She lifted dark blue eyes to his face, and he saw a weariness of soul in their depths. “You really do love Maggie, then?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” Reeve answered, really sure of the fact for the first time.

Eleanor stood up, offering him the basin and the cloth. “Reeve, I think it might be best if you do this,” she said, her eyes lowered now, her face virtually without color.

Reeve took the basin and sat down, gently applying the cloth to Maggie’s forehead.

He knew that Eleanor had opened the door, though he didn’t turn and look.

“I would advise you to keep very close watch on your Maggie,” Eleanor said in parting. “You have enemies, Mr. McKenna, and some of them are people you seem to trust.”

The door closed with a quiet click, and Reeve, pondering her words, went on tending his wife until Cora arrived, some minutes later, with fresh water.

He wondered who it was that Eleanor had referred to before; Duncan was the obvious choice, but, of course, Reeve wasn’t foolish enough to trust him. He’d let Kirk bring Maggie from the coach to the inn, but there’d been no real choice, and Duncan wouldn’t have been foolish enough to try anything with the lady’s husband so close by.

He glanced at Cora. She was harmless; just an aging spinster far from home and trying to make an honest living. Besides the retinue of servants staffing his various houses, that left only Eleanor herself. Had she, in some perverse way, been warning him that she was not what she seemed to be?

He sighed and stood up.

“No change, now, is there,” Cora said regretfully, sitting down to take Reeve’s place for a while. “You go and get yourself something to eat, Mr. McKenna. Stand by the fire for a bit. You’ll be no good to Mrs. McKenna if you lapse into sickness yourself.”

Reluctantly, Reeve left the room and went downstairs, where he forced himself to eat a bowl of stew and a biscuit. The warmth of the fire did feel good against his chilled flesh.

Duncan left a hand of cards to join him at the trestle table. “How’s Maggie?”

“No better,” Reeve responded woodenly, without looking at the man. An uneasy truce existed between them, but both knew that they would never again be friends. “And no worse.”

“I regret what I said about Maggie’s illness being a sort of justice. It isn’t and I’m sorry.”

Reeve glanced up from his stew, still deep in thought. “You do care about her in your way, don’t you?”

Duncan nodded. “I’d have married her, but she wouldn’t have me.”

“After what happened in your carriage in Melbourne that night, Duncan, you shouldn’t be surprised.”