by Jo Goodman
She pulled at his belt and began to unfasten the buttons on his fly. She pushed at his jeans, working them over his hips while he struggled to come to terms with her split riding skirt. “What the hell do you have on?” he demanded tautly. “And how do I get it off?”
“Not that way,” she said, pushing at his hands when he tried to raise the hem of the skirt. “It’s like a pair of pants. You can’t just toss it up.”
“Don’t ever wear it again.”
“I won’t.”
He found the buttons in the waistband, undid them, and with Lydia’s help, got her out of the skirt and undergarments. He lay between her open thighs and felt her adjust to his weight and position by hooking her heels around him. Her hand came between their bodies and she reached for him, arching as she found his hard arousal and guided him inside her. His thrust was hard and sure, driving her back. She lifted, pushing against him, and he came hard at her again. His breath was warm on her face. He whispered things against her ear she only partly understood, but everything he said, everything he did, excited her to a point past bearing.
Her mouth was open under his. Their lips played, tongues sought entry, and their kisses were like the joining of their bodies, powerful and erotic and filled with desire.
It was a fire that engulfed them, shooting flames that seared and licked at their sweat-slick bodies. The heat was intense and burned rapidly and they surrendered to the hot and aching pleasure of it. Nathan’s entire body tensed. His head was thrown back, his neck arched, and he felt Lydia tightly around him, urging him toward release with just the slightest of movements against him. In his last moment of control he thrust again, breathing her name as his body pressured hers with shuddering passion.
Lydia’s fingers dug into his shoulders and she held on, tasting the cold night air at the back of her throat as she sucked in her breath. Her body curved to his. She stretched and cried out and brought his mouth down on hers as every tight spring in her body uncoiled.
Their breathing seemed loud in the stillness of the night. He was warm and heavy on her, but Lydia didn’t mind except for—“Nathan? There’s a stone under my hip.”
His laughter was soft, washing over her. “Move it.”
Lydia’s hand left his shoulder and reached under the blankets to find the stone.
Nathan shook his head. The tip of his nose brushed hers. “Move your backside,” he said. “Not the stone.”
Heat rushed to Lydia’s face, but she moved her pelvis against him. “Like that?”
“Exactly like that,” he groaned. He kissed Lydia and shifted his weight off her before he came completely out of his skin. “God, but you’re sweet.”
Lydia got rid of the stone, found her pantalets, and settled her backside against the blankets. Her skirt lay somewhere out of her reach and she didn’t care. Nathan’s denim-clad leg was thrown over hers and he tucked the blankets warmly around her. They shared his sheepskin-lined jacket like two caterpillars in the same cocoon. She could make out his features, the straight slope of his nose, the lightly colored eyes that studied her face, the shape of his mouth. His expression was grave now, intent, so completely at odds with Lydia’s giddy smile that she wondered if she had mistaken his feelings again. Her smile gradually faded.
“Don’t do that,” he said quietly.
“Do what?”
“Stop smiling. I love to look at you when you’re smiling. I don’t think you can know how good it feels to be touched by it.” His forefinger traced the line of her mouth. The corners lifted and she kissed his fingertip.
“You don’t have regrets then?” she asked.
Nathan did not answer immediately. He searched her face for some sign that she was prepared to hear what he wanted to say. The glow from the fire washed her features in a yellow-orange light and tinted strands of her sable hair auburn. He cupped the side of her face gently. “One regret,” he said.
Lydia’s eyes closed briefly under the terrible pressure she suddenly felt. Her stomach twisted and there was an agonized groan that came to her lips that she could not hold back. Giving sound to her pain embarrassed her. She tried to turn away quickly and draw her knees fetally to her chest. Nathan’s hand on her shoulder stopped her and kept her on her back.
“Look at me, Lydia.”
She might have refused if it had been a rough command, but the manner in which Nathan said those words it might well have been a plea. She found herself staring into his eyes.
“I regret that in all the times I’ve made love to you, you’ve never known you were loved.”
Lydia’s lips parted fractionally and a tiny sound that was not pain, but surprise, rushed out.
“I’ve loved you for a very long time, Lydia.” And because he was absolutely terrorized by the thought of her rejection, Nathan added carelessly, “For what it’s worth.”
It was Lydia who caught him this time as he made to move away from her. “It’s worth everything to me,” she said.
“Do you mean it?” he asked softly.
“Oh, Nathan, of course I do.” Lydia lightly touched his cheek with the back of her hand. “You can’t know how desperately I’ve wanted to hear you say those words.”
“Perhaps I can,” he said.
At first she didn’t understand what he was saying. There was a hint of expectancy in his voice, but the cause of it eluded her. Her eyes widened as realization was brought home to her. “But you know,” she said. “You must know the way I feel, the way I’ve felt all along.”
“Must I?” he asked. “You ran away from me on the occasion of our very first meeting.”
“I was frightened…and fascinated. Of course I ran.”
“When I saw you later that evening you made certain I knew you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“I was embarrassed and worried you’d tell my parents where I had been.”
“You hated that I won the wager in your father’s poker game.”
“I thought you did it just to torment me.”
“You wanted Brig then.”
“I was stupid.”
Nathan was caught off guard by her admission. He smiled slowly and his chuckle sent a delicious frisson of warmth through Lydia. “Yes,” he said. “You were stupid.”
Not at all offended, Lydia nodded happily.
“You also found out enough about the wager between Brig and me to set the both of us up.”
“I was stupid only to a certain point.”
“We deserved everything you did to us,” he said, clearly remembering the jump from her bedroom window.
“Even the fertilizer in the flower bed?” she asked.
“Especially the fertilizer.”
“It could have been deeper,” she said.
Nathan kissed her smug smile and finally began to believe that she really did love him. There was no bitterness in her tone as she recalled the trick that had been played her, no resentment or ill will. In spite of how he had wronged her, she had come to love him. “I would have never wished for you losing your memory,” he told her, “but there was a part of me that was grateful when it happened. I was being given a second chance with you, or perhaps it was my first real one, only I didn’t know quite what to do with it. You accepted me so easily then, so trustingly, that I was afraid for you. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt and yet I was the one who was doing it to you.”
“You loved me then.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.
“I…yes, I suppose I did.”
She smiled because he sounded surprised. “I loved you then, too.”
Nathan shook his head. “You only thought you did.”
“What I felt for you then was quite real, Nathan. Don’t belittle my feelings because I couldn’t remember the past. While we were on the Avonlei I was in love with you. I never understood how much in love until we arrived at Ballaburn and I discovered I couldn’t hate you as I wanted to. I left because I had so little control where you were concerned. I was afra
id of surrendering my very soul if I stayed.”
“Instead you took mine when you left.”
Her eyes darted over his face. He meant it, she thought wonderingly. He really meant it. “I didn’t know,” she said softly.
“That’s because you married a coward. I was afraid to tell you.” He sighed and his smile was rueful. “God, Lydia, I think I’ve been afraid of you from the very beginning. I’ve never wanted anything the way I’ve wanted you.”
Lydia chided gently, “Ballaburn.”
“I’ve never wanted anything as much as I’ve wanted you,” he repeated. “Ballaburn be damned.”
She placed a finger over his lips. “No, don’t say that. I’ve come to love Ballaburn, too. I know it was wanting the land that brought you to me.”
Nathan hesitated. “It was partly that,” he said after a moment. “It was partly something else. You suspected it a while back, I think.”
“Brigham.”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to let Brigham out of my sight. If Irish’s child had been a boy, Brig would have killed him. He wouldn’t have settled for a third of Ballaburn. When I arrived in Frisco and discovered Irish had a daughter, I was only a little less worried. I know how Brig appeals to women and I didn’t think Irish’s daughter would be immune.”
“I wasn’t,” she said honestly, and felt Nathan’s wince. “But that’s when I was stupid.”
He brushed her mouth with his. “You know I don’t really think you were that.”
“I know. But I was painfully eager to accept Brig’s attentions. He appeared to be wealthy, immune to my mother’s attraction, and interested in my work with the orphanage. He was pleasant, attentive, kind, and—”
“All the things I wasn’t.”
“Some of the things you weren’t,” she corrected. “Don’t forget, the circumstances of our first meeting were quite different.”
Nathan laughed shortly. “Our first meeting wouldn’t have happened without Brig. That altercation in the alleyway was his doing. Those thugs were his hirelings. He set the whole thing up to have the opportunity to rescue you. You don’t know how often I wished I had never overheard his plans. Instead of being grateful for my interference you were resentful.”
“I told you I was embarrassed,” she said. “Not resentful. Why did you intervene at all?”
“Because I thought Brig had gone too far. You could have been hurt.”
Lydia snuggled closer. “I was grateful,” she whispered. “For that and other things.”
“Other things?”
“For your help with Charlotte and her baby. No, don’t say that you weren’t helpful. You were. I know that it didn’t end as we might have wished, but you gave Charlotte a chance that she didn’t have with me or Dr. Franklin.”
“I saw you at the cemetery. You bought a headstone for her and Ginny Flynt, didn’t you?”
“You were there?” She remembered standing in the cemetery, George Campbell close at hand while she said a prayer by the graves. There had been someone on horseback higher up the hill and later a carriage had disturbed the silence. “You were following me?”
“Not exactly. I was following Brig. Sometimes it was the same as following you.”
“I suppose it was,” she said. One of Lydia’s hands slipped inside his shirt. His flesh was warm, his heartbeat steady. “I know what you did for Kit, setting him up at Saint Benedict’s and all. I realize you didn’t do it for me, but I’m grateful just the same. Grateful, I think, that I’ve fallen in love with such a good man.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She smiled. “That’s all right. You can pretend you don’t know. I even find your modesty becoming.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lydia kissed him. “It’s enough that I know.”
He held her close, his embrace the secure circle of his arms. “Suppose you tell me something,” he said. “What made you decide to come out here tonight?”
“I told you that already. I didn’t want to be left at the house alone.”
“I thought perhaps you’d tell me the truth this time.”
“That is...” She stopped. Didn’t she owe him something more than another lie? There had to be trust between them. “...not the truth,” she said, sighing. “I came out here to protect you.”
“I see,” he said softly. “Where did you get the idea that I needed protection?”
“It’s more puzzling to me why you think you don’t. We both know how much Brig wants Ballaburn. To his credit he tried manipulation first. He wanted me to divorce you and marry him.”
“Is that why you asked me for an annulment?”
“I wanted to hold out some hope to Brig, but I never would have married him. I’d have left the country and you would have been safe. Not being married to either one of you, Irish would have had to rethink what he wanted to do with Ballaburn. I suspect he’d have settled on a fifty-fifty split and you and Brig would come to some kind of agreement on how the place should be managed.”
“I see,” he said slowly. “So you’ve given this matter a great deal of thought.”
“I had, but you wouldn’t grant me the annulment. That changed everything. Nathan, if Brig makes me a widow, then I’m free to marry him. He’ll try to get Ballaburn that way. I left Sydney with you so I could protect you, not the other way around.”
“I was afraid it might be something like that,” he said. “You’re Mad Irish’s daughter, you know that, don’t you?”
“Let’s say I’m beginning to understand what people mean when they say that to me.”
Nathan chuckled. “It’s not entirely a compliment.”
“I’m learning that, too.”
“So how were you going to protect me out here?” he asked.
Lydia did not mistake his tone for anything but patronizing. “I have one of Irish’s guns in my saddlebag,” she said. “No derringer this time. It’s a Remington and I know just enough about using it to make Brig think twice about hurting you.”
Nathan released her immediately. He sat up, looking around for her saddlebag. He found it and the gun inside. Swearing softly and succinctly he put them both down out of her reach.
“Nathan! Put that gun over here!” She started to sit up. The cold and the force of his arm drove her back down again.
“God, Lydia, that you could be so naïve. You’re not to do anything to Brigham, do you hear me? I’ll handle him. I’ve known all along that he might use you to get to me, and if he succeeds, Lydia, he’ll still use you. He’ll make you his wife, take Ballaburn, and at the end of a year you’ll have a very tragic suicide, your wrists slashed, the blood drained out of you. He might rape you first, your hands tied tightly to the headrails of your bed, and it won’t matter if you struggle because I suspect that Brig would like that.”
Lydia’s hands were covering her ears. “Stop it, Nathan! You’re not—”
He took her hands away and held her as closely and tightly as he could. “I love you, Liddy,” he whispered against her ear, then her mouth. “I love you. I don’t want anything to happen to you, do you understand?” He felt her nod and drew her head against his shoulder. His hand nestled in her hair. “I can’t protect you if I’m dead and that’s what I’ll be if you get between Brig and me. That you’re willing to risk so much means everything to me, but I don’t need proof that you love me. God only knows why you do, but I know you’re telling me the truth.”
“Yes,” she said. There were tears pressing against her tightly closed eyes. “Hold me, Nathan. Please, just hold me.
Nathan did. In the stillness of the night, with Lydia’s gentle breathing reminding him of the passage of time, he came to know the profound nature of love.
Chapter 15
Nathan turned away from the small group of stockmen engaged in energetic conversation around him. He didn’t wonder any more how he could always sense Lydia’s approach, he simply accepted it as
one of the unique pleasures of loving her so deeply. He strode over to where she had reined in her horse and helped her dismount, relieving her of the wicker basket she carried on her arm. A blue-and-white checked cloth covered the contents of the basket and the deliciously warm fragrance of Molly’s spiced chicken and apple cobbler had Nathan’s mouth watering.
“Well, I like that,” Lydia said as she watched her husband investigate the contents of the basket. “Not so much as a peck on the cheek or it’s-a-pleasure-to-see-you.
Nathan glanced up from the basket, grinning wickedly. His free arm snaked around Lydia’s waist and he jerked her toward him, playfully rough. Bending his head, he caught her mouth with his and kissed her hard and long, breaking off only when his mind registered the light smattering of applause from the circle of men off to his right.
Lydia’s theatrical curtsy in their direction prompted him to take a bow. There were several good-natured taunts that followed Nathan and Lydia as they linked arms and disappeared over the hillock for their picnic.
“Thought I told you never to wear that skirt again,” Nathan said, settling against the trunk of a red gum tree. He felt about her split riding skirt the same way he imagined a randy knight felt about chastity belts: it didn’t belong on his wife when he was around.
Lydia twisted the cloth basket cover and snapped him in the chest with it. “Perhaps my aim should be lower,” she said, eyeing the taut fly of his trousers. “I thought you were going to ravish me back there.”
Nathan routed through the basket, found a chicken leg, and bit into it hungrily. “You can’t decide what you want,” he said around a mouthful of food. “First I get taken to task for not welcoming you properly, then I get the same when I do. I’d be grateful if you’d make up your mind.”
Lydia leaned toward him, taking aim with the twisted tea towel, but at the last moment she unraveled it and carefully tucked one corner in Nathan’s shirt, smoothing the rest of it across his chest like a dinner napkin. She smiled innocently at him as she completed the small wifely task. “Don’t get too used to it,” she said, giving him an arch look. “I came out because Irish is napping and Molly and Tess said there’s no room for me in the kitchen. The coach just left a little while ago. This came for you.” She handed him a small square packet. It was surprisingly heavy for its size, as if it might hold a few coins.