“No.”
“Then trust me now. Quentin will not hurt me. He won’t hurt any of us.” She looked into Quentin’s eyes. “Whatever he may be, Quentin is not evil. No more than you or I.”
“You will… keep the gun?”
“Yes. I must speak to Quentin now, but I shall not fail to protect myself. You would help me best if you’d gather the others and bring them into the parlor. Please fetch Mrs. Daugherty as well, and ask her to bring my father out of his room. It’s very important that everyone stay indoors today.”
Andersen bobbed his head. “Yes. Yes, I understand.” He cast Quentin a glance composed of equal parts fear and loathing and scuttled backward down the hall, watching them both until he passed out of view.
Johanna released a long breath and stared at the gun in her hand.
“You won’t need that against me, Johanna,” Quentin said lightly. Better to joke than to run wailing in despair.
He hadn’t known quite what to expect of their first meeting after last night’s loving. Awkwardness, yes, and perhaps a little shyness on her part. A new familiarity between them. Possibly even her resolve that it should never happen again. Anything but this.
His latest, brief flirtation with hope had already come to an end. Andersen had seen to that—Andersen and his accusations.
Accusations Johanna confirmed with the bleak, drawn expression on her face.
It was still a beautiful face, though the hair hung bedraggled about her shoulders and her forehead was moist with perspiration. He’d have to be dead not to appreciate it, however desperate his circumstances. Her face, her lips, her form from crown to toe were imprinted upon his hands and his lips and his heart.
He didn’t dare embrace her, though his mind and soul and body demanded the solace of her arms. He didn’t dare move at all.
“Andersen was telling the truth,” he said. “Someone was killed last night.”
“So I have heard.”
“And you think… that I had something to do with it.”
Anguish darkened her eyes to pewter. “When you left me—” Her voice faltered just for an instant. “Afterward, where did you go?”
“To the woods. And then back here.”
“Do you remember every moment?”
Did he? Could he be certain he hadn’t forgotten the forgetting itself? He remembered falling into bed, exhausted from his run, and then sinking into what he presumed was a deep, uninterrupted sleep…
“I didn’t drink,” he said, frantically sifting his mind for plausible alibis. “I knew nothing of this Mr. Ketchum before Andersen told me.”
“He was known to mistreat his Chinese workers. As—” Her throat worked. “—as May’s father might have mistreated her.”
His lungs stopped working. “You said something happened in town… the night I got drunk. You never told me what it was.”
“May’s father was attacked and wounded.”
“Oh, God.” He fell back against the wall and clutched at his head. Trouble always followed in his footsteps, wherever he went, whispering of violence, of fear and hatred and suspicion. It had found him again, in this last and final sanctuary.
But in all those times past, the whispers had never been of murder.
He forced himself to look at her instead of cringing like a whipped dog. “Did I kill this man?” he asked, letting blessed numbness seep into his body.
She shook her head, too fiercely. It savaged his heart to see her so torn, so vulnerable. She was the very pillar of solid strength to everyone here, including himself.
He’d undermined that fortitude ever since he came to the Haven, hour by hour and day by day. Last night had shattered the remaining foundations of her life, and left her with nothing to be sure of.
“Johanna,” he said. “Did someone see me do this thing?” He straightened, staring past her. “I’ll go into town at once and give myself up—”
“No.” She raised her chin. “We know nothing yet. No facts, only rumor. But there is something I must tell you, something I recently discovered. I wish that circumstances permitted me to explain more gradually. I fear it may be difficult for—” Tears filled her eyes. “I am sorry, Quentin.”