The Gunslinger's Daughter

Chapter Five

An authoritative knocking roused Chloe from her sleep. The auburn-haired girl picked up her head. She ceased drooling into her pillow and checked the corners of her mouth with the back of a free hand.

"Coming Aunty," she groaned before blinking the sleep from her eyes.

It only took a moment to realize that she was not in her bedroom. Nothing about this room said little princess. Rather it screamed old and rundown, and it reeked of tobacco.

"It wasn't a dream," she groaned again. Startled by the revelation, she sat bolt upright and winced. She was plagued by a stiffness that can only come with sixteen hours of sleeping like the dead.

"No. But then I don't blame you for holding on to hope," Dane replied, standing in her doorway. He had a self-amused smile. She believed he was recalling her misadventure with the doves. His reward for his wit was a shriek and a pillow hurled at his face.

"You're supposed to wait to be invited in," she cried while pulling the blankets up to her ears. This was despite being covered in a sleeping shift.

"Oh, quit your fussin', I like my women grown. Now, out of bed, girl." His voice still denoted amusement. A loud clunk-clunk next to her head earned her curiosity. He had thrown her a pair of boots. She brought down the blanket to peer over the edge of the bed.

A pair of caramel riding boots, to be exact. Well-worn, but tooled intricately. No spurs. It was not enough to endear the sheriff to her.

Chloe scowled at Dane a little harder. He responded by putting his hands up in the universal sign for surrender. He backed out of the room slowly and only paused before closing the door to speak again. "I expect to see you downstairs in ten. We have a long ride ahead of us and faster is better than slower."

The door closed and Chloe threw the covers off. With a little effort she went about the task of getting out of bed and putting herself together. A quick wash at the basin was the first step. The water was tepid, stagnant, and a far cry from a hot shower, but it would do.

She dressed herself in pieces borrowed from Kate. Or, more accurately, one of Kate's doves. One closer to her size.

The grey, corseted top was ill-fitting. The sand-colored skirt reached her ankles in length. It weighed what Chloe assumed to be a metric ton. She could not have been any more uncomfortable, or bogged down, short of also having a ball and chain to drag with her. An exasperated sigh came unbidden as she eyed the pouch of dried flowers on her night stand.

"All right, you overgrown tea bag." It went down into her bodice next.

She looked far away for a moment. Tea sounded great, right about then, and she despised tea. If this had been a normal day than Chloe would have been sitting at her aunt's kitchen table. She would have been frowning into an overpriced cup that very moment. She imagined her Aunt Sofia harping about her shirt being untucked for the nth time and wished she could see what she was wearing now.

They had never had a close relationship. Sophia never married, never had any children of her own, and never wanted either. Despite that, she would be damned if a stranger was going to raise her sister's child. It did not count as a stranger so long as they were being paid for their services, to hear her tell it.

Still. Tea sounded good.

She could not dwell long. Her eyes fell on the riding boots still by the bed. Golden-brown leather things with no shortage of scrapes and gouges. The pointed toes of them were abused. What Chloe found interesting was the tooled detail. They were ornate for something that was made for functionality.