by Shirl Henke
Sighing, Rebekah prepared to tackle the weeding. Then, a thought danced into her head. Another, frivolous one. Mama would not return until supper, and her father would probably be later yet. Who would know if she broke just a few tiny rules, nothing more than foolish social conventions really? She laid aside the ugly sunbonnet and heavy gloves, rolled up the sleeves of her old muslin dress, and unfastened the top buttons. There, much cooler and more comfortable. Who would be there to see her anyway?
* * * *
Rory had spent the week in back-breaking labor—indeed, potentially bone-breaking labor. Luckily, his were all still intact, thanks to his ability to communicate with horses. He had broken a dozen wild mustangs to accept bit and bridle and trained six others to bear his weight and respond to the rein and knee signals. As soon as the wild herd was ready for sale, Beau Jenson had promised to take him out to his track to meet the trainers who worked with his thoroughbreds.
Rory knew he would prove himself even more valuable to his employer handling fine racers. In any case, Jenson had been so impressed with his new man's breaking methods that he had given the enterprising young Irishman the afternoon off, saying it was too hot to work horses. Ostensibly, he was going fishing, a pole slung over his shoulder as he walked his bay down the street, but he planned a small detour past the parsonage of Wellsville's First Presbyterian Church. He had made it a regular part of his nightly trip to the river outside town where he bathed off the smell of horses and dust.
The first thing he had done after unpacking his saddlebags in the small room above the stable was to make some casual inquiries about the Reverend Sinclair and his flock. If any of the men in the Dry Gulch Saloon thought it odd that an Irish Catholic was curious about the local Presbyterians, no one mentioned it. They remembered all too well how wickedly he wielded his fists.
* * * *
The water buckets were heavy. Rebekah had overfilled them, but laden with her burden it was better to eliminate at least one trip the length of the large yard. She had to soak the hard earth around the cabbages and beets before she could pull weeds, a slow, laborious process involving filling the heavy tin sprinkling can with water from the buckets and plying it across the long, even rows of vegetables. Most of the big plot was neatly wet down and cleaned of weeds.
Rebekah could feel the itch of mud beneath her fingernails and knew her face and arms were smeared with it. No matter, she would soon be finished. A long soak in the big iron tub in the washroom sounded heavenly. She could hardly wait and picked up her pace, letting the water slosh carelessly over the side of the pail. Unfortunately, the garden sat on a slight incline and she was heading downhill with her burden.
The spilled water rolled ahead of her in an ever widening rivulet on her well-beaten path between the rows. Heedlessly, she persevered until one of the pesky pumpkin vines, which twisted in and out between all the other vegetables, caught her ankle and she lurched forward, struggling to regain her balance and kick free of the vine.
One bucket dropped to the ground with a loud clank, followed by a splash. Her left heel slid in the mud. Before Rebekah realized what had happened, both feet flew up in the air and she landed on her backside in a puddle of muddy water. She let out a loud squawk of surprised indignation, then a very unladylike swear word which Dorcas would have caned her soundly for using.
“If I'd known you liked to play in the mud so much, I'd have invited you to ride up around Pyramid Lake to where the sulfur pots bubble up out of the ground,” a familiar mocking voice taunted.
Rory Madigan leaned against the side of the shed with one booted ankle crossed negligently over the other and his arms across that magnificent expanse of lean, muscled chest she had so admired the day of the boxing match. But Rebekah Sinclair was in no mood to admire anything at the moment. She raised one mud-covered brown hand and shoved angrily at the wad of hair that had come loose from its moorings and hung in her eyes.
Succeeding only in snarling it worse than before, she yanked the pins from it and shook it back out of her face. “I hope I've amused you sufficiently, Mr. Madigan.”
Her green eyes glared up at him, and the bright afternoon sun highlighted the gold flecks swimming in them. Rory fought the urge to kiss away the mud smear across her nose. Instead, he reached out chivalrously and offered her his hand. “I thought we'd dispensed with surnames, Rebekah. I'm never amused by a lady in distress.”
She looked up at the devilish smile on his handsome face and gave in to one of the impulsive urges that had made her the bane of Dorcas Sinclair's existence since she was a toddler. She took his hand, then yanked him from his casual stance at the edge of her self-created mud wallow. He tumbled to his knees, then rolled into the trough between rows of cabbages and pumpkins.
“So, it's a dirty fight yer wantin', eh colleen?” he said, his brogue thickening as he chuckled while pulling her closer to him until he lay on top of her. He could feel her breasts through the wet, muddy fabric of her dress, pressing intimately against his chest. Although tall and slender, Rebekah Sinclair was very soft and very female—preacher's daughter or not. He grinned impudently down at her sputtering face, then gave in to impulse as well, for Rory Madigan had never even tried to curb his baser instincts, especially when they came to lithesome females. He placed his hands on each side of her head and slowly lowered his mouth to hers.
Rebekah knew he was going to kiss her, out in her own backyard, lying on top of her right in the middle of the cabbage patch! Anyone who happened up the side street could see them. If Widow Pruitt next door were home, which thank heavens she was not, she could see them from her kitchen window. Rebekah responded the way any intelligent, gently bred young lady would in like circumstances—she held on to him for dear life and kissed him back.
Rory gave her plenty of time to resort to maidenly modesty and turn aside his kiss, but she startled him by throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her lips firmly to his. It was instantly apparent that she possessed no knowledge of the finer points of the art. Doubtless, her previous experiences with kissing were confined to innocent pecks from green boys. Her mouth remained primly closed and she attempted to make up what she lacked in finesse with enthusiasm and enough pressure to crack his teeth.
He took her delicate jaw in one hand and restrained her as his tongue rimmed her lips, then teased at their seam, giving her the idea that he wanted to be inside. When she opened enough to emit a startled little gasp, he took advantage and ran the tip of his tongue along her small white teeth, then darted deeper to tease and twine with her tongue as his mouth moved over hers masterfully. Two young soiled doves at Pearly's Palace in Denver had taught him the finer points of kissing, letting him practice for free until they pronounced him the best ever. He worked on perfecting that skill as assiduously as he had his boxing.
Rebekah felt the blood rushing to her head as his mouth mastered hers, eliciting tingling pleasures that robbed her of breath. She followed his clever coaxing and let her tongue dart between his open lips, tasting and teasing as he did. Suddenly the blood seemed to rush lower, leaving her light-headed and spinning out of control as heat pooled in her belly. One of his long legs was slung possessively across hers; and his hips pressed shockingly against her own, moving in a slow lazy roll that was mesmerizing.
His chest brushed across her breasts each time he raised his head to reposition his mouth for another of those soul-robbing kisses. The thin wet cloth separating their upper bodies allowed her to feel the rasp of his chest hair on her delicate skin and the most appallingly delicious thing was happening to her breasts. Her nipples tingled, radiating an exceedingly pleasurable ache. She could feel what she had always thought of as her most inadequate feminine endowment swelling as she arched against him like the brazen hussy she surely must be.
Rory was one step from ripping the clothes from her and taking her there in the middle of the garden when her small startled whimpers of surprise and amazement began to penetrate his consciousness. She had
never even been properly kissed before in her life—a young sheltered girl, totally innocent. He was taking shameless advantage of a warm, passionate nature that her sanctimonious family had probably spent a lifetime trying to squelch. Rotten bastard.
Rebekah felt him break their wild kiss and roll away from her. When she opened her dazed eyes, he sat staring down at her with a troubled expression. Scarlet shame heated her face, and she rolled over in the mud, too humiliated to look at him. Then, she felt his gentle hand on her shoulder.
“I'm sorry, Rebekah. I apologize for taking such ungentlemanly advantage of an innocent.” He felt her flinch away from his touch.
“I pulled you down beside me. That was hardly ladylike,” she whispered, fighting a losing battle with humiliating tears.
He reached into his back pocket and extracted a handkerchief, old and frayed, but luckily not mud-soaked. He began to wipe gently at her face. “You're making trails through the mud,” he said, striving for lightness. “Could I borrow some to wash my face?” That did the trick. She looked up at him, and a wobbly smile curved her lips.
“Why is it that I feel I've known you all my life?” The question seemed to ask itself.
He shrugged and gave her a sunny smile to ease her fears, ignoring the persistent ache in his nether regions. “I could say the same thing, although the last time I even associated with a respectable girl was back at St. Vincent's when I was thirteen years old.”
“St. Vincent's? Is that your church?” She dabbed at her face with his soft old handkerchief, which was filled with the subtle male aromas of tobacco and horses.
“No. It's an orphanage in New York City. The Sisters of Charity took me in when my parents died in an influenza epidemic. We'd just arrived from Ireland a few months earlier,” he added softly.
Her own misery and embarrassment forgotten, Rebekah reached out and laid her grimy hand on top of his. “How tragic to be all alone with no family—especially when you were such a little boy yet.”
“I still had family at first. Three older brothers. But Sean died of consumption. He was the eldest. Ryan and Patrick were too old for the orphanage. They had to leave me there, but they promised to come back for me when they'd made their fortunes.”
“What happened?” Rory Madigan seemed alone in the world now.
“Ryan died in a Comstock silver mine back in sixty-four—in a cave-in. Patrick's ship was lost off the China coast in a typhoon. That's what happens to Irishmen who dream of striking it rich,” he said bitterly.
“I'm so sorry, Rory.”
Her sweet, soft voice brought him back from his bitter memories. “I've never told anyone but January Jones about my family.”
“Is he the little colored man I saw at the fight?”
“He was my manager as well as a good friend—my only friend…until now.”
She smiled shyly as he helped her to her feet in the middle of the ruined patch of garden. “I'd like to be your friend, Rory.” And more than your friend, some inner voice taunted.
He raised her hand in the same elegant salute he had given her that day on the bandstand, ignoring their muddy dishabille as he kissed her fingertips. “I was going fishing, but now I think I'll use the river for a bath instead. Care to join me?” he dared her.
Rebekah looked down at her ruined clothing and the shambles around her. “Oh, my goodness! Look at me, and Mama will be home shortly expecting me to have the garden watered and weeded. I have to finish the weeding and then...oh dear, how will I ever get clean without ruining the bathtub and washroom!”
He picked up a half-filled pail of water and said, “You've done a fair job with the watering part of the project. Let me help with the rest. But you're right—we'll have to hurry, not only because of your mother.” At her puzzled look, he added, “If we let this mud dry on us, we'll crack and break like sun-dried apples.”
Rebekah smothered a giggle behind one muddy little fist. Soon they were working side by side, sprinkling the remaining dry soil and weeding between the rows of half-grown vegetables. He worked fast with sure, strong hands, pulling out thistles and pepper grass, then smoothing the muddy gouges in the earth until all telltale traces of her accident were erased.
“You're an awfully good gardener,” she observed.
“My mother kept a garden back in Galway,” he said with a faraway look.
“That's nice. I never thought of the Irish as farmers.”
“We grow more than potatoes,” he retorted angrily. “My father was the head groom for the Earl of Waltham. My brothers and I took our lessons with his own son's tutor.”
“I didn't intend a slur on your family—or on your being Irish, Rory.” His pride was prickly indeed. How often had her father said the Irish were the stubbornest race on earth?
His hot temper was just as quick to cool when he saw her genuine hurt and bewilderment. “I'm sorry, Rebekah. I'm so used to being insulted for being Irish that I take offense when none's meant. I suppose if there's one true fault of the Irish, it's a rotten temper.”
“I never thought of that as any nation's special trait. Anyway, you don't seem to hold a grudge. That's the important thing—and you admit when you're wrong. Some folks will never do that.” She picked up the sprinkling can, her hoe and other small gardening tools, and he took the empty pails and followed her around to the shed.
As she replaced the gardening utensils on the pegs along the wall, he asked, “What about cleaning up in the river? You could at least scrub off the worst of the mud and spare your family washroom.”
Rebekah hesitated until he added, “I've got my horse with me. I can have you back in plenty of time for supper. Promise.”
“Exactly what my already hoydenish reputation would need—to be seen covered head to foot in mud, riding with a stranger to bathe in the river! Thank you, Rory, but I must decline.”
“I do want to see you again, Rebekah, although I suspect your family won't approve of me,” he added stiffly.
“I'd like to see you again, too.” She chewed her lip for a moment. “You're right. You're an Irish Catholic. Even my father, who's a very kind and tolerant man, wouldn't approve of my keeping company with someone outside our faith.” She did not mention her father's unreasoning dislike of the Irish.
“I always go fishing on Sunday afternoons down at the river—out that direction, past where it curves around that big stand of alders. If you could slip away and meet me, no one would know—at least until you wanted to tell them about us.” His voice was cautious and neutral.
“I’ll try if I can this Sunday.” Her voice was frightened and breathless.
He whistled and his big bay stallion came trotting obediently around the corner of the shed. “This is Lobsterback,” he said as Rebekah admired the horse.
“Lobsterback. What an odd name for such a magnificent animal.” She scratched the bay's forehead and grinned at Rory. “Don't tell me that's not a real slur against the English.”
“Sassenachs,” he said, but without rancor as he swung up and returned her grin. “But I like the horse even if he does have a red coat.” He kneed the bay forward, calling out to her, “I'll meet you at the river Sunday.”
Rebekah stood rooted to the ground as he rode off, his words echoing enticingly. I'll meet you at the river Sunday. “That was probably how Satan tempted Eve back in the garden,” she chided herself. But she knew she would be there on Sunday, come high water...or hell.
Chapter Four
Rebekah dressed for church that Sunday morning with particular care, glad she had been able to finish sewing the new dress length into a pretty summer frock. It was only an inexpensive lavender calico, but at least it was made to fit her, not taken in from her sister's more ample proportions, with the hem let down for her ungainly height. She piled her hair on top of her head and plied the curling iron to create a cluster of soft ringlets, then hid the fancy hairstyle beneath a demure bonnet she could discard after worship.
When she inspected her slend
er form and sun-kissed face in the mirror, she was pleased in spite of the light dusting of small gold freckles across her nose and cheekbones. Mama had scolded furiously because she had worked outdoors without taking precautions. If only she knew what else her daughter had done that afternoon in the garden! Forcing the disquieting thought aside, Rebekah smoothed the bodice of the simple dress over the soft swell of her breasts. If only she were large-breasted with wide, flared hips instead of being so...well, flat! But Rory didn't seem to mind.
She scolded herself. Such a thing could not be dwelt upon during morning worship. Bad enough that she was sneaking out this very afternoon to meet a man. What should she do if he asked to court her openly? It would be one way to discourage Amos Wells. But such a scheme could backfire and cause her parents to force her to wed the older man.
“I'll never marry a man I don't love,” she whispered stubbornly to herself. Then, seeing her father's stricken hazel-green eyes, so gentle even in stern reproach, she realized how difficult the choices that lay ahead would be.
Her Sunday school class was pandemonium that morning. Ten-year-old Thad Taylor let loose a garter snake right in the middle of her explanation about Moses and the Ten Commandments. The rest of the boys dived down onto their hands and knees in pursuit while the girls squealed and jumped up on their chairs. Old Miss Haversham, the organist, was practicing when the chaos erupted. Hearing the shrieks of “snake, snake!” she fainted dead away onto the keyboard, resulting in a discordant wail from the organ, which drowned out the children until Deacon Becker pulled the elderly lady back on her bench and revived her.