Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  “It looks fine to me.”

  “It won’t stay. I don’t have enough pins!”

  He drew his hand out of his pocket. Clasped in his fingers was a small metal box. “I just happened to pick these up at the mercantile.”

  “Oh, Ward,” she breathed, her eyes shining as she moved toward him with her hand outstretched.

  “Not so fast,” he said, removing the box from her reach. “I haven’t heard a word of thanks, or any other sign of appreciation so far.”

  “I do thank you for the clothes, of course,” Serena answered, flushing a little as she let her hand drop to her side. “I can’t imagine how you arranged such a perfect fit.”

  “I simply gave the local seamstress a dress of yours a few days ago, with a few instructions for enlarging it here and there.”

  Serena frowned. “But I thought you said you gave my dress to Sanchow for rags.”

  Ward lowered his bright-green gaze to the metal box in his hand, shaking it a little to make the pins rattle. “Then I must have lied. No matter. We were discussing the form your appreciation should take for my outlay so far on feminine fripperies.”

  “You — you are as bad as Otto!”

  “Otto?” he asked, his head coming up. “What has he to do with this?”

  “He thought I owed him a reward too, for bringing the package from the dressmaker up the stairs.” Serena lifted her chin as she spoke, her blue-gray eyes dark with contempt.

  “And did he get it?”

  “No! No more than you are likely to get yours.”

  A tight look came and went across Ward’s face. “Otto I will attend to later. For now, there is one small difference between him and myself. I still have something you want.” Again he rattled the pin box.

  Serena released her hair, letting it cascade in a shimmering cape about her shoulders. Her fingers went to the buttons that fastened the bodice of the gray cheviot. “If it is a question of paying for what you have given me,” she said, a tremor in her voice, “then you can have it back. All of it.”

  “No.” Coming close in one swift stride, he caught her wrists in his strong fingers, stilling her movement. “That wasn’t what I meant, and I think you know it well enough. I only wanted you to come to me for a change, to offer freely what I have been forced to take, until now. Forcing you to accept my every touch gives me no pleasure. I have a craving to find out what it would be like if you were willing.”

  Another time Serena might have answered his suggestion with scorn. But now in the deep and even timbre of his voice, she seemed to hear an echo of the promising attorney who had tried to shield his friend’s good name, and protect that friend’s parents from the horror and shame of their son’s suicide. She met his eyes with a long and searching look, noticing for the first time the gold flecks that gleamed in their green depths. Slowly, almost without her own volition, she turned her hands in his grasp, and as he released her wrists, reached out to smooth her fingers upward beneath the lapels of his jacket. She pressed closer, and with her lashes concealing her expression, raised herself on tiptoe.

  He drew in his breath as her lips touched the chiseled firmness of his mouth, but he did not move, did not stir even as she molded her soft curves to the length of his body, sliding her hands upward to clasp them behind his neck. Then with a low sound in his throat, he caught her to him, his arms closing so tightly around her she could not breathe. He sank his fingers into the silken mass of her hair that tumbled down her back, his kiss deepening, bruising in its strength.

  Abruptly he lifted his head. Face shuttered, his breathing ragged, he set her from him. His hands gripped her forearms for a long moment to steady her, then he stepped away. He turned toward the sitting room, before glancing at the pins in his hand as if he had never seen them before. Stepping to the bureau, he placed them on the near corner.

  “If we are going on that drive,” he said, his voice rough, “we had better get started.”

  “Yes,” Serena said, her voice faint. She did not move until he had left the room and she had heard the springs of the couch in the sitting room creak as he threw himself upon it.

  With fingers that shook, she twisted her hair into a knot and secured it with pins, then set the velvet toque over it. So preoccupied was she that she scarcely looked at the set of the smart little hat. In the mirror, her face was pale and her lips crimson from Ward’s kiss. Beneath her agitation she was amazed at herself, at the impulse that had made her go to him, and the desolation she had felt when at first he had held himself so stiff and unresponsive. Did he feel the same when she lay unyielding in his arms? It seemed unlikely, and yet he was clearly dissatisfied with the situation between them. Would he expect her to act as she had just now from this moment onward? If so, he would be disappointed. Though she was not certain how she came by the knowledge, she knew well that to continue in that way would be dangerous. Setting her lips in a firm line, she swung from the mirror and moved toward the sitting room.

  The sun shone with the bright crystal glare of high altitudes. The air was crisply cool, fresh with the scent of spruce and pine, and yet with an undertone of woodsmoke and dried grass that spoke of fall. They took the wagon road that wound out of town in the direction of Mt. Pisgah. They passed the cemetery with its stark tombstones and blowing grass starred with purple mountain asters, and rattled past an outlying collection of decaying ranch buildings. About a mile out of town, near the turning that swept upward toward the rocky peak of the mountain, they saw a house. It lay off to the right in a small draw where the road forked. An enormous structure of white-painted clapboards with turrets and ornate gingerbread woodwork, it was an imposing residence, built on a rise that backed up the mountain slope, and fronted by a clear-running creek. Serena turned in the buggy to stare at it, and at the arched stone gateway that marked the entrance to the drive.

  Ward flipped the tip of his buggy whip in the direction of the dirt roadway. “The stage route to Florissant.”

  “I was looking at the house.”

  “Oh, that’s Nathan Benedict’s place, the biggest and best in the district. It’s patterned after the Antlers Hotel down in the Springs, has not one but two rocking-chair verandas, and a bathroom for every bedroom.”

  “It’s rather isolated, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the way Nathan likes it.”

  Nathan Benedict, the man who had given Ward the use of his private railroad car, a widower with a taste for space and his own company. Nodding in the direction of the smoke that came from one of the numerous chimneys, she said, “He seems to be in residence.”

  “Would you like to meet him?” Ward asked, an edge to his tone. “I’m sure it can be arranged.”

  Serena sent him a quick glance. Straightening in her seat, she stared ahead. “Not today, thank you. I wouldn’t cut this drive short for anything.”

  They climbed higher and higher, winding over the mountain road with its dirt and granite gravel bed that fell sheer away on one side. Ward was silent, concentrating on his driving, urging the horses up the steep inclines. Serena exclaimed now and then at the sight of wild flowers, the flight of black-headed blue jays, so much larger and more brilliantly blue than those in Louisiana, or the glimpse of a scurrying ground squirrel that she persisted in calling a chipmunk. Gray squirrels, disturbed by their passing, chattered at them from the tops of spruce trees. The carriage rolled beneath the overhanging branches of bare-branched aspens, the horses churning the fallen leaves, like heart-shaped golden coins, under their hooves. The dust rolled out behind the buggy, settling quickly in the thin air. Wind swept down on them, soughing in the trees, fluttering the manes of the horses, and tugging at Serena’s toque hat. She lifted her face to it with a swelling sensation inside her chest. Staring around her at the vast and burning blue of the sky, the rolling green hills and the majestic mountain ranges that edged the horizon, blue and silver with distance, she was aware of a sharp enjoyment bordering on content.

  After a time Ward p
ulled up to rest the horses. The novelty of the scenery and the chilling closeness of the road’s precipitous edge had worn away. Serena slanted Ward a long glance and looked away again. She cleared her throat. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I — I do appreciate your taking the time to drive me out here.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized how provocative they might sound after what had passed between them.

  He flung her a quick frown. “There’s no need to thank me, not now. It’s something I should have done long ago.”

  It was also something Pearlie had prompted him to do, Serena thought. Grasping at some means of changing the subject, with the other woman on her mind, she said, “I had a visitor this morning.”

  “Did you?” His eyes narrowed, though he stared straight ahead.

  “Pearlie seemed to think it was time I knew a little of your history, and hers.”

  It was a moment before he spoke. “I trust you weren’t too bored.”

  “No, not at all. I was fascinated, in fact.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Why? It explained a great deal that had puzzled me.”

  “Such as?”

  His question, Serena thought, was not idle. “Why you had denied your Southern, Mississippi heritage. How a man like you came to be a gambler.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a gambler. It’s a profession like any other that happens to be based on mental labor instead of physical.”

  “You don’t believe that!”

  “Don’t I? From what pinnacle do you sit in judgment, Serena? You are a gambler yourself.”

  “I?”

  “You, your father, every man and woman who has come to Cripple Creek. You are all ready to stake your last dollar, sometimes even your lives, on the chance of striking it rich.”

  “We — we aren’t after something for nothing.”

  “Nor am I. Every time I play I risk losing what I have gained. No man has to play against me. He does it precisely because he would like to gain something without having to work for it: something for nothing.”

  Mulling over the answer, it was some time before Serena realized he had neatly circumvented any inquiry she might have made into the past he had left behind in Natchez.

  To reach the summit of Mt. Pisgah, they had to leave the horses and buggy and climb some distance on foot. The view from that elevation was astounding, a vast panorama. They could see in every direction of the compass. To the southwest lay the Sangre de Cristos. North and west were the ranges of the continental divide. Tipped and streaked with snow, the peaks of a hundred mountains ringed the world, shading into the cumulous-studded cerulean of the sky. Pikes Peak loomed to the east, a massive red-pink shape that overshadowed the cradling walls of the volcanic crater where the gold camps lay. They could see Canon City, fifty miles to the south. Cripple Creek was spread out below them, its shanties and more substantial houses alike with the look of child’s toys. Farther away in the folds of the mountain crater lay other gold-mining towns, Victor, Elkton, Alta Vista, Altman, and nearly a dozen more. Large and small, the smoke from the stacks of their homes and smelters stained the sky. And as far as the eye could see, there were yellow-brown scars of individual gold mines, each surrounded by its tailing dumps and framework of buildings, including the supports that held the drums for the hoists that let the men down into the mines. Their names rolled off Ward’s tongue as he pointed them out, along with the amount of gold produced. There was the Independence, richest mine in the district, where the owner, Winfield Scott Stratton, had already taken out five or six million; the Gold Dollar, the Prince Albert, the Beacon, the Blue Bell, the Anaconda; so many, so much money it was beyond imagination. It seemed incredible, looking at that barren crater in the blinding sunlight, that the sterile land could have yielded up such riches.

  It was well after noon by the time they reached the mountaintop. With great foresight, Ward had ordered a picnic lunch to be packed into a hamper and put in the back of the buggy. They spread the food on a bed of sun-steeped pine needles and settled down to a meal of barbecued ribs, cold potato salad, and beans, washed down with pure, icy-cold water from a mountain spring that seeped to the surface not far away. To top off their repast there was melon, and they threw the rinds some distance away and watched in stillness as the chipmunks squabbled over the juicy pulp that was left.

  When he was finished, Ward stretched out on the ground. Within minutes, he was asleep, his eyes shaded by the gently moving shadows of the pine above them. Serena packed the remains of their meal away, then sat beside him, hugging her close-drawn knees. For a time she watched the play of the chipmunks and the fluttering explorations of a butterfly. It was so quiet the snapping sound of a grasshopper was loud and clear. The smell of the pine needles rose around her. In this sheltered spot the sun was warm, tempered by the gentle coolness of a breeze. The sweet languor of the afternoon crept in upon her. By slow and careful degrees, she stretched out her cramped legs and eased herself backward, first to one elbow, then to full length upon the ground. She watched the high-flying clouds for long moments, noting their shadings of gray as they rose up over the mountain. The sun still shone, however. Lifting her arm, she covered her eyes.

  She came awake with a start. Warm lips covered hers, and there was a loose, cool sensation of exposed skin at her throat. With slow stiffness from lying in one position so long, she uncovered her eyes and let her hand come to rest on Ward’s shoulder. Pleasure as gentle and somnolent as the afternoon welled inside her, and she let her mouth mold itself to his, accepting the invasion of her senses with soft and melting sweetness.

  Ward’s questing fingers encountered the belt at the waist of her walking costume. Sewn directly to the material of the skirt, it could not be undone. The hooks which allowed her to remove the dress were at the side. He sighed, and with slow reluctance, raised his head, settling to one elbow above her. The gold flecks were bright in the depths of his eyes as he stared down at her, and the hint of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

  “I knew,” he said, “that buying clothes for you was a mistake.”

  The urge to aid him, to unfasten the hooks that confined her, was so strong that she curled her fingers into fists to keep from acting upon it. Lowering her lashes, she turned her head away.

  “What is it, Serena? The bright light of day? We both know you have no faults to be revealed. Is it this open space then? There aren’t many in Cripple Creek with the energy to climb heights for the view, not on a working day. Besides, we are hidden here, and if there should be someone, there will be plenty of advance notice as he comes up the hill below us.”

  “It — it isn’t that.”

  “If you are worried about your dress, it looks as if the best thing you can do to save it would be to see it doesn’t get in my way. And if that isn’t the problem, if it is my touch you object to, then you should know by now how to endure it.”

  She lay still, unable to formulate an answer. There was in his voice the ring of an ultimatum, and yet she was still not sure his need for her was so great that he meant to take her there on the mountainside.

  “Of course, if you don’t mind a few rips and tears, or being tumbled with your skirts above your head, then I don’t.”

  “Ward, no,” she breathed, catching at his hand as he slid it over the curve of her hip, reaching to drag her skirts upward. The light in his eyes was implacable. There was a pale line around his mouth, but his face was grim and the tendons of his wrist beneath her hand were as taut as steel.

  “Well, Serena?” he inquired, his voice tight.

  It was almost as if he regretted the threat, but having spoken, would not retreat from his position. Would he go through with it? Would he really tear her clothes from her if she did not comply with his wishes? Somehow, she did not want to think so, did not want to find out. It would be easier to do as he said, easier because the chance he meant every hard and hurtful
word was too great to risk.

  She swallowed hard against the press of pain in her throat, pain whose source she was unsure of. “To make certain of my willingness again?”

  “It seems the only way.”

  “You may be right,” she whispered. Still holding his hand, she pulled herself to a sitting position. Only then, when she was certain he did not intend to force her cooperation, did she release him. Lifting her arms, she removed her toque and set it carefully to one side. With her face averted, she twisted to undo the hooks that closed the side seam of her dress, and rising to her knees, dragged it off over her head. Her shirtwaist came next, followed by her petticoats. She unbuttoned her corset cover and slipped it off over her arms. Wearing only her corset and drawers, holding her chemise-like corset cover to her breasts, she glanced at Ward. He lay watching her, an unfathomable look on his face. He had made no effort to undress.

  “Well?” she inquired with a lift of her chin.

  “Well?” he drawled.

  To be so nearly naked while he was still clothed brought a flush of embarrassment to Serena’s cheekbones. Why it should be so, she could not have said; she should have been used to it by now, since she had been parading in front of him for weeks in less. It was probably sham modesty brought on by the novelty of wearing underclothing, though she recognized the unreasonableness of being more disturbed by being only partially undressed instead of completely so. It was nearly as unreasonable as having her embarrassment turn to irritated anger.

  “What are you waiting for?” she demanded.

  “Are you in a hurry? I didn’t know you were so anxious.”

  “You know very well I’m not!”

  “Yes, I suppose so. A pity.”

  Two could play at that game. With the lift of an eyebrow, Serena reached for her petticoat. “Of course, if you have changed your mind—”

  “No. I was just considering the possibility that you might perform the same service for me as you have for yourself.”