by Jo Goodman
His question effectively canceled Brook's vow of moments before. She raised her head and glared at him, hot color in her face. "You always know so much. You tell me."
"There's no need to spit fire at me." When she tried to wriggle away from him Ryland held her fast. "Stop that or you're going to have a man again. Very soon."
"Oooh! You are the most single-minded individual I've ever known. And I'm not speaking of your threat to have at me again. Let me go, Ryland."
Ryland pushed Brook onto her back and trapped her beneath one of his legs. She flailed at him with her fists, and he stopped the blows by grasping her wrists and pressing them against the bed. "Would you stop, for God's sake?" he growled. "What's wrong with you? I asked you a simple question and you react like a damn wildcat."
"Would you be flattered if I asked you how long it had been since you were with a woman?" she demanded, striking the offensive.
"Perhaps not flattered," he admitted, "but it wouldn't set my blood running hot and cold at the same time. Was it Sumner? Has it been that long since you lay with a man?"
Brook's mouth flattened mutinously, and Ryland gave her an impatient shake. "I never slept with Andrew if that's what you're trying to find out," she said through gritted teeth.
"I know that," he said. "You were too tight. That's why I hurt you. And I know you've never experienced much in the way of pleasure from the act before. That was fairly obvious by your response. Did Sumner take his pleasure from your pain? Is that why you fainted at the sight of the strap and leveled your weapon at me whenever you had the chance?"
"Go to hell," she said with remarkable calm.
"Was it Sumner that cooled you to men for so long?"
"Let me up."
"Damn it. Answer me, Brooklyn."
"Answer your own questions. Dear God! Join the legions of all those other men who have known me. You're just like them. Always adding two and two and arriving at five. And I despise you for it. Say anything you want to about Phillip, but know this, Ryland North, he was the only one who ever understood me. He was the only one who ever cared about me." This time when she fought him for release Ry let her go. She eased away from him, yanking at a sheet from the bed, and wrapped it about her as she jumped out of bed.
Ryland sat up and made a grab for her. "Where in the hell do you think you're—"
Brook eluded his grasp and fled the master suite for the refuge of the adjoining bathroom. She threw the latch on the door behind her, but in her haste to get to the sink she neglected the lock on the door that led to the open hallway. Leaning over the porcelain basin, Brooklyn painfully retched the contents of her stomach. When the last wave of nausea passed she weakly pumped water into the sink to clean it, then splashed her face with the icy water and rinsed out her mouth. It wasn't enough. She still felt dirty.
Brook placed a bucket in the sink and began pumping madly, tossing bucket after bucket into the claw-footed tub. There was no time to heat the water on the stove that had been built into the bathroom for just that purpose. She couldn't wait that long to cleanse herself of Ryland's touch.
Stripping off the sheet and dropping it on the floor, which was puddled with water, Brook lowered herself into the tub. She took the hard lye soap and a brush from a ledge above the tub and began scrubbing herself, welcoming the harsh friction of the brush against her skin, which crawled with goose bumps. Lost in her own thoughts, in her single-minded desire to rid herself of Ryland's touch, Brooklyn never heard the door from the hallway swing open.
Ryland stepped into the bathroom and surveyed the scene in front him. Brook was sitting in about four inches of water in the tub, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head bent forward as she tried to scrub her back raw. The skin of her arms and legs was already red and scratched from her efforts. "Why didn't you answer me?" he asked.
Brooklyn didn't bother looking up. "I didn't hear you," she said dully.
"Do you realize how long you've been in here?" He finished buttoning the fly of his jeans and leaned back against the door. "I thought you hurt—" He stopped, his eyes riveted on the pinkish hue of the water around Brooklyn's thighs. His gaze strayed to the sheet lying on the floor. The stains on it were widening as the puddle of water it lay in diluted the blood. "Where did this blood come from?" he demanded. But he knew the answer. God help him, he thought. He knew the answer.
Ryland's voice grated harshly over Brook's ears. "That jackass you brought up here is smarter than you are," she said. "One would think I'm the first virgin you ever bedded."
When Ryland spoke again his voice was no longer rough. "You are," he said quietly, his eyes bleak. Unmindful of the water on the floor, Ryland knelt beside the tub and took the brush and soap from Brook's hands. She gave them up easily, without a struggle of any kind, but she refused to look at him. He reached behind him and got a washcloth and a bar of lilac-scented soap from the pine linen cupboard. When his fingers first dipped into the water they retracted in shock, but since Brook seemed oblivious to the temperature, Ryland said nothing about it. "Lean back," he said. "I'll wash you."
Brook turned her head sideways and glared at him through eyes that were like crystalline shards. "I'll see you in hell first. Get out of here, Ryland. Take your guilt and get out."
"I'm not leaving you like this. If I go now, I'm taking you with me."
She leaned back against the sloping edge of the tub, uncaring of her nudity, and stared at the ceiling. Her eyes felt dry and gritty, and she almost wished she could cry to wipe away the irritation. "It was your touch I was trying to erase," she said unemotionally as he swept her shoulders with the soft cloth. "Your penance only makes me feel dirtier."
Ryland's hands faltered and he dropped the soap, but he kept on with his task. He washed her all over, never touching her with anything but the cloth or the soap. He remembered every place he had touched her with his hands and mouth and applied tender pressure to them all.
Don't be kind to me, Brook wanted to tell him. I hate it when you're kind. It makes your anger so hard to bear. She maintained a stony silence, unable to voice any of her thoughts.
"Stand up," he said. Ryland rose with her and pumped fresh water into the bucket. She was shivering so violently that she barely felt the rinse water cascade over her shoulders. Ry found a towel and began to dry Brooklyn briskly, then wrapped it around her and lifted her out of the tub. He managed to unbolt the door to the master suite with little difficulty and carried Brook into the room they had shared for nearly two weeks. After he laid her on the bed he rifled the drawers that were hers and found a clean nightgown, faded and as unflattering as the one she had worn earlier. "Put this on." He went to his own wardrobe then and groped around the base of the cupboard until he found what he wanted. As he approached the bed his knife glinted blue-silver in the moonlight.
Brook recoiled at the sight of the blade and quickly slipped the nightgown over her head. "There's no need," she said, raising her chin a notch. "I've done what you wanted. Don't I always?"
Ryland ignored her, his eyes fastening on the belled bracelet on her left wrist. He took her hand, lifted it, and inserted the knife between her skin and the leather. In seconds he had pried away the metal slide and the bracelet slipped off her arm.
"You're letting me go?" she asked, her eyes mirroring her confusion.
Ry shook his head and pointed to the window. The steadily falling snow danced and glistened as it swept past the leaded panes. "No. It's snowing. By morning the pass will be blocked." He looked around the room. "I'll move my things out tomorrow. You can stay here. I'll sleep next door from now on."
Later that night, when Brook slept and wept unknowingly into her pillow, there was some part of her mind that deeply missed the comforting embrace of two strong arms and the whispered endearments that gentled her troubled dreams.
Chapter 8
The shadows cast by the tall pines on the hillside behind the house warned Brooklyn it was already late when she woke. She washed her face wit
hout glancing at the mirror above the sink and braided her hair, letting it fall in a loose plait down her back. Dressing with more haste than care, she chose a serviceable dove gray poplin dress with a collar that hid even her throat from view. After stripping the bed she gathered an armload of dirty laundry from her room and the bathroom and made her way downstairs. Ryland was noticeably absent from the house, but she saw evidence that he had made his own breakfast in the kitchen. Clean dishes and a frying pan were piled beside the sink on a towel. She imagined he had eaten several hours earlier. The dishes were bone dry now, and not even the lingering scent of bacon permeated the room.
Shrugging to herself, Brook deposited her things on the floor of the tiny laundry room and began sorting through them. She paused as she came to the bloody sheet, then tossed it into the deep tub behind her and began pumping cold water into the tub. She let it soak while she filled a kettle with water, which she placed on the kitchen wood burner and lit a fire under it. By the time the kettle water was boiling her knuckles were bruised from scrubbing out the bloodstains against the washboard. Dropping the sheet in the dry tub, and adding the kettle of hot water to the wash water, Brook applied herself to the other articles with only a little less fervor.
Brook made several trips outside, braving the whipping wind and six inches of snow, to hang the laundry on the line Ryland had put up for her. Though she had tried to wring everything dry with her hands, the first articles on the line were already stiff by the time she arrived with the last load. Looking at the row of frosty laundry made her long for San Francisco. It had been easy there. Living at the Hamilton, she had paid a young Chinese boy with the absurd name of Abraham Wong to take care of her things. They were always returned the following day, laundered and pressed, and she merely had to put the articles away. Tears gathered in her eyes and she wiped them away quickly, blaming them on the stinging force of the wind rather than self-pity.
After securing the last articles to the line Brook crossed the yard to the stable. As she suspected, Ryland's horse was missing. The mule was also gone. Brook kicked at one of the empty stalls angrily. He told her the pass would be blocked by morning. Had he left in the middle of the night, then, abandoning her this time instead of waiting for her to try to escape? The stable door slammed behind her as she left, and Brook hunched her shoulders and lowered her head against the wind. She stopped in the smokehouse long enough to pick out a small cured ham and carried it back to the house. Brook dropped it on the thick butcher block table in the kitchen and went immediately to the hearth, hunkering down in front of the fire to warm herself.
Throughout the day, though Brook kept herself busy so she wouldn't have to think, she found herself straying again and again to the large window in the sitting room. By midafternoon it was snowing, large furry flakes that blurred her vision and drew a white gauzy curtain across the access road to the mining camps. By late afternoon she admitted that Ryland had deserted her.
She ate her dinner in the kitchen and wondered why she bothered cooking for herself when the meal was virtually tasteless. But she knew the answer. Activity dulled her mind and released her from last evening's painful memories. Being in Ryland's arms had been the most singularly beautiful thing that had ever happened to her, the aftermath, one of the ugliest. Brook was, if not entirely honest with others, painfully honest with herself. After the initial shock of finding herself in his arms—and no matter what he thought, she had not begun that bout—she had accepted his playful advances for one reason: she wanted to offer him irrefutable proof that she was not a whore, that she had never bedded any man and had never wanted to. She had expected him to know immediately that she was a virgin, but now she realized that when Ryland took a notion to heart, he guarded it against all evidence to the contrary. When he had asked how long it had been since she slept with another man, Brook had wanted to die.
She remembered with painful clarity the moment when he had finally come to terms with his mistake. His voice had been soft, infinitely sad, even grieving. And he had been gentle then, washing her skin as if it were velvet or as dear as fine silk. It hadn't occurred to her that he had never bedded a virgin before. Now, with the gift of hindsight, it seemed perfectly reasonable to expect exactly that thing. He would have shied away from the wide-eyed flirtations of young women in the first thralls of calf-love. He was not the sort of man to take kindly to a wedding arranged by an outraged father with a shotgun in one hand and plenty of buckshot in the other. No, in the interest of things right and decent, Ryland would have been drawn to experienced women who knew what sort of hand he was going to deal at the outset of the game.
Brooklyn laughed almost soundlessly as she curled into the large armchair in the study. She rubbed her cheek against the back and caught Ryland's scent in the pores of the soft leather. He had thought she knew everything about the game, and Brook had to take her share of the blame for that. She had expended enormous amounts of energy convincing him she was exactly what he perceived her to be. At various times he had seen her as another man's mistress, a gambler, a cheat, and a jaded woman capable of stealing a young man from under the nose of his family. Yet, if he had never returned to her life she would have gone to her grave thinking herself a murderer. She supposed that in the end it all evened out.
Brook fell asleep in the chair, her arms crossed against her middle for warmth. Hours later she stirred sleepily as an afghan was placed over her shoulders and tucked around her feet.
"You've come back," she murmured.
Ryland paused in adjusting the afghan. He hadn't meant to wake her, but he couldn't go to bed himself without making certain she was warm. The dying embers of the firelight cast her face in a pale orange glow, burnishing her hair and coloring her pale cheeks. He couldn't have gone to bed without taking his fill of the tranquil beauty that composed her face. His hungry gaze took in the arch of her eyebrows, the sweeping fan of lashes which fringed the almond-shaped set of her eyes, the curve of her softly parted lips. He couldn't have gone to bed at all. Weary as he was, he would have stayed in the study with her until sunrise, content simply to watch her sleep. "Of course I've come back," he whispered in return.
"Thought you'd left me," she said, rousing herself a little. "Would have served me right... shouldn't have been so mean to you... never thanked you for being alive." She yawned sleepily. "Didn't want to be a murderer."
Ryland caught snatches of what she was saying and frowned deeply as the import of her words was brought home to him. She was apologizing... to him! "I was afraid you would be gone by the time I returned. That would have served me right."
"Couldn't leave... I like it here." Brook remembered the stiff laundry and smiled ruefully. "Most days," she added. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, focusing at last on Ryland's gravely serious features. He was hunkered down in front of her chair, his hands on the curved arms on either side of her. His hat was tilted upward, and the brim and crown were dusted with snow.
"I left you a note," he said, pointing to the rolltop desk in the corner of the study.
She hesitated a beat before answering. "I didn't see it."
Ryland attributed Brook's pause to the fact that she was tired. All during the return trek from Virginia City he had promised himself he was finished with not believing her. "I wish you had. You would have known I was coming back." Now it was Ryland who hesitated. "I brought you something," he said finally. "Would you like to see it now, or would you rather wait till morning?"
Brook could not take her eyes from his face. He was eager, yet reluctant. His eyes were like that of a small boy, wanting to please and afraid he would fail.
"Now, please," she said.
Ryland stood. "Wait here." He was gone less than a minute and returned carrying a large crate under one arm and a crowbar under the other. "Close your eyes." After Brooklyn had complied he placed the crate at her feet and pried open the slats. Ryland lifted it, tilting it in her direction. "You can open your eyes now." He tipped the crate.
Oranges and lemons rolled onto her lap. The ones she didn't catch bounced onto the floor. "Oh, Ryland! You dear, dear man!"
Her laughter warmed him. It was all that he had wanted to hear, even more than he thought he deserved. He set down the empty crate and gingerly stepped over the fresh fruit that lay at the foot of her chair. Ryland leaned over Brooklyn. "I want you to know something, Brooklyn. I didn't bring these as a peace offering or to atone for last night. I knew what I was going to do as soon as you mentioned you wanted fruit yesterday at dinner."
"But the snow," she protested. "You said the—"
He held a finger to her lips, not quite touching her. "The snow was a problem." A rather large problem, as it turned out, but he wanted to spare Brooklyn the details. He had managed to get by the mining camps in the morning, but on the return he had had crews who were supposed to be digging below ground digging through six feet of snow so he could get back into the valley. "I probably would have waited, given the storm, but last night was a powerful incentive to do something right by you... finally."
"Thank you." Brooklyn looked away, uncomfortable with the aching lump at the back of her throat. "It was a lovely gesture." She began to gather the oranges and lemons in her lap, dropping them in the crate as Ryland moved away.
"Leave them," he said when she slipped off the chair and onto her knees to gather the ones on the floor. "We'll get them in the morning." He held out his hand to her, wondering if she would take it. "Come. You belong in bed now."
Brook looked at Ryland's extended hand a long moment before she accepted it. She slid her palm against his. It was enfolded immediately and Brooklyn was lifted to her feet. She followed his soundless tread up the carpeted stairs to the second story. At the door to her room he paused, releasing her hand somewhat reluctantly. "Good night, Brooklyn."
She touched his forearm. "Your things... I never moved them. They're still here."