by Tess LeSue
Her thoughts had lost their way. Love had nothing to do with her and Tom Slater, or with his arousal under her sponge. Some men just had a hair trigger, that was all. She wondered if he was watching her shadow on the dressing screen. There was a thought with some sparks to it. She tingled as she rose from the tub, aware that the lantern would cast her shadow into relief against the dressing screen. She ran her hands down her body, and she could swear she heard his breath catch. She smiled. She might just be a retired whore, but she was a top-notch retired whore.
She hummed as she toweled herself dry. Once she was dry, she had to face her stinking black habit. She wrinkled her nose. The underdress was just as bad. She tossed them both in the tub, submerging them in the soapy water. Then she tossed her undergarments in too. She couldn’t wash her breeches, because her life savings were sewn into them. She’d just have to hope that a night of airing out would improve their fragrance. She couldn’t be bothered scrubbing anything; she’d leave the gowns to soak for a bit. Now, what the hell was she going to wear while everything was wet?
She probably should have thought of that before she’d shoved everything in the tub. Oh well. Every problem had a solution. There was an Indian blanket neatly folded on a chair nearby. She could wrap up in that. She could turn anything into a dress, she thought smugly as she wound the blanket into a kind of Grecian wrap. There was a shaving mirror hanging from the dressing screen, and Emma contorted herself to see if she was decently covered. Now she had to do something about her hair—or lack of hair. Although . . . maybe it was best if he saw her like this, bareheaded as a bald eagle. She wasn’t too worried that he’d recognize her as the redheaded whore from La Noche, now that she didn’t have the nun hat on; she thought that would have happened by now if it was going to happen. And it might be best to damp him down by showing him her baldness; it seemed cruel to keep him all het up when nothing could happen between them. And nothing would cool him off faster than her peach-fuzz head. It was a stark reminder of her nunhood—if the hideous black habit hadn’t been enough. She also thought she looked genuinely awful, and that would help to damp him down too.
She felt bizarrely shy as she stepped out from behind the screen. He was still pretending to be asleep. She ran her hand over her scalp. Her vanity was already starting to ache. She liked the admiration in his eyes. She wasn’t looking forward to it fading when he caught sight of her.
She shook off the damn fool feeling. Stop it. Pining over some pretty man she could never have wasn’t going to do anyone any good.
Why couldn’t you have him? He’s right there. He clearly wouldn’t mind . . .
No. She wasn’t doing that again. These were dangerous thoughts; they glittered like fool’s gold, but like fool’s gold, they weren’t worth keeping. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t lead herself to heartbreak again, and she always kept her promises.
“The food’s getting cold,” she said, straightening her shoulders and gathering her pride. Who cared if the admiration in his eyes fizzled and died once he saw her bald head? That was what she wanted. Wasn’t it?
He didn’t respond, still clinging to the pretense of sleep. She shrugged and crossed the room to the couch. It was no skin off her nose if he wanted to eat cold beans.
She knew he was watching her as she curled up on the couch, tucking the Indian blanket tightly around her. “It was a shame not to eat it fresh,” she sighed, as she made herself a plate, “but I’d rather be clean when I eat, than all mucky and hot like I was. I don’t know how you bore the stench of me.” When she lifted the lids on the clay pots, delicious aromas filled the room. Spicy beans, onions and tomato, roasted peppers. She heard his stomach rumble.
“Want me to bring you a plate?” she asked dryly. There was no response. Fine. Let him wait. She took a tortilla and attacked the peppers and beans. The food was good. She sighed happily. She loved food. Everything about it. Good food filled her with a sense of total well-being, even when times were hard.
Her ma had been a good cook. Emma’s earliest memories were of the smell of fresh bread baking and the taste of salted butter melted into fat, yeasty hunks of it. Her mama made so many kinds of bread: sourdough, soda bread, corn bread, French bread, rye, potato bread, pumpkin loaf. Every lunch hour there was a meal to make your mouth water: grits and okra, catfish and peppery greens, and all kinds of beans in all kinds of ways, all of it accompanied by steaming-hot bread. Everyone went back to work in the afternoon happy, even when the farm was floundering. Emma’s ma could even make possum palatable, which was no mean feat. She’d known how to make a feast out of lean cracklings, and Emma’s youngest, happiest girlhood had been spent at her mother’s side, kneading and chopping, stirring and scrubbing. Food and happiness were closely linked. When Ma got sick, the feasts had stopped, and any happiness Emma had felt melted away. It didn’t come back.
Sad thoughts didn’t belong with good food, so Emma pushed them away and concentrated on the oily goodness of the peppers. She wished she had some corn bread too, to mop up the juices. The tortillas were good, but they were nothing on her corn bread. The thought of corn bread reminded her of her starter, which was still with their luggage and needed feeding. She’d have to ask the servant girl to bring it up, or maybe she could go to it. She wouldn’t mind a walk in the fresh air, but she couldn’t leave Tom alone, in case someone came in. She glanced over at him. He wasn’t quite quick enough to close his eyes before she caught him.
She grinned. “There’s no point in pretending, honey. I can hear your stomach complaining from here. And I don’t blame it; this is mighty good food. I’ll bring you a plate.” Humming, she piled high a plate for him and poured him a glass of spring water from the jug. Night had fallen while she bathed, and the lanterns cast long shadows. She stood next to the bed patiently, watching the shadows dance on the planes of his face. He was still on his stomach, cheek pressed to the mattress, eyes stubbornly closed.
She wondered if he was still aroused. She shouldn’t have entertained the thought, because it caused a fountain of sparks, and she was trying not to encourage sparks. The problem was he was gorgeous. Just looking at him sent her into spark territory. He put every man she’d ever met to shame. Look at those cheekbones. Those lips. Those thick black eyelashes. He was magnificent. And even more so because he didn’t seem to know it. Unlike his brother Luke, Tom seemed to be utterly clueless about how beautiful he was. While Luke used his looks to charm, Tom just went through the world like he was a regular old cowhand; there was no flirting, no sideways looks, no meltingly knowing smiles. He was just plain old Tom, and whether he was with men or women, his behavior was the same.
Only . . . she hadn’t really seen him with a proper woman, had she? In their time together, he’d only been around nuns and veiled señoras and children. There’d been no one at all to flirt with. He wasn’t likely to act more than a simple cowhand with nuns and children. How could she know what he was like with women, when she’d yet to see him with a woman he could charm? Except for Seline. She felt her stomach clench as she remembered that hot look he’d given her back in Mariposa, when she’d posed stark-naked on the staircase. He hadn’t been plain old cowhand Tom then, had he? He’d been a smoldering dark presence behind Deathrider, all leashed animal desire and burning eyes. She envied the women who’d felt the full force of that Tom Slater. Her gaze ran over the shape of his body beneath the thin comforter. Lucky, lucky women.
If he was still aroused, he wasn’t likely to roll over while she was standing here. Because he was a nice man, and he thought she was a nun. Even if she hadn’t been a nun, he probably wouldn’t have rolled over. He didn’t seem the sort to foist himself on women, even when the woman in question had forced him into a cheeky sponge bath.
“I’ll just leave your plate here,” she said, not quite able to keep the note of regret out of her voice. She set the plate on the bed in front of him, close enough that the smell would tanta
lize him. “There’s a glass of water on the floor next to the bed too,” she added, placing the glass on the floor. “Eat up before the food’s stone-cold, and before the servants come back for the dirty dishes.”
She retreated, heading behind the screen to wash her clothes. Through the calico, she could see his silhouette as he stirred. She had to smile at his completely unbelievable show of stretching and yawning and pretending to wake.
“How’s your hip, honey?” she called.
He muttered something. Lord, he was adorable. She wrestled with the soaking wet habit. He was like a boy in a man’s body. Awkward, shy, but also powerful—there was all that volcanic energy seething under the calm.
“I thought you already had a bath,” he said. His voice was tight.
“I did. Now I’m giving my stinky clothes a bath.” She could hear his spoon scraping the plate as he shoveled food in. He sure sounded hungry. “There’s still food in the pots, if you want seconds,” she told him.
He grunted.
“Yell out when you want it. Don’t go getting up and tearing at your wound.”
He grunted again. But before she’d even wrung out her wet clothes, he was asking sheepishly for seconds.
Coming out from behind the screen felt even harder this time, now that she knew he was definitely looking at her. She found herself blushing—and she hadn’t blushed since she was a green girl. She cringed when his gaze lingered on her head. She brushed her hand over her scalp. Goddamn it. She hated this feeling. This was the reason she’d sworn off men. They made you feel so goddamn vulnerable.
Hellfire. What did she care what he thought? She didn’t. Let him look all he wanted. She forced herself to keep her hand at her side, away from the peach fuzz on her scalp. She lifted her chin and went to collect his plate. He was staring. So let him stare.
“You have to cut it all off when you take your vows,” she lied, feeling the need to answer his unasked question. It barely even felt like lying. She hated herself for the note of defensiveness in her voice. It made her feel weak. “Vanity has no place for a nun.” She didn’t know for certain that was true, but it probably was. Look at what they wore. And Calla had said so, and she knew more about nuns than was reasonable. Especially for a whore.
“It don’t look too bad,” he said. He was clearly trying to be polite, but it just made her feel grumpy.
“It don’t matter how it looks,” she snapped, snatching the plate out of his hand. “That’s the whole point.”
He stayed silent as she marched to the food and tipped the clay pots out onto his plate. She thrust the food at him and stalked back to her washing. For some reason, her eyes were hot and itchy. Like she was about to cry. But that was stupid. Why in hell would she cry just because some idiot man saw her with a shaved head? She wouldn’t. And that was that.
17
THE NEXT FEW days were a sweet oasis. Somehow, Emma managed to keep Tom hidden from view as the servants changed the sheets and emptied the bathwater, delivered food and laundered their clothes. Once or twice she hid him in Calla and Anna’s room, especially the first day, before Emma had managed to hastily mend the black dress he’d ripped to shreds. There were a few close moments, but overall, they’d kept him secret remarkably well.
Emma fetched her sewing and her starter from the wagon, and the five of them enjoyed a well-earned rest after the shenanigans on the trail. She kept her starter happy, sending batches of dough down to the kitchens (because she had to use the starter anyway and it was sinful to waste such nice yeast), and sewed up a new underdress for her horrid habit (so she’d have a spare, which would allow her to wash more frequently). She and Anna cut down and altered a couple of the simpler muslin gowns in Emma’s trunks for Winnie, who was wide-eyed with pleasure at inheriting such finery. They slept late, in their divinely soft beds, and filled up on wonderful fresh food.
Gran Rancho de Gato was a sublime place to rest. The hot days were blunted by the cool of the fountains and the gardens, and when the balcony doors and the windows were thrown open, the smell of water and flowers perfumed the air. Through the windows, they watched the changing sun on the mountains: blue and silver in the early mornings, golden in the bright of day, brassy in the waning and lushly purple as night drew in. Emma had never seen such beauty in her entire life. It gave a girl ideas.
“One day, I’m going to have a house just like this,” she sighed. She and Calla were sprawled on the couches, enjoying the morning sun, while Anna had taken Winnie to play in the gardens. The girl had blossomed now that they’d taken a few days to rest. She was well fed and well slept, and had come out of her shell. She particularly enjoyed Doña Maria’s doting and the presence of other children. Emma could hear the sound of squeals and splashing water and smiled. She stretched out her fingers, which ached from sewing. Now that they’d finished Winnie’s dresses, Doña Maria had given her an old black gown to alter, to replace Tom’s ruined señora’s outfit. Emma had tried her best to fix the black dress, but it had been too badly damaged to repair effectively. It looked a fright. Fortunately, Doña Maria had a trunk of old clothes that had belonged to her mother, who had been a tall woman by the looks of it. Which was good, because “Doña Elvira” was tall herself. The black dress Doña Maria delivered was terribly out of fashion but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It might even work in their favor, as it would make Tom even less attractive to men like Irish George, with his wandering hands. Emma had been working on the dress all morning, much to Tom’s displeasure. He got more cantankerous each time she made him have a fitting.
“Oh yes,” she sighed again, pausing her sewing to watch the bougainvillea bob in the breeze and the sunshine slant across the courtyard, “one day I shall have a house just like this. Only by the sea.”
“A house like this?” Tom said, in his usual grumpy way. The man was like a bear with a sore head. He refused to stay in bed and play the invalid, and was prone to pacing, which set Emma’s nerves on edge. “A house like this, for nuns?”
Ugh. There was the nun thing again. It always tripped her up. “Why not?” she said, even though Calla was giving her warning looks. “Why can’t nuns have a bit of prettiness in their lives?”
“I thought you swore a vow of poverty?”
She really could stab him with a needle sometimes. He was such a sourpuss. “Dreams don’t cost anything,” she said primly. “I can dream I have a house like this.”
“Me too,” Calla said. Oh, that was a relief. For a while there, Emma had thought she was going to join in with the sourness. Emma had enough sourness from Tom; she didn’t need it from both of them. Calla might have soured if Emma had insisted that nuns could have houses like this, but when Emma kept it to dreams, she relaxed. Poor nuns. You’d think a vow of chastity was enough. Poverty seemed to be gilding the lily, in Emma’s humble opinion. If she ran a nunhouse, she’d only make them choose one: chastity or poverty. The chaste ones could live in luxury like this, and the poor ones could find comfort in love. That seemed like a fair trade.
But it was ideas like those that showed why she’d never really be a nun, she supposed.
“I’d have a house like this but with the balcony facing the mountains,” Calla said happily, falling into the dream like she was sinking into a warm bath. She smiled as she stared out the window at the view. “You could sit out there as the sun was setting. I’d have a couch like this on the balcony too, so I could put my feet up at the end of the day.”
“I’d have my bath out there,” Emma topped her. “A nice, hot, steaming bath as the stars came out overhead. You could watch the moon rise over the mountains.”
They’d played this game on the trail out from Missouri, and then again on slow nights in the Heart of Gold. If I could, it was called. Over the months, Emma’s coulds had solidified into a single dream: If I could I would have a house by the bay, where I could watch the water from my windows. If I could I wo
uld have a big sunny kitchen, with pots of herbs on the windowsills and bread in the oven. If I could I would have a garden with a vegetable patch, fruit trees and chickens, and a bit of lawn to lie on and watch the clouds. If I could I’d have a place to call my own, where I could be safe and I could be warm, and no one would come pawing at me in the night. If I could I would be free to say no and to close the door. And lock it.
“If I could I’d sleep in until morning was just about done,” Calla said longingly, “and someone would bring me breakfast in bed.”
Yes. “If I could I’d have pancakes and syrup every morning and never get fat.”
“If I could,” Calla sang, “I’d have champagne with my pancakes.”
“Followed by a bath scented with French perfume.”
“By my French maid!”
Oh yes!
“If I could I’d get the hell out of here,” Tom snapped.
No. Emma glared at him. “You’re ruining the game.”
“Game? I don’t see any game. What I see is us sitting around while the posses get ever closer. We need to leave. Now.”
He was right. Emma hated him for it, but he was. They should have left already; “Doña Elvira” was well enough to travel, and there was nothing else keeping them here—it was just that Don Rey’s hospitality was so seductive. It was so nice to sleep on a pillowy mattress, between soft sheets, even if it was on the floor; it was so nice to have a warm bath drawn and hot food delivered; it was so nice not to have to wash pots or suffer sunburn, or to get a sore rear from bouncing along on a horse all day.