A Lady Bought with Rifles (30 page)

Through the corridor into my room. Still holding me, he bolted the door and drew the shutters. He sank down with me on the bed, kissing my throat. His fingers fumbled at the buttons of my dress. Losing patience, he ripped the cloth from my back, pulled off the ruined dress along with my chemise. I gave a cry as his hands closed on my breasts.

“It's all right, darling, all right. No matter what they taught you in England, you'll enjoy it, too. I'll teach you.”

There was a tingling in my breasts and he laughed softly as he teased the nipples hard, began to caress my flanks as he slipped off my drawers and stockings, began to undress himself.

“Touch me,” he breathed, pressing his hardness against my hand. “You have to learn to like him, Miranda. He adores you. He can scarcely wait to get into you.” Taking my reluctant hand, Court made me stroke the quivering phallus with its swollen veins.

Court was shaking, too. With a groan, as if driven to a pitch he could no longer endure, he swung his leg over me. Then the stiff throbbing alien part that made him a man slid down to thrust lightly, then harder, plunging all the way in as I cried out, afraid of being smashed, afraid of being broken.…

“Why, you—” Court panted.

His loins spasmed. I thought he had climaxed. He rested on me, almost a crushing weight, then raised on his hands, gold eyes piercing, while I felt him or my own nerves twitching within me. He stayed like that till my whole body ached and a silent screaming began to coil in my head.

“Who was it?” he asked coldly.

My mouth was dry. I couldn't speak.

He set his thumbs above my collarbone, fingers circling my neck. “Damn you, who was it?”

Trace was dead. He couldn't hurt Trace. As if he read my mind, Court ground out, “Winslade?”

I nodded. The thumbs dug in, the fingers tightened. Maybe I wouldn't survive after all. But I had my voice back and the screaming lashed out of me. “I belong to Trace, not you. I'll never belong to you.”

Court lunged forward so hard that I screamed. His gentleness was gone. He gripped me beneath the head with one hand, grasped me under the buttocks with the other, holding me in a vise as he rammed and battered me senseless.

“I'll show you who you belong to,” he gasped as my mind slipped into blackness. “I'll show you.”

I roused with a heavy weight pinning my arm, shuddered as I saw Court's wiry hair beside me. I was bruised in many places from his hands but ached worst between my legs. As I tried to free my arm so I could get up and wash his odor from me, he stirred and flung one arm across me, fondling my breast.

“I'm not done with you,” he said thickly. “Not by half. You've got some things to learn. A whore's tricks, since you are one.” And he set his hand behind my head and forced it downward.

The afternoon nightmared into twilight. Still weakened from my long confinement, I lapsed into fleeting tortured dreams in between the times Court used me. After the first few attempts to fight, after my first shame and shock, I was numbed, longed for simple physical rest from his hands and mouth, sinewy legs, that incredibly renewed organ that came out of me limp but would breach me an hour later. Not that he relied solely on it for my subjection.

As the bars of light from the shutters dulled and muted voices sounded from the rest of the house, I grew inert, and as if he needed, if not my loving response, at least resistance, Court rolled from me, sat for a moment on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.

“My wife,” he said, as if he rinsed his mouth of foulness. “My innocent bride.”

Getting to his feet, he dragged on his clothes, stood over me as he buckled his belt. “I suppose I shouldn't feel cheated. You have the makings of a pleasing whore. And that's what you'll be to me in our bed, though to the world I'll seem a fond-enough husband.”

Speech was beyond me. I wanted only to slip back into comforting soft–oblivion. It was one thing, still cherished and unmolested, to think I could divorce my spirit from what was happening to my body, resolve to live through it and escape. Now I had tasted to the roots of my being that what happened to my flesh happened to
me
, that interwoven total of mind, body, and soul.

If one afternoon could do this, strip me of will, physical courage, even normal response to outrage, what would happen in weeks, months, a year? Court seemed to guess what I was thinking.

“It will go better with you when you decide to use your energy to gratify rather than fight me,” he said. “Be absolutely sure of this, Miranda: legally and in fact you are mine, utterly dependent on me for protection and all your needs. The sooner you fit your behavior and attitude to the realities, the sooner I'll be disposed to indulge you.”

I kept my eyes closed, scarcely breathing. I felt his eyes burning my flesh, searing me with his ownership as cruelly as a heated brand.

“Chepa will bring you a tray,” he said.

“I—I'm not hungry.”

“Shall I feed you?”

I was silent again, beaten. After a long moment, his steps moved away.

Chepa's soft voice woke me from exhausted slumber. “Señora? I have brought rice and chicken and these are green corn tamales, very nice. My mother made them especially for you. Will you try them?”

The room was almost dark, gentle to my eyes as I raised slowly, stifling a moan. To my astonishment the food odors tantalized me. The short rest and, most of all, Court's absence, had a bracing effect.

“Thank you, Chepa.” I accepted the tray and began to eat slowly, propped against the pillows she plumped behind me.

Warmed by the delicately spiced food, my body slowly regained sensitivity now that it was safe to feel again, experience what was.

“Please heat water for a bath,” I requested, setting down the tray.

“It is ready,” Chepa murmured. The dark eyes in her piquant heart-shaped face would not look directly at me and I felt her pity. Perhaps I should have resented it but I didn't. We were both women, vulnerable to what had happened to me. I accepted her unspoken sympathy as a healing power that supported though it couldn't defend. “El señor said you would wish a bath and that I was to help you.” She glanced in disappointment at the tray. “The tamales are so good, señora! Can you not have a few more bites?”

To please her, I dutifully ate the rest of one tamale. “That was delicious,” I said. “Tell your mother I thank her.”

Chepa smiled, nodding, and took away the tray. I lay back on the pillows. As if driven by their own volition, my hands groped over my body, finding bruises, weals, marks of teeth and nails for Court's passion was much like that of the stallion I'd watched that day Trace first kissed me but refused to finish lest he ruin me for my husband. I curled my lip at that, though it had proved a too-realistic objection.

Still, something deep and primitive screamed from my center, from my loins and violated parts, that Trace was irrevocably my lover, my man, my promised husband. Court was the encroacher, the trespassing thief. And whatever happened, I rejoiced that I'd known the grace and strength of my true love, that he had possessed me completely, even though it made me a whore in Court's view, provoked him into debasing me.

I had loved a brave magnificent man, loved him still though he was dead, and he had loved me. That must be my armor against Court. I wouldn't let him defeat the woman Trace had loved. Somehow I'd live. Somehow I'd be free.

Wincing at the pain of movement, I pinned up my hair while Chepa readied the bath for me. Without being asked, she began to strip off the used sheets and put on fresh ones.

I thanked her and stepped into the hot water that stung every place, and there were many, where my skin was broken. I couldn't wash away what Court had done, but I could scrub off his scent.

The smell of him, a not-unpleasant man odor, for Court was fastidious, permeated my next days, seemed to fill and become the scent of my own body, for he spent each night with me and often part of the day.

Though sometimes he compelled me to the perversions of that first day, most often he simply took me repeatedly with an almost grim deliberation. He seemed to enjoy it little more than I did. I wondered if he hated me now, found me repugnant, but took this means of punishing me, keeping me physically aware of his domination.

I didn't dare ask if he'd tried to halt Dr. Trent's mission, but as weeks passed and the doctor didn't return early, I hoped that Court had either not tried or been unable to stop him.

Slowly, fearful of interference from Court, I resumed a patched, raggedy sort of life. Chepa helped me clean the school of wreckage from the battle and I began holding classes every morning. At first only a few children came, but gradually they all ventured back. Sometimes their mothers would stay for an hour or two, watching with pride as their children read aloud or spelled or did sums at the big slate.

I dreaded the scrutiny of the women for a time. Did they know anything of my life with Court? If they did, they showed nothing and treated me with shy respect.

When soldiers began to drop in, I could see only their uniforms and was nervous and on guard. Then I began to realize that many were very young, not much older than Domingo. They were bored, homesick, and listened intently to the lessons, particularly history and geography. The children stole suspicious glances at them the first few times they came, but then I noticed that the soldiers were walking home with the youngsters, sometimes playing with them.

One day Ruiz, now a colonel, came into the school. Three boy soldiers who were sitting at the back went rigid and rose, saluting. He smiled ironically, watched me for a long moment, dark eyes probing, then turned on his heel with a jerk of his head to the young men. They followed him like dogs about to be whipped.

Telling the children I'd be back shortly, I hurried after Ruiz, who had halted and was staring contemptuously at the soldiers, who looked like scarecrows indeed, with their ill-fitting uniforms and alarmed faces.

“Report to your sergeant,” he ordered when he saw me. “Tell him I will be along in a few minutes.”

They saluted and fled. Ruiz bowed, holding my hand almost to his lips for much too long. “I must apologize for those wretches, señora. Have no fear, they will not trouble you further.”

“They are not a trouble,” I said. “They seem to listen eagerly.”

He lifted a bland eyebrow. “Ah, señora, who would not?”

“Colonel, please. Do not punish them. They are welcome. They—they're little more than children themselves and must miss their families.”

“They must be soldiers. Have you thought what would happen if they become friendly with the schoolchildren? Then they would visit their homes and what would happen if it ever became necessary to enforce order at Mina Rara? Would you have these young soldiers you pity have to shoot their friends?”

“That—that won't happen! The Mina Rara Yaquis are not rebels.”

“Not yet.”

Fear gripped me, fear for the children and their parents. “These people have been here for years; some were born here. My father treated them well. They've been happy, had no reason to fight. This is true, Colonel! Ask Mr. Sanders.”

“Yes. Your husband.”

What did the major know of us, the truth of our marriage? Court had taught me to recognize the signs of desire in a man. Though the officer's manner was formally correct, his gaze made me flush, for it seemed to disrobe me with leisurely enjoyment.

“I am sorry that you think me severe,” he said charmingly. “But there must be discipline. I will set my men at harder lessons.”

“But—”

“Your concern does you credit, señora, but soft hearts are a luxury we soldiers cannot allow ourselves. May I say that I am delighted to see you in renewed health?”

“Thank you,” I said mechanically. Argument would only provoke him to harsher management, but it was with a heavy heart that I went back to my hushed pupils.

I was telling them Sewa's story of the Ku bird, using its glorious features to teach them how to spell the colors of that fantastic borrowed plumage, when a tall broad figure shadowed the door.

For the second time that morning, the children froze.
“Fuera!”
Court snapped.

They were gone in a twinkling. Court strode forward, sent the globe spinning as he passed it. What were you discussing so earnestly with Ruiz?” he demanded. “And those soldiers—I saw them scuttling out. Why were they here?”

“They—they like to listen! Court, they're only boys.”

“Boys! If they had a chance, they'd prove differently.” His lips peeled back from his teeth. “You at least won't tell me that Ruiz is a child eager to learn his alphabet!”

“He made the soldiers leave.”

“And you were sorry for them,” Court guessed. “You followed him, begged him before the village to be easy with those insolent miscreants. Have you no sense of fitness, Miranda? Will you never learn your place?”

“My place?” I said scornfully, remembering that this was my mine and that Court would have still been an employee had he not used coercion. “And what is my place?”

“I'll show you, madam!” He caught my wrist, dragged me to the door before he stopped, obviously getting control of himself. “Will you walk to your place—our bed, my sweet—or shall I further entertain gapers by carrying you there?”

I regretted my proud words. I should've learned by now that defiance could only bring me pain, deeper humiliation. But Ruiz's treatment of the boy soldiers, the way he and Court had disrupted my school and frightened the children, provoked rebellion from deeper levels than reason could penetrate. Spine stiff, chin high, I walked to the house, Court's hand beneath my arm in a way that would look protectively cherishing to observers.

The moment we were inside the door, he swept me off my feet. Startled into panic, I did what I hadn't attempted in weeks, actively fought him, writhing to scratch, kick, bite, try to throw him off balance.