Silken Thunder

by Fayrene Preston

  And she knew where there was a meadow …

  The sun was golden, gentle, and warm, as if it knew Anna wouldn’t be able to take any harshness. A soft breeze shimmered through the grass, bending the long blades so that new colors of green were created.

  In the center of the meadow she sank down amid a carpet of velvet-petaled buttercups and marigolds, her skirts billowing out around her. She braced her hands behind her and leaned back, letting the tranquility and the beauty of her surroundings soak into her.

  “Anna?”

  Startled, she looked up. A tall, dark figure stood between her and the sun. She lifted an arm to shield her eyes and stiffened. “What are you doing here?”

  Wes dropped down in front of her. “I saw you walking this way and followed you.” He tossed his hat to the grass beside him, looked at her, then grimaced. “I'm lying. I was watching for you.” His gaze searched her face. “How are you? The baby … ”

  “I’m fine.” Feeling unsure and awkward, she plucked a stalk of buttercups and brought it to her nose. All of their meetings had been in darkness. Now, unexpectedly, they were together in a sunlit meadow. It made Anna feel strangely unprotected.

  “Where’s the ring?”

  She touched the place between her breasts where the ring rested beneath her dress. “I had a long chain. It was my mother’s.” She hesitated, then lifted her hands to the back of her neck and the clasp of the chain. “You’ll be wanting your ring back.”

  “No.” Without thinking about it, he had reached over and pulled her arms down. “No.”

  She shrugged, puzzled.

  Tall flowers surrounded them, the scent of the blossoms perfuming the air. Anna studied Wesley through a veil of thick lashes. Every woman in town agreed that he was very good-looking. Strands of silver threaded through his brown hair and matched his light gray eyes. She'd seen those eyes freeze into ice when directed at other people, but they were never cold when he looked at her.

  He was an enigmatic man, she thought not for the first time. Then suddenly her confusion vanished and what had been muddy before now cleared. She wanted to understand him. And she felt strongly that the key lay in his past. “I suppose you’re happy now that you have the ledger back.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be happy?” He glanced away from her. “The railroad will come through on schedule, and I’ll be the one in charge.”

  “But what about Mr. Lassiter?”

  “I can’t think of a thing he can do to me. He’ll most likely leave town soon.”

  “Just give up? Do you really think so?”

  He pulled up a blade of grass and absently ran it through his fingers, shredding it. “Now that I have the ledger, I don't think of him at all.”

  “You can do that, can’t you? Simply cut someone out of your mind and never think of them again.”

  “I learned a long time ago that you do what you have to do to survive.”

  She'd always known he was a hard man, yet suddenly she realized that in the years to come it would be his gentleness and his passion she would remember. Somehow, in this sunlit moment, it wasn’t enough to know what he was. She wanted to know what he had been yesterday and what he would become to-

  morrow. She said impulsively, “Tell me about yourself. Tell me what your life was like when you were a boy.”

  He was astonished by her request until he remembered her tentative curiosity of a few nights before … and his child growing within her.

  Jesus, he didn’t like to talk about himself. He hated remembering the ugliness and the pain of those years. But she had asked, and she had a right to know.

  He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did, his words came haltingly. “I guess you could say my home was a ragged tent in a mining camp in Nevada. In the wintertime the cold wind used to seep through the holes and under the flaps. In the springtime rain would drive in like ice-cold needles.”

  “Then your father was a miner?”

  “He was a gambler who drifted in and out of the area for the first seven years of my life, then he disappeared altogether. My mother was a prostitute who serviced the miners.” He smiled bitterly. “I was a bastard.”

  Anna felt a pang of compassion as she thought of that desolate little boy. Their hasty marriage the night before had shocked and bewildered her, but now everything was easier to understand. He hadn’t wanted his child to be a bastard; he wanted it to have his name.

  He was continuing. “I remember going hungry, and falling asleep on cold, hard dirt floors because no one was there to put me into a bed. Some of the dogs in the camp were treated better than I was. Later, I realized that my mother was addicted to opium.”

  Anna was looking at him in a way that no one ever had, he thought, surprised. In the clear blue depths of her eyes he saw a sadness and a sympathy that was solely for him, and something he couldn’t identify moved in his heart. “I learned early how to look out for myself, Anna, and I’ve lied, cheated, and charmed my way through life ever since.” He paused. “You wanted to know, didn't you? You wanted to know what had made me the way I am today, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So now you do. And there’s one more thing you should know. I never saw any sense in the world until I saw you.”

  Her heart seemed to pick up a beat. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought that life in that mining camp where I grew up was the way life was everywhere — raw, mean, dark, ugly. Until you, there had never been anything to convince me differently. But you … ” His fingers clenched on the blade of grass. “You were like a shining light beaming through my darkness. So I set out to get you.”

  “By blackmailing me.”

  “Would you have had anything to do with me if I’d done it any other way?”

  She thought about Wesley calling on her at home and meeting her father. She tried to imagine him courting her like a suitor, accompanying her to church picnics, taking her on afternoon buggy rides, perhaps sitting down to dinner with her and her father. She couldn’t even envision it and decided he was right. If he’d approached her in any other way, she undoubtedly would have rebuffed him. He’d gotten her in the only way he had known how.

  “Well, Anna?”

  “I think I wish you’d tried some other way.”

  He met her gaze. “I wish I had too.”

  He looked away, feeling oddly vulnerable, and saw a gold and orange butterfly flutter among a grouping of lavender Scotch thistle, then settle onto one featherlike blossom. So much beauty, he thought. So much pain. He’d never told anyone what he’d just told her. He felt as if a surgeon had taken a knife and laid back several layers of his skin, exposing a misery he’d fought all his life to keep hidden away.

  “It’s all right, Wesley,” Anna said softly.

  She knows how I’m feeling. Amazed and moved, he extended his hand, wanting to touch her and maybe in some way get closer to her. Then he realized what he was doing and he jerked his arm back.

  The butterfly left its petaled perch to flit around Anna's shoulder. Ever so lightly it landed. She angled her head so that she could see it. The butterfly delicately fanned her face with a flutter of its fragile wings, then flew away from her and landed on the exquisite beauty of a golden buttercup. She smiled as she watched it.

  She will be a gentle, loving mother. The baby — his baby — would be so very lucky, he thought.

  “When are you going to tell your father about the baby, Anna?”

  She glanced at him, startled, and it dawned on her that he hadn't asked about the marriage, only about the child. It was as if the marriage had no further importance for him. “I’m not.”

  He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not a complete fool,” she said, her words coming uncertainly at first. “Last night doesn’t change anything, Wesley. We both know that.”

  A shock of pain went through him. He glanced away, reaching out blindly to grasp a small cluster of dandelions. They came apart in his hands. />
  Anna didn't want or expect a future with him, and he couldn’t really blame her, could he? He’d done nothing but take from her. Now he had to face the difficult realization that there were some things he just couldn’t take. And he couldn't force her to spend the rest of her life with him.

  He dropped the maimed remains of the dandelions to the ground and took the buttercups from her hands. Instead of pinning up her hair, she’d loosely tied it in a narrow black ribbon at her neck, leaving the rest of it to fall freely down her back like a glistening golden waterfall. He leaned over and placed the flower gently behind her ear.

  His hands didn’t brush her skin, but Anna felt his warmth as his face came close to hers and his hand passed her cheek.

  “I’m going away,” she said.

  Wes was still. “When did you decide that?”

  “I think the decision's been forming from the first moment I realized I was pregnant. It’s the only way.”

  It seemed to Anna that the silence that fell between them pushed a dark tension into the light-filled peace of their surroundings.

  With a suddenness that surprised Anna, he reached for his hat and got to his feet. “I need to get back to town.” He started away, then stopped and turned back. Bending his head, he ran his hand around the brim of his hat. His gaze holding her own was filled with many emotions — belligerence, sadness, anger, even an odd diffidence. “Will you come to me tonight?”

  The gold and orange butterfly had time to flit to four flowers before she whispered, “I don’t know.” Wes nodded curtly, spun on his heel, and strode away from her.

  As she watched him go, Anna's hand found the ridge of the chain beneath the thin fabric of her dress and traced it down to where the ring lay nestled between her breasts. Her body had warmed the metal, and when she absently pressed the ring into the softness of her breast, she felt the outline of Wesley’s initial like a brand on her flesh.

  “You haven’t learned, have you?” Brianne’s quietly spoken question reached across the bedroom to the apple-green medallion-back sofa and the man who sat upon it. “We nearly lost our lives because of your hatred for Wes McCord, and now you’re about to put yourself in jeopardy again.”

  “Someone’s got to stop him,” Sloan said, the lines of his rugged face grim. “Who better than me?”

  “Anyone, for heaven’s sake.” His set expression told her that she wasn’t getting through to him. “Sloan, we nearly lost our lives in that canyon. Didn’t that have any effect on you?”

  “It gave me one more reason to hate the man.”

  She went to him and sat down beside him. “How can you place more value on something that happened fifteen years ago than you do on our future together?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with our future together.”

  “How can it not?”

  “There’s no danger to us now. Wes thinks I’m not a threat since he has that damned ledger back.” He smiled with satisfaction. “And by the time he finds out how wrong he is” — he shrugged — “well, it won’t matter. He’ll have lost everything, and I doubt if he’ll have any fight left in him.”

  “I wish I could make you understand how wrong you are. Why couldn’t you just talk to him about David’s death?”

  “Talking would be useless.” The worry in her eyes made him reach over and gather her hands in his. “Listen to me, Brianne. I know you don’t understand, but I want you to ask yourself something. What would you have done if the Grimes brothers had killed Patrick?”

  “I would have hunted them down until I drew my last breath.”

  He smiled crookedly. “See there.”

  She looked at him for a moment, fighting against agreeing with him before finally sighing resignedly. “I hadn’t thought of it in that way before, but now I can understand a little better. But, dammit, Sloan, I still don’t approve.”

  “And I wouldn’t approve if you set out to hunt someone down either, but I’ve got to do this, Brianne. Everything is going to be fine. All it’s going to take is two telegrams. And there’ll be no violence. At least not from me. I promise.”

  Brianne found little reassurance in his promise, but she had to be satisfied with it. For the present, at any rate.

  Wes’s hand tightened around the glass of whiskey he held as he heard the front door open, then the sound of footsteps as they moved down the long entrance hall. They were Anna’s footsteps. He’d listened for them too many times not to know her light, graceful step. And, as on those many occasions, his heart was pounding in anticipation of her appearance. However, tonight would be different from all those other nights.

  He heard her pause at the entrance to the front room, but he knew she would see that no light had been lit there. The lamp burning on his desk in his study and the flames that were dancing in the fire- place were at present the only lights in the whole house.

  “Wesley?”

  “I’m back here.”

  After a moment she appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing in here?”

  “I had some work to do.” In truth, he had been unable to do any work at all. His mind had been too full of thoughts of her. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  “I wasn’t sure I would either.” She still wasn't certain why she was there. It was as if she’d been drawn to him by the hint of vulnerability she’d seen in his expression this afternoon in the meadow. And she had a sense that in their final parting there should have been something more, something that seemed to remain just out of reach.

  Pushing aside the whiskey, he stood up and walked around the desk. He held out his hand to her. “Come here, Anna.”

  She hesitated.

  “Please.”

  She crossed the room to him. There seemed to be a new weariness in his voice and manner, she thought. And he looked older, with harsh lines seaming either side of his lips.

  “Sit down.”

  “Sit down?” she asked, puzzled. Something was wrong. Wesley was never in his study on the nights when she came to his house. And once she was with him, they never spent time downstairs talking. In- stead, he would hurry her upstairs, undress her, and take her to bed.

  He waved his hand toward a small chair by the desk. “Please. I have something I want to give you.”

  She took the chair he indicated but said, “Wesley, you know I won’t accept any gifts from you. We’ve discussed this many times.” A renegade thought entered her mind. Just this once she’d love to keep something he’d given her, something that in years to come she could take out and look at and remember him by. Then again, she knew she’d never forget him.

  “This is one gift you’ll be glad to accept.” From the bottom drawer in his desk he pulled out a locked metal box and set it on his desk before drawing a key from the pocket of his trousers. It took him only moments to unlock the box. He lifted the lid and extracted the documents, then stood, came around to the front of the desk, and handed the papers to Anna.

  She gazed at him, bewildered. “These are my father’s notes of debt.”

  He leaned back against the desk and folded his hands. “They’re yours now.”

  “I don’t understand. You demanded that I give them back after I’d taken them, now you’re simply handing them over to me?”

  “I’m setting you free, Anna.”

  Astonishment, then pain hit her. All she could think to say was “Why?”

  Wes looked away from her. He should have known that she would want an explanation. But voicing his reasons would be impossible for him. There were too many complexities involved, too much agony and torment.

  “Wesley … I’m not sure I know what to say. This is very unexpected.”

  He smiled gently at her, his gaze moving over her fair hair with a strangely melancholy yearning. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  He took the notes from her, walked to the fire, and threw them on top of the blazing logs. Fire caught the edges of the notes instantly, and the flames began devouring the paper
. Soon all that was left of the notes that had once bound Anna to him were tiny bits of burned paper, blackened with a glow of red, being drawn up the chimney, fragile as the butterfly’s wings they had watched together only a few hours earlier.

  He stared down at the fire. “I'm going to ask one more thing of you. But, of course, you don't have to do it.”

  “What is it?”

  He raised his head and looked over his shoulder at her. Then he turned and faced her. “Will you go upstairs with me one last time?”

  The sudden surge of need she felt for him shook Anna badly. With the specter of blackmail no longer present, she was free to get up and walk out of the house if she liked. But she suddenly realized that she wouldn’t leave. This was why she had come. To erase the bitterness that had always existed between them.

  And to say good-bye.

  She gazed into his eyes. “Yes,” she said softly.

  For the last time. The words ran through Wes’s mind as he plucked the pins from her golden hair and watched the silken strands uncoil and shimmer down her back past her waist.

  For the last time. The words echoed hollowly in Anna's mind as she pulled her hair over her shoulder so that he could unbutton her dress.

  Their clothes were taken off slowly; kisses were given that lasted long minutes. With dreamlike rhythm they touched and moved and strained against each other. And when at last they lay on the bed, they still found no sense of urgency.

  Wes saw the bruises that he had made on her skin that night in the glade.

  “They’ll eventually fade,” she whispered, her fingers threading through his hair.

  “But it should never have happened.” His lips brushed over the marks as if he could heal them with his touch. “To mar something so perfect is a sacrilege.”

  She laughed softly. “I’m not perfect.”

  His mouth skimmed down to her breast. “Don’t blame yourself. About anything. Right from the start, everything has been my fault.”

  Heat was melting through her. “Has it? I wonder.”