The air was humid, the threat of promised rain still hovering as Eden turned away from the saloon entrance to continue down toward the river. If he had hesitated a moment more, he would have witnessed Dara’s return to the city with Clay.
A royal duchess couldn’t fault Dara’s rigid posture. She ignored Clay when he slowed the wagon to speak to the milling crowd of men, and after hearing what had happened, she couldn’t summon another ounce of anger. The first fat raindrops fell as Clay guided the horses into the lane running alongside the store. Clay helped her down from the jump-seat buggy, and Dara wished he would just once be impulsive enough to sweep her up into his arms. Hand in hand, they made an awkward dash for the sheltering dryness of the porch.
Before Clay could whisper good night as he was prone to do, Dara held on to his hand and led him to the wicker settee in the far shadowed comer. The thick profusion of jasmine vines twisted within the weighted boughs of the pine trees muffled the sound of the rain and created a bower scented with rich perfume. Dara sat down, ignoring the damp of her gown’s hem and her shoes. She waited impatiently for Clay to reluctantly join her before she spoke.
“You had no right to force me to leave the social!”
“Dara! How can you say that? Was I supposed to stand aside and allow one of those men to dance with you?”
“Why not?” she demanded, low-voiced and angry. “You certainly didn’t have a moment to spare for me. Not to dance, or talk, or anything.” She couldn’t believe the anger churning inside herself. Crushing the cherry silk striped skirt of her gown with one hand, she gripped Clay’s hand with the other, trying to convey the force of her emotions to him. “Clay, please understand. We hardly see each other anymore. Sometimes I believe you find it very easy to forget about me.”
Rubbing his thumb against the slender length of her fingers, Clay sighed deeply. “You’re being downright silly to imagine I could forget the woman I love. You saw for yourself how riled everyone is, and I just couldn’t walk away from them, Dara. They needed me. You must understand that we have to take a firm stand now. If we don’t, they’ll run all over us. Tonight was just the start of it. First they take over our town so it’s not safe for a lone woman. Next they come to our socials and try to integrate themselves. Next thing you know they will bring more trouble. The men of this town won’t stand for it.”
“Clay,” she pleaded, “that’s not what I saw tonight. I saw lonely men that wanted a chance to join in. Nothing terrible could have happened if they’d been allowed a few dances. There wasn’t any liquor there, and they weren’t drunk, as Reverend Speck accused them of being.”
“Dara, you’re a woman, and you don’t understand these things.”
It was the very assurance in his voice that Dara didn’t know what she was saying, that she didn’t mean to defend those miners, that set her teeth on edge. But then, could she blame Clay for thinking this way? After all, wasn’t she always understanding? Hadn’t she been patiently waiting until he deemed everything perfect before their marriage could take place? And wasn’t this the way society proclaimed it should be? Men ran their world and directed a woman’s in this age.
She turned her head aside, hearing the echo of Eden McQuade’s voice taunting her that she wasn’t a woman yet. A bitterness filled her along with the thought that if circumstances were left to Clay, she might never know what being a woman, being loved by a man, really meant.
“Honey,” Clay chided, “you’re not listening to me.” Dara turned her head and freed her hand at the same time. “I promise you,” he began, “this is the last time we’ll have to wait. Once I replant the stock those fool miners ruined, I’ll know whether or not my grafting methods will take. Just think of it, Dara. I’ll improve not only the quality of the fruit, but the yield of my groves.”
“No.”
“What? What did you say?”
“You heard me, Clay. I won’t wait again. I want us to set a date to be married now, tonight. You can’t understand what having to wait is doing to me.”
“What’s happened to you? I thought you believed in me, in what I’m trying to do for us. You know—you’ve always known—how important this is to me.” He slipped his arm around her rigid shoulders, hugging her close, his voice softening to a whisper. “Honey, I know the waiting hasn’t been easy, but please, if you love me, be patient a little while longer.”
Dara closed her eyes. How could he say he loved her and make her go on year after year, always waiting to experience the joy of being his wife? Did he ever once consider how old she was? Dara’s thought of being like his prize citrus trees—frozen by a blight, sap and fruit and delicate blossoms dying before they had a chance to be touched by the sun—brought a shudder to her body. She couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it.
“You’re chilled sitting out here in the damp. Come on, let me get you inside.”
Dara offered no further resistance. She stood before the front door with Clay’s arm around her, frowning at the angle of the lamplight inside the parlor window. Her anger dissolved in a tide of weariness. She had tried and failed. No, not failed, she just hadn’t told him how threatened she felt by the excitement Eden McQuade so effortlessly generated.
“You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you?” Clay asked, but continued before she could answer. “I promise you that by this time next year, we’ll have our wedding. I do love you, Dara. If the waiting gets hard, please don’t ever forget that. I want you to have the best, and I just can’t do that now. I owe so much to the land. It’s a trust my father and his family set out for me.” He drew her closer within the circle of his arms. “Be patient a bit longer, and everything will be perfect the day you become Mrs. Clay Wescott.”
Dara found that an ember of hope flamed bright inside her. She rubbed her cheek against the soft cloth of his jacket. “Clay,” she whispered, “I know you want everything perfect for us. But that’s not what I want or need.” She would have felt his withdrawal even if he hadn’t moved, and she had to gather her courage to make a last stand. “Let me finish,” she murmured when he pulled back slightly to gaze down at her. “Do you know how hard it is for me to face people in this town, day after day, week after week, and turn aside their questions of when we’ll be married? Can you try to understand how much it hurts me to see women I went to school with coming into the store, shopping for their growing families? I’m twenty-two years old, Clay. I want to be your wife and share everything with you, not wait until you achieve your idea of what will make me happy. I never wanted a better house or riches. I fell in love—”
“Are you trying to say that you don’t love me still? Or are you harboring a resentment against me for wanting so much for you?”
Tears seemed to form effortlessly, but she managed to keep them controlled. Her fingertips against his lips held him silent. “Please, give me a date. I don’t care how hard it will be to manage. I’m strong, Clay. I’m not afraid of hard work. If we share the building of your dream, it will only make our love stronger. I don’t need a fancy new house. I need you to love me.”
He stared at her upturned face, trying hard to pierce the deep shadows and see what brought the note of desperation into her voice. Drawing her hand down to his chest, he rested his lips against her temple. “What has caused all this urgency to set a wedding date? Does what happened with McQuade today have something to do with this?”
“Time’s passing and you don’t care,” she answered in a strangled voice, hating the truth of his words, afraid to admit them even to herself, yet unable to deny them.
“Don’t you think it’s a strain on me to keep away from you? I want you for my wife, Dara. I’ve wanted that since you were old enough to notice me. Remember,” he coaxed softly, rocking her gently against him. “It was spring when you first came visiting with your father, and you’d just learned how to put up your hair.”
“And for a change, you didn’t run off, but stayed outside with me, pushing me on the sw
ing, talking to me and not shooing me off like a pesty child.”
“And I stole a kiss from the sweetest lips.”
“My very first,” she whispered, willing to be lulled into the blissful state of that long-ago day.
“Your kisses are still the sweetest, Dara. I’d still steal one from you.” His arms tightened around her, his head lowered, and his voice became intimately deep and husky. “You’ve got to know how difficult it is for a man to content himself with a small taste of the woman he loves.”
“Do I?” she asked with a deep ache beginning inside her. She tilted her head for his kiss, accepting that it would be as chaste now as the very first one. Acceptance gave way to a spark of resentment. She was a woman, no matter what Eden thought, and she needed proof beyond words of Clay’s loving her, wanting her. She cradled his cheeks with her hands. “Clay, if you want me to believe you, then show me … kiss me like a man who can’t wait to make me his wife.”
The tension in Clay’s body gave Dara her answer before he spoke.
“I can’t believe what you’re saying. Why, you’re acting brazen,” he stated with a strong suggestion of reproach.
“Brazen!” she repeated in disbelief, pushing against his chest to be released. “Clay, let me go.”
“Not until you calm down.” His hands slid to her upper arms, and to Dara’s shock he gave her a little shake. “We’ve never had a fight before, and I still want to kiss you good night.”
A cold knot formed inside her. “We haven’t had a fight, Clay. If you think we are, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“What do you want from me? What do you think I’m made of?” he demanded, tightening his hold on her. “I have loved and respected you. Too much to take advantage of this mood you’re in now. And if you won’t tell me what’s causing this, I can’t help you.”
“You’re right, Clay.” The words were spoken before she could stop herself.
For a moment, a brief wild moment, Clay kissed her with a barely leashed hunger before he gently released her and whispered good night.
Coldness spread inside her along with gnawing hunger for something more as Dara stood at the edge of the porch step. She ignored the light sprinkle of rain, watching Clay urge his team down the lane and away from her without a backward glance. Angrily she brushed aside her tears. How could she love a man who showed such a callous disregard for her feelings? And why, after all these years, all this wasted time, was she just beginning to realize it?
A scraping noise demanded her attention, and she turned toward the sound, knowing without seeing who was there.
“Haven’t you anything better to do than sneak around and spy on me?”
The glowing tip of a cigar showed Eden’s sharply delineated face for a brief moment. Dara began tapping her foot impatiently, waiting, no thought of going inside, of running, coming to mind. There seemed to be a sudden surge within her, a reckless hot excitement of knowing he was here, and of not knowing what he would say or do. Her breaths quickened at the thought, and with eyes as old and as curious as Eve, she watched him come forward.
With one booted foot resting on the bottom step, he rested his elbow on bent knee, leaning toward her. With that rough, rich voice that seemed to stroke her soul, he said, “That was a rather touching scene I was forced to witness, Dara.”
“Forced?”
“I was about to return to my office, and since this is the shortest route, I believed it prudent to remain out of sight.”
“I’ll just bet you did,” she muttered under her breath. His lips drew her gaze, singularly beautiful, with a reckless slant to them that intensely sharpened the memory of how they felt against her own. Her skin surface seemed to heat beneath her constrictive clothes, her breaths shortening. But she was afraid of what he made her feel, almost as if she didn’t know herself. Dara’s good night was abrupt.
“Do you always beg him, Dara? If I had a woman like you,” he whispered, stepping up closer to her, “you wouldn’t need to beg me to kiss you. You wouldn’t get the chance to ask. You’ve a mouth made for a man’s kisses.” He reached up to tease the soft hair at her temple, and she jerked her head back and away from his touch. Eden smiled. “I’d want you, and you’d never be in doubt about it. Maybe,” he added with a hint of laughter as he stepped back, moving into the rain-swept shadows, “maybe you might find yourself wanting me, too. I wouldn’t need to see the longing in your eyes, I’d be feeling the same. Think about that when you try sleeping tonight, Dara,” he said over her furious sputtering. “Think about me.”
She stopped herself from swaying toward him, shocked by his words, yet excited by the fission of heat those very words called to mind. But Eden McQuade talked of wanting, of needs, not of loving or commitment, and his boldness brought fear to replace the dangerous kindling of long-buried emotions. She bolted for the door without a word and Eden walked away.
Her screams tore the rain-swept dark and brought Eden running.
Chapter Six
Eden burst into the house. The sight of Dara sobbing over the prone figure of her father moved him to contain an instantaneous murderous fury. He hesitated a moment in the archway to the front parlor, taking a quick scan of the room for signs of a struggle. There were none.
“What happened?” he demanded.
She barely spared him a tear-glazed look when he knelt beside her on the floor. “I don’t know. I … I just found him … like this.”
Eden righted the tilted lamp and then gently pushed Dara aside to conduct his own quick examination of the unconscious man. There was swelling on the right side of Cyrus’s head, but when Eden tried to straighten his left leg, Cyrus cried out. A breath he had not realized he was holding rushed out.
“I think he’s broken his leg, but I’m not a doctor.”
“It’s a two-hour ride to—”
“I know, but he needs immediate attention. Don’t fall apart on me, Dara. I could ride out to the church and get Sophy Halput for you if you don’t trust me, but we could manage this between u s.” He turned toward her, placing his hands on her shoulders, shocked to feel the chill of her flesh beneath the thin silk of her gown. “I can set his leg, Dara,” he offered, trying to impart some of his strength and warmth to her. “I just hope that nothing more than a fall knocked him out.”
Dara managed to control herself under his steady gaze. She found herself agreeing with him, not wanting to question why she trusted him.
“I’ll need wood to make a splint and linen strips.” With a knife he drew from his pocket he split open Cyrus’s pant leg. “There’s no blood and the bone hasn’t ripped through the skin. But get plenty of blankets first. We should get him warm.”
With Eden’s hand on her elbow, Dara scrambled awkwardly to her feet. The restrictive stays of her corset pressed against her ribs, but it was fear for her father that made breathing difficult. With Eden’s reassurances, she recalled his help with Matt and hurried to get what he wanted. When she returned with a thick quilt and blankets, Eden was still kneeling beside Cyrus. He tried to wake him without success. Quickly he shoved both tables and the settee aside to make more room and set the two lamps on the floor.
“I don’t want to lift him from here,” he said without looking up at her. “Spread the quilt on the floor—I’ll try to be gentle moving him.”
Dara laid out the quilt and smoothed the edges, while Eden handled her father as if he were a baby, but every moan from Cyrus tore at her nerve endings.
“I couldn’t find any wood to use for splints, and I don’t think we have any in the store,” she said, already tearing the linen sheet into strips. “I’ve beaten some egg whites and that should help hold his leg immobile.”
Eden ignored the quiver in her voice. “Stay with him. I might have some wood strips left over from the cabinets Jesse made for me.”
Cyrus drifted in and out of consciousness, crying out when Dara gently washed around the
lump on his head. There were a few deep scratches, and she wondered what had happened to him. Eden returned carrying two uneven strips of raw wood and a cut-glass decanter filled with dark amber liquid.
“Brandy,” he explained at Dara’s inquiring look. “I’ll need more light in here and a glass.”
“You need a dry shirt first,” she insisted, embarrassed to see the way the wet cream-colored linen delineated the set of his shoulder and his rib cage as he brushed rain-damp hair back from his face. If Dara was embarrassed then, it was mild compared to her feelings when she returned to the parlor and found that he had stripped off his shirt. Thrusting one of her father’s shirts at him, knowing it was too big, Dara turned her back toward him. Neither of her brothers was as broad across the shoulders or chest as Eden, and she wanted him covered. The few moments he took to put on the shirt and button it were agonizing ones for her. The sight of his bare torso was sketched in her mind like a bold ink drawing. If he sensed there was anything amiss in her demeanor, Dara was most thankful he had ignored it.
Four lamps made a golden circle of light on the floor as she knelt opposite him, holding her father still while Eden labored to set his leg. Cyrus roused, cried out, and then fainted. Eden’s hand on her arm helped to steady her. She dipped linen strips into the large basin of beaten egg whites, then handed them to Eden so he could wrap them first around the leg and then over the short lengths of wood. His hands, she noticed, were gentle as he smoothed the sodden cloths so that they would dry into a stiff mold. Dara felt the growing tension between them, had from the first, but tonight there was an added element of intimacy and something more she couldn’t explain to herself. Glancing up from wiping her father’s brow, she found herself tempted to wipe the sweat beads that glistened across Eden’s beneath a lock of black hair.
The tender feeling expanded inside her, and she was glad his concentration was totally on his labor. He had not boasted idly of his doctoring skills, and she was ashamed that she had derided him, but questioned the circumstances that forced him to learn it. She lost track of time, exhausted after helping him carry her father’s feather tick mattress and bedding into the parlor and getting him settled to sleep there. When she voiced a protest, Eden’s thoughtfulness surprised her.
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