The Barefoot Bride (11 page)

The trip to Chickadee's special place took two hours, even on horseback. But when they arrived their efforts were amply rewarded. Chickadee's hideaway was truly paradise. As Saxon gazed out at the rich, turquoise-green beauty of the Blue Ridge, he suspected he could touch the sky, it was so close. The cool air filled him with an unfamiliar euphoria as if it were laden with some magical property.

Chickadee saw his pleasure. "Ain't it purty?"

"I never knew such beauty existed. Why don't you live up here instead of down in your little cove?"

She sighed. "We're a-trespassin'. The man who owns this spot's got his ass on his shoulders. Lareny Lester's his name. He lives in Lenoir. Techous is what he is."

"Techous?"

"He gits riled easy and quick."

Saxon went to sit on a flat rock. "What does he do with this land?"

"Nothin' as fur as I noticed." She sat beside him. "Reckon he jist likes a-ownin' it. But he don't even let folks up here. I'm a-tellin' you, Saxon, he's so tight with ever'thang he's got, when he grins his pecker skins back."

Saxon threw his head back and laughed, wondering if Chickadee would describe Araminta as eloquently.

"One time me and Khan come up here, and ole Lareny was already here? Well, he seed us and near about failed offen the mountain a-trying' to chase us away. And I mean to tell you, he was a-blastin' away somethin' fierce with that ole shootin'-arn o' his. Tole us iffen he ever seed us up here agin, he was gwine have us throwed in jail."

"Yet you and Khan come up here anyway."

"Cain't stay away. I love this place, Saxon. In the winter I like to brang my sled up here an' slide down the hills."

Saxon imagined the hills covered with snow. He thought of his boyhood friend, Max, back in Boston, and remembered all the times they'd practiced sledding together, backwards, standing up, sideways, in any position they could possibly invent.

Sideways had always been the most difficult, but they'd never stopped trying. "Sideways."

"Sideways?" Chickadee repeated.

"Yes. Sledding sideways. My friend and I... A long time ago."

When he didn't elaborate, Chickadee continued with her own story. "I feel good when I come here. Reckon iffen I
did
have any money, I'd use it to try and buy this place from Lareny. Not that he'd sell it, but I'd try. And iffen it was mine, I'd build mysef a cabin and live here till the day I died. Ever'body's got dreams, y'know. That's mine."

When they finished their picnic, Saxon lay back and folded his arms under his head, unaware he was scowling.

"You got that troubled look on yore face agin. I brung you up here to git some heartease."

Saxon almost laughed. He'd been thinking about Araminta. One thought of her erased anything remotely related to heartease. "Sorry. I guess I'm just lost in thought."

She mistook the emotion in his voice for homesickness. "You must be a-missin' Desdemona. But cain't she git along withouten you? She's got yore granny thar, don't she?"

"Yes," he snapped.
But Grandmother hates her grandchildren,
he explained silently. Familiar, bitter feelings erupted inside him as the years fell away and he was a little boy again. His heart pounded with the pain that would never go away.

He forced a smile, took one of Chickadee's curls, and brushed it across his nose. It smelled of fresh air, of woods and mountains, so very unlike those potent, cloying perfumes the Boston ladies wore.

Its soothing scent imperceptibly calmed his hammering heart.

But Chickadee saw the way the stormy midnight blue of his eyes faded to soft, peaceful azure. She wondered about that odd fear and pain she sensed in him. Puzzle pieces floated around in her mind, a few of them finally connecting.

Saxon always changed when he spoke of his grandmother. His memories of that woman hurt him. What in the world had happened to him? "What's Desdemona like?" she asked, hoping information about his sister would reveal more.

"She's lovely but... totally silent. No one knows what to do with her, so—well," he said guiltily, "she spends most of her time alone. I believe she prefers it that way because she never looks for anyone. She never really does anything but sit and stare into empty space."

"Why don't she talk?"

He sighed heavily. "No one knows. The doctors can't find anything wrong with her."

"Thank it's in her mind then?"

"More than likely."

Compassion for the girl she'd never met filled Chickadee. Desdemona didn't talk; Saxon was tormented. Sweet Lord in heaven, what had happened to them?

"Maybe Desdemona's a-pinin' away fer heartease. And since she don't talk, she cain't ask fer the comp'ny and affection she needs. Thur ain't no medicine like love, Saxon."

He scoffed silently at her fantasy about love. Love had nothing to do with anything. It would be Chickadee's outrageous enthusiasm that might possibly get through to Desdemona. "I wish she knew you," he said slyly. "I bet
you'd
be able to make her smile."

"She don't smile neither?"

"Never."

"Law, I ain't never knowed nobody who didn't never smile. 'Cept ole Misery and Lareny Lester."

He cupped her cheek in his hand. "Perhaps when you're doing all the traveling you want to do, you'll come to Boston and meet Desdemona."

His hand was so warm. Warmer than sunshine. "Ever up that way, yore house is the first place I'd stop. But Boston ain't real close, is it?"

He turned over onto his belly and kissed the tip of her nose. "It's far away, Keely. And right now, I can't imagine being so far away from you."

His eyes, as they gazed down at her, were bluer than any blue thing she'd ever seen. His hair, wavy and soft, was as black as mountain coal. And his lips—oh, what things they could make her feel with their sweet words and kisses. She reached for him, and when his lips met hers, no thrill she'd ever had could compare with her wild surge of happiness. Kissing Saxon was a good thing. Nothing that caused this kind of pleasure could be wrong.

And it was the sort of bliss she knew she'd miss sorely when he was gone. Sudden sadness replaced her delight. "Saxon, I don't want you to go."

"My life is in Boston, little one."

His plan was working, he realized. She was getting used to having him with her. It was time to start making sure she couldn't live without him.

Again, he pressed his mouth to hers and smiled when she wrapped her arms around him. Ever so slowly, his hand crept down her shoulder and edged her breast. It was firm yet soft in his palm. Gently, he kneaded it.

"Saxon—"

"Shhh." A deeper kiss quieted her.

She began to take his hand away, but when he circled his palm upon her breast, that yearning made her middle sink again. Faintly, she heard the rustling of the trees as the breeze blew through them, and from somewhere a bobwhite was calling.

But nothing, no sound was more beautiful than the song Saxon's body sang to hers.

Her hand, instead of moving his away, tightened on his fingers. And when his kiss deepened further, her low moan filled his mouth. She didn't resist when he unbuttoned her shirt and cupped her bare breast.

Reverently, Saxon held the silken globe. When the dusky crest hardened beneath his hand, he moved his lips to it, his actions eliciting another moan from Chickadee. Slowly, his tongue flickered over the rigid peak, and when Chickadee began to ease her body closer to his, he took her into his arms and rolled onto his back.

Her hair was like a shower of autumn leaves falling all around him. Gently, she blushed, her tawny skin becoming an apricot rose hue. Her eyes, like twin patches of the richest grass amid a field of warm earth, smiled down at him, the shine they held lighting his own.

While she lay atop him, he removed her shirt completely. Her shoulders felt and looked like rich cream, yet no expensive oils had ever been smoothed into them. No luxury had ever been Chickadee's, yet her very simplicity spoke of sumptuous elegance.

He pressed his face into the warm valley between her breasts, his hands curled around their outer sides. "Keely, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever known. And no matter where I go, I'll never find another girl as lovely."

He thought about how many times he'd said those same things to other women. He'd never meant them before, but he did now.

Chickadee warmed with pleasure. That this outlander—this impossibly handsome man—would say such flattering things and mean them, was something she'd never dreamed would happen.

She squirmed downward and rested her chin on his chest. "You say the nicest thangs, Saxon. You must have strangs o' girls back in that Boston city. I bet they line up a-wantin' you to say them thangs to 'em."

"I've no one special waiting for me in Boston, and after knowing you, I can't think of a single girl there with whom I'd like to be doing this."

"You like a-kissin' me?"

"I do." He could have sworn he heard her purr.

"Y'know. I used to thank this was wrong. Mama never tole me nothin' about menfolks, but... Saxon, this ain't wrong. Whilst you kissed me a minute ago, I was a-thankin' on how right it was. It didn't hurt nobody a'tall."

Slowly, as he'd done with her, she unfastened the buttons of his shirt. When his bare chest was revealed, she bent and took one of his nipples into her mouth, her tongue imitating his earlier actions.

Saxon closed his eyes. Desire, hot and demanding, stabbed into him. How he wanted her! How the hell had this happened? Wasn't
he
the one who was supposed to be in control of this game of seduction? It was
his
plan, yet Chickadee, at this moment, was holding all the cards.

And it wasn't only that, but guilt was beginning to twist through him too. He'd never had a second thought about what he did to women, but now..."Keely, wait."

Her eyes met his, but her lips stayed on his nipple.

He sat up and pulled her into his lap. "Do you know what's happening between us? What this is leading up to?"

She pulled at the slight matting of hair on his chest. "It don't have to go no further than what we let it go."

"But Keely—"

"How fur do you want it to go?"

He frowned. That was supposed to have been
his
question. And when he asked it, she was supposed to tell him she wanted to make love. He'd have done as she requested and made her want more. She'd have married him and gone on to Boston. The scheme had been simple, and it should have been easy to accomplish.

So why was he so hesitant to see it through?

His hands went to her cheeks. "Why do you even have to ask me that? Don't you
know
the answer?"

She nodded.

"Keely," he began, and swallowed whatever was lodged in his throat. "I... you... What do
you
want?"

She took his hands and held them tenderly in her lap. "Saxon, I don't really know what I want. All's I can tell you is when you look at me in that special way, when you smile at me or touch or kiss me, I git a powerful hankerin' fer somethin' I don't understand."

She pressed his hand into her belly. "It sets in right here. It's a warm feelin', like thur was a spark in thar, but then it gits bigger and hotter, and soon it's like a far a-blazin' all through me. I ain't rightly shore what it is, but I got a feelin' you do."

"I do know what it is. But I—"
Some womanizer you are, Sax,
he told himself.
You've got her right where you want her, and you can't make yourself take her.

"I trust you, Saxon. Jist like you confidenced in me when I tuk you a-huntin' fer that bahr. You knowed I warn't gwine let nothin' bad happen, and I know the same thang about you right now. Iffen you know what it is I'm a-honin' fer, I'll trust you whilst you give it to me. Well, Saxon? Are you gwine do what both you and me want you to do?"

"It's not as simple as that, little one. I don't want to hurt you, and—"

"It's gwine hurt?"

He couldn't look at her. He bent his head and watched her lace her fingers through his. "Yes, your first time will hurt, but that's not what I was talking about."

"Iffen it hurts, why do people do it?"

"It doesn't hurt the man. Only the woman."

She pondered that. "Well, that ain't fair a'tall. Menfolks a-gittin' thur jollies, and women—"

"It's only the first time, Keely. After that, it doesn't hurt anymore. You know so much, yet you know so little. How can I explain the way of things to you?" He laid her down in his arms, much as he would hold a baby. "You don't really know anything about lovemaking, do you?"

"Tole you I seed animules—"

"It's not the same thing. Animals do it to procreate, and emotions aren't involved. With people, feelings are—"

"I know those feelin's. I'm a-havin' 'em right now."

Again, he turned his eyes away from her and looked up to watch a cloud sail by. Ordinarily, he was little better than one of those animals. Emotion never entered into his lovemaking.

And it didn't now either, dammit! His whole future was at stake, and nothing else mattered. Without Chickadee, there would be no outwitting Araminta, and Desdemona would never learn to smile. And since he had no intention of marrying anyone other than Chickadee, his inheritance was in jeopardy too. Everything depended on making her his wife.