the trip. Duncan’s saying good-bye to Anna, and I was assigned to pound on your door if you didn’t appear soon.”
A dozen questions came to mind, but they’d have to wait. If she planned to be ready when they pulled out, she had to hurry.
Lewt stood as she jumped up and caught her chair as she knocked it back in her haste. “We’re going home.” The other three didn’t look as excited as she felt.
Em ran to her room and packed her few things as fast as she could. She wanted to have time to check all the horses before they started out and to say good-bye to the priest and nuns she’d met.
When she glanced out her window into the courtyard, she saw Duncan standing beside Anna. She’d removed her little-girl shift and was wearing one of the habits the sisters had given her, but her wild hair was still free.
Em turned away, not wanting to eavesdrop.
It appeared all were safe and they were heading home. By tomorrow she could be riding across the ranch and they’d all sit around at dinner and talk of all that had happened.
CHAPTER 38
DUNCAN STOOD IN FRONT OF ANNA, FIGHTING THE urge to touch her. For a week she’d slept beside him, nursed his wound, bathed him. They’d shared hours of being together, locked in together, but he’d never learned to talk to her.
“Are you sure you want to stay here?” Duncan asked.
She nodded.
“Well, I’d rather you come to Whispering Mountain with me. My cousins would take good care of you, and you’d be safe there also. But I can’t very well order you to come with me. Appears to me you’ve probably had enough of people telling you what to do. The priest told me you took right to the order of nuns here, even been going to prayers with them.”
Anna took his hand in hers but didn’t say a word.
“I guess you got a right to make up your own mind. I’ve left money with the priest in case you change it. He said he’d see you had traveling clothes and he’d take you over to a rail station himself.”
Duncan shoved his hat back on his head, wishing he could persuade her to go with him. Nobody around here knew what she’d been through. Nobody knew how strong she was. Maybe, he told himself, nobody including him knew what she wanted. “If you come to Austin, the ranger station will know where I’m at. If you make it to Anderson Glen, somebody at Elmo’s Mercantile will bring you out to the ranch. I wrote everything down and left it with the priest in case you forget.
“Any chance you want to talk to me, Anna? I thought I heard your voice once, but maybe it was a dream.”
She shook her head, then stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
“I guess that means we’re friends.” He smiled. “Mind if I stop by now and then and check on you?”
Anna smiled.
She was tiny, he thought, but beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful creature he’d ever known. She might be nineteen, but he had the feeling she was just newborn.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He tipped his hat and turned to leave, but she caught his hand.
Without looking at him, she slipped a piece of paper into his hand and ran back to the nuns working on fencing in what looked like a garden.
Duncan turned the worn paper in his hand. It looked like a corner of an envelope yellowed with age and smudged. He couldn’t make out the name at the top, but the address was a number on Lantern West in New Orleans.
He flipped the scrap over, and in a child’s block writing someone had penciled Anna Margaret Barrister.
Duncan smiled. He had her name and a clue. Anna wasn’t giving up on life and hiding out in a mission; she was giving him the key and waiting for him to return with an answer.
“I’ll be back,” he whispered. “I promise, if you have family left, I’ll find out.”
When he walked through the kitchen, he began his investigation. “Ladies,” he said to the cooks, “do either of you remember Toledo ever getting mail from New Orleans?”
Rachel shook her head, but Sarah J spoke up. “She goes to Mexico City every June or July, and once I seen her bring back a box of mail. Mostly things she ordered that we couldn’t get, but once I remember I saw a package from New Orleans