Chapter 3

She watched him sip the hot liquid, oddly fascinated by each small movement. “Dead. A riding accident. It’s been a year now.”

“So it’s just you and the Negro?”

“John,” Eliza said sharply.

“What?”

“His name is John.”

Ford nodded. “So it’s just you and John? Why not sell? Go back to your people?”

Eliza stirred the stew simmering in the pot over the flames. Her face and arms burned, but it wasn’t the heat from the fire that made her skin turn red. For the first time since her husband died, she realized how much she missed him…how much she missed having him in her life and in her bed. She had thought that she was over such nonsense.

“There’s nobody to go back to. Would you like a bath? You look about the same size as my husband, if you’d like a change of clothes. I have a razor as well.”

“Perhaps after I eat.”