There was no opportunity to ask what had happened. Laura worked mechanically, helping Jake pull a man from a saddle, using her small body as a crutch to support a leg-shot man on the way into the relative security of the kitchen, catching a loose horse that threatened to tear down the paddock gate. There was little point in seeking the kitchen herself. She was too wet and filthy to tend the injured, and there was no sense in sending one of the frightened maids out in the rain and wind in her place. With Jake and Jettie at her side, she could manage.
But she kept searching for Cash. Laura knew it had to be Cash who had hauled her from the field. She still felt his hard arm crushing her ribs, knew the rough brush of his cheek against hers when she had fought with him, even if the throaty sound of his voice hadn’t reached her ears. He was out there somewhere.
As the panic in the yard subsided and the rain slowed to a steady downpour, Laura considered going out to look for him.
All in all, she would have been better off if she’d given in to that mad urge, she decided a moment later when the stallion raced into the yard, sides heaving as he reared and plunged and steadied under the curse and insistent tug of his rider. Cash was off and striding in her direction before a groom had time to grab his reins.
Laura’s heart quailed, but she held her place, until a hard arm grabbed her, and she screamed in surprise when he lifted her off her feet.
“I ought to wring your neck. What in hell did you think you were doing? You could have got your head shot off. My God, Laura, I’m going to tie you to a bedpost until you learn some sense. What in hell have you been doing? You look like a drowned rat.” His ranting continued on as he dragged her into the lighted kitchen, shaking her until water sprayed from them like wet dogs.
He dropped her on the kitchen floor and gave her a black glare as a puddle of water spread from her dripping skirts.
“Get upstairs and out of those clothes before you catch pneumonia.” At her mutinous look Cash took a step forward and caught the sagging cotton of her soaked bodice. “Upstairs, Laura, or I’ll strip you down right here.”
The menace in his voice she understood. He had never spoken to her like that before, but she’d had enough experience with Marshall to know when to run. Fighting her fear, Laura turned and fled from the room.
Cash felt the scathing looks on the faces of the others in the room as he watched her go, but he wasn’t in any humor to cater to their sensibilities. Swinging on his heel, he stormed out in the same fury with which he had entered.
As hard as he had tried, he had failed tonight. Although he had brought down a few of the miscreants, Marshall’s band was still essentially intact to strike again. Cursing Laura, the storm, and his own ill luck, Cash strode toward the stables and the men seeking to dry themselves. He would hang before he let Brown and his bunch win.
As soon as Cash left, Laura hurried back down the stairs to the kitchen. Jettie had already disappeared to change her own clothing, and Jemima caught one sight of her mistress and turned her around again.
“Mastuh Cash catch you down here, he gonna whip your hide good. You get some of this here hot water and get yo’sef back up them stairs. You ain’t gonna do a lick of good by makin’ yo’sef sick.”
The kitchen had begun to clear, with the less injured taking themselves off to their cabins or the stables to dry out. Several of the more severely injured were lying on makeshift pallets around the fire, nearly naked and covered in blankets. She wasn’t certain who half of them were. Cash must have brought his own reinforcements. Jemima was right; she didn’t belong here.
But she couldn’t let Cash order her around. She wouldn’t be bullied anymore. Brushing off the cook’s admonitions, Laura replied, “The tree came through the roof. Rain is pouring through the attic again. I have to get someone to help salvage the furniture. Is there anyone who can help?”
Jemima rolled her eyes and placed her hands on her hefty hips in exasperation, but Laura refused to budge. She would move furniture by herself if someone didn’t help her do it.
“I’ll find someone,” the cook agreed. “You get yo’sef on upstairs, now.”
Laura did as told, but not to change. There was little point in ruining another gown working in the steady trickle of rain through the newly plastered ceilings. The elm had crushed the temporary roof, and she suspected it had tom through weakened timbers on the side of the house. Bricks were lying inside some of the rooms, and glass was shattered throughout the whole west side. The room that had once been Sallie’s had tree limbs pushing through the windows.
She moved the smaller items of furniture in the rooms that had just been restored from the fire. Sallie’s room and furniture had been too damaged for restoration, so she stayed out of there. But all the other rooms on that side had been returned to some semblance of normal. She was too bone weary to weep at their destruction.
The wind was dying as Laura dragged a washstand through the hall to an empty bedroom on Cash’s side of the house. A couple of the maids ran up to help her, and together they pushed a mahogany lowboy out from under leaking plaster.
Some of the older boys joined them, and Laura left them to haul furniture while she and the maids turned to the task of stripping draperies and mattresses and rugs. Most were damp, but not totally ruined yet. The water hadn’t had time to go all the way through roof and attic and ceiling. The house had been made solid once. It would stand up through this catastrophe too, Laura vowed.
Cash’s voice roaring up from the kitchen brought her head up and froze the servants around her. Furniture had been left willy-nilly up and down the hall where the boys had dragged it, and there was damp drapery hanging all over the cherry stair rail and dripping from bedposts in every room. Laura flinched at the damage that was being done to the wood beneath, but the maids didn’t know better. She needed to install a clothesline in the basement. But that thought had no sooner formed than boots slamming up the stairs scared it out again.
“Out! All of you out! I’ll not have the damned roof caving in on you for the sake of the lousy furniture. Get downstairs where you belong.” Drenched from head to foot, his black hair plastered to his head, and his shirt a second skin against his chest, Cash shoved through the chaos. His eyes flashed fury as he focused his attention on Laura.
“I thought I told you to get out of those clothes, Laura Melissa Kincaid!” He shoved aside a ruined velvet bedroom chair, and before Laura could evade him, he grabbed her waist and hauled her from her feet for the second time that night.
Laura screamed and beat her fists against his shoulders. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until she felt the furnace of his body against hers. Their clothing ought to steam from the heat generated by the contact, and she clutched his soaked shoulders as he shoved open the door to his room.
“Put me down, you maniac! I won’t be hauled around like a sack of flour.” Panic and anger mixed as they entered the darkened bedroom.
She hadn’t dared haul any of the wet furniture in here. When Sallie had taken over Cash’s old room, he had moved into this adjoining sparsely decorated suite. The bed was plain and unadorned, the furniture simple, but it was boldly Cash’s, from the riding boots in the corner to the abandoned deck of cards on the dresser. Even after he had moved out, Laura hadn’t dared to enter this sacrosanct interior.
But she was here now, and not liking it one bit. She ripped from his hold as soon as her feet hit the floor. “Who do you think you are, you big oaf? That furniture has been in the family for ages. I’m not going to let it be ruined by a leaky roof! Aunt Ann loved that dresser! I can save it. Let me go, Cash.” She tried to rush past him, but he grabbed her again, shaking her into silence.
“To hell with the furniture, Laura! You’re what matters. Look at you! You’re shivering in your shoes and your fingers are blue with cold. Get those clothes off now or I’ll rip them off, I swear I will.”
Laura’s hands grabbed for the buttons of her bodice as Cash made a menacing step forward
. He had threatened her earlier and she had run in terror, but she wasn’t giving in this time. Boldly standing up to him, she met his black gaze with a glare of her own.
“Look at the pot calling the kettle black! You’ve got an eye that won’t open from that drunken brawl over nothing and nobody, and you condemn my saving the furniture? And you’ve ripped open the gash on your cheek again. It needs bandaging more than I need drying out. And I’m not any more likely to catch pneumonia than you are, standing there in your mud-filled boots. Get the hell out of my way, Cash Wickliffe. You’re no example for me to follow.”
“The hell I’m not! If you had any gumption at all, you’d be in my bed now, and Sallie would be weaving her spells on some poor besotted fool elsewhere. But you’re a craven coward, Laura Kincaid. You couldn’t stand up to me then, and you can’t stand up to me now. You’re too afraid someone will notice you if you say what you think. You keep your mouth shut when you ought to be screaming bloody murder. Well, it’s about time I changed all that. Get those clothes off, Laura, my patience has come to an end.”
“You can’t talk to me that way. No one gave you any right to talk to me that way. I’ve only tried to do what’s proper, that’s more than you can say. Cash Wickliffe, get your hands off me!” Laura screamed as he shoved aside her hands and ripped at the buttons of her gown.
“Tell me now you’re not Sallie. That’s what you always say, isn’t it? Poor drab little Laura, never fitting in her cousin’s shoes. But I know better, don’t I, Laura? Of all the men in this county, I’m the one in a position to know that you’re a hundred times better than Sallie could ever hope to be. And I’m not going to let you make a martyr of yourself for your damned dead Kincaids.”
His words slammed against her ears with the violence of the storm outside. Laura couldn’t absorb the words, but she could absorb the wrenching strength of Cash’s fingers as he yanked at the frail material of her gown. Meeting violence with violence, she grabbed at the linen of his shirt and jerked. A button flew across the room.
“See how you like it, Cash! See how you like being pushed and shoved around and told what to do every minute of the day. How does it feel when a woman fights back? Tell me, Cash! How does it feel?”
She had little luck with ripping the strong material, but she could jerk at the buttons until they loosened and she could find the man beneath. The room was too dark to see his bruised torso, but she felt the heat of him as her fingers brushed his skin.
She gasped as her bodice fell away to hang limply from her shoulders, but she was too furious to fight his advances. She meant to tear him limb from limb first.
“You tell me how it feels, Laura. I’ve been there before. You’re the pampered one. You’re the one who’s never had to lift a pretty finger unless you want to. You’re the Kincaid. Everybody looks out for you, don’t they? Why didn’t you go with your folks back to the city? They would have wined you and dined you and found you a man if you wanted one. But you don’t want one, do you, Laura? You’re afraid of men. You’re afraid of everybody. You were so afraid of Brown riding in here that you led a band of innocent farmers right into his hands. I ought to strangle you for that alone.”
He’d found the ties to her skirt and petticoat and sent them cascading to the floor. A cold draft of wind blew against her wet legs. She loosed her hold on Cash’s shirt and stepped back in panic. She had no reply to his accusations. She needed none. Before she could offer any protest at all, he swung her free of her encumbering attire and stalked toward the bed.
Chapter 33
“Cash!” Her scream of panic would have echoed through the house but for the distant roar of thunder and the pounding rain overhead.
Cash merely bent to rip at her soaked and ruined shoes.
Laura kicked and struggled to right herself, but the electric air had undergone a subtle change. The heat of Cash’s hand scorched her skin as he jerked off her stockings, but there was no pain in his touch. The hard hand grasping her knee did not bruise or threaten. She barely suppressed a gasp of unexpected pleasure when Cash finally rose to stand beside the bed, and she could see the broad expanse of his bronzed torso beneath the shirt she had partially ripped from his shoulders.
She wouldn’t allow such traitorous longing to overcome good sense. Garbed only in the thin chemise plastered to her skin, Laura tried to push past Cash’s powerful body to escape the trap closing in on her. “Damn you. Cash Wickliffe! I’m not some toy to be tossed around as if I haven’t got a lick of sense. Get out of my way, you brute!”
His arm lashed out to catch her before she could make good her escape, and with his unoccupied hand Cash reached to jerk down the bedcovers. “Anyone with the sense God gave a goose would be down in the basement on a night like this. You had fair warning.”
Laura screeched in outrage as he heaved her between the cool sheets. When he sat beside her to remove his boots, she scrambled to her knees and launched herself at his broad back. Her teeth sank into his shoulder as Cash threw one boot to the floor. He swung around and carried her back to the bed again with his greater weight.
His face hovered not inches from hers, but Laura was beyond fear now. All the pent-up rage and pain that she had carried with her for years exploded beneath this final indignity. Without caring whom she hurt, she tore at Cash’s bruised chest, ripping at his shirt and scraping her nails down his skin. “I’m not going to let them take it all away! I won’t, I tell you! This is my home, and they’re not taking it away from me. I’m going to fight them, Cash. I’ll fight, damn you. Get off me!”
With a curse, Cash shoved upright and reached for his other boot. Rage and whiskey still flowed through his veins, but he retained enough sense to know the source of the heat building like a fire in his middle. “You’d have to get through me first, Miss Kincaid,” he warned tersely.
“I will.” Laura flung her legs over the side of the bed. She wasn’t running from him. She never meant to run from another situation again. But she wouldn’t sit here and take his abuse either.
“No, you won’t.” Throwing all good sense to the winds threatening to thrash the house into splinters, Cash hauled her back to the bed beside him. Heat emanated from every point where they touched, but he was a gambler and accustomed to playing with fire. He had no idea what he meant to do with her. He just knew he couldn’t let her escape again.
Rage served better than the other feeling seeping through her, and Laura struggled to regain her freedom. She had no breath left for words, but hit at his shoulders and wriggled in his embrace and tried to lash out with her feet. But she had no defense against his kiss. She surrendered to it without a fight.
The rage with which they had fought each other now took another outlet. Instead of fighting with words, they ripped at hampering clothes, straining for a solace neither could articulate.
It all happened too fast. With the rain pounding against the roof and the wind whipping at the windows, they rubbed together and made fire. Perhaps the wind whipped the flames higher. Laura would never know. She knew only what her body told her, and that message said their only chance of survival was together. Right or wrong, she wrapped her arms around Cash’s shoulders and arched upward into his embrace and found succor in the fierce penetration that joined them.
The piercing brand of Cash’s possession returned with the familiarity of yesterday. The rightness of it made her cry out and reach for more, and all was lost as they struggled feverishly to find that bliss they had known once before. Laura’s tears fell to the pillow as uncontrollable waves of pleasure swept through her, and then she could do nothing but let Cash carry her where he willed, until he, too, succumbed to that explosion of helplessness.
Lethargy sapped any lingering fury. Curled against Cash’s bare shoulder, with his arms around her, Laura listened to the fall of rain, heard the steady drip as it leaked into the other rooms, and fell asleep without moving from the shelter she had found.
Cash pulled the blanket around her naked
ness and held her close to his warmth. Tomorrow was the time to judge and condemn what had happened here tonight. Tonight he only knew he had come home.
They woke again in the predawn silence. Perhaps it was the sudden absence of rain or the forewarning of autumn’s chill that sent them huddling for warmth. Laura snuggled into the encompassing heat of Cash’s arms, then lifted her mouth to greet his lips when they brushed her face. The gentle touch of his hand on her breast sent a shiver of desire through her, and with a sigh of relief she fitted her hips to his and found his need to be as great as her own.
The fierceness of earlier had evaporated. This time they were slow to touch and explore, to gentle and caress, taking their time to absorb each new sensation. For Laura it was a voyage of discovery, and she couldn’t help the tears of happiness that fell when they could no longer stay apart.
Cash filled her with a joy she had never known, a joining of two spirits that made their bodies sing with life and love and pleasure. For two people who had spent much of their lives alone, just on the outside of the human warmth and closeness of families, this miracle knew no bounds, and they clung together for the pure beauty of the blending and not just the physical pleasure of their bodies.
They dozed again, waking only when the room was filled with light despite the draperies on the windows. For once, neither felt any urge to escape the haven of safety of their bed, and Laura snuggled down beside Cash and smiled contentedly as his hand caressed her hair.
“Happy birthday, Laura,” Cash whispered against the thick tangles of golden brown.
“Happy birthday?” She turned a quizzical gaze upward to the underside of his unshaven chin, loving the intimacy of this angle.
“Merry Christmas,” he answered inanely, as much to himself as to her.
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