Maggie had no time for Eleanor or the snake; she was examining Reeve. She found that he was breathing, to her great relief; he’d been shot through the shoulder and the bleeding was already slowed to a trickle.

Hearing a whistling thunk of a sound, Maggie looked up to see Jamie pulling his knife from the ground, where it had severed the snake’s head from its body. “Is my brother alive?” he asked.

“He is—no thanks to you,” Maggie responded, pulling up her skirts to tear off strips of her petticoat for binding Reeve’s wound. “Where the devil have you been, Jamie McKenna?”

Jamie took his time answering. He went and freed the poor struggling horse from beneath the overturned buggy. “I was lookin’ after me mate, Mr. Kirk. He’s going to get well, by and by. Bullet barely touched him.”

Out of the corner of her eye Maggie saw that Jamie was kneeling beside Eleanor now; she didn’t want to look too closely, sensing that the moment was a private one, but she did see her brother-in-law gently close the woman’s eyes and smooth her tangled hair back from her forehead. “I’m sorry things weren’t different for us,” he said to the dead woman, his voice detached and hollow with some secret pain.

Reeve was just coming around. “What the hell—” he muttered.

Maggie smiled with relief and with love. “My hero,” she said, bending to kiss his furrowed forehead. She paused and drew a deep breath, then rushed on. “I want you to promise me that you won’t hurt Duncan for abducting me. He was carried away by passion, that’s all, and he’s quite sorry.”

Reeve sat up, wincing a little at the pain in his shoulder, and his aquamarine eyes took in Maggie’s thickening waistline, her tumbledown hair, her dirtsmudged face. “Passion, is it?” he reflected, and then he chuckled hoarsely and shook his head. Maggie would have boxed his ears if he hadn’t already been injured.

Jamie was utterly silent. He lifted Eleanor gently into his arms and started back toward the cabin. Maggie watched him go with a feeling of sadness as she helped Reeve to his feet.

“How did you know where to look for us?” she asked.

“Cora told me that Duncan had tricked you into getting into his carriage and she guessed that he was headed here because she’d heard him making arrangements to buy the place.”

Maggie looked at the carcass of the snake and winced. “I hope there aren’t any more of those around,” she said.

Reeve leaned on her slightly, his flesh pale as death from the pain as they made their way out of the cane field in the direction Jamie had taken. He said nothing.

“Eleanor was Elisabeth’s mother,” Maggie said, because she needed to make conversation.