"My father has already run one plantation into the ground. I don't intend to give him a chance to destroy another. You're the foreman, I'm the boss, and he's only a guest. I just ask that you be polite to him. I dislike argument."
At last she had drawn a reaction from him: Cade's eyebrows rose a hair. Lily enjoyed the satisfaction at finally getting through to him.
"He'll not like it," Cade warned.
"He didn't like Jim, either, but that didn't stop me." With that retort, Lily spun around and returned to the house.
There were a lot worse things in life than what her father didn't like. It had been a hard lesson to learn, but she had learned it well.
Chapter 5
"I want you to come home with me, Lily. I think I've seen and heard enough these last days to convince me this isn't any place for a woman alone. The work isn't suitable for a lady, there's still Indians close enough to be dangerous, and from all I hear, there's war in the air. They're saying the Mexicans are holding American prisoners and planning to shoot them. There's going to be repercussions, just you wait and see."
"Daddy, I'm not leaving. This is Roy's inheritance. This will all belong to him one day. I have to hang on to it any way I can. And you talk as if Jim isn't ever coming back. He could turn up tomorrow. What would he think if I had already hightailed it back home?"
"He'd think you were a sensible woman." Ephraim set his coffee mug down on the table and glared.
"I'm not going, Daddy, and that's final. I don't belong back there anymore. I never did. This is my home and I'm staying." Lily stood up and carried her plate to the sink. Jim had installed the pump in here several years ago, before he built the kitchen, and she was proud to have it. It wasn't the same as having slaves to haul and carry for her, but she preferred it just the same. She liked having something of her own, and this house was hers.
"Not by yourself, you can't. Hell, honey, you're the only woman within twenty miles, far as I can see. These men aren't made of stone. You've gotta have someone here to protect you. It's been over two months since Jim disappeared. You have to start facing facts. If you're too stubborn to leave, you'll need to start looking for a decent man. That Ollie Clark seems like a fine, upstanding young fellow. He owns that store back in town, don't he?"
Lily sighed and ran her fingers over her temple, where a throb was building. She loved her father, but he was beginning to get on her nerves. The fact that Ollie owned a store had impressed him. In her father's eyes, that would make any man fine and upstanding. Maybe he was right, but she had no intention of putting herself in a man's power again. Jim had been a good man, but he had never wanted to hear her opinions. Now she had the opportunity to do things her way, and she fully intended to take advantage of it. The labor-intensive cotton would be the first to go.
She looked up as Roy burst into the house, his narrow face lit with inner excitement as he began to extol upon his latest accomplishment. Letting Roy learn to ride was one of those things that Jim would never have allowed.
"Mama, Cade says I'm almost ready to ride to town. Can I, Mama? Please?"
Sighing, Lily tousled Roy's hair. Roy was only eight. Surely that was too young for such a ride. She would have to talk to Cade. That would be easier than listening to her father's arguments.
She stepped outside before Cade could cross the yard to pick up Serena. Roy piled out of the house after her, sensing the confrontation to come.
"Cade!" Lily knew she spoke too sharply, but it had been a long day. She combed her fingers through Roy's unruly curls as she waited for her foreman to turn and find her.
When he did, his gaze went not to Lily but to her affectionate hold on the boy. It was twilight, and the shadows almost concealed Cade's features, but Lily could almost swear she saw a look of longing in the man's eyes before he raised them to her.
"Roy says he's almost ready to ride to town. That's a long distance. Don't you think it's a tad soon?"
His voice, when it came, was thoughtful and not its usual curt tone. "He learns quick. He ought to be rewarded. It can wait until several of us are ready to go."
Cade was right, of course. Lily had been prepared for a confrontation, but it had only been her own frustration speaking. She couldn't erase that glimpse of longing, of loneliness she thought she had seen in Cade's face. Perhaps he had some human traits, after all. After a few short words, she released him and took Roy back into the house.
Lily pacified her father by turning the subject to her sisters and how well they were doing, while making certain that Roy scrubbed himself down good before going off to bed. The pressures of all the things that had not been done this day was giving her a throbbing headache. She finally retired to the room she and Jim had shared.
The possibility that her father was using her absence to search for Jim's store of liquor no longer worried her. He was a quiet drunk, and there was no one out here for him to embarrass but her, and she was beyond embarrassment.
Not bothering to light a candle, Lily closed the door between her bedroom and the dogtrot and leaned against it with relief. It was times like these when she missed Jim's company. He had been a buffer between her and the rest of the world, a source of support when she needed it, a calm companion who could make the day's catastrophes look like molehills. These months of independence were teaching her how tediously lonely life could be.
Lily drifted to the window and stared out at the tidy assortment of buildings she and Jim had painstakingly created. There were no slipshod lean-tos and ramshackle barns here. All the structures, from the lowly kitchen to the house itself, were as solid and dependable as Jim. There were no fanciful shutters or useless adornments, nothing remotely stylish beyond the practical lines of timber and clay, but she didn't need fanciful. She needed the security of four walls and a roof over her head, and Jim had provided them.
Just as he had provided her with a name and a father for her child. Lily turned away from the window and stared at the low-slung rope bed she had shared with her husband of nearly nine years. Her childish dreams of love and romance had been permanently killed before she had even met Jim. Except for children, he had given her just precisely what she wanted. Why did it feel as if he had never existed now that he was gone?
And she was quite certain that he was gone. Practical Jim wouldn't even have a ghost to come back and haunt her. If he were alive, he would have found some way to send her word. Lily knew that as well as she knew her own name. Jim was gone and he wasn't coming back.
Staring at the empty bed, Lily felt the loneliness curl around her like the notes of the flute in the dry air outside.
Flute?
Grateful for this distraction, Lily stared out the open window. Music was a rare commodity in these parts. Her heart hungered for it, grieved for its absence, and longed for it more than she had ever desired or wanted love. Love was an ephemeral thing, but music was real, so real she could almost taste the notes floating over the still night air.
Knowing sleep would elude her anyway, Lily sought the source of the unusual sound. Not wanting to disturb the rest of the household, she slipped through the window to the ground. Men's trousers had many advantages—getting in and out of tight spots was one of them.
Following the notes of the flute through the quiet night wasn't difficult. She could hear the restless shuffles and low nickers of the horses in the paddock. The music came from the opposite direction, from the low knoll ahead. Loblollies and oaks shaded the grass there. She and Roy used to picnic beneath the trees, before Roy decided he was too big for "baby stuff." She would have to take Serena up there one of these days.
She didn't want to think about Serena either. Cade could take the child away any day, and there wouldn't be a thing Lily could do about it. She was trying to be practical, giving the care of the child to Juanita for much of the day, but Serena was so much like the child Lily had always wanted that it was impossible to ignore her entirely. That was one more piece of the day she didn't have to think abou
t tonight.
Her goal was to find the music. A breeze lifted the loosened strands of her hair as she floated across the yard and toward the hill. The moon was just appearing on the other side of the barn, a silvery spectacle against the black of the sky. It wasn't full yet, but she could feel its pull. Lily shivered and listened to the night creatures harmonize with the notes of the flute as she progressed up the hill.
By the time she reached the top, Lily knew what she would find, but she didn't hesitate. The magic of the music was a rarity for which she would defy the laws of mankind. Already the throbbing in her head had lessened, and her body felt loose, at one with the world. This was the way it had once been and never would be again.
Tears formed at that thought. She didn't allow them to fall. Without a word, she sat down near the man who skillfully poured his talents into the crude reed instrument.
Cade had seen her coming. The overlarge white shirt she wore caught in the silver rays of the moon and gleamed like a ghostly image. He had thought the household asleep. He hadn't meant for any to hear but himself and the stars, but she didn't disturb the oneness between them. The music accepted her into its tightly drawn circle, and he continued to play until the song wended its way to the end.
Then he put the flute aside and turned his gaze to her.
It was impossible to conceive that this incredibly large man could produce such delicate music, but Lily knew better than to speak of miracles. She held out her hand in a pacifying gesture for her intrusion. "I miss music more than anything or anyone else I left behind," she whispered.
Cade's enigmatic gaze revealed nothing. He crossed his arms over his raised knees and nodded. "Music speaks to the soul."
Lily didn't know how he could be so perfectly attuned to what she had thought was her hidden secret, but she nodded gratefully for his understanding. "I wish I had something as easily transportable as a flute. Jim said we couldn't bring a piano."
Guilt wormed its way to Cade's insides. She was being brave, talking of her husband when she had no knowledge of his whereabouts. He heard the pain in her voice; the music had reached out to it. He very possibly had the power to intensify that pain—or to relieve it. Uncertainty kept him from revealing any more.
"They have a piano in town," Cade said. He'd stood outside Clark's barn any number of times, listening to the intertwining of notes, contemplating making such a joyful noise. The player hadn't been expert, but he'd never heard anything like it before.
Apparently this was news to Lily. She looked up at Cade with something akin to excitement burning in the pale blue of her eyes. "Really? Why didn't anyone tell me?" Then she shut up and her gaze drifted to the pasture beyond the trees.
Her husband had known. He could see that suspicion forming on her face.
"I suppose that's what they do in town on Saturday nights," she murmured. "Jim told me it was too rowdy to stay after dark."
"The other women stay," Cade said without inflection.
Lily had never been close to her sisters, but she had grown up in a household of females and missed the feminine discussions and laughter and shared secrets. Juanita couldn't fill that need entirely; she had been too damaged by her past. Lily didn't know much about the town ladies, but there was no reason she couldn't meet them somehow, if she put her mind to it.
"I wish I could hear the piano," Lily said. Actually, she wished she had a right to play the piano, but that was beyond her ability to speak.
"I'll take you in if you wish to go."
Lily surprised herself by saying, "I would like that, thank you. I don't think Juanita would mind watching Serena, and my father can look after Roy. Do they have other instruments besides the piano?"
Cade stroked the flute as he gazed on the woman sitting boldly in the grass before him. He had never met anyone quite like her before. She was white and female, which should put her completely out of bounds for any conversation at all. But she was his boss, and as such, there had to be a certain amount of communication. She wore trousers like a man, and to a certain extent she spoke like a man, but he couldn't treat her with the same deference as Ralph Langton or with the scorn he felt for the ignorant farmhands he worked with. If she had been a whore, he could have had certain expectations, but she was a lady. How the hell should he treat a lady who wore pants?
"Fiddles, sometimes," he responded while he struggled with the problem.
"Is there dancing?" she asked anxiously.
It was then that Cade realized that this woman didn't see categories as other people did. She saw people through the eyes of a child, as they related to her. It was rather amusing to realize that he had been avoiding her to keep from offending her ladylike sensibilities, when she was more likely offended by his avoidance than his presence. That's what he got for assuming all white women were alike.
"They dance," he agreed.
Cade was enjoying looking at her. Her hair had the sheen of gold in the moonlight. He wished she would let it blow free instead of bound in that braid that never quite held all the silky tendrils in place. She was small-bosomed and slender-waisted, but in the revealing denims, he could see that her curves were in all the right places. Her skin glowed golden from exposure to the sun, but he suspected that beneath her billowing shirt she was as pale as the moonlight. It wasn't a thought he should dwell on.
"I don't dance," Lily informed him pointedly.
Even though he had known she would draw a line somewhere, Cade acknowledged disappointment that it had come so soon. "Neither do I."
At his sudden gruffness, Lily hastened to explain. "I never really learned. I was always playing the piano for my sisters and their friends. I... Well, I married young. Jim doesn't dance."
Cade smiled then, a genuine smile. He rose to his feet with a grace that belied his size and offered his large hand to help her do the same.
"You had best sleep tonight if you are to stay awake tomorrow."
His hand was brown and callused, but gentle. Lily was quite aware that what she had just done was utterly insane, but she didn't care. Her soul longed for music and this man had just offered it to her.
Releasing his hand, she turned back toward the house without a word of parting.
Chapter 6
As they drew closer to the barn, Lily heard the tinkling notes of the piano over the hubbub of voices and laughter, and her heart pounded with excitement. She had never really been to a dance before. She didn't know what would be expected of her, and she was half terrified, but the piano drew her onward.
The fight with her father faded as she drew nearer. He had been opposed to her staying in town without him, but she wouldn’t have his drinking ruin her very first evening out. Besides, he would no doubt raise the roof if he knew Cade was the one escorting her. It was much better this way, all on her own, without family or memories.
Lily was grateful that Cade had cleaned up for the occasion. He'd had his long black hair trimmed to his shirt collar, and from somewhere he had acquired a decent white homespun shirt that he wore covered by a leather vest. If one liked sun-bronzed features and arrogant Spanish noses, he could be considered a handsome man. His looks didn't concern her so much as another subject, however. Just outside the barn she stopped and laid a hand on his arm.
Her touch halted Cade in his tracks. He had been all but holding his breath since she had walked out of the house wearing that blue gingham dress. The top molded to her firm breasts, and the oval neckline revealed more of her milky skin than those hideous shirts did. He was having difficulty keeping his thoughts from straying to the long legs he knew existed beneath the loose skirt. Somehow, just knowing those legs were bare beneath the folds of material was more arousing than seeing them encased in denim every day.
"Cade, do you drink?"
That was a damfool question, and it jarred Cade out of his daydreams. He looked at her suspiciously. "Does a pig eat?" he asked, with a certain amount of surliness.
Her lips tightened briefly, then relaxed
as she removed her hand. "I meant hard liquor. They'll have refreshments, won't they?"
"Ollie isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart," he agreed.
Lily took a deep breath, unaware that Cade was distracted by the movement of her bodice. "There will be lemonade and the like, won't there?"
"For the ladies." Watching her breathing, Cade wasn't following her drift with any degree of accuracy, so he agreed without caution.
"Then there will be something to quench your thirst besides liquor."
That caught Cade's attention. He stared at her as if she had lost her head. "Men don't drink lemonade."
"You sound just like Roy telling me he's too big to go on picnics. Real men would have the courage to do whatever they damn well liked."
Lily lifted her skirts and strode off before he could react. Cursing, Cade followed two steps behind her. So much for his notion of arriving with a beautiful woman on his arm. He should have known that Lily Brown wouldn't condescend to being escorted by a mere male. Oddly, he was positive that the fact that he was a half-breed hadn't entered her bigoted little mind. Being male was sufficient to lower him as far as he could go.
Cade didn’t care about the impression he made as he entered the barn where he had never dared trespass before. He consciously avoided trouble, but his mind was on the swaying skirts of Lily Brown and not the people watching him enter. It didn't take two steps into the barn to realize his error.
Ollie Clark stepped into his path, blocking Cade's view of Lily. Instantly on the alert, Cade felt the watchful attention of several of Ollie's cohorts on the sidelines. He hadn't intended to make trouble, but he certainly didn't intend to run from it either. Directing his gaze questioningly to the tall man in front of him, Cade waited.
Tin-Stars and Troublemakers Box Set (Four Complete Historical Western Romance Novels in One) Page 5