Two Brothers by Linda Lael Miller

in a place like the Yellow Garter, if I was dressed like the other women. So I put on Liza Sue’s dress and set out. I was going to decide what to do when I got there.”
    “And when you did? Get there, I mean?”
    Aislinn blew out a loud breath. “Shay was perfectly fine. He’d handcuffed Billy to a rail in front of the bar and he was playing pool.”
    “Ah,” said Tristan, with portent, as though some great dilemma had been resolved. His chair creaked when he leaned forward. “Who’s Liza Sue?” he asked.
    Aislinn explained how she had found her friend huddled between two buildings only the night before, sobbing and injured, smuggled her into the employees’ dormitory at the hotel, helped her land a position as a maid.
    “You make a habit of this sort of crusade?” Again, there was no derision in Tristan’s voice; he was merely curious, sifting coolly through an assortment of facts.
    “No,” she answered, and lowered her head. While itwas true she went out of her way to help other people whenever she could, she mostly had her hands full looking after her own concerns. She’d felt sorry for Liza Sue—who wouldn’t have?—and as for the march upon the Yellow Garter to save Shay, well, she still didn’t completely understand the forces that had compelled her to do that. It was as if something had taken her over from the inside and driven her to it.
    Tristan got up, went to the potbellied stove, and poured a mug of coffee for himself. He held up the pot and Aislinn, knowing he was asking if she wanted more, shook her head. It was odd, having someone offer to wait on her; in the last three years she’d worked ten and twelve hours a day, six days a week, filling cups and carrying plates, and no one had served her anything.
    Returning to his chair, Tristan swung it around backward and straddled it, his right arm draped across the high back, the cup in his other hand.
    “How long have you felt the way you do toward my brother?” he asked.
    Aislinn stared at him. “What way?”
    He leaned forward again and widened his eyes at her in good-natured mockery. “The way that makes you put on duds like those and charge into a saloon with a derringer in your hand.”
    Aislinn subsided a little, pondering the undeniable implications of what the man had just said. “I don’t know,” she answered, at some length. “Yesterday, I didn’t even like him.”
    Tristan chuckled appreciatively. “I see,” he replied. He got up, returned the chair to its place by the wall. “Is there anything I can get you from the hotel? A change of clothes, maybe?”
    She looked at him in weary appeal. “If you want to help, you can persuade your brother to let me out of here, tonight. I’m in enough trouble as it is, without the wholetown seeing me leave the jailhouse in the bright light of day.”
    He seemed genuinely regretful. “I don’t know Shay too well,” he confided, “but it seems to me that there’s a stubborn streak in him. When he turns you loose, ma’am, it will be because he’s decided that’s the right thing to do, and for no other reason.”
    “You’re probably right,” Aislinn agreed, dejected.
    “What about the clothes?”
    She shook her head. She yearned to change out of the ruffled dress, but by now Eugenie and most everyone else who worked at the hotel would be fast asleep. Sending Tristan to awaken them could only make bad matters worse. “If there’s another blanket around someplace—”
    He found one of scratchy wool, but clean, and handed it through the bars. Then, after bidding her a courtly good night, he went back to the chair behind the desk, settled himself there, and began to read the book he had set aside earlier.
    Aislinn was full of questions about Shay and Tristan—had been ever since she’d first seen them together—but it wasn’t the time to make inquiries. She was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and reluctant to pry, though she suspected that last was a temporary