Linda Castle

by The Return of Chase Cordell

“Mmm.” He never looked up. He just continued to rub his fingertips against his temples in small circles.

  “You’ve been in here for hours. Are you hungry?” Linese approached his chair warily, half-expecting a sharp rebuff for invading his territory.

  He looked up and fastened a remarkably sober gaze on her. A single dark strand of hair rested across his thick eyebrows. His eyes were hooded and languorous, but the rough-etched contours of his face were still distant and hard.

  He reminded her of a wolf—ravenous and feral. The narrowed gaze he fastened on her was a mixture of suspicion and distrust. It pulled at her heart.

  “No. I am not hungry.” His speech was softly slurred from the brandy.

  “Is there anything you require?”

  “No.” He sighed heavily and looked away. “There is nothing that I require.” His sardonic reply held a measure of poignancy.

  It intrigued her, drove her onward. She took a halting step toward him. “Chase? What is it? What is wrong?” she whispered.

  “My head hurts from reading so much.” His deep, throaty explanation stopped her only inches from his leg.

  She looked down at him again. Suddenly the hard lines of his face didn’t seem so harsh. In her eyes, as she wanted so desperately to believe it, he wore only the lines of strain and fatigue. He had seemed so aloof and independent before. He now displayed a vulnerability she had never seen.

  A wave of compassion and love swept over Linese. She bent down and grasped his boot top at the ankle. She lifted his leg with both hands.

  His head came up with a start. “What are you doing?” His eyes narrowed down to gray slits. The sole source of Linese’s courage to persist in the face of his scowling expression was her deep love for Chase.

  “I’m taking off your boots.” She grabbed her skirt with one hand and shoved it out of the way, while she knelt in front of Chase to take hold of his heel and pull off the tight-fitting boot.

  Chase started to protest, then Linese bent toward him in front of him. Her position allowed him a completely unobstructed view of her breasts. One golden curl hung down beside her swanlike neck. Chase tried to look away but the sight was hypnotic.

  He stared at the creamy swell of her flesh and imagined what it would be like to touch her. Heat danced up his legs toward his belly while he observed her. He could almost feel her flesh in his palms, could imagine what it would be like to bury his face in her pale hair. He could practically smell the combination of soap, honeysuckle and his own passion.

  His boot came off.

  His foot hit the floor with a thud. Pain radiated up his leg to his damaged hip. He drew a hiss of breath between his clenched teeth and tried to master the ache in his leg—and his heart.

  “Did I hurt you?” she asked.

  The concern in her voice shamed him. He wanted her to believe he was impervious to pain and hurt. He wanted her to admire him. God forgive him, he wanted her.

  “Of course not,” he growled. His mouth was sour with the taste of the lie. Another in a series of lies he kept telling her. It struck Chase that his life had become one long, bitter untruth.

  He disgusted himself. And the more he wanted Linese, the more disgusted with himself he became, because she embodied truth and goodness and a past he yearned to remember.

  Linese paused to look at him. Chase devoured her body with his eyes. Then she smiled and picked up the other boot and slid it off. When she was finished, she sat down on the floor beside his outstretched leg.

  A tingling sensation began to burn his thigh where it was touching Linese’s back. The spiraling heat traveled up the length of his body and into every muscle and sinew. The feeling gathered and pooled in the pit of his stomach only to send fingers of desire swirling back out to his limbs, his hands, his fingers.

  The top of her golden head was so close, if he flexed his fingers, he could touch her. He cursed himself for wanting her, but it did no good. He wanted her anyway.

  “I’ll read to you for a while. Maybe the pain in your head will go away.”

  “I don’t need to be read to.” He could not trust himself to sit here while she was so close, so appealing. She had no notion of how perilous it was to remain with him. She could not know—he did not know himself—how deep his affliction ran.

  “I want to read to you, Chase.” Her soft words contained steel. She glanced up at him and he saw something new in her cool-water blue eyes. He saw determination harden within their depths. To protest further would put him at risk of exposure. He was, after all, married to her.

  Married to her.

  “Fine.” Chase sighed in disgruntled capitulation. He reached for the glass, tipped it up and drained it. If he got drunk enough, maybe he could ignore the way her skin looked or the softness of her lips. He would simply close his eyes and let the brandy numb his brain and his need.

  Linese felt a tiny shiver of satisfaction at Chase’s grudging response. She wondered if this was how a general felt when he gained the hill or took the river. She bent her head and tried to hide her smile of pleasure. She was Chase’s wife, she should sit and read to him of the events in Mainfield. She should pull off his boots and linger with him over a glass of spirits, and then maybe they would be able to find what had been lost in the two years he was gone. Linese picked up the first paper and read the date aloud.

  “’June 22, 1861. The citizens of Cooke County have formed a home defense and are calling themselves the Cooke County Home Guard Cavalry.’” She glanced up at Chase. He had leaned his head back against the chair and his eyes were closed. She started to read again.

  Chase listened while Linese read about Texas and the campaign to secede. Reports of the weather and the escalating war took most of the space, with an occasional tidbit about a birth or death. Her voice was pleasant and somewhat soothing to him. He found himself actually enjoying the sound of it.

  After a few minutes he heard the paper crinkle and realized she had stopped reading. The room seemed empty and cold without the sound of her voice. He raised his head and looked at her.

  She was neatly folding the paper away. “Do you wish for me to continue?” She tipped her head toward him and raised her eyebrows in question. The lamplight glinted off the clear azure color of her eyes.

  His heart thudded painfully inside his chest cavity. It took some effort to keep from reaching out to touch the silken strands of her pale hair.

  “Yes, please do.” Instead of closing his eyes this time, he watched Linese with intensified interest. He was powerless to do anything but watch her, and want her, and die a little because he could not touch her.

  She picked up another paper from the disorganized pile and opened it. Light glimmered on her hair when she bent her head toward the page. Chase knew he was courting his own disaster, but no matter how he argued with himself, he could not force himself up from the chair, or his eyes away from the vision of his wife.

  ” ‘June 1, 1862. The provost marshal is looking for the person responsible for the murder of Alfred Homstock, a new resident to Ferrin County.’”

  Her face became animated and her brow crinkled slightly while she read the old news item. Soft lips curved, bent around the sound of the words, in a manner Chase found exotic and sensual.

  “’…unsubstantiated rumors abound that Homstock’s death was in retaliation for Unionists being lynched by suspected secessionists recently in Cooke County. Unverified reports indicate he may have been part of the Underground Railroad and could have been the victim of the runaway slaves he was trying to help, but so far there have been only rumors. The sheriff in Tyron County will be handling the investigation.’”

  She stopped reading and laid the paper down in her lap. A soft flush filled her cheeks, she swallowed hard and blinked. Her pink-tipped tongue darted out to moisten her lips. Chase could see she was embarrassed about something. He was struck by a sudden feeling of satisfaction to know that about her, but he realized it was obvious, and was not a memory returning to him.<
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  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Hezikiah decided it would be proper to formally announce our wedding since we were not married here in Mainfield.” She squirmed a bit.

  “So?”

  “Since we married without anyone in Mainfield being present, he wanted to announce it.” She blushed deeper.

  Chase felt the unmistakable bite of sorrow and raw grief pour over him. He grieved for the loss of something precious that he must have treasured, and he grieved for himself because he could not remember the special moment of marrying Linese. Suddenly the need to remember the Colt and gold and what had gone on with the mayor paled beside his anguish at not remembering his wedding day.

  “Read me what he wrote.” His voice sounded hard and flinty to his own ears. Chase nearly choked on the bitter fact that the only way he would learn about their wedding was through a pitiful two-year-old account written by an aging bachelor who was not even present.

  Linese cleared her throat and began to read. “‘Chase Cordell, grandson of Texas Ranger Captain Cordell, surprised the citizens of Mainfield by bringing home a bride. The former Miss Linese Beaufort, of Ferrin County, will be residing at the family home, Cordellane. Mr. Cordell, a Unionist, has joined the Northern army….’” Her voice trailed off and she looked up at him with a beseeching look on her face.

  “Is that all?” Hearing the dispassionate article filled with nothing more than hard, cold facts left a hollow ache inside Chase. He longed to know everything that involved Linese.

  She sighed and avoided his searching gaze. “Only some silly reference about you missing from Mainfield two weeks prior to our wedding, and how people were speculating about what—or who—had kept you away from Mainfield.”

  Chase’s brows shot up when he grasped the implication. “Is it the general opinion of Mainfield that you bewitched me and held me prisoner?” He sloshed another portion of brandy into the glass and cursed his missing memory.

  “As I recall, it was the other way around.” She said with a tremulous smile. “You most certainly took me captive, as you well know. There are still ladies in Tyron County who are disappointed that their most eligible bachelor up and married a girl from another county.” She blushed bright red at the confession.

  She dipped her head and avoided his gaze. This brave, delicate creature, who had the misfortune of being joined to him by marriage, gave him a moment of unexpected happiness. He found himself smiling while he succumbed to the urge to run his fingers down the side of her face.

  She trembled visibly beneath his feather-light touch. It buffeted him, the way she closed her eyes like a house cat and leaned into his tentative caress. A hard, hot vortex of desire swirled inside his gut and threatened to uncoil like a roused water moccasin.

  “Tell me what you recall, Linese.” His request was a throaty growl. “How do you remember our meeting?”

  Her eyes widened and she smiled up at him. It was a timid expression, one of love and memory, one he could only share through her recollections, since the damnable loss of his memory had robbed him of the past.

  Her smile became wistful and full of feeling. “You swept through the door of the Presbyterian church like a blue norther. The women whispered about who you were and where you had come from. I remember thinking you were probably a riverboat pirate on the run from the law.” She laughed softly under her breath, but Chase wondered if she was closer to the truth than either of them knew.

  Had he been running from the law? Is that what had driven him to join the army? Had he chosen a slightly honorable way to retreat from the consequences of some terrible act? Is that what compelled him to leave this precious female to care for his feeble grandfather and fend for herself in a harsh climate of hostility? He clenched his jaw against the thought and realized if that were the case, then he hated the man he had been.

  “You near shocked the Presbyterian minister to death when you—when you said what you did….” She was still speaking softly, lost in her world of memory and emotion.

  “And what shocking thing was that?” he asked while he allowed his eyes to skim over her face.

  “You said I was the one. You said I was the girl you’d been waiting for and you were going to make me your wife.”

  He could almost visualize it. It was not a memory, nothing as clear and firm as that, but he could picture the scene in his mind.

  She would have been standing by the wall with her eyes shyly diverted, like the lady she was. He probably had mud spattered on his breeches from hard riding, and God knows what other wicked deed. Linese would have blushed slightly, like she was now, when he spoke directly to her. He could understand how he wanted her, but to his great hopelessness he couldn’t remember it.

  There was a hunger eating at his soul while he watched her. Something was happening to him. He was being consumed by more than just the need to remember his past. Whatever powerful thing wrapped itself around him, it revolved around Linese.

  Chase felt deprived, starved. He longed to slake his starvation with the taste of Linese’s sweet lips, to sate his appetite with her love.

  “Did I shock you, Miss Linese Beaufort?” The name she had revealed to him from the Gazette rolled off his tongue like warm honey. He liked the way it sounded. It almost had a flavor, like rich Creole cooking, like Linese herself. She was unique, sweet with a little spice that made a man hungry for more and more.

  His hand still rested against the curve of her jaw. She rubbed against his fingers. “No, you didn’t shock me. You intrigued me.” She looked straight into his eyes. “I loved you from the first moment I saw you.”

  The heartfelt admission hit Chase like a fist. She had loved him then, probably loved him now, but would she find him so desirable if she knew the secret he kept from her or the dark mystery hidden in his past?

  Chapter Five

  Emotion ripped at Chase.

  He reached for the glass of brandy and finished it off in one gulp. Each time Linese looked at him with that loving, trusting expression clouding her eyes, it shredded his insides. He couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “It’s late, Linese. You should go to bed.” The terse sound of his voice fell a little shy of being a command.

  She pierced him with a cool gaze. “I think I will sit with you awhile longer. If you don’t mind.” Her refusal was just short of outright disobedience. He scanned her face and saw defiance and passion written there.

  He sighed and slumped back in his chair in sheer defeat. She wasn’t going to make it easy on him. This sweet belle had iron beneath her silken exterior.

  No submissive shrinking violet sat at his feet, no matter how it might have looked to an outside observer.

  If he wanted to be away from her as much as he kept telling himself that he did, all he need do was rise from the chair and leave the room. It was just that easy, and just that complicated.

  “Read to me some more then….” he said gruffly. “Since you are going to stay.” Perhaps the key to his past was hidden in the old copies of newspaper. At least if he concentrated on the words, maybe he could think about something besides her soft mouth and sensuous eyes.

  Linese felt as if she had won a tiny battle of wills in the past few minutes. Chase had not stalked away from her, as she half expected him to, when she did not give in to his demand. It was a small start, but enough to give her encouragement. Her hand was trembling slightly with excitement, and hope, when she picked up the paper and started to read.

  Chase listened to the accounts of war and sporadic news about himself that he had apparently provided in letters home, but no memory emerged. He was still lost and confused and becoming more frustrated with each passing minute. Linese paused in her reading and he found himself oddly disappointed.

  “Are you finished?” His tone was sharp with the pain of wanting her.

  She turned to look at him. Her searching eyes had the same effect on him as being pierced by an enemy bayonet.

  “Yes, Chase, I’m finished.
” Her voice held a faint tone of frustration, or he chose to think it did.

  She stood up and shook out her skirt. He caught a whiff of female warmth and the lingering trace of flower blossoms that seemed to surround her.

  Perhaps it was the brandy—maybe it was his madness—but he reached out and jerked her onto his lap. She settled onto his thighs with a soft swish of fabric. The weight of her bottom against his legs sent an explosion of desire through him.

  “You smell nice,” he murmured. He tilted his head back in order to see her face, now only a few inches above his own, and sighed in restless contentment.

  “Chase, you’ve been away so long….” She sighed. “I missed you.”

  Chase felt his soul being ripped in half. He wanted to try to find the words to explain his erratic behavior, even though he knew he could never explain what he had become, what he could never be again.

  “Don’t, Linese, don’t talk.” He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he chose to deny it.

  She bit her bottom lip and blinked rapidly.

  It was his undoing.

  He pulled her face down to him and claimed her lips. They tasted like clear spring water. She was not heady and robust like Creole cooking, not as he thought she would be. She was more pure, like life-giving nectar to a dying man.

  Her body was somehow soft and familiar in an odd, dreamlike way. It gave Chase hope that perhaps if he explored her and the life he had led, maybe some tiny piece of his memory would return. At least that is what he told himself as he allowed his mouth to linger on hers while crushing her to him.

  She moaned softly.

  He realized that he was holding her in a most intimate fashion. One hand was sprawled across her bosom. The warm fullness of her breast excited him and he grew bolder. Chase devoured her lips as hunger and brandy-induced daring spurred him on. He kissed her savagely and allowed his body to respond to her. When he released her mouth, she nuzzled into his neck.

  “Chase, let’s go to our room.”

  Her words had the same effect on him as falling into a winter river would have. His ardor chilled in his veins like shards of ice.