Blackstone's Bride

by Bronwyn Williams

  You’ll never learn, will you?

  “I’ll get the turpentine, you wait right here.” Her voice sounded remarkably calm considering she had knelt between the man’s thighs and let him kiss her senseless while his—while that—that thing grew larger and larger, bumping against her stomach like a puppy nosing her for attention.

  She felt his eyes burning through her clothes as she stepped out onto the back stoop and dampened a rag with turpentine from the jug. Let him watch. She had done nothing to be ashamed of, kissing was no crime—even if he was sorry afterward.

  If she’d had sugar she’d have made a poultice from that. As it was, she used salt. It should draw off any suppuration and help the wound to heal. She tied the ends together to make a neat package.

  “Whiskey.”

  “What?” Confused, she turned to confront him.

  “Whiskey’s as good as anything I know of for cleaning out a puncture wound.”

  “Well, I don’t have any whiskey, all I have is turpentine and lamp oil.” She grabbed his foot and lifted it by the ankle, her grasp none too gentle as she muttered something about blood poisoning. She could feel his eyes boring a hole right through her, but she worked doggedly, refusing to meet his gaze. If he thought he could embarrass her by kissing her senseless and then telling her he was sorry he’d done it, he was dead wrong.

  She slapped the poultice over where the thorn had come out and said, “Hold it there,” waiting until his hand replaced hers to step back.

  “How long?” he asked meekly.

  “Till hell freezes over.”

  He closed his eyes. Eleanor closed her own. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—it’s just that…”

  “I know.” He sighed. “If it’s an apology you’re wanting, then consider it said. For everything.”

  Standing tiredly in her filthy gown, half her buttons still undone, she studied the man sprawled before her, all six feet of him in his dirt-stained blue jeans that emphasized far too much of his masculinity for her peace of mind. They were as different as day and night. He was dark; she was light. He was powerfully built, she was scrawny. He was—she wanted to say as ignorant as she was educated, but it wouldn’t be true. He might lack formal schooling, but he was by no means ignorant. He had a wonderfully inquiring mind and besides, he knew things that she’d never even heard of.

  But then, she knew things that he didn’t. And if only because it was going to take their combined efforts, their combined skills, to get them away from here, this was no time to start bickering, much less to get involved in anything of an intimate nature.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, “I really am sorry.”

  She nodded. A hairpin, one of the few she still possessed, struck her shoulder and fell to the floor. “The exigencies of the moment. I understand.”

  Was that a twinkle in those fathomless eyes of his? “Is that what it was?” he murmured. “An exigency. Never would’ve figured it for that.”

  She, who had never flounced a single flounce in all her twenty-seven years, flounced away. Trouble was, in a three-room cabin, there was not much flouncing room. As a grand exit was out of the question, she said, “Eggs,” and fled.

  Jed was leafing through her dictionary when she returned. He had laid the poultice aside. The homely room smelled of coffee and turpentine.

  “Two eggs,” she said. “I forgot to collect them, so much has happened.” Heat rushed to her face and she blamed her discomposure on him. Smug devil. Exigency, indeed.

  “If you have a needle and thread, I think I might be able to piece together something from my coat sleeve that’ll get me down the road a ways.” He laid the dictionary aside.

  Without a word, she went in search of her sewing basket. When she returned, he was fingering his torn coat. “I can wax the thread if you think it’ll help. I have paraffin.”

  “Not worth the trouble,” he said, and started cutting the dangling sleeve apart into sections.

  Well, if he could put the kiss they had shared behind him so easily, so could she. “That reminds me, there was a letter in your inside coat pocket. I put it under the pepper grinder.”

  She retrieved the stained and wrinkled paper, folded into thirds, and held it out. “I didn’t read it,” she hastened to assure him.

  He glanced up. “Wouldn’t have mattered if you had, it’s nothing important.”

  If it weren’t important, then why had he carried it with him all these years? she wondered. She’d been tempted to read it when she’d first discovered it. In case he died, she would have eventually had to notify his family.

  “It’s from a girl I used to know,” he said, laying aside a section of buckskin and starting another cut.

  “Vera,” she said. And when he looked at her, she had to explain. “I might have glanced at it once—I needed to know who to notify in case you—that is, if…” She closed her eyes, wishing she’d never even mentioned the darned thing. “All right. I read enough to know it was deeply personal, so I set it aside and then I forgot it.”

  “Mmm.”

  Mmm, indeed. The man was purely insufferable. She was tempted to hand him the dictionary and tell him to look up the word. But she didn’t, because she was knew she was being childish. And because there was no room for childishness, not with all there was still to accomplish.

  “Gracious, would you look at that, it’s almost dark already,” she said, sounding insufferably cheerful. “I’d better light a lamp if you’re planning to do close work. I’ll just go—”

  “Eleanor,” he said calmly.

  “What!” she snapped, feeling heat rise to her face again.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. No, I’m not. I’m embarrassed. And I—I have a headache.” So now he’d think she was crazy. Maybe she was. Otherwise she’d be back in Charlotte grading yesterday’s spelling test. “I’ll get the lamp and start on supper. First thing in the morning I’ll speak to Varnelle. If you’re able to travel, I don’t think we should waste any time, do you?”

  Once supper was over, Jed went back to working on his moccasins. His mother would have been horrified at the results, but he thought he’d done a pretty fair job considering what he’d had to work with.

  The letter was still lying on the workbench beside the sewing basket where he’d left it. The thought of seeing Vera again after all these years left him feeling…

  Curiously, feeling nothing at all. When George had written to tell him she’d married her father’s foreman, he’d celebrated by getting drunk and buying himself a woman for the evening. The next day, after he’d recovered enough to remember, he’d thought about it—about Vera being married to the same man who had burned her father’s initials into his ass. Funny thing—even then he couldn’t recall feeling much beyond minor irritation.

  “How soon can you be ready to leave?” he asked when Eleanor dried the last plate and hung the towel on the rack.

  She pursed her lips in thought, reminding him all over again of what those lips had felt like under his. How they’d tasted. He knew how she felt in his arms now—the way her soft, small bosom felt pressed against him—the way her belly snuggled into his groin. He was almost sorry he did. If they were to stay alive these next few days, he had to keep his mind focused on one thing only—getting them away from here undetected.

  Trouble was, it was getting so he couldn’t look at her without thinking things he had no business thinking. Even now, he thought, disgusted, he was sweating like a horse.

  “Tomorrow night if Varnelle agrees. She hasn’t been at all friendly since Devin died.”

  “Tell her your company doesn’t think much of the hospitality around here. He’s ready to move on.” He was only half joking, but she actually appeared to consider it.

  “I could do that. On the other hand, she might feel obligated to tell Alaska. I think I’d better not tell her anything other than to remind her that if I leave, she’ll have Hector all to herself. Not that I was eve
r any real competition, but she won’t believe that.”

  Jed could only hope she was right. The fly in the beer might be if Hector wanted what Eleanor called Dev’s shares more than he did the other woman. “Better hope she doesn’t give us away instead,” he said dryly. “I never heard of a shotgun wedding where the bride was the one being ramrodded, but around these parts, nothing would surprise me.”

  She looked at him for a long time, saying nothing. Her eyes said it all. She was counting on him to see that things never came to that point.

  He heard the kettle start to boil. The bottom was warped so that it always rocked as it started to steam. She slid it off the fire, poured it into a fat brown pot and reached for the cups, his big one and her dainty china one. He hoped to hell she wasn’t planning on taking along her dishes.

  As if reading his mind, she said, “I don’t have that much left to take. Nothing important, anyway.”

  “Lay out what you want and I’ll tell you whether or not it’ll fit into the saddlebags.”

  “You’re not going to give up on that horse, are you?” She poured him a cup of black tea, steeped instead of boiled. Not that he could tell the difference, but he’d learned a few things since he’d been her guest, one thing being that while it was all right to boil coffee, it was a crime against nature to boil tea.

  “I can’t rightly leave him behind. Besides, we’ve got a pretty fair ways to travel, even after we get past Dexter’s Cut.”

  Silently, she sipped her tea, her eyes avoiding his. Jed suspected she was thinking about the fact that she had no place to go. No home, no family, no job and, unless he was mistaken, no money. Her in-laws had seen to that. Nice family.

  “Did I tell you I’m taking you with me?” It came out of the blue, taking him by surprise.

  “Well, of course you are.”

  “No, I mean all the way.” He waited for it to sink in, knew the moment it had. Just about the same time the full impact of what he’d just said soaked into his own thick skull. Hell, when it came to having a home, he was in no better shape than she was. The house where he’d grown up now belonged to his half brother, George’s wife and his family.

  She didn’t argue, she just sighed. “At this point, I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  In for a penny, he told himself. “Look, I’ve enjoyed your hospitality. Now it’s my turn to return the favor.”

  Right. Now all he had to do was get there before Stanfield called George’s loan, else they might all be sleeping under the stars.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Eleanor hardly slept at all that night. Judging from the sounds coming from the bedroom, Jed was every bit as restless. They had talked far into the night about what to take and what to leave. She knew he wasn’t interested in anything but getting away—he had nothing to leave behind. But she’d needed to talk and he’d been kind enough to listen. He’d even made comments at the appropriate times.

  His determination to get his horse back worried her. It was going to be a problem, because the Hootens lived near the middle of the settlement, and while the noise might wake him up, Alaska wasn’t one to go dashing out into the night just because the dogs were barking.

  What if he stayed behind? What if he caught Jed trying to steal his horse back? What would he do to him? To them? Because, of course, Eleanor would be right there, too. She wasn’t about to allow him to go off on his own. For one thing, he didn’t even know where the Hootens lived.

  On the other hand, it was a long walk to the nearest market town, and by morning they needed to be out of reach of anyone who’d ever heard of the Millers of Dexter’s Cut.

  The sky was already growing pale when she gave up any hope of sleep. She could sleep once they got away from here. Until then she needed to gather her most persuasive arguments and pray she didn’t run into a suspicious Alaska when she went down to talk to his sister.

  Her luck held. Judging from the sounds coming from the cove where Alaska had his still, he and several of his friends were sampling his wares. Considering all the sampling that went on, she thought wryly, his must be the finest whiskey east of the Mississippi.

  Varnelle was flapping a bedsheet on the front porch when Eleanor hurried up the path. Keeping house for two lazy scoundrels like Alaska and Digger had to be a thankless task. She was doing the girl a favor, she assured herself. Hector, for all his faults, was several cuts above the Hootens.

  “Good morning.” Eleanor pasted on a smile, hoping it looked convincing. She had never come calling before, not even back in their friendlier days.

  Varnelle looked at her and waited. Not so much as a civil greeting. Gathering her courage, Eleanor said, “I see you’ve already got started on your garden. I haven’t even laid off my rows yet.” Nor would she. Not if her plan succeeded. “May I walk out there and look at what you’ve got coming up?” She needed to get away from the house before she brought up the reason she was there.

  Some ten minutes later Eleanor hurried up the hill again, hardly able to contain her glee. She waved to old Miss Lucy, and shooed away a curious hound. Better not act too cheerful, she cautioned herself, else they’d be certain to wonder.

  Bursting into the cabin, she hurried to the bedroom and flung open the door. “It’s worked! She’s going to do it!”

  Her mouth fell open. She blinked twice and spun around. “I’m sorry, I—please excuse me, I didn’t know…”

  Jed, dressed only in the bottom half of his mutilated union suit and that hanging low on his hips, was carefully scraping away his beard, using her mirror and washbowl and her sharpest butcher knife.

  “You don’t ever want to startle a man when he’s holding a knife to his own throat.” The warning was tempered with amusement.

  Without turning to face him, she said, “I should have known better than to barge in. I’ve forgotten how to live with another person.”

  “No harm done,” he said, sounding as if he truly meant it. “You’re among friends.”

  That was the trouble. If he were only a stranger she would have begged his pardon and left. As it was, she knew too well how that smooth back felt under her hands, knew just how silky his thick black hair was. Knew the taste of his mouth and the way his beard ignited nerve endings she’d never even known she possessed.

  “Yes, well…it’s tonight. When we’re leaving, that is. We decided on midnight, when everyone will be asleep. It’s bound to be more confusing then, don’t you think so?”

  “Bound to be,” he said equably, as if he’d taken it for granted that everything would go as planned.

  Eleanor had been a bundle of nerves ever since she’d set out, not knowing if Varnelle would hear her out or tell her family.

  “Does she know about me?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she might suspect something. She might’ve heard Alaska talking, but I didn’t mention anything and she didn’t ask. She knows how long I’ve wanted to get away.”

  “What was the clincher?” He scraped off the last of his beard, slung the soap off the knife and laid it aside. Then, holding her small mirror, which was all she had since Devin had sold her large oval gold-framed wall mirror, he turned his face to one side and then the other, examining his clean-shaven jaw.

  She had almost forgotten what he looked like without a beard. It had grown so fast that by the second day, she had trouble seeing the shallow cleft in his chin. “The clincher?” she asked belatedly.

  “What does she want for her services? Most women want something. Turn around, Eleanor, I don’t want to talk to your back.”

  Without appearing more a fool than she already did, she had no choice but to obey. Pretend he’s Devin, she told herself.

  Small chance. Devin had never, at least not since the first few days they were married, made her breath catch in her throat the way this man did. My word, the way that cotton knit clung to his buttocks was purely sinful!

  “What does she want? Oh. My rose silk dress,” she said. “That and Hector, not that I
even mentioned him, but it was understood between us that I’d be leaving the field clear for her.”

  He reached for his shirt and shrugged into the sleeves, but not before she had seen the fresh bruises on his chest and side. Evidently, his tumble down the mountain had been rougher than he’d let on.

  “Didn’t you tell me that was your wedding dress?”

  She shrugged. They both knew—at least she knew and he had probably surmised—that the last thing she wanted was a reminder of her brief marriage. “It won’t fit her. It probably won’t be very becoming either, with her coloring, but she wanted it, so I said I’d leave it here for her.”

  “Then I guess we’d better sort out and pack the rest of what you want to take, and then we’d do well to get some rest. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t sleep much last night.” As if to prove it, he yawned, and then winked at her. “And no, I’m afraid there’s no way we can take your books.”

  “I hadn’t planned on it,” she said, thinking longingly of the dozen or so volumes she had nearly worn out by now.

  “Maybe the dictionary,” he said. “Never can tell when you might need one of those.”

  She felt like weeping. Dear Lord, how does he do it? she wondered. Big, strong, dressed like a—like a scalawag, and he could melt her heart with something like that. A dictionary, of all things!

  She got out three towels and set them aside. A small pot for dipping and heating water, two spoons, two forks, two cups. It would take up a lot of room, but they might need them along the way.

  Jed selected two knives, her butcher knife and a smaller one she used for peeling potatoes when she was lucky enough to have them to peel. He laid out her hammer to take, and poured salt into a smaller container.

  Eleanor set out her other pair of shoes, then shook her head. The ones she was wearing had holes in the soles, but lined with a strip of elm bark, they served well enough. Her good shoes were not only impractical, they pinched her toes. And so she set them aside with the rose silk dress. Varnelle was welcome to them if they fit…and even if they didn’t.