A Lady of the West (6 page)

As it happened, Carmita, Lola, and Juana were all in the kitchen, gossipping cozily. The friendly chatter
of rapid Spanish halted when they noticed Victoria in the doorway.

“Señora,” Carmita said, smiling broadly. They were all smiling at her. Belatedly Victoria realized they expected a blushing bride. She did blush, though not from happiness.

She said, “Please, Carmita, may I talk with you for a moment?” Despite her efforts at control some of her despair must have shown for Carmita stopped smiling and rapidly came to her side.

They walked out into the courtyard, so pretty with its multitude of yellow roses. Victoria pretended to look at the roses, fingering some of the velvet petals. She said, low, “If my questions embarrass you, please don't feel you have to answer. It's just—I don't have anyone I can ask, except for you.”

Carmita looked puzzled. “Of course, señora.”

Victoria flushed again. “Carmita … when a man—that is, what does a man—how are babies made?” She was beet red by the time she finished, and felt utterly helpless.

Carmita gaped at her. Victoria hurriedly turned away, but Carmita laughed and put her motherly arms around the tense young woman. Her brown eyes were warm. “No one thought to tell you the way of things? Poor señora! Yes, sit down, and I will tell you about men and babies.”

She did, very succinctly, and Victoria heaved an inner sigh of relief. It was as she had thought, the man did enter a woman's body and there emptied himself of his seed, which sometimes resulted in a baby, though not, Carmita said with heartfelt thanks, every time. The Major had not done that to her, so she would not be having his baby. At least, not yet. She didn't know what had gone wrong last night, and she knew he could return to her bed at any time. They had a lifetime together for him to consummate the marriage. But for today, at least, she was safe.

Another question occurred to her, and she said
diffidently, “How does a woman know if she is to have a baby?” She knew they didn't have to wait until they grew big, because she had known several women who had announced their expectancy long before there had been obvious evidence.

Carmita patted her arm. “Your monthly bleeding won't come, señora.”

Victoria considered that. Her monthly cycle was so regular she always knew to the day when to expect the onset. It appeared she would have a reliable means of telling, if the worst happened.

“You will also cry a lot, and sleep a lot, and feel so sick that no food stays down,” Carmita continued cheerfully. “When you do feel like eating, you will want strange things that, of course, Lola will not have, and someone will have to go to Santa Fe to buy it. That's the way of it. When I carried my Juana, I felt as if I had to have oranges, every day. Señora, I don't like oranges, but every day I ate them, five and six a day. Then Juana was born, and I didn't like oranges anymore.”

Victoria sat in the courtyard after Carmita had returned to the kitchen, enjoying the early-morning coolness and the bright sun, calming her frazzled nerves. She had survived the night, as horrible as it had been, and the new day was fresh and sunny. If the coming night brought a repeat of the horror, well, she would survive that, too.

She thought about the things Carmita had told her and wondered why well-bred young women were kept so abysmally ignorant of such basic facts. She would far rather have known what was going to happen, as unpleasant as it had been, than to have suffered in the dread of the unknown, which had made it just that much worse. Her mother had known what she would face, yet had left her in ignorance. Victoria found that hard to forgive.

She would tell Emma. Not about the Major's failure,
but the true facts of what men did to women in the marriage bed. She would tell her how babies were made and how a woman knew if she were pregnant. And later, if Celia were ever to think of getting married, Victoria would tell her, also.

She thought of the way Garnet watched Celia, and bit her lower lip. Now she knew what he wanted, and she was more determined than ever to keep Celia away from him.

Roper. He, too, had known what the Major would do to her.

Stunned, she realized that every man knew all of this, that only women were kept ignorant. This was what men did to fast women, to prostitutes. The realization put a different slant on every memory she had. The dances and socials and picnics she had attended had all been a part of the ritual leading up to the marriage bed, and bared bodies, and all of her young beaus had known what would happen. How many of them had looked at her and imagined her with her nightgown rucked up to her waist?

In retrospect she felt very indignant. The system of carefully perpetuated ignorance seemed to her rather like throwing lambs to wolves. She had been prepared for the indignity but not the total loss of modesty or the pain. She thought she would not have been so blindly terrified if she'd had a realistic idea of what to expect. But now, she thought with a wave of depression, she fully knew what her marriage to the Major would be like.

Roper paused by the gate to the courtyard, his attention caught by the young woman sitting so still, with her hands folded in her lap. The bright morning sun glinted on her hair, picking up the gold in it. He realized that her hair was dark blond, not the brown it had appeared before.

She sat staring at nothing, motionless. He knew she
couldn't have had a wonderful night, yet her pale face revealed none of it. She might have been a statue, except for the way the light breeze played in the loose tendrils of hair at her temples.

His mother had sometimes sat in the courtyard, when she could find a spare minute in her busy days. Elena had been warm and vibrant, always ready to laugh with her sons and husband. The young woman who sat there now was cool and controlled, with a face as blank as marble.

He felt faintly contemptuous of her for marrying McLain. He felt disgusted with himself for wanting a woman McLain had touched. But the sight of her made his chest tighten, and blood rushed to his loins. He knew her stillness masked her pain and fear, and he admired it. He wanted her for that cool control. He wanted to shatter it with warm passion, he wanted her naked and vibrant and alive with need for him, he wanted her to claw at his back and arch her hips against him. He wanted to snatch her up and take her far away from here, because she was so out of place around men like McLain and Garnet, even himself. Their lives were stained with blood and violence, and it would inevitably touch her. He didn't see how he could prevent it.

He had stared at her too long; she turned her head, sensing his presence, and their eyes met across the courtyard. Without haste, every movement graceful, she rose from the bench and returned to the house. Roper clenched his fists at being dismissed by her, but too much was at stake for him to lose control now. His time would come.

The Major came to her room again that night. Victoria made no sign of protest, but lay with her arms at her sides. Again, McLain expected her to behave no differently.

He was desperately afraid of another failure, of
again losing himself to those terrors of the past. McLain crouched between her opened legs and frantically tried to beat life into his unresponsive sex. The more afraid and humiliated he felt, the harder he tried, and nothing happened. All the while she lay there like a damned statue, reminding him of Elena, as if the woman had risen from the dead to torment and punish him.

He swore and rolled off of the bed and returned, trembling, to his own room. Cold sweat trickled down his face and barrel chest. The damn bitch had emasculated him, finished the job that Elena and her bastard had started!

His worst nightmare had become reality. God, he'd wanted her for so long, all of his life. Not her in particular, but someone like her, a lady to show the world he was someone important. She was perfect; a woman of impeccable bloodlines, manners, and breeding. She made Elena and that damned Sarratt look like white trash. She was finally his, and he couldn't take her.

He laughed soundlessly, a little insanely. He had his lady, all right, but he couldn't do a thing about it.

He thought of her white-skinned, perfect body and broke out in a sweat again at the thought of touching her and finding his manhood limp and useless.

In a thousand nights during the past twenty years he had awakened to hear himself whimpering, and found his hands cupped protectively over his privates. A thousand nightmares had been filled with a scarlet-stained knife and a boy's hate-twisted face. In his dreams he couldn't escape and the knife finished its job. The reality had been bad enough; he'd walked spraddle-legged for weeks and his left testicle was drawn and withered. He'd lived in hell until he had recovered enough to find out if he was still capable of humping a woman, though he never let anyone know how desperate he'd been. After finding out that he
was
still capable, he took to bragging that he was more man with only one ball than most men were with two. But bragging hadn't kept the nightmares away.

But that wasn't true anymore. His greatest fear had been realized. He couldn't get an erection.

She was so dainty and pristine, so untouchable. Frank McLain sat in the darkness of his room and tried to work things out in his mind, find some sort of explanation for the humiliating failure of his flesh. Goddammit, he'd never had any trouble humping a woman before, once he'd recovered from the knife wound. Only this one.

So it had to be her fault. It wasn't him; it was something about
her.
Maybe ladies weren't for screwing. He had his lady for ruling over his house, his lady to dress in fancy gowns and show off in Santa Fe. With her culture and background, there was no limit to how high he could rise in the territory. That was why he'd married her. Hell, he didn't care if he got any brats on her; he didn't give a damn about leaving all of this to some snot-nosed kid who probably wouldn't have half of his own strength. This was
his,
won with his guns and brains and guts. He was undisputed king in this part of the territory, and now he had his queen. He had what he wanted. Let her keep her knees locked; women like her were made to be treated like dolls, cosseted and protected, showcased in all their finery and jewels.

That was what was wrong.
He just hadn't understood before. He'd take care of her like she was royalty given into his protection, untouchable and untouched. When he wanted to hump somebody, he'd go to the kind of women he was comfortable with, women who squirmed and squealed and liked it.

Like Angelina Garcia. She was just a whore, but she liked it any way a man could give it to her. McLain thought of the times he'd plowed her himself and to his enormous relief felt his manhood begin to stir.
Yeah, that was what it had been all along. There wasn't anything wrong with him, it had been his wife.

He jerked off his nightshirt and hurriedly dressed. He had to have a woman, a real woman.

Angelina had a room in the small building where the houseservants once lived, back when the damn Sarratts had kept enough servants to button up their britches. Most of the building was used for storage now; Carmita, Lola, and Juana used two rooms just off the kitchen. Angelina wasn't much on keeping her room neat; it was always strewn with clothing and food, and stank of sex. She was greedy; she wanted several men a day, and if they didn't come to her she went to them. She was flamboyantly beautiful, with a lush body, long black hair, and flashing dark eyes. As he hurried across the dark ground, McLain thought of what he was going to do to her and grew fully hard.

He could barely wait. A thin line of light showed beneath her door. He pushed it open and Angelina turned her head sharply at the intrusion. She was naked, lying under a patched, yellow sheet, and she wasn't alone. One of the cowpunchers lay naked and groggy beside her.

Angelina was at first astonished to see him; after all, he'd only gotten married the night before. Then a slow, self-satisfied smile curled her lips.

“Get out,” McLain said to the cowboy.

The man stumbled to his feet and awkwardly got into his britches and boots. He too was astounded that the Major was there. The tale would be all over the ranch by morning.

Angelina lolled against her pillows, letting the sheet fall to the side so that her large breasts were revealed. “So,” she said in a purring voice. “Your grand lady can't satisfy you?” It wouldn't take much, as she knew from experience. The Major was too fast, but she always praised him as if he were the biggest and best stud she'd ever had. Angelina was shrewd enough to
know she had a good thing here, and the best way to keep it was to butter up the boss.

McLain grunted as he unbuttoned his pants. “She couldn't even get it hard,” he muttered, and from that, and his haste, Angelina understood exactly what had happened. She wanted to laugh, but knew she had too much to lose if she shared the joke with others, even later. She stifled her smile and instead stretched out her arms toward him.

“She must be a cold fish, then,” she purred.

McLain freed his erection and lowered himself. “Bend over,” he panted, already near climax at the thought. “I want to do it that way.”