“Brigham,” she whispered, in a despair of wanting.
His lips moved, warm and firm and soft, against her temple. “Not tonight, love. Not when your feelings are out of control this way.”
Lydia's soul shriveled a little, out of loneliness and disappointment, but her reason rejoiced. Brigham's assessment of her mental state had been correct; she was not in her right mind. She had moaned and pitched under his fingers and his tongue like a wanton, raised herself to him like a sacrifice, sobbed in glorious surrender while he satisfied her.
And she'd done all this because she was overwrought, because she'd come to love Devon as a brother and he was so grievously hurt. She'd wanted to give Brigham comfort, as well as take it from him, but it wasn't a choice she would have made in the cool light of good sense, and she knew it.
She began to cry softly, trying hard not to make a sound, but Brigham knew. He caressed her cheek with one callused hand, wiped away her tears with the rough side of his thumb.
“It's all right, Lydia,” he said hoarsely, holding her blessedly close. “I went too far, I know, but things won't go any further.” He kissed her again, unromantically, on the bridge of her nose. “I'm sorry.”
Lydia thought of the way her body had flown while Brigham loved her, and recalled how her very soul had seemed to soar free of her body during those wicked, violently joyous moments while she had been totally his. Don't be sorry, she pleaded, in silent grief. She had no excuse to offer, and couldn't have uttered a word even if she had.
Brigham just held her after that, and the experience was like medicine to her troubled spirit. She had always given comfort, though in less intimate forms, of course, but she'd rarely received it herself. In a way, for all its tender peace, the protection of Brigham's strong embrace was headier and more glorious than his bold lovemaking.
Presently, however, it occurred to her that such intercourse between a man and a woman was, by its very nature, reciprocal. She reached out to touch him, brazen in the sudden intensity of her curiosity, and was startled to feel his manhood straining, hard and imperious against her palm.
He gave a strangled cry when she closed her hand around him, the sound hissing through his teeth as if she'd held a hot coal to his flesh. He swore deliriously and curled his fingers around her wrist to free himself.
“I'm trying to be a gentleman,” he breathed, after a long interval of deep, ragged breathing. “But if you do that again, I won't be held accountable for my actions. Is that understood?”
Lydia's eyes widened at the note of dangerous sincerity in his voice, and at the same time she wanted to find out what she was missing. If it was more of what he'd just taught her, and better, he wouldn't have to worry about being a gentleman because she wouldn't be a lady.
“I never knew it felt like that,” she marveled.
Brigham groaned, like a man in the throes of cholera, and moved away from her slightly. “Please, Lydia,” he pleaded. “Don't talk about it anymore. I already feel as if I've got a lighted stick of dynamite between my legs.”
The sudden return of her inhibitions gave her the impetuousness to sit up, turn her back and reach for her clothes, which were lying in a heap beside the bed. Her face went crimson and her lower lip trembled. How on earth would she face Brigham again after the way she'd acted?
His hand closed gently over her right shoulder. “I need a wife,” he said, in a tone that might have been warmer instead of coolly practical. “My daughters need a mother, now more than ever. I'm asking you again, Lydia—marry me.”
It took all her strength to rise from that bed, walk to the fireside and begin dressing herself. She knew Brigham was watching her every move, but there was no helping that, because the cabin had only one room and a loft, and there was nowhere to hide. “I know I came here on the agreement that I'd marry for my keep,” she said, her voice shaking. The tragic truth was that it was all she could do not to return to that bed, surrender to Brigham again, tease him until he finally took solace in her body. “But for the first time in my life I have to go back on my word. I can't be your wife, Brigham.”
She heard the rope springs of the bed creak as he sat up, and turned her back swiftly, her motions frantic as she tried to dress.
When he spoke, he was standing so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her nape. “Why not?” he demanded quietly.
Lydia bit her lower lip, and her eyes filled with tears. She could not turn around, could not face him. “Because I won't have a husband who doesn't love me,” she whispered when she found the force inside herself to speak. “It would be better to have none at all.”
Brigham didn't touch her, nor did he reply. She felt him turn away, unable or unwilling to offer her the one shining thing she wanted most in all the world. In the moments that followed, she grieved bitterly for the dream he'd offered and then taken away.
11
LYDIA WANTED TO FLEE BACK TO THE MAIN HOUSE ON HER own, without waiting to light the lantern against the darkness or even taking the trouble to drape herself in her cloak as protection from the rain, but Brigham wouldn't suffer an escape. He made her wait, physically barring the door by leaning against it while he wrenched on his clothes, his gray eyes extending a furious challenge: try getting past me. Just try it.
Lydia stared at him in embarrassed fascination for a moment, then turned away, her arms folded. By morning, she surmised, her chagrin would have grown to such proportions that she'd be unable to face Brigham Quade at all.
She put a hand to her mouth and gave a small, stifled sob.
To her surprise, Brigham rested his hands on her shoulders, though he did not turn her to face him. “Don't punish yourself,” he commanded, his voice low and gruff and full of authority, for all its softness. “It's a natural thing for a woman to carry on like that when she's being loved, and there's no wrong in it.”
Lydia flushed deeply at his directness, but at the same time she was marveling at the way he'd seemingly read her thoughts. She might have been thinking of Devon's great trouble, after all, or of some private tragedy just her own.
She lifted her chin and forced herself to speak. “Let's get back,” she said. “I want to look in on Devon and find out if the doctor is here yet.”
Brigham sighed. “Yes,” was all he said. He put Lydia's cloak over her shoulders, lit the copper lantern she'd brought up the hill with her earlier, before her personal fall from grace, and put out the one that burned next to the window.
The rain had intensified, as if stirred to greater fury by human passions, and Brigham was soaked to the skin by the time they reached the kitchen of the big house. His dark hair hung dripping in his face and, for a long moment, he looked at Lydia with torment in his eyes.
Then, still without speaking, he set the lantern in the middle of the table for her to see by and thrust himself up the back stairway, through the darkness.
Lydia took a few minutes to compose herself, or, at least, to make a noble effort. She shook out her cloak and hung it from one of the pegs by the back door. Despite the cover the garment had given her, she was hardly drier than Brigham had been.
She'd be no help at all if she caught pneumonia, she reasoned, her pragmatism in full sail again. And neither would Brigham.
She pumped water into a copper teakettle, set it on the stove to heat, and added kindling to the dying embers in the grate. She had found a jug of lemon juice in the pantry, along with a crock of honey, when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
Brigham, she thought, her heart seizing up in her breast, trying to make itself small and hard and invulnerable.
But it was not the master of the house who stepped from the shadows at the base of the rear stairway. It was Captain McCauley, and Lydia was so stunned by the sight of him that she let the jug and the honey pot tumble to the table and collapsed into a chair. Lydia had not seen the man since the night she'd helped him escape a Union camp.
It couldn't be him, she said to herself, looking throug
h spread fingers.
“Hello, Lydia,” the apparition said, with a smile in his voice. He approached, slowly, a thin man with an engaging smile and unruly brown hair.
Lydia laid her hands on the tabletop to anchor herself, fingers splayed as if to take purchase somehow from the smooth, cool oilcloth. “Wh—” was all she managed to say.
His presence was easy, his manner graciously southern. He looked much the same as he had lying in that faraway hospital tent, about to lose his arm to a bounty-hungry surgeon, except that he was healthier, of course. “It constantly amazes me,” he said, “how small this old world really is.”
Lydia swallowed hard. Captain McCauley was at once a reminder of the horrors she'd seen during the war and a living reassurance that life goes on, as regularly and unchangeably as the seasons.
“What are you doing here?” she finally got up the strength to ask.
The captain sighed. “I'm afraid the late conflict left the South much changed from what I remembered,” he said, his tones revealing both sadness and resignation. “My wife and child perished with the fever, you see, and everywhere I looked I saw something to remind me of earlier, more benevolent days. I signed on as ship's doctor with a craft traveling around the Horn—the Enchantress, she was called, originally out of South Carolina. I wandered around Seattle for a few days, then encountered a man looking for a physician to bring back to Quade's Harbor.” He paused, shrugged his thin shoulders. “And here I am. You did a fine job of looking after that young fellow up there, Lydia,” he added, with a nod toward the ceiling. “He's got some rocky days and nights ahead of him, but I think he'll pull through.”
Lydia felt a current of relief swirl through the flood of confusion and surprise that had already engulfed her. Devon would recover. The kettle began to hiss and sputter on the stove behind her.
“You never mentioned you were a doctor,” Lydia said foolishly, staring at the man who had once been an enemy, remembering how she'd orchestrated his escape and prayed he would get past the lines of her own side.
McCauley chuckled. “I was out of my head with pain and fever most of the time, if I recall,” he said. Then, with his left hand, he touched his right upper arm fondly, almost reverently, and he smiled. “I owe you a debt, Lydia McQuire. It would seem to me that the benign fates have placed me in an ideal position to repay it.”
Lydia searched his lined but still-handsome face, and she wondered how anyone, Union or Confederate, could ever have seen this gentle man as a foe. “Are you planning to stay here in Quade's Harbor?” she asked, rising on shaking legs to get mugs down from the cupboard, spoon in thick honey and add lemon juice to that.
“I might,” the captain answered. “God knows, the place could use a doctor, and I could use a place.” He knitted his brows together in a thoughtful but not unfriendly frown. “What's that concoction you're mixing up there?”
Lydia's spoon clattered as she stirred hot water into the honey and lemon juice. “Just a simple cold remedy.” She sniffled, suddenly very conscious of her wet hair and sodden skirts. “I was caught in the rain, you see, and thought it wise to take preventative measures. Would you like some tea, while the water's hot?”
Captain McCauley smiled wearily. “That would refresh me some, I think,” he agreed, rising. “It's going to be a long night.”
“You'll be in Devon's room?”
The doctor nodded. His clothes were threadbare, but finely made, and he still held himself proudly. “Yes,” he said.
“I'll bring your tea there, then,” Lydia replied, turning away, pretending to be busy. She'd forgotten that Captain McCauley was a perceptive man, and she feared he'd look inside her and guess that she had a wild side to her nature, a facet she'd just discovered in Brigham Quade's arms only that night.
“Thank you,” he replied.
Lydia hastened to light another lantern and offer it to him. “It's good that you're here, Captain,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “Quade's Harbor needs you.”
Tired humor rumbled in his low voice, like faraway thunder. Or the guns of war. “You'll not be calling me ‘Captain’ anymore,” he said, “for I don't wish to reciprocate by addressing you formally as ‘Miss McQuire.’ My name is Joseph.”
“Joseph,” Lydia repeated dutifully.
When he'd gone, she made the tea and left it to steep while she carried the lemon-and-honey potion upstairs.
She found Brigham in the hallway outside Devon's room, his back to the wall, staring off into the distance as though he could see into some far corner of the universe. He hadn't changed his clothes, and his hair was still wet and tousled.
“You'll catch your death,” Lydia scolded, nudging his upper arm to get his attention.
The gray eyes revealed surprise when he saw her, as though he'd been wrenched back from a far place. And, of course, he had. “What do you want?” he demanded, just as though he had not made tender love to her only a short time before.
Lydia might have felt wounded, if her inner barriers hadn't been so firmly in place. The only course open to her, she'd already decided, was to pretend nothing had happened in that cabin on the hill. “I want you to drink this,” she said tersely, shoving the still-steaming mug at him. “And change into dry clothes, if you please. If there's one thing we have no need of around this house, it's another invalid.”
Brigham stared at her in bemusement—no doubt few people spoke to him in such a fashion, given his power and authority—then took the mug and scowled at its contents. “Unless there's whiskey in this stuff, I don't want it.”
“There most certainly is not,” Lydia whispered, in a hiss. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw a door open and a small face appear in the wedge of light. Millie. “You're setting a very poor example for your daughters, Mr. Quade,” she finished, turning to walk away. With a mere look, she sent the curious Miss Millicent scuttling back into her burrow.
Brigham stopped Lydia before she'd gone more than two steps, however, grasping her upper arm and forcing her to face him. “We are not going to playact, you and I, and make believe tonight didn't happen, Miss McQuire,” he said through his teeth, “because it did. I'm not a man to deny the truth. That, my dear, would be setting a poor example for my daughters.”
Lydia felt a sweet shiver rush through her at his touch, and she was immediately ashamed. Devon was lying only a few yards away, broken and in pain more brutal than any human being should be asked to endure. Joseph McCauley had turned up, bringing with him all the memories of battles past, and here she stood, wanting to be alone with Brigham again. Wanting to lose herself in the fevered distraction of his lovemaking.
“Besides that,” Brigham said, breaking the explosive silence, “you're a fine one to be giving lectures, little Yankee. You need drying off and warming yourself.”
The words were innocent enough, but they burst inside Lydia like small cannonballs, and brought pictures to her mind that ignited her passions all over again.
She glared at Brigham until he released his hold on her arm, then went on downstairs without speaking.
She drank her own lemon-honey concoction, then banked the fire in the cookstove and went up to her room. Carefully, she stripped away her damp dress and linens, then put on a warm nightgown. When that was done, all by the light of a single lamp burning on the bedside table, she took down her hair, dried it with a damask towel from the bar on the side of the washstand, and then combed out the tangles.
Under any other circumstances, Lydia would have put on a wrapper and gone to Devon's room to look in on the patient. She knew Devon was being well taken care of by Captain McCauley—Joseph—and Polly, however, so she fell into bed instead, utterly exhausted.
Mercifully, sleep took her straight away, and carried her off to a peaceful place of placid dreams. When she awakened, Millie was bouncing on the mattress beside her.
“Oh,” the child said, feigning surprise when Lydia's eyes flew open. “You're awake, Miss McQuire.”
Lydia
smiled. “Isn't that a strange thing, Miss Quade,” she countered. She knew Millie wanted reassurance, and that the other adults in the house were too busy to give it. “And how are you this morning?”
Millie gave a worldly little sigh. “Now that the doctor is here—and Charlotte heard him tell Papa that Uncle Devon will probably recover—I feel a lot better.” She got under the covers and snuggled close to Lydia, like a warm, wiry puppy, full of restrained energy. “I'm very glad you're here,” she said.
Curving one arm around Millie, Lydia embraced her briefly. “Me, too,” she replied. “And where, pray tell, is your sister this morning? Or should I say, who is your sister this morning?”
Millie giggled happily. “I'm not sure she's anybody but herself,” she answered, “but it's still early.”
Lydia sighed. “Perhaps it is. Still, maybe we'd better get up and see about breakfast, don't you think? There will be a lot going on in this house today, I should imagine.”
Despite this decision, they laid there for a while longer, listening to the light rain tumbling against the roof and the ordinary sounds of morning—a dinner bell clanging somewhere, the horn of a boat either arriving in the harbor or taking its leave, muffled creaks and clatters in the rooms around them.
Finally, Lydia threw back the covers. “I'll wager that I can be dressed and in the kitchen before you can,” she challenged, playfully narrowing her eyes at Millie.
Millie narrowed her own gaze, a gaze so like Brigham's that it made something hard and spiky rise in Lydia's throat and twist painfully before going down.
“What do I get if I win?” Miss Quade demanded.
Lydia laughed, mentally reviewing the contents of the pantry. “Cookies?”
“Cookies!” Millicent agreed jubilantly, bounding off the bed and running for the door. “Do I get to help make them, too?”
“Absolutely,” Lydia said. She took her time getting dressed in one of the frocks Devon had had her buy in San Francisco, washing her face and cleaning her teeth, doing up her hair in a plain and sensible style.
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