Christ. He had no idea what to say to a wet, angry woman. “If you want to make the coffee and take over the cooking, I have no objection.” She turned away and leaned against Rebecca’s flank. “In fact, I’d be obliged.”
“Just go away.”
“The truth is, I don’t much like to cook, but you’re good at it.”
“I don’t know anything about cooking over an open fire.”
“I’ll teach you.”
She stood away from Rebecca and shook her head. “I know you mean well, and I’m sorry I said I’d tear you apart if you came out here. But please. I need to be alone.”
He moved closer, running his hand along Rebecca’s back. “I’m not good at this. Tell me how I can help you.”
“No one can help me.” She pushed away from Rebecca and dug her fists against her eyes. “I should have stood up to her. I should have said this, I should have said that. I talk to the Wards in my head. Most of the time I don’t even realize I’m doing it.” She dropped her hands. “I replay the scenes and make them come out differently. I’m strong and in control, and they can’t do or say anything to hurt me.” Anguish hunched her shoulders. “And you know the worst of it? Even if I could go back and live that time again, I’d do it the same way. I wouldn’t stand up to her.” She struck her thighs with her fists. “Because they were Clarence’s parents! So I didn’t talk back, I wasn’t rude, I let them use me and say hurtful things, and finally I let them take Claire!”
He brushed his fingertips across her cold cheek. “It’s over. You can’t change what happened.”
She drew back as if he’d slapped her. “You have no right to tell me to forget the past. Not when you live there, too! Not when you’ve spent ten years trying to atone for an imagined wrong.”
“You think I imagined killing good men?”
“When you killed a Yankee, Cameron, he wasn’t a good man. Not at that moment. He was a man who was trying to kill you.”
“I didn’t come out here to talk about me.”
She wiped at the rain on her face. “It’s the same thing, isn’t it? You? Me? We’re both trapped in the past like flies in a spider web.”
He stared at her hair, black in the rain and gathering darkness. She hadn’t said anything that he hadn’t pondered before, but hearing it aloud drove home a truth he didn’t like to examine.
“Listen to me,” he said, cupping her shoulders between his hands. “We’re going to fix your past. We can’t turn back the clock and change what happened with Claire, but we can change what happens in the future. Della? This time you can make that scene end differently.”
She shuddered beneath his hands. “Don’t ask that of me. All I want to do is look at her. I just want to see her. Please.” She gazed up at him with panicked, pleading eyes. “It’s done. I wish to God that I hadn’t left her behind, but I did and I’ll never forgive myself for that. But, Cameron, if she’s happy, if she’s safe and comfortable and happy, then I can’t punish her by taking her away from the only life she’s known. I won’t.”
Now was not the time to argue. They were a long way from Atlanta. There would be other chances.
“Come back to the lean-to and get out of the rain.”
“I know how crazy I sound.” She gripped his arms, wanting him to understand. “I’m wild and raging because she stole my baby, but I want to leave everything as it is and let her continue to have Claire.”
It wasn’t so hard to grasp. Bitterness choked him when he let himself realize that he could never settle down like an ordinary man. Yet he was proud of what he’d accomplished in the last ten years.
Dropping an arm around her shoulders, he gently led her back to the lean-to. The instant they ducked inside, Cameron felt the warmth.
Luke’s saddle and blanket were gone, but he’d dug a fire pit inside the lean-to and started a pot of beans and fresh coffee. Cameron peered into the rain, but he saw no sign of the old man, didn’t sense his presence.
“Should we look for him?” Della asked. Worry deepened her gaze. “Where would he go?”
“He’s gone home.”
“At night? In the rain?”
“Luke’s lived his life on the range. He’ll make camp if he feels like it.”
The rain muffled sound, but it annoyed him that he hadn’t heard Luke ride out. That would have pleased the old man.
“I didn’t say good-bye! I didn’t tell him that I like him more than I was mad at him.”
“I suspect he knows.” Now he noticed that Luke had brought in Cameron’s saddle and bags, had laid out the towels. The sly old devil. He almost smiled, guessing what the old man had imagined.
With the fire pit inside the shelter, it was warm enough that Della removed her duster and shook off the rain near the lean-to’s opening. She hesitated, then wrapped her long hair in one of the towels.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she said, sinking to the ground next to her saddle. She didn’t look at him. “I feel like a fool. We were just talking, and suddenly I was furious for no good reason. Just . . . so angry I couldn’t hold it in.”
After removing his oilskin and hat, he poured them coffee and added sugar to hers.
“I wasn’t like this at the farm.” She sipped the coffee, closed her eyes and murmured a word of thanks. “At least, not often. Do you get angry?”
“Sometimes I want to shoot some vicious son of a bitch instead of taking him in to stand trial.”
“Have you ever done it?”
“Came close a couple of times. Are you hungry?”
They ate Luke’s beans, then placed the bowls outside to be washed by the rain. The beans were a bit too salty, and some biscuits would have sat right, but all in all Luke had done well by them.
Now what?
He and Della were alone, listening to the rain on the canvas of a small lean-to. They would sleep not three feet apart. Conversation died in his throat. Luke had provided a buffer between them, had made conversation easy and natural. He wished the old man were still there.
Uneasy, he glanced at Della. She’d loosened the towel around her head and was drying her hair. Firelight softened her expression and for a moment he saw the girl in the photograph.
Never had he let himself imagine that he would be alone with her like this. Close enough to smell her rain-fresh scent, to reach out and touch her if he’d had that right.
And now he understood that the girl in the photograph had been ephemeral, a construction of his imagination. In truth, the girl was the seed which had produced the rose in front of him, a complex combination of beauty and thorns.
“Talk to me,” she said when their silence became uncomfortable. She reached for her comb. “Talk about something not connected to the past.”
Not since childhood had he seen a woman comb wet hair, hadn’t guessed at the patience required to unravel tangles left from toweling. The intimacy of watching her perform a private toilette made his stomach tighten.
“Would you like whisky in your coffee?” He needed a task that required him to look away from her. “It’ll help you sleep.” More likely, he was the one who would need help sleeping. “What would you like to talk about?”
“I don’t know, anything. What do you do for pleasure?”
“Read, mostly. When I’m staying in town, I attend lectures, lyceums, and community events. I don’t mind working with my hands when there’s an opportunity. I enjoy chess.”
“What do you read?”
“Law books, usually. Sometimes fiction.” Now the comb slid smoothly through her hair. The shorter strands around her face were drying in soft curls. “I like Mark Twain. I enjoyed Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.” A fact he would have admitted to very few people.
She looked up with one of her rare smiles. “I read that. It wasn’t really a children’s tale, was it?”
“What do you do for pleasure?” Fascinated, he watched her tilt her head and nimbly plait her hair into a long, glossy braid.
“Do you underline passages?”
“Never,” she said, smiling again. “And I’ll wager that you don’t, either.”
“What else do you enjoy?”
She tied off the braid with a twist of twine. “My garden is a chore, except I like growing the stupid pumpkins. Cooking is a pleasure when there’s someone to cook for.” She lowered her gaze and brushed the end of the braid across her palm. “I used to enjoy playing the piano, although I wasn’t particularly talented at it. Do you like to dance?”
He pulled his legs up and rested his wrists on his knees. If the journalist who’d written James Cameron, An American Hero had overheard this conversation, he might have written a very different book. The thought made him smile.
“As a matter of fact, I did enjoy dancing. Can’t say I’ve done much of it in recent years, though.”
“I used to love to dance.” Her eyes shone in the firelight. “I loved the music and the big ballrooms. The ladies in beautiful gowns whirling around the room like pale, fragrant flowers. And the men all in black with their hair slicked down. Remember how it smelled? The candles and the perfume and the scent of the powder on the floor?”
She would have worn her hair up with a jeweled ornament in her curls. He imagined her with sparkling eyes, flirting with a silk fan and tapping her foot beneath a satin hem.
“That’s a nice memory.” Raising a hand, she covered a yawn, then tossed her braid over her shoulder. “I think I’m dry enough to try to sleep. You were right about the whisky. I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Are you going to sleep now?” A rush of color brightened her cheeks and she busied herself opening her bedroll and plumping up a thin pillow.
“I’ll sit up a while. Wait until the fire burns down.”
She looked relieved. Interested, he watched her climb into the bedroll, amazed that she managed to do it gracefully and without exposing a flash of ankle. Her boots were neatly placed beside her saddle, although he hadn’t seen her remove them.
“I made a spectacle of myself. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve done the same.”
“I doubt that.” She smiled and held his gaze until they both looked away. “Well. Good night, then.”
“Good night, Della.”
Turning inside the bedroll, she arranged herself on her stomach and cradled the pillow in her arms. How could she breathe with her face in the pillow?
“You’re certain we don’t need to worry about Mr. Apple?”
“Luke’s fine.”
“Mmm. I like the sound of the rain.”
There was a finger of whisky left in the bottle, and he poured it into his cup, then faced the dark opening. If Luke had stayed, they would have had a problem with the sleeping arrangements. Cameron couldn’t visualize himself agreeing to put Della between them, not in close quarters like these, where it would be easy to offend by accidently brushing against her. Neither could he visualize placing himself in the middle, where it would be awkward to rise swiftly if the necessity arose.
Despite the drumming of rain on the canvas, he imagined he could hear the steady rise and fall of Della’s breath. Damn it. And long after the fire had settled into dimly glowing embers, he saw her braid in his mind’s eye and wanted to slide the luxuriant weight of it through his hands.
He tossed back the whisky and let the scald burn down his throat. He had no right to these thoughts. No right at all.
Chapter 10
Morning sun lit the range, transforming a sea of grass into glistening golden waves. Rabbits swam in the undercurrents, and a herd of antelope bounded across the surface. Brilliant blue curved overhead, washed clean of haze and clouds.
As the day warmed, the knots dissolved between Della’s shoulders. She deliberately anchored her mind in the present, pleased to discover that finally she could ride all day without aching, could enjoy a day as bright and sunny as yesterday had been cold and damp.
In late afternoon, Cameron circled around and rode up beside her. “Did I hear you whistling?”
“It’s a barroom song called ‘Mary Avaline.’ ” In the end, she was who she was. A former bargirl who whistled. She wouldn’t apologize for enjoying a pursuit that was not considered feminine. But she did sound a little defensive.
“I know that song.” Cameron tilted his head and whistled a few bars. “Can you sing it?”
“Heavens, no. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. But for some reason I can hit the notes true if I whistle.”
“Start again. I’ll come in on harmony.”
She stared at him through her blue lenses. What a surprising man this was, a study in contrasts. Rigid in so many ways, but tolerant in others.
After wetting her lips, she whistled the first notes of the song, waiting for him to join. He tracked perfectly, whistling alto to her soprano.
When the last notes faded, Della twisted on her saddle and blinked in astonishment. “That was wonderful. We created real music!”
He grinned. James Cameron actually grinned. Her heart soared.
“I loved it,” she said enthusiastically. “Let’s do it again. Do you know ‘The Girl I Left at Home’?” The song was slow and melancholy, but well suited to harmony.
“That’s amazing.” A stranger would have believed they had practiced together for years.
“The horses enjoyed the performance.” Leaning, he stroked Bold’s neck. “Bold’s been restless all day. I think the songs calmed him a little.”
“If you want to run him, I’ll take Rebecca’s lead rope.” When he hesitated, she arched an eyebrow. “Yes, it’s a ploy. First, I take over the cooking, then I start leading Rebecca. Next, caring for the animals will be my job. Then, I’ll start digging the fire pit and setting up camp. I figure in a week or two you won’t have anything to do except twiddle your thumbs.”
He pursed his lips as if he half believed her, then he suddenly laughed. “You’ll still need me to carry the saddles and bags.”
“Only until I grow eight inches and put on some weight and muscle. Give me Rebecca’s rope.”
As he galloped ahead, she thought about how good it made her feel when she said something that made him laugh. Since she doubted he laughed easily or often, his laughter made her feel special.
But he’d made her feel special from the beginning by listening and by seeming to genuinely want to know and understand her. At first she had attributed his interest to a natural curiosity about his friend’s wife. However, recently she’d begun to suspect Cameron might be interested in her for her own sake.
The possibility was flattering but also disturbing.
In all these years, she had never seriously considered remarriage. One or two men had let their interest be known, but she’d made it clear their attentions were unwanted. First, the past tied her to Clarence. Second, she’d proven she made a selfish and unworthy wife.
Now Cameron’s attentions confused her thinking. It wasn’t that she looked at him wondering about marriage, she hastily assured herself. He would be the worst possible choice, another husband who placed himself in harm’s way. She couldn’t bear that.
But spending so much time with Cameron reminded her that men and women were meant to be together. Luke Apple had practically said the same thing. Her sense that Luke could be correct warred with her ties to Clarence and her unworthiness.
And there was something else. Having decided she would spend her life alone, she had shut the door on sex. And she had sealed away sexual thoughts and feelings so completely that, until James Cameron rode up her driveway, she could have truthfully said that she seldom, if ever, thought about sex.
That was no longer the case. It w
as like vowing never to eat another piece of cake, and finding the vow easy to uphold because there was never cake in the house. Then the most tempting, most delectable cake imaginable appeared and suddenly she had a raging hunger for cake. Cake was all she thought about. Imagining the taste and texture, the look and size of it on her plate.
Della swallowed hard and turned her gaze away from the figure far out on the range.
The odd thing about her recent thoughts was that sex had never played an important role. She hadn’t disliked sex, she thought loyally, remembering Clarence, but she hadn’t particularly liked it, either. Sex was an awkward duty one performed to appease one’s husband and to conceive a child. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
But lately, lying in her bedroll, shocking thoughts had crept into her mind. Was sex the same with every man? What would it be like with Cameron? That question and the images provoked by the topic flooded her body with damp heat.
“Your face is pink. Are you all right?” Cameron asked, reining hard beside her in a spiral of dust.
“It’s just the sun. It’s hot today. Hard to believe, isn’t it, that it could be so cold yesterday and hot today?” She was babbling, trying not to look at his muscled thighs or the tanned sureness of his hands.
Feeling the heat in her cheeks and stomach, she turned her head. He was totally unsuitable. She was unworthy. And that was the end of it.
“There’s a place about a mile ahead that would make a good camp.”
Nodding, she glanced at the sinking sun. Every day, as she grew more accustomed to riding, Cameron extended their time in the saddle. Oddly, the hours passed more quickly now than when the days had been shorter.
“If you’re all right by yourself, I’ll go on ahead and bag a rabbit for supper.”
“I’m fine. Rebecca is no trouble.”
When she reached the campsite, Cameron had dug the fire pit and skinned two rabbits, enough for tonight and tomorrow’s supper. He came forward and pulled the saddlebags off Bob’s rump.
“I’ll get you set up, but the cooking is your job.”
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