In the Marshal's Arms by Emma Jay Page A

dog for company. Honestly, he’d expected more of a fight.
    A team of horses were the only occupants of the barn, which was in a sad state of disrepair. He unsaddled Bathsheba, rubbed her down, then gave her some grain, fed the team as well, and headed toward the house.
    At the edge of the porch stood a curtained-off contraption with pipes and wooden posts, surrounded on three sides by muslin curtains. He peered inside to see the ground was moist. Above him hung something that looked like a giant watering can. He stepped back to see that the watering can was attached to a cistern.
    “It’s a shower,” Maddy Colby said from the porch.
    Rhys used every bit of training not to jump in surprise.
    “When you need to cool off, or if you don’t want to haul water for a bath, you bathe here.” She approached warily, reached past him and tugged a rope. Water streamed out of the giant watering can in an even flow and splashed on the earth below.
    “Your husband make that for you?”
    “No, I did it,” she said with some pride. “I have running water in my house, too.”
    He wasn’t sure whether or not that was an invitation. “Sounds like a fine thing.”
    She nodded and he took a look at her in the sunlight. Her auburn hair was a myriad of colors—so many he wondered if two strands were the same. Her big brown eyes were long-lashed and her nose had a cute little slope, with a dusting of freckles. Pretty pink lips just begged for a man’s kiss. Her dress was a faded calico, but it hugged her full breasts and nipped in at her narrow waist. He was surprised to see she was barefoot beneath her skirts.
    How had an idiot like Colby won such a beauty?
    “What would you like me to work on first?”
    “I’ve been thinking on that,” she said. “I’ve been trying to repair the roof, but it’s a trick to climb around up there in a skirt.”
    He stepped back to look up at the angled roof. “I can see that. Where are the supplies?”
    “Up there already, shingles, hammer and nails. The ladder’s around back.”
    Indeed it was, already leaning against the edge of the house.  And when he climbed up the steeply pitched roof to see she’d done a great deal of the work herself, he was impressed.
    A few hours—and quite a few swear words later and a throbbing thumb later—Maddy Colby stepped out into the yard and shaded her eyes to look up at him.
    “Mr. Burgess. Dinner will be ready in just a bit. Will you come down and take a shower?”
    He set the hammer down and sat back on his heels. “I beg your pardon?”
    “I—I don’t want—just, before you come into the house.”
    “Ah.” He did smell pretty bad, with trail dirt and sweat from being up here in the sun. Texas heat, even in November, could be a bitch. He’d thought about a bath, but he wondered about operating the shower. “Now?”
    “Please.”
    He looked at the work he’d accomplished. Quite a lot but not done. He straightened, his back cricking, his shoulders aching. He hadn’t done manual labor like this since he was a kid. He readjusted his hat and headed toward the ladder. When he looked down, she had gone inside.
     
    Maddy stirred the gravy with a shaking hand. She hadn’t had anyone to cook for in months and she enjoyed the process. She hoped Mr. Burgess had an appetite. In her experience, men did. She hadn’t had any interaction with anyone in weeks, and hoped she remembered how without making too much of a fool of herself. She glanced out the front window and her spoon froze.
    Mr. Burgess stood at the edge of the porch, close to the shower, and stripped off his undershirt, revealing a muscled chest and shoulders, a vee of black hair covering his chest, tapering down his flat stomach and into his pants. Her mouth went dry at the sight.
    Edward Colby, her lover, had been a handsome man, fit, but barrel-chested and hirsute, and his brother Luke, who sometimes shared her bed, was broad-shoulders and heavily muscled. This man was lean,