Her heart was pounding. She felt inside the quickening of a treacherous response. He sought her mouth, plundering its sweetness as he drew her closer to lie across his knees. He cupped her breast, his thumb brushing the sensitive peak to tautness. His hand drifted lower, tracing the hollow of her waist and the curve of her hip, settling on her thigh. He pushed the hem of her gown higher, baring her body below the waist. He loosened his fingers from the tangle of her hair, letting it spill over his arm as he pressed her nearer, spreading his hand over her back. The honeyed languor crept along her veins, sapping her resistance, numbing her will. His touch was gentle yet possessive, familiar yet disturbing.
It was the touch of a murderer. Serena wrenched her lips free, arching her back to twist from his hold. On a sobbing gasp, she pushed away, sliding, slithering over the silk and satin crazy quilt. She did not get far. With deliberation, he fastened his grip on her gown, yanking it upward, above her head, imprisoning her arms in its folds. His arm snaked around her waist as he stripped her naked, and with a lithe, heaving roll, he pulled her under him.
She struck out, pummeling him with her fists, and had the satisfaction of hearing his murmured curse as she split his lip against his teeth. He made no attempt to retaliate, but pinned her wrists to the bed, jerking them above her head where he spanned both with the biting steel fingers of one hand. There was the taste of blood from his cut in the bruising pressure of his kiss. Her vulnerability was total, and he took thorough advantage of it, forcing her lips apart, invading her mouth with his tongue. His free hand wandered downward over her body, and she writhed in panting fury under the intimacy of his caresses.
Weighting her to the bed, he kicked off his boots and divested himself of his clothing. The ridged muscles of his thighs pressed into her, communicating the urgency of his desire. His hard fingers closed around the rose-tipped mound of her breast; the wet warmth of his mouth covered it. Serena turned her head from side to side in useless negation, not only of his plundering touch, but of the growing fullness of her loins, the burgeoning ache pervading her that could be assuaged by one thing only.
He pressed his lips to the valley between her breasts. His eyes darkly shadowed, he rose above her, parting her legs. She felt the probing hardness of his manhood, and then the jolting quiver along her nerves as he eased deep inside her.
Her lack of control was debasing; still, she could not stop the tumult that swept in upon her. She could not check the impulse to rise against him, to clutch at his shoulders as her mind slipped its bonds, swinging dizzily to the pulsing of her blood, obeying the primitive prompting to ignore all but the heated surge and flow of the joining. There was nothing but the two of them, male and female, blending, straining together toward oblivion and the sole chance of its conquest, melded in a physical union of supreme transcendence, beyond right or wrong as set forth by puny men. He was a part of her, and she of him. They tumbled on the bed, their mouths locked, their breaths mingling, the firelight gleaming rose red on the glistening play of their bodies, reflecting darkly in their eyes. Recklessly they spent themselves, uncaring of the morrow, holding it at bay as they strove together toward the bright and golden explosion, the magical balm that would ease the soreness of their hearts, move them to the sweet relieving saltiness of compassionate grief, and allow them the wound-binding surcease of dreamless sleep.
22
A light tapping sounded, stopped. It came again, louder this time. Serena turned over onto her back. The calf of her leg encountered the bony hardness of a knee. Her lashes flew upward, and she turned her head to stare into the gold-flecked green eyes of the man beside her.
“Your maid?” Ward asked, his words a breath of sound as he nodded toward the door.
The knocking, of course. Dorcas always brought her morning coffee, but she waited until Serena rang for it. “I don’t know.”
With a muttered imprecation, Ward heaved himself over and flung back the covers, preparing to step naked from the bed. It was at that moment that Dorcas turned the knob and crept into the room. She opened her mouth to speak, but as her gaze fell on Ward, no words came out. She stood rooted, her gray eyes widening until they seemed to fill her face.
Ward recovered first. His curse was stronger as he whipped the covers back over himself once more.
Amusement bubbled up inside Serena, the first in months. Holding the sheet over the swelling curves of her breasts, she pushed higher on her pillows. Refusing to look at Ward where he sat pressing the quilts down across his waist, sternly repressing a smile, Serena said, “It’s all right, Dorcas. What is it you wanted?”
The girl gulped. She fastened her eyes on Serena as if in a desperate effort not to stare at the man beside her. “Mama said I was to say the — the front door was unlatched all night, and that Mr. Dunbar is — is not in his room, and — and what must she do?”
“What did she have in mind, counting the silver?” Ward demanded, his tone irascible.
“Sir?”
“Never mind,” Serena said soothingly. “Tell your mother everything is fine.”
“Yes, ma’am. Would — would you be wanting your coffee?”
“You may as well bring it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The girl bobbed a curtsy and sidled out the door. They heard the quick pad of her feet on the hall rug as she ran toward the back stairs.
Ward grimaced, letting one hand rise and fall in a futile gesture. “I never meant to embarrass you.”
“No? Just what did you intend?”
“To stay around just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“To protect you, if you needed it.”
Serena stared at the clenched fist that rested on his knee. “You certainly found an odd way to go about it.”
The corner of his mouth tugged upward. “It worked, didn’t it? You’re safe.”
“That all depends on how you look at it,” she answered, a frown forming between her eyes still dark with sleep.
“If you are expecting an apology for that, too, don’t. I’m not sorry.”
For some reason she did not care to analyze, Serena found that answer reasonable, even satisfactory. She looked away to the Renaissance dresser with its tall, pedimented mirror. She and Ward were reflected in its diamond-dust clarity, something Ward had already discovered, she found, as she met his gaze in the glass.
Serena transferred her stare to the black ashes of the fireplace where the fire had burned down hours ago. “Did you really think there was any danger?”
‘I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Something about your Mormon elder bothers me. There have always been pulpit denunciations of the red-light district. What’s different about Greer is his approach. It’s not him so much as the kind of people he may stir up. There’s a certain type of man who just might think it good fun to take a whip after a woman, especially if he had the company and approval of a crowd.”
“A whip — you mean the elder’s scourge of the Lord?”
“That, or a knife — or a piece of rope, or hay wire. They all qualify.”
Boots, the crib girl who had been Consuelo’s friend, had been strangled with hay wire. “On the other hand, such streetcorner sermons might trigger the urge for revenge in a man, if he had something against women of the lamplight, who might prefer to do the job alone.”
“The possibility had occurred to me, especially since the elder singled you out for special attention.”
“Who? Who could it be? I thought before Otto — before I killed him that he might be the one, but there’s been another girl murdered since then.”
“Otto was never that smart. This man is either cunning, or extremely lucky. He’s given no one a close enough look to recognize him — except the dead women.”
A shiver ran over Serena. “It’s horrible to think about.”
“Still, they happened, all those deaths. Someone has got to think about it.”
Ward reached for the top quilt, pulling it up over her shoulder. �
�Not you, and not now. Let it go. I may be wrong; there may be no connection whatever.”
He climbed out of bed and, finding his trousers, stepped into them. Shirtless and barefooted, he moved to the fireplace hearth and knelt to kindle a fire. Serena watched him, watched the play of the muscles across his broad back, the easy competence of his movements, the quick, impatient way he raked back the unruly lock of dark-brown hair that fell over his forehead. Against her will, the memory of what had taken place between them the night before stole into her mind. She was depraved; she must be. How else could she find pleasure in this man’s arms? Why else would she allow perilous desire to make her forget what he was, and what he had done? What flaw was it in her character that made her respond so passionately to the touch of a man who had killed another? To what depths of degradation would it lead her, to what terrible sacrifice of dignity, pride, and hope?
“You said you wanted to talk to me,” Serena said, her tone abrupt. “What about?”
He was a long time in answering as he broke brittle sticks of kindling wood in his strong hands. “I’m not sure it was a good idea.”
“Why? Because you think you can get what you want without it?”
For a moment he was still, then he snapped a stick of pine with the sound of a gunshot. “Because,” he said deliberately, “I don’t think it will do any good.”
Serena took a deep breath. “It was about Nathan’s death, wasn’t it?”
“Not entirely.”
“I — don’t know what you expect me to think. You were there at the mine that afternoon, I know you were.”
“I don’t deny that. But I never got to see Nathan privately. He was busy with the hoist; it was all he wanted to talk about. There were people around. He said we would go into his office as soon as he had run that crucial test, as soon as he had gone down in his precious cage.”
Another twig snapped. Ward kept his back turned to her. She frowned in concentration. “Do you expect me to believe that, after your threat to — see that Nathan freed me? And there’s one other thing that troubles me,” she went on recklessly. “It seems a strange coincidence that years ago in Natchez a friend of yours died under peculiar circumstances, and you wound up with his wife, while now the same pattern has repeated itself.”
Ward reached to take a lucifer from the holder on the mantel, struck it, and held its yellow flame to the pitch pine. It caught, flaring into life, the light of the flames flickering over his bronzed torso. He shook out the match and tossed it onto the carefully stacked wood. Only then did he speak.
“I will have to admit you have reason for suspicion.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
He got to his feet and turned slowly to face her, his feet apart and his hands on his hips. “I told you what happened. What else is there?”
“I don’t know,” Serena said, her tone a little wild, “but there must be something that will make me believe you.”
“If there was, I would say it,” he told her, his eyes dark as he surveyed the pale oval of her face and the tumbled glory of her hair trailing over her shoulders. “It looks as if this is something you will have to accept on trust.”
Serena watched him, an arrested expression in her pewter-blue eyes. Trust. It was a word she had used to him not so long ago when he had spoken of complete possession, which might have been a euphemism for love.
Her mind shifted to another occasion, to a time she had misjudged him. Abruptly she said, “Nathan told me you didn’t take his bribe, the money he offered you to allow him a clear field, neither at the time, nor last summer.”
His face tightened. “I owe him that much then.”
“To balance that,” she went on as if he had not spoken, “I must remember, is your threat to turn me over to the sheriff if I failed to give you what you wanted. How can I trust a man who could drive so callous a bargain?”
A suspended look came into his eyes, as though he were debating the advisability of the answer he wanted to make. The moment passed; however, an odd lightness remained in his expression. He moved his shoulders in a gesture of resignation. “Stalemated, then.”
Before she could reply, the door opened inward, thrown wide as Mrs. Anson swept into the room. Her cold gaze took in Serena in bed with the quilt slipping from her bare shoulders, Ward standing half-dressed before the fire, and the discarded clothing that lay on the rug beside the bed, or straggled over its footboard.
“I could not believe my ears when Dorcas told me,” the housekeeper announced. “I was certain she had made some ridiculous mistake. I see I was wrong.”
A black frown drew Ward’s brows together. He glanced at Serena. “I understood this woman was housekeeper here?”
“I am,” Mrs. Anson said, her bosom swelling as she took up the challenge. “I was with Mr. Benedict for ten years and kept house for him at Bristlecone for the past three. He was a dear, sweet man, and a more generous and considerate employer than you would ever hope to meet, and I am scandalized by this desecration of his home.”
“I think you will do well to remember, Mrs. Anson, that he is dead.”
“How can I forget? How could anyone, with him not in his grave a day? It is past belief to see his widow, the woman he loved, consorting with her lover under his roof before he is even cold!”
“The woman you are speaking of,” Ward said softly, “is now your mistress.”
“That may be, but I would consider myself failing in my duty if I didn’t try to bring her to some sense of propriety.”
“Even if it costs you your job?”
The housekeeper looked from Ward to Serena and back again. “Who are you to interfere, and what do you mean by threatening me?” she demanded, her tone a trifle less assured.
“Sometimes,” Ward said, his eyes narrowed, “a threat is enough.”
Serena flung him a quick glance before she intervened. “If you will remember, Mrs. Anson, Mr. Dunbar is involved with the trust which holds this house in ownership for my son, and as such, he is concerned with the management.”
It was obvious from the flush that rose to the woman’s face that she had forgotten. That did not prevent her from giving a sniff of disdain.
“Your loyalty to Mr. Benedict is admirable,” Serena went on, “but as Mr. Dunbar pointed out, you are no longer in his employ. It would distress me to have to let you go, but if you can’t be happy here, that may be the best course.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Mrs. Anson said grandly.
“Thanks to poor Mr. Benedict, I have no need to slave here another day! You may consider this my notice. I will not require a character reference from you. My daughter and I will be out of the house by noon.”
Behind her there was a crash. Dorcas stood in the hall beyond the open door, the coffee service of Delft blue china in shards at her feet.
A look of annoyance crossed the housekeeper’s face, but she moved toward her daughter, stepping majestically over the debris. “Come, Dorcas,” she said and, collecting the white-faced girl, swept off in the direction of the servants’ quarters. A rueful look crossed Ward’s face. “Too bad about the coffee.”
“I suppose you know this means you will get no breakfast,” Serena informed him, flouncing a little as she raised herself higher in the bed.
“I’m not hungry,” he answered, admiring the results of the lowered quilt.
“Or lunch!”
“You offered to cook for me once,” he reminded her.
“That was before I acquired a kitchen like the catacombs of Rome.”
“What do you know about the catacombs?”
“I saw them once on a stereopticon slide. Besides, I have another mouth to feed, Mary, Sean’s nurse.”
“I expect we can find something for today. After that, I have an idea for a replacement.”
She stared at him in suspicion. “Do you now? Do I know her.”
“I don’t believe you’ve met.”
“You relieve me,” she
answered, her tone dry. “At least I can be reasonably certain she doesn’t come from the Eldorado.”
“You can.”
“And what am I to do for a maid?”
He raised a brow. “You sound as if you are ready to blame this on me, too. I distinctly remember you being the one to mention that ironclad battleship’s leaving.”
“Only to keep you from doing it for me!”
“I will admit to some responsibility, mainly because I could see that you were speechless. That being the case, I will take on the job.”
“Which job?” Serena asked, disliking the gleam in his eyes, uncertain of where this conversation had led her.
“As your maid, of course.”
“Of course,” she said faintly.
He moved to shut the door, turning the key in the lock. “Shall I begin by helping you dress?”
Serena watched his advance with trepidation. “That’s — all right. You can put your own clothes on first.”
“If I did that, you might expect me to leave, and then who would protect you from your housekeeper?”
“I don’t need any protection.”
“That’s what you think.”
His words sounded very much as if he meant his stay with her to be permanent. The arrogance of it, the unmitigated arrogance! The impulse to request that he leave the house hovered on her tongue. One thing that kept it from being spoken was the suspicion that it would be futile; the other was the purposeful way he was advancing upon her.
“Ward,” she began uncertainly.
“Yes, Serena?”
“May you be damned, Ward Dunbar,” she told him, her fingers tightening on the sheet as she watched the slow removal of his trousers.
“It’s more than likely, darling Serena,” he said as he joined her in the bed. “Much more than likely.”
It was the next day before Ward went into town in his absence, Serena sent for the mine superintendent of the Century Lode. She had thought long and hard about her ownership of the mine and her other holdings. Many of her conclusions were influenced by her father’s long years as a laborer, and his views on the benefits to be derived from treating workers fairly. She had combined these attitudes with much she had learned from Ward and Nathan at different times in their talks, and with her own feelings on the subject. She was ready to make a few changes, some her own, some that Nathan had intended. And then there was the problem of the hoist. It was blocking the shaft at the present time. Something was going to have to be done about it.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2 Page 130