“Just being neighborly,” she agreed. But she suspected that he didn’t believe what he’d said any more than she did. She looked down at Abigail, saw that moonlight was spilling through a crack in the shutter, turning her to silver. This time, gazing upon her child, she felt peace instead of panic. She tucked the covers in more closely and felt Abigail’s forehead. Still warm, but markedly less so.

“I guess we could play checkers,” Scully suggested.

Evangeline nearly laughed. “Let’s do something more practical, Scully,” she said. “You need barbering. I mean, I can see that you keep yourself shaved, but when was the last time you had your hair cut?” Cutting hair was a mundane task, just the sort Evangeline needed to occupy her hands and her thoughts. Some invisible part of her remained stubbornly at Abigail’s bedside, all the while, waiting and keeping watch.

He looked a mite sheepish. “I guess it was sometime last spring. Miss June-bug trimmed it up right before me and Big John headed south to buy cattle.”

“I see,” Evangeline said, eyeing him speculatively. He was one of the handsomest men she’d ever seen, but a few passes with the scissors could only improve him. “Well, then, sit down over here, by the fire. I’ll get my sewing shears.”

He looked at her in surprise, no doubt wondering why she was willing to stray from Abigail’s side when she hadn’t dared to so much as glance away earlier in the evening, but he had the good grace not to ask. He simply pulled a chair over to the hearth and sat down.

Evangeline fetched her shears from the sewing box and her comb from the trunk, then brought the broom from the pantry. She draped his shoulders with a piece of flour-sacking and began to comb his hair.

It was only then, standing close to him like that, touching him, that she realized she might have made a mistake. Even with the chair back between them, she could feel the hard heat of his back against her midsection, and she was not unmoved. He seemed tense, too; his broad shoulders were rigid, and his neck looked stiff as a fence-post.

She gave a soft, nervous laugh, the comb in one hand and her scissors in the other. “Scully, relax. I’m not going to cut your ears off.”

He drew a deep breath, let it out again, but he was still as a buck deer listening for a hunter. “How do I know you’re any good at this?” he asked, in an obvious effort to lighten the moment a little.

“You’ll just have to take your chances,” she answered. She could hear Abigail’s labored breathing across the room; indeed, her own breaths were matched to her daughter’s, and she suspected their hearts were beating in perfect sequence. She was as aware of Abigail as she had been when she was lying in bed beside her, holding the child in her arms. There might have been an invisible cord strung between them, binding them one to the other, Evangeline thought, and that gave her comfort as well.