“It’s love, all right,” Rupert said. He sounded very worldly wise for a schoolmaster who had only now gotten around to considering marriage. “And you don’t want to marry him because you think you might be like your mother?”
Lily wanted to make her case by explaining how hot-blooded and wanton she was with Caleb, but it wouldn’t be delicate to speak too specifically of such things with a man. “It’s more than that,” she said. “I’ve got my heart set on a place of my own, and on finding my sisters. Caleb wants to leave the army and go back to Pennsylvania to live. Marrying him would change the whole course of my life.”
“Love often does that.”
Lily was incensed. “Why do I have to be the one that does the giving up and the changing? Why not Caleb?”
“I see your problem,” Rupert announced. “Neither one of you is the sort to back down from a decision once it has been made. I guess it would be better if you just stayed here and tilled your land while he went back east. He’ll probably meet some pretty girl and forget all about you.”
Just the thought made Lily’s blood run hot as kerosene. “He won’t either,” she argued. “He’ll see reason and stay here with me. I know he will!”
Rupert shrugged. “For your sake, Lily, I hope you’re right. Now, tell me, what about this idea of traveling to Chicago? Are you going to do it?”
“I’m hoping I won’t have to,” Lily answered. “I wrote Mama and asked her if she knew where my sisters are. If she does, I’m sure she’ll write back and tell me.”
At that moment there was a knock at the front door. Lily bounded out of her chair, then caught herself and returned to the table. “You answer it,” she whispered to Rupert, already assembling an appearance of indifference.
Rupert complied, but the caller was only Winola. She smiled coolly at Lily as she took off her bonnet.
“Rupert and I usually work on our lesson plans after supper,” she announced, making the pursuit sound intimate.
Lily wondered if she was expected to vacate the premises. “Go right ahead,” she said, standing up to begin clearing off the table. She was abysmally disappointed that Winola wasn’t Caleb. “I’ll try not to disturb you.”
The glint of Liy’s diamond must have caught Winola’s eye, for she suddenly grabbed her hand. “You’re engaged!” the schoolmistress crowed, obviously delighted.
Lily started to correct Winola’s misconception, but Rupert leapt into the conversation before she could finish.
“Yes,” he said quickly, and with great exuberance. “Lily’s marrying a man named Caleb Halliday. He’s a major in the army.”
“Oh,” Winola said, looking much friendlier. “Well, congratulations, Lily.”
“Thank you,” Lily answered, shooting one murderous look at Rupert before she went on with the task of setting the kitchen to rights.
Soon Rupert and Winola were comfortably seated at the table, their heads close together, working out their lesson plans for the next day. They seemed to have forgotten Lily entirely, and even when she deliberately dropped a cast-iron skillet to the floor they didn’t look up.
With a sigh she put on her shawl and went out for a walk. Maybe if she had some fresh air and exercise she would fall asleep easily that night, instead of lying there having foolish thoughts about Caleb.
She headed directly for the Grand Hotel, where she assumed Caleb was staying. She strode up to the desk and asked after him.
“Major Halliday’s checked out, ma’am,” the young clerk explained. “But you might speak with Mrs. Parrish. She and the major were together earlier this evening.”
Lily squared her shoulders automatically. She thanked the clerk and turned to go.
“Mrs. Parrish is in the dining room,” the young man called after her in a helpful tone of voice.
Lily started toward the door, but in the end her curiosity overrode her considerable pride. She would go into the dining room and speak to Bianca.
She entered, glancing from side to side, only to see Caleb sitting with Bianca near the windows. There was a candle in the center of the table, and its light flickered like liquid gold over their features. They were laughing, their heads close together.
Lily might have turned and walked out without either of them seeing her, but she wanted Caleb to know that she knew he was a two-timing, back-stabbing bounder. So she summoned all her courage, squared her shoulders, and marched over to the table.
“Good evening, Bianca,” she said cheerfully. “Caleb.”
Caleb rose from his chair, but there was no guilt in his expression, only challenge.
“Lily!” Bianca cried, sounding genuinely pleased. “Do join us. We were just talking about—”
“I couldn’t,” Lily interrupted. “My brother is expecting me home at any moment.” In truth, Rupert had either forgotten her or was hoping that she would stay away for a while so that he and Winola could spoon. “I just wanted to tell you good-bye, Bianca. I hope your journey will be a pleasant one.”
“I may not be leaving,” Bianca said, unaware she’d driven an invisible spthrough Lily’s heart with those innocent, brightly spoken words. “Caleb has convinced me that I shouldn’t be too hasty.”
“I can just imagine that he has,” Lily said warmly, never looking at Caleb, although she was conscious of him in every fiber of her being. She glanced at the big regulator clock on the wall nearby. “It’s getting late—I’d better hurry home,” she said. “It was good seeing you again, Bianca.”
With that, Lily turned and walked away at a brisk pace, her chin high, her eyes burning with tears she was too proud to shed. She hoped Caleb would follow her and offer some explanation, but he didn’t.
When Lily arrived at Rupert’s house she peeked into the front window and saw her brother kissing Winola with unrestrained passion.
With a little sob of frustration and heartbreak Lily sat down on the front step to wait, her chin propped in her hands. It seemed the whole world was romancing tonight—except for her, of course.
Chapter
13
Liily couldn’t wait until the following Saturday to travel back to Fort Deveraux. It was too painful knowing Caleb was in Spokane, renewing his friendship with Bianca Parrish. So she bought a sturdy pinto gelding from the man at the livery stable, along with a saddle and bridle, and trousers and a shirt from the mercantile. Then she packed her valise.
After writing a short note of farewell to Rupert, which she left propped against the sugar bowl in the middle of the kitchen table, Lily mounted her horse and set her face toward Fort Deveraux. By nightfall she would be in her own little cottage across from the schoolhouse, making plans to move onto her homestead.
She wasn’t more than five miles outside of town when she began to wish she’d bought a hat and some proper boots as well as denim trousers and a shirt. The sun was so bright that it made her squint, and her scalp was sweating, making her hairline damp and sticky. Worse, the horse she’d purchased was determined to show her he deserved his name:
Dancer. He liked to prance and do little sideways jigs, but he had a problem with straight ahead.
Lily had serious doubts that he’d do as a plow horse.
When twilight came Lily was still miles from Tylerville, let alone Fort Deveraux. Resigned, she found a little rock-walled canyon, gathered a few twigs, and tried to start a fire.
Sally of Typhoon Sally, Queen of the Rodeo had once set a pile of wood ablaze by rubbing two sticks together. Lily tried that and found out fast that the process was overrated. Whenever she’d needed a fire, she’d used matches.
Dancer, meanwhile, seemed perfectly content. There was a stream nearby where he could drink, and the ground was covered with sweet green grass.
For Lily the pickings were slimmer. She hadn’t brought along any food, having expected to reach her destination well before nightfall, and now she’d go hungry. She didn’t have a gun or a knife, and even if she had, she would have been hard put to kill some unsuspecting
little creature and eat it. She sat down on a fallen log next to her nonexistent fire and propped her chin in her hands to consider her fate.
“What would Typhoon Sally do?” she asked herself, and Dancer, and the waving green grass that stretched for miles, practically unbroken by trees, in every direction. No answer came to her from within or without. She looked up at the sky and hoped it wouldn’t be cold that night.
It was then that she felt the first tickle, about midway up her spinal column. That was followed by another tickle, and another, and suddenly they were all over her. Lily bounded off the fallen log and looked down to see that it was swarming with red ants.
With a startled scream she began tearing off her clothes. Her shirt went first, and then her trousers, and then her shoes and stockings. There were ants in her hair, between her toes, everywhere on her body. She danced and swatted wildly in a futile attempt to escape them.
Caleb rode up just as she was trying to submerge herself in an ice-cold creek no more than six inches deep. Calmly he hung his hat on the horn of his saddle, then he put his hands on his hips, an infuriating grin spreading across his face.
“Ants?” he inquired cordially.
He was at once the first and last person Lily would have wanted to see. She sat up in the creek, her hair dripping, her arms covering her breasts, ants banished at last. Her legs and bottom were so numb from the cold that she couldn’t even feel them. Teeth chattering, she made a strangled sound of rage and shouted, “G-give me my clothes!”
Caleb picked up the trousers and the shirt and the stockings, which were scattered about with abandon, and assessed them with mischief twinkling in his eyes. “These can’t be your things, Lily—they look like they’d belong to a half-grown boy.”
Lily struggled to her feet. She didn’t want to show herself to Caleb, but if she stayed in the water any longer she wouldn’t be able to walk. Furiously, shivering with cold, she struggled to the shore. “You know very well they belong to me!” she raged, tearing the clothes from Caleb’s hand and starting to put them on.
It was a difficult task, since her skin was wet, but she managed. When she turned around again Caleb was squatting beside her fire, and a small blaze was just catching under the wood.
Lily glared at him. “How did you do that?” she demanded.
“I lit a match,” Caleb responded. “Elementary stuff.”
Giving a wide berth to the log where the ants kept residence, Lily found a smooth rock and, after a careful inspection, sat down upon it to pull on her shoes. When that was done she reached out for her valise and opened it.
She was brushing her sodden, badly tangled hair when Caleb spoke again.
“Hungry?” he asked.
Lily’s stomach grumbled. “Yes,” she admitted grudgingly.
Caleb fetched his saddle bags and tossed them to Lily. “There’s some hard candy in there. Maybe that’ll hold you until I can shoot a rabbit.”
Lily fairly clawed open the leather flaps. After a few moments of ferreting through the bags she found the candy and popped several pieces into her mouth. “I suppose you think I don’t know how to survive in the wilderness,” she began, her words garbled by the candy. “But the fact is …”
Caleb turned away, pulling the pistol from his holster and spinning the chamber with a practiced thumb. As Lily watched he took bullets from his belt and loaded the gun. “We’ll talk about your survival later,” he said uncharitably. Then he turned and strode away into the gathering darkness.
A few minutes later the sound of a shot echoed through the evening air, and Lily winced. Still, she was glad to see Caleb stride back into the light of the campfire. Using a pocket knife and several small tree branches he made a spit and put the freshly skinned rabbit on to roast.
By that time Lily had consumed all the hard candy in Caleb’s saddle bags, but she was still ravenous.
“Were you following me?” she asked, hugging her knees and watching her supper cook.
“Yes,” Caleb answered in his direct way. He sat down across from Lily, and the firelight did a primitive dance over his features. “I wanted to see how you could get by on your own.”
He didn’t need to tell Lily that she’d failed the test miserably; she knew, and her pride had been stripped as bare as the supper rabbit. “I thought I could reach Tylerville, at least, before nightfall.”
Somewhere in a nearby copse of pine trees an owl hooted, and in the distance coyotes howled at the rising moon. Caleb glanced toward Dancer, who was grazing a few yards away. “You might have made it if you hadn’t bought such a fool horse.”
Lily felt called upon to defend Dancer, even though she privately agreed. “He’s pretty,” she said after taking several moments to search her mind for something favorable to say.
Caleb stood up to turn the rabbit on its spit. “Look how far that got you.”
“I suppose your horse could make better time.”
“Without a doubt,” the major answered. “As it is, we’re both stuck here for the night, so there isn’t much sense in arguing.”
Lily rested her chin on her updrawn knees and sighed. Now that Caleb was there the night didn’t seem quite so dark, and she had to admit she would have been half-starved by morning if not for him. All the same, agreeing with him didn’t come easily. “Did you persuade Bianca to stay on in Tylerville?”
Caleb favored Lily with an infuriating grin as he sat down again, this time a little closer to her. “Maybe,” he replied.
Lily lowered her eyes. “That’s certainly a vague answer.”
“We can talk about Bianca another time. Right now I want to know why the hell you took off like that. You could have run into a lot of trouble out here by yourself.”
She sniffed, hoping Caleb wouldn’t guess how near tears she was. “I’ve told you before?m not afraid to be on my own.”
Caleb stirred the fire, and a shower of crimson sparks rose up to mate with the silver stars scattered across the sky. “Only because you haven’t got the good sense to be,” he replied, but his tone wasn’t inflammatory.
Tired and discouraged, Lily let her head rest against the rounding of his shoulder and sighed. “Are you and Bianca taking up again?”
Caleb laughed. “Hardly. But I’ll admit I enjoyed letting you think that for a while.”
“Surely you don’t believe I cared,” Lily bluffed with the last of her bravado. It was getting cold, even near the fire, and she hugged herself.
Caleb took off his coat and put it over Lily’s shoulders. The scent and weight of it brought back memories that made her cheeks grow warm. “You didn’t care?”
Lily considered, recalling Reverend Sommers’s thunderous declarations that all liars go straight to hell when they die. “Maybe I cared a little,” she said in a small voice. “Just a very little.”
He caught her left hand in his and lifted it so that the diamond sparkled in the firelight. “I see you haven’t cut off your finger yet.”
Lily smiled sleepily. “That would have hurt too much.” She paused to sniff the air. “Is that rabbit ready? I’m starved.”
Caleb prodded the meat with the tip of his knife. “Not quite,” he answered, settling down beside Lily again. His arm slipped around her shoulders, and she was too tired, she told herself, to shrug it off.
She turned her head to look up at him. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“For what?” Caleb asked, watching her face with an expression of tenderness that made her throat constrict.
“For fixing that rabbit,” Lily replied, “and for not yelling at me or giving me a lecture on my foolhardy ways.”
Caleb kissed her forehead lightly, the way one might kiss a grubby, disgruntled child. “Believe me, if I thought it would help, I’d yell.”
Lily drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Except for her ravenous hunger, she felt content. “I think I should have bought a rifle. It’s time I learned to shoot better.”
“Now there’s a reassurin
g thought,” Caleb remarked in a wry tone of voice. He speared the rabbit again, took it off the spit, and deftly cut it into pieces, which he laid carefully on a tin plate from his saddle bags.
Lily picked up a large chunk of the steaming, fragrant meat and bit into it. “This is good,” she said with her mouth full.
Caleb kissed her greasy lips. “What an interesting addition you’d be to afternoon tea in Fox Chapel,” he laughed.
Lily was hurt. “What an embarrassment, you mean.”
“Never.”
Assuaged, at least for the moment, Lily continued to eat, andwhen the meal had ended she and Caleb went down to the stream together to wash their faces and hands.
“You’re really a very good cook,” Lily remarked. They were so far from the fire that Caleb was little more than a moving shadow in the darkness.
“Thanks,” he responded lightly. “If you have any business to take care of, you’d better do it now, because you’re not going to want to leave the fire by yourself.”
He was right, but Lily was mortified at the prospect of relieving herself with a man present. “Turn your back,” she said, unbuttoning her trousers.
Caleb laughed. “I can’t see you, Lily. It’s too dark.”
“I don’t care.”
Lily heard the rustle of small stones as he turned away. Naturally, the moon came out from behind its cloud the moment she crouched, bathing her and the rest of the landscape in silver light. A man of his word, Caleb was indeed facing in the other direction.
“I hope there aren’t any Indians looking on,” Lily said, fastening her trousers.
Caleb chuckled. “So do I, Lily-flower, but for entirely different reasons.”
She walked confidently toward the snapping heat and comforting glow of the fire. “You’re just trying to scare me.”
Caleb had taken his bedroll from the back of his horse when he unsaddled it. Now he smoothed it out on the grassy ground. “You can keep the first watch,” he said, sitting down on the bedroll and pulling off his boots.
Lily’s eyes were wide. “What do I do if I see something?”
Lily and the Major Page 20