The Peacemaker by Chelley Kitzmiller

shirt against his skin.
    "Feeling better yet?" His voice vibrated through her body and her mind like a small earthquake and jolted her back into reality.
    She stiffened her spine and stood straight as a flagpole. "Yes, much better, thank you," she said in a tight, stilted tone. "I'd always been told to put butter on a burn, but whatever is in that salve is much better. What is in it by the way?" She hoped the chatter would help get her mind off him. It didn't.
    "An old Apache recipe of bear grease and a few herbs. Nothing out of the ordinary." He set the salve aside, then cradled her hands in his, palms up. Indy was startled at the contrast. His hands were nearly twice as large as hers and his skin was dark and rough where her's was soft and white.
    "Your skin is going to draw tight as a bowstring, but once it blisters and breaks, it'll loosen up. Don't try to help the process along. It will be raw underneath and you'd be opening yourself up to infection. I'll leave you the salve. Use it until it's gone."
    Indy nodded, not trusting herself to speak for fear of saying something stupid. She didn't like the effect he had on her; the way just being near him wreaked havoc on her emotions and made her senses spin out of control. She'd never experienced that kind of reaction before; it was unnerving and, she had to admit, a little frightening.
    Captain Nolan came back into the room. "I'll go out back and tell the colonel we're ready to resume the meeting."
    "That's all right, Captain, I'll tell him," Indy volunteered hastily. She hurried away before either of them could protest, desperate for the chance to go outside where she could clear her head.
    She found her father outside standing in the shade thrown off by the building.
    "Father? They're waiting for you." He took a step toward her. "I wanted you to know how sorry I am for my clumsiness. I didn't mean to cause such a disturbance. I promise you it won't happen again."
    "You don't mean a lot of the things you do, miss, and yet you do them anyway. It's because you don't think. You never have." His innuendo was, she knew, in reference to her mother's and brother's deaths. He threw his cigar onto the dirt and ground it down with his booted heel. "You shouldn't have come to Bowie, Independence." His cold, gray eyes sent a chill down the back of her neck and as soon as he walked away, she moved out of the shade into the sun.
     
    With a frown drawing his lips in the same downward arch as his mustache, Colonel Charles Taylor came back into the parlor. "I apologize for the interruption, gentlemen." He strode across the room and stood behind his chair. "If you'll take your seats we can get on with this. I have a meeting with the quartermaster a little later."
    Nolan promptly sat down.
    Shatto ignored the request and walked over to the hearth where he studied the books standing between two cone-shaped rocks that served as bookends. Mahan's engineering textbook was there, as he'd expected. He could recognize a West Pointer from a hundred yards. It was something in the bearing and behavior. He picked up the book and leafed through it. After a few moments, he returned it to the mantel and took his seat, blatantly disregarding the colonel's example of correct posture by crossing his arms in front of him and leaning back, balancing his chair on its rear legs.
    Indy opened the back door, slipped inside and walked quietly across the parlor to her bedroom, careful not to bring any attention to herself as she passed the table where the three men were seated.
    With only one small window for ventilation, her bedroom was unbearably hot. She sat down on the edge of the bed, wondering how to occupy her time while their conversation was going on. Then, she noticed the latest issue of Godey's Lady's Book lying on her bedside table. Prudence had lent it to her. She was about to reach for the book—a weighty two-pound tome—when she heard her father's voice and looked across the room at the door,