Montgomery drew on his cheroot, then expelled the smoke. He tossed the small cigar aside with a flip of one wrist, and in that same motion a derringer slipped into his palm.
“I’ll put the Colt in your hand,” he said smoothly, “and it’ll look as though you drew on me.” He shrugged. “An obvious case of self-defense.”
Gil didn’t argue that Miss Emmeline was bound to tell the truth of the matter, because he knew Montgomery would never give her the chance. Montgomery meant to kill Emmeline, too, and then testify that Gil had done it. Folks might believe a story like that, since most of them probably thought Gil had never cared about Emmeline in the first place, disappearing without a word as he had. Montgomery, now that Gil considered the matter, had probably done what he could to foster that assumption.
He lunged at Montgomery, letting out a low roar of desperation and fury as he landed on the other man. The derringer went off, and Gil heard the report, felt the bullet burrow deep into the flesh of his shoulder. But the explosive pain, rather than felling him, sent the power of a wounded grizzly surging through his system.
He and Montgomery rolled on the ground, struggling for possession of the derringer for what seemed to Gil an eternity, and then there was another shot. Montgomery stiffened, then went still, and Gil raised himself to his knees.
He was holding the derringer in both hands, still pointed at Montgomery’s dead heart, when Emmeline arrived, accompanied by Marshal Scead and a handful of heathens who’d no doubt been waiting out the revival in Kelly’s Saloon.
Gil found Emmeline’s pale face in the darkness, focused on it, and passed out.
When he woke up again, he was lying on the billiard table at Kelly’s, and old Doc Blitter, the most devoted heathen of them all, was digging in his shoulder with what felt like a broken ax handle. There was blood everywhere, and the pain was so exquisite that it set Gil’s head spinning and brought his supper surging up into the back of his throat.
“Don’t go puking,” Doc Blitter said, speaking around the lighted cigar dangling from his teeth. “That’s all I need right now, you puking.”
Emmeline was somewhere nearby, at the edge of a shifting fog. Gil heard the rustle of her skirts as she paced back and forth, stirring the filthy sawdust floor with her leather shoes. “You, sir,” she said to the doctor, “are nothing but a butcher!”
“Maybe so,” said Doc, digging deeper, “but I’m the only man within fifty miles of this shit-heel town who knows how to get a bullet out.”
“Look at you,” Emmeline went on, her voice rising note by note toward a shrill crescendo. “You’re filthy. Why, even if you do manage to get the bullet out, he’s bound to die of infection!”
Doc swore, tossed aside his cigar with a bloody hand, and reached for something. Gil watched in horror as the doctor upended a half-filled bottle of rotgut whiskey into his wound.
“This’ll fix that,” the physician said.
Fire blazed in the wound and sped through Gil’s veins, and he lost consciousness again and dreamed he was back aboard the Nellie May. He’d relived the entire experience by the time he woke up again.
This time he was in a bed, with clean linen sheets lying smooth against his skin. The pain was with him, a dull, incessant ache, as though his bones had been pried apart at the joints. Emmeline sat nearby in a rocking chair, tatting an edge onto a pillowcase.
Gil tried to say her name, but it came out as a croak, and left his throat raw.
As though lit from within, her face brightened when she looked at him, and she set aside her needlework and rushed over to pour water from a carafe on the bedside table and offer him some.
He took a careful sip and fell back onto his pillows, feeling as weary as if he’d just plowed a field without a mule. Looking up at Emmeline, he suddenly did not know what to say.
She stroked his forehead with a cool, light hand, and he marveled that so simple a caress could send such a sweet echo pulsing through his soul. “At least that horse doctor didn’t kill you,” she said, and sat down carefully on the edge of the mattress.
“I thought I dreamed that part,” Gil said gruffly, with a grin that wavered on his lips. Hell, he thought, even his mouth was weak.
Emmeline shook her head. “It was quite real,” she told him. She was holding his hand in her lap, her fingers intertwined with his. “Neal Montgomery is dead.”
“I know,” Gil said, and was surprised to realize that he felt sorrow. He had, after all, intended to kill the other man, in order to save his life and Emmeline’s.
Her cheeks were pale as parchment. “Everybody knows it was self-defense, so there won’t be any trial.”
Gil let out a long sigh, because he’d been worried that the incident would be construed as murder, even though he’d taken a bullet in the shoulder himself. He brought his hand to his mouth, and Emmeline’s with it, and brushed his dry lips over her knuckles. “‘Everybody’? Tell me what you think, Emmeline, because that’s all that matters to me.”
She looked deep into his eyes. “I think we were both fools to spend even one day apart,” she said earnestly. “Why, we acted as if we had all the time in the world!”
He nodded. “I agree,” he replied, and looked around the room at the bright wallpaper, the solid furniture, the lamps with their colorfully painted glass globes, the silver picture frames on the guest-room fireplace mantel. “You won’t mind leaving the judge’s house and coming back to the cabin with me?”
Emmeline’s smile nearly blinded him. “Mind? I’ve got my things all packed, and the house is already up for sale.”
“What about Izannah?” Gil asked.
“She and Becky Bickham are going back east,” she answered. “They’ll both spend a year traveling in Europe with our aunt. Once we’ve sold the property, Izannah and I will share the proceeds.”
Gil nodded, but he was weary, and his concentration was flagging. “I believe I’ll rest for just a minute,” he said.
Emmeline bent and kissed his forehead, then rose and went back to her chair. He heard the comforting sound of the rocker as he drifted off to sleep, away from the pain. Slumber was a quiet, peaceful realm, no longer haunted, and he rested there, and healed, safe in the constancy of Emmeline’s love.
One Month Later …
Emmeline stood alone on the veranda, wearing her doing-business hat and carrying her gloves. Gil’s precious letters, retrieved from Neal Montgomery’s desk by the marshal, were tucked safely in her handbag.
Izannah, dressed to travel, was beside her, tearful and yet eager to set out on the journey east. Mr. Connors, the stage driver, had agreed to bring the coach right to their door, in honor of the occasion, since he had to pass by the judge’s front gate on the way to Missoula anyhow.
The house, along with most of its furnishings, belonged to a young doctor from Boston now. He and his family would live on the upper floor and use the lower one as a clinic and small infirmary.
Emmeline heartily approved, her opinion of Doc Blitter being what it was. And she knew she would not miss the many possessions she had sold or given away—Gil’s letters and the brooch he had brought her were all she really cherished.
Still, the house had been her refuge, first as a child, then as a bride believing herself to be a widow. As eager as she was to go home to Gil and the little cabin beside the creek, she could not turn away from it without sentiment, and gratitude.
She laid one hand to the whitewashed siding, as if caressing a living creature. Good-bye, she said in the silence of her heart.
The arriving stagecoach made a great racket and Becky Bickham, waiting by the front gate with her parents and a good-sized trunk, called out to Izannah in an eager voice to hurry up. Emmeline smiled and turned toward the street with one arm around Izannah’s waist.
“We’ll go forward,” Emmeline said firmly, “and not look back.”
When they reached the gate, Izannah embraced her. The coach driver and Reverend Bickham were already loading bagga
ge, while Mrs. Bickham wept into a much-mended handkerchief.
“I promise I’ll write every week,” Izannah said.
Emmeline kissed her cheek. “You’d better,” she answered with a mock scowl. There was a flurry of good-byes after that, along with a few tears, and then Emmeline stood with the Bickhams watching the stagecoach trundle off toward Missoula, where the girls would board a train that would take them all the way to New England.
When the dust settled, Emmeline and the Bickhams said farewells to one another—they would meet again on Sunday morning, of course—and then Emmeline climbed into her overloaded surrey. She took up the reins, released the brake, and turned the rig toward her future.
Gil was standing in the doorway of the barn when she arrived, his shoulder in a sling, leaning on a pitchfork. He watched, with a slight, crooked smile, as she drew the surrey to a stop beside the creek and climbed down. Lysandra lowered her ancient head to the clear waters and began to drink noisily, and on both sides of the stream, Gil’s cattle grazed in the rich grass.
“You are not supposed to be working,” she scolded as she drew near. Reverend Bickham had organized a crew to make repairs on the barn, and there was wood chopped and stacked for winter. With the cattle Gil had bought from other ranchers, they had the beginnings of the ranch they dreamed of building together.
“And you’re not supposed to be nagging,” Gil said when she reached him. He set the pitchfork aside and drew her against him in a one-armed embrace. Their kiss was gentle at first, even cautious, and Emmeline’s heart leaped, brimming with a new and ever-deeper love.
They were like newlyweds—although not in all ways, for they had agreed not to consummate their marriage until they could wake up together the morning after and go on with their lives.
Gil eased Emmeline into the barn, where the fresh hay was sweet-scented and prickly-soft, and kissed her again, this time with hunger. She responded by parting her lips to receive his tongue.
“Perhaps we should go inside,” she gasped, breathless, when he finally allowed her to take air.
Gil nuzzled her neck and stroked her breast. “You’ve forgotten what I said, Miss Emmeline,” he teased as she trembled under his touch, yearning to shed her dress and underthings and receive him completely. “I have no patience, this first time. I’ve waited too long to have you.”
Emmeline flushed, but with pleasure, not embarrassment. She stepped away from him, and he watched her breasts rise as she reached up to remove her sensible hat and toss it aside. After that, she unpinned her hair and shook her head, causing the auburn tresses to fall, bouncing, to her waist. Then, like a temptress, Emmeline began unfastening the small buttons at the front of her dress. Presently she stepped out of the garment and stood before Gil in her petticoats, drawers, and camisole.
He pulled her to him with a low, impatient cry and wrenched the eyelet-edged camisole down, freeing her full, sumptuous breasts. He admired them, fondled them gently in his calloused hand, and then bent his head to take fierce suckle at a taut nipple.
Emmeline cried out in shameless pleasure when he pushed down her petticoats and literally tore away her drawers to cup her in a firm, possessive grip. The heel of his palm pressed against the nubbin of flesh he’d bared, and he made slow, tantalizing circles as he continued to feast on her breasts.
He kissed her again, and the two of them dropped to the hay and knelt facing each other. “Next time,” he said hoarsely, “I’ll take you like a lady. Right now, I want you in the swiftest and most primitive way I can have you.”
Emmeline had been transformed from woman to she-wolf, and she turned on her hands and knees, offering herself to her mate. Gil opened his trousers, found the passage that waited to receive him, and thrust himself inside her with a fierce, almost anguished cry. She was ready, and set a brisk pace for him, whimpering low in her throat while he fondled her breasts and moved hard against her.
Just when she would have hurled back her head and groaned in satisfaction, he slowed himself, and dipped his head to plant light kisses along the length of her backbone. Emmeline shuddered and drew him back into the age-old rhythm that would appease them both. She reached back into his trousers and tickled him with her fingertips, and after that, they were both lost.
Their bodies collided hard, then harder, then harder still. Finally, with a great, mingled sob, they climaxed together, flexing and straining against each other until the last tremor had subsided. Then they fell into the hay, exhausted, to gather their strength for another bout of lovemaking.
After some time, Gil raised himself onto his good elbow and surveyed Emmeline’s breasts greedily. She pushed him onto his back and straddled him, and they both laughed at her audacity. The laughter stopped, however, when Emmeline guided Gil inside her, and had him as thoroughly, as mercilessly, as he had had her. She was relentless, and rode him until he lay tamed beneath her, and then was seized by her own pleasure, and uttered a long, gasping shout as she came.
When at last it was over, Emmeline fell to her husband’s chest, and he held her, murmuring words of love as she drifted slowly back from ecstasy. In time they were strong enough to untangle themselves and rise from the lush cushion of hay. Emmeline found her clothes and put them on, but her hair was spiky with straw, as was Gil’s, and her hat had disappeared entirely.
Gazing at Gil, Emmeline felt suddenly shy. She’d been wanton, flinging herself into their lovemaking the way she had, behaving like some primitive creature and carrying on wildly enough to scare the cattle away.
She looked down, shaking her skirts with both hands.
Gil cupped her chin in his palm and raised her face. “I love you, Emmeline,” he said, clearly and with purpose, as though speaking to someone who might not hear or understand what he was saying.
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “And I love you,” she responded.
Gil took her hand and led her out of the barn and across the wide yard toward the cabin. Inside, sitting in the middle of the table, was a small box. “I couldn’t afford to buy you one of these before,” he said as Emmeline raised the lid and found a simple golden band inside. “Will you stay with me, and be my wife?” he asked. “ ’Til death do us part?”
“Longer,” Emmeline replied, holding out her hand so he could slip the ring onto her finger.
It was a perfect fit.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright C 1995 by Linda Lael Miller
This title was previously published in the anthology Everlasting Love.
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First Pocket Star Books ebook edition January 2013
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ISBN: 978-1-4767-1099-0
Linda Lael Miller, Resurrection
Resurrection Page 8