Caleb’s composure was shattered. It was real, then—because Joss wouldn’t deny it, it was real. Mama was truly dead, and the three of them, Joss, Caleb, and that squalling, red-faced baby girl, were all that was left of the family.
A hoarse sob ripped itself from Caleb’s throat, and he felt Joss’s powerful arm slip around his shoulders.
“You do all the crying you’ve got to do,” Joss said quietly, his chin resting against the top of Caleb’s head. “In time the hurting will stop. And I’m going to take care of you, boy—you and little Abigail. Don’t you worry, because I’m always going to be right here.”
I’m always going to be right here. The words echoed in Caleb’s mind years later as he sat in the hotel room, remembering. Joss was still on the farm, but things had gone terribly wrong one hot day during the war, and as far as Joss was concerned, Caleb was as dead as their mother and father.
Abigail had written that there was even a stone in the family plot with Caleb’s name carved in it.
A crushing sense of loss descended on Caleb. He flung himself off the bed and away from thoughts of his bullheaded brother.
He went to the window and looked out on the dried mud of the town’s main street. Tomorrow he’d have to return to Fort Deveraux and his work there. He’d be forced to leave Lily.
A wagon jolted past, loaded with supplies for the fort, and Caleb turned away, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. There had to be some way to bring Lily back with him.
He toyed with the idea of hiring her as his housekeeper instead of installing her in a house in Tylerville, but he knew what would happen if he did that. The resultant gossip would take the rigid pride out of Lily’s backbone and the insolent snap from her brown eyes. And she wouldn’t agree to such a plan anyway.
Caleb paced. Mrs. Tibbet, the colonel’s wife, was always looking for a housekeeper. Every time she hired one the lady would marry a soldier departing for home and leave the Tibbets’ employ.
A slow grin spread across Caleb’s face. If Lily accepted the position, she would be close at hand, and he’d have an opportunity to win her over to his way of thinking. He’d court her, after a fashion, though he had no intention of marrying her or any other woman, and he’d teach her the pleasures of a good man’s bed.
A pang of guilt struck his middle as he remembered Bianca and the way she’d looked when he’d told her he wouldn’t be calling on her again because he’d met someone else. She’d turned away, her shoulders very straight, and said she didn’t care much for being a soldier’s mistress anyway.
Caleb exiled Bianca from his mind, just as he had Joss.
He opened his watch for the thousandth time and saw that it was finally time to go to supper at Mrs. McAllister’s. He went to the mirror, brushed his hair, and put on his shirt and then his uniform coat—the one with the gold epaulets.
There were no flowers to be had in all of Tylerville, except for wild blossoms blooming in colorful profusion at the edge of town, and Caleb wasn’t about to let his men see him picking daisies and hollyhocks. He persuaded the storekeeper to open his door, even though it was Sunday, and bought a box of fine French chocolates.
When he reached the boarding house where Lily lived she answered the door herself. Her attitude was one of resignation rather than welce, and Caleb suppressed a smile. The time would come when she would greet him by flinging both arms around his neck and pressing that delectable little body to his.
Her eyes, brown as coffee, dropped to the fancy box in Caleb’s hands. “Good evening,” she said coolly.
Caleb’s mind filled with an unbidden image of her in the parlor of the grand house in Fox Chapel, wearing silks and satins and graciously greeting his guests of an evening. He’d be the envy of every man north of the Mason-Dixon line.
He shook off the idea. He was looking for another mistress, not a wife.
“Hello,” he replied somewhat belatedly.
Lily stepped back to admit him, her gaze catching on the chocolates again. It was Caleb’s aim to make her look at him just the way she was looking at that red satin box.
He extended the candy and knew by the pleasure in her eyes that she’d received few gifts in her life. And for one insensible, fevered moment Caleb wanted to give her everything. He wanted to drag the world to her feet and make it bow.
“Thank you,” Lily said, accepting the chocolates with both hands.
Caleb felt relief surge through him. All he had to do was show Lily how gracious life could be, and she would forget her silly ideas about homesteading a hardscrabble farm.
“Won’t you sit down?” Lily asked, indicating a horsehair settee facing Mrs. McAllister’s parlor fireplace.
“After you,” Caleb said, and when Lily took a seat on the settee he joined her.
Lily lifted one corner of the chocolate box and peeked inside. “Do you suppose Mrs. McAllister would notice if I ate just one piece before supper?” she whispered.
“Eat the whole box if you want,” Caleb replied, oddly touched.
Lily cautiously chose a chocolate from the box and popped it into her mouth. Caleb watched as she rolled it around on her tongue, savoring it, and his blood turned hot as kerosene in his veins.
“Would you like one?” she asked, holding the box out to him.
Caleb drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Time. He had to give things time. “No, thanks,” he said hoarsely.
Lily looked delighted that she didn’t have to share, the greedy little scamp, and Caleb wanted to laugh. He also wanted to carry her off to his bed and make her completely and inexorably his own.
He drew another deep breath.
Elmira McAllister swept into the room just then, all smiles. She was a handsome woman, Caleb thought wryly. In fact, she rather resembled his first sergeant.
He rose immediately to his feet, took the lady’s offered hand, and kissed it. In a sidelong glance at Lily he saw her slide the candy box under the cushion of the settee.
“Major Halliday,” the landlady trilled, “I can’t tell you how honored we are to have you come calling.”
Caleb didn’t knw exactly how to respond to that remark, so he brushed it off by seating Mrs. McAllister in a nearby chair.
When dinner was served the other tenants were conspicuously absent. Caleb wondered if his hostess had ordered them to eat in their rooms.
“You’ve got chocolate on your chin,” he whispered to Lily when the landlady went to the kitchen for the first course.
It was wonderful watching her reaction. She dipped the tip of her table napkin into her water glass and dabbed hastily at the spot Caleb indicated with the touch of an index finger. Sometime in the future, when she was warm and contented from their lovemaking, he’d confess to Lily that there had never been a speck of chocolate on her face at all.
Mrs. McAllister hurried in with a tureen of soup just then, or Caleb would have kissed Lily soundly on the mouth. When her hand accidentally brushed his thigh he felt himself harden fiercely and was grateful for the concealing tablecloth.
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair when Mrs. McAllister went out for the main course.
“Is something wrong?” Lily asked, her dark eyes wide as she studied his face.
“No,” he lied. “What happened to the other boarders?”
Lily leaned close to him; he felt her breast against his upper arm and groaned inwardly as his condition worsened. “Mrs. McAllister enticed them to stay away,” she confided. “She wants me to marry you, so I’ll have money and position.”
Caleb knew Lily had hoped to shock him. “Would you do that?” he asked smoothly. “Marry a man for money and position, I mean?”
“I’m not going to marry anyone,” Lily insisted.
“So you’ve said,” he replied, and he slipped his hand under Lily’s arm. He hoped she’d stick by her decision, since a married woman wouldn’t do as a mistress.
She started slightly as he brushed his fingers over the sensitive flesh on the underside
of her forearm, and a delightful apricot blush pulsed in her cheeks, but she made no move to rebuff him. “She’ll be back at any moment!” she hissed.
“Wrong,” Caleb replied with a slight shake of his head. “She wants us to be alone together as much as possible.”
He saw in Lily’s eyes that she knew he was right. “This is most improper,” she said.
Caleb moved his fingers in a slow, feather-light circle, watching with satisfaction as her breasts rose on a quick breath and a pulse tapped its beat at the base of her neck. She tilted her head back for a moment and closed her eyes as he touched her, and he knew a soaring triumph. He’d been right. For all her innocence, Lily’s blood ran warm as mulled wine in her veins.
Much as Caleb would have loved giving Lily a lesson in pleasure, he knew he mustn’t move too fast. He withdrew his hand just as Mrs. McAllister came in with the roast chicken.
Lily flashed him a look, her color still high, and turned her attention to the meal.
When dinn replas over—and the hour seemed interminable to Caleb—he asked permission to take Lily out for a walk in the moonlight.
It was Mrs. McAllister who readily agreed; Lily was looking at him with stormy eyes.
He led her into the relative privacy of the McAllister apple orchard.
Lily leaned against a tree, her hands behind her, her pose unconsciously thrusting her beautiful breasts forward and sharpening the sweet anguish Caleb was feeling. “I’m not a loose woman,” she said firmly, without preamble, “and I won’t be your mistress, no matter how many boxes of chocolates you give me.”
Caleb rested one hand on the gnarled trunk of the tree she leaned against and bent toward her. “That’s the last thing I think, Miss Chalmers,” he informed her. “That you’re a loose woman, I mean.”
“Is it?” She blushed again. Fetchingly, he thought. “You’ve kissed me twice today, Major Halliday. And tonight at the table, you—you—”
“I touched you,” Caleb said softly. “And you let me.”
Lily sighed. “I don’t know what possessed me.”
“I do,” came the easy reply. “You’re supposed to feel like that when the right man touches you, Lily. It’s natural.”
She stared up at him. “It is?”
Caleb nodded. “Not only that, but it gets better.”
Lily swallowed. “It couldn’t.”
“But it does,” Caleb argued gently. “One day soon, when you’re ready, I’ll show you.”
“It seems to me that you expect rather a lot for a pound of chocolates,” Lily protested.
Caleb laughed. “Rebel while you can,” he said. “Very soon things will be different.”
She looked as though she didn’t believe her ears. “Of all the audacious, low-minded—”
He ran his thumb along her jawline, delighting in her fury and her fire. Taming her was going to be pure joy. “Yes?”
It took a mere brush of his lips to make her tilt her head back for his kiss. Caleb wondered if she was sophisticated enough to know how much he wanted her.
He’d kissed her thoroughly when she finally placed both hands against his chest and pushed.
“It’s hopeless,” she gasped out defiantly. “So stop trying to convince me!”
Caleb smiled and allowed one of his hands to stray, ever so lightly, across her breast. He felt her nipple grow instantly taut against his knuckles. “I mean to have you, Lily Chalmers,” he warned, his voice barely more than a breath. “The time will come when you’ll stand at your window watching for me.”
She gaped at him.
“I see we understand each other,” he said, putting his hat back on an stepping back to see Lily better. She was like some delicate, exotic flower blooming in the moonlight.
“Suppose I tell you that I never want to see you again?” she managed after a long time, her voice a breathless whisper.
Caleb knew he looked a lot more confident than he felt. “You won’t,” he answered.
“What makes you so sure?”
“The kiss we just shared.”
“You say and do the most outrageous things, Major Halliday.”
He touched her chin with the tip of one index finger. “I’m leaving tomorrow, Lily.”
Maybe he was imagining it, but he thought he felt her quiver. “Leaving?” she asked in a small voice.
“I’m going back to Fort Deveraux.”
He could see she was mentally gauging the distance between Tylerville and the fort, and that eased some of his anxiety about leaving her. “You’ll probably forget all about me,” she said.
Caleb chuckled ruefully. “I couldn’t do that if I tried,” he answered. “And I don’t intend to try. Lily, there’s an officers’ ball at the fort next Saturday night. Will you go with me?”
Her alabaster throat moved as she swallowed, and it was obvious that she was searching her mind for reasons to refuse. “I don’t have a proper dress—”
“That won’t be a problem. I have a friend who’ll be able to come up with something for you to wear.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed. “What friend?” she demanded.
Caleb wanted to shout for joy. She was jealous! “You met her in the dining room yesterday—Mrs. Tibbet.”
“Her clothes would never fit me,” Lily protested.
“No,” Caleb agreed, “but her niece’s would.”
He knew then that she wanted to go to the ball, and the knowledge made him exuberant.
“Where would I stay? The fort must be ten miles from here—I could never get back to Mrs. McAllister’s in time to go to bed.”
“You could spend the night with Colonel and Mrs. Tibbett. There probably aren’t two more acceptable chaperons in the whole territory.”
Lily smiled uncertainly, and the eagerness in her face twisted Caleb’s heart. “I’ve never been to a ball,” she said in a speculative tone of voice. “Would I get another box of chocolates?”
“Only if you promise not to eat them in front of me,” Caleb replied, remembering the agonies he’d suffered watching her roll the sweet around on her tongue. Then, after planting a light kiss on Lily’s mouth, he escorted her back to the house and took his leave.
Chapter
3
The next morning, while Lily was lingering over a late breakfast and doing her best to steel herself for another shift at the hotel dining room, Gertrude Tibbet came to call. She rapped lightly on the glass pane in Mrs. McAllister’s kitchen door and smiled when Lily leapt to her feet.
After smoothing her hair and straightening her skirts Lily admitted the unexpected guest with a quiet “Good morning.”
Mrs. Tibbet nodded graciously. “Hello, Lily.”
“Won’t you sit down?” Lily asked, suddenly remembering her manners.
“Thank you,” the older woman said, “but I can’t stay long. Caleb tells me he’s invited you to the officers’ ball at Fort Deveraux on Saturday evening.”
Lily swallowed. She should have refused him, she knew, but she’d never been to a ball, and she knew this might be her only chance. “Yes, ma’am. He did.”
Gertrude Tibbet smiled again. “He also said that you were quite properly concerned with your reputation and refused to attend unless suitable arrangements could be made.”
Color pulsed in Lily’s cheeks. She wondered what else the major might have told Mrs. Tibbet—had he admitted kissing her, for instance? Or confessed he wanted Lily to be his mistress? “That’s true,” she said belatedly, beginning to clear away the breakfast dishes because she was nervous and needed something to do with her hands.
Mrs. Tibbet’s small shoulders seemed to swell beneath her black sateen cloak as she took a deep breath. “Well, then, I’ve come to solve the problem. The colonel and I would be delighted if you’d consent to stay with us on Saturday evening. Major Halliday could see you back to Tylerville on Sunday afternoon.”
Lily’s eyes were wide. “That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Tibbet, but you see, I don’t—”
“You don’t have a dress,” the older woman finished for her. “Don’t worry. I’m sure something of Sandra’s would fit you.”
Lily wavered. Heaven only knew when she’d be invited to a ball again, with a gown provided and everything, and besides, nothing more would come of it. She’d never take up with a soldier, after all. “I—I just have to ask my landlady.”
Mrs. Tibbet arched stone-gray eyebrows. “Your landlady?”
Lily sighed and dropped her voice to a whisper. “She’s pretty much of a fussbudget, Mrs. McAllister is,” she confided. “If I do anything she disapproves of, I won’t have a place to live.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Tibbet, but she didn’t look as though she saw at all. Lily thought she seemed puzzled.
“If you’ll just wait here,” Lily said hopefully, “I’ll come back straightaway with an answer.”
Mrs. Tibbet nodded, and Lily dashed out of the room. She found Mrs. McAllister changing the shee on Mr. Arguson’s bed.
Hastily Lily explained Caleb’s invitation to the officer’s ball and Mrs. Tibbet’s offer to put her up while she was at Fort Deveraux.
Mrs. McAllister beamed at the idea. “Before you know it, Lily Chalmers,” she said buoyantly, “you’ll be carrying the major’s dinner to the table of a night, instead of waiting on strangers at the hotel.”
Lily felt a stab of shame, knowing Caleb had quite another purpose in mind. He was a scoundrel, and he deserved whatever happened to him. But for just one shining, magical night Lily would pretend he was a prince. “You don’t object to my going, then?”
The landlady favored her with a stern look. “See that you mind your manners, that’s all. No gentleman will buy the cow when he knows he can get the milk for nothing.”
Lily managed not to roll her eyes until she’d turned her back on Mrs. McAllister and stepped into the hall again. Caleb had come right out and admitted that he had no intention of “buying the cow”—he only wanted to rent it.
Lily and the Major Page 5