Maggie, resting? Stubborn, energetic Maggie? Reeve thrust away Eleanor’s hands when she would have taken off his rain slicker. “Where?”

Eleanor sighed. “Upstairs. First room on the right.”

Reeve took the stairs two at a time, driven by some instinct that warned of trouble. He found her lying, half covered, in a cot pushed against the sloping roof.

Slipping out of his canvas coat, Reeve covered her and then stepped back, not wanting to drench her in rainwater. He flung his squishy hat aside and dried his hair with a towel he found in the cupboard beneath the washstand.

“Maggie?”

She opened her wondrous gray eyes and looked at him in an unseeing way that chilled Reeve as his wet clothes hadn’t. “Saints in heaven,” he muttered, touching her forehead with one hand.

Her flesh was hot beneath his fingers.

Whirling, Reeve raced out of the room and back down the stairs. “Eleanor,” he ordered, “go upstairs and see to my wife. She’s running a high fever.” He turned to Duncan, who, like himself, was still dripping wet. “Kirk, is there a doctor around here?”

Duncan shrugged, but his face was drawn, and at that moment Reeve knew he cared about Maggie in his misguided and volatile way. “I don’t spend any more time around here than you do, McKenna.”

“That missionary fellow over on Squatter’s Ridge,” said the innkeeper’s rotund wife, “he’s a doctor, ain’t he, Angelina?”

A young girl in a servant’s cap nodded her head. “Yes, mum.”

Before Reeve could react, Duncan rounded on his men and ordered, “Bring him here.”

Two of them donned their canvas coats and wet hats without complaint, and went out.

Reeve went back upstairs to Maggie, stripping to his trousers and then pulling up a chair to sit beside her bed. He knew that Duncan was behind him, but he said nothing.

“She’s so like my wife,” Duncan observed.

That made Reeve look back over his shoulder at the man who had once, a long time ago, been his friend. “So that’s why you’re so obsessed with her,” he said hoarsely. “She reminds you of Elena.”

Duncan stiffened at the sound of the name Reeve knew was almost holy to him. “She was carrying your child too—just like Maggie is. It’s an odd sort of justice, isn’t it, McKenna?”

They had been over this ground a thousand times before. Reeve closed his eyes and sighed. “I never touched Elena,” he said patiently, bracing himself for the reply he knew would come.

“She told me herself that the baby was yours. She said you were taking her to America—”

“Duncan, for God’s sake, listen to me. I don’t know why Elena lied to you, but there was nothing between us. Ever.”

“She chased after you! Do you know how humiliating that was?”