Alicia's Misfortune (39 page)

“Come,” he said. “We should go.”

He took her hand and they began the pretense that they were
happily wed and there was no friction between them.

Charlie walked her to a great room that was through a set of
double doors off the living room. He must indeed love dancing. This great room
was Dodge’s answer to a ballroom and he had it in his very own home. The side
of the house folded back and it opened the room up to a lamp-lit garden. It was
spectacular.

Horses and buggies carrying festively dressed guests, began
filing in. The clapping of horse hooves sounded up the drive. Musicians took
their places as the various servants set out the party fare. In no time, music
was playing and, skirts and boots were twirling around the floor.

Guests were shaking Charlie’s hands and nodding to Hailey.
Everyone was smiles from ear to ear. Women were kissing his cheek and wiggling
her fingers in lady’s rendition of a delicate little handshake. It seemed odd
that she and Charlie were going to such trouble when he wasn’t even sure he was
going to stay married to her.

Music playing full swing. They started off the dancing with
a lively piece. Guests nudged the two them to dance. If they were going to keep
up appearances, they had little choice but to dance together.

Charlie placed a firm hand at the small of her back and took
her other hand, they went sailing around the floor. It was wonderful. He was a
superb dancer. The touch of his hand in hers was directly connected to her
heart. Her whole chest tightened. She had the strong urge to sigh
 

The floor was crowded. Making great sweeping moves was
tougher to do.
 
Charlie and Hazel’s
bodies were closer and closer. They grazed each other as they danced through
their moves. They gazed at one another. Hailey’s yearning was tortured. She
needed him bad.

The music played right into the next piece that was
considerably slower. They stretched their arms and turned their bodies,
pressing into each other if but for seconds.
 
All the while they held each other’s gaze. He wanted her as much as she
wanted him.
 
He was being stubborn.

She loved that she could put her hands on his hard muscles.
He was so big and square and solid and his arms were like railroad ties. So
strong and hard as they held her. They twisted and turned so slowly, points of
his body joining hers.
 

She wavered. She had spent the biscuit dancing with and she
needed solid food.
 
He was so attentive
that he knew this.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s get some dinner and eat.”

People could fix themselves plates as they wanted and eat.
That’s what Charlie and she did. She had hoped he would choose from the buffet
for her. She liked being slightly dominated by him. But he left her to make her
own choice. He ladled out two glasses of punch for them and they sat.

“If I eat all this, I’m liable to bust out of my party
dress,” Hailey said innocently.

Charlie regarded her with lurking passion. She blushed. She
didn’t know whether she should excuse herself for the inadvertent remark or be
glad for it. She hoped she got him so worked up that he had to take back his
ultimatum.

“You are a wonderful dancer,” she said, taking a forkful of
steak.

She could see the trace of a smile bending his lips. “So are
you, I must say.
 
Dance much in Wichita?”

“I’ve been to a dance or two,” she replied, with fond
remembrance.

“I suppose with your late husband -” he began.

But a surge of her emotion stopped him in his tracks. She
was stunned, a dam of pain threatening to burst right where she sat. She was
trying to be discrete. She fanned herself.

“Are you alright? Did you swallow wrong?” he asked with
genuine concern.

She shook her head no. She knew her face turning beat red.
Her sister always said her face looked like a tomato before or after she was
cried.

“Let me take you out for some air,” he said.

Charlie ushered swiftly out to the garden patio and beyond.
He grabbed a chair from the patio and took is far out as he could before the
garden reverted back to uncivilized prairie. He sat in the chair and put her on
his lap. Hailey wrapped her arms around his giant shoulders.

“Please talk to me,” he said softly. “I made you well up
just now. Best to get it out even if it’s right here at our wedding party.”

“I don’t know if I can do it without sobbing my eyes out,”
she began. “I thought I had cried all my tears for Warden, and for the baby -”

All the avoiding she had done by wrapping up her sister’s
life and hopping on a stage was now right in front of her. And the only thing
that was making it any better was talking about it and being held by Charlie.

“Hailey,” he said softly. “I am confused here. I believe the
feelings you have for the two of them are real but last night, I know what that
was real. You have never been with a man before. You may have been married but
not in every way.”

“Charlie,” she pleaded.
 
“I’ve done something. If I tell you what I did will promise me to not
send me back?”

“I’m not fixing to send you anywhere. Truth be told, I can’t
turn you away not when you make me feel the way you do,” he said.

He turned her tear-drenched face to his and kissed her. His
lips were so sweet and warm.
 
And Hailey
had been incredibly starved for him. Hailey was impassioned, plunging her
tongue into his mouth, plundering its sugar. He broke the kiss urgently.

“I have to know what have you done?” he insisted.

“Why do you need a mail order wife?” she asked randomly.

“No,” he scolded gently. “My question first and then I will
tell you anything you want to know.”

Hailey sucked up her courage. “Warden and the baby were my
sister’s family, “ she said, the thunderstorm of emotion mercifully staying at
bay. “My sister Hailey is the one who wrote to you and exchanged all the
letters with. I didn’t know about it until she died. I adored her -”

Tears streamed down her face faster than she could wipe them
off.
 

She continued. “She was almost three years older than me. We
were all the family we had left. We had an aunt, “ she rolled her eyes.
“Anyhow, Warden and Hailey had a town home where we all lived together. First
the baby died of fever, then Warden.
 
Hailey and I were spared it. I don’t know what is worse. Getting sick or
being spared.
 
Just when I thought
everything was getting back to normal, a simple little accident --”

Hailey took a deep breath. She felt like she had been
talking forever.

“I must be heavy on your lap,” she said.

“You’re fine. So please,” he said, his voice was firm.
 
“Tell me your name.”

“I’m Cora,” she said, finding courage to look into his blue
eyes.

“I see,” he said, the way he felt towards her warming
considerable.
 

He was no longer stiff or standoffish. It was as through the
truth had lifted a wall between them.

“So there, that wasn’t so bad,” he continued. “Tell me the
truth, was it?”

“You’re not going to send me away?” she whispered.

“I married you sweetheart. If you go anywhere, I’m liable to
put you over my knee,” his eyes actually twinkled.

Seized with a sudden fear, she asked, “Do you reckon our
vows stuck because I wasn’t who I said I was?”

“We can say them again,” he laughed. “I don’t imagine the
preacher standing up for us one more time. But just so you know, I’m calling
you by your name. I’m calling you Cora.”

“That’s fine with me,” she said with relief. “It was making
me so sad to have my sister’s name on my mind all the time.”

He kissed her nose. “We must always tell each other the
truth of it. It makes it so much better between us.”

“It does,” she agreed, feeling free to be easy with him.

“In every way,” he said, his voice laced with seduction.

He took her mouth with his and kissed her like he had while
they were in bed. It was a slow, simmering kiss that rushed her with arousal.
It overtook her body like a flash flood. She was at once aching and empty with
need for him.

“Cora,” he murmured her name.

As his mouth ravished hers, his hands searched her. His
palms were so large and powerful against her delicate teacup sized breasts. She
loved being in her handsome husband’s embrace. It thrilled her in a way that
had never expected it could.

“So sweet,” he said. “Now that that is out of the way, I
have to figure out a way to end this party. I am going to ache for you until I
can get you alone again. Wouldn’t be proper to just disappear any longer than
we have. Come.”

Charlie took Cora’s hand. He stopped without warning and
kissed her again.
 
Slowly, powerfully, as
though he had to have just one more before entering the house. He walked them
up to the call box, where the caller called out the dance steps out.

“Folks,” he said, quieting everyone out. “Newly married
people are always learning and discovering things out about one another.”

 
He turned to Cora and
winked. He gave her that he still held a little tug to assure her.

“I just learned that my sweet, wonderful, beautiful little wife
prefers to go by the name of Cora. It’s kind of a silly story and one that we
will keep between the two of us at least for now. So without further ado, I
would to introduce all of you all to my new wife, Mrs. Charles Anthony
Halverson. Cora.”

Everyone erupted in boisterous applause and whoops and
hollers. There were a couple of cattle whistles in there too. Cora had had a
raging crush on her new husband.
 
Now she
was certain she was head over heels in love with him.

He spoke to the musicians behind the call box and then
offered her his arm. “Mrs. Halverson, will you dance with me?”

The crowd cleared. They looked with smiles as Charlie danced
her slowly around the middle of the floor. Cora’s heart was brimming. It flowed
over in delicate tears of relief and of love.
 

“I didn’t tell you how beautiful you look,” he said softly.

The hunter’s look in his eyes went straight to her belly.
She was filled with warmth and aching for him. She had the strong desire to lay
back and offer herself to him.

“You are very handsome,” she had the courage to say. “So
handsome.”

She was done in by her own words. The mere mention of how
attracted she was to him flooded her with arousal and she teetered. She could
feel the feeling rise to her face. She had to have an expression. It made her
feel sort of bewildered.

He smiled softly at her. “Am I now?” he asked rhetorically.
“I am pleased that you think so.”

“I am pleased I think so to,” she said without thinking.

When she realized she had said that out loud, she held her
fingers to her surprised mouth. He let go a full laugh. He stopped the dance to
pull her close to him.
 
To wrap her into
his massive arms, against his rock hard chest and laugh.
 

“I think we’re going to be happy, Cora,” he said.

“I think we already are,” she replied.

The guests left finally at the stroke of midnight. Charlie
decided that was the perfect time to call it a night. His employees cleaned up
just enough before he dismissed them to. And when he and Cora were alone, he
swept her up in his massive arms and dashed up the winding stairs.

He practically tossed her on the massive Eiderdown mattress
in their master bedroom. They both worked furiously to free her from the
imprisoning party dress. He finally unfastened all the hooks that ran up the
back of her dress.

“You’re wearing sack frocks from now on. A man could die
trying to hold his wife,” he complained.

He peeled off the dress. He regarded her with the strangest
expression. It was pained and tormented. Cora understood it completely.
 

“You are so beautiful,” he remarked, trailing his hand along
the corseted lines of her body.
 

He tweezed her nipple, peaking over the cup of her corset.
Cora lurched; the pleasure went straight between her legs.

“Cora,” he whispered.

He hovered over her as she lay flat on the bed. She looked
up at him.

“I’ve been wrong,” he said. “I punished you for keeping a
secret from me and now I have one for you. I cannot take you until I tell on
myself if you will have me after that.”

Cora was afraid.

“What?” she asked.

He took a deep breath. “I got some unsubstantiated word
about your sister.
 
That she had passed.
That’s why I didn’t show. I was there in town just as a coincidence. The driver
of the coach came and fetched me.
 

But when I saw you and saw that you matched her description
in every way I figured I had been mistaken. The person giving me the news made
me pay for it that’s why I was a bit skeptical. I was way hard on you. I am so
sorry –”

She could see that it pained him to say out loud what he had
done.

“This is our wedding night, Charlie Halverson. Let’s
celebrate our new life together,” she said.

Charlie stood like a mountain out of the earth and took off
his clothes. Cora rolled over so that he could unlace her.
 

“Oh my goodness, that feels so much better,” she exclaimed.

“I’m going to forbid you to wear these things too. Maybe,”
he growled.

And while she was on her belly, he got behind her. He drew
her back against him. He reached around in between her legs and toyed with her
there. Cora lifted her thigh and rested it up and on his. She felt so delicate
against his large brawny frame.

He cupped her breasts as he pushed his rigid erection into
her. He was tender for she was sore from the night before. But she was wet and
ready for him. She had gotten herself all worked up by thinking about him
during the whole day.

He encouraged her to fan her thigh, up and down as he moved
in and out of her.
 
He was a brilliant
lover for that indeed made her pleasure stronger. He pressed his mouth to the
ticklish base of her neck, toying with her with the devilish tip of his
tongue.
 
She whimpered with the pleasure
of it. She did not hold back. She cried out with the pleasure he gave her.

“Mmm,” he purred. He moved his mouth to her earth and
pleasured her there.

Cora arched down against him. Driven by timeless instinct,
she rocked against him in wild rhythm, chasing the ecstasy that was building
within her.
 

“Let it come baby,” he encouraged her. “Let it come.”

His voice was an aphrodisiac to her and it was her response
to it that pushed her over the edge. She tumbled into a canyon of rapture. Her
body spasmed with the pureness of it. No part of her was spared. It pushed out
through the top of her head out through her toes. She was a tingling, quivering
mass and still he drove into her.

Charlie wound her round him, while staying inside. He coaxed
her to her back.
 
He brushed the hair
away from her face and looked deep into her eyes. She was helplessly bathed in
ecstasy. She felt him tense. His head tilted up and his eyes fluttered. He was
finding his pleasure too. He was like a magnificent beast.

He roared as his pleasure hit. It was so magnificent. So
perfect. Cora loved him completely. He crumpled onto the bed, spent. He took
her into her arms and held her the whole night though. He loved her twice more
before dawn. Charlie loved her completely too.