Sweetbriar

by Jude Deveraux

  Cord Macalister stood in the open doorway. “Well, if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes.” His eyes raked her sleep-flushed face, golden hair flowing across her shoulders, down her back, the unbuttoned dress revealing a full curve of her breast.

  “Cord, I didn’t expect…”

  “You ’spectin’ Mac? Well, he’s luckier’n I thought.”

  Linnet hurriedly fastened her dress, pulled her hair back into a long, fat braid. “What can I do for you?”

  He settled himself onto the bench by the table, long legs out in the floor. There was something demanding about Cord Macalister that made you pay attention to him, made you always aware of his presence. “I’m just bein’ neighborly. Thought we might like to get to know one another.” His eyes held amusement as she had to step over his legs to get to the fireplace.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, but I have to prepare supper.” He watched her as she hurriedly scraped potatoes and threw them into the pot.

  “Seems like a lot of food for one so little as you,” he commented.

  “It’s for Devon. He eats supper here.”

  “Well now, that’s real cozy for him, ain’t it?”

  “It’s little enough to repay him.”

  He lazily looked at her body, considering her without clothes, then brought his eyes back to hers. “I just reckon I could find another way to have a debt repaid, if you owed it to me.”

  A knock on the door made Cord shout, “Come in,” before Linnet could get there to answer it.

  Devon lost his smile when he saw Cord and turned cold eyes to Linnet.

  “I didn’t know you had company. I’ll just go tend to my own business.”

  “Now, cousin, don’t be that way. This little lady’s cookin’ a mighty fine supper. I’m sure there’s enough for both of us.”

  Devon shot Linnet a look of contempt. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt anythin’. Good night.” He closed the door behind him.

  Linnet started after him but Cord caught her arm. “Leave him be. He’s always been like that. Got the quickest temper you ever saw. Never could say nothin’ to that boy without him gettin’ riled.”

  Linnet’s eyes caught Cord’s and flashed anger at him. “And you knew this about him and deliberately provoked his anger.”

  Cord gave her an incredulous look. “Well now, you might say I did, but then when the game’s a pretty little thing like you, I’d say any way of huntin’ was all fair.” He held her arm, running his hand over her from wrist to elbow.

  She pulled away from him angrily. “Now that you’ve invited yourself to supper, you may as well eat it….” She tossed half-raw stew into a wooden bowl, splattering the front of her dress.

  Cord was fascinated. In thirty-six years, no woman had found his charm resistible—any woman he decided he wanted, that is. The reluctance of this one held him in awe. He ate slowly, unmindful of the food, but watching Linnet as she angrily stabbed a needle in and out of what looked to be a man’s shirt. When he’d finished, he rose and stretched, white fringe whirling about him, beads glittering in the firelight, grinning when he saw Linnet watched him. “Miss Tyler, honey, it’s been a real interestin’ evenin’, real interestin’, but I got to be goin’.”

  She nodded. “Good night.”

  He flashed a smile at her, then paused at the door, thoughtfully. “Sweetbriar ain’t never been one of my favorite stoppin’ grounds, but I just may change my opinion of it real soon. Might be nice to stay around here this winter and just see what happens.” He left her alone.

  Cord walked into Devon’s store, expecting the people who waited there for him. He was a good storyteller, and his visits were enjoyed. With a grin at the eager children before the fireplace, allowed to sit up late on Cord’s first night in Sweetbriar, he went to where his cousin stood by the wide counter. “Real fine cook that little lady of yours.”

  Devon turned cold eyes up to the man, ten years older than he, but his rival most of his life. “I don’t remember puttin’ a brand on her.”

  “Just wanted to hear it again. Sweet words they is, too.” He sauntered toward the fireplace, beginning a story already.

  Chapter Six

  LINNET STOOD QUIETLY IN THE DOORWAY FOR A moment, a cloth-covered basket under her arm. She watched Cord, surrounded by enraptured people, his big blondness, the white of his fringed buckskins, setting him apart from the others. Doll Stark caught her arm and silently motioned her to a door at the back of the store. No one noticed her as she opened it, thinking it led outside to the stables. She was momentarily startled when she found herself in another room, and it took a while to adjust to the darkness before she saw Devon lying on the narrow bed, his shirt and boots thrown onto a bench. His dark skin gleamed in the moonlight, his black hair thick, curling about his neck. She marveled at how young he looked, how like one of Crazy Bear’s braves. She thought of the necklace he’d worn the night of her rescue.

  She tiptoed to a bench by the bed. She should leave, she thought, she should leave the basket of food for him and go away. His fingers twitched in some dream. How much she wanted to touch him! His eyes were open, staring at her, the blue so incongruous with the dark skin.

  “Brought your supper,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t have come in here except Doll Stark pointed this way and I thought the door led outside,” she explained too rapidly. Of course that didn’t explain why she was sitting two feet from him or why she had put out her hand to touch his warm fingers.

  He sat up, bare feet on the floor, and ran his hand through his thick hair, and she wondered if his hair was coarse or soft. There was no hair on his chest, just clean, dark skin, long, lean muscles.

  “You didn’t have to bring me anything.”

  She smiled, trying to keep her eyes on his face. “I know I didn’t, but I wanted to. I couldn’t let you go hungry, not after it was my fault that you hadn’t eaten or slept.”

  He took the basket from her. “I get pretty mad sometimes and say things I don’t mean. Oh, Lord! Don’t tell me this is fried chicken.”

  “An entire chicken and a whole apple pie.”

  “I think I can eat it all.”

  “I thought you could.” As Devon bit into a chicken leg, she looked around the room. There was a shelf on the far wall, and she went to look at the ornaments there. She couldn’t see them very well in the darkness, but they were more of the wooden ornaments she had seen in the front of the store. She ran her hands over one of them, enjoying the smoothness of the carving, as Devon watched her. “You made these?”

  He nodded, his mouth full.

  “Devon, do you know that these are works of art? That if you were in the East they could be sold for high prices?”

  He paused a moment before resuming eating. “Just whittlin’. My pa was a lot better’n me.”

  “I can’t imagine that.” She picked up another piece. “What was he like, your father, I mean?”

  Devon smiled. “He was a good man. Ever’body liked him. Best pa a boy could have. Let me alone when I needed it, tanned me when I needed it.”

  “He wasn’t very old when he died, was he?”

  “No,” Devon stated flatly.

  “How did it happen?” she asked quietly.

  “Bear.” Devon seemed to put some of his grief in that one word, grief that he’d felt after he’d seen his beloved pa torn apart by that bear. Gaylon had held him and kept him from tearing into the animal with his bare hands. Devon wondered later how the old man had had the strength, since Devon was already a strong young man of twenty-three.

  “Take some of ’em if you want,” he motioned to the figures, “or all of ’em, I don’t care.”

  “Devon, you should care. They’re beautiful, and you can’t just give them away indiscriminately.”

  “Whatever you mean, I don’t know.”

  “You can’t give them away to just anyone.”

  “Why not?” he demanded. “They’re mine, and there’s plenty more where they came
from.”

  “Devon Macalister, don’t you dare get angry with me again. I’ve had quite enough for one night.”

  Her words reminded him of Cord and he ate silently.

  “I would like to have one of them, though, but it’s too dark to see and I couldn’t possibly decide which one I wanted.” She walked toward Devon. “I’ll take the basket now if you’re finished.”

  “That was good, one of the best meals I ever had,” he said sleepily as he put his feet on the bed. “Thank you.”

  “Good night, Devon,” she said at the door.

  “Good night, Lynna.”

  In the morning Linnet went to Devon’s store, but Gaylon said he’d ridden out very early, his horse loaded down with food.

  “He runs off most every time Cord shows up,” Doll said. “Goes to see his great-grandfather, the Shawnee one.”

  “Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” Gaylon said.

  Linnet couldn’t believe how lonely she grew in the next few days. She spent time with all the people of Sweetbriar, but they had their own lives and not much time to spend with her.

  When Cord asked her to go riding, she hesitated but accepted. She wanted to know what caused the animosity between the two men.

  Cord put his hands on his hips and looked down at her, a slight smile on his face. “You ain’t afraid of me, are you?”

  She studied him for a moment. “No, I’m not.”

  “Then there’s no question about it. I got another horse from Floyd Tucker and if’n you’re ready, we can leave anytime.”

  The idea of a ride and getting away from the settlement appealed to her very much. “I would like to go for a ride, Cord. Let me get my shawl.”

  Cord watched her enter the little cabin, then looked up at the gray sky. Yes sir, he thought, everythin’ was goin’ just like he planned.

  Linnet knew the weather was unseasonably warm, and everyone said it couldn’t last much longer, and today it was overcast and everything had the strangest feel to it, as if things were hollow and each sound echoed through the forest. Cord didn’t say very much, just led her down a narrow path into the woods. It seemed they had gone miles.

  “Cord, haven’t we gone far enough from the settlement? Devon keeps warning me about the Indians.”

  He grinned back at her. “Just ’cause that cousin of mine sometimes lives with the Indians, don’t mean he’s the only one understands ’em. You can trust me, I’ll not take you anywhere it ain’t safe. Anyway, we’re there.”

  She rode her horse up beside his and they sat together, looking out over the wide, blue expanse of the Cumberland River.

  “Pretty, huh?” Cord broke the stillness.

  “Yes, it’s breathtaking.”

  He dismounted. “Got anythin’ like that in England?”

  “Everything in America seems so much larger, even the people seem bigger.”

  He stood beside her horse and put his arms up for her, the way Devon had done so many times. She put her hands on his shoulders as he lifted her to the ground, but he did not release her, holding her firmly about the waist. He gazed into her eyes for a moment, and Linnet found that her heart was beating rapidly. The knowledgeable way he held her, the confidence he emanated, made her breath catch. Slowly, he brought his face close to hers, his eyes searching hers all the while. His lips touched hers gently, then he forced her mouth open. She was startled at first, but she found the sensation not unpleasant at all; in fact, she quite liked being kissed. He moved his mouth from hers and pulled her to his chest, and she heard his heart pounding. Oddly enough her own had returned to normal.

  “You’re a sweet little thing, Linnet,” he said as he stroked her hair. He pulled her from him to look at her face, but before either could say a word, the skies broke apart, torn asunder by a brilliant flash of lightning. Immediately, sheets of bitter cold rain filled the air.

  Linnet gasped as the first deluge soaked her to the skin and she instantly began to shiver. “Get your horse,” Cord shouted over the downpour. “Follow me.”

  She grabbed the reins and followed the big man. Within minutes, he had led them to a deep, dry cave. She wrung out her hair and wiped the water from her face as Cord took the horses to the back of the cave and unsaddled them.

  “Here, this’ll help until I get a fire going.” He put a blanket around her shoulders. She watched as he took twigs from a rather large pile of dry firewood along the wall and started a fire. “Now, come over here and get warm. You look froze to death.” He rubbed her cold, wet shoulders, and soon some circulation came back into them.

  She held her hands over the fire. “That is certainly the coldest rain I have ever experienced.”

  “It’ll turn to snow ’fore too long,” he said as he threw some more wood on the fire. “I’m afraid our Indian summer is over and winter is upon us.”

  “It was good that you knew of this cave.” She looked at him when he was silent.

  He turned laughing eyes toward her. “It sure was a good thing.” Stretching out on the sandy floor, head propped on his bent arm, he put one hand out to her. “Why don’t you come over here and let’s keep on where the rain stopped us?”

  She stared at him for a moment. The cold rain was like a doorway that locked them inside the cave. She looked at the pile of firewood, then rose and went to the mouth of the cave to look at the rain, shivering at the cold, now that she was no longer near the fire. “You planned this, didn’t you?” she asked quietly.

  “Now how could I plan a storm like this?”

  “You’ve lived in the woods a long time and you know what the weather in Kentucky is like.”

  He grinned at her slowly, taking in the wet, clinging dress, thinking of her skin, creamy, smooth. “You might say I had some ideas about what it could do today and I thought I might as well be prepared. What’re you frettin’ about? Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen that you ain’t gonna enjoy as much as me.”

  “Tell me, Cord, what would happen if I said no to you?”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “Well now, come to think on it, I don’t rightly know. Ain’t no woman ever said no to me before.”

  She continued to stare at him, and his expression changed to a harder look.

  “Truth is, Linnet, I don’t think I’d like a woman sayin’ no to me.”

  She looked back at the rain.

  “You ain’t thinkin’ about goin’ out in that, are you? I wouldn’t advise it. It’s gettin’ colder by the minute, and I doubt you know your way back to Sweetbriar. Now why don’t you stop bein’ so all-fired ornery and come back here by the fire?” He watched her a moment, then laughed. She looked back at him. “I reckon this must be your first time with a man, and you’re scared. You don’t have nothin’ to be ascared of. I’ll be real gentle, and there’ll hardly be no pain a’tall.”

  She walked back to the fire and grabbed her shawl. Cord’s grasping hand missed her skirt. He sat up, eyes flashing. “You ain’t goin’ out in that!”

  “I fear you leave me no choice. It’s either stay here and…” She sighed. “Or take my chances outside. I prefer the rain.”

  He stood, his face furious. “I don’t force myself on no woman and I ain’t about to start now.”

  She stopped tying her shawl. “Does that mean that if I stay here you’ll leave me alone?” The incredible anger in his eyes answered her. “Then I truly have no choice whatever.”

  “Just don’t you think I’m gonna come and rescue you like Mac done. You go out there and you go alone. I’ll see you at your funeral.” His eyes swept her body. “Such a waste,” he sneered.

  Linnet gave one last look at the warm fire and ducked her head as she stepped into the freezing rain.

  Cord watched her for a moment, then turned and kicked at a loose rock on the cave floor. He sank down on the blanket by the fire. “Don’t she beat all?” he said aloud, shaking his head a moment before grinning. He’d wait a few minutes and then go and get her. She’d be plenty willin’ to come to
him after a while in that cold. Stretching, he put his arms behind his head. The girl sure had courage, he thought, as he rubbed his hands over the fire and remembered kissing her. He’d never wanted anything so badly in his life as he wanted this little girl.

  Linnet realized how right Cord’s words were as soon as the cold rain turned to sleet. Ice formed on her hair, hanging off her shawl. Her feet were already numb, but she kept her head down against the driving sleet and kept walking. In one respect, Cord had been totally wrong: Linnet had an excellent sense of direction and now she unerringly headed for Agnes Emerson’s house. Once she thought she heard someone near her and she glimpsed Cord’s unmistakable white buckskins through the trees. She hid behind an enormous, rotten stump and waited until he was gone.

  An hour later she was not so sure of her decision to leave the warm cave. How bad could Cord have been when you compared him with death? She was more than cold, her body too numb to even shiver. The sleet had turned to snow, and her wet dress was frozen on her, clinging and dragging her down.

  It was strange how she didn’t seem to feel the cold anymore, but she was incredibly sleepy. All she wanted to do was lie down somewhere and sleep. She heard a dog barking far away, but the sound came to her in a haze. If she could just sleep a while, then she could get up and walk some more. It couldn’t be far to Agnes’ house. A dead tree lay across her path, and the snow made such a fluffy, white, soft bed next to the log. She sank to her knees and touched the stuff. To her hands, past blue, turning to an ugly gray, the snow seemed almost warm. She stretched out; ah! the bliss of sleep. Something touched her face but it didn’t wake her.

  “Ma! She’s over here. I found her!”

  Agnes ran through the rapidly falling snow to her son. The eighteen-year-old Doyle knelt by Linnet’s still form and brushed the snow from her face. His hands on her throat reassured him that she was alive. Bending forward, he lifted her into his arms, appalled at the stiff, frozen dress.