Phoebe's Valentine

by Duncan, Alice

  She huffed, obviously trying for hauteur. She didn’t quite achieve it, and Jack’s heart softened until it was as malleable as a lump of clay. Lord, he loved this woman.

  When he began to kiss her again, he felt her slump against him. His words spread out on the satiny skin of her shoulder like a healing unguent.

  “I’ll unfasten your gown, sweetheart. We won’t let it get wrinkled, I promise.”

  “Thank you,” seeped out small and breathless.

  Her head fell back and Jack felt as though he’d just won a battle. This victory felt sweeter than any he’d accomplished during the war. Her sigh of surrender was balm to his aching soul.

  Phoebe made no protest when he undressed her, not even when he untied the tapes to her drawers. She stood before him, arms at her sides, naked, her poor scars revealed to his loving gaze.

  “God, Phoebe, you’re beautiful.”

  It was an honor to be allowed to know her secrets. She had granted him a privilege he cherished. He knew how terrified she’d been of intimacy; with good reason. That she trusted him enough to reveal herself made his throat ache with unshed tears. He slid off the bed, onto his knees, and pressed his cheek to her abdomen. His arms wrapped around her knees, and he worshiped her. When her small, scarred hands twined in his hair, he felt humble.

  The feeling didn’t last long. Soon it was overtaken by overpowering desire. Jack felt the blood pulse through her veins and his flesh leapt with vitality and the need to express it.

  “To bed with you, sweetheart,” he murmured, and swept her off the floor.

  This time, since Jack had taken the precaution of laying her dress out, very carefully, across his cabin’s overstuffed arm chair, Phoebe did not protest. Instead, he heard her little mew of desire and wondered if he’d be able to control himself enough to be gentle with her. She deserved all the gentleness he had to give

  But Phoebe, who knew this would be the last time she would ever experience Jack’s love, didn’t want him to be gentle. When he began to delicately trace her jaw with his finger, she bit it. Then she surprised the living tar out of him by throwing her leg over his hips, and flipping him so that he lay on his back, stunned. Then she proceeded to nibble on the rest of him. As she nibbled, she undressed him.

  “Phoebe, I—”

  His voice sounded a startled, delighted whisper in the night. She shut him up quite effectively by covering his lips with hers. She was pleased to hear his words trail off into a groan of passion that seeped from his mouth into hers. She swallowed his groan and gave him one of her own.

  He’d begun laughing again by the time he recovered from the shock of her attack and wrestled her onto her back. This time they were both naked.

  “God damn, Phoebe. God damn.” Those were the last words Jack spoke for a long, long time.

  Phoebe wasn’t interested in words any longer, either. When she hurtled over the precipice, she took Jack with her.

  It was very late when Jack buttoned Phoebe’s gown again. Then he did his very best to make something of the shambles her hair had become.

  He had to kiss her again, an activity that almost ended with them on the bed once more.

  “No, Jack,” Phoebe panted at last. “I can’t. I have to get back to the children and Sunshine.”

  “Well,” he grumbled, “all right.”

  She gave him another little peck on the cheek and tried to rise. He stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “Will you be all right, Phoebe? In that little cabin? I know you don’t like to sleep indoors.”

  “Oh, Jack.” Her voice seeped through him like the sun’s rays. She loved him. He knew it. “I don’t mind sleeping inside houses. It’s tiny, cramped, dark spaces that bother me.” She shuddered and he clamped his arms around her again.

  “If you’re sure, Phoebe. Otherwise, you can sleep under the stars. I’ll fix something up for you.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He picked himself up off the bed and shoved his feet into his boots.

  “Jack, do you think General Sheridan is the one to whom I should apply for the adoption of Sunshine?”

  When he didn’t answer her for several seconds, she sought his eyes in the mirror. He looked troubled. “What’s the matter, Jack?”

  “Well . . . I-I-I don’t know.”

  “But you know him better than most people do, certainly. For heaven’s sake, he embraced you.”

  By firmly reminding herself several thousand times that the war was over, Phoebe believed she could face the prospect of speaking with General Sheridan about Sunshine. She knew she could never be as fond of him as was Jack, but she also knew she could ignore her aversion for Sunshine’s sake. Besides, she’d almost begun to like him. Sort of.

  “Yes. The general and I go back a long way, and I respect him as I respect very few of the men I fought for and with. Or against, for that matter, although General Lee’s about the best man I ever met in my life.”

  “You actually met General Lee?” Phoebe’s question was filled with all the awe and respect her southerner’s soul held for the matchless leader of their lost Cause. She watched Jack nod.

  “At the surrender.”

  “Oh.” A terrible pain speared her, taking her by surprise.

  Jack seemed to sense her reaction. He squeezed her shoulder. “He’s a great man, Phoebe. If the south had had more like him, or more money and men behind them, it would have been your side who won the war.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t like to think about it, Jack.”

  He heaved an enormous sigh. “Well, I know you don’t believe it, but it’s probably better the way it happened. I know how rough things are back home. But if the south had won, the Union would be in shambles and your own government would have collapsed in on itself because there’s no way you could have survived economically. And with the Union a mess, too, there’s no way we could have helped you rebuild.”

  “I really don’t want to think about it, Jack.” Phoebe’s grief began to give way to anger. More than anything else, she didn’t want to leave Jack tonight in anger.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He gave her another kiss. “Anyway, General Sheridan is a great soldier. He is and always has been totally pragmatic, however. There’s not a jot of compassion for the enemy in him.”

  “Oh!” Phoebe stared at him, wide-eyed, in the mirror. “How horrid.”

  “I guess it is when you think in terms of people.”

  “What other terms are there?”

  Another sigh preceded Jack’s, “Terms of duty, terms of goals, terms of campaigns, terms of objectives. Soldierly terms.”

  Sobered, Phoebe gazed at him for several moments while he finished braiding her hair and pinned it up. At last she said, “But he seems so . . . so gentlemanly.”

  “He is. It’s his job that isn’t.” Jack stared at her for a minute, his hands on her shoulders. “That’s why I’m not in the army any longer, Phoebe. I couldn’t make myself forget the people. I couldn’t think only of the objectives.”

  She turned on her stool and hugged him around the waist, hard. “Oh, Jack, I wish things could be different.”

  “So do I, sweetheart. Believe me, so do I.”

  They held each other for several minutes, neither one wanting to break the peace they’d forged together in the night. But at last Phoebe stood. She had to get back to her children.

  “I’ll see you to your door, my dear. At least you don’t have to share quarters with the evil Mrs. Davidson.” Jack bowed her out of his own quarters.

  She whacked his arm. Then she looked contrite. “I reckon I shouldn’t have been so mean to her. She’s probably not so bad, really.”

  He chuckled. “I reckon she’s not. But Phoebe—” He turned her around and stared down into her petal-soft eyes.

  “What Jack?” Good heavens, she loved him. She’d give her soul if he could love her back. She knew she was being foolish.

  “Phoebe, come to San Francisco with me. You c
an bring Sarah and Sunshine and William.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You want us to come to San Francisco with you?” She could barely hear the question herself and was surprised when he answered her.

  “Yes. Please? You’ll be much happier there than in Santa Fe. And safer. I can guarantee it.”

  She peered up into his eyes, beautiful by the light of the stars. She couldn’t see their color but knew they were the blue of the heavens, as blue as a summer sky. Those eyes of his held a world of sincerity.

  And he spoke not a word of love.

  Phoebe knew she couldn’t go to San Francisco with Jack Valentine. Not even the knowledge that her heart would go with him and leave her in Santa Fe to wither away into an empty, aching shell, could make her go with a man who didn’t love her, who wouldn’t marry her.

  He was a man who deserved better than her, anyway. And, although Phoebe knew she deserved no man at all, she still had a splinter of pride left. She wouldn’t follow any man, not even this one, to be his plaything.

  Even if her pride were not involved, what kind of example would it set for the children? No. She couldn’t do it.

  “We’re going to Santa Fe, Jack,” she said finally, her heart aching. “We’re going to Santa Fe. My family is there.”

  Her family. Jack stared down at her and, for the first time, saw her brother Paul in her face. There was the same stubbornness, the same pride, the same gallantry, the same unconquered nobility. Phoebe Antoinette Honeycutt had a way about her, every bit as much as had her dashing, valiant brother.

  “Well, then, I’ll see you to Santa Fe, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you, Jack,” Phoebe said, and her aching heart broke.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Phoebe’s first glimpse of Santa Fe was not one to make her heart sing with delight or swell with encouraging emotions.

  “Oh, dear,” she whispered, holding little Sunshine close to her breast and looking around with dismay. “It’s all so . . . so . . . brown here.”

  Jack chuckled. Even though Phoebe’d come to expect his laughter in reaction to anything she said about the new things she encountered, she resented it.

  “Well, it is. Just look at everything. It’s all so—brown.”

  “Summer dust and adobe brick,” Jack murmured as he took her advice and scanned the scenery. “Everything here’s made out of the clay soil. Mixed with straw and water, it makes pretty good bricks.”

  “Oh.” Phoebe took another look around. “Is it always so—brown?”

  Jack laughed outright. “You got something against brown, Miss Phoebe Honeycutt?”

  “Of course not.”

  She was lying. Phoebe gazed at her surroundings and her heart felt like lead. There was no color here. Everything was—brown. Sort of a light, tannish, reddish brown. Strong tea with milk, if she remembered correctly, although it had been so long since she’d had the luxury of tea she wasn’t sure anymore. Phoebe had grown up with lush greens and golds and reds and deep, delicious chocolates. With flowers and sweet smells. Not with—brown. Brown with spiny lizards and rattlesnakes. And cougars. And cactus. And hairy spiders.

  She felt very discouraged.

  “Do you know where your uncle lives, Phoebe?” Jack spoke softly, as though he recognized the lie she’d tried to keep a secret and was trying to be gentle.

  “Yes. I wrote to him and Aunt Mae that we were coming. Here’s his direction.”

  Jack took a tattered card from Phoebe’s numb fingers. “Forrest Trading Company.” He peered at her curiously. “He’s your mother’s brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “You expect they’ll mind taking in an extra child?”

  Her arms tightened around Sunshine. “I don’t know.”

  Then, as though it erupted from her heart without her knowledge or consent, Phoebe blurted, “I’ll miss you something awful, Jack.” She hung her head after the truth tumbled out, ashamed of having given in to something that had been gnawing at her for days.

  Jack chucked her under the chin with his gloved finger and made her look at him. “No, you won’t, Phoebe. I promise.” He smiled his devil’s smile.

  Trying to smile back and failing dismally, Phoebe said, “Now, how can you make me a promise like that, Black Jack Valentine? Are you magic like Sarah and William’s horses?”

  A broader smile and a shake of his head made her go limp. “No. I’m not magic. Just a plain man.”

  A plain man. Ha! Jack Valentine was about the least plain man Phoebe’d ever encountered in her life. Her throat felt as though somebody had stuffed it full of rocks which now scraped and hurt so much she couldn’t make herself say anything else.

  Jack watched her try to be brave and his heart, which had been filled nearly to capacity in the past couple of weeks, expanded another inch or so.

  “I just know, Phoebe,” he said at last.

  Phoebe wished he was right; knew he was wrong.

  Jack clicked at the mules and grinned to himself.

  Their entourage made quite a stir as they rode through the quiet streets of Santa Fe, Phoebe and Jack in the wagon, an Indian baby on Phoebe’s lap, a troop of 10th Cavalrymen following in their wake. A sea of brown faces peered at them. Phoebe watched, fascinated, as people stepped outside their homes and businesses and gawked as they passed.

  “They’re all—they all look Spanish, Jack,”

  “Most of ‘em are, I expect. This was Spanish settlement a long time before anybody from the United States got involved here.”

  Phoebe nodded. “I remember my Aunt Mae writin’ us that.”

  “Look up toward the hills, Phoebe. See? They’re not brown. Well, they’re not all brown. In the springtime, they’re almost green, in fact.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. I’ve been through here in spring. It’s pretty in these parts.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Sure I am. There are even wildflowers along the roadside when it rains.”

  “Really?” It was obvious Phoebe didn’t quite believe him.

  William and Sarah were, much to Phoebe’s dumbfounded pleasure, actually sharing Lucky Strike today. So far, it seemed as though they were doing so amicably. At least neither had pushed the other out of the saddle yet. They rode up to the wagon now, big smiles on their faces.

  “All the people here speak Spanish, Aunt Phoebe!” William declared, as if the circumstance delighted him.

  Phoebe gulped. “Do they?”

  “Yes. And they dress funny, too.” Sarah’s blue eyes gleamed with excitement. “I don’t think a one of them’s got on a corset.”

  To the accompaniment of Jack’s bellow of laughter, Phoebe said, “Is that so?” Then she scowled at him.

  “Welcome to Santa Fe, Miss Phoebe,” Jack told her with a wink.

  # # #

  They found Uncle Fred’s business with no trouble at all. It was a large trading company and seemed quite prosperous. All the commotion had alerted Phoebe’s relatives of their impending arrival, and Uncle Fred and Aunt Mae stood on their porch, waiting for them. Mae waved a handkerchief, with which she took the occasional swipe at her tear-drenched eyes. The porch, needless to say, was brown.

  “Better give me Sunshine, Phoebe. I reckon she’ll be scared of all the hugging and kissing that’s going to be happening.”

  “All right.”

  Phoebe’s heart was in such turmoil, she barely knew which way to look. She consigned Sunshine to Jack’s care with a big flurry of kisses and concerns as she tried to assure the baby’s security and find Sarah and William in the welter of soldiers who’d suddenly overtaken them. She knew she needed to say good bye to Hosea, too, and hoped he’d linger long enough for her to do so properly.

  Oh, Lord, were Sarah and William decent? They’d become such a couple of wild, raggedy hoydens during their troubled trip. And how was she going to explain how she’d managed acquire an Indian baby? Had she written that she’d be with a guide named Yves Basteau? Ye
t here she was, cozy as a nesting hen with Jack Valentine.

  Thrusting all of her frantic concerns aside, Phoebe scrambled from the wagon. “Uncle Fred! Aunt Mae!”

  And then she found herself swallowed up by all that remained of the bosom of her family.

  Aunt Mae, a squat dumpling of a woman, wiped her dimpled cheeks with a plump hand when she finally grabbed Phoebe by the shoulders and stepped back so she could survey her niece in peace. “Why, Phoebe child, I swear, I had no idea you’d grow up to be such a beauty! You’re stunnin’, child. Simply stunnin’. Why, just look at her, Fred! She’s the picture of your Mother Forrest!”

  Aunt Mae burst into tears and drew the astonished Phoebe to her buxom bosom once again. Mae’s words rattled around in Phoebe’s head like marbles. Beauty? Her? Stunning? She looked like Mother Forrest? Grandma Forrest? Her mother’s mother? The one with the cats?

  Her Uncle Fred’s gruff voice broke into Phoebe’s scrambled thoughts. “Leave off smotherin’ that child, Mae. It’s my turn.”

  So Mae propelled Phoebe from her own embrace to that of her husband. While Mae was a small, fleshy woman, Fred was extremely tall. He held Phoebe tight to his belly, which was rather large, and where she was pretty sure she was going to suffocate before he finally let her up for air.

  “It’s good to see you, Phoebe. You’ve had a hard road to travel. But we’ll try to make it up to you.”

  Uncle Fred’s rumbly voice broke on the words, and Phoebe fought to contain her own easy tears. Then she turned to discover William and Sarah, standing side by side, their hands clasped in front of them. They looked terribly bashful and a little frightened of these strangers who were their kin.

  “Aunt Mae, Uncle Fred, let me introduce you to Pauline’s two children, William and Sarah. Children, come up and shake your uncle’s hand and give your Aunt Mae a kiss.”

  “I don’t want no handshake from any children of Pauline’s, Phoebe Honeycutt. I aim to have me a big ol’ hug.” With those hearty words, Fred lifted William in his strong arms and embraced him.

  Phoebe could tell William’s dignity was sorely tried by Fred’s embrace at first. He soon warmed up to the big, boisterous older man, though, and hugged him back. While William was busy being manhandled by Fred, Sarah gasped for breath against Mae’s large, fluffy breast.