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man to welcome our guest like that gets a taste of his own medicine.”
    Charlotte managed to crack open her eyes, amazed she hadn’t dived under the settee. Where had she gained such confidence?
    Talbot had a shotgun at his shoulder, as did Garland and every bartender.
    There were a few apologetic coughs, then pistols disappeared back into holsters. The rowdier miners sat back down and the more cautious members of the audience emerged from under their seats or behind their boxes’ paneling. The actor poked his head onto the stage from behind a sturdy column, like a wary tortoise investigating the early spring air. Polite applause greeted him this time and he sauntered forth more cautiously.
    Silence fell when he reached the stage’s center. Even the bartenders’ usual clatter as they passed fresh drinks disappeared. The actor swept the crowded room with his pale eyes as if he could see through the darkness into everyone’s soul.
    “ ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe,” he announced and a woman loosed a long, heartfelt sigh of anticipation.
    Talbot shoved his shotgun under the settee. Only Charlotte’s fast action kept her skirt from being pinned by it.
    “Once upon a midnight dreary / While I pondered weak and weary,” the actor intoned. His hands inscribed circles as if casting spells upon his enthralled audience.
    “Do you want to listen or may I close the drapes?” Talbot asked softly. “I doubt you want to see Isham.”
    “Please shut them,” Charlotte assured him. He sealed them carefully, then joined her on the settee. “Besides, I enjoy Shakespeare better or even Burns. Do you like Shakespeare?” she asked, desperate to make conversation in these very intimate confines.
    “Very much. My mother used to read his sonnets and plays to me.” He took a sip of coffee, his lean length comfortably relaxed across the leather.
    “His sonnets, too?” Charlotte blinked at him. She could believe that a woman would teach her son to cherish the plays, since those were commonly performed. But the sonnets were frippery bits of rhyming words, more often relegated to the feminine sphere.
    “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon up remembrance of things past . . .”
    Talbot’s rich drawl, far more attractive than the actor’s melodramatic tones, faded and he shrugged. “She was an Anson of Chillington and wanted her only child to enjoy English poetry.”
    “Chillington? Earl Chillington?” Charlotte came up onto her knees to look at her companion more closely.
    “He’s a second cousin, who received the house and title in England, while my mother inherited everything else.”
    “A fortune,” guessed Charlotte, backed by generations of banking instincts.
    “She brought it as dowry to her Southern marriage.” He waved that off and swallowed more of his richly spiced drink, as if for solace. “The War wiped it out.” He swirled his coffee for a moment before answering the question Charlotte hadn’t asked. “My mother died only a year after the fighting started.”
    “I’m very sorry.” Charlotte dared to put her hand over his. His expression carried such anguish, similar to her father’s on the rare occasions when he mentioned her mother.
    “It was better that way. The Low Country’s climate was very hard on her and we still had enough property to keep her comfortable.” Ancient pain snarled behind his gritted teeth before his fingers laced through hers.
    “My mother was from Scotland,” Charlotte offered and shifted so she could sit next to him. She could at least offer the simple comfort of her presence, even if he didn’t want to say much about his mother. “Father made me memorize Mr. Burns’s poetry in her memory.”
    “Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw,” Talbot began and cocked an eyebrow at her.
    “I dearly like the west,” Charlotte finished triumphantly.
    “Here’s to poetry, Ace.” He lifted his cup to hers.
    “Charlotte,” she corrected him, the first