“Scream,” Caleb replied, settling down into the makeshift bed and gazing up at the stars. His voice sounded as though he might nod off at any second.
“You can’t just leave me out here,” Lily reasoned. “If I’m not scalped, I’ll freeze to death.”
The firelight flickered in Caleb’s whiskey-colored eyes as he looked at her and tossed back the blanket. “Be my guest,” he said in a low voice.
Lily hesitated for only a moment, then she was sitting next to him, pulling off her shoes. “This is highly improper, of course,” she said as she snuggled in beside Caleb.
“There’s no denying that.”
Lying spoon fashion with Caleb, Lily could feel his masculinity against her buttocks. She shifted, trying to avoid the contact, but he shifted with her. She turned to face him, knowing he would win because he always did. “You can kiss me if you want to,” she offered.
He wrapped his arms around her and cradled her close. “Maybe in the morning,” he yawned.
“You’re not fooling me, Caleb,” Lily told him bluntly. “You’re hard.”
“So is the ground. Go to sleep, Lily.”
She couldn’t close her eyes, even though she was exhed. She was too aware of Caleb’s scent and warmth and strength. Soon she’d be homesteading and he’d be back in Pennsylvania, courting someone like Sandra, but for tonight he belonged to Lily alone. She began unbuttoning the front panel of his shirt.
“Lily.”
She kissed the hairy, muscled wall of his chest. “Ummm?”
“Stop it.”
Lily found a masculine nipple, hidden in down, and teased it with her tongue, eliciting a low, rumbling groan from Caleb.
But he grasped her wrists and thrust her roughly onto her back. “Enough, Lily.”
Her eyes were wide with confusion and hurt as she looked up at him. Not in her wildest imaginings would she have guessed that Caleb wouldn’t want her.
“You’re always so headstrong,” he marveled in a furious whisper. “So impulsive. You just do whatever comes into that demented little brain of yours, whether you have any idea of what you’re letting yourself in for or not.”
Lily tried to free her hands, but he wouldn’t let them go. In fact, he pulled them high above her head and held them easily with one hand. With the other he unbuttoned her flannel shirt.
“Caleb,” she whispered, “stop it!”
“You started this,” he answered, “I didn’t.” And he continued opening the buttons of her shirt until she was naked to the waist.
“I didn’t mean—”
“The hell you didn’t,” Caleb interrupted, and he lowered his head to take the straining peak of Lily’s bare breast into his mouth.
An involuntary groan escaped her, and she struggled again, without success, to free her hands. Caleb responded by spreading his fingers over the warmth of her belly and suckling all the more greedily.
Lily twisted from side to side, but he followed her with his mouth, and his hand deftly undid the buttons on her trousers. She felt them sliding downward over her hips. When they reached her knees Caleb positioned himself above her, letting her hands go at last.
She meant to push him away, but instead she found herself caressing the nape of his neck. “Caleb,” she murmured just before his mouth covered hers in a savage kiss.
When he broke away his eyes glittered, catching fragments of moonlight and turning them to amber. “God help me, I know I should turn away from you,” he breathed, “but I can’t. I need you so much, Lily. So much.”
With one powerful stroke he was inside her, and Lily arched her back in glorious surrender, gazing up at the millions of stars spattered across the sky and making a low, crooning sound in her throat.
Caleb moved slowly, involuntarily, upon her. “You little witch,” he rasped.
She was kissing the base of his throat, where a pulse beat furiously. Her hands moved beneath his shirt and down over his taut buttocks, pushing his trousers out of the way as they passed.
“I can’t hold back,” he groaned, and his hands slid beneath her bottom, lifting her to receive a ferocious, driving stroke. “I can’t stop—oh, God, Lily—Lily … ”
She waited for pain, for fear, for Caleb had never taken her with such primitive voracity; even in the moments of greatest intimacy there had been a restraint in him, however tenuous. Now there were no constraints; he was like a wild stallion, unpredictable, ruthless, driven by instinct.
Lily thrust her hips upward to receive him, and he lunged deep inside her, his head back, his teeth bared in the singular fury of passion. Even as her own body was racked with brutal tremors of satisfaction she soothed him, her hands caressing his face, his magnificent chest, his muscled back.
When he gave a warrior’s shout of victory and went still upon her Lily was almost overwhelmed with tenderness. She held him as he lay gasping and spent in her arms.
“Damn you!” was the first thing he managed to say.
Lily laughed, even though there were tears in her eyes. “Such tender words.”
“I could strangle you, you little vixen.” The words were still labored, and the anger in them was all too real. “You refuse to marry me, and yet you feel free to crawl into my bed and drive me straight out of my mind.”
She circled his nipple with the tip of one finger, delighting in the way his flesh grew taut in response. “Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?”
“No,” he bit out, pushing her hand away. “And stop that!”
Lily kissed his chin. “Don’t be so crabby, Caleb. How many times have you seduced me? I was only giving you some of your own medicine.”
He chuckled and fell to her neck, kissing the night-cooled, ivory flesh until it grew warm under his lips. This second time Caleb loved Lily with excruciating slowness, drawing response after response from her before taking her completely.
When it was over Caleb pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “Good night, sodbuster,” he murmured.
Lily slept deeply, dreamlessly, and when she awakened the sun was shining in her face and Caleb was nowhere about. For a terrible moment she believed he’d left her, and she raised herself on one elbow to look around.
The horses were both tethered nearby, but there was no sign of Caleb.
Lily buttoned her shirt and righted her trousers, which had worked their way down around her ankles. She was climbing out of the bedroll when Caleb returned, grinning.
“Morning,” he said, running his eyes over Lily’s rumpled clothes with amused appreciation.
Feeling strangely shy, Lily averted her eyes. “Good morning,” she mumbled. Seeing her shoes a short distance away, she fetched them and sat down on Caleb’s bedroll to tie the laces.
“We’ll get some breakfast in Tylerville,” he announced, starting to saddle Lily’s horse. “While we’re there you’d better put on a dress and do something with your hair. There’s going to be talk enough when we come back to Fort Deveraux together.”
Lily dreaded the prospect. Now that her return was imminent she remembered the unfriendly woman on the stagecoach, and the two ladies who had whisked their skirts aside when they passed her on the sidewalk. “There are times when I wish I’d never left Spokane in the first place,” she confided despondently.
Caleb’s smile was warm and reassuring. “As much trouble as you are, I’m still glad you did,” he answered.
Lily looked at him and then glanced quickly away again. She’d been brazen the night before, and the memory shamed her, reminded her that she was no better than her mother had been. “People don’t dare snub you,” she pointed out brokenly. “Women don’t pull their skirts aside or forbid their children to speak to you.”
He came to her and pulled her to her feet. “What are you talking about?”
She explained haltingly, in a small voice. “They think I’m a tramp,” she finished miserably, and then she covered her face with both hands. “And maybe they’re right.”
; Caleb pulled her hands down and shook his head. “Lily, all you’ve got to do to shut them up is marry me. Do that and they’ll be polishing your shoe buckles.”
“I can’t,” Lily whispered. “Caleb, you know I can’t, and you know why.”
With a ragged sigh he released her. He kicked dirt over the last of the fire and went back to finish saddling the horses.
An hour later he and Lily rode into Tylerville. Even though they avoided the main street of town, they still drew plenty of notice.
Caleb rented a room for Lily at the hotel, ordered fresh, hot water sent up, and then disappeared into the saloon. Lily climbed the stairs to her room, valise in hand, hair falling around her shoulders in a series of tangles. Two elderly women stared openly at her trousers and shirt as she moved along the upper hallway.
She put her tongue out at them and unlocked her door.
She was sitting slumped on the bed when a maid arrived with a huge bathtub, which she set in the middle of the room. The woman was plump, with dark hair and severe features, and her eyes moved over Lily’s clothes and hair with frank curiosity.
“Your man said to send up breakfast, along with the hot water.”
“Major Halliday is not my man,” Lily said tartly. She was too discouraged and too weary to defend herself properly.
“He gives the orders and you follow them,” the maid pointed out. “That means he’s your man.”
Lily was stumped for an answer, but she glared until the woman wilted a little and crept out of the room.
Charlie Mayfield brought her breakfast in person, and he whistled in amazement when he saw her clothes. “Pants? The major’s got you wearin’ pants?”
“It was my idea,” Lily said defensively, wrenching the tray out of his hands and sting over to the table beside the window. “Furthermore, I’m getting tired of everyone going around assuming that I do a somersault every time Caleb Halliday snaps his fingers!”
Charlie cackled at that. “He’s got his work cut out for him, the major has. But I figure he’s man enough to handle the job.”
Lily lifted the lid off a plate of sausage, eggs, and fried potatoes and began to eat. Her motions were quickened not only by temper, but by hunger. “If he’s down there telling everyone that he’s got some kind of hold over me,” she said between bites, “he’s lying!”
Charlie was as tickled as a gossipy old spinster. “He didn’t have to say nothin’. Just bringin’ you in here and orderin’ up breakfast and a bath said it all.”
Lily supposed it did, and her shoulders sagged in temporary defeat. “I’m ruined,” she said.
“I reckon that’s so, unless you marry him. People’ll come around soon enough if you do that.”
“I’m not going to sign away the next fifty years of my life just to keep the gossips happy,” Lily said, waving a butter-milk biscuit for emphasis.
Charlie shook his head, marveling. Before he could offer a reply, however, there was another knock at the door, and Lily called out a grudging “Come in!”
The maid entered again, burdened down with two bucketfuls of steaming hot water. Charlie looked at the tub, then at Lily, shook his head again, and walked out muttering.
By the time Lily had finished her breakfast the maid had carried up enough water to fill the tub.
Lily locked the door after the woman was gone, then put a chair under the knob for good measure. Caleb had walked in on one of her baths before; he wasn’t going to get a second opportunity.
The water was cooling rapidly, so Lily took a fast and vigorous bath. When it was over she put on drawers and a camisole and petticoat, then took her good yellow dress from her valise and shook it out.
It was still wrinkled when she put it on, but there was no helping that. She took the chair out from under the doorknob, turned the key in the lock, and left the room with her head held high.
She found Elmira McAllister just starting up the stairs. “So it’s true,” Lily’s former landlady gasped, laying a hand to her breast. A spot of color glowed on each cheek. “Folks saw you riding into town sneaky-like with Major Halliday. So I was sent to find out. Are you his wife or not?”
“It’s none of your business whose wife I am, if I’m anybody’s,” Lily replied, but she was careful to let the ring Caleb had given her show. The diamond was practically as big as a bird’s egg; let the town’s busybodies talk about that.
“You’ll regret being so uppity when no decent woman will have you to tea or sit next to you in church.”
Lily’s aplomb deserted her. “Mrs. McAllister, I—”
She was cut off. “You’ve had your warning, Lily Chalmrs,” the older woman said, shaking a finger in Lily’s face. “Just remember the words of St. Paul—it’s better to marry than to burn!”
With that she stormed off, leaving Lily to wonder whether she had a friend left in the world. By now even Gertrude Tibbet and Velvet Hughes had probably turned against her.
Chapter
14
When Caleb didn’t return to the hotel immediately Lily went to look for him. She checked the saloons first, peeking in over the swinging doors, and was vastly relieved not to see him there among the midday revelers.
He wasn’t in the general store or the land office or the blacksmith’s shop, either. That left the livery stable.
Arriving there, Lily found Caleb hitching his horse to a buggy. Dancer was in a nearby stall, contentedly chewing grain.
Lily smoothed the hopelessly rumpled skirts of her best dress and approached. “I’m ruined,” she confided miserably. “Everyone hates me.”
“I don’t,” Caleb pointed out.
Lily was not consoled. “You’re a man,” she retorted, “and that doesn’t count.”
Caleb arched his eyebrows at that but said nothing.
“Your people back in Pennsylvania—what are they like?” Caleb finished his work and turned to face Lily, his arms folded. Because the barn was shadowy and he was wearing that blasted campaign hat of his she could barely see his face. “Decent, hardworking, ordinary enough.”
“Rich?” Lily inquired.
“Yes, you could say that.”
Lily sighed. Marrying the major might eliminate her current dilemma, but once the back-east Hallidays got a good look at her the snobbery would begin all over again. Caleb’s family would wonder what had possessed their long-lost son to choose an orphan with a questionable reputation for his wife.
He curved a finger under her chin and lifted it. “They’d take to you immediately, sodbuster,” he said. “It’s me they’ve got no use for.”
“And if they didn’t?”
“They would. Now let’s get back to the fort—that is, unless you want to stop at the church and get married first.”
Lily thought for a moment, then shook her head.
Caleb sighed, walking away to bring Dancer out of his stall and tether him to the back of the buggy. Lily didn’t wait for him to help her but stowed her valise under the seat and climbed up on her own. She averted her eyes when Caleb settled in beside her, released the brake lever, and took up the reins.
He whistled to the horse, and it bolted forward, drawing the rig out through the double doorway of the stable into the bright sunlight. “Our children are going to be remarkably stuborn,” he commented as they started down the main street of town.
Lily tried to ignore the avid stares of passers-by. “We aren’t going to have any children,” she said. Some instinct caused her to lie. “My—my monthly arrived today.”
Caleb fell silent, and in a sidelong glance Lily saw his disappointment. She laid a hand on his arm but could not. bring herself to admit the truth. If the major believed there was no child—indeed, no possibility of a child—he might stop pursuing Lily. The sooner he gave up, the sooner she could get on with building up her homestead and finding her sisters.
She bit down on her lower lip. Of course, if there was a baby growing inside her, would it be fair to let Caleb go back to Fox Chapel wi
thout ever knowing he was about to become a father?
The quandary made Lily feel sick to her stomach, and she put it aside to enjoy the warm sunshine of the day. Wildflowers were blooming in profusion along both sides of the rutted country road, and the sky was that particular, pungent shade of blue that always made her throat go tight.
They traveled in relative silence until they reached Lily’s land. There Caleb stopped to let the horses rest and drink from the creek.
Lily scanned the surrounding area with satisfaction, but her smile faded when she saw the Indians lining the top of the small rise to the south. There were six of them, and they were carrying rifles.
“Caleb,” Lily whispered.
He turned from the horses to glance at her curiously. “What?”
“Indians,” she managed to say. “Over there, on the rise!”
He turned in a leisurely fashion to look toward the hillside, making no move to take his pistol from its holster or dive for the rifle Lily had seen him put under the seat back in Tylerville. “Son of a gun,” he remarked, sounding interested but not alarmed.
Impatient, Lily started to reach under the seat.
“No sudden moves, sodbuster,” Caleb warned calmly without even glancing in her direction. “They don’t take well to things like that.”
Lily sat still as a stone, her fingers itching for the rifle even though she didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with it. Do something! she wanted to scream as the Indians rode down the hill at a cautious pace. “They’ll probably scalp me,” she fretted through her teeth.
“If they don’t, I will,” Caleb replied.
At that, Lily fell silent. Her eyes grew wider and wider as the Indians rode nearer on their squat, stout ponies. Their dark hair hung down around their shoulders, but that was their only similarity to the illustrations in Typhoon Sally and the other books Lily read with such relish. Instead of being bare-chested, like literary savages, they wore oddly cut calico shirts. Rather than loincloths they sported ordinary trousers, and their moccasins weren’t moccasins at all—they were plain black boots of the type available in any mercantile.
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