“They’ll be all right until tomorrow,” Caleb replied, urging her down the wooden sidewalk toward the house he had been assigned as a concession to his rank.
Lamps burned in the windows of Caleb’s parlor, and there was smoke curling from the chimney. Lily was pleased that he’d been there and made preparations. It meant he loved her.
When they reached the porch, and Caleb had opened the door, he swept Lily up in his arms and carried her across the threshold. The moment they were inside, away from the eyes of interested neighbors, he covered her mouth with his in a consuming kiss.
Lily felt her bones melt within her, along with all her misgivings. Her arms wrapped around Caleb’s neck, and she responded wholeheartedly to the kiss. When it was over she took his hat from his head and tossed it away.
“I love you, Major Halliday,” she said boldly.
“How much?” he teased in a low, husky voice.
“I couldn’t possibly tell you.”
He nibbled at her lower lip for a moment, still holding her in his arms. “Will you show me?”
“Oh, yes,” Lily whispered, kissing him lightly.
Caleb carried her up the stairs and along the hallway to the master bedroom. There was a fire snapping on the hearth. The bed was made up with crisp, clean sheets turned back in a welcoming fashion.
The major set Lily in a chair near the fire, and he dropped to one knee in front of her, took her hand in his, and kissed it He looked so like a prince from a fairy tale that Lily was nearly overcome.
“I didn’t make a proper proposal before,” he said quietly.
“Oh, Caleb.”
“There’s never been anyone else for me, Lily,” he went on, “and there never will be again. I’m promising you right now that your happiness will always be as important to me as my own.”
Lily’s eyes brimmed with joyous tears. Why had she waited so long? She put her arms around Caleb’s neck and embraced him, and his head was cradled against the plump cushion of her breasts. “I love you so much,” she whispered.
He looked up at her, a glint dancing in his eyes. “Show me, Mrs. Halliday.”
Lily sat up very straight in the chair. “Very well, then, Major, I will,” she said in a most proper tone of voice. “If you’ll just unfasten the back of my dress …”
Caleb reached behind her to comply, and his usually deft fingers fumbled at the task. It touched Lily to know that he was nervous on this special night, even after all that had gone before.
When he’d finally managed to work the last button Lily slowly lowered the gossamer bodice of her borrowed wedding gown. She was bare beneath it, since it wouldn’t have accommodated a camisole, and Caleb drew in his breath at the sight of her breasts, as though he’d never seen them before.
Lily traced his mouth with the tip of her index finger, then brought him gently forward to her nipple, and he took it hungrily. While he suckled she ran her hands through his soft, wheat-colored hair, encouraging him. Presently he took sustenance at the other breast, and Lily relaxed her hands and let her head fall back in sheer contentment. She could have gone on nourishing Caleb like that for hours, the sensation was so piercingly blissful, but eventually he had his fill.
Without rising from his knees he lifted Lily’s skirts and petticoat, letting the froth of lace and silk fall over the sides of the chair. Then he untied the ribbons that held her drawers closed.
Lily moaned as he drew them down over her legs and thighs and feet, then tossed them away.
He lifted one of her knees over one arm of the chair, and the opposite knee over the other. His hands caressed Lily’s inner thighs. “Show me how much you love me, Mrs. Halliday,” he said.
Lily was filled with sweet despair. Never had she been so totally vulnerable to Caleb, never had she enjoyed it more. She parted the silken veil for him and started, with a whimper, when he touched her treasure with his tongue. She tried to draw her knees together—the pleasure was too keen to be borne—but Caleb held them firmly over the arms of the chair.
He laved her once, lightly, and her fingers went back to his hair, knotting there, trying to press him closer.
Caleb chuckled against her spicy warmth. “This one is going to take a lot out of you, sodbuster,” he promised.
Lily was writhing slightly, but she couldn’t go far because Caleb was holding her knees. Her vision blurred and her breath quickened as he sampled her again, and she gasped his name.
“Do you like that, Lily?”
“Oh,” she whimpered. “Oh, Caleb …”
“Do you?”
“Yes! Oh, yes!”
He took her full into his mouth, and he was greedy. Lily rocked wildly with pleasure, her hands clawing at his shoulders.
Caleb brought her to the very brink, then nipped her lightly with his teeth. With a lusty cry she gave up in an explosive surrender, her hips buckling as he wrung every last response from her.
When it was over she sagged in the chair, too dazed to speak. Caleb gently brought her legs back together, lifted her from the chair and set her on the bed. There he tenderly undressed her, and when she lay naked before him, her legs spread wide as he wanted them, he took off his own clothes without ever looking away from her face.
When he was as bare as she, he mounted her.
Lily was ready for him; her satisfaction had only made her long to be filled with Caleb, to be a part of him, to extract cries of pleasure from him as he had done with her.
But Caleb, as usual, was stubborn. He came back to Lily’s mouth and kissed her, and his shaft was positioned to enter her. Lily tried to enclose him with a thrust of her hips and instead got just an inch of him, enough to tease her.
She begged him to take her, but he only kissed her again and gave her another inch. Wild with need, Lily clasped his buttocks in her hands and pressed him to her with all her might. This time he allowed her to prevail, giving her his full length.
Pressing his hands into the mattress, he raised himself upon her and began to thrust and withdraw, his pace slow and steady and calculated to drive Lily mad. Finally, in desperation, she flung her legs around his hips and would not let him leave her.
“I love you, Lily,” he groaned against her neck, and then he lunged deep.
She arched her back and cried out for joy, and from that moment on they were both lost. The tempo increased second by second until they were heaving their bodies together in unreasoning need. The crescendo of their two quests tore cries from both their throats and hurled them back to the mattress in utter exhaustion.
Lily had promised herself that this would be the time she would tell Caleb about the letter that had prompted her decision to marry him, but she was too spent to shape the words. She snuggled close to him beneath the covers and slept until desire shook them awake again, demanding every scrap of energy they’d regained through rest.
The next day, at midmorning, Caleb and Lily went home again, because Lily was worried about her chickens.
When they reached the homestead the chicks were still chirping merrily in their box. When Lily had fed and watered them and caressed a few lightly with her fingertips, she was happy again.
Laughing, Caleb gave her a long kiss and a swat on the bottom, and he warned her that he intended to have her well and truly that night when he returned from the post. Lily didn’t much mind the prospect; so far, it had been easy to love, honor, and obey.
Once Caleb was gone she made sure Dancer was all right, then ventured to the old house to see what could be done to make it habitable for the chicks. They would need heat, since they were so small, but that was no problem. There was still a rickety old cook stove there, and Lily filled it with kling and got a nice blaze going.
After that she put the chicks close by, still in their crate, since she had no chicken wire to contain them, and made sure they had food and water. When that was done she dragged the big tub from its peg on the rear wall and carried it to the new house, where she set it in the yard, in the v
ery place where she and Caleb had bathed.
Once she’d filled it with creek water she built a fire around the base of the tub. When Caleb returned early that afternoon she was industriously washing clothes. She had a smaller tub for rinse water, and a line, bought in Tylerville the day before, stretched from the corner of the new house to the corner of the old one. Clean shirts, petticoats, dresses, trousers, and drawers all flapped in the fresh May breeze.
Lily stopped her work to throw her arms around Caleb’s neck. “Home so soon, Major?”
He gave her an energetic kiss. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, sodbuster.”
Lily delighted in being held so close to him, but her pleasure faded a little when she remembered that there had been a letter for him from someone in Fox Chapel, as well as the one from her mother’s lawyer.
She left Caleb’s arms and rolled down her sleeves.
His eyes held a bewildered expression. “Lily, what is it?” “Yesterday, when I went to Tylerville, there was a letter for you. I forgot to mention it, with all the excitement.”
Caleb’s eyes cleared a little. “Where is it?”
She fetched it from the table beside her bed and brought it outside to him.
He frowned as he assessed the handwriting on the envelope, and Lily turned and walked toward the house as he opened it. Somehow she knew it was going to change things for them, just as the letter about her mother’s death had done.
“W-would you like something to eat?” she asked, aware that he’d followed her. She busied herself stoking up the fire in the stove and ladling water into the pot to brew coffee.
“Nothing you’re prepared to serve right this moment,” Caleb replied in a distracted voice. Then he was silent.
When Lily could bear that silence no longer, when it had stretched on and on for what seemed like an eternity, she turned to face him. “Caleb, what is it?”
“It’s from my brother Joss,” Caleb answered. The letter lay on the table beside him, and he was staring out the window as though he could see some long-ago scene just beyond the glass.
Lily drew a deep breath, then let it out again. She wondered why she hadn’t seen it in Caleb before, this desperate wish to go back to Pennsylvania and confront his past. It was probably every bit as consuming as her own need to see her sisters again.
“He wants you to come home to Fox Chapel,” she said.
“No,” Caleb answered without even looking at her, his tone gravelly. “He wants to buy my share of the farm so he can forget he ever had a brother.”
Although Caleb’s expression and bearing wereunreadable, Lily knew he was wounded. She went to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Can he do that?”
At last Caleb looked up at her. The reflections of a thousand yesterdays were visible in his golden eyes. “I suppose. Joss is a powerful man, and he has a lot of influence in Pennsylvania.”
Lily caressed her husband’s cheeks. She longed to comfort Caleb, but she wasn’t sure how to go about it. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, and Lily’s hand fell away when he rose from the chair. He crossed the kitchen and opened the door, and Lily felt as though a great and terrible distance had opened between them.
“I’ll make biscuits for supper,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to offer him.
“Good,” Caleb replied, and then he left the house.
Soon Lily heard the steady bang of his hammer, and she knew he was working on his house again. She mixed up the biscuit dough, then set it aside, since it was still too early to start supper.
When she figured Caleb had had enough time to assemble his thoughts, she went outside.
He was on the roof of his house, hammering down shingles. He’d taken off his shirt, and his muscled chest glinted in the late afternoon sunshine.
“I’m going over to see Velvet,” Lily called up to him in a casual tone. She wanted him to say she should stay, wanted him to climb down from the roof and let her take him into her arms, but he didn’t so much as look at her.
“All right,” he answered.
Feeling bereft, Lily started toward the woods, stopping off at the old house to check on the chicks. The laundry was nearly dry, too, and she still had a few pieces to wash.
She found Velvet chasing a spotted cow around the corner of the new cabin she and Hank had been building almost since the day of their wedding. It wasn’t finished by any means, but the roof was up and the walls were enclosed, so they were living inside. No doubt it felt like a palace after residing in an enclosed wagon.
“Come back here, you!” Velvet shrieked, unaware of Lily’s presence.
Lily laughed, forgetting her own worries for a moment, and ran to help her friend corral the renegade. She’d had some experience with the animals, since it had been her job, when she was living with the Sommerses, to hunt down the milk cow every evening and bring her home. Together Lily and Velvet managed to corner the testy bovine between the wagon and the newly constructed outhouse, and Velvet threw a rope around the beast’s neck.
“Mule-headed rascal!” Velvet scolded, giving the cow a slap across the nose.
“Where did you get her?” Lily asked, delighted.
“Hank bought her off an Indian,” Velvet answered, wiping one arm across her forehead. “I say that Indian got the best part of the deal.”
Lily was petting the cow’s heaving side, trying to calm her. “You won’t think that when you have milk and butter and cream,” she said.
“If I have to catch her every time I want them things,” Velvet replied, “well—I’d sooner go right on buyin’ ’em at the post store.”
“I’ve got chickens now,” Lily volunteered proudly. “In a few months, when they’re big enough, there’ll be plenty of eggs for all of us.”
Velvet was calmer then. “Excuse my bad manners,” she fretted. “I didn’t even ask how the wedding night went!”
Lily’s blush was answer enough.
“Come in,” Velvet said, tying the cow to the left rear wheel of Hank’s wagon. “I got some coffee left from breakfast.”
“Where’s Hank?” Lily asked as she followed her friend into the little house. Like her own place, it smelled delightfully of freshly sawed wood.
If Velvet sensed that something was wrong, she’d also discerned that Lily wasn’t ready to talk about it. “He’s plantin’ some fruit trees up on the rise.” She poured hot, strong coffee for herself and Lily and joined her friend at the table. “That sure was a pretty weddin’ you and Caleb had,” she said dreamily. “Him so handsome in that uniform and all, and you so lovely in that lacy dress.”
Lily wanted to lay her head down on her arms and weep, but she didn’t. She was a pioneer, a homesteader, and she had to be strong. “Caleb had a letter from Fox Chapel,” she began, and as she listed her worries and her fears Velvet listened closely.
“He’s not going to want to come back once he’s there with his own people around him, and I’ll have to choose between Caleb and my land.”
Velvet leaned forward slightly in her chair. “You’d choose Caleb, wouldn’t you?”
Slowly, Lily nodded. “But there’d be bitterness between us, Velvet. I’d give up the homestead for him, but that doesn’t mean we’d be happy together.”
With an awkward, work-worn hand Velvet reached out to touch Lily’s arm. “I thought things could never turn out right for me, and they sure enough did. Don’t give up now, Lily. You’ve got to hold on.”
Lily tried to smile, but she couldn’t quite manage. She’d run out of hope.
Chapter
22
Even though nothing had really been resolved, Lily felt better for having shared her burdens with Velvet She returned home in the last blaze of sunshine to find that Caleb was still on the roof of his silly, spacious house, hammering and hammering.
Lily squared her shoulders and set to work finishing up the last of the wash—it could dry inside, by the stove—and
taking the clean garments down from the clotheslines. After that she looked in on her chickens and was stricken to find that two of the downy little creatures had perished. Even thougis was only to be expected in the raising of chicks, Lily mourned them.
She buried the feather-light bodies solemnly, well behind the privy Wilbur Pierce and his friends had erected while they were building Lily’s new house, and went to the creek to wash her hands. The hammering ceased, and she turned to look back over one shoulder.
Caleb was regarding her in a strange way, as though he could see straight through her.
Drying her hands on her apron, Lily got to her feet and walked slowly over to stand within the shadow of Caleb’s house and look up at him. He was ablaze with the golden fire of the struggling sun.
Lily put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side. “Why are you building that house, Caleb Halliday, when we both know you’re going to hightail it back to Pennsylvania and drag me right along with you?”
She couldn’t read his expression, but she saw that he was climbing deftly down the roof. He reached the ladder and descended to stand facing her, his shirt in one hand, his muscular chest glistening with sweat even as the first chill of twilight came up from the creek.
“Half of that farm is mine,” he said.
Lily sighed. “So go back to Pennsylvania and fight for it,” she said, exasperated. “You’re not the only one with problems, you know.”
Caleb looked at her closely as he shrugged back into his shirt and began doing up the buttons, but he didn’t speak. He seemed to know that Lily was going to go on talking without any urging from him.
“It just so happens that my mother is dead, and I’ll probably never find out where my sisters are.”
“So that’s why you were willing to marry me all of a sudden—you’ve given up. I don’t know as I like that very much, Lily.”
“What you like is of no concern to me,” Lily said briskly. She started to turn away, but Caleb caught her by the arm and made her stay.
“You can’t just up and quit like this. It isn’t like you.”
“You’ve said it yourself, Caleb: The West is a big place. My sisters could be married, with no time in their busy lives for a lost sister they haven’t seen in thirteen years. They might even be dead.”
Lily and the Major Page 32