by Alix West
“Shut the hell up and let’s finish with the cattle before it gets dark.”
The brothers spent the rest of the afternoon looking at the steers that had been culled from the herd. Nick left for home just before sundown. Will returned to the house to find Charlotte in the parlor, working on the baptismal gown. Her eyes lit up when she saw him, and she set it aside.
There were times when it seemed she wanted to kiss him, or touch him. He avoided all of that, stopping her with a hard look. If she so much as drew near, he felt a powerful surge of lust grip him. Everything about her frayed his self-control. Her beauty. Her laughter. Being in the same room with her tormented him. And yet, he found that the end of the day was soon becoming his favorite time of the day.
“Caroline made chicken and dumplings,” she said with a smile. She drew nearer, but stopped a few paces away. “It smells wonderful. Are you hungry?”
“I am,” he said.
She flinched. His tone was too gruff. He knew that. Yet he used the same tone almost every time he spoke with her.
“I’ll go wash up and be down in a moment.”
They ate dinner in their usual silence, but he could tell she wanted to tell him something. She shifted in her seat and fidgeted with the linen napkin. In the candlelight, she looked especially lovely. Her hair was pulled up in a twist. A few tresses framed her face. His hands itched to tug the hairpins free and thread his fingers through her silken tresses.
“Twenty-three more days.”
Her startled response was the first clue that he’d said the words aloud. She regarded him with wide eyes. After blinking a few times, she shook her head with bewilderment.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll have the guest room for twenty-three more days, and then you’ll go to bed with me each evening.”
He imagined she might recoil, but she said nothing and took a small, dainty bite of her cake. She chewed thoughtfully and set her fork down. “You’ve been counting?”
“Maybe.” It was an absurd response. Obviously, he’d been counting.
She reached beside her and lifted a small box and set it in front of him. “I bought you a wedding present.”
He eyed it suspiciously. She hadn’t responded to his comment about twenty-three days and now she offered him a gift. What did she mean by that, he wondered. Cautiously, he opened the box. A pair of silver cufflinks glinted in the candlelight. He lifted one to read the face. It was etched with his initials.
“You bought me a gift?” he asked.
“I thought I would wait to give it to you, but the spirit moved me to give it to you sooner.”
Guilt twisted inside him. He set the cufflink back in the box and put it on the table. “I don’t have a gift for you. I can buy one in Fort Worth, if you tell me what you want.”
“That’s very romantic.”
He shrugged. “It might have been romantic if I had bought it before you gave me a gift.”
“No, Will. Your offer to buy me a gift is touching. It makes me so happy. I can’t begin to tell you.”
He eyed her, waiting for more. She didn’t sound particularly happy. It seemed more likely that she was putting some plan in motion. Did she want him to buy some lavish piece of jewelry? A diamond necklace? Pearls perhaps. He could see something adorning her neck and imagined surprising her with an expensive gift.
The thought almost made him smile. He’d return from Fort Worth, his desire to touch and hold her ten times what it was now. He’d give her a string of diamonds or pearls or whatever she wanted and then he’d carry her straight to bed. To hell with waiting a month.
“What would you like, Charlotte?”
His voice was rough with desire. She clearly heard the need in his voice because her cheeks pinked. His cock, always hard when she stepped into the room, throbbed almost painfully. He was thirty-five years old, but she had him randy as a boy. He fisted his hand.
She shook her head and looked away demurely. “I couldn’t possibly ask you for anything, Will. You already sent me too much money to prepare for life in Texas. Asking for more would simply be greedy.”
She gave a small laugh, one that made his blood seethe with desire.
“You’re going to spoil me, if you’re not careful.”
A growl formed in his chest. He wanted to spoil her. The thought surprised him because that wasn’t at all what he’d set out to do. His intention all along was to have a reliable woman. A helpmate. What he ended up with was a girl who was far too young for him, knew next to nothing about life on a ranch and had made his life hell ever since she’d arrived.
“I want to spoil you. Then maybe we can renegotiate the notion of waiting a month.”
She nodded slowly, her lips pressed together with a resolute and firm determination.
“Diamonds? Emeralds? Anything you want, Charlotte, name it.”
“I don’t want jewels, Will.”
He frowned. A slow burning anger sparked inside him. Did she want to return to Boston? It was impossible. He couldn’t let her go. In the days since she’d come, he thought of nothing but her. She filled his house with warmth and made the big house feel like a home.
She set her plate aside and folded her hands in front of her. “I want to go on the cattle drive.”
He narrowed his eyes. What was she talking about? “What cattle drive?”
She rolled her eyes and her lips quirked with a smile that was pure sass. His relief that she wasn’t asking to go back to Texas was replaced by a desire to kiss that smirk from her lips.
“Fort. Worth.” She said each word slowly as if he were some dim-witted fool.
He couldn’t hold back the grin, or the laughter that followed. He gasped for breath and wiped the tears from his eyes. “You… aw, Charlotte… you want to go on a cattle drive,” he managed to say between gales of laughter. “To Fort Worth? You?”
She waited, impassively, for him to stop laughing. “You said I could have whatever I wanted. I want to go with you.”
“Absolutely not.” He rubbed his forehead and chuckled. “No, Charlotte, not this time and not ever.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“It’s dangerous. A man’s job. I won’t even consider it.”
“You’re letting Mary go.”
“Mary always goes. Silas has brought his wife ever since they got married twenty-five years ago. I don’t remember Mary not going. If she didn’t go, we’d have to endure Silas’s cooking and I don’t think I could get the men to undertake a cattle drive and bad cooking.”
“So why can’t I go? I could help her with the cooking. Or whatever she needed.”
“You don’t know how to cook.”
“I can peel a potato. I can follow directions.”
Her voice rose a few notches and her eyes sparked with indignation. She was even more lovely to him when she grew impassioned and he had an overwhelming urge to pull her onto his lap and bury his face against her neck. This girl had been here only a few days and he needed her like he needed to breathe.
She wanted to go on a cattle drive? He wanted to wrap her in silk and satin and keep her locked away in a tower. The idea of her getting anywhere near danger made him half-crazed with fear.
“Please tell me you’ll think about my going,” Charlotte said in a let’s-be-reasonable voice.
But this went beyond reason. He knew that.
“I won’t think about it,” he said coldly. “Don’t ask me again.”
To drive his point home, he brought up something they hadn’t talked about. The first moment he’d seen her being manhandled on the train.
“I shouldn’t have even let you make that trip from Boston by yourself, Charlotte. I should have come for you, to keep you safe. You very nearly got yourself hurt by a drunk and that was in the middle of a crowded train. You think I’m going to take you out on the trail?”
He saw the pain his words cost her. A look came over her like she might tear up, but he wasn’t having any of
it.
“Don’t waste your tears on me, girl.” He lowered his voice. “What I say goes. If I say you can’t go on a cattle drive, then that’s final. You signed a marriage proxy and you promised to love and obey. I promise you the love part of that doesn’t matter one bit to me, but the obey part I take very seriously.”
She kept her gaze on him, as if trying to stare him down, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she rose from her chair and went upstairs. He heard her steps as she ascended and listened as she walked down the hallway past his bedroom. A moment later, the sound of her door closing with a firm thud told him he could expect many more long and lonesome nights.
Chapter Three
Charlotte
The collar of the gown was giving her fits and she had to tear out much of her morning’s work. She grimaced. This was Will’s fault. She blamed him entirely. He hadn’t interrupted her or done anything to overtly contribute to her disastrous stitches. No, he’d upset her so much that she’d tossed and turned all night. This morning she’d felt restless. Lost. She’d dressed quickly, hoping to find him before he left, to make peace with him, but he was gone.
It had only been eight days since she’d arrived in Colter Canyon. An impossibly short amount of time to pass any sort of judgment about her marriage to Will Travis. And yet she did. He kept his distance from her or simply rejected her anytime she tried to draw close. Was it too much to ask that he show her some small shred of tenderness?
She threw her sewing aside and muttered as she moved across the room to the window. Each time she stood at the parlor window, she found herself looking for him. It was pathetic, and self-loathing swirled inside her. She never imagined being a clinging vine and yet there she was hoping for a glimpse of him, imagining him taking her hand in his, or even seeking her out.
But no.
It was as if he could hardly stand to be near her. The cufflinks she’d been so proud to give him, he’d tossed aside after hardly even a passing glance. And now he was traveling to Fort Worth to escape her? She was being petulant. He had business to conduct and the cattle drive had been in the works long before she’d arrived, but it still stung.
Caroline, the cook, stepped into the parlor. “Dinner will be a little late, Mrs. Travis.”
“That’s fine. Can I help you with something?”
The woman shook her head. Caroline acted a little offended any time she tried to help with the cooking. She’d been the Travis cook for too many years to share her kitchen, she would say, only half-joking, it seemed.
“I’m fine, Mrs. Travis. I had to help Mary with gathering things for the trip to Fort Worth. Silas put his back out and wasn’t able to help her.”
With a smile and a respectful nod, Caroline excused herself and returned to the kitchen. Charlotte wandered out the door and along the length of the porch. The wooden slats creaked underfoot. The soft spring breeze carried the scent of rose blossoms from the bushes Will’s mother had planted around the house when she was a young bride.
From the porch, Charlotte could see Mary working in the shed. Someone, one of Will’s men probably, had backed the buckboard into the shed. Mary climbed up and carried a box to the front. She bent over and disappeared from view. A moment later she stood and wiped her brow before returning to the back of the wagon and stepping down.
Mary was more than twice her age, and yet she was an integral part of the cattle drive. Charlotte closed her eyes and shook her head. She felt bitter, unwanted and resentful.
At least Mary and Silas treated her kindly. She turned on her heel and went to her room. After rummaging in her trunks, she found the trousers she’d made. She changed out of her dress and donned the work clothes she hadn’t yet worn. Next she found the boots she’d purchased for work on the ranch.
Sturdy boots, he tells me. Buy some sturdy boots, but I won’t let you actually do anything in them. She spoke in a deep voice to mock him and amuse herself. Lacing the boots, she snickered. She felt a little better. It helped to let off a little tension.
She liked wearing trousers. The nuns at St. Mathews used to let the girls wear trousers when they worked in the gardens. Even some of the younger nuns wore divided skirts outdoors.
She looked at herself in the mirror one last time and decided she was ready. With a bounce in her step, light-hearted and even a little happy, she left the house. She crossed the farmyard and entered the shed. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Mary appeared from behind a stack of hay and gaped.
“Mrs. Travis!”
“I’m here to help you, since Silas hurt his back.”
She tried her best to sound authoritative. Mary let her gaze wander down Charlotte’s shirt to her trousers and finally to her boots.
“I see.”
Charlotte rubbed her hands together. “Put me to work.”
Mary grinned and pointed to a stack of crates that needed to be loaded. The next few hours passed quickly and pleasantly as Mary told her about the first cattle drive she ever went on. She spoke about Will’s father and how he’d always bring a guitar for the evening campfire. Her stories made the whole venture sound more and more appealing.
“I asked if I could go, but Will said no.”
Mary shook her head. “He’s very protective of you. Maybe when you’ve lived on the ranch a little longer.”
“He’ll never permit me to go on a cattle drive.”
Mary pursed her lips but said nothing.
The last things to load were the large cooking pots. They worked together to lift the heavy iron kettles into the buckboard and position them against the side. After they tied them down, they covered the wagon with a tarp.
“I thank you, Mrs. Travis. I’m grateful to have this done so I can do the cooking for my David’s baptism. Silas is making the meat, but I’ve got to make the sides. Enough for fifty, so I’m starting tomorrow.”
“Do you want help?”
“Heavens no, Mrs. Travis. You shouldn’t help in the kitchen. It’s not fitting!”
Charlotte smiled. “No one wants me to cook. I wonder if they’ve heard about my lack of cooking skills.”
Mary slapped her side and laughed.
“I really am a terrible cook,” Charlotte admitted. “It’s too bad because they say the shortest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I might be able to charm my husband if only I were a better cook.”
Mary waved a dismissive hand. “Pfft. Mr. Travis is over the moon about you, Charlotte.”
Charlotte felt the familiar sting of tears. “I was sitting on the porch the other day and a couple of cowboys walked past. I could hear them. They talked about visiting saloon girls in Fort Worth…”
A slow realization came over Mary’s face. “Oh, honey.”
Charlotte turned away. “He told me from the start that this was an arrangement. I’m a fool for setting my hopes on something more.”
Mary crossed the shed. “Will’s not like that. He doesn’t dally with those girls.”
Charlotte nodded. She felt a twinge of guilt for burdening Mary with her fears. Mary couldn’t know what Will did or didn’t do when he went to Fort Worth, but she appreciated her attempt to ease her worries.
“Thank you. It’s getting late. Almost dark. I should go home and serve my husband dinner.”
Mary smiled at her. “Good night, Mrs. Travis.”
Charlotte left the shed, stopping in the entrance. “I’ll have that gown done by lunch tomorrow.”
She returned to the house. The aroma of Caroline’s cooking greeted her and made her stomach grumble. Working with Mary had given her an appetite. Not bothering to change into a dress, she washed. Her hands were grimy. Even her face was coated with dust. She splashed water on her face and checked her appearance in the mirror.
In the reflection, she saw Will standing behind her. She shrieked and stumbled backwards. He leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed, eyeing her with an expression she couldn’t place.
She let out a
gasp and set her hand over her racing heart. “You frightened me.”
He stepped inside the washroom, shutting the door behind him. The last remnants of dusk filtered through the laced curtains. With his face cast in shadow, she couldn’t say why on earth he had shut the door, effectively trapping her in the small room with him.
He moved closer. The desire to retreat came over her but she forced herself to remain still.
“What are you wearing?”
She swallowed and glanced down. His actions bewildered her and, for a moment, she forgot what she was wearing. Water droplets fell from her face. She wiped her hands on her trousers and in a very unladylike gesture rubbed her shirt sleeve across her face.
“Trousers.”
In the shadowed light she thought she could make out the clench of his jaw.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Same as you.”
Moving slowly, he reached down to grasp her wrist. She drew a sharp breath of surprise. Awareness flared across her skin, her breasts tightened and ached. He sat down on the edge of the enormous cast-iron tub and pulled her close. His scent washed over her. He smelled of sweat and horses and hard work. Normally the smell of a man’s sweat repulsed her, but she wanted to draw close and take in more of the scent.
Her sex grew slick. Tendrils of pleasure wrapped around her.
With his free hand he reached around her waist and positioned her next to his legs. He slid his hand up the small of her back to between her shoulders, then gently pushed her forward, to lay her over his knees. Her arousal twisted and fought with outrage. In a single blinding instant, she understood what he was going to do. Inside her mind, she fought and screamed, but, in reality, she lay helpless.
“Hands on the floor, Charlotte.”
She whimpered but obeyed immediately. The cold tile floor contrasted with the warmth of her clammy hands. With one hand he held her down, lightly but firmly. The other he set on her bottom. The heat from his palm sank through the fabric of her pants. He squeezed her gently.
The first swat didn’t hurt nearly as much as she’d imagined. A slight sting raced down the length of her thighs. She pressed her knees together. The next smack drew a soft cry from her lips. Each blow after that made arousal spark and burn, and pain and pleasure swirled together. Getting spanked by Will humiliated her, but not because of the punishment, but because of her body’s response.