Indigo Blue (28 page)

There were no words. Looking up at her, he realized, too late, that it wasn’t in her to manipulate anyone, or to tell a lie. The closest he’d ever heard her come to speaking a falsehood was when she denied being afraid, and that stemmed from stubborn pride rather than an intent to deceive. Jesus, why hadn’t he read that in her eyes? They were as clear as tinted glass and revealed her every thought and feeling.

Is that your wish? Must I? Is that your final word?
He recalled the distressed look on her face this morning when he had asked her to be careful feeding the animals.
I really don’t approve of your feeding that cougar.
He hadn’t forbidden her to do it. That hadn’t been necessary. His disapproval had been enough. Denver Tompkins’s voice came back to haunt him.
A squaw will do whatever her man tells her.

Jake felt as if he might be sick. She had laid herself out like a rug to be walked on, and he had ground her pride into the dirt with the heel of his boot. He released her wrists and sank back in his chair.

“I’m sorry, Indigo. You can put the shirt back on.”

She angled one slender arm across her breasts and bent to retrieve the blouse with a palsied hand. Jake’s gaze snagged on the knife wound that slashed her right forearm. She was nothing like Mary Beth; he’d been a fool to make a comparison.

She clutched the leather to her chest. “If you’re finished, may I go to the bedroom?”

If he was finished? Jake cringed. He felt pretty sure he had done all the damage he could possibly do. He was finished, all right.

THE MOMENT JAKE GAVE INDIGO PERMISSION, she turned and fled the kitchen. When she gained the dark bedroom, her feet dragged to a stop, and she whirled to stare at the shadowy walls, feeling like a trapped animal.
Joking
? She clamped a hand over her mouth and swallowed down the rising panic. He was toying with her; there was no other explanation. Being married to him was going to be worse than her most horrid imaginings.

On rubbery legs, she made it to the bed. She squeezed her eyes closed and forced her mind to go blank. It was either that or scream, and she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. . . .

After he had called himself every dirty name he could think of, Jake pushed to his feet, picked up the lantern, and walked through the house. He found Indigo stretched across the bed, her face pressed into a pillow. After placing the lantern on the bedside table, he sat next to her and put a hand on her back.

“Indigo, please, don’t cry.”

She turned up a stricken but tear-free countenance. “I don’t cry.”

Jake let his gaze wander to the wall. “I owe you an apology. I never meant to ridicule you. I thought—well, I misunderstood, and I’m sorry.”

His delivery sounded so damned stiff and formal and so totally unlike how he felt that he wanted to groan. He dragged his gaze back to her. She had her face pressed into the pillow again. Tendrils of tawny hair had escaped her braid and lay like molten threads of copper against her silken nape.

“It’s all right,” she said in a muffled voice.

It wasn’t all right. She was terribly upset, and he had been deliberately goading her to get a reaction, never dreaming that her upbringing forbade her to retaliate. The responsibility that placed upon him was frightening. He had been handed authoritarian rule over her life? Half the time he didn’t even understand the girl.

“I acted like an ass, and it isn’t all right.” He skimmed his fingertips up the leather of her blouse and toyed lightly with the curls that wisped so temptingly at her nape. “You see, I thought—”

He felt her shrink from his touch and realized how she resented it. He sighed and moved his hand. He didn’t blame her.

Bracing an arm behind him, he leaned back so he could see the side of her face. “Indigo, would you look at me?”

She turned her head and fastened injured blue eyes on him.

“I don’t deserve it, but could you find it in your heart to forgive me? And try to forget I did something so despicable?”

Her expression said more clearly than words that she didn’t see one good reason why she should. Jake had to accept that.

“I know it’s no excuse, but I have a sister—Mary Beth. You remind me a lot of her—not in looks, but in temperament. And she . . .”

Looking down into those gigantic spheres of shimmering blue, Jake kept talking, scarcely hearing what he said, hoping and praying that he could make her understand if he told her about his sister and their famous battles of will. When he finally fell silent, some of the hurt had been erased from her face.

“She truly broke all the dishes? What did you do?”

Jake smoothed a lock of hair from her cheek. “I hid the Chinese vase and yelled at her to stop. What else could I do?”

“What do you eat on at your house now?”

Jake’s stomach clenched. He had momentarily forgotten that he was supposed to be a man of limited means. Thank God she didn’t seem to realize how expensive a Chinese vase could be.

“We had to buy more dishes. Anyway, back to my reason for telling you about her. When Mary Beth wants something, she’ll do almost anything to make me change my mind, including trickery, if she can pull it off. Sometimes, she won’t speak to me for days at a time, and it drives me wild. I thought—when you—”

“You thought I was doing the same thing,” she finished.

Jake nodded, still feeling a little sick when he remembered the look on her face in the kitchen. “When I asked you to undress, I never dreamed you’d actually do it. I figured you’d turn tail and run.”

“Where would I go?” she asked in a hollow little voice.

The question caught at Jake’s heart. She had nowhere to go, he realized. Wolf’s Landing was the only world she knew. “I’ll never ask something like that of you again,” he promised.

“To undress, you mean?”

He hated to dash the flare of hope he saw in her eyes. “I won’t ask you to humiliate yourself,” he amended. “Do you forgive me?”

Her eyes softened to a cloudy blue. “Yes, I forgive you for making me take off my blouse.”

He heard a conditional note at the tail of that sentence and smiled. “But you don’t forgive me for making you stay at home.”

She made no reply, which was eloquent in itself. Jake looked away. “I wish I could change my mind, Indigo, but I can’t. I’m sorry my decision has made you so unhappy and angry.”

“I don’t feel angry now.” Her eyes closed. “Just empty.”

God, he felt like such a bastard. The most awful part of it was, he really hadn’t meant to be. He ached to gather her into his arms, to soothe her. But after their set-to in the kitchen, he didn’t want to do anything she might misconstrue.

He sat up, scooted backward on the bed, and braced his spine against the headboard. Patting the pillow beside him, he said, “Why don’t you come over here and sit beside me. Maybe if we talk, we can come up with some solutions so you’ll feel a little less empty, hm?”

She pushed up on her elbows and eyed the spot next to him.

“Come on,” he urged gently. “I promise not to bite.”

Looking none too enthusiastic, she rose to her knees and came forward. As she settled herself beside him, Jake draped an arm around her shoulders. The moment he touched her, he felt the trembling rigidity of her body, and he realized the very last thing she wanted was to be close to him.

An awful suspicion slipped into his mind.
Is that your wish?
Tucking in his chin, he regarded her bent head. He’d be wise to find out exactly where he stood, he decided, before he dug himself in any deeper.

Lightly touching a wispy curl at her temple, he said, “You know, I love your hair in a braid. But I think I like it best when you wear it down.”

She lifted her hands and began plucking hairpins. With an ache in his throat, Jake watched the tawny rope of braid loosen as she combed her fingers through it. Silken tresses spilled onto his arm, then over onto his lap. He hated himself for what he was about to do. But, dammit, he had to know.

“I didn’t mean for you to take it down right now, Indigo.”

She dragged her hair back from her eyes to regard him. Never more than in that moment had Jake noticed the blend of both her parents’ features, her mother’s fragile beauty, her father’s proud regality, all molded together to create a face as striking as it was lovely. Indigo, a puzzling combination of pride and humility, strength and vulnerability. He’d never understand her.

Jake’s heart caught at the confusion he read in her expression. Then she averted her face and began gathering her hair to rebraid it. She was going to think he had a serious problem making up his mind, but at least he had his answer.

He leaned his head against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “Now that you’ve taken it down, Indigo, just leave it,” he said in a gravelly voice.

From the corner of his eye, he saw her lay the hairpins aside and settle her small hands on her lap. Silence. For the moment, Jake welcomed it. The magnitude of what he had just discovered nearly overwhelmed him. God, no wonder she had rebelled against marriage. Since the first day he had known her, three things about her had stood out, her wild streak, her fierce pride, and her fidelity to her father’s beliefs. Now, as she saw it, she had become a white man’s chattel.

Jake thought back, trying to recall those times when he had seen Hunter issue an order. The only times Jake had witnessed had occurred last night, the first a subtle lifting of his hand to silence his wife when she protested Indigo’s marriage, the second a stern denouncement when Indigo dared to protest the marriage herself.
Do you defy me, Indigo?
Jake closed his eyes as he recalled her quavery response.
No, my father, I will never defy you.

Now the ultimate power Hunter had wielded over his daughter had been handed to Jake.

Slowly, the reality of it sliced through the fog of revulsion in Jake’s mind. Not that he didn’t believe the male head of a household should have authority. He did. It just nauseated him to think that his every wish had become Indigo’s command. If he continued to ask, how long would she sit quietly beside him, braiding and unbraiding her hair? Jake had the sinking feeling that she’d do it all night. Whether or not it made sense didn’t seem to play into it.

He wasn’t cut from the right kind of cloth to live up to this. It frightened the hell out of him to think Indigo might take everything he said literally and obediently do it. In a fit of anger, he might tell her to go stick her head in the horse trough or to go drown herself in the creek. Where Jake came from, people said things like that. He said things like that. Mary Beth’s reaction was to poke out her tongue or thumb her nose. Jake couldn’t count the times he had threatened to strangle her. Indigo might take a threat like that seriously.

Jake had the horrible urge to laugh. The entire situation was incongruous when he thought about it. In a white household where authority was often questioned, there was no doubt who the boss was because, in varying degrees, he blustered, threatened, and sometimes resorted to physical force to see his orders carried out. In Hunter’s household, where his authority was absolute, no one could tell who ruled whom because Hunter seldom felt a need to assert himself.

Jake supposed it was a good way to live. Everyone in Hunter’s home seemed happy, more so than most. The only problem was, he wasn’t at all certain he could walk in his father- in-law’s footsteps. He had never felt a need to weigh his every word before he spoke. No one had ever kowtowed to him, carrying out his smallest wish. Having that kind of power over someone was frightening.

It was also tempting.

For the first time in his life, Jake came face-to-face with a dark side of his nature. What man hadn’t harbored secret yearnings at least once to have a lovely dream creature at his beck and call, part slave, part seductress, who would satisfy his every whim? In most instances, the fantasy was just that and perfectly harmless. Only for Jake it had become a reality.

Within the circle of his arm sat a beautiful, sweet, innocent girl who would do anything he told her. Even now, she sat quietly, waiting for him to speak. Seductive images slipped unbidden into his mind of Indigo kneeling over him, gloriously naked, her hair a coppery curtain around his face as she bent to let him suckle her breasts.

Jake slid his hand from where it rested on her shoulder until he found the silken slope of her neck. Absently rubbing his knuckles along the column of her throat, he envisioned her lying before him, lifting her hips and opening herself so he could taste the honeyed moistness of her. His pulse quickened, and he pressed a fingertip against the underside of her fragile jaw to raise her face to his.

With her dusky lips inches from his own, her breath so warm and sweet, Jake didn’t know for a moment if he could resist kissing her. She was his. Not even God would condemn him. He not only didn’t have to wait, but he could demand anything he wanted from her.

That was a potent and heady thought.
Is that your wish?
God help him, he wouldn’t be human if he weren’t tempted. He swallowed and shoved the image away. Maybe to be tempted was human enough, but if he carried through on it, he’d be the world’s most heartless bastard.

Her eyes shimmered up at him, their usual milk-glass blue darkened to silver by what he could only guess was fear. All of this might be a revelation to him, he realized, but not to Indigo. She had entered into this marriage knowing she would be thrust into a lifetime of servitude. As early as last night, she probably had considered the possibilities and accepted that her fate was entirely up to him. Was it any wonder she leaped when he got close to her?

Jake felt as if someone was squeezing his throat. “We were going to talk about ways to make you feel a little less empty.”

“The feeling will pass,” she replied softly. “In time I will grow accustomed to things as they are.”