Free The Officer and the Traveler by Rose Gordon

twenty pounds if Michaela had to guess. Fabric and scissors, needles and thread, shears, tapes, pins and patterns all piled two feet high.
    “ How long did it take you to travel here?” Michaela asked her sister.  
    Ella shrugged and followed Aunt Lucille out of her house and into the covered area that acted as a hall between the two residences. “A little over two weeks, I think.”
    Michaela shut the door to the Lewises’ behind her. “I’m surprised it wasn’t longer with all that weighing down the carriage.”
    “ And now more than ever I’m glad I brought it so I can begin making you a new wardrobe.”  
    Michaela wanted to groan. In need of a distraction before that conversation went any further, she casually asked, “Do all the men come eat lunch with their wives?”  
    “ Only the smitten ones,” came the quick reply of the lady with dark blonde hair who was lying in her bed with her covers to her chin.  
    “ I suppose we’ve been married too long for that, haven’t we, Sarah?” Aunt Lucille said, touching the other woman’s forehead. “You’re not hot. Are you hurting anywhere?”  
    “ Or itchy?” Ella piped in, walking over to the other woman.  
    Michaela furrowed her brow.
    “ No. Thank heavens, I’m just tired,” Sarah said with a grimace. She fluffed a pillow and shoved it behind her. “But for good measure I did have Amos check my back in case I’d missed anything,” she added with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.  
    “ Oh, good. I wouldn’t wish such a fate as that on anyone.” Ella opened the curtains a bit and took a seat on the sofa.  
    “ What fate?” Michaela asked. Had she missed something?  
    “ One almost as bad as death,” Ella murmured. She unfolded the dress she was working on. “Around the time I arrived I was bitten by a spider. One so venomous that it made me sick.”  
    “ Not just sick,” Aunt Lucille added when it seemed Ella was finished with her inadequate explanation. “It made her delirious.”  
    “ And those were the better ailments,” Allison said. She lifted her needle and stabbed it into the orange and brown fabric she was edging. “You should have seen— and smelled —the spot on her leg that was infected.”  
    “ Surely it wasn’t that bad,” Ella said as she dug through her basket.  
    “ How would you know?” Allison retorted, not unkindly. “You were the one fortunate enough to be sleeping when it had to be cleaned.”  
    Michaela bit back a smile at the exchange. If she didn’t know any better, Allison could have truly been a sister to the two of them with her gentle teasing. “But you’re better now,” Michaela confirmed.
    “ Yes. Much.” Ella pulled out a little square of red silk and tossed it to Michaela. “Here. You might not like to sew, but you can at least make your own nightgown.”  
    Michaela felt her eyes widen. There wasn’t anything on this planet that could tempt her to sew a nightgown out of such a bold color of meager fabric.
    Aunt Lucile’s chuckle filled the room. “Don’t worry, dearie, you won’t have to wear it very long. Gray’ll have it off of you before you realize it.”
     

 
     
~Chapter Eight~
     
     
    Usually the morning after a night doing a post in the watchtower, Gray was ready to crawl in bed and sleep well into the afternoon.
    Not today.
    After General Davis had left him alone, he’d had nothing but time to think. And that was a scary prospect for a man who’d just been accused of rape and acquired a fiancé all within the past twelve hours.
    “ How did she know it was an officer?” Gray burst out by way of greeting when General Ridgely emerged from his home.  
    “ He rode in on a horse.”  
    Gray crossed his arms. “She said that?”
    “ Well, no, but he had to have. The Cherokee camp is too far from here to have reached them by foot, accost the girl and make it back before daybreak to resume his duties. He had to have ridden a horse.”  
    Of course