“Miss Honeycutt,” Jack said, his voice gone hard, “either you sleep in the wagon and let Bill sleep by the fire with me, or you’re going to need more than a frying pan.” He gave her one of his most devilish grins and she gasped in outrage.
“Why would you hit Jack, Aunt Phoebe? He’s not bad like Mr. Basteau.” Sarah’s big blue eyes held nothing but innocent inquiry.
Jack saw Phoebe take one enormous breath, as though to argue further, then expel it. Good. Jack knew right to be on his side. After all, William said he was twelve years old, long past the time a boy should be quit being pampered, and plenty old enough to learn about how to survive on the plains.
Also, although he would never admit it, Jack didn’t like the way Phoebe looked, all worn down and exhausted. She needed rest. And something else bothered him, too.
“Let me see your hands, Miss Honeycutt.”
“What?”
He could tell how startled she was when she dropped a tin cup in the wash basin, splattering Sarah with water.
“Aunt Phoebe!” Sarah jumped back and brushed off her frock.
“I’m sorry, Sarah, darling.” Phoebe made a show of drying off her ward’s arms and shaking out her apron.
Jack would not be diverted. “Your hands, Miss Honeycutt. Show them to me now.”
“My hands are no concern of yours, Mr. Valentine.”
“They sure as hell are my concern, Miss Honeycutt. If your hands are hurt, you aren’t going to be able to drive the team.”
“I drove the team quite nicely today, Mr. Valentine, and with no help from you.”
He saw her color rise again under his sarcastic smile. “Well, I did drive them quite well,” she muttered in her own defense. “It’s not my fault I didn’t know about the brake.”
“Your hands, Miss Honeycutt.”
Jack held out his gloved hand, rock-steady and enormous. At last, Phoebe placed her right hand in it. She didn’t want to, though, and Jack felt a lick of sympathy for her. Still, he wasn’t going let this woman perish on the desert if he could help it. And if she was wounded, he fully intended to take care of her. Granted, given his odd attraction to her, it was probably safer if they hated each other, but that didn’t negate his duty as a man and protector.
When he turned her hand over to look at the palm, his exclamation was unintentional.
“Good God! What in the world have you been doing?”
Her hands were a mess. Peering at the palms closely, Jack could see scarring where blisters had formed, broken open, become infected, and barely healed over before new blisters grew. The backs were callused and red, cracked and chapped. There was swelling at the base of her fingers where infection festered yet. These were definitely not the hands of a helpless, frivolous, worthless southern damsel.
Damn. Jack’s jaw tightened up so hard it hurt.
“You needn’t be rude.”
Jack looked at her sharply.
“It was the plow, Jack,” Sarah told him, as though admitting to the existence of a family skeleton. “The plow done that. We didn’t have no mule to pull it.”
“Be quiet now, Sarah.” Phoebe didn’t sound as firm as she usually did when dealing with her chatter-box niece.
Jack scanned Phoebe’s face. A sudden urge to wrap her up in a big hug and tell her everything was going to be all right slapped him upside the head, and he became angry with himself. And Phoebe.
“I’ve got some salve in my pack. It doesn’t smell very good and it’s greasy, but it’ll help heal these hands of yours.” He lifted her left hand, since she didn’t seem inclined to show it to him on her own. Its condition was every bit as pitiable as the other.
“Lord, woman, didn’t anybody ever tell you about using thick gloves when you work at farming?”
Jack fought the urge to admire her when she snatched her hands back and barked, “Of course I know about thick gloves, Mr. Valentine. But your army didn’t leave us any thick gloves!”
Jack saw a flash of grief in her eyes a scant second before she whirled away and tried to stomp back to finish the washing up. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to a halt.
“Bill and Sarah can finish washing the pots, Miss Honeycutt. You need to keep your hands out of water until they’re healed.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re a man.”
“Is that so? Well, this is one man who’s not going to put up with your misplaced airs and graces, madam.” So saying, he towed Phoebe over to where he had laid his pack out next to a boulder. “Here. Sit down on this blanket, and stay put while I doctor your hands.”
Phoebe would have protested if she weren’t so upset. Before she’d give in to tears in front of this hideous excuse for a human being, though, she’d fly to the moon. She sat with what she hoped was an indignant harrumph.
Then she saw him eye her narrowly as he fished around in his pack, and feared her harrumph had not sounded as angry as she had intended it to. She glared at him to make up for it.
Instead of making him behave, though, her defiance only seemed to tickle him. He cracked a reluctant grin before he sat beside her on the blanket and picked up her hands. She didn’t deign to look at him, but stared stonily into the encroaching night.
Whatever was in his precious salve, though, it felt good. It had been so very, very long since Phoebe had enjoyed the luxury of a hand cream or a lotion that this smelly balm felt like heaven being smoothed into her battered skin.
“What’s in this salve, Mr. Valentine?” she asked, and then wanted to kick herself for voicing her curiosity.
“Besides bear grease, there’s powdered yarrow and the juice from a plant called aloe. I learned about it from some Mexicans on another trip out this way.”
It almost killed her to say, very stiffly, “It is—it is quite soothing. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
When she tried to rise, he held her down. “You’re not going anywhere yet, Belle. I’m going to bind those hands so the salve doesn’t rub off while you sleep. It won’t do your blankets any good at all.”
“My name is not Belle, Mr. Valentine, and I am quite capable of taking care of myself.”
“Doesn’t look like it to me, Miss Honeycutt,” Jack growled. “Sit still.”
She sat still. She didn’t like to, but she did. When he tied the last knot in the bandage, he said, “There. All set. Now you can sleep in peace and maybe those hands will heal at last.”
Phoebe decided she’d thanked him enough for one evening, so she simply nodded and started to rise. He aggravated her still further by assisting her to her feet.
“There.” He sounded smug. “Now I’ll just help you into the wagon, and you can have a nice night’s rest.”
“I shan’t be sleeping inside the wagon, Mr. Valentine,”
She could tell how peeved he was by the two deep creases that suddenly appeared between his black brows. She didn’t care. If she had to sleep inside the enclosed wagon at night, she’d die. She knew it.
“I’m not going through this again, Miss Honeycutt. I’m helping you into that wagon, and you’re sleeping there. Damn it, it’s not safe for you to sleep outside.”
Phoebe turned and leaned toward him, hands on her hips. “If it’s not safe for me to sleep outside, why is it safe for William to sleep outside, Mr. Valentine?” She sounded triumphant that she’d caught him in an incongruity.
Jack adopted her pose to the letter, until the two of them were squared off in the classic pose of verbal antagonists the world over. “God bless it, Miss Honeycutt, William’s a boy! He’s supposed to sleep outside!”
“Not if it’s not safe, he’s not!”
“It’s not unsafe—exactly! It’s that William’s a male, for God’s sake!”
“And just what does that have to do with anything?”
Phoebe noticed her niece and nephew staring in fascination at the two of them, and realized she was setting a terribly improper example by waging a battle with this awful man at the top o
f her lungs. Softening her belligerent pose, she dropped her hands to her sides and hissed, “He’s only a boy, Mr. Valentine!”
Jack looked over, saw the children, and he straightened up, too. He still sounded angry, though, when he hissed back, “I know he’s a boy, damn it. But he’s twelve years old! It’s time he began to learn to be a man! Do you want him to grow up to be a damned sissy?”
“Will you please stop swearing at me, Mr. Valentine?”
The ruts between his brows deepened. “I’ll consider it when you begin behaving like a sensible woman.”
Good Lord. The man was simply too stubborn to be reasoned with. She snapped, “Fine then. Help me into the wagon.”
She could see him relax, and her aggravation did not abate. Blasted monster thought he’d won, did he? Well, she’d show him.
In truth, the very thought of sleeping beneath the canvas tent tied over the wagon bed was enough to give her palpitations. Ever since that black night in the cellar, with smoke pouring in and people screaming and guns firing and then—anyway, it was just too much to expect her to endure a night of confinement. Phoebe would roast in hell before she told Jack Valentine the reason she preferred to sleep under the roof of the sky, however.
Savagely, she began to undo the canvas ties holding the top down. Because of her bandages, her movements were clumsy, but she kept at it, doggedly, trying not to scream in frustration when the ties slipped through her swaddled fingers time after time.
She was startled when she heard Jack’s furious, “What the hell are you up to now?”
She poked her head out of the wagon and scowled at him. “Don’t you dare yell at me, Mr. Valentine. You may think you’re our savior, but you will not tell me how I may or may not spend the night.”
It looked as though he was shaking, he was so mad. Good. “Why in the name of all that’s holy are you taking the top off the wagon, Miss Honeycutt?”
Phoebe felt a surge of satisfaction when she heard the strain in his voice. Aha. That’s why he was trembling; it was because he was trying not to yell in front of the children.
“If you refuse to allow me to share the campfire with you and William, then I shall create my own out-of-doors in the wagon.”
She saw him pass his hand over his face in a gesture of sublime frustration. When he spoke again, she could hear the tension in his voice.
“Why, Miss Honeycutt? Why do you desire to spend the night under the stars? I had believed ladies to prefer sleeping indoors.”
With a toss of her head, Phoebe said, “Shows how much you know.”
She dropped the tie she was holding when he bellowed, “Why? Why, why, why? Answer me, damn it! I’m trying to be patient with you, but why can’t you behave like a normal, rational woman? Just once?”
Her lips thinned into a tight, straight line a moment before Phoebe said, “I do not care for confined spaces, Mr. Valentine. I will not be confined.”
The image of a bayonet blade slicing through the thick smoke, a dirty blue uniform, and a mustachioed devil—grinning, malevolent—flashed through her mind and she had to shut her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them again, Jack looked as though he were barely containing his frustration. She held her ground and glared back at him.
At last he said, “Aw, hell. Get out of the wagon, Miss Honeycutt.”
She didn’t trust him an inch and didn’t budge. “Why?”
With an enormous sigh, he said, “I’ll make you a bed by the fire.”
She stared at him in deep suspicion for a moment, then said, “Fine,” in a tone her mother would have deplored. Her mother, however, hadn’t had to deal with Jack Valentine.
She began to climb down from the wagon only to have her waist encircled by two enormous hands. She gasped in indignation when Jack swung her to the ground, but before she could protest his cavalier treatment, Sarah captured her attention.
“Aunt Phoebe.”
There was a hint of childish querulousness in Sarah’s voice. Immediately Phoebe turned away from the dratted man and toward her niece.
“What is it, Sarah, darling?” she asked in a voice of pure honey.
“I’m tired, Aunt Phoebe.”
“Let me help you get into your night things, Sarah, dear, and I’ll tell you a story before you go to sleep.”
“Will you sing me a song?” Sarah’s tone carried all the whininess of an exhausted eight-year-old.
“Of course I will, sweetheart.”
Without another glance in Jack’s direction, Phoebe strode over to little Sarah and began to help her dress for bed.
Jack stared after her, wondering at the reason behind her fear of confined spaces. She’d been going to take the cover off the wagon, for the love of God. In spite of himself, he felt a tickle of amusement. Small and irritating though she was, Phoebe Honeycutt was a determined little thing. He didn’t want to admire her. Unfortunately, it was difficult not to.
William walked up, looking happy as a lark to be camping out under the enormous Texas sky. Jack, feeling a pinch of churlishness for trying to pry information out of him, asked, “How come your aunt doesn’t like to sleep inside the wagon, Bill?”
William shrugged. “She don’t talk about it. Says it’s not a subject fit for polite company.”
“Oh.” Well, hell.
“Of course, you bein’ a Yankee and all, I don’t reckon she’d consider you polite company,” William said as he spread his blanket.
Jack couldn’t help laughing, and William stiffened, as though he only just realized what he’d said. “I—I didn’t mean you’re not polite, Jack. I just meant that—well, Phoebe don’t hold with Yankees much, after what they done to her family and all.”
“You’re her family, aren’t you, Bill?”
“Well, yes, we are, but we’re from Charleston, not Atlanta. We’re Finnertys. Aunt Phoebe—well, she’s always tellin’ us we’re Honeycutts, but we ain’t really. Our pa was William Finnerty, Senior. I reckon Aunt Phoebe’s the last Honeycutt.”
“She’s the last one, huh?” Jack tried to pretend the sudden lurch his heart took had nothing to do with William’s words.
William nodded. “Her pa and two brothers was killed in the war. I think maybe—just maybe, you know—Aunt Phoebe has some good reasons why she ain’t too fond of Yankees. Not that you’re one of those Yankees. But—well, you know.”
Jack finished spreading a bedroll for Phoebe and reluctantly admitted to himself that he guessed he did know. “The war’s been over for five years now, Bill. I think it’s time to put it behind us and move on.”
William plunked himself down on his own bedroll. He appeared to be thinking. Jack glanced toward the wagon. He tried to pick out the forms of Phoebe and Sarah. It was too dark now, though, to discern anything but darkness against darkness. A sweet soprano voice begin to sing “Aura Lee” softly, and Jack’s heart did an unexpected flippity-flop in his chest.
“She tries to take good care of you,” sneaked its way out of his mouth against his will.
He saw William nod as he sat on his own bedroll, taking off his boots.
“She does try, all right. Sometimes I wish she wouldn’t try so blamed hard.”
The two of them sat quietly for a while as they listened to Phoebe sing. Jack was sorry when “Aura Lee” came to an end. It cheered him up some when she began singing “Listen to the Mocking Bird.”
“She has a real pretty voice, don’t she, Jack.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Yes.”
“Used to sing in the church choir and at weddings. At least that’s what she told me. I don’t recollect it. Anyway, the church was burnt down when we went to live with her.”
Jack didn’t say anything; he just listened.
When the song ended and it didn’t sound as though Phoebe planned to sing anymore, he heaved a sigh and said, “Why don’t you take this candle over to the wagon, Bill. I reckon she’ll need some light to change by.”
“All right. Thanks
.” William started over to the wagon, then stopped and turned around. “You’re right, Jack. She tries hard. And she’s real nice, too.”
Since the boy immediately turned on his heel and began to hot foot it to the wagon, Jack didn’t have to answer. It was just as well. He was afraid he might have to agree with him.
Chapter Four
Phoebe was greatly relieved to find Jack already lying down and covered up when she walked over to her bedroll. It wasn’t only because she was in her night clothes and it would have been indecent for a man to see her in all that fluffy flannel. She also didn’t want to have to thank him for the candle.
Trying to figure out how in the world she could pay him for his efforts on her behalf, though, was beginning to make her head ache. On the other hand, the ache might have been due to the lingering after effects of her heat exhaustion. Whatever the cause, Phoebe decided not to think anymore tonight, but to crawl between her blankets and get a good night’s sleep.
Unfortunately, she did not close her eyes quickly enough to avoid having her attention captured by the splendor of the night sky. Jack had laid out the bedrolls near a cottonwood tree but away from its branches, and there was nothing to interfere with Phoebe’s view of the incredible sky.
Gracious sakes, there were a lot of stars up there. Phoebe had never experienced such wide open spaces as these in Texas. She liked them, although they were somewhat overwhelming. At the moment it looked as though she might reach out and grab a handful of stars right out of the sky. The quarter-moon dangled in the midst of them, just like one of her mama’s silver crescent earrings.
The thought of her mama made Phoebe’s throat ache almost as much as her head was aching. A huge sigh leaked out before she could stop it.
“Are you all right, Miss Honeycutt?”
Jack Valentine’s rumbling baritone sounded polite, a fact that shouldn’t have made the ache in Phoebe’s throat worse, but it did. She remembered a time when everybody was polite to one another. Those days were long, long ago; before the awful Conflict.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“‘Night, Aunt Phoebe.”
Phoebe's Valentine Page 4