Squire's Quest (28 page)

Why on earth would they come sniffing around with Merlin in the cabin?

She was shivering when she finally stopped listening, not having heard anything
suspicious since the receding footsteps. Her feet were like two chunks of ice. She scurried back
to bed, less afraid now the door was securely barred.

"Cal?" Merlin reached for her when she snuggled down beside him.

"Go to sleep."

His arm curved around her, pulled her tight against him. "I've got a better idea."

"You're dreaming," she said again, feeling desperate. She could feel his thing, hard
against her thigh. "Go back to sleep."

But she let him pull her close. His arms around her made her feel safe.

"You've been up a while. Why?"

"I thought I heard something. Probably a coyote sniffing around."

"Huh. Maybe." He rose onto one elbow. "I want you so doggone bad," he
whispered.

"It would be wrong," she whispered back. "Sinful."

"That's preacher talk. There's nothing sinful about pleasure, as long as nobody gets hurt
by it."

Before she could argue--or even make up her mind if she wanted to--he'd covered her
mouth with his.

The last time he'd kissed her, she'd been shocked and a little bit scared. It had felt so
good, and all she could think of was Mrs. Flynn's warnings about how easy it was for a good girl
to be seduced by a perfidious man.

She knew exactly what Merlin had in his mind, and it still scared her. But it tempted her.
too. Oh, how it tempted her.

He was a good man, not at all perfidious, and he had promised not to take her virginity.
Not unless she asked, anyway.

I won't ask, so maybe it's all right.

She opened her lips to his probing tongue.

The sound he made was like a cat's purr, filled with satisfaction and delight and
encouragement. It made her want to stroke him, just as she would a cat. Unable to resist, she slid
her hands across his shoulders, up into his hair, loose tonight and silky.

He slipped one hand between them and cupped her breast. His fingers plucked at her
nipple, sending tremors through her, making her breath hitch. Nothing had ever felt quite so...so
wonderful.

A tiny voice far back in her mind said,
Anything feels that good has to be
sinful
.

She liked Merlin's notion better.

He spread his hand across her chest, held it there for a moment, right over her heart. She
knew he could feel it tripping wildly, as if she'd been running. She realized she'd been holding
her breath, and let it go with a gusty exhalation.

"Scared?" His voice was low, just above a whisper, and deep, pitched much lower than
usual. His knee pushed between her legs, but her nightgown held it from going far.

"No."

The next thing she knew his hand was hot on her thigh. She stiffened. "Yes." It came out
a long hiss as she pulled air between clenched teeth.

"Don't be. I keep my promises." Now his hand was between her thighs.

Instinctively she clenched them together, trapping his fingers. "Maybe."

"Maybe? Maybe what?" He wiggled his fingers but didn't try to force her legs open.

"Maybe I...should be...scared. "

"Not as long as you keep your legs together." He chuckled, but she heard strain in his
voice. "That's what Ma told my sisters, anyhow."

For some reason his words made her relax. "Did they?"

"You'll have to ask them. That's not something a man wants to know about his sisters."
He pulled his hand from under her gown, gently smoothed it over her legs, and lifted the other
hand from her chest. "I reckon this isn't such a good idea. If I don't stop now, I'll break my
promise sure."

This was nothing like what she'd been warned against. "You're stopping?" This time she
was the one to rear up on an elbow. Even though all she could see was the pale oval of his face,
she glared down at him.

Her body thrummed. There was an ache below her belly one she'd only noticed when he
took his hands away, but she knew it had been there since he kissed her. She'd just been too
nervous to pay attention.

"Merlin?"

His eye was closed.

"Did you do this on purpose? Make me feel all... All stirred up. Hungry?"

"Sweetheart, you don't know what stirred-up is. When you let go my hand, I came so
close--" He rolled away from her.

"So close? To what?"

"To buryin' myself to the hilt in your sweet heat." He inhaled sharply. "Oh, hell."

She felt his body jerk once, twice, heard him groan.

After a minute, he said, "Can you reach my clothes? I need my kerchief."

He'd set a chair beside the bed and his clothing was hung on the back. She fumbled,
pulled his bandanna from where he'd tucked it into a shirt pocket. "Here you are."

He took it without turning over.

Mystified, she lay back down. He was fussing, but she didn't know with what. He hadn't
blown his nose. Finally curiosity got the best of her. "What are you doing? What
happened?"

"I protected your virtue," he said, and didn't sound too happy about it.

* * * *

Come morning Merlin managed to creep out of bed without waking Cal. Or if she was
awake, she was shamming sleep.
Probably embarrassed.
He sure was.

What the dickens had come over him, grabbing her like he had? He'd given a promise
and meant to keep it, no matter how troublesome it was.

Troublesome it had been, and darned uncomfortable. He'd slept the rest of the night in a
wet spot.

"The Army's on its way," Murphy said when he entered the barn a while later. He held a
tin cup, its contents steaming. "They're sending troopers over to help clear the drifts so we can
open the barn doors."

"Good. Any chance they'll help us dig out those wagons too?" He'd taken a look this
morning at the makeshift drift fence when he'd gone out to fill the first tub with snow. Some of
the drifts extended ten or twelve feet into the corral, almost entirely burying the fence. Left
alone, pretty soon they'd be frozen hard enough the mules could walk right across. "I don't
hanker to spend the next week with a shovel in my hands."

"I'll ask." Backing up to the forge, Murphy hunched his shoulders. "I'd hoped it would
warm up now the wind's dropped. Don't look like it's going to, though."

"It's clouding over. I reckon it won't get any colder, anyhow." Merlin gave the bellows
handle a couple of pulls. "We need a coal delivery, if we're going to keep the forge going. How
likely is it we'll get one today?"

"If Haskins knows the road's passable, he'll get a wagon out here. I'll send Jeb in this
morning."

"Do you know for sure it's passable?"

Murphy set his empty cup down and picked up a pitchfork. "Likely it's only drifted at
the railroad embankment. Jeb can help Haskins' boy dig through the worst of the drifts."

The snow in the tub was almost all melted. Merlin reached for the shovel, but paused
and said, "Were any of the men out and about in the night?"

Murphy looked at him curiously. "In the night? Before midnight?"

"No, more like two, three in the morning. I'm not sure of the time, but it was late." He
waited, unmoving, while Murphy cogitated.

At last he said, "Ollie and Nance came in about eleven-thirty. The fools rode in to town,
and damn near froze doing it. Nobody else was out, not that I know of, anyhow. Why?"

"Somebody was. They poked around the cabin, tried the shutters and the door. Left
tracks all 'round the barn, too, but I didn't see any sign they came inside."

Murphy shrugged. "Some bum lookin' for a warm bed, I'll bet. We're not all that far
from the tracks."

Shaking his head, Merlin swung the shovel onto his shoulder. "We're a ways from town.
It doesn't seem likely a man in search of somewhere to hole up in would come out here, where
there's nothing much but warehouses and barns and corrals." He went to the door, but turned
before going through it. "Tell the men to keep their eyes and ears open, will you? I've got a bad
feeling."

* * * *

Callie ran out of tasks before noon, even though she'd cleaned every shelf, dusted the
top of every can, and washed the inside of the cabin's two windows. The only uncleaned thing in
the cabin was the loft, and she was considering climbing up there when Merlin entered, stomping
snow from his boots.

"How big are your father's feet?"

She could only gape.

"Shut your mouth before you catch a fly." He sat and began unlacing a boot. "Does he
have big feet? Wide or narrow?"

"Why?"

He began on the second boot. "Just answer me, will you?"

"Pa's got really small feet, for a tall man. I don't think they're as big as mine, but they're
wider." Her feet were a source of embarrassment, being long and narrow. "Why?"

Before he answered, he set both boots close to the hearth and stood with his back to the
fire, hands behind him. "Whoever was creeping around here last night had big feet, a couple of
inches longer than mine."

"Why'd you ask about my father's feet?"

"Just a notion. Do you think he might come back, looking for you?"

Her belly clenched. "I hope not," she said. It came out a whisper. She tried to find
enough spit to moisten her suddenly dry mouth. "I hope I never see him again."

Almost before she'd closed her mouth, she was wrapped in his arms. He rocked her, side
to side, back and forth. As he moved, he said, close to her ear, "He won't get another chance to
abandon you, Cal. Not while I'm between you and him."

Unable to speak, she nodded, rubbing her nose against the scratchy wool of his shirt. He
smelled of mule and sweat. And safety.

After a while he stopped rocking her. "All right?"

"I think so. Oh, Merlin, he scares me." She hadn't admitted, even to herself, how
frightened she was of her Pa. A couple of times, when he'd hit her, she'd seen the light of
madness in his eyes, as if he was at the edge of control. The last time, when she'd admitted
leaving the Ogden depot in search of food, he'd knocked her down. As she lay on the platform,
stunned, he had loomed over her with both fists clenched, panting. For a long time she'd cowered
there, knowing he was ready to hit her again...and again.

"There's something wrong with him. I think he's crazy." She clung to him when he
moved to release her. "If he finds me I think he'll kill me, sooner or later."

His hands were like iron cuffs on her upper arms as he pushed her away and guided her
to a chair. "Sit. We're gonna talk about this." He pulled the other chair around so it faced her.
Once she was seated, he dropped into it. "You said he'd hit you a few times. Sounds to me like it
was more than a few times and more than just a simple hit. What really happened, Cal?"

Staring at him, trying to see past the brown of his one eye into his thoughts, she sought
the right words.

"Cal? I'm waiting."

"I told you he sent me to Mrs. Flynn when I'd been in Virginia City a little more than a
week?"

His nod told her to get on with it.

"I only saw him once or twice a year while I was with Mrs. Flynn, and he was always
cranky and short of temper. A couple of times he took me out walking, as if he wanted to make
sure she didn't hear what he said. He never said anything that mattered, though. Just how was I
getting along, and was I learning to cook, and did I have any money."

Merlin's voice had a dangerous edge to it when he said, "He took your money? How
much?"

"Not much at first, but the last time he took everything I'd saved, nearly forty dollars.
Mrs. Flynn gave me a dollar a month for spending money when I first started, and I never spent
it all. After three years she started paying me." At the memory, she had to smile. "A dollar a
week. I felt rich."

"She was cheating you, if you cooked like you do now."

"I didn't think so. Besides, she was giving me board and room and paying for my
clothes."

"Like that ugly gray dress? Bet it cost her a fortune."

"Don't you bad-mouth her. Mrs. Flynn was like a mother to me."

His hands went up, as if to hold her off. "Fine. But it is an ugly dress."

"I outgrew all my clothes summer before last. Mrs. Flynn said I was too old to be
growing, but I did, nearly three inches up and too much around." The around had mostly been
bosom and hips, as she'd gone from stringbean to hourglass, and she'd hated it. The men in town
had taken far too much notice of her, even after summer ended and she started wearing her
too-big wool coat whenever she went out.

"She said she'd buy me all new when she was sure I stopped growing. But Pa
came."

"Let's talk about your pa some more. Why'd he suddenly decide he wanted you with
him? Seems to me he'd gone along fine without you."

"He said I was all grown up and could be useful to him." What she didn't say was that
she'd been afraid of the use he might put her to, given the gossip she'd heard about him. "When I
asked him how, he--"

After waiting a while for her to go on, Merlin said, "He hit you?"

"Uh-huh." And shamed she was to admit it. If she'd only kept her tongue between her
teeth. She'd learned better than to question Pa even before he'd left home. So had Ma.

He leaned back and stared at her with one narrowed eye. She squirmed, waiting for him
to speak again, but habit kept her silent.

"I think your pa wants you back. Whatever use he has for you, I think he's ready."

"Then you think last night--"

"I think he sent someone to see if you were here. All he'd have to do is ask in town and
pretty soon he'd learn you'd moved out here. We made no secret of it."

A ball of ice seemed to grow in her belly. "No," she whispered. "No, I won't go back
with him. I can't."

"No, you won't. One way or another, Cal, I promise you won't go back to your
father."

He could tell she had no real idea of the danger she was in. "There's only one thing to
do."