Lily flung her arms back over her head, utterly abandoning herself to her husband’s attentions. She’d long since learned that her vulnerability heightened the pleasure for both of them, and it was safe to offer herself to Caleb because she knew he would never hurt her.
She groaned lustily when his fingers slipped inside her, and her thighs began to thrash on the smooth linen sheets. She grasped the railings in the headboard of the bed in both hands and held on.
Caleb removed his fingers to roll the small nubbin of excited flesh back and forth between heaven and hell. Lily would never have guessed the two places could be so close together.
“I want you, Caleb,” she choked out. “I need you. If you don’t take me right now, I’m going to—I’m going to—oooooooh—”
Caleb continued to fondle her until the firestorm in her senses had passed, leaving her quivering, moist with pleasure and perspiration beneath his hands.
“I wanted it to happen when you were inside me,” Lily fussed.
“Don’t worry,” Caleb answered. “It will.” He kissed Lily’s mouth, and then her neck, and then her breasts and her hard, rising belly. By the time he parted her for a brief but fiery little conflict with his tongue she was ready again.
Caleb stopped her writhing by grasping her hips in his strong hands. He entered her in one hard, deft stroke, forcing a long, husky cry from her throat as her back arched to receive him.
His control shattered when she reached up to toy with his nipples, and he gave a muffled shout as he parried and then lunged, causing a delightful friction deep inside Lily.
Their lovemaking became a tender battle as Caleb repeatedly sheathed and unsheathed his manhood, the pace quickening with every stroke. Finally the inevitable happened, and for several soul-wrenching moments they were bonded together, fused into one flaming entity.
When they broke apart Lily lay curled beside Caleb, naked to the darkness and the warm night air, the back of one hand pressed lightly to her mouth. “Everyone in Pennsylvania must know what you just did to me,” she managed.
Caleb chuckled. “It would help if you didn’t carry on like a she-wolf, Mrs. Halliday.”
Lily laid her head on his bare shoulder. “You wouldn’t like it if I was quiet, and you know it,” she answered. “You go off like a shotgun when you hear me.”
He clasped one of her plump buttocks in his hand and squeezed it gently. “Oh, you’re right there, Mrs. Halliday. I do like knowing that I’m putting you through your paces.”
Lily punched him in the ribs for his arrogance. “It’s not as if I don’t do the same thing to you,” she pointed out.
Caleb rolled over and slid down to kiss her belly. He seemed to love touching it now that it was rounding with his child. “You know, as soon as you get over having this baby, I think we ought to start another one.”
Lily sighed. “I have no doubt that we will.”
He came back to dally at her breasts for a while in a sleepy, undemanding way, and Lily entwined her fingers gently in his hair. Soon she drifted off to sleep.
“I wish you’d stay for my wedding,” Caleb’s younger sister Abigail fretted. She was flanked by Sandra and Susannah, who both took her side.
Caleb touched his sister’s peaches-and-cream cheek. Like her brothers, Abigail liked getting her own way. “We need to be back home before winter,” he said quietly. “Besides, we have business to take care of in Chicago. Important business.”
Abigail’s lower lip jutted out. “I guess I’ll just have to come out and visit you, then. On my honeymoon, maybe.”
Caleb grinned. “You’re welcome any time, Abbie. You know that.”
Sandra, who was blooming with pregnancy, had long since trained her husband, Lieutenant Costner, like a lap dog. “I don’t see why either of you would want to go back to that uncivilized place anyway,” she stewed. “There’s nobody there but a bunch of Indians and outlaws and soldiers!”
Lily wondered if her corn was still good or if it had dried up in the hot summer sun, and she couldn’t wait to see Velvet and Hank and tell them all about her trip. “It’s home,” she said quietly, linking her arm with Caleb’s.
He looked down at her and nodded, his eyes shining.
Relations between Joss and Caleb were civil, though still a little awkward. Nonetheless, Joss and Susannah insisted on throwing a grand party for Caleb and Lily before they left, and Susannah lent Lily a wonderful ball gown to wear. It was made of ecru lace, with a full, tiered skir th a bodice that showed off her satiny bosom.
She was sitting out a dance when Caleb took her hand, pulled her into the shadowy alcove off the ballroom, and presented her with a worn velvet box.
“This belonged to my mother,” he said quietly.
Holding her breath, Lily lifted the lid. Inside was a delicate silver filigree necklace accented with a snowfall of diamonds. “Oh, Caleb.”
Caleb took the splendid creation from its box and moved behind Lily to put it around her neck and fix the clasp. He bent and kissed the place where the two ends of the chain met. “Someday our son will give this to his wife.”
Lily turned to look up into Caleb’s eyes. If she had ever doubted his love for her, those feelings were behind her for all time. No man would have given such a cherished heirloom to a woman if he didn’t care about her deeply.
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me, meeting you,” she said. She smiled, remembering that day in the hotel dining room in Tylerville when the soldiers had been teasing her and she’d dropped her tray. “Though I must admit I didn’t think so at the time.”
Caleb put his hand under her chin and gently lifted her face for a light, brief kiss. “I knew the instant I saw you,” he confessed when his lips had left hers, “that I wanted to be with you forever. I just didn’t have sense enough to see that you were made to be a wife, not a mistress.”
Lily was full of quiet joy. All that was needed to make her happiness complete was some word of her sisters.
“While you’re dancing with all these admirers of yours,” Caleb went on, with a wicked light glittering in his eyes as he nodded toward the contingent of handsome young men gathered in the ballroom, “I want you to remember whose bed you sleep in.”
Lily was just about to protest when he gently lowered the bodice of her lace dress, completely baring both her breasts. “Caleb!” she gasped, aware of all the people dancing and talking just on the other side of the curtains that enclosed the alcove. She covered herself with her hands, but Caleb tucked the jewelry box into his pocket and caught hold of her wrists, holding them behind her.
Her proud breasts swelled under his perusal, and the nipples went obediently taut.
“You’re mine,” Caleb said, as if Lily hadn’t known that he owned her soul as well as her body. And then he bent and took one pulsing nipple into his mouth.
Lily bit down hard on her lower lip to hold back a moan of pleasure, for such a sound would surely have carried. Her pride, always so formidable, was gone. “Caleb,” she whispered, “take me somewhere and make love to me.”
He shook his head. “Not yet. I want you to be thinking of me all the rest of the evening.”
Caleb had his way, for Lily’s mind and body were so attuned to him that she could think of nothing and no one else. Hours later, in their bed, he satisfied her with a thoroughness that left her exhausted.
Chicago was changed from the time Lily had lived there, of course, but returning gave her a strange mixture of emotions: nostalgia, anger, sadness, joy. She paced the hotel lobby nervously as she waited for Caleb to finish arranging for their room. When that was done she was to see a doctor, even though she wasn’t feeling sick.
Lily truly begrudged the time. “Couldn’t you have made the appointment for after we’ve talked to Mama’s attorney?” she demanded anxiously when Caleb came and took her arm.
He shook his head as he led her outside. “A pregnant woman needs care, Lily. I want to know that you’re all right. Aft
er all, when we get back to the homestead you won’t have anybody but old Doc Lindsay at the fort to look after you, and he’s hardly more than a horse doctor.”
Lily was exasperated, but she knew arguing with Caleb would only waste valuable time. It was like having words with a hitching post.
They took a cab to the office of the doctor recommended by the hotel manager, and Caleb ushered Lily into a towering brick building in the middle of the city. Some of the streets looked familiar to Lily, but she’d been so young when she left Chicago that she couldn’t rightly remember if she’d ever seen this part of it before.
The doctor ordered Lily to take off her clothes and lie down on the examining table, and she obeyed only because he was a kindly-looking older man with a tidy white beard and gentle blue eyes. Still, her cheeks flamed, and she clutched the white linen cover he gave her as he made his examination.
“So this baby was started in April, was it?”
Lily nodded, biting her lower lip.
The physician gave her an innocuous pat on the bottom and told her to sit up. He was washing his hands under steaming hot water flowing from a tap when Lily rose from her ignoble position.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“I’d say it’s a boy,” the doctor replied, looking back at her over one shoulder in a friendly way. “You’re carrying him low, you know. A girl generally rides high, under the rib cage.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Lily persisted.
“The baby is large,” the doctor sighed, “and you’re a small woman. I don’t think having this child out in the middle of nowhere is a very good idea, Mrs. Halliday.”
Lily closed her eyes. Once Caleb heard that, they wouldn’t be going back to the homestead until after her delivery, and that was a disappointment to her. On the other hand, she wanted her baby to be born healthy and strong. “I see,” she finally managed.
“Everything’ll be all right,” the doctor told her quietly. “So don’t you worry.”
Caleb’s reaction was anything but a surprise to Lily.
“We’ll stay right here until after the baby’s born,” he said, and she knew by his tone and expression that there would be no point in arguing with him. They would take a house in Chicago and travel home in the spring, hopefully in time to plow and plant.
Lily put everything but s pat task at hand from her mind as they drove through the city streets in yet another taxi, the wheels clattering over cobbled roads.
“Do you suppose we’ll find out anything about my sisters?” she asked.
Caleb took her hand and held it tightly. “Yes. We’re not going to stop asking until we do.”
Kathleen’s attorney was out of town, but his clerk gave Lily and Caleb an address from their files.
The place was in a surprisingly affluent section of town. In fact, it was a mansion built of brownstone, and the lush gardens buzzed with bees. The grass was a deep green cushion, and a high fence of iron kept strangers at bay.
Caleb walked straight up to the gate and tried it. To Lily’s vast relief, it opened, but she stood frozen to the sidewalk.
With a gentle grin Caleb reached out and clasped her hand. He tugged her along the walk and up the marble steps to the porch. The front doorway was wide enough for a wagon to drive through, and some of Lily’s nervousness faded as she imagined such a sight.
No one answered their knock, so they made their way around the back of the great house to try the other door. They got no response there either.
Lily was downcast when Caleb gave her a little nudge and scolded, “We can ask the neighbors, Lily. It’s not as though we’re pressed for time.”
No one was at home in any of the surrounding houses except for servants, and they greeted Lily’s questions about her mother with tightly pressed lips and shakes of their head. It seemed likely that Kathleen’s reputation had followed her to these elegant environs.
Caleb took Lily to see an opera that night, to cheer her up, and they went back to Kathleen’s neighborhood the next day and the next, and the one after that. In the meantime the Hallidays took a house of their own not far away from Kathleen’s, and hardly less elegant.
Since the place was furnished right down to books on the shelves, Lily didn’t have to shop for chairs and beds and chamber pots. Her life was complicated by the fact that there were servants, for she had no idea how to boss anybody but Caleb.
He laughed and said she’d better learn.
As the days passed Lily grew plumper and rounder. She taught herself to pick out tunes on the parlor piano, read virtually every book in the library, and made Caleb tell her about every moment of his day. He spent most of his time downtown, managing their investments, but when the sun went down he was the most attentive of husbands.
Lily took to visiting her mother’s empty house once a week or so, in the carriage, accompanied by Loretta, the upstairs maid. There was never anyone there.
Finally December came, with its cold winds and mountains of snow. Lily was in the narrow yard beside their house, laughing and pelting Caleb with snowballs, when the first pain struck.
It doubled her over, and Caleb was at her side instantly.
Dr. Branscomb arrived within the hour. Lily’s delivery, as he had predicted, was long and difficult, but just before midnight Joss Rupert Halliday came into the world, howlng with fury and weighing in at a hefty nine pounds.
“There will be other babies, won’t there?” Lily demanded of the doctor. Even after all the pain of delivering her son she wanted more of Caleb’s children. Many more.
“No reason why not,” Dr. Branscomb said quietly. After washing his hands he signed the birth certificate, put on his suit coat, and went away.
Caleb had taken his son out of the room to be bathed, and when he returned carrying the squalling bundle his face glowed with delight. “He’s mad as hell, isn’t he?”
Lily smiled despite her weariness. “You would be, too, if you’d just been through a birthing.” Caleb kissed her forehead and laid the baby beside her on the bed. “I love you, Mrs. Halliday,” he said, “but I think maybe we’d better stop with Joss here.”
Lily shook her head resolutely. “Oh, no. I want more children, and I’ll have them. Doc Lindsay may be an old sawbones, but I think he could handle the task of delivering me of a few more babies like this one.”
Little Joss was still howling, so Lily picked him up and put him to her breast. Even though her milk wasn’t in yet, he seemed to be comforted just by suckling, and Lily smiled at that. He was just like his father.
As soon as she was well enough to leave her bed Lily started going to her mother’s house again. Every day she knocked on that door and on the doors of all the surrounding establishments, and every day she got nowhere. In a few weeks it would be time to go back to Washington Territory and resume her life there. She yearned for the homestead, but at the same time she knew leaving Chicago without learning anything about Emma and Caroline would crush her.
On the third day of March, 1879, Lily’s luck changed for the better. Just as she reached for the familiar brass knocker the sound of piano music swelled out through an open window that Lily hadn’t noticed before, and it was a song she and her sisters had once sung together in harmony.
Her heart thundering in her throat, Lily scorned the knocker and reached for the doorknob. A moment later she was in the entryway, and the music wrapped itself around her like an embrace, welcoming her.
A pure, sweet voice was singing.
Three flowers bloomed in the meadow,
Heads bent in sweet repose,
The daisy, the lily, and the rose….
Linda Lael Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including her bestsellers of romantic suspense, Don’t Look Now, Never Look Back, and One Last Look. Her acclaimed frontier romance series include Springwater and The Women of Primrose Creek. There are more than 14 million copies of her books in print. Ms. Miller resides in
the Scottsdale, Arizona, area.
Visit her website at www.lindalaelmiller.com./p>
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
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Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
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Chapter
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Chapter
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Chapter
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Lily and the Major Page 37