kid was at an age where he was naturally curious about sexual matters, and this entailed questions that no boy could rightly be expected to ask his own sister.

Cole laid his cards face down on the table. "You don't know for sure when it'll happen, Arthur, but there are precautions that can be taken to lessen the odds. You understand about odds, don't you?"

"Yeah. Like in cards and roulette, right?"

"Like in cards and roulette. Exactly."

"What precautions?"

"That's a complicated question. There are a few different ways. One has to do with timing."

The boy seemed to accept this and moved on. "When you do the thing with the girl, you're supposed to love her, right? So ... did you love her?"

Cole sighed. His gaze was drawn again to Gwin. There had been a few women in Cole's past, most of them fleeting, impulsive affairs of the moment, but only one where the word love had crossed his mind. "I thought I did, Arthur, but it turned out I was wrong."

"Like Silas."

Cole looked back at Arthur curiously. "Like Silas?"

"Yeah. He loved Emmaline, but he was wrong. She loved Sidney. He was her Sir Lancelot."

"He was her
what?
"

"Sidney was her one and only true love, her Sir Lancelot. That's what she told Silas the night she left."

This Emmaline must have been some woman, Cole thought. Time enough to spout fairy tales but too busy to check behind her own son's ears. "I'm sorry, Arthur. That must have hurt him pretty bad. And you too, huh?"

Arthur shrugged. "Nah. She said she'd come back for me. And she would've, too, except she died before she had a chance. Whose turn is it?"

But Cole could see his eyes watering. He picked up his own cards and discreetly looked away. "It's your turn, kid. And by the way, what was that score again?"

"Sixty-one to twenty-two. You don't have a prayer."

*

Gwin watched Cole through veiled lashes as he finished setting up their sleeping berths. Ever since the handcuff incident, he’d been sticking to her like a tick, and it was getting on her nerves.

"I have to use the convenience room," she said.

Cole's jaw tensed as he continued to spread a bed linen on the upper berth. "You just used the convenience room."

"I have to use it again."

He fixed her with a look that could have melted lead. "What's it going to be this time? Fainting in the aisle or shouting 'Fire' again in an effort to create a panic?"

She managed to muster an innocent expression in reply to this reference to their last dinner stop. "I thought I smelled smoke."

He bent down very slowly until they were nose to nose. Her eyes started to cross, and she jerked her head back a notch to focus better. His murderous expression didn't improve any with distance. "In a train station ... you thought you smelled smoke. How alarming."

She had finally succeeded in wearing those cool Pinkerton nerves down to a frazzle. She could now, in good conscience, call it a day. "Really" she said, "this mood of yours is horrid. Maybe you need to get some sleep."

"Maybe I do." He straightened, towering over her like a disapproving redwood.

"So, what'll it be tonight?" she inquired breezily. "Are you going to tie me up again?"

The hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, the first in many, many hours, and Gwin's guard went up.

"Not tonight, your ladyship. Tonight we're going to do things a little differently." Cole tapped Arthur, who was busy playing solitaire on the lower berth. "You're up top tonight."

"Really? You mean it?" Arthur gathered up his cards and scrambled up onto the second berth. "This is gonna be fun!"

Gwin wrinkled her nose. "You mean, I'm stuck sleeping with
him
?"

"Not quite." Cole pointed to the lower berth. "You're down here."

"Oh, well, that doesn't sound so bad." Gwin tossed her valise onto the berth and started to bend down, then straightened abruptly at a startling thought.

Surely, he wouldn't dare. Gwin's cheeks flushed. She sputtered like an old water pump. "Oh, no! You can't ... you wouldn't ... that would be—"

"You're got two minutes to get undressed and do whatever it is you do before getting all the way under those sheets. After that, ready or not, I'm coming in."

Gwin squared her shoulders. "This is highly irregular, Shepherd."

Cole narrowed his eyes dangerously. "
You
are highly irregular, Gwin."

Gwin searched his face for any sign that he might be bluffing. There was none. "But what about my reputation?"

"Which one? Horse thief? Or cardsharp? "

"That's not funny. You know what I'm talking about."

"Well, if you weren't such an all-fired pain in the—" He caught himself, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes again. He began in a calmer tone. "You proved to me last night that you cannot be trusted sleeping alone. Fine. Tonight we sleep together. Now, thanks to you, I'm about dead on my feet, so shut up and get your pretty little bottom in there before I put it in there for you." He pulled out his pocket watch. "Your two minutes starts now."

"I can't believe you're doing this. What are people going to think?"

"If anybody asks, we'll tell them we're married. We sure as hell act like it. One minute, forty-eight seconds."

Gwin's mind worked furiously. He was bluffing. He had to be. After all, Cole was not the kind of man who would stoop to such improper levels just to teach her a lesson. Would he? Gwin scrutinized his grim face. Of course he was bluffing. Well, she was an expert at short card games. She could bluff with the best of them.

"I see what you're doing. You're still mad about last night, so you're trying to get a rise out of me. The joke's over. You've had your laugh."

"One minute, thirty-six seconds."

Gwin bit her lower lip.

"I'd get moving if I were you."

Gwin decided in that moment that he was, indeed, serious, and what had he said?
One minute, thirty-six seconds?
She moved, and pretty quickly too, ducking barely in time to keep from smacking her forehead into the upper berth. "This is an outrage!"

She went in head first on all fours, posterior presented toward the aisle, when she was suddenly struck by the idea Cole might see fit to help her in with the toe of his boot. She scrambled around, still crouching on all fours, and yanked the curtains closed behind her. She blinked in the dark, listening to the abbreviated conversation above.

Arthur's awestruck voice. "Geeee whillikins! Hey, Cole, are you really gonna—"

"Go to sleep," Cole said flatly.

Arthur clammed up, and Gwin heard the upper berth creak as her brother settled in for the night. She knew that he would be asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He'd be no help to her at all.

"One minute, fifteen seconds."

"Be quiet out there, you ... you ..." She couldn't think of a word vile enough to hang on him, so she let it drop, rolling onto her back and bringing one knee up to hurriedly unlace a shoe.

He's trying to rattle you,
she lectured herself sternly, pulling off her shoe and throwing it down.
Don't let him get to you. Stay strong. Stay calm. So what if the two of you are going to be sleeping together? Sleeping is sleeping. This is stick-in-the-mud Cole Shepherd we're talking about. It isn't as if anything is actually going to happen ...

Gwin couldn’t control the blush that burned from her cheeks to her ears. Holy Moses! It had to be at least a hundred twenty degrees in here with the curtains drawn.