The water was warm as an old maid’s bath, and mirror-smooth, since the tide was out. He lowered himself into it, as other men had done before him, and would after him, trying not to think about the moving shapes below. In truth, he knew, there was more to fear from the two-legged predators patrolling the decks of the ship than from the legendary sharks. Gil had made two other attempts at escape over the course of his captivity, and his back, an unbroken expanse of scar tissue from the whippings he’d received for his trouble, was an ever-present testimony to the high price of failure. If he was collared again, he knew the captain would surely kill him, as an example to others who might be spinning some reckless scheme to get away.
He swam slowly, concentrating on absolute silence, praying inside his head. The shore was within fifty yards when Kenyon, the man swimming just ahead of Gil, went under the surface with one gurgling cry. Blood bubbled up from below, and Gil felt watery echoes of the graceful, rolling motions of the kill against his skin. The prayers gave way to soundless screams, and he did the only thing he could—he continued to move toward shore, blindly and without hope. Behind him, the carnage continued as other sharks gathered, and vaguely, as if from far in the distance, he heard men screaming, while others called mocking offers of salvation from the decks of the Nellie May.
Gil gained the beach, by some miracle, and lay sprawled in the sand, alternately shuddering and retching. As far as he knew, of the seven men who had begun the ordeal, he was the only one who had survived.
He awakened now, and was not surprised to find himself on his belly, with his arms spread wide over his head and his fingers digging into the dirt. His body invariably relived that night as vividly as his mind did when the nightmares came, and he rested under the apple tree for several long moments, trembling and fighting the need to weep. Those things, too, were part of the involuntary ritual.
When he’d collected himself sufficiently, Gil got to his feet, pulled on his trousers, and buttoned them. He stumbled to the creek, checked on the horse, and then knelt on the bank to splash cool water on his face. When the last remnants of the dream had dissipated like smoke, Gil found the flask in his saddlebags and drank deeply. After pissing in the tall grass over near the barn, he got back into his bedroll.
There was only one thing he could think of that would drive away nightmares better than cold water and whiskey, and that was a tumble with Miss Emmeline. He’d been celibate since the day he left her, and he had no intention of breaking his wedding vows now. He just hoped she’d be quick about deciding whether to take him back or not, because waiting was a lot harder, now that he could see and touch her and hear her voice. One hell of a lot harder.
• • •
Emmeline forced herself to have breakfast with Izannah and teach her nine o’clock piano lesson before she went out to the carriage house to hitch up the judge’s surrey. She laid the satchel she’d taken from her grandfather’s safe upon arising on the floorboard, securely against one foot, and took off.
There were less direct ways to reach Gil’s property than by driving south on Main Street, but Emmeline was not given to deceit. Furthermore, she harbored no illusions that, by taking elaborate precautions, she could stem the flow of gossip. The speculative stares and hesitant waves she received as she passed through town were proof that she was right.
She had barely put Plentiful behind her when a rider appeared, and she pulled up on the reins as Neal came to a halt beside her. He tipped his hat and smiled, but the look in his eyes was less than cordial.
“Good morning, Miss Emmeline,” he said.
Emmeline fidgeted on the hard seat of the surrey while her ancient dapple-gray mare, Lysandra, bent her head to graze at the side of the road. “Good morning, Mr. Montgomery,” Emmeline replied. “Was there something you wanted?”
Neal leaned, with deceptive indolence, on the pommel of his saddle. “Common decency prevents me from answering that question honestly,” he told her. “I suppose I don’t dare hope that you were on your way to the Circle M just now, to tell me you’ve decided to divorce Hartwell and marry me?”
Color climbed Emmeline’s neck and throbbed in her cheeks, but she kept her shoulders straight and her chin high. “I have not made a decision one way or the other, where divorce is concerned. I do believe, however, that you and I were both saved from a tragic mistake yesterday.”
He resettled himself in the saddle, an unnecessary motion, since he, like most men in that part of the country, had been riding so long that he was practically part of the horse. “Do you, now? Well, I happen to disagree completely. I’ll wait, Miss Emmeline, until you come to your senses and accept the fact that you’ve thrown in your lot with a scoundrel.”
Emmeline bit her lower lip and looked away for a moment. She had made up her mind, once and for all, not to marry Mr. Montgomery, but there was possibly some truth in his implication that she was allowing lesser instincts to guide her. “Please,” she said with cool dignity and absolute sincerity. “Don’t wait for me. You deserve someone better.”
“There is no one better,” he replied easily, and touched the brim of his hat again. “Good day to you, Miss Emmeline.”
Emmeline did not answer, but instead reined poor Lysandra away from the lush grass and set the surrey moving again.
When Emmeline reached Gil’s house, she found him straddling the apex of the roof, bare-chested in the June sunlight, wielding a hammer. Seeing her, he immediately reached for his shirt and pulled it on. He was agile as he moved down the inadequate ladder leaning against the front wall of the cabin, and she could easily imagine him climbing the rigging of a ship.
Gil was buttoning his shirt as he came toward her. His hair was mussed and his smile was tentative, almost cautious, as though he expected bad news. She supposed he’d had more than his share of that—provided his story was true.
Emmeline bent and picked up the small satchel that had been resting at her feet while Gil waited to help her down from the surrey. Even the act of placing her hand in his seemed wickedly intimate to her, and roused all the old, treacherous sensations.
She withdrew her hand quickly and clutched it to the grip of the satchel. “I wasn’t able to care for the cattle and horses after you went away,” she blurted out, “so I sold them. Since the livestock was yours, so is the money. Here it is.”
Gil took the bag she thrust at him, but his expression revealed puzzlement. “You kept it all this time? But if you believed I was dead—”
“When it became obvious that you weren’t coming back,” Emmeline said, her voice rising a little before she managed to lower it to a more moderate tone, “I went back to live with my grandfather. He settled my affairs as best he could, considering his failing health, and when he died, I found the money in his personal safe, in a packet bearing your name.”
Gil stared into Emmeline’s eyes for what seemed like an eternity, then opened the satchel and reached inside, bringing out a stack of bills tightly bound with string. “I would have understood if you’d spent this on yourself,” he said at length in a raspy voice. “What kept you from selling the land, Emmeline?”
She smoothed her skirts and then patted her hair, which tended toward untidiness. “I knew it meant more to you than anything else in the world, and I couldn’t bring myself to let go of it. I kept thinking I’d come back out here to live someday.”
Gil smiled at Emmeline then, and though she remained somewhat nervous, she was more at ease after that. “I thank you for that,” he said, “though I have to say you were only partly right. There isn’t a parcel of land on this earth that means more to me than you do, including this one.” Having said those pretty words, Gil had the good grace to turn away, so that Emmeline could blush in private.
After she’d recovered her composure, she lifted her skirts and followed him, even though good sense dictated that she ought to leave immediately. She simply couldn’t trust her judgment when it came to Gil Hartwell. But the fact that he was her legal husband
didn’t mean she would fall into his arms and tell him all was forgiven. He had changed a great deal during their time apart, and so had she.
“This money will come in handy,” he said, offering a nail keg for a chair. “As you can see, the place could do with some fixing up.”
Emmeline looked around carefully, taking in the sunken roof, the broken fences, the weed-choked patch where her garden had been, long ago. She hadn’t been back to the ranch since the day her grandfather had come to collect her and taken her away to his house in town. She’d always known there would be too many memories here, and that it would hurt like everything to see the property gone to rack and ruin, after all her and Gil’s hard work. They’d had such dreams, such hopes.
Gil was leaning against the trunk of her beloved apple tree, his arms folded, the stack of bills protruding from his shirt pocket. “You look so sorrowful,” he said. “What’s going through that mind of yours?”
She lowered her head for a few moments, making busywork of smoothing her skirts so he wouldn’t see just how deep her sorrow ran. “I was thinking of dandelions,” she said presently, fixing her gaze on the creek and the fine horse grazing beside it, “and how they turn to ghosts and blow away in the wind.”
“Scattering their seeds over the land,” Gil added gently. “Renewing themselves, the way all living things do.” He came to stand before her, and touched her cheek with the lightest brush of his fingers before tilting her chin upward. The sun blazed behind him, blinding her to all but the shape of him, but she did not close her eyes.
“Tell me how to lift your spirits, Emmeline,” he went on with quiet dignity. “I’ll ride out if that’s what you want. Hell, I’ll make myself a pair of waxen wings and fly off into the sun. Just tell me how to please you.”
The words were out before Emmeline had even guessed she would say them. “Hold me,” she whispered. “Take me into your arms, Mr. Hartwell, and hold me tightly and don’t let me go ’til I can really believe you’re back.”
Gil drew her slowly to her feet and into his embrace. It was bliss to nestle against him, as she had so long before, while her heart matched its pace to his. He smelled of old wood, summer grass, whiskey and hard work, and the scents lent substance to Emmeline’s memories, and brought tears to her eyes.
He kissed her temple and spread his fingers wide over her back. She felt his desire, hard as tamarack against her lower belly, but he made no move to claim her as a husband claims a wife, nor did he speak. He just stood there, holding her, and for Emmeline the experience was a homecoming in and of itself.
She rested her forehead against his shoulder, and her tears wet his shirt. “I am so very afraid, Mr. Hartwell,” she confessed in a low and wretched voice.
Gil cupped her face in his hands, the rough edges of his thumbs brushing the moisture from her cheeks. “Oh, darlin’,” he said raggedly, resting his chin on top of her head. “Of what? Tell me what scares you.”
Emmeline expelled a deep, shuddering sigh. “You do,” she replied. “You and everything you make me feel. Dear God in heaven, Gil—to let myself love you again, and then lose you—”
“Shhh,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere, ever again, unless you send me away.”
Emmeline stepped back in his embrace, just far enough to look up into those impossibly blue eyes. “You said that before,” she reminded him. “The day we were married. You mustn’t make promises you can’t keep, Gil.”
He kissed her forehead, and an ancient and sacred yearning moved through Emmeline, weakening her. “You’re not ready to hear my promises,” he said, and there was grief in his voice, in his body, in his handsome face. Then, somehow, magically, he forced a smile, and closed his hand over hers. “Come and sit by the creek with me, Emmeline. Like you did when we were courting.”
She allowed Gil to lead her past the ruined house and through the tall grass to the stream bank, and the sunlight danced like melted diamonds on the restless, whispering water.
“Take off your shoes,” he commanded, beaming as proudly as if he’d created that pure, spring-fed creek himself, just for her amusement.
A strange intoxication possessed Emmeline, as if Gil had cast a spell over her. Whatever had lightened the mood, she was grateful.
She had worn slippers, instead of her usual practical black boots, with their many buttons, and she laughed as she kicked one away, then the other. The stream was ice cold, but she had always loved to wade in it and feel the smooth stones against the soles of her feet.
She made her way to the middle, where the water reached to her calves, and stood there reveling in the sheer irresponsibility of what she was doing. Gil watched her from the bank, grinning, his arms folded, his hair gleaming like onyx in the sunlight.
When Emmeline’s feet went numb, she made her way reluctantly to the shore and sat down in the grass to stretch out her legs and wriggle her toes. Now that the judge was gone, and it was just her and Izannah, there were many demands on her time. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d done anything so frivolous as to wade into a creek with her skirts hiked up.
Gil crouched beside her, and offered a bouquet of bright yellow dandelions, not yet turned to ghosts. She welcomed them as though they were orchids plucked from the Garden of Eden.
He sat down and pulled Emmeline’s right foot onto his lap. She uttered a dreamy sigh as he began to rub that innocent extremity between his hands, restoring the circulation with such efficiency that she gave him the other foot as well. When she would have withdrawn, however, he took a gentle but firm hold on her ankles.
Emmeline braced herself by putting her hands behind her on the soft ground, and watched this beloved stranger curiously. It did not occur to her to feel fear; if there was one thing she was sure of, in all the universe, it was that Gil Hartwell would never hurt her. Not physically, at least.
Without speaking, he took the smallest toe on her right foot in his thumb and forefinger, and began to work it between them, his touch light and sure and sensual in a way Emmeline had not expected. He progressed, with infinite slowness, from one small digit to another, until he’d reduced all ten of them to the consistency of butter.
Emmeline closed her eyes and let her head fall back, feeling the sun on her face. Gil proceeded to caress her right instep, her arch, the protruding bone on the inside of her ankle. However innocent and undemanding his touch, Gil was seducing her, and she wasn’t sure she would resist him. She was a tactile creature, shameless as a house cat, and it had been seven long years since she’d felt those light, leisurely strokes on her flesh.
She sagged backward into the deep, fragrant grass, expecting him to undress her, as he had done so many times before their parting, and make love to her on the creek bank, in the warm light of the sun.
Instead, Gil shoved her slippers back on, first one, then the other.
Emmeline sat up, stunned, disappointed, and more than a little insulted.
Gil’s expression was grim. “I want you more than I ever have before,” he said, “but I won’t have you saying I seduced you. If you want my lovemaking, you’ll have to ask for it.”
Emmeline opened her mouth, then closed it again. She wasn’t ready to ask, though she most certainly desired him, and the dichotomy was nearly overwhelming. Feeling spurned, she clambered awkwardly to her feet, her sodden hem and petticoats clinging to her legs and ankles. She shook a finger at him, but when she tried to speak, all that came out of her mouth was an indignant squeak.
Gil chuckled and stood up with considerably more grace than Emmeline had exhibited. “Take a breath,” he said. “You look as though you’re strangling.”
Emmeline complied, and sucked in one outraged gasp. The mirth dancing in Gil’s eyes incensed her, even as a part of her celebrated the easy ingenuousness of his laughter.
“The devil take you, Gil Hartwell,” she managed to blurt, and then slogged off toward the waiting surrey.
Gil stopped her, taking a light hold on her shoulder and
turning her to face him. “I’m not scorning you, Emmeline,” he said, wearing a diplomatic expression now, made partly of amusement and partly of tenderness. “Please understand that. If I’d taken you just now—and God knows, I wanted to—you’d have hated me for it within the hour.”
Emmeline sagged a little, for she could see the truth in his words. “How will I know,” she asked in a small voice, “when I’m ready?”
Gil reached out, traced her lips with his fingertip. “You’ll know,” he assured her.
She searched his face and saw some of the old Gil there, and more of the new. In many ways, he was a stranger, this husband of hers. The man she remembered would have had her beside the stream, and gloried in her pleasure as well as his own. The old Gil wouldn’t have thought beyond the moment, and in some ways, Emmeline missed that side of him.
“If someone had told me you were going to come back someday,” she said softly, “I wouldn’t have believed things could be so complicated. Did you know it would be like this?”
Gil’s smile was infinitely tender and unspeakably sad. “I’ve learned to take life as it comes,” he replied. “Six and a half years as a virtual slave makes a man patient, Emmeline, when it doesn’t kill him.”
She wanted then to put her arms around Gil, to give comfort instead of taking it. For the first time, it struck her that she’d been selfish, thinking merely of her own grievances, never really considering what might have happened to him. “Will you come for supper?” she asked, keeping her distance because she sensed he wanted that. “Tonight, I mean, at seven o’clock?”
Gil executed a stately bow. “I would be honored, Miss Emmeline,” he replied. “Not to mention relieved to be spared my own cooking, if only for one night. Now, get yourself into that surrey and drive away before chivalry gives way to lust and I take you where you stand.”
Although Emmeline did not find the latter idea entirely unappealing, she turned and hurried toward the surrey all the same, scrambling up into the seat before Gil could offer a hand and set her senses to rioting again.
Resurrection Page 3