Page 52 of Fairest of Heart

Titus let the matter drop, but the scowl on his face didn’t abate.

“Here it is!” Penelope added an extra helping of cheerfulness to her voice as she pulled out Madame’s corset and set it on the dresser top. She ran her hands over the fabric, pressing her fingertips along each seam in search of any lump or abnormality. “I might have to take it apart seam by seam before I figure out its secrets, but I can work on that while you trail Mr. H—”

“What is it?” Titus bent his head close to hers.

“One of the seams is ripped. Near one of the boning channels.” She ran a finger over the ragged tear. There should be a stiff piece of boning there, but it was flat. She bit her lip. “I don’t remember this channel being empty before. All the stays had been in place. The fabric must have snagged on something when it was being tossed about last night.” She glanced at the floor around the dresser, then hunkered down and peered beneath. “I don’t see a lost stay, though. Do you think . . . ?” She stood and turned to look at him. “Could something have been secreted in there? Like the missing jewels? Did Hunt find them after all?”

Titus took the corset from her and examined the tear. “If he had, he wouldn’t have taken the wrong corset back with him.”

An odd look crossed his face. “Last night,” Titus murmured the words beneath his breath, not really talking to her. He moved toward the door, looking around as if recreating a scene from memory. “He was over here.” Titus dropped to his knees. He ran his fingers along the crevice between the floorboard and wall. Then felt under the dresser. Then around the dresser’s rear leg.

“Got it.” He pulled back his arm and held up his hand. A small red stone glimmered between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think Hunt got the jewels last night. I think Rowdy did.”

Oh dear.

22

Titus heaved a sigh as he directed Rex toward the Glen Rose post office. What was he going to do about Rowdy? The sneaky little rascal had given him the slip. Most likely with a pocketful of stolen jewels.

Did he even understand the value of what he’d taken? Or in his mind, did buttons serve as an equal trade? It was hard to tell with Rowdy. The fellow wasn’t exactly playing with a full deck. Then again, the wily old-timer had outmaneuvered a trained Texas Ranger, so it might be best not to make too many assumptions regarding Rowdy’s intellect. The cowpuncher might have a few dents in his noggin, but he also had about forty years of experience on Titus. Right now, experience was winning.

It didn’t help his mood any that Titus had been unable to track Hunt down either. As he’d expected, the trail had run cold once his tracks merged with the traffic on the main road. Years’ worth of hoofprints and wagon ruts made it impossible to pick out one specific rider. At least he’d been able to determine that Hunt had been heading north. It wasn’t much, but it aligned with his theory about him rendezvousing with Narcissa.

Titus hated feeling ineffective. It stole his confidence and stirred his ire. Especially when people he cared about were in the line of fire. He’d gotten very little sleep last night. Partially because he kept watch for a couple of hours to make sure the intruder didn’t return, but most of his insomnia could be blamed on an unquiet mind. Sure, he’d plotted and planned the best way to catch Narcissa and Hunt with the evidence needed to convict them. And, yes, he’d expended a good deal of mental energy trying to unravel the whole corset conundrum. But what had crawled under his skin the most was the vision of Penelope moving around in a shocked daze after Hunt had broken into her room. She’d done her best to put on a brave face, but he’d felt her trembling when he’d held her against him. Seen the lost, vulnerable look in her eyes. It had haunted him. Angered him. Hardened him.

Had she not suffered enough at their hands?

He was losing his detachment. His objectivity. And all because of a pair of gray eyes, a pure heart, and a smile that twisted his insides into knots every time she aimed it his direction.

Having reached the post office, Titus dismounted and looped Rex’s reins around the hitching rail. He patted the black gelding’s neck and murmured a few distracted words of praise. A quiet urge drew his attention away from his horse and onto his saddlebag. Titus hesitated for only a moment before lifting the flap and reaching inside. His hand closed around the spine of a small, thick book. He drew it out, then dropped it into his jacket pocket. It seemed the Lord wanted to talk to him. He’d better oblige. As soon as he sent his report.

It didn’t take long to send the telegram, seeing as how he was the only customer in the post office this late in the afternoon. He wired Ranger headquarters with an update on his investigation—minus the bit about Rowdy—then headed outside to wait for a reply.

An unoccupied bench invited him to take a load off, so Titus plopped onto the seat, wishing he could take the load off his mind as well as his feet. That’s what you’re for, he thought as drew his Bible from his pocket and thumbed it open.

He fanned the pages to Proverbs, then started scanning Solomon’s words of wisdom, figuring that’s what he needed before heading back to the ranch to confront Rowdy. He started at the beginning of the book and slowly turned pages until he spotted a note made in the margin near the top of chapter three. A note written in his mother’s hand. He smiled. His parents had given him this Bible when he joined the Rangers, admonishing him not to be so consumed with seeking justice that he neglected to seek the Lord.

He remembered opening the book during his first night at headquarters. How he’d propped a lantern next to his bedroll in his tent and reached for the ribbon marker. A marker that had been inserted near the end of the book, not in the middle as he would’ve expected with a new Bible. He’d tugged on the ribbon and opened to the book of Third John. Verse four had been underlined, and his mother had written in the margin, I’m praying for you. When he read the verse, he swore he heard her voice whisper to his heart. “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” Walk in the truth. Not the world’s truth but God’s truth. The truth personified in Christ. A truth that balanced justice with grace.

Focusing again on Proverbs, Titus drank in his mother’s guidance. Follow this path, she’d written. Then she’d underlined the first twelve verses. He read over the words, the tension in his neck loosening at the reminder that God would direct his paths if he would trust him. The warning not to be wise in his own eyes brought a rueful reminder of how he’d misjudged Penelope and urged him to hold on to patience in his dealings with Rowdy. But it was verse three that kept drawing his attention again and again.

“Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart.”

For the first time, the order of the words struck him. Mercy preceded truth. Did that make it more important? That couldn’t be right. Nothing was more important than the truth. It was the only absolute a man could hold on to. It was what drove Titus as an agent of the law. Truth and justice. The two couldn’t be separated. Yet truth could be mishandled. The Pharisees had wielded it like a weapon to maintain their position of power. Satan himself used God’s truth by quoting Scripture when tempting Jesus in the desert. Could it be that truth without mercy was like knowledge without love?

Titus spotted another note in the margin. Not a personal note but a reference: Psalm 25:10. He flipped to Psalms. “All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth. . . .” Another reference. Psalm 85:10. He turned. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” His mother tied one verse to another like clues on a treasure map. The next, Psalm 89:14, “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne; mercy and truth shall go before thy face.” Then back to Proverbs. Proverbs 14:22, “Do they not err that devise evil? But mercy and truth shall be to them that devise good.” The clues ended with Proverbs 16:6, “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.”

Mercy and truth. Always together. Mercy always leading the way.

How am I supposed to be merciful and be an agent of justice, Lord? Am I supposed to let Narcissa LaBelle and Cecil Hunt run free to continue their thieving ways? Wrongdoers must be punished, or evil will abound. Even you sent your people into exile when they broke your laws.

The reference in the margin completed the circle, urging him to return once again to Proverbs chapter three. But this time, instead of focusing on the third verse, Titus’s eyes drifted down to the last verse his mother had underlined. Verse twelve. “For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.”

Mercy did not negate correction. In fact, mercy often demanded correction. God sent his people into exile in order to bring them back into relationship with him instead of letting them fall further into idolatry and wickedness. Because he loved them.

Perhaps mercy accompanied truth when a lawman viewed those he hunted as God’s creation first and criminals second. When justice served the people of Texas instead of a personal vendetta. When preserving the innocent took precedence over prosecuting the guilty.

His mother must have sensed how close to the edge he’d walked while tracking Nora. How the line between justice and retribution had started to blur. He thought he’d matured since then, that he had a better handle on his emotions, but the more he came to care for Penelope, the more the old desires for retribution knocked on his door when he thought of how she’d suffered.