Lily

by Greenwood, Leigh

  He was trying to make her feel better. This was the part no woman liked; this was the part she had to endure. Well, she would if she must. She wanted a baby more than anything in the world.

  The pain as Zac thrust into her was sharp. But it was brief. It was gone almost before she was aware of it.

  Now Zac was moving within her just as he had before, only this time she felt stretched to the limits, filled with him. He lifted her hips so he could penetrate more deeply. She helped as much as she could. She knew the baby had to grow deep in her body, sheltered from all possible harm.

  But it wasn't long before she forgot all about babies or of more pain to endure. The waves of pleasure started coming again, only they were more intense this time. Lily didn't understand how that was possible, but it was rapidly being proved to her there was more to baby-making than she guessed.

  This time, however, it seemed to be affecting Zac the same way it was affecting her. He was no longer the calm master in control of her body. His escalating passion seemed to be keeping pace with hers. His breath was more laboring, his movement more excited.

  Gradually his thrusts became quicker, penetrated more deeply, came closer to reaching the very core of her. She felt herself gradually losing control. She was conscious only of herself and Zac, their bodies inextricably joined, as they floated higher and higher on a mounting crest of sensation that threatened to overwhelm all conscious thought.

  She clung desperately to Zac. He was her lifeline, her anchor, her magnetic north. Without him she felt certain she would fly off into space and disintegrate into a million tiny pieces. She clung to him, strove to absorb him, to become one with him, until she felt their bodies begin to meld into a single mass of heat-melded passion.

  Then just as she was flung to the very edge of consciousness, she felt herself begin to float down once more, born earthward by waves of release too exquisitely sweet for words to describe.

  She felt Zac tense, heard him gasp, felt his body spasm as it released its seed deep within her.

  She finally felt married.

  * * * * *

  "Is that all there is to making a baby?" she asked a few minutes later.

  Zac didn't know how to take that. He didn't know whether she was hoping for more, or if she'd been disappointed in his performance. No one ever had been.

  "Sometimes you have to do it again. Do you think you could endure that?"

  "Right now?"

  Zac began to be even more concerned. "Well maybe not this very minute."

  "How long are you supposed to wait?"

  Zac rolled up on his elbow. "You don't have to do it again. If it was that unpleasant--"

  "No, I don't mean that at all." Lily blushed. "I liked it quite a lot. I was hoping we didn't have to wait very long before we could try it again."

  Zac kissed her on the nose and pulled her close. "We won't have to wait very long at all."

  "Did you leave any steps out?"

  Zac sat up, self-doubt plaguing him again. "Why?"

  "I just thought if there was anything you left out, I'd like to try it the next time. Now that I'm not afraid anymore, I'm sure I would enjoy everything."

  "I'll see what I can do," Zac said, nuzzling her neck, "but I'm not made of iron you know. I have to rest now and then."

  "But not for too long?"

  "No. In fact, I'm feeling remarkably rested right now. Just in case we didn't make a baby the first time, we might have to do this a lot more," he warned. "Monty and Iris didn't have their first baby for six years."

  "I hope we won't have to wait that long."

  Zac thought such a period of repeated trials seemed a perfectly wonderful way to spend a large part of the next six years.

  He was just about to embark on what he hoped would be a long period of trying to get the proper procedure just right when the bedroom door burst open with a shattering crash. He looked up to see a tall, thin man with a long black beard standing in the doorway, glaring at him like a fiend from hell.

  Oh God! He knew he shouldn't have made love to Lily before making certain the marriage was legally recorded. Now the Devil himself stood on his threshold, ready to drag him down into Hell.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  "Who the hell are you?" Zac demanded sitting straight up in the bed.

  "I'll ask the questions, thou debaucher of innocent women, thou arch fiend among fiends."

  This was beginning to sound like a rerum of Sarah Thoragood. Zac thought the Devil considered himself the arch fiend. Besides, now that he got a better look, this fella didn't look all that devilish. Just ugly.

  "Oh, for goodness sakes, Hezekiah," Lily said as she scrambled to cover her nakedness and her embarrassment, "stop carrying on like a great fool. Zac and I are married. Do you think I would be in the same bed with him if we weren't?"

  "You mean this skinny windbag is the man your father picked out for you to marry?" Zac asked.

  "Yes. This is Hezekiah Jones."

  "Hezekiah Jones!" Zac repeated, nearly choking on the name.

  "Yes. It's a great mortification to him, so I'd prefer you not make a point of it. This man, Hezekiah," she said, pointing to Zac, "is my husband, Zachary Taylor Randolph."

  "Zac will do."

  "Hezekiah believes in being formal."

  "Then let him get the hell out of my bedroom until we get some clothes on. I bet he never popped in on your ma and pa at a time like this."

  Lily found it difficult to believe her mother and father had ever experienced a time like this.

  "Don't think you can escape punishment for violating this poor, innocent woman by cursing and blaspheming," Hezekiah thundered. "The gates of Hell yawn at your feet. You shall be swallowed whole. You shall--"

  "You shall suffer a bullet in the head if I'm forced to get out of this bed."

  "For goodness sake, Hezekiah, leave," Lily implored. "Go downstairs and have somebody make you a cup of coffee. I'll be down as soon as I can get dressed."

  "I find it difficult to believe the evidence of my own eyes," Hezekiah declared, abandoning bombast for honest bewilderment. "But I'm not leaving you, even though you've compromised yourself. I couldn't look your father in the face if I left you with that . . . that libertine one minute longer."

  "That's enough," Zac growled as he threw back the covers, his patience completely gone.

  Hezekiah gaped in horror. "Sir, I feel compelled to point out that you're not wearing any clothes."

  "Then you know you're about to be beaten senseless by a naked man, probably a first for you. But given your propensity for opening doors that should have remained closed and uttering the first ill-considered thought that springs into your very narrow mind, maybe not."

  "You really married this man?" Hezekiah asked Lily, backing up in the face of Zac's advance.

  "Yes, she did," Zac said, suffering only a twinge of guilt at the lie. They would be married before Hezekiah found out.

  Hezekiah backed through the door.

  "Wait downstairs," Zac barked. "There's a full bar. Help yourself."

  He slammed the door in Hezekiah's stunned face.

  "Your father should be roasted on a spit in Hell for even thinking about marrying you to that man," Zac shouted.

  "I guess this means we won't get to try making a baby again," Lily said.

  Zac shouted with laughter. "You're the perfect wife for me."

  Much to his surprise, he meant every word of it.

  * * * * *

  "Why didn't Papa come if he was so worried about me?" Lily asked Hezekiah when she'd dressed and gone down to the saloon. "He never wrote. Nobody did. I thought nobody cared."

  "He didn't trust himself not to murder the man who enticed you away. He thought I, as your fiancé, would be a more suitable choice."

  "You're not my fiancé," Lily said. "You never were. I told you that over and over."

  "But your father--"

  "Papa never listened to anything he didn't want to hear," Lily snap
ped. "Furthermore, I didn't run away because of a man."

  "Then you're not married to that naked man upstairs."

  "Yes, I am, but I didn't come out here to marry him. I came to get way from you and Papa. I knew Zac would help me, but I never expected to marry him."

  "But he's a gambler! How could you marry such a sinner?"

  "Let me remind you you're talking about my husband. If you continue to say unkind things about him, I shall do something quite awful to you."

  "What could you do to me?" Hezekiah asked with all the natural arrogance of a man who had been born certain he was superior to any woman created.

  "If you hold his mouth open, I'll pour a bottle of whiskey down him," Zac said. "Being found dead drunk on the steps of a gambling saloon ought to do wonders for his character. It might even turn him into a human being."

  Lily looked up to see Zac coming toward them. Just seeing him caused her nearly to burst with pride. He was wearing nothing but a bathrobe -- his bare feet and legs showed plainly -- but she was certain there couldn't be a taller, more handsome husband in the entire world. That he should be her husband was a surprise that still nearly took her breath away.

  "Even if you hadn't already sold your soul to the Devil, you wouldn't be a suitable husband for a woman of Lily's purity," Hezekiah announced.

  "But your dried-up, hidebound, sanctimonious little soul would be a perfect match for her sweetness and innocence, right?"

  "Her father choose me to be--"

  "Her father didn't have to marry you. He might have changed his mind if he had."

  "Your soul is already damned," Hezekiah announced. "Why must you drag Lily into hell after you?"

  "Actually I'm counting on her to keep me out of its fiery jaws," Zac said. "Now I've heard all I'm going to listen to from you. I don't care what you think of me, but Lily happens to think better of me than you or I. I won't have her being subjected to your diatribe."

  Hezekiah opened his mouth but Zac interrupted him.

  "If you feel you must continue rebuking me, look up the local preacher and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Thoragood. I have no doubt they'll hang on your every word. I've been up all night, so I'm going to bed. If you feel you must see my wife again, come back after we open."

  "I would never enter this place when it was doing the work of the Devil."

  "Fine. Tell Lily good-bye, and get the hell out."

  Hezekiah tried not to look apprehensive, but Lily knew he wasn't used to being challenged. Besides, he was five or six inches shorter that Zac, and Zac really did look a little devilish just now. She supposed it was those black eyebrows and black eyes. Hezekiah gave ground. "I'll be back," he announced as Zac sent him stumbling through the door with a push. Zac slammed the door behind him.

  "If you ever considered for so much as one second being the wife of that man, you're not worthy of being a Randolph," Zac said.

  "I never did," Lily said. "Do you really think I'll make a good Randolph?”

  "The best," Zac assured her. "You know, I'm not as sleepy as I thought. Do you think we might have another go at baby making?”

  Lily giggled. "I guess Jacob was right. A man really can make a baby any time day or night."

  "Baggage!" Zac cried. "Wait until I get my hands on you."

  Lily would have beaten him upstairs if she hadn't stumbled over the hem of her dress.

  * * * * *

  Zac couldn't find Windy Dumbarton anywhere. Nobody had seen him. Nobody knew when to expect him back.

  "He never goes far from whiskey and a faro game," Zac said to the bartender at one of Windy's favorite haunts.

  "Sure, but he can find that in just about any town west of the Mississippi."

  Which Zac had to admit was true. Some cities and towns had begun to settle, put down roots and put up churches and schools. But most were made up of men wandering from one place to the next, looking for excitement, gold, or a chance to avoid the humdrum lives they had lead back East.

  "Tell him I need to see him the minute he gets back " Zac told the man. "Tell him I'll give him a hundred dollars if he finds me within an hour of returning to town."

  "You must want him real bad," the bartender said. "Usually people are only too glad to get shut of Windy."

  "Once I talk to him, I will be, too," Zac said. "He's been the cause of the worst nightmares of my life."

  Zac didn't know where to look next. He'd covered all Windy's known haunts and every place he might wander into by accident. Yet he couldn't stop looking. He had made love to Lily for the last four nights.

  Guilt was eating at him like an acid. No matter what she said, no matter how much she pleaded, he should never have touched her.

  He tried to stay away. Each night he spent hours fabricating plans to keep from going to bed with her. Each morning her smile, her nearness, the sight of her welcoming body caused them to blow away like dried grass.

  They were married now in every sense of the word. Not even the black cloud of Hezekiah's presence had the power to change that, but the lack of a properly registered marriage could. Zac lived in fear of Hezekiah's trying to confirm their marriage and finding nothing on record.

  He was certain if Lily ever discovered what he had done, she would leave him. If his brothers discovered what he had done, they'd kill him. It wouldn't matter that he had regretted his actions almost from the first. It wouldn't matter that he'd wasted four days trying to find Windy and set things right. It would only matter that, as usual, he'd done the most comfortable thing for himself despite the consequences to others.

  He'd also failed to do the one thing that could possibly have made his behavior seem less awful than the actions of a lower-than-a-snake's-belly piece of horse dung. He'd not kept his promise to himself to leave Lily untouched. He'd taken her virtue and left her a woman living in sin.

  For a woman of Lily's background and beliefs, he couldn't imagine how he could have done anything worse. He'd done many things in his life, but he'd never dishonored any woman. Now he had, and it was something he couldn't live with.

  Of course he could always marry her again. He would have done that in an instant, but it would require explaining why he wanted a second marriage ceremony when he had been so opposed to the first one.

  He couldn't do it, not until he'd exhausted every possible alternative. He couldn't bear to think of the look that would come into her eyes. One of the things he liked best about Lily was her belief in him, in his innate goodness. After a lifetime of having everyone, including his family, assume the worst, it was wonderful to have someone who believed the best. It made him want to live up to her expectations. Honesty compelled him to admit his family was closer to an accurate gaging of his character than Lily, but still it made him want to try.

  It seemed awfully perverse of Fate to make off with Windy Dumbarton so Zac couldn't do the right thing just when he'd finally made up his mind to do it. But questions of right and wrong didn't really bother him. It was the loss of Lily's trust that scared him more than anything. He didn't care what his family or the Thoragoods thought of him as long as Lily still believed in him.

  That had never been important to him before. Now he knew he couldn't live without it.

  * * * * *

  Sunlight struggling to enter through stained glass windows illuminated the interior of the church. Walls of brick and floors of stone kept the interior as cold as the frown on Mr. Thoragood's face.

  Lily, however, felt the heat rise from under her collar until it caused her cheeks to flame. She wasn't certain whether it was from embarrassment or anger. But at this point, it hardly mattered. The longer she listened, the angrier she got. Hezekiah had talked Mr. Thoragood into letting him deliver the Sunday sermon. Lily felt certain he'd written it specifically for her.

  She was sure everyone in the congregation knew it.

  He was preaching on the Woman at the Well, the one who was living in sin. When he couldn't quite bend that around to fit Lily, he moved on to something abo
ut gambling saloons being the equivalent of the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. Apparently feeling himself on more fertile ground, he had launched into a full-scale attack on the girls who worked in such places, equating them to women only too happy to cast aside the morals their parents had tried to instill in them for the pleasures of the flesh.

  Lily saw people in the congregation nodding their heads in agreement. She knew most of them wouldn't know one of Zac's girls if they saw them. She also knew most of them wished she wouldn't come to their church. Suddenly she could stand no more. She got to her feet to leave, but instantly changed her mind.

  "I've heard a lot of talk from you and Mr. Thoragood about the sinful women who work in saloons," she said in a very loud voice when Hezekiah paused for breath, "but I have yet to see either of you try to help them."

  The gasp of shock was audible even over the rustle of people turning to stare at this woman who had done the unthinkable, interrupt a preacher in the midst of his sermon. Hezekiah stood speechless. Mr. Thoragood looked stunned. Mrs. Thoragood was as red as a tomato.

  "Many of these women are just as decent and honest as anyone here. They came to San Francisco hoping to better themselves. Because they're unmarried, the only jobs they can get are in saloons. I know because the same thing happened to me."

  "We found you a job," Sarah Thoragood spoke up, finally regaining possession of her voice and senses. "Several of them."

  "And I was fired because I attracted too many men. Everyone seemed to feel if the men's intentions weren't honorable, mine couldn't be either. That's exactly what you've done to these young women."

  "You can't deny that many of them are sunk in a sinful way of life," Mr. Thoragood stated.

  "I can only speak for the women who work at the Little Corner of Heaven."

  "The very name is a sacrilege," someone muttered.

  "I also know this congregation has never done anything to try to improve their lives."

  "We've invited them to church."

  "Have you gone to the saloon, spoken with them, issued the invitation in person?"

  "It wouldn't be suitable--"

  "Neither have you tried to get to know them, to help them find other jobs, to help them meet young men who might marry them. Instead you've stayed in your homes, safe from the sin you're so afraid of, yet complaining it's all around you."