He nodded. “I think so. I know I ought to be. Anyhow, I’m sorry you’re angry at me,” he answered with a little flare of boyish audacity.
She bit her lip, then laughed in spite of herself. She held out her hand a little hesitantly, but he knew he was forgiven.
Young Silcott’s fever mounted toward evening, but when Doctor Irwin arrived he gave him a sleeping powder and before midnight the wounded man fell asleep. Ruth tiptoed about the room while she arranged on a little table beside the bed his medicines and drinks in case he awakened later. After lowering the light she stole away silently to her own bedroom.
Rowan knocked a few minutes later. He heard her move across the floor in her soft slippers. She wore a dainty crepe-de-Chine robe that lent accent to the fresh softness of her young flesh. She had just been brushing her hair, and the long, heavy, blue-black braids were thrown forward over her shoulders.
All day McCoy had been swept by waves of tenderness for this girl wife of his who had risked her life to save him by driving into the line of fire so pluckily. He had longed to open his heart to her, and he had not dared. Now there was a new note about her that puzzled him, one he had never seen before. The eyes that flashed into his were fierce with defiance. Her slim figure was very erect and straight.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
He was taken aback. Never before had her manner been less than friendly to him. While she was in this mood he could not voice his surcharge of feeling for her.
“You are tired,” he suggested.
A sudden gusty passion flared in her face. “Did you come to tell me that?”
“No. To thank you.”