Heart of the West (57 page)

He exhaled a long breath through his teeth. "Hannah..."

"Did you think you could go on fighting it and hiding it forever?"

She felt him swallow hard. She looked up at his face. A muscle bunched and hollowed in his cheek. Her hand stroked the length of his neck, up and down. His flesh was so cold and the muscles cording his throat were so tense it was like touching a marble statue.

"Oh, Rafferty... I usually ain't one for handing out advice to the lovelorn, not when my own heart's been broken so many times it leaks like a rotten bucket." Her hands fell to the lapels of his coat, and she gave him a little shake. "But for once I'm going to tell you what you better do. First, you go on and keep Gus from getting himself killed out there on the plains this winter. Then you bring him back to her, and you leave. You leave before the day comes when your feelings get the better of you and you do to her for real what so far you've only done to her in your dreams. You leave before Gus finds out that the woman he loves is in love with you, before he tries to kill you for it so that you wind up killin' him, your own brother." She shook him again. "Leave the RainDance, Rafferty. Before you go and break all our hearts, including your own."

A trace of sad tenderness eased the hard lines around his mouth. "Wise, Hannah..." He drew her back into him, his hand pressing her head deep into the curve of his neck. He stroked her hair, his fingers tightening in it a moment, then letting go. "We had us a time, didn't we, darlin'?"

Her heartbeat seemed to fill her throat. She nodded, her chin scraping against the rough black wool of his collar. "Yeah... we did have us a time."

Gus came pounding down the stairs and slapped his fist against the beaded curtain. "Let's go, brother," he called out, and slammed out the door.

Hannah and Zach broke apart, both looking a little bright-eyed. "You want to go on up and tell her good-bye?" she said. "Gus won't think anything of it."

He stood still, his hands hanging loose at his sides. He was holding his head stiff, so he wouldn't even look toward the stairs, and she had never loved him more than she did in that one moment. "If I saw her now," he said, "I wouldn't be able to leave her. Not even for Gus."

Drew Scully came to claim her one morning a month later.

He came when she was in her front parlor, watering her ferns. When Clementine, feeling stronger, had gone for a walk along the river. Hannah saw him out her window, leaning against her fence as he'd been doing the day she and Rafferty had said their good-byes. Only this time he didn't walk off down the road to his job at the mine.

This time he opened her front gate and walked down her path, coming for her. The watering can fell from her fingers with a loud clatter. Water splashed the hem of her poppy-red silk skirt and left a wet stain on her tree of life carpet.

The winter sun was out in all its glory, for a change. It poured through the stained-glass fanlight over the door so that the long shadow he cast on her oiled pine floor was striated with tiny rainbows of red, yellow, blue, and green. He pulled aside the beaded curtain and took a step into the room, and her heart thumped unevenly and every nerve in her body hummed taut.

His face was like a hawk's, stark and sharp, predatory. There was something intensely, dangerously sexual in his eyes.

He looked on the verge of losing control, and she suspected that this wasn't something he often permitted himself to do. She wondered what would happen if he did. She felt a reckless urge to find out, to make him break his own rules.

She watched his mouth move as he spoke and wondered what it would be like to kiss it. "There's talk all around town," he said, "that your lover's left you for the winter, that maybe he's left you for good."

She tossed the hair out of her eyes and willed the breathlessness from her voice. "That's nothing to do with you, Mr. Scully, and I'll thank you to get yourself on out of here this very minute before I—"

"He's left, Mrs. Yorke, and I'm claiming you." His voice was guttural with the hunger she saw on his face. He took a step and she crossed her arms over her breast as if she could still the wild thrusting of her heart. "I'm not waiting until you've decided you no longer love him," he went on as he came toward her. She shuddered as he touched her face, and again as he spread his fingers over her cheek, while his mouth hovered against her lips. And then shuddered once more as the realization slammed into her, winding her, that this man, this
boy,
could own her as no one else ever had. "I want you now, Hannah Yorke, while you can still taste him on your lips. That way, when you come, I'll know it's me you're coming for and not some memory of him."

And then he was kissing her.

He kissed her as if he were starved, sucking on her mouth, drawing the life out of her. He slanted his head so that his lips could cover hers more fully, and he kissed her deeper, slower now, yet hot, demanding. His breath tasted of soda tooth powder. It seemed a strange and sweetly human thing in the midst of all the raw passion pouring out of his mouth.

His lips rubbed hard against hers, pushing them open. She moaned deep in her throat and gave herself up to him, and she moaned again as he stroked her mouth with his tongue, stroking, stroking, stroking, a graphic promise of what was to come. Her breath caught as he tugged her head back and slammed his body into hers.

"You're mine now," he grated. The words slurred as his tongue moved around hers while he spoke.

"Yes," she whispered, but that one word had the shattering force of a scream. To want and be wanted like this.

And she wanted him. Oh, how she wanted him. She gripped his coat, clinging to him, her mouth seeking his, taking, devouring. They rammed into the wall, then staggered blindly into the piecrust table. Her mouth still locked with his, she fumbled behind her, her fingers clutching the Arab scarf that covered the table, pulling it down with her as they fell to the floor. The bronze dragon candlestick went flying with a loud clatter into the nickel parlor stove. The plaster bust was saved from shattering by the thick grizzly bear rug. A mother-of-pearl trinket case clunked her on the head, but she barely felt it.

She pulled at his clothes. He tore his mouth from hers long enough to rip off his coat and shirt and send them flying across the room. She ran her hands over his chest and felt the savage drumbeat of his heart. His flesh was hot, slick with the sweat of desire.

She looked up into his hungry, steel-hard eyes. She kissed the rigid muscles along his jaw, tracing her tongue over the hard line of his mouth. There was a wildness in her, a greed and violence that staggered her. She could hear her own blood roaring in her head, her breath coming fast and uneven.

"Take me," she said, the words coming out of her on sharp, hot gusts of breath. "Take me now..."

He ripped open the front of her poppy-red silk dress and pulled down her corset and camisole, baring her breasts. His head fell forward, his hair brushing her neck as he drew her nipple into his mouth, sucked at it hard, greedily, and she cried out, entangling her fingers in his hair, wrapping her legs around his hips, trying to draw him inside her now, now, now... He reared back and yanked at the buttons on his trousers, pushing them down over his hips. His face was hard, his whole body shaking. She laughed and scraped her nails over the taut plane of his belly, and the muscles spasmed and his penis jerked against her thigh... inside her now. And she cried out, a long, keening wail as he drove into her. She arched her back, rearing up to meet his thrusts, tossing her head back and forth, whipping his face with her hair, digging her fists into the thick grizzly fur of the rug, riding him, riding it, riding the hunger and the need and the longing and the soaring, shattering peaks of pleasure that ripped through her again and again and again, now, now, now.

And as he sank down into her, she heard him say the tender words. She didn't believe them; she was much too wise for that. But they rang sweet in her ears nonetheless.

"I love you, Hannah Yorke," he said.

CHAPTER 24

Sleet spit against the glass, and the wind gusted down the chimney, fanning smoke into the room. The norther was blowing in from the mountains in wild counterpoint to the soft murmur of the women's voices coming from the bed.

Jealousy twinged in Hannah's breast as she looked at the heads, one ash fair and the other prairie dog brown, that were bent over an Altman and Stern catalog. She hated herself for minding that Clementine and Saphronie had become such close friends lately. They had both lost a child, after all. Her own hurt she had never shared with Clementine, for to speak of her lost baby would be to admit to wickedness and weakness and shame, and that she had never dared to do. Yet there was a heaviness within her, a pain in her soul, and she ached sometimes from holding it all inside her.

Hannah took the glass chimney off a big potbellied lamp, struck a match to the wick, replaced the chimney, and adjusted the screw. A soft yellow light now flooded the storm-darkened corners of the room, shimmering off the crimson silk wallpaper, the gilt mirror, and the heavily lacquered peacock screen. A room right out of a brothel, Hannah thought, minding suddenly that this was so.

She moved restlessly to the window. She looked out, cupping her hand to the pane as a shield against the lamp glare. It was a foul evening and would only get fouler. She went to the fire, pushed a stick deeper into the flames and moved a cheval fire screen with a petit point rose panel closer in to block some of the heat and smoke.

She breathed a guilty sigh of relief when Saphronie took a brass warming pan out from beneath the bedcovers and left the room, and she was left alone at last with Clementine.

"A norther's brewing up outside," she said.

Clementine shifted the catalog to the other side of the bed and patted the mattress in silent invitation. "I always think I'm not going to mind winter, and then it gets here and I find I mind it very much."

The crisp shamrock-green sateen of Hannah's skirts rustled as she sat down next to Clementine. The girl's stomach was monstrous beneath the bedcovers, the baby was due at any time. "Montana winters do try a woman's soul," Hannah said. "But I reckon no matter how hard the winter, spring always comes."

"I'll never forget my first Montana winter, when Charlie was born..." The eyes Clementine turned to her were like deep, dark seas, spilling over with grief. She pressed her hands hard against the bones of her face. "Oh, Hannah, I do so hate myself for all these tears. I couldn't cry for so long, and now I can't stop."

A tight band of misery seemed as if it would crush Hannah's ribs. Her eyes felt sore and raw, as if the tears were hers. She hesitated a moment, then leaned over and wrapped her arms around the younger woman, hugging her close. She breathed in a deep sigh that was soft with the smell of rose toilet soap.

"I should have died in his place," Clementine said, her voice muffled by Hannah's shoulder. "It should have been me."

Hannah stroked her back. "No, no... Oh, Lord, honey, there is no pain like losing a child. It is an agony no woman should ever have to endure."

"Yet you have endured it."

Hannah stiffened and jerked away, forcing out a laugh that sounded empty even to her own ears. "Land, Clementine, whatever made you think such a thing? I never... I..."

The words piled up in her throat, getting caught on a heavy, choking knot of fear and shame. She'd always known this day would come. Funny how she'd just been congratulating herself on having kept the secret for so long, and here it was out. But then a woman's sins always caught up with her. No matter how far or how fast she ran, they were always there waiting for her just around the next bend in the road.

She squared her shoulders and lifted her head, blinking hard against the betraying tears that filled her eyes. "How... how did you hear of it? The only one who knows is Shiloh, and I don't reckon he would tell you."

Clementine was looking at her with that wide-open gaze of hers that could see so much. "Shiloh didn't tell me. I guessed from some things you've said over the years. And from knowing you so well."

Hannah felt her whole body flush. She forced herself to meet those cool, fine eyes, those
lady's
eyes, but inside she was dying. She had lost men before and gotten over it. But she didn't think she could bear losing Clementine. "He didn't die," she said.

"Oh, but I thought..."

Those lady's eyes had narrowed just a little, and Hannah felt herself die some more. "I lost my boy, my baby, but not to death." Hannah drew in a deep breath and prepared to let it out along with everything else. "To begin with, I wasn't married when I had him."

Clementine stirred. She patted Hannah's arm. "I know. You told me once a long time ago that you'd never had a husband."

Hannah's gaze fell to the hands she had clutched in her lap. She picked at a loose thread in the skirt, a flaw in the weave of the sateen. "I guess if I thought you knew the truth about me, you wouldn't want to be my friend no more."

Clementine gripped Hannah's hands and brought them up to her breast. "Oh, Hannah, don't you see? You are
my
friend. You can't know what that means to me—to have a friend. I don't care how many men you've lain with for money or for love, you are and will forever be as dear to me as the sister I never had."

Hannah emitted a watery little gulp of a laugh. "I never had a sister either. I never had much of anything in that Kentucky coal-mining town I grew up in. Why, Daddy used to joke that we were so poor, if we didn't skip eating twice a week, we'd starve to death." She laughed again and was rewarded with a smile.

"I don't think my father ever made a joke in his life," Clementine said.

"Well, we might have been poor as Job's turkey, but we had us some magical times." She picked at the loose thread again, her drawl thickening with the memories. "He died in the coal mines when I was ten, Daddy did. Ma and me went to live with her sister, who was married to the baker. So we had plenty to eat after that, but it was never the same. And then the world turned magical again when I met... him. He was the son of the mine owner, just back from a grand tour—that's how he put it, 'my grand tour,' if you can imagine that. I don't think I ever met anyone more high-toned in my entire life, before or since." She sighed softly. "He was a sweet-talking man."

"And he was the father of your baby?"

Shame burned a hot path up Hannah's chest, and she averted her face. The truth was... if she lost her friend by telling the truth, she couldn't bear it. She patted Clementine lightly on the mound of her stomach, forcing a smile. "Hannah Yorke ain't nobody's fool, honey. I was a virgin way back in those days, and I made him ask me to marry him before I spread my legs."

Clementine smiled again, a warm, slow smile, and the warmth of it spread down deep into Hannah's chest. Oh, Lord, it was hard, but it felt good, too, to be talking. She'd never shared herself like this with another woman. Only with men, and then it wasn't a sharing, but more of a giving up of something to them in the hope that she'd get a little something back in return.

"Ma made me a dress—she hocked her wedding ring to buy the lace for it—and my aunt and uncle baked up the fanciest cake you ever did see. I reckon that must've been one of the worst days of my life, waiting at the church for him to show and knowing as the minutes ticked by that I was just another fool in the long line of fools that men have made out of women. The bounder had left town on the morning train, and he left me with a bun in the oven."

Clementine took Hannah's hand, their fingers intertwining like the strands of a rope.

"Well, I sure enough couldn't bring that sort of shame on my ma, so I ran off to the big city, to Franklin. I got me a job selling gloves in a dry goods emporium until I started to show. Then I lost the job and my room at the boardinghouse. And when I got good and cold and hungry and scared, another sweet-talking man came along and took me up to this big fancy white house, and he said all my worries were gonna be over."

Clementine gripped her fingers harder, and Hannah took a strange sort of solace from the strength of them.

"I suppose you can guess what kinda house it was and what he wanted from me in return for putting a roof over my head and food in my belly. My boy was born in a brothel without a daddy to give him a name. And that was when I committed the worst sin of my whole misbegotten life." She stopped, unable to go on, the horror of it almost choking her. "I sold him."

"Oh, Hannah..." Clementine pulled Hannah's hand onto her lap, holding it hard against her pregnant belly.

"The midwife who'd cared for me—she brought a man to see me. He owned a bank or something. He told me how there was a law in Kentucky against keeping children under the age of ten in a brothel, and how he could give my baby a good home, he and his wife. Schooling and warm clothes to wear and plenty to eat. He just kept talking and talking at me, and I was so weak and tired and scared, worried, you know, about how I was gonna provide for him. Oh, Lord, Clementine, I was just so scared..."

Clementine stroked the back of Hannah's hand over and over. "Of course you were. You could have left with him, but what kind of work would you have found? Look at Saphronie. And if you'd stayed in that house, they would have taken him from you anyway."

"But I
sold
him. That banker offered me a hundred dollars and I took it."

"You gave him up into a good life, Hannah."

"You mean because he grew up with shoes on his feet and a full belly, and not ever knowing that he's a bastard and his ma was a whore?" Scalding tears welled up in Hannah's eyes. "But I loved him so much and I would have made him a good mother. I know I would have. I should have found a way. Somehow I should have found a way..."

"You would have made him a wonderful mother," Clementine said fiercely. "The best in the world."

A heavy silence filled the room. Then Hannah shrugged and sniffled, rubbing at her eyes. She wanted to get the rest of it over with now, so she talked fast, punctuating the words with brittle, bright laughter to chase away the pain.

"Anyways, I really didn't mind working in that brothel after a while. I guess I've always liked a good time, and I had pretty clothes to wear and plenty to eat. Why, I could make sixty dollars on a good evening. And on Sundays we'd all go riding out in a black brougham, dressed in our finest, and I'd feel like a queen.

"But one day another sweet-talking man came along, and I ran off with him and joined up with this dime show that he was manager of. You ever seen a dime show? I didn't think so. It's like a cheap sort of circus, with freaks and acrobats and song-and-dance numbers. We went to places too rube for the big tents. On the rag sheets—those are the handbills that go out— I was listed as the featured attraction. Do you know what a hootchy-kootchy girl is? As long as the men kept laying their money down, I kept taking the veils off. I didn't have to whore, though, not with the boss happy for me to keep his bed warm."

"When I was a little girl I used to dream of running away to join the circus."

Hannah looked at Clementine in astonishment. She couldn't imagine anyone wanting to run away from satin sheets and six-course dinners, from lace tuckers and silver hair combs and all those little luxuries that went along with impeccable manners and a hoity-toity way of talking. Yet Clementine had done the next best thing to joining a circus—she'd run off to Montana with a cowboy.

Hannah waved an airy hand. "Oh, well, I soon tired of the dime-show business, and so I took up with a sweet-talking riverboat gambler. We traveled up and down the Missouri together. He was handsome enough to die for, that man, and the biggest scoundrel ever born to torment women." A sad smile pulled at her mouth. "Honey, never trust a man who tells you he loves you and can look you in the eye whilst he's sayin' it."

"They do sometimes lie," Clementine said. "Even when they don't mean to."

Hannah's eyes widened again and a startled laugh burst out of her. "How'd such a genu-ine lady from Boston get to be so smart about men?"

"She grew up," Clementine said simply.

Hannah's smile faded, and she looked away. "Yeah, well, it takes some of us a good long while to do that."

Oh, Lord, but hadn't the world seemed wonderful in those days, she thought, traveling up and down the river with love on her mind. So full of the good things—good lovin', good times, and good booze. She had gone so far beyond the line of respectability that she couldn't see it anymore and so she didn't care. She had felt so free, free when other women were fenced in by their corset stays and the strictures of their ladies' societies. She'd developed a taste for freedom in those days, a craving that still tugged at her woman's soul.

But in living free she had discovered the nature of the beast: it had no heart. If you broke freedom open and looked at it too closely, you discovered that it was hollow.

"It was during my riverboat days," Hannah said, "that I wound up with my rose." She flashed a dimpled smile, jumping to her feet. "Look, I'll show you."

She reached beneath her green sateen skirts and pulled off her sheer muslin drawers, then hoisted her skirts and petticoats until they were all bunched up around her waist. She planted her foot on the bed and turned her naked thigh toward Clementine's astonished gaze. The rose tattoo was a stark blue on the paleness of her skin, disappearing into her woman's hair.

Clementine touched her cheeks with her palms. "Oh, my, how..."

"Naughty?"

"How deliciously naughty."

They laughed together as Hannah dropped her skirts and sank back down on the bed. Their hands became linked again as naturally as a hook and button coming together.

"I reckon I thought I was a pretty smart chippy, Clementine—at least in the beginning. And I hornswoggled myself into thinking I was happy. But I had nothing with that gambling man—no gold ring, no babies, no home, and no pride. That's the second thing I'm most ashamed of. I loved that man so much that I forgave him everything he did—his other women, his drinking too much and cheating at cards, his jealous rages whenever he'd imagine me so much as looking at another man. He never hit me, but he beat me up bad on the inside. One day he up and decided he wanted to try his luck at the gaming tables in Deadwood, and that was where he left me. In Deadwood. I woke up one morning and he was gone, and I almost killed myself over that."