Dewberry Creek VI: A Mean Place Underneath
The men go to Rhodes, and Ruth and Javier are sent on an errand. The encounter leads to a messy truth that both Ruth and Arthur find themselves admitting to, in a way.
Pairing: Arthur Morgan x FemOC/Reader POV Tags: Longfic, Slow Burn, Smut (18+), Violence, Canon-Typical Injuries AN: we're getting horny, people. I am so excited because now we are getting into the part of the story I've been clawing at for the better part of a year. this is a longer chapter. taglist: @thorst, @autrytonic, @arthurmorganist, @appalachiancowboy99, @blueskies664, @ultraporcelainpig, @pinescent-and-gingerbread, @honeymaltgelato, @newest-obsession, @mrsarthurmorgan7, @arthurstinmug, @blueskies664, @v3lv3tf0x, @emerald-ranch, @redwritr, @photo1030, @kisblle, @honeycoyotes, @captainstottlemeyer, @globetrotter28, @abducted-cowz ➵ AO3 Link ➵ Fic Masterlist ➵ Previous | ➵ Next
The morning at Dewberry Creek is sticky and slow.
The heat is already rising out of the ground by the time you wring out the last shirt over the washtub. Water drips from the hem, darkening the grey baked clay at your feet. Camp is stirring properly now. Men move about with bed-rough hair and half-buttoned shirts. Coffee steams at Pearson’s fire. Horses stamp and flick flies with their tails. Somewhere deeper in camp, Sean is already talking far too loudly for the hour, and Susan Grimshaw cuts across him like a knife.
You hang the shirt on the line and wipe your damp hands on your skirt.
The grey clay walls of the creek bed hold the heat in strange ways. Down here it settles low and heavy, thick as wool, while the breeze only stirs at the top where the tree roots knot through the banks. You glance up that way now, toward Dutch’s tent, where voices drift down in pieces.
Dutch. Hosea.
You know the cadence of both by now. Dutch is all booming thunder and velvet. Hosea is lower, drier, more like a steady hand on your shoulder than a raucous sermon.
You tuck the empty basket under your arm and drift toward the campfire more out of habit than purpose. Pearson grunts when you pass, elbow-deep in something bloody. You set the basket near his wagon and pour yourself a tin cup of coffee from the pot next to the flames.
It tastes burnt. Pearson made it this morning. Sighing, you drink it anyway.
Dutch and Hosea’s voices sharpen enough for words to form in your ear.
“…can’t sit here forever,” Dutch says.
You slow and listen without meaning to, the cup warm in your hands.
Hosea hums. “Didn’t say forever. Said we oughta know the lay of the place before we start pullin’ on loose threads.”
You don’t move closer, but the camp is small enough and the mornings are still enough that the sound carries clearly. Dutch stands outside his tent with his vest already buttoned, dark hair slicked back. He’s got a coffee cup in one hand, the other braced at his hip. Hosea leans against a wagon wheel nearby, hat tipped back, cigarette smoke drifting between two fingers.
Dutch shakes his head. “Well, I know enough already. Lemoyne is full of backward fools clingin’ to a war that ended thirty years ago. Men in grey coats struttin’ around like old ghosts. Women behind lace curtains with poison in their smiles. Whole damn place still thinks the Civil War’s liable to start up again if they glare hard enough.”
Hosea lets out a short, amused breath. “That about sums up the saloon owner I talked to.”
Dutch goes on as if he hasn’t heard him. “And Rhodes…” He says the name as if it tastes sour. “Whole town’s got the look of somethin’ left too long in the sun. Sleepy on the surface, mean underneath. A place like that usually’s got money in it or trouble. Usually both.”
You take another sip of coffee and pretend not to be listening.
Hosea scratches his jaw. “I heard talk yesterday in town. Not from the saloon this time. Old fella outside the gunsmith, drunk enough to tell the truth. Says two families more or less own everything ‘round here. The Grays and the Braithwaites.”
Dutch’s eyes narrow with interest. “That so?”
“Mhm.” Hosea nods. “Far as he told it, one’s old money, one’s older money, and both think the county belongs to ’em by divine right. Farms, workers, influence, politics. Hell, maybe even the law. If there’s business to be found in Scarlett Meadows, it likely runs through one of those names.”
Dutch grows still in the way he does when an idea takes hold.
You’ve seen it before. It comes over him like a shadow passing over water. A glint in the eye. A small tilt to the mouth. The shape of a plan forms before the words for it do.
“The Grays and the Braithwaites,” he repeats softly. “Now don’t that sound promisin’.”
“Or dangerous,” Hosea says.
Dutch smiles. “Dangerous things are often promising.”
You look down into your cup.
That’s true enough of most things in this camp.
A boot scuffs somewhere behind you. You glance over your shoulder and see Arthur coming up through the creek bed from the far side of camp. He walks broad and deliberately, hat low against the growing brightness of morning. He’s got that look like sleep didn’t quite come, and the day has already offended him by starting. One hand hooks in his gun belt. The other hangs loose, though from the set of his shoulders you’d think he was dragging the whole world behind him.
He heads straight for Dutch and Hosea, not noticing you at first.
“Morning,” he mutters as he comes within earshot.
Dutch turns, easy charm settling back over him. “Arthur. Just the man.”
Arthur grunts, which in Arthur’s language may as well mean yes.
Hosea glances once at him, then at Dutch, already knowing where this is headed.
Dutch sets his coffee down on the crate beside him and steps forward a little, the morning sun catching on the rings at his fingers. “Hosea and I were just discussing our friends to the south. Rhodes. The local gentry. The opportunities available to men with imagination.”
Arthur’s mouth twitches at one corner, though there’s no real humor in it. “Are y’ now?”
“Indeed.” Dutch folds his arms. “I want you to take a few of the boys and ride into town. Nothing dramatic. Nothing ambitious. Just look around. Have a drink. Listen. See what kind of people we’re dealin’ with.”
Arthur’s expression stays flat. “Who d’you want me takin’?”
“Maybe Bill, maybe Sean. Lenny. Keep your ears open.”
Arthur snorts. “Maguire don’t keep much open besides his mouth.”
Hosea’s smile tugs at one side. Dutch ignores them both.
“The point,” Dutch says, “is not to start anything. I ain’t askin’ for heroics. I’m askin’ for observation. I want you boys to look like travelers. Tired, thirsty, harmless enough.”
Arthur lifts his eyes at that, one brow shifting just slightly. Harmless is not a word that sits naturally on him.
Dutch sees it and grins. “Well. As harmless as you can manage.”
That nearly gets a chuckle out of Hosea.
Arthur rolls one shoulder. “Fine. We go in, have a drink, look around, come back.”
“Yes.” Dutch points a finger at him then, his smile thinning into something more pointed. “And you do not get too wild.”
Arthur’s face goes blank in that way it always does when he knows he’s being prodded.
Hosea drops his gaze to hide his amusement.
Dutch keeps going, merciless now. “This is not Valentine. You understand me? I do not need you and Lenny tearing through another town like two schoolboys set on fire with whiskey.”
You nearly choke on your coffee.
Arthur looks, finally, in your direction at the sound. His eyes catch yours for half a second. Dark. Sharp. Briefly surprised to find you there.
Then his gaze cuts away again.
“That was that one time,” he mutters.
“One time memorable enough to live forever,” Dutch says grandly.
Hosea chuckles under his breath. “I do recall a saloon girl askin’ if there really were two of him.”
Arthur drags a hand down his jaw. “Christ.”
Dutch laughs outright. “Exactly. So no. You go to Rhodes, you drink, you listen, and you keep your wits about you.”
That makes Hosea bark a laugh. Even you have to hide your smile in the rim of the tin cup.
Arthur glares at both of them, though there’s less heat in it now, more weary resignation than real temper. “You done?”
“Almost.” Dutch steps closer and lowers his voice a little, though not enough to keep the words from carrying. “These people down here pride themselves on bloodlines and old grudges. That means vanity. Vanity means cracks. I want to know where those cracks are.”
Arthur nods once.
“See how the Grays carry themselves. See if the Braithwaites are as rich as rumor says. See who owns the sheriff, who owns the saloon, who owes who a favor.”
Arthur shifts his weight. “Alright.”
Dutch’s expression softens back into something almost fatherly. He claps Arthur once on the shoulder, firm. “Good man.”
Arthur takes that as the dismissal it is and turns half away. Then, Dutch adds, “And Arthur.”
He pauses.
“Take it slow. We just got here. I do not want to announce ourselves before we know what song this place is singin’.”
Arthur looks back over his shoulder. “I heard you.”
For a moment, nobody speaks.
Camp moves around the quiet. A horse tosses its head. Pearson swears because something burns. A crow lands on one of the creek banks and watches with the black-eyed patience of a preacher waiting on sin.
Then Arthur glances toward the hitching rail where Lenny is trying to tighten a saddle strap and failing because Sean keeps jawing at him from two feet away. There’s the faintest shift in Arthur’s face. Not quite affection. Not quite dread.
A little of both.
“I’ll get ’em together,” he says.
Dutch nods. “Good.”
Arthur starts down the slope toward the others. As he passes you, he slows just enough to tip his chin in your direction.
“Mornin’, Missus Shaw.”
The words are gruff, nearly swallowed by the noise of camp, but they land all the same.
“Mornin’, Mister Morgan,” you answer.
His eyes flick once to the cup in your hand, then to your face, as if checking something he has no right to ask after. Then he moves on, boots crunching over dry earth, his voice already rising at Lenny.
“Get that thing saddled proper or I’m leavin’ your ass here.”
Lenny protests. Sean cackles. Bill appears as if conjured by the very word drink.
Dutch watches them gather with that pleased, far-off look he gets when his pieces begin moving the way he wants.
Beside him, Hosea lights another cigarette and blows the smoke out slowly.
You stand with your cooling coffee between your hands and watch Arthur go, broad-backed and sun-struck, moving toward whatever trouble the day has set aside for him.
-
The afternoon turns honey-gold and lazy over Dewberry Creek.
By then, the worst of the heat has begun to loosen, though the earth still gives it back in waves. The banks of the dried creek glow white and grey in the slanting light, and camp has fallen into one of its quieter moods. The men who stayed behind keep to whatever shade they can find. A few of the horses doze with one hind leg cocked. Somewhere beyond the wagons, someone is splitting wood with a steady, dull rhythm.
You sit beneath a lean-to with Jack Marston tucked into your lap, the two of you in the patchwork shade cast by canvas and pole. The book rests open in your hands, its worn spine complaining with every turn of the page. Jack is warm and wiggly against you, all sharp elbows and dusty knees and complete attention. He smells faintly of sunshine, creek mud, and the soap Abigail used on him two nights ago.
You clear your throat and read on, trying to keep your voice even, though Huckleberry Finn makes that difficult. There’s something sly and bright about it, something with a grin tucked between its teeth.
Jack hangs on every word.
Every so often, he tips his head back to look up at you, eyes big and shining, as if he can’t believe a story can keep unfolding like this, one small marvel after another. Every time you pause at the end of a page, his whole body tightens in anticipation.
“And then?” he asks.
You smile down at him. “You impatient thing. I ain’t skipped any.”
“Then keep goin’!”
Beside you, Abigail snorts softly without looking up from her sewing. She sits cross-legged on a folded blanket, one of Jack’s trousers spread over her lap, lips pinched in concentration as she works the needle through a tear at the knee. Her dark hair is pinned up, loose and practical, tendrils escaping around her face in the damp heat. A dull silver thimble glints on one finger. Every few minutes, she bites a thread clean or squints at a stitch she doesn’t trust.
“He gets that from his father,” she mutters.
Jack twists enough to protest. “Mama.”
“What?” Abigail glances at him, all innocence. “You do.”
He scowls in a way that is entirely John, which only makes you laugh, and then squirms until he’s settled more squarely against your ribs.
You pick the thread of the story back up and keep reading.
Camp noise drifts around you, low and familiar. A horse blows through its nose. Someone coughs by the fire. Pearson bangs a pot hard enough to announce he’s working, though whether he’s cooking anything worth eating remains an open question. The pages rustle beneath your fingers. Jack’s head grows heavier where it rests against your shoulder.
You read about rivers, boys, and freedom. About rafts and schemes and trouble dressed up as adventure. Some passages slide over Jack easily enough, but others catch him proper.
“What’s that mean?” he asks, pointing to a line.
You lower the book and explain it as best you can, simpler, softer. He listens hard, mouth parted, then nods solemnly as though you’ve handed him something important.
Abigail watches the two of you for a moment, her face gentling.
“You’re spoilin’ him,” she says.
You keep your eyes on the page. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mhm.” She bites off another thread. “First stories, then next thing I know you’ll be teachin’ him words too fancy for the rest of us.”
Jack beams at that like it’s high praise.
You turn the page. “There are worse things than a boy likin’ books.”
“No argument there.” Abigail smooths the cloth over her knee. “Long as he still remembers how to do somethin’ useful too.”
Jack, affronted now, declares, “I can do useful things.”
You lower the book and look at him gravely. “Can you?”
“Yes.”
“Name three.”
He squints into the middle distance with all the strain of a philosopher being held at gunpoint.
“I can… feed Old Boy.”
“Sometimes,” Abigail says.
“I can find rocks.”
“That ain’t useful,” she says.
“It is when you need a rock.”
You laugh before you can stop yourself, and Jack grins, delighted to have won something, too smart already for his own good. He is already opening his mouth to name a third skill when footsteps approach from the creek bed.
You glance up.
Javier comes down the slope with that easy, rolling stride of his, hat tipped low, sunlight catching on the silver buttons of his shirt. There is always something composed about him, even in this heat, as though he moves to music nobody else can hear. He lifts a hand in greeting before he reaches the shade.
“Afternoon, ladies,” he says warmly.
Abigail nods. “Javier.”
Jack cranes around in your lap. “You goin’ somewhere?”
Javier smiles at him. “Maybe.”
He comes to a stop just outside the lean-to, thumbs hooked in his gun belt. There’s dust on his boots and a look about him that says errand rather than leisure.
“Ruth,” he says, turning to you, “you wanna come with me into town?”
You blink up at him. “Town?”
“Rhodes.” He jerks his chin toward the road as if the place sits just beyond the next thought. “Dutch asked me to go collect the boys from the saloon before they forget they got horses, names, and a camp to come back to. Thought maybe you might like a ride.”
The answer jumps out of you before sense can lay a hand on it.
“Yes.”
It comes fast enough to make Abigail smirk.
Heat rises in your face, and you try again, with a little more dignity this time. “I mean… yes. If it ain’t a burden.”
Javier’s mouth curves into a grin. “It’s a wagon ride, not a marriage proposal.”
Abigail snorts. You shoot Javier a look over the top of Jack’s head.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.” His smile softens. “And no. It wouldn’t be a burden. Come on, Güera.”
The thought of leaving camp, even for an hour or two, opens in you like a window unlatching. Dewberry Creek has only just started to feel familiar, and already the walls of camp can begin to close in. The same wagons. The same paths worn through the dust. The same watchfulness, however kindly meant. A ride into Rhodes means air, motion, a change in the look of the world. The shop window. Maybe the smell of fresh bread if it's baking. Maybe just the pleasure of not sitting still. It has been more than a week since Hosea brought you to town and you’re starting to feel stir-crazy.
You close the book over one finger to keep your place and look down at Jack.
“What d’you think?” you ask. “Should I go?”
He studies you with exaggerated seriousness, then the book, then you again. “Will you come back?”
The sweetness of it touches somewhere tender.
“Of course I will.”
“With another chapter?”
“With another chapter.”
He considers that, then gives a solemn nod of permission.
Your laugh catches in your throat. “Well then.”
You shift him gently from your lap into Abigail’s arms, and he goes with only mild complaint, more interested in the interruption than in resisting it. You stand and stretch, feeling where your skirts have wrinkled beneath you, where the heat has glued the fabric to the backs of your knees.
Then a thought strikes you.
“Jack,” you say, kneeling so you’re eye level with him, “I might see if there’s a book in town.”
His whole face brightens.
“A new one?”
“If I can find one.”
His excitement is instant and pure, a struck match. “A story one?”
“Hopefully.”
“With pirates?”
You glance at Abigail. “That depends on what the bookseller of Rhodes believes in.”
Jack accepts this as a perfectly sensible answer.
You straighten and turn to Abigail. “Need anything?”
She looks down at the trousers in her lap, then at the thimble on her finger. She lifts it and frowns. “Actually… yes. A new thimble, if you happen across one. This one’s near split.”
You hold your hand out. She slips it off and passes it over. The metal is warm from her skin, the edge bent just enough to catch the light wrong.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“You don’t have to go spendin’ your money on me.”
“It’s a thimble, not a pearl necklace.”
Abigail gives you a dry look. “Fine. Then get me two.”
Javier laughs softly.
You tuck the dented thimble into your pocket and set the book carefully on the folded blanket. Your hand lingers a moment on the cover of Huckleberry Finn. Then you rise fully and brush your palms down your skirt.
“Give me one minute.”
You hurry to your things, heart beating a little faster than the occasion truly calls for, and rummage for your bonnet. Camp smells of dust, horse sweat, old canvas, and something frying at Pearson’s fire. You tie the bonnet beneath your chin, pat your hair, then think better of it and retie the ribbon neater.
There’s no reason for it.
You know there’s no reason for it.
Rhodes is just a town. Javier is just Javier. The men are likely halfway drunk by now, or halfway there, which ought to strip the whole thing of anything but practical amusement.
And yet.
You smooth your skirt again.
By the time you come back, Javier is letting Jack inspect the wagon harness from a safe distance while Abigail watches like a hawk, ready to strike.
“Ready?” Javier asks when he sees you.
You nod. “Ready.”
Abigail hands Jack’s trousers back to him and straightens his collar with quick, affectionate hands. “Bring her back in one piece.”
Javier puts a hand over his chest. “Señora, I am wounded you think otherwise.”
“I know otherwise,” Abigail says.
You laugh, and Jack calls, “Bring me pirates!”
“I’ll do my best,” you promise.
Then you and Javier set off.
The wagon waits at the upper lip of the creek bed where the ground levels out and the road begins to mean something. Javier offers you a hand up, more out of habit than need, and you take it. His palm is dry and callused. You gather your skirts and climb onto the seat while he circles round and takes the reins.
A flick of leather, a creak from the wheels, and the horses start forward.
Camp falls away behind you by degrees.
First, the lean-to and wash line vanish beneath the rise of the bank. Then the tops of the wagons sink from sight. Then even the smoke from the cookfire is gone, leaving only the open country and the long late light of Lemoyne.
For a little while, neither of you says much.
The road winds through Scarlett Meadows in soft red curves, packed earth scored by wagon ruts and hoofprints old and new. The fields beyond lie green and overfull, thick with summer. Stands of oak and cypress hold their shadows close. Now and then, the breeze lifts, carrying the damp smell of marsh water from somewhere unseen, braided with wild grass and the sweeter scent of crushed clover under the wheels.
You breathe deeper than you have all day.
Javier notices.
“Camp wearin’ on you already?” he asks, not unkindly.
You look out over the road ahead. “Not wearin’. Just… crowdin’ a little.”
He nods like he understands that exactly. “It does that.”
The wagon rocks gently beneath you. Every rut jolts up through the seat, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind you you’re moving. A dragonfly flashes blue near the ditch. White egrets rise from a patch of marsh grass in a slow, startled drift.
“You looked happy to get out,” Javier says after a minute.
“I was,” you admit. “I am.”
“That bad, then?”
You think of Jack warm in your lap, Abigail beside you, the book in your hands, the sleepy comfort of the lean-to. You think of Arthur riding out that morning with Dutch’s instructions on his back like an extra piece of tack. You think of the way camp holds tenderness and tension in equal measure, how even the safest place you know can begin to feel too small when too many thoughts are trapped inside it.
“Not bad,” you say finally. “Just the same.”
Javier gives a quiet hum. “The same can be dangerous.”
You turn to him, amused. “That sounds like somethin’ Dutch would say.”
“Dios no lo quiera.” He flashes a grin. “I prefer music to speeches.”
That makes you smile.
The horses plod on, steady and patient. Ahead, the road stretches into the amber wash of afternoon, and somewhere beyond the trees and fields and the hush of old southern land sits Rhodes, waiting with its red-dirt streets and shuttered windows and men already drinking the day down.
You rest one hand over the pocket where Abigail’s bent thimble sits and think of Jack’s hopeful face when you promised him a new book.
A small errand. A simple drive. Nothing more than that.
-
Rhodes arrives in layers.
First, the road widens and hardens beneath the wagon wheels. Then the fields give way to fences and telegraph poles and the occasional house set back from the road beneath live oaks draped in grey moss. Then, all at once, the town itself rises out of the red dust, low and sun-struck, with false-front buildings and hitching rails and boardwalks warped pale by heat.
The place looks half asleep.
That’s the first thing you think.
Not dead. Not empty. Just drowsing with one eye open, the way a dog might doze on a porch while still keeping track of every footstep in the yard. Men sit in doorways and on benches, hats tipped low. A pair of women in light dresses move along the far side of the street beneath parasols, talking in low voices that disappear beneath the clatter of wheels. A wagon loaded with feed sacks rolls past in the opposite direction, the driver giving Javier a nod too brief to mean kindness. Even the dust here seems settled in a particular way, as if Rhodes has been baking in the same gossip and grudges so long the dirt itself has grown suspicious.
The buildings stand close and practical, brick and clapboard and weathered paint. Signs swing gently over storefronts. Somewhere nearby, a blacksmith’s hammer rings out, hard and measured. The air is thick with horse sweat, tobacco smoke, hot wood, and the faint sour sweetness of spilled beer drying in the street.
Javier steers the wagon toward the Parlour House, one hand easy on the reins.
“There,” he says, nodding toward the saloon.
The place sits broad and self-important on the street, front steps worn in the middle, windows dulled by dust and shade. You can hear it before the wagon fully stops: laughter rolling out through the doors, the scrape of chairs, piano notes wandering a little drunk through the noise.
Javier pulls the horses up by the hitching rail and sets the brake.
For a moment, neither of you moves.
Then he glances at you, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Alright. Here’s the plan.”
You turn a little on the seat, already amused by the look on his face. “That sounds dangerous.”
“It’s efficient,” he corrects.
“That sounds worse.” You giggle.
He ignores that. “You go in and gather the men.”
You stare at him. “I do what now?”
“Yes.” He gestures toward the saloon doors with both hands, as though unveiling a stage. “They’ll be alot happier seein’ your pretty face than mine.”
You laugh despite yourself. “You are shameless.”
“True.” He tips his hat back a fraction. “But I’m also correct.”
You peer at the Parlour House, then back at him. “And what if they’re too drunk to care whose face it is?”
“Then you tell ’em Dutch sent you, and if they still don’t move, I’ll come in and drag ’em out by the heels.”
“You enjoy this far too much.”
“I’m a simple man,” Javier says. “I enjoy many things.”
You shake your head, smiling, and gather your skirts. “Fine. But if Sean bites me, I’m sendin’ him back to you.”
“Fair.”
You climb down from the wagon, boots finding the packed red dirt of the street. The afternoon has dipped deeper toward evening now, the light richer, the shadows longer beneath the awnings and porches. The Parlour House looms warmer and louder as you approach, its doors thrown open to the heat.
At the threshold, you pause for half a heartbeat.
Then you step inside.
The change in the air hits at once.
It’s cooler than outside, but only just, and close in the way all saloons are, thick with smoke and the smell of whiskey soaked into wood. A haze hangs beneath the ceiling. The piano in the corner is being worked by a woman who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else, her fingers moving dutifully through a tune while men talk right over it. Glasses clink. Chairs scrape. Somebody laughs too loudly at the card tables. Somebody else is arguing about something that no longer matters and maybe never did.
Your eyes take a moment to adjust.
Then the room begins to separate into faces.
Sean is the easiest to spot, of course. He is never so much in a room as all over it. He stands near one of the tables with a half-finished drink in hand, talking animatedly to a man who looks trapped by the experience. Bill is at the bar, shoulders like a bull in a shirt too tight across the back, already looking irritated by the world in general. And Lenny...
You spot him off to one side near the far end of the counter, no drink in front of him, expression set hard with the kind of anger that tells you something is wrong before anyone says a word. He’s not loud about it. If anything, the anger is made sharper by how quiet he is.
Sean sees you first.
His whole face breaks open. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Before you can brace yourself, he barrels toward you through the tables with all the force of a happy dog and sweeps you into a hug that nearly lifts you off your feet.
“There’s an angel in Rhodes,” he declares into your bonnet ribbons, “and she’s come for me specifically.”
You laugh and brace a hand against his shoulder as he sets you down. “Don’t flatter yourself. I came for all you poor idiots.”
“Cruel,” Sean says, clutching at his chest. “Utterly cruel, Missus Shaw.”
“You’re wanted back at camp.”
“Wanted?” He grins. “Now that sounds far better than ‘sent for.’”
Bill, hearing his name unspoken in the general direction of trouble, turns from the bar with a glower. “What’s all this then?”
“You,” you say, stepping around Sean before he can make a stage play out of the moment. “Javier’s outside with the wagon. Dutch wants everybody back.”
Bill grumbles at once, exactly as expected. “We just got settled.”
You glance at the emptying glass in his hand. “You’re very brave, settlin’ that hard in the middle of the afternoon.”
He huffs through his nose, not pleased but not truly resistant either. “I ain’t had that much.”
Sean leans in toward you, confidential. “He’s ‘ad enough to start repeatin’ himself, which is always a bad sign.”
“Shut up, Sean.”
Lenny has drifted closer by then, and when you look at him properly, you see the tightness around his mouth, the banked anger in his eyes.
“What happened?” you ask quietly.
His jaw works once before he answers. “Nothin’ I ain’t seen before.”
You don’t need it explained. Not fully. The look on his face and the space in front of him tell enough.
Your gaze slides to the bartender and back.
Lenny lets out a breath through his nose. “Wouldn’t serve me. That’s all.”
It isn’t all, and the thinness of the phrase makes your stomach knot. The unfairness of it lands hot and useless under your ribs, because there’s no fixing a rotten thing in one sentence, and no justice to be had in a room like this without turning the whole afternoon bloody.
“I’m sorry,” you say.
Lenny shrugs, but it’s stiff. “Ain’t your fault.”
“No,” you say. “But you’re leavin’ anyway.”
That gets the ghost of a smile out of him. “That I am.”
He doesn’t need convincing. Truth be told, neither does Bill, however much he mutters. Sean groans theatrically when you herd him toward the door, but he’s already moving. Maybe Javier was right. Maybe your arrival changes the flavor of the errand. Men become easier to steer when they can pretend it was their own idea.
You guide them through the room in a loose, reluctant cluster, weaving between tables, sidestepping a spittoon Sean nearly kicks over, ignoring the curious glances that follow you. The piano keeps jangling on. The bartender avoids looking directly at Lenny now. A man near the window tips his hat at you with a smile too familiar to be polite, and Bill answers on your behalf with such a dark stare the man thinks better of it.
At the door, Sean leans down toward you again. “You’re sure you won’t stay for one?”
“I’m sure.”
“One dance, then.”
“You’re pushin’ your luck.”
“That implies I ever had any.”
He slips out into the waning light with Bill and Lenny behind him, his complaints already dissolving into fresh chatter. Through the open door, you catch a glimpse of Javier waiting by the wagon, one boot on the spoke of a wheel, looking exactly as though he expected this outcome all along.
You should follow.
You know you should.
Instead, just for a moment, you turn back toward the room.
Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s the sense of unfinished business in the air, as if one piece still sits loose. Maybe it’s simply because Arthur hasn’t appeared with the others, and your eye has been searching for him since the moment you stepped inside, whether you meant it to or not.
Now you find him.
He’s at the bar, leaning one elbow against it as though the polished wood is the only thing keeping him upright. Not falling-down drunk. Not yet. But deep enough in his cups to wear that particular Arthur look, edges roughened, patience worn thin, broad shoulders bent under some weight nobody else can see. A glass sits in front of him. Another shot is already in his hand.
The amber light from the window catches in the whiskey and in the tired planes of his face.
For one heartbeat, you only look.
Then you start toward him.
The room seems louder on the walk over. Boots thudding on floorboards. Someone laughing at a joke you don’t hear. The scrape of your own pulse in your ears. Arthur doesn’t notice you until you’re close enough to speak.
“There you are. Come on, Arthur. Everyone else is already outside.”
There is silence for a moment, then his shoulders tense like he is about to get in a gunfight.
“Christ, woman, would y’ just shut up?” Arthur snaps, then knocks back his shot of whiskey, quickly demanding another. His slurring, drunken insult immediately enrages you.
“Come on, Arthur. Get your sorry ass together and let’s go.”
“Yeah, Arthur, you better come on. Yer lady’s waitin’ on ya,” the man next to him slurs, grinning stupidly at the outlaw.
Arthur gives him a half-serious shove, and the man topples to the floor. “Mind yerself, y’ sorry sack of shit.”
The man curses from the floor, but the room barely notices.
Rhodes’s Parlour House is too used to that sort of thing. Chairs scrape. The piano stumbles on. Someone laughs across the room as if nothing happened.
Arthur doesn’t look at the man again.
His shoulders are still tight, jaw set hard beneath the scruff of his beard, the empty shot glass turning lazily between his fingers on the bar. Whiskey hangs sharp in the air around him. Another glass is set in front of him.
For a moment, he says nothing. He just stares toward the mirror behind the bar, eyes a little glassy beneath the brim of his hat. The bartender retreats to the far end like he’s measuring whether trouble is about to bloom.
You lean a little closer.
“Arthur,” you say again, quieter this time.
The word lands somewhere in him.
His shoulders shift.
Slowly, he turns his head toward you.
And the look in his eyes changes.
You have seen Arthur Morgan angry before. You have seen him tired, amused, annoyed, grim, patient. This is something else. Something sharper. Restless. Raw around the edges.
His gaze drags over you once.
Your bonnet ribbon. Your throat.
The line of your shoulders beneath your dress.
Then back up again.
“You here to babysit me now?” he mutters.
“Someone has to.” You retort.
He snorts under his breath.
“You’re drunk,” you add.
“Observation skills of a goddamn hawk.”
Outside the door, through the haze of afternoon light, you can see movement. Sean’s voice carries faint and loud at once. The wagon creaks as someone climbs up into it.
They’re waiting.
But neither of you moves.
You tilt your head toward the door. “Come on.”
Arthur lets out a long breath through his nose and rubs the back of his neck like the whole world has started irritating him all at once.
Then he pushes away from the bar. He grabs the last shot and downs it, the glass clinking on the rough bar.
For a second, you think he might simply follow you out.
Instead, he steps closer.
Too close.
Your back bumps lightly into the wood-paneled wall beside the bar before you even realize you’ve given ground.
Arthur follows.
His shadow falls over you.
Then his palm slams against the wall beside your shoulder.
The sharp crack of it makes you jump.
The room seems to narrow all at once around the two of you.
You’re pressed back against the wall, Arthur’s broad frame boxing you in. His hand braced above your shoulder, his hat low over his eyes, his breath hot with whiskey.
“You are the most infuriatin’ woman I’ve had the shit luck to meet, Missus Shaw,” Arthur hisses.
“You’re a classless, brainless drunken brute, Mister Morgan,” you spit back, teeth gritted. “I oughta…”
“Oughta what, Calluna?”
“I told you, don’t call me that. You ain’t earned that right.”
He gives a humorless little laugh. “Oh, high-brow Lady Calluna can’t stomach a lowly criminal like me usin’ her name?”
“What is up your ass, Arthur? Huh? Why are you always so goddamn full of piss and vinegar? Christ, why am I always the one catchin’ it?”
His jaw jumps.
“I can’t decide if I wanna wring your pretty little neck to stop your whinin’ or…”
“Or what? Y’gonna hit me? What’s the big, bad outlaw gonna do?” you taunt, lifting your chin and jabbing a finger into his chest.
His expression darkens.
“...or hold you down and make you scream my name,” Arthur snaps, shoving you harder against the wall, your shoulders striking the wood.
Your mouth falls open.
A rough, dangerous smile ghosts over his face.
“Maybe I oughta fuck you ’til you can’t walk. Teach you a goddamn lesson,” he growls, voice low, ragged, and slurring. “Get you underneath me, where you belong.”
You should slap him.
You should slap the stupid, drunken look right off his face and drive your knee into his groin and never let him speak to you that way again.
But right then, you are far too aware of the answering throb low in your belly. Of the weakness in your knees. Of the creeping heat that starts in your cheeks and works its way down your throat and chest. Of the damp warmth gathering against your bloomers.
All you can think about is Arthur Morgan in front of you, caging you in between those broad arms.
How this mountain of a man has you pinned to a saloon wall, threatening you like it’s some kind of punishment.
How every hard line of his, every piece of muscle and sinew and rough-hewn man, sets something wild alight in your blood.
How every time you’ve been pressed against him before comes rushing back in a tangled, breathless wave that sends a shiver down your spine.
How you have been lying to yourself this whole time.
How indeed, you would scream his name.
You are attracted to him.
Your mouth is hanging open. You snap it shut.
Arthur’s glassy stare doesn’t waver as he leans in closer, planting his other hand on the wall above your other shoulder, bracketing you in entirely.
“You’d be so pretty beneath me…” he slurs. “Can’t get the goddamn sight of it outta my head…”
His face is only inches from yours now. He wets his lips as he leans in closer, as if...
As if…
And then, all at once, your senses come crashing back.
You duck under one of his arms and shove away from him. You stumble a few feet back, and the sudden movement sends him reeling into the wall before he loses his balance entirely and tumbles to the floor in his drunken state.
He groans against the hardwood, rolling from his side onto his stomach.
You leave him there.
Drunk on the floor.
Let somebody else deal with him. Let somebody else peel that man up off the boards.
There is a treasonous heat building in you now. You breathe hard, blood pounding in your ears. Your face feels hot enough to light a lamp. Flustered. Off-balance. Rattled.
Hot and bothered.
You move quickly through the saloon, dodging men and women between you and the door, trying desperately to ignore the traitorous clench between your thighs as Arthur’s words echo in your head. Your skirts rustle against your legs.
“Hey, thought you were gonna collect Arthur.”
“He’s wasted. You know how he gets. Need a little more muscle to collect him.”
Javier rolls his eyes and climbs down from the wagon. “Ay, Dios mío. Alright. Let me go get him.”
The damp seam of your bloomers drags sweetly against your cunt as you climb onto the wagon bench.
You want him.
And he wants you.
Your wedding ring burns against the skin at your neck.
