Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  She felt his gaze, the heat of that unveiled stare, and though it repulsed her, she found herself able to resist the desire to escape. He had never stopped looking at her since the instant he had arrived. He sat at the kitchen table and watched her while she prepared supper, then fixed his eyes on her throughout the meal itself. Though he did not offer to help her with the dishes, he remained seated at the dining room table where he had a clear view to the kitchen. Her spine prickled and her hands felt chilled even in the hot soapy water because she knew her every movement was carefully observed.

  But none of it mattered. He did not make any move to touch her, and as long as he kept his hands to himself, she would tolerate his stares. If he touched her, or tried to kiss her as he had before, she wasn’t sure she could maintain her calm. She hoped she would not have to find out.

  “Your papa gave us one hour,” he said suddenly, so suddenly that Julie started. She hadn’t realized she was that lost in her thoughts. “Ten minutes is gone already. Put down that sewing and come here.”

  “I can’t. I must have all the chores done before—”

  “I said come here,” Hans commanded. He kept his voice low, a fact that in itself set Julie on her guard. “You must learn to obey me, Julie. When I am your husband, I will not stand for disobedience.”

  “You are not my husband yet, Hans, and I am not yours to command. I may never be.”

  She had said the wrong thing. In an instant, he was on his feet and had crossed to her. He tore the sock from her hand and threw it across the room, where it landed with a heavy thud of the darning egg inside it. Startled, she had no time to defend herself against his next assault. This time the little sewing basket, filled with pins and spools of thread and loose buttons, went flying through the air along the same course as the sock. Instinct pulled Julie out of her chair before she could stop herself, and of course Hans was right there.

  His large, hard hands grabbed her arms painfully and pulled her against him.

  She could not raise her hand to slap him, for he held her arms too tightly, but she could and did turn her face away from his kiss. He would have to let go her arm in order to hold her head, and then she would strike.

  But he did not let her go. He lowered his face to her neck, to the extended corner where it joined her shoulder and the skin and tendons were pulled taut. Lips hot and wet, he mouthed the cool flesh before running the edges of his teeth threateningly along a pulse beat. Julie moaned and twisted away from him.

  Hans laughed, but there was no humor in that low snarl.

  “So, this is how you like it? That is good, very good. I like it too, when there is some pain.”

  “I don’t like it at all,” Julie corrected, her voice low with anger. She had meant to keep her feelings hidden, at least for a while, but he had made that impossible. “I loathe it, as I loathe you. Let go of me.”

  He laughed again, completely undaunted by her denial.

  “But I have no intention of letting go of you. In just six more days you will be my wife and—”

  “No! I won’t marry you. I would rather live here and slave for my mother and put up with my father for the rest of my life than marry you. If you drag me to the church, I will refuse the vows. You can’t make me marry you.”

  She tossed her head defiantly and then gazed into Hans’ eyes. They were on a level with hers, not above hers as Morgan’s were. Once she had thought Hans’ eyes were the prettiest, clearest shade of blue; now she saw nothing but icy cold in them, no depth, no soul. She was not afraid of him.

  “Your papa wants to be rid of you. You shame him. He will not let you stay here, even if you wish to. So where would you go? To the doctor who isn’t even a man? Did you know that, Julie? Your precious surgeon is a gelding, not a proud stallion like your salesman or that drifter your papa took care of.”

  Julie bit her tongue. Something warned her not to reveal the truth, not yet and not to Hans. Neither would she show him any shock or shame.

  “He is still twice the man you would ever be,” she spat.

  He hit her then, releasing her arm and slapping her cheek so quickly that she could neither react to avoid the blow nor counter with one of her own before he had thrown her to the floor.

  “I will show you what is a real man.”

  He placed one booted foot on her skirt, high enough to hold her down, while he began slowly to unbuckle his belt. Next, instead of unbuttoning his trousers, he pulled the long leather band free from his waistband and wrapped the buckle end of it around his fist. Now, despite her effort at control, Julie knew fear.

  “Your papa did not beat you, and that was a mistake. He should have taught you a sterner lesson of obedience to men.”

  “As I suppose you plan to do now?”

  “Exactly.”

  He snapped the belt sharply so that the tip just flicked her thigh, where he had pulled the skirt fabric taut. Julie flinched at the pain, but made no outcry. She reached for the buttons on the skirt and quickly undid them. Before she could scramble out of the garment, Hans had snaked his weapon again, this time catching the back of her shoulder. There would be a welt, she suspected, from that lash, but no permanent injury. And the pain was bearable.

  Another blow landed on her buttocks as she got to her feet and ran for the stairs, and this time she could not suppress a short, sharp wail of hurt. Stumbling in her haste, she felt an iron grip on her arm as she tried to clasp the banister and maintain her balance.

  She saw bloodlust in those blue eyes, then a sound above drew both his attention and hers.

  “What are you doing, you fool!” Wilhelm whispered from the landing. “People don’t mind when the whores scream, but they will come running if you start the same thing here. Wait until you have her in your own house.”

  Wilhelm’s scolding shocked Hans into loosening his hold on Julie’s wrist, and she took the opportunity to race up the stairs. Shoving her father aside, she frantically sought the refuge of her room.

  Breathless, she leaned against the door and waited for the summons that never came. Angry whispers floated up from the foyer, but she did not listen to them, did not care to listen to them.

  How long she stood there, she could not tell. The last light faded outside her window, and the night sounds drifted in. She vaguely remembered hearing a wagon, she thought, but it occupied no identifiable place in the sequence of her memory. Hans might have left immediately after the argument with Wilhelm or stayed much longer.

  She wasn’t even positive that he had gone at all.

  She shivered, and a yawn escaped her. When she let herself relax, after discovering that every muscle of her body was almost cramped with tension, Julie discovered she was exhausted. She wanted sleep, days of it, and yet when she looked at her bed, she knew somehow that she could not lie upon it.

  She went to the narrow wardrobe and fumbled in the dark for the clothes she wanted. Her searching fingers encountered the soft batiste of her new blouse and lingered there, but that was not the garment she wanted. The light blue would be too easily seen. She finally found the dark blue calico, recognizable by its relatively unworn texture and the long sleeves.

  Fully dressed again, she next searched for a shawl. Not for a second did she take all her attention away from the hallway outside her door, for she listened for footsteps, voices, even snores that might have told her anything, but she heard not a sound. It was almost as though she were the only person left in the house.

  She did not unpin her hair, though she thought of it, for it was more easily concealed under the shawl when coiled at her neck this way than loose. With no mirror to examine her appearance, Julie trusted to her imagination to tell her how she looked, and then she went to the dresser.

  In the box that had held her gold piece lay a small collection of lesser coins, and some greenbacks. She had counted them often enough to know that she had almost ten dollars, hardly a princely sum, but it was all she had. It would at least buy her a ticket out of Plato, if
nothing else, and perhaps somewhere else she could make a new life. Hadn’t her father done it often enough?

  She stuffed the money into a pocket and then placed her ear against the door.

  She heard nothing, and so ventured to open the door. The one advantage to having no lock was that though she could not lock anyone out, neither could they lock her in.

  Now the sounds came to her. Willy B she had no idea when he had come home B thrashed in his sleep and mumbled something from a dream. When she whispered his name, he did not answer; she knew he was sound asleep. From the slightly ajar door to her parents’ room filtered Wilhelm’s snores and, barely audible, little whimpers from Katharine, as though her headache invaded even her sleep.

  Julie paused long enough only to pull off her shoes before she slipped silently down the stairs. She waited again in the foyer, listening for any sound of stirring from the rooms above, but the family slumbered on as though they had no cares, no worries, no guilts.

  The front door had a tiny squeak on occasion, so Julie padded through the dining room and kitchen to the back door. It opened without a whisper, and she closed it carefully.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Tired fingers curled into a loose fist at Julie’s side, but she couldn’t raise them to the door yet. The fist, indeed her whole arm, quivered with nerves stretched like the strings of a harp. She inhaled deeply, smelling the tang of chili that must have been Morgan’s supper. Had he cooked it himself, or had Winnie Upshaw made it for him? Julie’s fingers tightened even though she hated the jealousy that flexed its muscles. Winnie was a friend, yet Julie could find it in her to envy Winnie’s closeness to Morgan.

  She had seen no lights in any of the windows when she walked down the lane and then around to the back of the adobe house. No doubt Morgan was already in bed and asleep as anyone in his right mind should be. And he probably wouldn’t hear her even if she did knock. So she tapped softly, as though to fulfill her own prophecy.

  There was no reply. Julie waited, knowing she could not return whence she had come, and yet not daring to knock again. With her knuckles still poised an inch or two from the door, she held her breath.

  Then a light flared above her, a brief glow that illuminated a thin cigar and a man’s dark, brooding face. He had been on the rooftop patio, probably watching her all the while. Embarrassed by her boldness and his observance of it, Julie turned to leave before he could reach the stairs and climb down them.

  “Wait.”

  It was a command so soft and gentle that she wouldn’t have heard it by daylight, but in the night’s quiet, his voice rang clear.

  So she waited, as he asked, and in a matter of seconds he was beside her. His breathing was only slightly hurried, whether from the quick dash from the roof or from something else wasn’t readily discernible. He took the cheroot from between his teeth and held it in his fingers. The smoke curled up between them, pungent and warm. The glowing red ash shed no light.

  “Julie.”

  The word caressed her, though he had not touched her, and she felt the brazen warmth of desire surge through her.

  “Were you waiting for me?” she dared to ask.

  “No.” He could barely see her in the moonless dark. “Yes. Yes, I was waiting, or at least hoping.”

  His voice rose slowly, then sank again on that last word. He felt as if his breath had been sucked right out of his lungs and his heart had somehow leaped from his chest to his throat. He wanted to touch her, not as he had so often when they worked together, but as they had touched when they were not working.

  “Let’s go inside,” he whispered.

  She wanted him to take her hand or clasp her elbow, but he didn’t. He reached instead for the door handle, then pushed the unlatched oak panel inward, opening the way into the kitchen. Julie walked ahead of him, pausing after three or four blind steps. A match scraped on a boot sole, and then Del walked past her to light the lamp on the table.

  She almost gasped at what the kerosene glow revealed. Morgan looked awful, almost like the derelict she had stumbled across in front of McCrory’s store all those long weeks ago. But tonight his face was clean-shaven, his hair looked slightly damp as though from a recent washing, and his shirt was freshly laundered and even ironed. It was his face that bore the ravages: his cheeks looked sunken, lines etched sharp hollows around his mouth, and exhaustion had painted dark shadows under eyes that never left her for an instant.

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Those green eyes took in every detail of her face, the high cheekbones flushed with nervous pink, the brown eyes wide and lustrous, the lips he had kissed so precious few times now parted just enough for her tongue to slip out and moisten them. His own mouth was dry, inside and out.

  “I wanted to see you,” she managed to reply.

  Searching for words and tripping over every single one he wanted to use, he stumbled until he found level ground.

  “I meant to call on your mother today. How is she?”

  “She stayed in bed most of the day. Papa removed the splint.” Feelings she couldn’t hide surfaced, and she turned away from him.

  He moved behind her, placing one hand on her shoulder as though to turn her around, but he exerted no force. He didn’t need to. Just his touch seemed to be enough. She faced him again, her eyes lifting to his. Now no words were necessary.

  His hand slipped from her shoulder to her neck, sliding under a single strand of loose hair. As his thumb caressed her temple and felt the racing pulse, his fingers cupped the back of her head. She let his hand take the weight, and his clasp tightened.

  “I want to kiss you, Julie, but I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Afraid that it isn’t what you want.”

  She had seen pain in his eyes before, and she had seen him cry, but the agony in his confession struck her with its intensity. Yet when he tipped her face upward to meet his, his mouth was gentle, touching softly just the fullest part of her lips. Warm breaths mingled in a single sigh.

  His fingers fumbled with the knot of her hair, and sought the pins that held all that silver silk imprisoned. One by one the tiny shackles clattered to the floor, and one by one the shining strands twisted free.

  “So beautiful,” he murmured, clasping a long hank to plant a kiss upon it. A breath of rainwater and Pears soap filled his nostrils. “Oh, Julie, you shouldn’t be here, but I’m so glad you are.”

  He filled his arms with her, curled a hand to hold her head against his shoulder. It fit so well there, as though it had been made expressly to lie in the hollow above his breast. No doubt she heard his heart pounding, her ear pressed so tightly to him that he could feel the delicate whorls through his shirt.

  She closed her eyes to hold in the tears. She felt so safe. No one could hurt her, neither Wilhelm with his threats and reminders, nor Hans with his hard hands and stinging belt. If only it could always be this way.

  “Are you crying?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She tasted the words of her answer on the tip of her tongue, but they never went any further, for when she looked up again, he was waiting with an answer of his own.

  This time his mouth covered hers possessively, driving all thought from her reeling brain. When she reached her tongue out in tentative greeting to his, she felt his surprise and immediately withdrew.

  “I…I’m sorry,” she stammered with a bright blush. “I thought …”

  “You thought exactly right. Exactly.”

  He ran his fingers into her hair to loosen it further and to hold her head while he kissed her a third time, and he did not let her go. When she responded, more hesitantly even than before, he welcomed her, gently pulling her tongue into his mouth to taste and discover.

  He pushed her shawl from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. Now he could feel body heat through the soft fabric of her dress, and more. As he slid his hand down her back, his sensitive fingertips distin
guished the upper edge of a camisole, then the drawstring of her pantalettes under the waistband of a petticoat. And beneath all that, Julie herself. A Julie who would be warm and passionate and giving, as she always had been.

  The hunger grew in him. Now he tasted fully of her, sliding his tongue past hers to the edge of her teeth and beyond. Thirstily he drank of the sweetness and craved more. Her mouth open to him and her body clutched tightly to his were no longer enough to satisfy the long famine. Starvation flooded his loins with familiar urgency.

  He had wanted her before, but never like this. The wanting was a pain, a fire, a screaming that filled him with emptiness. Had she stood passive in his embrace, the fire might have remained controllable, but he knew there was frenzy in the way her arms encircled his waist and her fingers clutched at his shirt. Frenzy, yes, but fear also.

  Now it was Morgan who withdrew, though he carefully eased himself just far enough away to break the bond of that kiss. Her eyes widened, and the tears spilled freely from them. Tenderly he touched his lips to a salty ribbon on her cheek.

  “Please, Julie, tell me why you’re crying,” he begged. He had to know if she had come just for comfort or for another reason. Did she know what she was doing to him? He could not take advantage of her if she did not, and yet he hoped—almost prayed—that she did.

  “No, I won’t let you go,” he reassured her when she clung even more tightly to him. “Let’s sit down and talk for a minute, all right?”

  She nodded and sniffled and finally loosened her hold on his shirt long enough for him to lead her into the parlor, where some light from the kitchen filtered to cast soft shadows.

  “If I were still a drinking man, I’d offer you some brandy or even a shot of whisky,” he opened once he had her seated on the sofa. “I don’t even have any coffee left from supper.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t need anything.”

  There, she was calmer now. She displayed lingering agitation by twisting a fold of her skirt around her finger and by lowering her eyes, but the desperation seemed to have left her.