Blaze (6 page)

Mingled astonishment and desire confounded her normally rational mind. The feeling was unprecedented, the probable cause—if seriously considered—against all she believed in. Not for her, bewitchment and charming sorcery. Her reality was clear-cut and reasonable. She had never believed in flighty romanticism.

With visible effort she shrugged away the unease, and with a toss of her head set her sights on the crest of the hill ahead of her. Continuing her journey, she consciously set aside any further thoughts of her encounter with the Indian as she strode off to join her father for the rest of the day. Finding him several claims down the valley, Blaze spent the remainder of the day absorbing the complexities of purchase agreements, partnership contracts, and claim staking.

Late that evening when the sun had set and coolness at last drifted down the mountain, Blaze retraced her journey from Diamond City, this time on horseback. When the group of riders passed through the mud that had upset her that morning, Blaze looked off the trail to the tree where the Indian man had been sleeping. The site was deserted, as she expected, but then her dark blue eyes swept up the valley wall. Was she hoping to see him again? Catch a glimpse of that magnificent face and form which had lingered in her thoughts despite ruthless efforts at suppression? Utterly ridiculous. He was an Indian, she reminded herself. A primitive aborigine, her mother would say. Unable to speak more than a few halting words of English, she remembered. But when her gaze fell on a glow of light high up the mountainside, and she realized it was a firelit cabin window, her heart tripped against her rib cage and a sudden warmth stole through her senses.

"Blaze," her father repeated, "didn't you hear me? We'll be back in Virginia City in time for the Territorial Ball at the end of the week. I thought you'd enjoy knowing that."

"Oh, thank you, Daddy," she quickly responded, wrenching her eyes from the dark mountainside and the solitary glimmer of light. "Did you say this week?"

"Saturday night, pet. And a penny for your thoughts. Care to tell your old dad what's absorbed you so these last few miles? You've been in a hell of a fog."

"Oh, nothing, Daddy. I think I was dozing a bit. It's been a long day."

"It'll be our last day out for a while. We're heading down to Virginia City tomorrow. You'll have a chance to rest in the comforts of the hotel the night after next. Damn, a hot bath in a real tub will feel good."

"Amen to that," Blaze said enthusiastically. She felt as though all the dirt of western Montana were stuck to her sweaty skin.

WlTH the help of a lady friend, Hazard had recuperated from the ritual body slashing observed for mourning in his tribe and then had recommitted himself to his father's dream. His clan needed gold for their future; it wasn't as though there were choices. The placer deposits his uncle Ramsay Kent had been working didn't compare in potential with the newly discovered strikes. Since the first major deposits discovered at Grasshopper Creek in 1862, thirty million dollars of gold had been taken from the gulch. In 1863 and 1864, two more enormous lodes had been found at Alder Gulch and Last Chance Gulch. The pattern was repeated all through 1864 at Prickly Pear Valley, Confederate Gulch, Diamond City, Emigrant Gulch. The boom was on.

So Hazard was working two claims here, working very hard at what had appeared to be highly profitable claims, if his old mentor, Louis Agassiz knew his business.

But since the encounter with the red-haired woman, in the lull of the ensuing evenings, Hazard found his mind distracted, drifting easily into fantasies about her. The soft cloud of russet hair, her sun-kissed skin and vivid blue eyes, particularly the luscious body, were recurring images. It annoyed him that she intruded into his musing so. She had annoyed him with her peremptory posture; she was a part probably of that moneyed crew out to buy up all the gold claims in the valley. Her offer of forty dollars for a two-minute task bespoke the careless negligence of the wealthy Hazard had known so well in Boston. That type of woman, both beautiful and spoiled, could always annoy him. He probably should have taken her that day, he selfishly considered. It would have quelled the annoyance and satisfied the lust… If he had, all these unnerving images of her wouldn't be dancing before his eyes, Hazard reflected.

He needed a woman, that was all. It had been too long, and hell, he thought with cold-blooded hindsight, he could have protected himself even if she'd screamed rape. His claim was virtually impregnable to attack. It was one of the reasons he'd chosen the site; the position on the mountaintop would allow one man to hold off an army for a month or more. And whoever her husband or protector was, no man was going to put that kind of effort into avenging a woman's dishonor.

"Hell," he muttered aloud this time, and ignoring subconscious reasons to do with flaming hair and peach skin, Hazard abruptly decided to accept Lucy Attenbor-ough's invitation to the Territorial Ball in Virginia City next weekend. He knew a dozen women in Virginia City who would be overjoyed to see him again, including, of course, the inviting Lucy, a perfect opportunity to end his overlong celibacy.

He didn't admit to the possibility that the woman he'd held in his arms—who haunted his thoughts—would be at the ball.

THE night of the Territorial Ball was one of those pleasantly warm summer evenings depicted by painters and poets. The air smelled of new grass, fresh earth, and the sweet scent of tiny aspen leaves only beginning to emerge. The sun had sunk behind the surrounding foothills in a masterful display of flaming gold streaked across a shimmering sky. It was a sight which gave even the rough mining town a soft, inviting glow.

Blaze watched the liquid sunset from the window of her private parlor; her father was downstairs discussing business, while her mother, as usual, was taking an hour more than anyone else to dress. A servant delivered a glass of champagne with her father's compliments and, as she lounged before the window on a red plush armchair, Blaze sipped the wine and enjoyed the close of the day and the beginning of the night.

Yards of creamy lace and ivory silk hand-sewn with thousands of seed pearls spread luxuriously over her crinoline and flowed to the floor in soft crushed folds. The snug, revealing bodice of her gown was supported by whalebone stays, so the filmy lace draped below her bare shoulders was purely decorative. The pale fabric and lace spectacularly set off her peach skin and golden apricot hair. Long earrings of diamonds and pearls dropped from her ears, shining against the delicate texture of her skin. But reality defied the picture of perfection. Wayward tendrils were already altering her carefully arranged coiffeur. To the despair of her hairdresser, sent away in a fit of pique, Blaze's curls had a rebellious bent no amount of effort could control, and her stylishly smooth hairdo was regaining its natural tendencies.

A pendant of matching diamonds and pearls suspended from a delicate chain hung tantalizingly in the shadowed cleavage of her voluptuous breasts. Since a state of studiously controlled half undress was formal style for evening dress, Blaze failed to recognize how provocative her dress was, her breasts pushed high over the low decolletage of the gown brought west for just such an evening. Shoulders were extremely bare this season, and the drape of lace between shoulder and elbow served a multiple purpose. With the contours of the female form below the waist virtuously swathed in volumes of petticoats and fabric, the area from the waist up was left to remind men what a female was. The ruffle—so stylishly new—set off the sheer nakedness of the female shoulders while drawing equal attention to the soft breasts swelling above corseted silk.

Slender, long-legged, arrayed in pale silk like a Renaissance bride, with the satiny skin of her shoulders and half-revealed breasts lushly inviting, Blaze was guaranteed to turn heads at the territorial ball.

ONE male head denying any such intention was lying back against the headrest of a large porcelain tub drawn up to the west window of his second-floor room in The Planter's House, Virginia City's newest hotel. Stripped of the dirt and fatigue of several weeks of solitary mining, Hazard rested in the tub, leisurely enjoying a large glass of brandy. Life had become more gratifying.

Disquieting images of autumn gold hair had been displaced by more palpable carnal realities in the shape of several Virginia City hostesses of various descriptions who had passed more or less time in room 202 in the past few days. Hazard's sense of pressing social duties had consisted largely of entertaining ladies in bed. In fact, he was expecting one of them to return in less than ten minutes. There'd be time before the ball, Lucy had insisted, and after the long, lonely weeks at Diamond City, Hazard wasn't about to say no.

All in all, he was enormously content. The rare yearning, for the unusual red-haired woman, was gone now, submerged by satisfying sexual abundance in the three days in Virginia City. Transient cravings based on prolonged abstinence were all the fantasies had been, Hazard rationalized; they had nothing to do in particular with the woman in tight trousers. And now that the abstinence was assuaged, she could be dismissed from his thoughts.

At the soft knock, he drained the brandy and called out, "Come in." As he turned his head toward the door, his dark eyes swept the elegant brunette dressed in pink mousseline de soie with ribbon flounces of Belgian embroidery precariously holding her full breasts from spilling out of the bodice. Hazard became suddenly attentive as Lucy Attenborough entered the room, shut the door, and leaned against it.

"Should I get out," he asked softly, his eyes meeting hers, "or do you want to get in?"

"I can't, Jon… my clothes… my hair…"

"Take off your clothes, pet. I'll be careful with your hair." His glance held hers in predatory thrall. "Take everything off slowly," he said in a low, sensual rasp. "I'd like that."

She hadn't moved from the door, but her eyes glittered with hidden excitement as she surveyed her lover. Hazard was the most magnificent man she'd ever known, his scandalous eyes lured her with a dangerous attraction, his aquiline face was so beautiful he turned heads. Seated now in the bathtub—naked, bronzed, glistening with droplets of water across his broad-shouldered frame

—he was more of a man than ten of her husbands combined. Arching her back, she held his level dark gaze and felt the smoldering heat linger, then caress her body like licking flame. "How do you do it? How can you make me feel this way?" she asked, breathy, taut, flushing with pleasure.

"Charm of personality," said Hazard with a lazy smile, "together with lucid recall of the last four weeks without a woman," he teased. "Come, Lucy, you're too far away…"

Any woman in town would tumble for him and he knew it. How many had already this trip, she didn't dare wonder. Taking a step closer, she shivered at her urgency. "I never know, Jon," she said with a trembling, ingenuous smile, "whether I want you to rape me or treat me like a virgin bride."

The seductive black eyes, slowly moving in speculative appraisal, stared at her. "Why not both?" Sliding deeper into the steaming water, he paused, almost completely submerged, his midnight hair drifting on the surface of the water and his heavy-lashed eyes slanting upward. "Decide," he said invitingly, "which you want first."

Short moments later, two dark friendly hands reached up, held and steadied the impatient slim, nude body, as the chief justice's wife, dipping first one dainty foot, then the other, joined Hazard in the warm silky water. And he was very careful. That's why women adored him, because he was slow and gentle and… careful. Much later, when every part of Lucy's body was taut with longing, when every inch of her smooth flesh had been bathed in warm sensation, she opened her heated interior to the slippery water and to something else as well. Peaking exquisitely, she whimpered for release.

"Patience, sweet," Hazard murmured. "I haven't started yet." And the soft intensity of the statement silenced her. The floor became alarmingly wet after that, as small charged waves crested over the tub's rim, but the lady's hair, as promised, remained untouched.

An hour later, they helped each other dress and be-fore leaving, kissing him fiercely, Lucy unexpectedly pleaded, "Please, Jon, if you're really going back up mountain tomorrow… once more?"

He hesitated.

"Don't you want me?"

"I'm only thinking of preserving your clothes from" —his mouth smiled—"the rude savage."

Lucy's lashes came up to reveal heated desire. "Meaning you?" said the young matron in a hushed voice.