Banner O'Brien

by Linda Lael Miller

“What?”

  “Wear your drawers.”

  * * *

  It was a surprise when Katherine Corbin came storming down the wharf, her face red with anger. “Damn those stupid, selfish—”

  Banner forgot that she was leaving for Wenatchee, against her will, forgot Sean, forgot the impervious, irritating man beside her. “Katherine! What on earth—”

  Snow was gathering on Katherine’s nose and her eyelashes and on the brim of her stylish, feathered hat. “The Territorial Supreme Court overturned the legislature’s decision!” she raged. “Suffrage, they say, is unconstitutional! Can you believe it? Unconstitutional!”

  People were staring at Katherine, albeit with affectionate amusement.

  “Mother,” intoned Adam. “You have an audience.”

  “I don’t care!” Katherine retorted. “And what are you two doing here, anyway?”

  “Banner is leaving.”

  Some of the high color drained from Katherine’s elegant cheekbones. “What?”

  Banner flung a furious look at her husband. “I’m not going to Wenatchee!” she informed him. “The minute I get off the steamer in Tacoma, I intend to vanish!”

  Adam had obviously not considered this possibility; he looked both angry and taken aback. And the word he said turned more heads than Katherine’s diatribe about the territorial high court.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Banner said smugly. “You’ve made a scandal, Adam Corbin.”

  He bent until his nose was within an inch of her own. “Oh, that was nothing, O’Brien,” he hissed. “If you want a scandal, I’ll show you a scandal!”

  “Do let’s get in out of the snow and wind,” Katherine broke in, suddenly the diplomat.

  Adam nodded. “Certainly,” he said. “As soon as O’Brien boards the steamer, Mother, I’ll see you home.”

  Banner thrust out her chin and folded her arms. She had the impervious Adam Corbin over a barrel, and she knew it. “I’ll write you from wherever I decide to go, dear,” she said indulgently.

  Adam advanced on Banner, backing her down the wharf. Both of them knew that he couldn’t spare the time it would take for him to escort her to Wenatchee, and there was no other way he could be certain of her obedience. “You little—”

  “You could still let me stay with your woman, you know.”

  A swear word echoed out over the water.

  “Are you afraid we’ll compare notes?” pressed Banner. She was at the end of the pier now; another step and she’d be jellyfish bait.

  Adam’s face was fierce, and his eyes glittered with blue fury. “Get your—get into the carriage!”

  “What will you do if I refuse?” exulted Banner sweetly, well aware of the many witnesses claiming baggage on the wharf and boarding buggies and carriages ashore.

  “You don’t want to know, O’Brien!”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” she sang back, enjoying her advantage.

  The imposing shoulders moved in a shrug. But then Adam lunged at her, grasped her around the waist, and flung her up over one shoulder.

  Mortified, Banner kicked and struggled, but Adam simply strode toward the Corbin carriage, hauling her like a grain sack, apparently oblivious to the amused townspeople all around them.

  Gaining the carriage, he wrenched open the door and hurled his wife inside, watching impassively as she rolled across the vehicle’s muddy floor in a ball of indignation and green woolen.

  Katherine shifted in her seat and looked out the window, failing to notice the spectacle in a very studied way.

  Adam said something to the carriage driver and then got inside, just as his disgruntled, blushing wife was rising from the floor. He halted her progress by catching her arm and flinging her, face down, across his lap.

  Banner could literally feel his hand, poised over her derriere, and she closed her eyes against its inevitable descent.

  “Good heavens, Adam,” Katherine interceded crisply. “This is barbaric! Have you lost your mind?”

  “Yes,” he said, and then his hand made sharp contact with Banner’s bottom.

  Freed from the odd inertia that had possessed her before, Banner cried out, more in outrage than pain, and struggled. Her reward was a second swat, and this one stung.

  “Adam Corbin,” sputtered Katherine, over the uproar. “If you strike that dear child again, I’ll stop this carriage and get out!”

  “It is a long walk home, Mother,” Adam replied. And then he wrenched Banner’s skirts up until her drawers were showing and the cold wind was biting her buttocks through the cloth.

  Absolutely stunned by this affront, Banner shivered.

  “Cold, my dear?” Adam drawled.

  Banner was writhing now, and twisting, trying with renewed desperation to escape. “Yes!” she shrieked.

  “This will warm you,” he assured her, and then he spanked her in earnest.

  * * *

  She stood facing the parlor fire, a small, rigid bastion of indignation. “Don’t you come near me, Adam Corbin,” she muttered, without sparing him so much as a glance.

  Against his better judgment, Adam chuckled. God, how he loved her, needed her, wanted her. “Why don’t you sit down?” he teased.

  “Why don’t you drop dead?” she retorted.

  Adam remembered her shapely, upturned backside and his mother’s delightful umbrage and chuckled again. “You were the one who insisted on finding out what I would do, Shamrock. Now you know.”

  Banner whirled to face him, clover green eyes snapping, chin high. “How dare you strike me that way? And in front of your mother, for heaven’s sake! I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my life and my—my drawers were showing!”

  Adam grinned, delighting in the beruffled memory. “Defy me like that again, Shamrock, and they’ll be around your ankles.”

  Rich color surged into her face, but she swallowed whatever she’d planned to say and nodded almost meekly. Adam was still puzzling over that when she kicked him, hard, in the right shin.

  He bellowed in mingled rage and pain, and Banner fled, quite wisely, for her life.

  She was kneeling in a chair beside the bedroom fireplace when he reached her, peering at him over the back with wide, wary eyes.

  “If you send me to Wenatchee,” she said, “I’ll run away.”

  The thought terrified Adam almost as much as the danger Sean Malloy could be to her. He masked that by making a complicated business of undoing the string tie at his throat, opening his shirt. “Do you want to leave me so badly as that, Banner?”

  Slowly, she shook her head, and her hair was a magnificent Titian mane, catching the firelight and making it a part of itself. “I don’t ever want to leave you,” she whispered.

  And when Banner slipped out of the chair and stood before him, his breath caught in his throat. She was wearing only a camisole and a pair of drawers.

  She lifted her chin. “Are you sorry for what you did?” she asked.

  Adam swallowed. “No,” he answered, after a long time. “Are you sorry for defying me?”

  She smiled, the temptress, knowing what she was doing to him, reveling in it. “No,” she replied.

  “Fair enough,” he said, more moved than he’d ever been by her saucy, brazen beauty. “Come here.”

  Miraculously, Banner came to him. The yielding, primitive scent of her made Adam’s groin grind. He lifted her, carried her back to the chair where she had awaited him, draped her tenderly across his lap.

  But this time was quite different from the other, for Banner was facing him now, her succulent breasts rising and falling beneath the gauzy lace and ribbon of her camisole, her green eyes dark with sultry mischief. She slid one hand inside his shirt, tangled her fingers in the coarse matting there, set fire to the very marrow of his bones.

  And, with the other, she untied the ribbons that secured her drawers.

  Adam moaned as she guided his hand inside and sheltered it in the still hidden silk. Her knees fell wide, her head tilted back.
She closed her eyes, and a soft, savage whimper of contentment passed her parted lips.

  He enjoyed her gently, watched in wonder and love as she rose and fell in the ancient rhythm of passion. And yet, even as Banner arched her back, cried out, and then fell, shuddering, back to his lap, he had the distinct impression that it was he who had been seduced, he who had been loved and comforted and appeased.

  Banner slid from his lap, like a shimmering mermaid sinking back into a magical sea. Her fingers came to the already straining buttons of his trousers and gently undid them.

  That heated, needing part of him sprang toward her; she laughed softly and welcomed it with a kiss that caused Adam’s very soul to buckle within him.

  “Please . . .” he whispered raggedly.

  She kissed him again.

  An almost convulsive spasm jolted Adam; he spoke in fevered, nonsensical words.

  Banner chuckled and tormented him mercilessly with her tongue.

  Adam writhed, frantic, and she delighted in him, ruthlessly and with greed.

  And then Banner drew back, refusing to do more than kiss him, no matter how he pleaded. Playing his game, she recited all the places where she meant to do this to him, interspersing the wicked promises with nibbles.

  Something inside Adam, something heretofore untouched, broke free. He cried out his love for her and his triumph.

  He’d boasted that he owned Banner, earlier that day. Now he knew that the truth was quite the opposite.

  And she was stroking him, soothing him, igniting new fires that might be fiercer than those just quenched. “I love you, Adam,” she said.

  Adam couldn’t speak—breathing was almost more than he could manage. He groaned.

  “Ummm,” she said.

  Adam braced himself. “N-No—” he managed. “Banner—”

  She laughed, an imp come to power. “Yes,” she said.

  He was growing again, aching again, straining toward her even as he considered begging for mercy.

  Begging would have been pointless, even if he could have assembled the words, for, that night, there was no mercy in the wench.

  * * *

  Adam was sleeping deeply, just as Banner had intended. She stroked his dark hair, her touch as light as a whisper, and bent to kiss his temple.

  “Goodbye, my love,” she said.

  Adam stirred and snuggled deeper into the bedding, and one of his arms flailed toward the spot where she should have lain.

  Tears clouded Banner’s eyes as she turned away.

  The night was bitterly cold and very, very dark, and had Banner not had such a clear picture of the fate Adam might suffer at Sean’s hands, she would have lost courage.

  It was snowing as she descended the hill; her shoes and stockings were soaked through before she reached Main Street, and her cloak was little comfort, even with its fur lining.

  By rights, Banner knew, she should have left the garment behind; it, like the shamrock pendant, had come to her because of her marriage, not through honest effort.

  Approaching the hotel where she had lived so briefly, Banner shifted her medical bag from one hand to the other and lifted her chin. She’d left all her other clothes, hadn’t she? She’d left the fur muff that Katherine had given her at Christmas, the snow-glass from Jeff—her wedding ring.

  Banner thought of Adam, sleeping in the warm bed at home. With him, she had left her heart and her spirit.

  Climbing the hotel’s rough-hewn board steps, she imagined him waking up, finding her gone. Would he be furious? Would he hurt as she was hurting now, as she suspected she would always hurt?

  Banner paused at the sturdy doors of the hotel, closed her eyes for just a moment. Adam would rage when he knew she’d left, and he might feel a measure of pain for a time, but his woman would comfort him.

  That thought gave Banner the impetus to open a door, march to the registration desk, and ring the bell for service.

  Banner did not sleep at all that night, partly because she could not lie still long enough, and partly because she was afraid. Suppose Sean had already been released from jail? Suppose the clerk, who had obviously recognized Banner, had gone up the hill to report her presence in the hotel to Adam?

  The steamer arrived at seven-thirty the next morning, and Banner was the first to pay her passage and get on board. It wouldn’t have mattered where the craft was bound for—she was thinking strictly in terms of “away”—and the vessel was well out on the sound when Banner consulted her ticket and learned that she was on her way to Seattle.

  * * *

  Even before he could bring himself to open his eyes and confirm the fact, Adam knew that Banner was gone. He knew that she wasn’t just downstairs, talking with Maggie or cleaning instruments in the surgery—she was gone.

  A spinning, howling storm of grief engulfed Adam. Where should he look first? And what would he do if he never found her?

  Adam opened his eyes, forced himself out of bed, to the washstand, into his clothes.

  The ring was lying on the bedside table, along with the small drum Banner had given him at Christmas. He touched the toy, took the wedding band up, turned it in his fingers.

  Good riddance, O’Brien, he thought.

  And then he sat down on the edge of the bed and wept.

  * * *

  Seattle was a virtual frenzy of activity; men shouted on the wharves as the steamer docked, Indian women sold baskets and beads, Chinamen hurried along the wooden walkways bordering the harbor, small under their burdens of firewood, laundry, or salted fish.

  Banner drew a deep breath, walked purposefully to the base of the pier, and sat down on a snow-dusted whiskey barrel to ponder the days, weeks, and months ahead.

  Had she traveled far enough? How long could the small amount of money she had be expected to last?

  All around, whistles shrilled and bells clanged and people greeted each other. How lonely Banner felt, knowing there was no one there to hug her and shuffle her into a warm carriage and ask solicitously how the voyage had been.

  A tear slid down Banner’s cheek, and she dashed it away, bumping her nose with the corner of her medical bag in the process. “Drat!” she sobbed.

  “Banner?”

  She stiffened, looked up.

  Before her stood Jeff Corbin, his blue coat sprinkled with glistening flakes of snow, his eyes warm and more than slightly suspicious as they scanned the length of the wharf and then came back to Banner’s face.

  “Where’s Adam?”

  Banner shrugged.

  Hands wedged comfortably into his coat pockets, Jeff tilted his head back, searched the sky with a curious sort of interest, then dropped his gaze to his sister-in-law again. “You ran away, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” admitted Banner miserably.

  “Why?”

  “He—” she thought quickly, desperately—“he beat me.”

  Jeff laughed. “Adam? Try again, Banner. I’d sooner believe that he stepped out of a second-floor window and flew around the house.”

  Banner’s toes were numb inside her wet shoes, and she was hungry and tired and heartbroken. And now, of all the people in the Pacific Northwest, for heaven’s sake, she had encountered her husband’s brother.

  How bad could one person’s luck be?

  “He did beat me,” she insisted, somewhat lamely. “He turned me over his knee and—”

  Jeff’s mouth twitched. “That I can accept.”

  “Thank you very much,” pouted Banner, who was near tears and at the end of her very shaky resolve to be strong.

  Jeff crooked one arm toward her. “Come on. We’ll get something to eat and discuss my brother’s tendency toward brutality.”

  Banner knew that he was mocking her, but she was too disspirited to rise to the challenge. “I won’t go back to Port Hastings,” she said, even as she rose from her seat on the whiskey barrel and took the captain’s arm.

  Ten minutes later, Jeff and Banner entered the busy, clamorous dining room of
an expensive hotel.

  “Are you staying here?” Banner asked, hoping to guide the conversation away from Adam and her reasons for leaving him.

  “I slept here last night,” Jeff said, as a pretty waitress minced and fretted at the table side, trying her best to win the captain’s attention. Finally the girl went away. “We came into port yesterday,” he finished.

  Banner’s stomach grumbled inelegantly, and she fixed her eyes on the menu. “You left rather suddenly,” she said, referring to his disappearance on Christmas Day.

  “So did you, I’ll wager,” he retorted. “And you didn’t tell my brother you were going, did you?”

  Banner looked up. “Of course I did,” she lied.

  “You did not. If you had, you wouldn’t be here now.”

  Too hungry to argue, Banner simply shrugged.

  The waitress returned, first with coffee and then with plates laden with savory roast beef, boiled potatoes, and green beans.

  Banner ate hungrily and tried to plan another escape. “Are there—are there personal facilities here?” she asked, when her plate was empty.

  Jeff looked amused. “Of course,” he said, nodding toward the lobby.

  Banner dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and tried to look innocent. “If you’ll just excuse me for a moment?”

  Again he nodded. There was a languid flow to Jeff’s movements as he sat back in his chair and folded his arms.

  Banner stood up and walked sedately to the doors leading into the lobby. Her ruse was only partial; she did need to find the conveniences.

  She was washing her hands when she remembered that she’d left her cloak and her medical bag in the dining room. How was she to recover them without confronting Jeff?

  She was still pondering this dilemma when she opened the door and stepped out into the lobby.

  Jeff was there, holding Banner’s bag and cloak and grinning indulgently. Clearly she had not fooled him for a moment. “Ready?” he said.

  “Give me my things!” Banner hissed.

  He looked down at her shoes, the damp hem of her skirt. Concern and amusement mingled in his face. “No,” he replied flatly.

  Banner was tired of dealing with immovable, officious, overbearing Corbins, and she said so in no uncertain terms.

  Jeff only shrugged and took her arm in a grasp that was at once painless and totally inescapable. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Except to my room, where you will have a hot bath and some sleep.”