One Bright Morning

by Duncan, Alice

  Maggie moved to sit herself behind his right shoulder. She didn’t really have to be in back of him, but she felt less nervous there, with him naked from the waist up. Lord, he was a well-built man. His belly was flat, lean, and corded. His shoulders and arms rippled with muscle, and he had tight, dark golden curls on his forearms and chest that gleamed in the late-afternoon sunlight.

  Soaping her soft cloth, Maggie began to wash Jubal’s wound tenderly. Then she decided she would prefer to work without the cloth, so she lathered her hands and began to massage him with gentle strokes of her hands. She liked the feel of him. She also liked the smell of him. As warm tendrils of feeling began to sneak around and touch embarrassing places within her, she decided it had been too long since she’d smelled that male smell. Or felt that pelt of male fur on a man’s chest. Then, since Maggie was an honest soul, she admitted to herself that she’d never actually felt this way about a man’s scent or feel before. She decided that realization was better left unexamined.

  Jubal’s wound was still a painful red and looked terrible, but it had healed over and wasn’t oozing any longer. She knew it hurt him when she washed him and she was sorry.

  “I’m trying not to hurt you, Mr. Green, but if I press too hard, let me know and I’ll ease up.”

  “You’re not hurting me, Mrs. Bright,” Jubal mumbled. “It feels good.”

  His skin was warm and his muscles were firm under Maggie’s hands. She was supporting herself with one hand on his back while she soaped him with the other, and she had the sudden urge to slide her arms around his shoulders and laid her cheek against his broad back. She wanted to get right up next to him and close her eyes and breathe in the masculine essence of him. Her sigh of regret that she couldn’t do any of those things was gusty.

  “I’ll rinse off the soap now, Mr. Green.”

  Jubal only grunted.

  Her ministrations were driving him crazy. He was reacting to Maggie the way a man reacts to a woman he wants to bed. Jubal decided, as he sat there and tried to remain neutral about her sensuously rubbing soothing balm into his shoulder and back, that it was coming on toward one of those times in his life when a man needed the only thing a woman was good for.

  He was aghast when he realized that, while he was trying to talk himself into what a good idea it would be to visit one of the whore houses in El Paso, his whole being rebelled at the notion. He didn’t just want a woman; he wanted this woman. He admitted it to himself with something akin to despair.

  If there was one thing on this earth he didn’t want, it was to care about Maggie Bright. He didn’t want to want her. The Lord knew, he had a very poor opinion of women in general. His mother had made his father a miserable man for his entire life. His sister-in-law Janie had got Jubal’s only brother killed. And Sara. Jubal had loved little Sara, and now she was dead because Janie was a fool. Like most women.

  He knew what a woman could do to a man if he let her get under his skin. The problem with Maggie Bright was that she seemed to be getting under his skin even without Jubal’s conscious consent. That bothered him a good deal.

  Maggie rubbed Jubal’s shoulder and back for a long time after she knew she didn’t need to anymore. But she liked the feel of him beneath her hands and didn’t want to quit. She smoothed Dan Blue Gully’s soothing balm into Jubal’s shoulder in front and into his shoulder in back. Then she rubbed it into the rest of his back, just in case. And she decided that while she was at it, she might as well rub it down his arms. She was surprised at how very, very hard they felt.

  She finally quit rubbing him when she saw that he was getting goose bumps. Then she was ashamed of herself, because she thought he was getting cold in the evening air. She had no idea that his goose bumps were from another cause entirely.

  Jubal’s eyes were closed and he couldn’t decide whether he were in anguish or ecstasy. Maggie’s hands felt like silk as they spread the minty balm over his body, but his manhood was in a state fit to make a delicate maiden blush. Every stroke of Maggie’s fingers tingled through him, and caused much more than goose bumps to rise in him. He felt like a fool sitting there being tended by a woman who hadn’t an idea in the world what she was doing to him while his sex thickened and throbbed in response to her touch.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to stand up any time soon because he didn’t think he could tolerate the humiliation of showing his condition to the world, even the small world of Maggie, Dan, and Four Toes. Especially to that small world.

  When Maggie finally quit torturing him, Jubal slumped over in relief.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Green. I didn’t realize how cold it was getting to be.”

  She wanted to wrap her arms around him and warm him up, and she knew herself to be distinctly disloyal to Kenny. Maggie sighed in dismay. She was such a weak person. Her aunt always told her that, and it made her sad sometimes to think about it. On that bitter thought, she helped Jubal on with his shirt.

  “Are you feeling better now, Mr. Green?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” Jubal could barely speak. When Maggie reached to button his shirt, he said curtly, “I can do it,” and was sorry when she pulled back as though she had been stung, and looked abashed.

  “Oh, of course, Mr. Green. Your hands are free now. I’m sorry.”

  Jubal squeezed his eyes shut. Hellfire, he hated it that she was either thanking him or apologizing all the blasted time.

  Maggie scrambled to her feet. “I’ll get you another quilt to wrap around your shoulders, Mr. Green. That will keep you warm while I cook dinner.”

  Jubal thought about protesting, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. If it made her feel better to pamper him, that was the least he could let her do.

  Maggie had started across the camp to the wagon when something occurred to her. “Later on, you’ll have to rub some of that lineament into your leg wound, Mr. Green,” she said. Then she blushed and fled over to the wagon to fetch the quilt.

  Jubal stared after her and thought about how delightful it would be to have Maggie Bright rub balm into his thigh. Then he cursed his stupidity. He’d stay hard all night if he kept playing with those thoughts.

  Chapter Ten

  Maggie and Annie bedded down in the wagon that night. It wasn’t a covered wagon, and Maggie took pains to see that Annie would be warm enough. The worst of the winter chills were past them now although, so far, April wasn’t proving to be very springy and the weather was pretty cold. Still, Annie seemed comfortable. She slept like a baby in fact, which wasn’t surprising.

  Although the day had been filled with new experiences and it was late, Maggie didn’t feel especially sleepy when she lay down to rest. Not only had she become excited about this move to El Paso, but she was still vaguely troubled about the stirrings she had felt when she’d been nursing Jubal. She’d never felt those stirrings before, except with Kenny.

  And I didn’t feel them very often then, either, she admitted to herself with a guilty sigh as she stared at her sleeping baby. She tried to make herself feel less guilty about her disloyal admission by telling herself that she’d loved her husband dearly, that she’d been a good wife, that it was only because she missed Kenny so much that she found Jubal Green so attractive, but she was only marginally successful.

  “Well, Aunt Lucy always did tell me that I had a faulty character. I guess she was right.”

  Maggie’s glum conclusion depressed her spirits for a full five minutes, until she looked up and beheld the sky. Then her senses were so overwhelmed by the starry majesty revealed that she completely forgot that she had been busy chastising herself, and she could only stare heavenward.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she breathed softly, and wished Annie were still awake so that she, too, could witness this incredible splendor.

  She discovered that if she squinted very hard and pulled the edges of her eyes toward her scalp with her fingers, she could pick out the individual stars much better. They still slurred together a little bit, but not nearly as m
uch.

  I wonder if I could see everything better this way, she mused. Of course, I’d look mighty silly pulling at my eyes all day long.

  Using her new-found aid to sight, Maggie sat up in the wagon and squinted around the campsite. It was too dark now to discern anything much except one lone man squatting on a log beside the campfire, posted guard. Light from the low, flickering flames licked him up and down erratically, and she couldn’t make out who it was. She pulled the edges of her eyes so taut that the lids nearly met over her eyeballs while she tried to determine which of her three traveling companions was on duty at the moment, but it was to no avail.

  “Whoever he is, he’s big,” she whispered to herself. “That means it’s either Mr. Blue Gully or Mr. Green.”

  Maggie sat cross-legged on the wagon bed for several minutes, trying to decide whether to get down out of the wagon and chat with the man or not. She couldn’t sleep; it would be nice to be able to talk to somebody tonight. It was, after all, her first night away from home since she’d married Kenny four years earlier, and she’d been alone a lot since Kenny’s death. Adult company had been mighty thin in Maggie’s life.

  She realized that, if she knew for sure it was Dan Blue Gully there by the fire, she’d hop down in a minute. She felt really easy around Dan and had no trouble at all in talking to him.

  If, however, it turned out that the man was Jubal Green, Maggie didn’t know what to do.

  On the one hand, she very nearly pined to be in his company, a fact that caused her no end of guilty stirrings. On the other hand, when she was in his company, she felt nervous and twitchy and never quite knew what to say. Although, she had to own to herself, except when he was making her go all warm and fluttery or she was aggravating him, they seemed to get along pretty well now that he was no longer a fussy invalid. In fact, the only serious problem with their being together was the compulsion that occasionally overtook her to fling herself into his arms.

  “Oh, bother,” she finally muttered to herself. Shoving her feet into her heavy shoes, she threw a blanket over her shoulders and then clambered down out of the wagon.

  When Jubal caught Maggie’s movement out of the corner of his eye, he was up onto his feet and had his rifle cocked and lifted to his sore shoulder faster than a normal person could blink. When he realized it was Maggie, he lowered the gun and let out a soft groan that even he couldn’t identify the source of.

  It had taken damned near forever for his erection to go away after she’d rubbed his shoulder wound, and it had been bouncing back on and off ever since when he’d think about the sensuous way she had massaged him. When he’d soothed balm into his wounded thigh later on, he was hard as a rock the whole time, thinking about how nice it would be to have Maggie massaging him in such an intimate spot.

  Dan was sleeping a few paces away from the fire and Four Toes was out, scouting around on a mounted patrol. None of the men really expected trouble, but they all knew better than to lower their guard. Jubal was, in effect, alone, and now Maggie Bright was coming over to torment him some more.

  He watched with a glowering frown as she made her way toward him. She had her blanket clutched to her breast with fingers that looked snowy white by the light of the stars. Her hair was braided for the night and the braids were falling down over her shoulders.

  Jubal had an unaccountable urge to yank on the ribbons tied around those braids, loosen them, and let her hair fall down her back in wild waves of honey. He took a deep breath, squinched his eyes up against the image that thought evoked, and tried to keep his face impassive as she approached.

  When Maggie realized that the man at the fire was Jubal Green, she stopped in her tracks, suddenly shy. Then she decided it would be more embarrassing to turn around and get back into the wagon now that she was out of it than it would be to join him by the fire and try to chat.

  Jubal noted her hesitation with a grump in his heart. It’s as though she doesn’t want it to be me, he thought sourly.

  “I can’t sleep,” Maggie said with a bashful grin when she drew up to Jubal.

  He didn’t know what to say to that. She looked all tousled and relaxed and he felt incredibly awkward. He gestured toward the log that he had been sitting on.

  “Well, why don’t you sit down by the fire for a while, then,” he finally managed to choke out.

  With a shy smile, Maggie peered up at him. The fire was low and it flared up every now and then when it caught some fresh pitch. One of those pitchy eruptions occurred as Jubal gazed at Maggie, and her face looked pixyish and sweet in the sudden gleam of light.

  Jubal didn’t know whether he uttered his grunt of dismay out loud or not, but he realized with something akin to defeat that the rest of this trip was going to be awfully uncomfortable for him. Every blessed time he even looked at Maggie now, he reacted in a very embarrassing way.

  “Thank you,” Maggie said softly.

  She sat on the log and sighed with contentment. For some reason, she felt very good. Part of her happy feeling, she knew, was from excitement. She was doing something new. She hadn’t done anything new for such a long time—except things she didn’t want to do, like run the farm single-handed, holler at Ozzie Plumb, and nursemaid Kenny or Jubal Green.

  Jubal put another log on the fire and sat down beside Maggie. They both stared into the flames for several minutes. Silence, broken only by the friendly crackling of burning logs, enveloped the two of them like a fragrant, cozy cloak.

  “Wouldn’t Mr. Blue Gully be warmer if he slept closer to the fire?” Maggie asked at last.

  “He’d be a better target there, too,” said Jubal somewhat gruffly.

  “Oh.” Maggie’s soft exclamation elicited a surly grunt from Jubal.

  Silence stretched and grew around them once more, like moss on a tree.

  Jubal couldn’t stop himself from peering at Maggie from time to time. He noticed that she had an almost angelic smile on her face after she stopped thinking about Dan’s sleeping arrangements. Her expression was soft and sweet and bright. Maggie Bright, he thought. It fits.

  Maggie’s eyes left the fire and moseyed up to survey the stars over her head. She was used to the woods, but they were out of the forest now, and there was so much sky up there that Maggie found it almost impossible to comprehend such vastness.

  Jubal finally couldn’t stand it. He had to either grab and kiss her or talk to her.

  “It’s pretty out tonight.” His experimental statement brought Maggie’s lustrous eyes to his face, and he had to inhale quickly.

  “It is, isn’t it, Mr. Green,” she said. Her eyes went back to scan the sky.

  Jubal cleared his throat. “Is this anything like Indiana?” he asked her. He knew the answer and felt like a fool for asking, but he couldn’t think of anything better to say.

  Maggie laughed softly, delightedly.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Green. It’s nothing like Indiana. Indiana—where I’m from, anyway—is sort of—sort of—” Maggie’s words trailed to a halt as she thought about what Indiana was like. “It was sort of more settled, if you know what I mean.”

  That soft statement earned a chuckle from Jubal. “I guess most places are more settled than New Mexico Territory, Mrs. Bright.”

  “I guess so,” she agreed with a grin.

  Jubal continued to watch her watch the stars. He wondered what a young girl who had grown up in Indiana, who had bad eyes and terrible headaches and a little girl and no man, thought about her life, but he didn’t dare ask that, bold and straight-out. He knew her life was harder than most, but she seemed remarkably free from bitterness even if she did have a tendency to get all weepy every now and then. He admired that, as he admired her grit. He fumbled around in his brain for something to ask her that might give him at least a little of the answer to what he wanted to know.

  “Do you like it here, Mrs. Bright? I mean, on your little farm and all?”

  Maggie sighed and hugged her knees under the blanket she still wore over he
r shoulders. Jubal noticed her expression turn even softer and her eyes get even brighter, and his heart began to do such crazy things in his chest that he wondered momentarily if he was suffering a spasm.

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Green,” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “I think this is the first place I was ever happy.”

  Her answer surprised Jubal. He knew she possessed, as Dan Blue Gully would phrase it, a strong spirit. But Maggie’s life had been so hard that it was difficult for him to imagine her being as happy in it as she acted.

  “You like it here better than in Indiana?” He tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice when he asked the question.

  Maggie’s face was a study in sincerity when she turned it toward him.

  “Oh, my, yes, Mr. Green. Indiana’s pretty and all, but nobody cared about me there. In New Mexico, life is kind of rough, but I have friends here.”

  For some reason, Jubal’s heart was still clutching up painfully and he wondered if Dan Blue Gully might be able to give him a tonic for it later. “You didn’t have friends in Indiana?” he asked in a low voice.

  Maggie studied the fire for a few minutes before she answered him. “Well, you see, I didn’t get out much. My aunt and uncle ran a chop house there, and I pretty nearly worked the whole time I was awake.”

  Jubal’s jaw tensed and he made a sweep of the campsite with narrowed eyes. There she was again: that damned aunt of hers.

  “That’s where I met Kenny,” Maggie continued in a sweet, reminiscent voice. “He came into the chop house for supper one night on his way back to New Mexico, and we got to talking. We talked until my aunt came out to shoo me back into the kitchen.”