by Lee Savino
It had been nice, for a few moments, to be tied and helpless, forced to submit to another’s will. The pain baptized her, washed her clean.
The thought frightened her. But here sat her confessor, jovial, fair, and handsome, and completely unaware of the feelings he’d aroused in her.
She could never let him know.
A part of her grieved this. She needed an ally, a confidante, someone to lean on. Someone who accepted her for who she was. Who could sit by her and listen to her fears.
Someone worthy of entering the apothecary.
She sat very still next to the smoking Brit, wondering if she’d found the someone she’d wanted all along.
*
By the time Sebastian went to bed that night, his thoughts were consumed by the lovely Spanish rose.
Women found him fetching; he found women interesting and dull. Interesting when their brains weren’t suppressed by the expectations of marriage and breeding. Women of the ton were sometimes beautiful and sometimes intelligent, but mostly bored, as he was, closeted in their lives of leisure and crippled by petty concerns. With no problems to speak of, it was easy to spend time fussing about the temperature of your bathwater.
Of course, smart or stupid, he always enjoyed what lay beneath a woman’s skirts and fascinating toilet, and he enjoyed the seduction process. That was another reason his father had banished him to America.
In the past two years, he’d enjoyed his time with strumpets, especially the bawdy ladies of the West. As objects of desire, though, they had a certain hardness he couldn’t get past, a product of their vulgar situation. He needed a sharp, capable lady with the intelligence and business sense of a bawd, and the eager passion of a whore.
All this time hunting buffalo, he should’ve been hunting hoydens. A rarer breed and much more fun.
Of course, now he found one, he couldn’t touch her. His soldier stood at attention, awaiting orders that would never come.
Sighing, Sebastian sat up and took matters in hand. As he stroked himself, he imagined what it would be like to bed a woman like Francesca: to watch her pupils widen, her breasts rising and falling with her panting breath as he whispered lovely, despicable things. He’d pleasure her until little tremors ran through her body, and watch her eyes flutter and chest flush when she came.
Sebastian finished with a groan, and settled back. It was no use. He could spend himself every hour, and all too soon his thoughts would drift to his dark lady and his dick would grow so hard, he’d fear it’d snap off.
Of course, if he seduced the widow, no telling if his Man Thomas might meet exactly that fate. Francesca was a woman ruled by passion. He pitied her late, older husband. How had the man kept up with such a youthful bride?
Poor sod, Sebastian thought, and wondered who he was sorrier for, the late Cyro Montoya or himself.
He rolled over and punched the pillow. He may as well try to get some sleep. In the morning, he would see what he could do to help the widow Francesca. And if asked whether it was chivalry or another, baser reason that made him stay, he would lie.
*
His opportunity came the next day, when he, Juan, and Cage rode the rest of the perimeter and found another broken fence. Several cows had roamed out, fallen into an acequia and couldn’t get out. Juan sent his boy back to fetch reinforcements. Francesca arrived first.
“It happened last night, señora. We are lucky they haven’t drowned.”
“There weren’t just cattle here.” Cage pointed out the horse tracks in the mud. “Someone drove them across where the water is deep enough for them to drown.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Sebastian asked.
Francesca didn’t answer. She looked very tired.
“We need to get the cattle out,” Juan called. “This water is everyone’s, but it is meant for the farms, not a cattle wallow. They will destroy the bank.”
“Get them out,” Francesca said. “Tell all the vaqueros to take the cattle far away so this doesn’t happen again.”
“What if we cannot get an animal out?” Juan asked.
“Kill it, and butcher the carcass.”
“Wait. No need for that.” Sebastian dismounted. “We drive the cattle further up where it’s shallow, and build a ramp for them to climb out.”
Juan looked at Francesca and she nodded. “Do as the Englishman says.”
“I’ll get the others, and bring some logs,” Cage said.
Sebastian started stripping off his coat and shirt.
“What are you doing?” Francesca asked.
“Helping,” Sebastian said. “With your permission, of course.”
She nodded.
When the vaqueros came, Sebastian explained the plan. Cage and the others arrived dragging logs to split and make a makeshift ramp.
They labored through the hot day, and Sebastian kept the same pace as the others, even as his fair skin flushed with the heat and sun.
“You know, when I signed on to give you a taste of Western adventure, this wasn’t exactly what I meant,” Cage joked as they tried to coax a lowing cow out of the water.
Sebastian just grunted.
Cage leaned closer and spoke in a low voice. “So what’s the story? Someone drove these cattle in here. Who’s trying to make trouble for our hosts?”
“Francesca’s father got into debt with Doyle.”
“Doyle?” Cage also recognized the robber baron’s name. “Not a man to be indebted to. But now he’s dead.”
“His men aren’t. Francesca thinks her husband was killed by the Royal Mountain Gang.”
Cage let out a low whistle. “Those men are dangerous. I think Bigs and Johnson run the gang now. I can ask around, find out if they’ve been seen in these parts.”
“Thank you, Cage. And for sticking around.” Sebastian wiped mud off his face. Francesca and Ana had arrived bearing food for the noon meal.
Cage followed his employer’s line of sight. “Just be careful with her. That ain’t no soiled dove. You’re sniffing around a respectable woman, and a widow to boot.”
“I would never disrespect her,” Sebastian sniffed. “Other than some discipline to make sure she understands how she should treat me, I’ve been the model of propriety.”
“I’m sure.” Cage rolled his eyes. “But watch yourself. That young woman has been neglected too long. She’s a simmering pot about to boil over.”
Cage’s warning rang in his ears as Sebastian went to take lunch. Francesca handed him a tamale wrapped in corn husks, biting back a smile.
“You are covered in mud.”
“I am that,” he said cheerfully. “All in an honest day’s work. Can’t say I’ve ever had one of those.”
Francesca snorted.
“I’d say you had the harder part,” Sebastian couldn’t resist adding.
“Why is that?”
He leaned closer, on the pretense of taking another tamale. “It can’t be comfortable riding around all day on a birched arse.”
She sucked in a breath and he felt delight at shocking her. He usually wouldn’t swear in front of a lady, but after watching her move easily through the groups of rugged ranchers, snapping orders in Spanish, he knew she wouldn’t be a stranger to curse words. “Usually the welts feel worse the second day. Speaking of which, how is your bottom?”
Her nostrils flared. “That is hardly appropriate for you to ask.”
“My lady, since meeting in the woods, we’ve shared more than most.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “You are a scoundrel.”
“I am that,” Sebastian said happily. “But you also led me to believe you’d be brave enough to answer an honest question.”
She glared at him and he winked. A few vaqueros came over and saved him from a tongue lashing as Francesca had to stop and serve them. Sebastian hung close by, eating and enjoying the pretty flushed face of his Spanish widow. Across the way, Cage caught his eye and shook his head. Sebastian’s grin only broadened.
Finally, he and Francesca were left alone.
“Well?”
She bent close, fishing empty corn husks out of the tamale bucket and tossing them to the ground. “Yes, Englishman. My ass is bruised. But over all, it is fine.”
Sebastian settled back on his heels with a satisfied smile. “You slept well, didn’t you? The night after the birching?”
“Yes.”
“Señor Chivington,” Juan called, and Sebastian sauntered off, but for the rest of the day he caught Francesca watching him.
He’d gotten under her skin. He was behaving like a complete ass, tormenting a widow, but as long as he knew it, he might as well have fun.
She avoided him until late in the day, when the cattle were safely out and Sebastian and Juan were planning on the next day’s labor: repairing the acequias. The British lord had earned the respect of the head vaquero. The two approached Francesca and laid out their plans. She rewarded them with a tired smile.
“Well done,” she said. “How long will it take? We still must finish planting.”
“Señor Chivington said he would stay.”
“We cannot ask you to do that,” Francesca said to her guest.
“I insist. It’s my pleasure, and breaks up the long months of hunting and drinking. I’ve been looking for a good spot of honest work. You can ask my men.”
She stared at him, and he continued in a more serious tone. “My men and I are at your disposal. Do allow us to help.”
“Very well. I thank you.”
Juan headed home to wife and family, leaving Sebastian and Francesca alone. Before mounting her horse, Francesca skewered him with her dark gaze. “I do not understand you, Englishman. Why are you doing this?”
“I told you.” Sebastian winked at her, noting how she kept their horses between them. “I live for chivalry.”
“What man does things for a woman and expects nothing in return?”
“Oh, that’s part of the code.”
“The code?”
“The code between a knight and his fair lady. He goes off and commits glorious acts in her name, while one or both pine. I’d still be here helping you even if you were committed to another. Makes things more romantic.” He threw out an arm in a dramatic gesture, startling the horses. “My love would go unrequited until death. Rather poetic—don’t you agree?”
She wrinkled her brow. “You are not serious… Everything out of your mouth is a joke.”
“Apologies, my lady. Bad habit. Third son of a lord, must make my way on my own wits and charm. In addition to my father’s allowance.” He swung up on his horse, adding, “But, if it’s any consolation, I do get something out of it. As a noble knight, I must complete one selfless act a year, or be turned into a frog. As much as you dislike me, you wouldn’t banish me to live out the rest of my days as an amphibian?”
Her small, fleeting smile was more than enough reward.
*
Over the next few days, Sebastian made himself indispensable, to Francesca’s great annoyance. Even after the work on the acequia was done and planting continued, he made no move to leave. He was everywhere, maddeningly, helping her with chores, smoking in the garden while she weeded, or sitting on a stool in the kitchen with his man Cage, both of them playing off each other to make Ana laugh.
Señor Chivington was really two men, she reasoned. Or perhaps three. One, the merry jester who lived with no responsibility, content to laze about. She had no time for entertainment. The other, the firm disciplinarian, lashing her to a tree trunk and whipping her with sticks. The jokester was present during the discipline, though, for the man enjoyed it. And the disciplinarian became a strong man, a pillar of good sense, willing to labor in the fields. But she never knew which Sebastian she was talking to: the rakish lord, silly without substance, or the man of substance, helping in time of need. Which was he?
She wished she could chalk up all his acts to one man, intelligent and bored. But for all his silly arrogance, he was eager to please her. And his willingness to discipline her tilted her whole world and left her body aching and mind in disarray.
He made absolutely no sense. He fascinated her. And, more and more often, at night when she lay in bed and thought of him, she burned.
At dusk one day, Francesca stood at the apothecary window, watching his lanky form as he paced and smoked in the garden. He was waiting for her, she knew. Why else would he be hanging about, striking up silly conversations with Ana’s goat?
She hid in the apothecary until the sun sank just behind the mountains, then sneaked away.
It was the magic hour before dark, the time of gloaming, where the world is in perfect balance. Night and day, dark and light. Anything was possible. Francesca hurried across the fields to the woods, passing the family burial ground where her Cyro was buried along with her father. She touched their grave stones as she passed, but didn’t linger. The woods called her, and she hesitated only a second before plunging into the cool shadows.
She was going to visit her mother. Everyone else lay in the family cemetery, but not Francesca Bari, daughter of Francesca the wise and mother to Ana Maria Francesca De La Vega.
All the Francescas were buried under the large old tree in the forest grove. Now Francesca went about the grove, lighting candles at the feet of a statue of the Madonna.
She’d stopped going to confessional years ago, after she heard Bishop Bernardo believed her own deceased mother a witch. Cyro hadn’t approved of her quiet rebellion against the town’s faith, but he’d let her go her own way.
If her mother was a witch as the church claimed, who’d laid with the devil for power over herbs and potions, then that made Francesca a devil child. She’d once told Ana that since the church thought her the spawn of Satan, she had an excuse to avoid all boring religious practices. Ana had thrown up her hands at the twisted logic.
Francesca’s decision to stay away from mass didn’t make her popular with the bishop, but the townspeople accepted her as they had her mother—some eagerly, some grudgingly, but all eventually desperate enough to come to her for some tonic to ease backache or fever, or help to help deliver a baby or set a broken bone.
Francesca had found her place as a healer early, when she was very young and following her mother around to patients’ homes. She walked confidently on her own path, not caring if it diverged from the rest, and even if Bishop Bernard muttered about her and her mother, she had her powerful husband and father to protect her.
Now she had no one.
A birch wielding Brit was an unlikely guardian angel, but that was what he was to her. So what that he acted like a fool? She felt safer with him around.
But even that was dangerous.
“Madre, I need you,” she whispered. As always, she felt the pull between her mother’s and father’s world. Between freedom and duty, between her calling as a healer, and her prescribed role as a daughter, mother, wife. When things grew out of balance, she prayed for help.
She had never prayed so intently as she did now, not even when she asked for help finding Cyro’s killer.
“Madonna, have mercy,” she whispered, prostrating herself before the shrine. The saintly statue looked so calm and peaceful. How little she resembled the women on earth, Francesca thought bitterly. The real mothers who weren’t virgins when they gave birth.
After lighting the candles, she filled her bowl at the stream, then stripped naked. She bathed in the moonlit water, dampening her face and neck, dragging the cloth over her rapid pulse.
“Madre,” she begged. “Help me. I am a wanton woman. I am unclean.”
She closed her eyes, but all she saw was the Englishman, arms folded across his chest, face arranged in an intrigued smirk. Then he disappeared and she felt him as if he stood behind her, touching her neck, whispering his mocking words, tempting her.
She washed herself again and again, hoping to cool the fire within.
If it didn’t, she’d have to do something to dispel it soon.
Something she might regret.
*
All week long Sebastian labored in the fields. He noticed how Francesca avoided him, and he let her keep her distance, choosing instead to join Cage in the kitchen where they teased Ana while she cooked. He was surprised how quickly he took to farming life. Cage and his men grumbled about it, but found his sleep was better, his food tasted sweeter. And every so often, he caught a smile on Francesca’s face as she worked nearby, pretending not to hear their jokes.
The only worry was the dire straits of the ranch. For all their hard work, it seemed they were one disaster away from demise. Late at night, when Francesca thought everyone had gone to bed, Sebastian watched her sneak out to continue working on herbal remedies and tinctures that Ana sold in the town market. Sebastian wondered how long she could keep up the pace. He’d only known her a few days, and even he could see how the strain was getting to her, the exhaustion showing on her face.
One night, Sebastian saw the light in the apothecary and decided he’d had enough of standing by. If she kept this up much longer, she’d get sick. She needed someone to take care of her, and spank her bottom if she didn’t comply. A nice long session with the palm of his hand cracking on her bare butt cheeks would release tension, and do them both good.
But it was not to be. When Sebastian entered the little building, he found his lady asleep at her table, her head cradled on her arms. She looked smaller in sleep, fragile. He went inside, but she didn’t rouse, not even when he lifted her in his arms, and carried her across the field to the hacienda. Her hair smelled sweet, like roses.
As he entered her bedroom, she made a little sound. Her eyes stayed closed, and she clung to him, her fingers clutching at his shirt. Instead of waking her, he lay down on the bed with his sweet smelling bundle, expecting her to rouse at anytime. Would she thank him, or claw his eyes out? There was no telling with his wild Spanish rose.
Dawn was breaking over the fields by the time Sebastian slipped his arms out from around her, and covered her with a blanket, kissing her hair before tiptoeing away.