Evangeline merely shook her head, while Abigail was full of admiration. She would have given a great deal, her mother suspected, to get so dirty herself, with or without the impunity Scully enjoyed.

“I’ll need a bath,” he proclaimed.

Evangeline stiffened at that, even though there was no denying his logic. She got the tub out of the pantry without a word and carried it into the lean-to, then returned to the stove and began heating water. It was still cold in the small room, but Scully would just have to abide that, since there was nowhere else where he could decently shed his clothes.

He carried in the hot water himself, and presently, it got deep enough to suit him. He remained in the lean-to, splashing and singing like a cowboy at the end of a long trail drive, for a considerable length of time.

For her own part, Evangeline couldn’t quite work up that kind of good cheer. If she’d had her choice, Big John Keating would never return, and she’d be free to marry Scully, free to love him openly and bear his children.

She busied herself with supper—she’d killed one of the hens to make fried chicken, and would stew the rabbits for the next day, but she was aware in every tissue and fiber of her being of Scully in there bathing, gloriously naked, wholly masculine. Her Scully, who was not, and would never be, truly hers at all.

When he came out of the lean-to at long last, wearing the shirt she’d given him at Christmas and a clean pair of denim trousers, his damp hair gleaming in the waning light, he looked so handsome that Evangeline’s throat swelled shut and her heart squeezed in on itself until she thought it would stop beating for good.

“That chicken smells as fine as any I ever had back home in Virginia,” he said.

It was not a profound statement by any means, and yet Evangeline was oddly touched by it. He was making the best of a difficult situation, and she would do the same, even if it killed her. Which, she sometimes thought, it just might.

Supper was delicious, though Evangeline found that she didn’t have much of an appetite. She put up a good pretense of eating, and undertook the usual routine afterwards. Scully sat with Abigail on his lap, next to the fire, listening while she read aloud from the King Arthur book, her favorite, and Evangeline cleared the table and washed the dishes.

Then, while Evangeline got Abigail into her nightgown and generally ready for bed, Scully went out to the barn and corral to check on the livestock one last time and do the usual chores.

Abigail was already sound asleep when he returned, bringing the twilight with him, like a shadow. Evangeline was standing with her back to the fire, watching him in silence. Trying, if the truth be known, to memorize every aspect of his appearance, his bearing, his very substance. She wanted to be able to call him to mind, in perfect detail, for the rest of her life. To remember the sound of his voice, the way he walked and rode. Even when she was an old, old lady, with all her senses deserting her one by one, there would still be Scully to hold on to and remember, just as he looked that night, after his bath, strong and youthful and full of honor.