“And why not?” he demanded. “She was a young woman who appeared starved for passion, and I was a lonely soldier in a land where most were wont to affix various derogatives to my name. If I take you in my arms and kiss you, does that make me a lecher or pervert? Or is it only that you detest the fact that I choose to treat you like a woman?”
“Oh, I enjoy being treated like a woman,” Alaina assured him fervently. “And especially by you.”
“Then forget these senseless quarrels, Alaina.” He grasped her arms and turned her to face him. “I am a man, and you are my wife. You have no right to deny me.”
“You agreed that this would be a marriage of convenience only.”
“Bah!” He gave a derisive snort and leaned back angrily against the seat.
“Tell me what I must expect,” Alaina pleaded in an unsteady voice. “You vow that this will be a chaste agreement, but you accost me in broad daylight only moments after my arrival, intending to take your pleasure of me, by force if necessary. Then you come into my room and threaten dire violence at your whim. Now, you would seduce me in your carriage. I cannot help but wonder where this marriage will end, for you seem most fickle!”
“Madam, I am not fickle!” He pressed on, though she would have interrupted. “I have had enough of crows picking at my bones.” He leaned forward, and his voice cracked with the intensity of his emotions. “I have had enough of harpies screaming ’bout my head. You walk before me and greet my guests and play the part of wife so well. Then I see you cringing before me when I am stirred to take you in my arms. I see you kneeling in the rose garden, and the urge to take you then and there sets red-hot coals adancing in my belly. You sit beside me, prim, aloof, guarded, while the lust within me is like spurs tearing at my groin.”
As the words tumbled from his lips. Alaina’s eyes widened in amazement. He continued in a hoarse whisper as his hard fingers bit into the soft flesh of her arms.
“I see you beautiful and cool, bending, touching, turning, playing your bittersweet song upon the gutstrings of my need, and always you are just beyond my grasp.” He caught her hands in his and held them when she would have drawn them back. “I cannot promise I will never take you by force. I do not know that I can long endure this way. I want you willing in my arms, but I warn you, madam, you fill my mind both night and day. I dream of your lips on mine, your bosom warm and eager pressed to mine. I have a thousand visions of you, and the first of those burns my memory with soft, white flames which devour me more surely than any volcano’s fire. Think well upon it, madam, and have a care for how you tease me with a little showing of your bosom, lest we both discover the limit was not where we thought it to be.”
Alaina would never be sure whether she escaped or he let her go. She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them. “This bond or vow between us—we have built a fragile thing, you and I.” Her words were strangely muted. She shook her head and blinked back tears. “Am I to be your plaything then? Shall I ever sit and wonder if today I might have overstepped the bounds? Whether you will come to me in rage tonight? Or with pleasant cajolings? Or perhaps not come at all? What do you intend of this marriage, Doctor Latimer? Will we just say good-bye one day and never see more of each other? I warn you, sir, I want more than that.”
“The vows we exchanged were permanent enough for me.” He sounded tired now. He sat back in the corner, his face hidden in dark shadows.
“I exchanged some words with Mister James, not with you. And there was a prior agreement.”
“I have questioned Mister James to some length on that account, and I understand that the vows were made until death us do part. Yes, I believe those were his very words. Since he bore my letter of proxy, duly witnessed and sealed, do you not think those vows, made before God’s witness, supersede any other agreements?”
“But did you not agree that I could leave when I wanted to?”
“And do you? Is that why you’ve denied me? Do you have some other man you wish above me?”
She couldn’t bear the ragged, raking tone of his voice. “There’s no one else, Cole. I do not wish to leave here—without you.”
A long silence followed until they both noticed that the carriage was standing still. In fact, it had been stopped for some time, and furthermore, it was halted in front of the hill house. Olie was not in attendance, and Cole helped Alaina down in museful silence. They found the driver leaning against the wall in the vestibule, conversing with a yawning Miles. Cole stared at Olie until the man reddened and shuffled his feet in embarrassment.
“Yu were—uh—busy,” he explained. “An’ it vas cold up dere.”
Cole gave him a curt nod of dismissal while Alaina brushed past the men, fleeing up the stairs in painful humiliation.
Chapter 34
COLE was gone the next morning when Alaina ventured downstairs. Miles dutifully informed, upon her question, that the master of the house had traveled to St. Paul where he intended purchasing supplies to last the logging crews through the winter.
Alaina was surprised that Cole had not even seen fit to tell her he was going. “Murphy was sent for supplies just the other day,” she said carefully. “Did he forget something?”
“I think not, madam.” Miles saw her bewilderment and sought to ease whatever disappointment she might be feeling at the doctor’s absence. “Doctor Latimer decided to have his properties worked for timber this year, and with the crews about to leave, there’ve been extra supplies to buy. Murphy was not that familiar with the purchase order, madam, so the doctor went along.”
Alaina’s confusion grew despite Miles’s best efforts. “Doctor Latimer went to St. Cloud to post a notice for hire the day after I arrived. I thought it was something he had decided upon some time back.”
“No, madam,” Miles replied. “The doctor had no intentions of sending a crew up before he went down to fetch you.”
“But how do you know?” she asked in amazement.
The butler was most patient with his explanation. “Mister James has often approached the doctor on the financial advantage of working his lands for the timber, but until you came, Doctor Latimer displayed no interest in it.” Miles flushed as he realized he was being much too verbose with a lady he had cautioned himself not to trust.
“When do you expect the doctor to return?” she queried softly, unable to find a reason for Cole’s sudden preoccupation with business except that he had somehow felt driven to it by her presence in his house.
“They took several wagons with them, madam. I would guess it will be a few days before they’re able to get all the supplies they need and return. If you desire to venture out during the doctor’s absence, madam, he left the brougham and Olie to see you about.”
“That wasn’t necessary,” she murmured. “I have no place to venture to.”
The following days Alaina occupied her time in companionship with Mindy, though she was far from content. The house seemed alien to her, and the foreboding gloom heightened in Cole’s absence. Now that he was gone, the mansion appeared to come alive every evening in the weehours past midnight. Strange sounds emitted from Roberta’s room, and Alaina could find no explanation for them. Once, she even thought she heard a woman humming off key behind the closed portal of the red suite, and a memory was brought hauntingly to mind that Roberta had never been able to sing, even passably. It was just like her yellow gown and the charred bonbons. There seemed no reasonable explanation for the happenings, but she could only guess that someone in the house did not like her.
Another time, on leaving her own room to investigate a noise that sounded much like the shattering of glass, she saw a thin thread of light shining from beneath the door. Since Cole’s departure, Soldier had taken up the custom of sleeping beside her bed, and it was only the dog’s presence that lent her enough courage to try the doorknob. This time, to her amazement, she found the passage blocked from within. Some barrier had been placed against it.
“Stay, Soldier! Watc
h!” Alaina was determined to get to the bottom of this nonsense one way or another. She didn’t believe in ghosts, and she doubted that even Roberta had the power to come back and haunt her. Therefore, it had to be a living, breathing creature behind that door!
Running back to her room, Alaina put on her old robe, then caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. A thinly clad image stared back, with taut nipples straining against the fabric of the light wrap. She could not expect to accost the servants in such dishabille. Reluctantly she sought out the heavy, satin-lined, velvet robe that had remained unused in the armoire and slipped into it. The immediate increase of comfort was most thrilling, and temporarily discarding her proud forbearance, she also donned a pair of slippers before leaving her bedroom.
She rapped insistently upon Miles’s door until a mumbled reply bade her to wait a moment, but on retracing her steps to Roberta’s room with the groggy butler, whose woolen robe had been hastily donned, she saw only darkness beneath the door.
“Whoever is in there can’t have gotten out, not with Soldier guarding the way,” she reasoned aloud, though her voice shook with the excitement of the moment. “They must still be in there.”
Solicitously Miles turned the knob and pushed against the door. It creaked open easily, much to Alaina’s bewilderment. Regaining her senses, she followed Miles into the room and shivered as a cold draft swept through the chamber.
Miles touched a match to the wick of a lamp and carried it about the room as he made a careful inspection of every corner, nook, and cabinet until all possible hiding places were searched. But to no avail. There was simply no one in the room.
Soldier seemed quite docile as he returned briefly to the mirrors to inspect his reflection, but in bored disinterest, came back to plop himself at her feet.
“There was someone in here, I tell you!” Alaina cried in frustration. “I heard something break, and I saw a light under the door!”
No sign of broken glass was visible, but Miles was not one to dispute the mistress’s words. Yet he found it hard to accept the possibility of someone disappearing into thin air.
“I’m sorry I disturbed you, Miles.” Alaina didn’t want the servants to think she was losing her mind, but neither would she plead for the butler’s discretion. It was rather difficult not to question her own sanity when such things happened. “It appears that it was nothing more than my own foolishness and imagination.”
“ ‘Twas no trouble, madam,” he assured kindly. “And please don’t fret yourself. I can’t explain what went on here, but if you say it happened, I believe you.” He was suddenly convinced of his own sincerity in making such a statement, though he failed to understand his reasons. Indeed, he barely knew this young woman.
Alaina smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Miles.”
“You’ll be safe enough with Soldier watching over you, madam. Try to get some rest.”
The house grew still once again, and with Soldier sleeping beside her bed, Alaina managed to ease her trepidations enough to find the slumber she sought. But as she slid into its restful arms, she had one last conscious thought of how sweet a relief it would be to hear the tap of Cole’s cane coming down the hall.
Two nights hence, Alaina was awakened by the creak of the floor outside her bedroom door. Soldier’s head raised from his massive paws, and the ridge of hair along the broad back stiffened. Whoever it was, it was certainly not Cole. The doorknob turned ever so slowly, and the hound was at the portal in a leap, fangs gleaming white in the moonlit room. The silence was rent by his rumbling growl, and quick footsteps fled across the hall. When Alaina opened her door a moment later, the corridor was empty. The mastiff searched about, leading her once more to Roberta’s room, but just as before, nothing was even remotely out of the ordinary. This time Alaina refrained from disturbing Miles, not wishing to cause herself greater embarrassment, and returned to her bedroom where she braced a chair against the door.
During the next days Alaina grew quite attached to the idea of having the huge dog sleep in her room. They struck up a friendship of sorts, and, with Mindy, ranged the wooded hills together, outings which Alaina actively sought in order to be free from the gloomy atmosphere of the mansion.
It was toward the end of the week when Alaina was again awakened by small noises intruding into her sleep, but this time the sound came from Cole’s bedroom. Grabbing up her wrapper, she hurried through the bathing chamber where Soldier sat on his haunches, whining and pawing at his master’s door. A dim light filtered from the crack beneath the door, and when Alaina turned the knob, she found no barrier. The hound was through the open door in a rush, wagging his tail joyfully as he bounded toward Cole who stood before the open doors of his armoire unbuttoning his shirt. The man affectionately patted the beast’s head before the blue eyes raised to meet Alaina’s surprised gaze, and the slow smile that came upon his handsome lips was one of warmth and welcome.
“Cole!” She laughed in glad relief. “I didn’t know you were home!”
“I arrived back only a short time ago. I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
She shrugged happily. “I’m just thankful it’s you! Someone I can see, for heaven’s sake! I was ready to believe you have a ghost in this house.”
“I did frighten you,” he said in wonder.
“Oh, it wasn’t you!” she assured him. Her world seemed safe again now that he was home. “This house is so big, and every little sound echoes through it. It’s almost as if something here doesn’t like me. I feel out of place.” She lowered her eyes from his questioning gaze and stared at the floor in self-conscious confusion. Finally, in a rush of half apology, half sheer elation, she added, “Anyway, I’m glad you’re back, Cole.”
She couldn’t bear the long silence that followed her statement and, without looking up, fled back to her room, closing her bedroom door behind her.
The next morning she was half dressed when a sharp, angry curse came from the bathing chamber where she had heard Cole moving about. The explosive expletive did not trouble her half as much as the silence that followed. Tying a knot into the waistband of her petticoat, she approached the door and rapped lightly on the wood.
“Cole? Are you all right?” she questioned through the barrier. Receiving no answer, she leaned close to listen. “Cole?” Her tone became insistent. “Are you all right?”
A muffled grunt gave answer but hardly relieved her concern. Indeed, it sounded more like a groan than anything else.
“Cole?” She knocked on the door again. “If you don’t answer me properly, I’m coming in.”
Abruptly the door was opened, and Cole, wearing only a large, linen towel about his middle and clutching a small cloth against the side of his mouth, stood aside and swept an arm about to gallantly invite her in.
Angrily Alaina set her arms akimbo, ignoring the audaciously bold stare that, in a twinkling, divested her of chemise, petticoats, and corset. “I thought you were hurt!”
“I am,” he stated and removed the small towel to disclose a long, clean cut that ran across the corner of his mouth. “It hurts when I talk.”
The sight of so much blood brought a gasp of alarm from Alaina. “What happened?” she demanded. She took up a clean cloth, dipped it into the pitcher of water, and began dabbing at the gash, cleaning away the blood.
“I cut myself shaving,” Cole mumbled beneath her ministering.
Alaina arched a dubious brow. “For a surgeon, you’re rather unhandy with anything sharp. Hold still!” she admonished as she applied a lump of alum to the cut. “It’s plain to see you’re out of practice.”
He frowned at her chastening humor. “Would you also accept that I need more practice at being a husband?”
“Poor darling,” she crooned, as if in sympathy. Her eyes were wide and innocent as she needled, “Does milord chafe beneath the bridle of restraint?”
Cole peered down at her. “You’ve become quite saucy in my absence.”
She smiled serenely. “
I’ve learned that, in this house there’s something worse than a lecher, my love.”
“Indeed?” It was his turn to arch a brow. “And what is that, my sweet?”
Alaina chuckled and, with regal dismissal, dropped the cloth onto the washstand. Flippantly she shrugged. “His absence.”
With a flick of her petticoats, she spun about on a heel and returned to her bedroom. A moment later, when she looked over her shoulder, she found Cole leaning against the doorjamb, watching her with a hopeful, if somewhat lopsided, smile on his face. “Is it in your mind to be reasonable about our marriage then?”
Her jaw sagged at the question. “Me? Reasonable? Of all the nerve!”
“Never mind!” He cut her off sharply. He half turned, but paused and looked at her again. “Before I left, I informed the servants that we would be entertaining come the week’s end.” His face was stiff as he examined a snagged fingernail. “It’s about time I let our neighbors meet you.”
Alaina raised her chin proudly. She resented being set aside, shut off from his presence, then brought out like some fragile porcelain doll that could not withstand the strain of being overheld, overloved, or overused, and be commanded to perform for his guests. “Am I, then, to be displayed like some possession of yours, Major? To satisfy the wagging tongues hereabouts?”
His face tense and unsmiling, he stepped to her dressing table and began trimming the nail with a pair of small scissors he found there. “Did you not inform me that one of the duties of a wife is to perform as hostess for her husband?”
Her words smarted on the rebound, and she wished vehemently that she had never said them.
“There shouldn’t be too much left to do,” he stated, dismissing the argument. “The servants are usually quite dependable, but I will ask Carolyn to help you if you need assistance in some way.”
He stood indolently studying the nail with a total disregard for his state of undress, and she wanted to disrupt that arrogant complacency, if just for a moment. “Why not her brother?”
Ashes in the Wind Page 56