“Lily, you’re not your mother.”
“No,” Lily agreed sadly, turning to face Mrs. Tibbet, her hands clasped in front of her. “But Mama was young and happy once, and she must have thought she was in love with my father. She married him, she had his children. And then something changed, and she began to drink. Papa went away—I don’t even remember him—and the men started coming around, one after the other …”
Gertrude came to take Lily’s hands in her own. “Things will be different for you,” she said quietly. “You’re strong, and so is Caleb. Oh, Lily, don’t be afraid to take a chance.”
At that moment the colonel thundered from the hallway that he was going to have his supper right then whether the women cared to come to the table or not, and Lily smiled. “I promise I’ll think things through very carefully, Mrs. Tibbet.”
“Don’t take too long,” Gertrude answered, ushering her toward the door of the study. “Fate can take the strangest twists and turns, sealing us off from someone when we least expect it.”
At supper Caleb and the colonel discussed military tactics while Lily and Mrs. Tibbet talked of dress patterns and the need to reform Suds Row. For all Lily could tell, Caleb wasn’t even aware of her presence; but when dinner was over and she excused herself to leave, he immediately volunteered to walk her home.
Chapter
15
The moon seemed to ride on Caleb’s right shoulder as he stood facing Lily at the door of her cottage. The walk there from the Tibbet house had been accomplished mostly in silence, but now he swept his hat from his head and cleared his throat.
Lily braced herself.
“There’s something I’ve got to tell you—about your homestead,” he began.
“If you’re planning to give me another lecture, Caleb, kindly keep it to yourself.”
A muscle bunched in his jaw, then relaxed again. “All right, have it your way. Good night, Lily.”
She waited for Caleb to kiss her, but he only put his hat back on, turned, and went down the steps. Lily watched him for a few moments, then opened her door and entered.
The interior of the cottage was dark, and Lily felt a tremor of fear as she groped for the lamp she’d left on the sideboard, along with a box of matches. She heard a movement in the blackness and dived for the door, a scream gathering in her throat.
A strong hand clamped over her mouth before the sound could escape, and though Lily struggled, she was dragged back inside the cottage. Her attacker was wiry and strong, and he smelled of liquor and stale sweat. She knew who he was even before he pulled her over to the table and struck a match to light the lamp, even before he gagged her with a bandanna and tied her hands behind her and came around to face her.
“Go ahead and try to get away,” said Judd Ingram. “That’ll make it all the sweeter.”
Lily was terrified, but she wouldn’t allow Judd the satisfaction of knowing that. She let the expression in her eyes tell him what she thought of his kind.
He rounded the table and cupped her chin in one hand. “What a pretty little thing you are. I bet you just carry on something fierce when the major’s loving you. Well, tonight I’ll be the one who gives you what you need.”
If Lily hadn’t been gagged, she would have spit in his face. She lifted her chin to a defiant angle and glared.
Judd strode over to the bed and fng back the blankets and the top sheet. While he was doing that, Lily looked wildly around the room for some way of escape. Her only chance, she realized, lay in creating a diversion.
She bent over and, with a motion of one shoulder, upset the kerosene lamp in the center of the table. The glass chimney shattered, and liquid flame snaked out in every direction.
Lily leapt back out of the way while Judd cursed and began beating at the flames with a blanket. He was too late, though, for the fire seemed to flow from the lamp like magic, and soon the blanket itself was burning.
Lily ran for the door and flung herself against it, momentarily panicked by the spreading fire. Then her good sense came back, and she turned around to work the latch with her bound hands. She was on the brink of freedom when Judd grabbed her by her hair and flung her backwards toward the leaping flames.
Behind her gag Lily screamed. The fire was all around her, catching at her dress, singeing her skin with its heat. She struggled to her feet and ran toward the gaping door, hurtling through it. Outside, she lay down in the muddy grass and rolled until she was sure her clothes weren’t burning anymore.
The schoolmaster, a small, lithe man with thinning yellow hair and compassionate gray eyes, was the first to reach the scene. Lily was weeping in terror when he untied her gag and helped her free her hands from the length of rope Judd had used to bind her.
“In the name of heaven,” gasped the teacher, “what happened here?”
Lily looked back at the cottage. Flames were roiling behind the windows; it was as though hell itself had somehow broken through the ground to show it wasn’t bound to the bowels of the earth. Ignoring the schoolmaster’s question, she ran toward the house; her mother’s address, the temporary deed to the homestead, and every item of clothing she owned were inside.
Miraculously, despite the smoke and the heat, Lily managed to find her valise. There were no clothes in it, but it did contain the deed to her land and a few small personal items.
She collided with Corporal Pierce on the step, and he put strong arms around her and pulled her away. She heard the clang-clang of a fire bell and fainted.
When she awakened Caleb was there, and soldiers were everywhere, doing their best to contain the blaze. There was obviously no hope of saving the house.
“Oh, Caleb,” Lily whispered, “my business is gone—my clothes—”
His face was rigid. Without a word of explanation to Lily or anyone around him, he lifted her into his arms, along with her charred, battered carpetbag, and started out of the yard. They were well down the street before he rasped, “What happened?”
Lily wanted a few moments to compose herself before she told him. “Where are we going?” she countered, reaching up to brush a stray lock of sooty hair from her face.
He crossed the street, moving rapidly toward the row of houses where the officers lived. Lily assumed they were going to the Tibbet house and didn’t press.
But Caleb went right on past the Tibbet place, and past its neighbor, too. He kicked open the gate of the third houseand started up the walk.
“Caleb,” Lily said. She’d managed to calm herself somewhat once the immediate crisis of the fire was past, but now she was beginning to feel alarmed again.
He didn’t stop, didn’t even look at her as he carried her up the front steps, across the porch, and into his house. In the musty parlor, with its ghostly, covered furniture, he set her on her feet.
“How did it start?” he asked finally, turning away from her to stand facing the snapping fire on his hearth. Even the cloth of his shirt didn’t hide the uncompromising rigidity of his back and shoulder muscles.
Lily looked around the shadowy room, stalling for time. If she told the truth, she knew Caleb would do something rash and probably ruin his career in the process, yet she didn’t see where she had any real choice. “There was a man inside my cottage when you left. He gagged me and tied me up.”
Caleb whirled. “What?”
Lily wet her lips, hating to go on, yet knowing that she must. That she would be forced to, if she refused. “I tipped over a lamp, and he panicked and ran.”
Caleb’s gaze swept over Lily’s singed hair, her burned, soot-stained dress. “My God.”
She started to approach him. “I’m all right, Caleb. Isn’t that the important thing?”
He caught her shoulders in his hands. “Who?” he rasped.
Lily closed her eyes for a moment. God knew she had no desire to protect Judd Ingram from justice, but she didn’t want Caleb dealing with him in this state of mind. “I’m not going to tell you,” she said gently. Decisively. “No
t until morning.”
Caleb’s jawline went taut, and his grasp tightened on her shoulders. His tone of voice was a warning. “Lily … ”
She stood her ground. “Whatever our differences, Caleb Halliday,” she said firmly, “I love you, and I won’t see you court-martialed or hanged because of something you did in the heat of anger.”
He freed her abruptly and turned away, and she knew a battle was going on between the reasoning part of him and the savage that all men and women harbor somewhere within themselves. Lily wandered over to a gun cabinet and assessed the rifles lined up behind the dusty glass.
“I want to practice my marksmanship,” she said.
“Touch those rifles and I’ll tan your hide,” Caleb warned.
Lily squared her shoulders. “I’ll just have to do it on my own, I guess. Though I daresay there are plenty of soldiers on this post who would be glad to help me.”
Caleb had poured himself a drink, and the look in his eyes was deadly. “I’ll personally horsewhip the man who tries,” he said in a dangerous undertone.
Lily ignored the remark. “Well, I guess I’d better go and ask Mrs. Tibbet if I can rely on her kindness for somewhere to sleep tonight. Good night, Caleb.” She started toward the hall, but she didn’t get to the parlor doorway before the major stopped her.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he breathed. And even though Lily knew it was fear for her safety and not cruelty that drove him, she was annoyed.
“Let me go, Caleb.”
His grip tightened. “You’ll spend the night here,” he said.
Lily’s eyes widened. “Caleb, it’s bad enough that I’m alone with you under this roof right now. Can you imagine what people will say if I stay till morning?”
“1 don’t give a damn what they say,” Caleb replied, and Lily knew he’d never been more serious about anything.
“I’ll be ruined!” Lily protested.
“You’re already ruined,” Caleb said, letting her go so he could toss back the last of his drink and set the glass down on the sideboard with a clunk. “Besides, there’s something I want to find out.”
“Wh-what?” Lily asked, retreating a step.
“Whether you lied to me when you said you couldn’t be carrying my child.”
Lily’s cheeks flushed crimson. “Caleb Halliday!”
He arched one eyebrow and drew nearer. In a motion Lily couldn’t possibly have foreseen or prevented, he lifted her off her feet again, cradling her in his arms.
“I’ll scream,” she warned, for already he was starting to bewitch her with one of his mysterious spells.
His lips were a fraction of an inch from hers. “Maybe,” he answered, “but not in pain or fear.”
Lily whimpered as his mouth tamed hers. A fire as hot as the kerosene blaze in the cottage ignited in her loins. “Caleb,” she gasped when he finally relented and lifted his head to look directly into her eyes.
“Only the beginning,” he vowed, starting toward the darkened stairway.
“I won’t let you do this,” Lily protested, though she hadn’t the faintest idea how she was going to stop him.
“Won’t you?” He climbed the stairs, then moved swiftly along a hallway. Lily winced, her arms wrapped around his neck, when she heard a door fly inward and strike the wall.
She landed hard on a bed and started to scramble up, only to have Caleb press her back to the mattress. Her legs were dangling over the side, and they were separated because Caleb was standing between them.
He stretched to light a lamp on the bedside table, and the flame drove back the shadows just a little way, revealing Caleb’s determined face and the carved mahogany of the bedstead.
He caught hold of one of her feet and began untying her shoelaces. The fingers of his left hand curved with a gentle possessiveness around Lily’s calf.
“What are you doing?” she managed to demand.
“I told you,” Caleb answered, tossing the shoe aside and starting to roll down her ribbed stocking. The process was slow and sensuous, and Lily drew in a sharp breath when she felt his hand caress her upper thigh.
She tried again, sounding very reasonable. “Caleb, this is madness.”
He was taking off her other shoe, turning down her stocking. Again he moved with excruciating leisure. “What is love if not madness?” he countered. Now both her thighs were being petted, and his thumbs strayed lightly over the soft place hidden beneath her drawers.
Lily trembled, but when she tried to say his name it caught in her throat. She raised her arms high above her head and stretched as a feeling of anticipation swept over her, but she couldn’t have spoken to save herself from the entire Sioux nation.
Caleb pulled her drawers down in the same languorous way he’d removed her stockings, then knelt between her legs. “You lied,” he said softly, running a finger over the tangle of golden curls at the meeting place of Lily’s thighs.
She twisted on the rough, nubby bedspread, her confession hardly more than a breath. “Yes.”
His shoulders forced her legs wide apart. He kissed her lightly, just where she needed and wanted kissing, and her body convulsed, seeking greater contact. He put his hands under her smooth bottom and squeezed gently, as though testing fruit for ripeness. “You’re badly in need of a husband,” he scolded in a very low voice.
Lily could only utter a sharp “Oh!” as she felt his breath sweeping over her. She ached, and only Caleb could appease her.
He put one of her legs over his shoulder, then the other. Lily felt his tongue make a brief, heated foray into her curls and arched her neck and back at the same time, thrusting herself closer to Caleb.
“A husband could look after you properly,” Caleb went on. Even the pressure of his words was a sweet torment against her throbbing, still-hidden flesh.
Lily clawed at the bedclothes. “Caleb,” she whispered. “Caleb.”
He chuckled at her eagerness and disciplined her lightly with his tongue. She cried out in response, then groaned her urgings, sounding primitive and wholly desperate.
He unveiled the hidden nubbin and kissed it in passing. “What do you promise in return for what you want?”
Lily gave a strangled cry of fury and need, and Caleb laughed again. She felt him withdraw, and she mourned, then rejoiced when she felt his fingers there, plying her. “Nothing!” she gasped. “I—promise—nothing!”
Caleb held her apart for a long, suspenseful moment, then lapped at her with his tongue.
“Oh, God!” Lily cried. Grasping Caleb’s head in her hands, she tried to press him back to her, but he resisted.
“Tell me, Lily.”
She was still his captive, though he refused her the conquering she desired so desperately. The very pressure of his breath was driving her mad, and so was the proximity of his lips and fingers to the center of her passion. “Anything,” she gasped. “I’ll say anything …”
Caleb laughed and touched her with his tongue, delighting in the way her hips flew at the fleeting parry. “That you’ll marry me?”
“Yes!” Lily groaned. “Yes—oh, God—I’ll marry you—”
Caleb’s voice cajoled her; she could feel the motion of his lips against her intimate place as he spoke. “You’re not just saying that?”
“No—it’s true—I swear it!”
“Scamp,” Caleb scolded, but then he settled down to enjoy her in earnest, and Lily’s spirit soared as her body thrashed wildly on the bed. He brought her to a scalding climax that made her buck on the mattress like a frenzied mare being broken to ride, then soothed her with his hands and voice as she lay quivering in the aftermath, struggling to get her breath.
During that session she lost the rest of her clothes and had no memory of shedding them.
Caleb turned her on the bed so that she lay properly and gripped her ankles to spread her legs. She made no move to close herself to him as he slowly removed his uniform shirt, his belt and boots, his trousers.
Lily cou
ld see herself in the full-length mirror affixed to the inside of the bedroom door, lying there waiting so obediently, and although the sight angered her, she still didn’t move. In that age-old way of women who want love when it’s happening, if not before or afterward, she had suspended every instinct but one.
Caleb didn’t trouble to blow out the lamp, and Lily didn’t care about that, either. She spread her fingers over his chest as he lowered himself to her, not to push him away, but to fondle and caress.
She felt heat in every part of her body, her toes, her midsection, her breasts. Even her eyes were like pools of liquid fire in her head, sweet fire that consumed without burning. She reached down to grasp Caleb by his shaft and delighted in the gasp she elicited.
He arched his neck as Lily attended him with her fingers, and he held himself above her with the strength of his arms. She slid beneath him, loosing him for a moment to grasp the backs of his knees in her hands and pull. When he was kneeling she drew him down into her mouth and began to tease and torment him just as he had teased and tormented her.
Her hands were on his powerful buttocks, her shoulders between his knees. Now it was Caleb who was the beloved prisoner, and Lily cherished him with her fiery touch. He moaned loudly and soon began to plead with her.
She would not release him, for she wanted all that he was. all that he would have withheld from her. She wanted tender vengeance.
His buttocks began to move rhythmically beneath her hands. His voice was as raspy as a rusty hinge on a gate; his words were senseless. Lily knew he was begging, and her triumph was delicious. She didn’t know whether he wanted her to stop or to continue, and she didn’t care. For now, Caleb belonged to her completely, and she would do with him as she pleased.
He surrendered with a hoarse shout and a swift stiffening of his body, and Lily stroked his buttocks and the muscular backs of his thighs tenderly as she received him. She held him captive for a few precious moments afterwards, and when she allowed him to collapse, exhausted, at her side, she kissed his belly and the front of his thighs and the delightful, hairy expanse of his chest.
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