Pure Sin

by Susan Johnson

  “I don’t care how they feel. If I did, I’d be a martinet like them with my major interest court politics and the price of the emperor’s favor.”

  “Napoleon’s made them extremely wealthy.”

  “Our father left us wealthy. Napoleon’s friendship just helped. Maybe you chose the wrong brother to ensnare.”

  “I don’t like court.”

  “Reason enough, I suppose,” he sarcastically drawled. Looking up at her, he wondered what made her so malevolent. Although, knowing her family, he thought, it was understandable. “I don’t care to discuss any of this with you,” he deliberately said, and rising from the sofa, he moved away. The camellia scent surrounding her almost made him nauseated. “Just go.”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you in love, Adam,” she said, intent on a last uncharitable comment before she left. “It’s quite unmistakable. Like a sad young boy,” she chided. “But, then, I shouldn’t complain,” she went on with a flaunting smile. “It’s made you more generous than usual.”

  He turned away from her because he didn’t trust his temper, concentrating on the garden scene outside the window. And when he heard the door click shut, he exhaled like a man reprieved from a death sentence.

  He didn’t unlock Lucie’s bedroom door until he’d secured the suite door behind his wife. As if her spirit might still return to harm his daughter.

  Adam found Mrs. Richards seated beside Lucie’s bed, his daughter blessedly asleep. “They’re gone,” he quietly said. “Did Lucie know—”

  “The darling slept through everything,” Cook quickly interjected. “Thank the Lord. I just knew you’d send them on their way once you came back, Mr. Serre, but I don’t mind saying, those two servants made me a mite nervous. They’d steal the gold from a dead man’s teeth.”

  “I appreciate your taking such good care of Lucie. I’m deeply in your debt.”

  “Is she coming to Montana?” Mrs. Richards inquired, her tone contemptuous.

  “No,” Adam firmly declared.

  “Good!” Cook declared, rising from her chair. “I’ll finish packing, then. I was almost done when she came in,” Mrs. Richards darkly noted.

  “Just take what we can carry ourselves. The rest can be sent later. I don’t want our departure to cause attention.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  When the train pulled out of the station at eight, Adam allowed himself a small sigh of relief. Henry had reported that he’d seen no sign of Isolde and privately told Adam he’d detected no coffin being loaded onto the baggage cars—both remote possibilities, but not to be disregarded. The morning was sunny and still slightly cool, the horses and their grooms were settled in the stable car, Lucie and Flora were playing cards, Mrs. Richards was arranging supplies in the small kitchen. There was a very good possibility they could travel west without incident. A gratifying prospect at such short notice. He was in extreme good humor.

  Once they arrived at the railhead, complications might ensue; Ned Storham could be waiting. He would be apprised of his brother’s death by then, but Adam had already notified James and expected an escort to see them home.

  Four days on the train, another four on the trail, he thought, the rhythm of the wheels pulsing under his booted feet as he stood on the small open platform between his traveling coach and stable car. Once they reached his ranch, they were safe. He could protect his valley from attack.

  “Papa, come play with us,” Lucie shouted through the open door. “Flora is showing me a new game.”

  “In a minute,” Adam replied, taking one last look at the countryside passing by. Peaceful, bucolic—a pleasant change from his night past. He allowed his fatigue to seep into his consciousness. Lord, he was tired. He’d hardly slept in days.

  “Lucie has your talent for cards,” Flora said, smiling up at him as he walked in to join them. “She already knows all the rules, and we’ve been playing for only ten minutes.”

  “She has a good teacher,” Adam said, dropping into a chair beside Flora, his gaze affectionate. “Deal me in, and I’ll see if I can make it a little harder for you two to win.”

  They played for another half hour while the smells of breakfast cooking wafted in from the kitchen, both adults taking pleasure in Lucie’s obvious delight, both acutely aware, as well, of each other.

  Their eyes met over their cards and they’d smile, a private, lazy smile. And when they spoke, their voices seemed hushed in a sweet intimacy. Adam’s railcar offered shelter from the world, protection from the public, from the too recent showy glitter of the beau monde. They were isolated, a small family again, Lucie’s busy chatter a familiar, pleasing melody.

  “I’ll be glad to get back to the ranch,” Adam said as Lucie explained her cards to Baby DeeDee, his voice conveying infinitely more meaning than the simple words.

  “It was nice, wasn’t it?” Flora replied, understanding.

  “I’ve never really had a family of my own.” His eyes held a sweet tenderness.

  “I’ve never had a family,” Flora murmured.

  His smile offered cloudless pleasure. “You have one now.”

  That night after Lucie had been tucked in, when Mrs. Richards and Henry had retired, when the only sound in the plush sitting room was the perpetual cadence of the wheels on the rails, Adam gazed at Flora seated across from him and softly said, “I’ve been watching the clock since dinner. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve slept with you?”

  Flora nodded, suddenly unable to speak, acutely sensitive of his nearness, disquieted by her own intense need. They were alone but not alone, and he was tantalizing. Adam was barefoot in the summer heat, dressed casually in beige linen trousers and a white shirt, his hair tied back, his lounging pose etched on her mind as if longing were caustic.

  “Are you bothered by the”—his head tipped toward the closed bedroom doors—“close quarters?”

  She shook her head no and murmured, “A little,” her agitation apparent.

  “No one will … interfere,” he quietly said.

  “On orders?” She blushed at the thought of having their lovemaking discussed.

  “No.” He didn’t elaborate, he only added, “I haven’t seen you in that shade of blue before. Your gown’s lovely.”

  “Sarah bought it for me. She said men like blue.” Her cheeks flushed a deeper rose hue. “I didn’t wear it tonight because of … that.… I mean … I wasn’t—” She nervously stopped, her gaze dropping before Adam’s mild scrutiny.

  “Does it seem different now?” he softly queried.

  She nodded before she looked up, and when she spoke, her voice held a tremulous quality. “It’s not playing anymore, is it? Or teasing flirtation, or a summer liaison that ends when autumn comes. I’m not sure suddenly about …”

  “A lifetime commitment?” His voice was carefully modulated.

  “I’ve traveled as long as I can remember, Adam,” she said in a very small voice. “I’ve never stayed in one place for any length of time.” Her fingers unconsciously pleated the soft lawn of her skirt as she spoke. “What if I miss my research, the new cultures, my traveling?”

  “Why don’t we travel together?” He spoke casually, but his gaze was watchful; he already had a wife who preferred traveling alone.

  Flora’s restless fingers stilled. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  He smiled. “I’d love to go. Maybe not right away,” he added, “because Ned Storham is going to be one helluva problem for a while, but in a few months, six months, no more than a year, either he wins or I do, and then you can take me anywhere you want.”

  “I love you so much.…” Her eyes filled with tears. “I thought you’d want me to—”

  “—give up everything?” He slowly shook his head. “Why would I want you to change when I fell in love with a strong, wild, talented woman who’s spent a good part of her life trying to understand mankind’s common bonds? Don’t change. Just let me share
your adventures.”

  Jumping up, Flora threw herself into his lap, flung her arms around his neck, and hugged him fiercely. Covering his face with kisses, she laughed and cried and told him how much she loved him in the Absarokee words she’d learned from the women in Four Chiefs’s camp.

  Adam held her close, his eyes wet with emotion, some of the soft words achingly familiar, bringing back long-ago memories of childhood and mother love, other phrases more specifically those of a woman to her lover, blissful, joyous sounds, teasing, coaxing—but all of them words of his people through timeless ages. And for the first time he fully understood the profundity of love, its depth and breadth and fullness, as if a lifelong quest were over.

  The world was new for them that night. Love was new. Their bodies and souls untouched by the past, the sensation of bliss so intense, so graphic, Adam wrote the word on the steamy compartment window late that night and, lying on his back with his arms flung over his head, trying to catch his breath, he murmured, “Consider that written in diamonds.…”

  Flora playfully licked her finger and swiftly wrote the word on his chest while he smiled at her.

  “You’re branded mine …,” she breathlessly said, falling on top of him and kissing his fine, straight nose. “I hope you’re available for the next millennium.”

  “For you I am.”

  “Just for me?” A female possessive demand, an absolutely new sensation for Flora Bonham.

  “Only for you.…” He grinned. “Although I may suffocate soon from the heat. Let me open the window.”

  “They’ll hear,” she whispered as if the other occupants of the car were listening.

  “Everyone’s sleeping. The train wheels are so noisy, a gunshot would go unnoticed. You’re supposed to be grown-up and sophisticated.” His grin widened as he looked up into her indecisive face. “But if you don’t want to, I’ll gladly melt away for love.”

  “The wheels are rather loud.”

  “I’ll just raise the window partway.”

  “How far?”

  “Only enough for your newfound modesty.”

  “The other bedrooms are so close.”

  He grinned. “I won’t let you scream.”

  She punched him.

  He tweaked her curls.

  And the lighthearted melee began. In the rolling tussle Adam shoved the window wide-open, then stopped Flora’s protest with a heated kiss, and before very long thoughts of propriety had vanished from her mind.

  The night air swept into the small bedroom, washing over the rumpled bed and sweat-sheened occupants, bringing in the sweet smell of new-cut hay and clover, the rush of coolness mingling with the racing heat of their passion.

  The first night together after their long separation was the stuff of dreams, sumptuous and balmy and tender.

  It was also feverish tumult and heat.

  It was perfect love.

  Adam fell into an exhausted sleep toward morning, his lapse into slumber occurring with split-second suddenness. One minute he was talking to Flora, and when she turned back from picking up a pillow that had fallen to the floor, he was asleep.

  He lay facedown on the bed without a pillow or covers, his arms gracefully framing his head, his stark profile vivid on white linen, his muscled back awesome in its fluid power, his long athletic legs sprawled wide, his feet dangling over the end of the bed.

  “You’re mine,” Flora whispered, an inescapable sense of possession overwhelming her. And leaning over, she gently kissed his cheek.

  He stirred in his sleep and his hand reached out for her.

  Twining her fingers through his, she murmured, “I’m here.”

  A faint smile appeared on his beautiful mouth, and he gently squeezed her fingers.

  It seemed as if they inhabited their own private world as the train raced west, the following two days ones of peace and rest and contentment. They didn’t exit the coach at any of the train’s scheduled stops, for Adam was concerned with leaving a trail. He wasn’t sure if Frank had come to Saratoga alone or with cohorts, but if they were being followed, he wanted as little evidence as possible of their route. But in Chicago’s bustling station, as they were waiting to depart, Lucie spied a vendor with pink lemonade hawking her wares.

  “I want pink lemonade, Papa!” she cried. “Hurry, hurry, she’s walking away!”

  They were all seated in the small parlor section with the windows opened wide to mitigate the sultry August heat, watching the mass of humanity streaming by on the concourse.

  Responding to his daughter’s urgency, Adam went to the window and called the vendor over.

  “I want a big drink, Papa. I love pink lemonade,” Lucie urged.

  Adam smiled, purchased a large cup of lemonade, and handed it to her.

  “Look! There’s ice too. This is the bestest.” And she drank a big swallow. After several more laudatory comments and some coaxing, Adam obligingly drank some of the lemonade too. Flora declined the invitation to taste it, pointing to her glass of iced tea Mrs. Richards had just brought in.

  By sunset they’d cleared the station, the city, and its straggling outskirts and were well out in the country again, where they enjoyed the passing scenery over dinner.

  Shortly after their meal Lucie vomited. Adam was instantly alarmed, although he cautioned himself to a more cool-headed reaction; she’d probably just eaten something that hadn’t agreed with her. But summer fevers were dangerous, he knew, and particularly lethal to young and old. Carrying Lucie to her bedroom, he helped put her to bed and then sat with her, holding her hand, wishing they were closer to home, where the air was clean and fresh, knowing they had six more days of travel to reach their valley.

  Flora read to Lucie when she asked for a story, her little-girl voice a startling wisp of sound, drastically altered from her normal spirited tone. She lay very still and pale on her bed, her dark eyes listless, her small hand limp in her father’s grasp.

  “I’m so thirsty, Papa,” she whispered, but when she was given water, it didn’t stay down, and by evening, after retching several more times, she was so weak she couldn’t raise her head. Her pulse had weakened, the surface of her body had become cold, intense cramps were affecting her legs and arms. She barely opened her eyes now, and her skin was dry, indication of the intense draining away of body fluids.

  Adam sat beside the bed, terrified by Lucie’s rapid deterioration, by her stillness. “This train has to be stopped,” he said, his voice absolute, fear coiled tight in his stomach. “We need a doctor.”

  “I’ll have Henry tell the engineer we need a doctor in the nearest town,” Flora said, rising from her seat at the foot of the bed. Exiting the room at a half run, she moved through the parlor in search of Henry. Fearful of Lucie’s symptoms, she hadn’t dared voice her suspicions. She didn’t have the expertise to diagnose or treat cholera, and Adam was already wild with worry.

  “We’ll find a doctor soon,” Adam whispered to Lucie, gently stroking her forehead, her cool skin frightening to the touch. “Papa’s here, I’m right here, the doctor will know what to do, we’re almost there …” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And then we’re going home.…”

  When Henry appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, Adam looked up and asked, “How long?” his voice taut with alarm.

  “Forty miles. The engineer will telegraph ahead to have the doctor at the station. Another half hour,” Henry sympathetically said. He recognized cholera too; he’d seen it often in their travels.

  Adam nodded, his attention immediately returned to his daughter, oblivious to everything but the fearful threat to her life. The drastic change in her condition in so short a time terrified him, and head bowed, he silently prayed to The One Who Made All Things, asking his spirits to hear him even in a strange, faraway land. “I need your help, Ah-badt-dadt-deah, and your strength to save my only child. She’s my sunshine and happiness, the sweet promise of my life. Please hear me tonight, send me your help. She’s so young,” he
whispered.

  He could still remember the incredible joy he’d felt when he’d first held his daughter in his arms. Cloudy had brought her in to him minutes after her birth and had said, “She’s yours now, Monsieur le Comte. We’ll see that she’s happy, won’t we?” Lucie’s eyes had been wide-open, and she’d gazed up at him from a cocoon of soft white blankets with such a pensive earnestness, he thought she must have understood Cloudy’s words. And he’d whispered to the pink-cheeked baby, “Welcome to Aspen Valley, Lucie Serre. And Cloudy’s wrong. You’re going to make us happy.”

  She’d instantly become the center of his life, and he’d learned under Cloudy’s strict tutelage how to bathe her and feed her and change her nappies. He sang his own songs to her when he rocked her to sleep—Absarokee lullabies his mother had sung to him.

  He’d listened to her first word—“horse”; he’d been there to catch her after her shaky first step. And he’d helped teach her to ride her first pony when she was two. She always woke him up in the morning, kept him company at meals, recited her lessons to him. And made him smile.

  He couldn’t lose her.

  His world would fall into darkness.

  Unclasping his earrings, he slid them from his ears and carefully placed them beside her pillow. “Save her, Ah-badt-dadt-deah,” he murmured. “She’s my life.”

  Flora fought back tears at the sight of her betrothed relinquishing, to save his daughter, the talisman that protected his life. His anguish tore at her heart, and she longed to hold him in her arms. But she stood quietly in the doorway, not wishing to interfere, knowing he was in his own world with Lucie.

  “Breathe, darling,” Adam whispered, bent low over her still form. “Keep breathing … that’s a good girl.” He watched intently for her breath, holding his own as he scrutinized her tiny chest. And then an almost infinitesimal movement lifted the blanket. “That’s Papa’s girl,” he murmured, his relief trembling in his deep voice. “Breathe again, there, that’s right … now again …” as if he could will the air into her lungs.