Yankee Wife (17 page)

Joseph turned his head, gave her a smile that might have awakened ardent feelings in her—before she'd encountered Brigham Quade. “I'm under no illusion that you do,” he said. “If I'd taken that Yankee shrapnel in my eyes, instead of my arm and shoulder, I'd still be able to see that you care for someone else.” He paused, turning his gaze to the scene beyond the window glass again. “Brigham is a fine man, Lydia. But he's hard and he's ruthless, too. First and foremost, before any woman and before his own daughters, he loves that mountain out there. He takes his energy from it the way tree roots draw water from the ground; he's a part of it and it is a part of him. He'll crush you, eventually, with the sheer force of his will, like a wildflower beneath the heel of his boot.”

Lydia's lips were dry, and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. She could not deny Joseph's words, for she knew they held a tragic truth. If she let herself love Brigham, he might well consume her in his own fiery strength. Hadn't he warned her, that very afternoon, that when he made love to her in earnest, her cries of pleasure would echo off the mountainsides?

She closed her eyes, started a little when she felt Joseph's hand come to rest on her shoulder.

“There's no hurry, Lydia,” he said.

She thought she felt Devon's fingers tighten around hers as the door closed behind the doctor she'd once committed treason to help. “Every day,” she said, in a distracted whisper, “women marry men they don't love. After a time, if the husband and wife have some common ground, and an honest liking for each other, true esteem develops.”

Devon shifted slightly, and made a raspy sound low in his throat.

Lydia shook off her fanciful thoughts and got up to pour water from a carafe on the bedside table, giving Devon a drink, drop by drop, from a teaspoon.

Presently, Polly returned, and Lydia took her leave.

She found Charlotte and Millie squabbling in the kitchen, while poor Jake Feeny tried to cook supper. “Come with me,” she said, crooking a finger.

Both girls looked at her as though they expected a strict lecture. Instead, Lydia took them to the parlor, where the spinet was, and sat down to run lightly through the scales.

“This instrument wants tuning,” she said, as Charlotte leaned against one end of the piano and Millie the other. “Still, I think we can make some badly needed harmony, don't you?”

Millie put her tongue out at Charlotte.

Charlotte responded in kind.

Lydia struck a chord and began to sing. “Blest be the ties that bind…our hearts in Christian love…”

 

Brigham sat at the head of the table that night at supper, as usual, and of course Joseph was there, too, as well as Lydia herself. Charlotte and Millie had eaten earlier, in the kitchen, and gone to their rooms.

It was Matthew Prophet, the visiting preacher, who took center stage.

“Lots of sin in this place,” he blustered, looking at Lydia from beneath his bushy white eyebrows as if to hold her personally responsible for every broken commandment between there and the Canadian border. “Yes, sir, lots of sin.”

Joseph grinned, but said nothing in Lydia's defense. Brigham was no more chivalrous, as it happened, though he did not let the comment pass unconfronted.

“Personally, Reverend,” he said, reaching for the bowl of mashed potatoes and scooping out a second helping, “I think Quade's Harbor could do with a little more sin, instead of less. A brothel, say, or maybe a saloon.”

Joseph made a choking sound that might have been a laugh, and Lydia seethed. Admittedly, the reverend was a tiresome man, but he was also dedicated and sincere, and Brigham had no right to pick on him.

“Mr. Prophet is a guest here,” she pointed out.

Brigham skewered her with his laughing gray eyes. “So are you,” he parried.

The preacher leaned forward in his chair, as if expecting Lydia's hair to turn to hissing snakes, like a modern-day Medusa, and she wished, just for a moment, for the power to turn him to stone.

“You live here, do you?” the old man inquired. “In this house? Unchaperoned?”

Brigham smiled down at his mashed potatoes.

Lydia wanted to upend the whole bowlful onto his head, because he was enjoying her discomfort so much. She made herself smile. “I'm—the governess,” she said.

“Miss McQuire was actually brought here as a mail-order bride,” Brigham put in, with helpful exuberance. “My brother delivered her to me as a gift, from San Francisco.”

Prophet's stern and wizened face reddened significantly, and his nose twitched, as if sin had a scent and he'd caught it on the wind. “There are two innocent, impressionable children living in this house, are there not?”

Lydia shot a furious glance at Brigham, then flung one at Joseph, too, for failing to come to her rescue, as would have befitted a true gentleman.

“Yes,” she said, awkward in her annoyance. “Charlotte and Millie are children, all right.”

Joseph chuckled, sipping from his water goblet, and Lydia could feel Brigham's eyes on her, bright with amusement.

Mr. Prophet was concentrating on Lydia, who suddenly felt wanton, a corrupter of virtue. “If you came here to marry Mr. Quade, why haven't you done so?”

Lydia drew in a sharp breath, trembling now, not with timidity, but with outrage. “You seem bent on performing the marriage ceremony, Reverend,” she began, not planning the words she said next. “Well, that's fine. You can join Dr. McCauley and I in holy matrimony, right now, tonight.”

Brigham's fork clattered to his plate, and a sidelong glance showed that all the mirth, along with much of his robust coloring, had drained from his face.

Joseph smiled. Lydia was ashamed that she'd spoken so rashly, and so thoughtlessly.

“A fine idea,” he said, with a courtly nod.

Brigham crashed his fist down on the table, making cutlery and china clatter in reaction. “No!” he yelled. “There will be no wedding in this house, not between Lydia and the good doctor, that is!”

All eyes were turned to the master of the house.

He shook a finger at Lydia, as though she were a naughty child who'd repeatedly upset her milk. “I vow this by God's eyeballs,” he swore, in a dangerous, rumbling, thunderstorm voice, “if you carry on with this foolishness, I'll tell these men—I'll tell the whole damned world, Lydia—why you can belong to no man besides me!”

Lydia swayed in her chair, sick with fury and humiliation. “I hate you,” she whispered finally, pushing back her chair from the table to rise on shaking legs. “I despise you!”

Brigham got to his feet with disconcerting swiftness, towering over Lydia, breathing hard, as though she'd led him a chase through the thick underbrush that carpeted the woods beyond the walls of that sturdy house. His gray eyes were like steel, glittering under a layer of new frost.

“Do not challenge me to prove that the truth is otherwise,” he growled, tempering the words with a velvety sweetness that only made them more brutal.

She stood still, amazed and furious and afraid to do further battle because she knew he would win. With a look, with a touch, with the force of his mind, he could make her want him desperately.

Showing unexpected mercy, he freed her from the spell. “Go,” he said, on a harsh breath, waving a hand toward the dining room doorway.

Lydia turned and hurried away, her heart burning behind her collarbone, her emotions in such turmoil that she couldn't even begin to make sense of them. She swept up the stairs, moving as rapidly as she could in her cumbersome skirts, and took refuge in her room, leaning against the door and gasping as though she'd been pursued.

The room was dark, and Lydia didn't bother to light a lantern. She didn't want to see her flaming face in the bureau mirror, or the proud defeat in her eyes.

She paced swiftly back and forth, hugging herself and muttering.

For years she'd been able to keep her emotions under tight control, no matter what horrors presented themselves. Now, after she'd come through a war, after she'd traveled around the Horn and been forced to shift for herself in a strange city, after she'd journeyed on to Seattle, bold as a Viking woman, she'd finally met her nemesis.

Brigham Quade.

Lydia moved faster, back and forth, fighting, fighting. Brigham had uncovered all the feelings she'd worked so hard to suppress, bared them to the light, and now they rose within her like the creatures from Pandora's box. The pain was so fierce that it forced her to her knees on the rug, and she began to sob uncontrollably.

He said her name, kneeling in front of her, cupping her wet face in his work-hardened hands.

Brigham.

“Don't touch me,” she wailed, using the last shreds of her will to keep from screaming the words.

Brigham drew her onto his thighs, held her tightly, his face buried in her hair as it tumbled free of its pins. “Let go,” he said in an urgent voice. “Dear God, Lydia, you can't hold a whole war inside you. Let it go.”

Her fingers knotted on his shirtfront, which was already wet with her tears. The agony of the battlefields broke through her crumbling reserve like a river. “Babies!” she sobbed. “Brigham, those soldiers were just babies—”

His lips were warm and firm at her temple, his arms strong around her. “I know, Yankee, I know.”

She heard the screams, the thunder of cannon fire, the gnawing rasp of saws severing bone. Her own shriek was muffled by Brigham's shoulder.

He stood, lifting her easily, and carried her to the shadow-strewn bed. She wept in silence now, and would have curled into a tight ball if Brigham had allowed it. Instead, he stretched out beside her, his hard length like a splint securing a fracture, and clasped her close against him. For all his weight, the mattress shook with the force of her grief.

After a while, when exhaustion had calmed her, Brigham rose and gently removed her shoes, her stockings, her dress. She could not protest, but lay trustingly in her linens, spent by emotion.

He filled a basin with water, just as she had done for Devon when first tending his wounds, and began to bathe her skin, cooling and soothing her. She was raw and broken inside, as though she'd had some intangible surgery, but she also knew that from now on she would grow stronger with every day that passed. She had turned a corner, entered some new phase of her life, and would never be quite the same again.

Once Brigham had washed her—and there was something ceremonial about that, just as there had been in her clinging to him in the storm of grief that had swept over her earlier—he lay down with her again.

They had been bonded together in those moments, for good or ill, and even in her dreamy, disoriented state, Lydia knew that cord could never really be broken.

Deep in the night, Lydia awakened from a healing sleep, her blood hot with fever. Brigham lay beside her, fully clothed, his breathing even and deep, and she wanted him.

“Brigham?” Lydia lifted her head, brushed his lips with hers, let the silky tickle of her hair awaken him. Her hysteria was past, and she was in full command of her senses. “Brigham!”

He opened his eyes, grumbled. “No.”

Lydia laughed softly. “You've compromised me thoroughly, Brigham Quade. If I'm to have the reputation, and I surely will, then I want that pleasure you promised me.”

Brigham swatted her bottom lightly. “Go back to sleep, Yankee. You don't know what you're saying.”

“Yes, I do. You've ruined me by undressing me and lying beside me all night, and I want to know what you intend to do about it.” Lydia was quite serious. She was no prude, but certain conventions simply had to be respected, even in this remote wilderness.

“I intend to marry you,” he said, as though his plans should have been obvious. He might have been talking about hiring more lumberjacks or ordering a shipment of dried beans, for all the expression in his voice.

“That's very generous,” Lydia said acidly.

He patted her again. “You're welcome,” he answered, in all seriousness, and then he drifted off to sleep again.

L
YDIA LAY STILL BESIDE
B
RIGHAM, SOAKING IN THE
warmth and strength of his body, listening to the even meter of his breathing as he slept. She recalled the night before, when her rigid New England composure had slipped so badly, and a blush rose in her cheeks at the memory.

The experience had been a difficult one, an emotional transformation that had left her broken and raw in its immediate aftermath, but now she felt happier and more capable than ever before. Her feelings were back, and all of them were keen and vivid.

They filled her with an uncanny energy, and when that became too great to be subdued, Lydia bolted upright and scooted off the bed. She went to the bureau for fresh underthings, to the wardrobe for the prettiest of her simple dresses, a bright yellow and blue calico print.

Brigham lifted his head, made a grumbling sound, and focused bleary eyes on her. “Wh—?” he said.

Lydia smiled. King of the Mountain.

She slipped behind the changing screen in a corner of the room, taking her clothes with her. “It was very kind of you to propose marriage, Mr. Quade,” she called sunnily as she dressed, “and I meant to accept your suit. However, I've changed my mind.”

A muttered curse word came from the direction of the bed, and the ropes supporting the mattress creaked. “What?”

“I've decided not to marry you after all.” Lydia was fully clad now, and she peeked around the edge of the screen as she buttoned the front of her frock. “Of course, it wouldn't be proper for me to go on living in this house—much as I dislike Reverend Prophet, I have to admit he was right about that. Then again, I don't want to leave Charlotte and Millie, just when we're starting to establish a rapport, so with your permission, I'll move into one of the saltbox houses on Main Street. The blue one, if it isn't promised to anyone else.”

Brigham was sitting up now, his clothes and hair rumpled, looking at Lydia in irritable disbelief. “You can't be serious.”

Lydia reached for a brush and began to groom her hair briskly. Miraculously, she'd been set free of the past, a gift she'd never expected, and she was light-headed with the joy of it. “Oh, but I am.”

He reached for his boots, pulled one on with a fierce thrust of his foot. “You're forgetting something, Yankee. You and I just spent the night alone together, in a bedroom. On the same damn bed. If you walk out of this house without my wedding band on your finger, you'll be ruined. You said so yourself.”

She put down the brush and began to divide her hair for braiding. “That was what I thought, too, at first,” she conceded cheerfully. “However, after some consideration, I've come to the conclusion that I was mistaken. Oh, I'm not saying that we should throw off all moral constraints and behave in any way we wish, but we're not in Maine or Massachusetts, after all. This is the frontier, and the rules are a bit more flexible here.”

He came to stand behind her, facing the mirror. She was aware of his looming reflection, of course, but she didn't allow her eyes to rise and link with his. He might cast one of his dangerous spells if she did.

“What about Millie and Charlotte?” Brigham asked in a dangerously quiet voice. “They've come to hold you in very high regard. Losing you will be a blow to them.”

Lydia allowed herself the smallest smile. She had finished plaiting her hair, and wound the thick braid into a coronet, which she pinned expertly into place. “I have no intention of deserting your daughters, Mr. Quade,” she said. “I will devote my days to them. Should one or the other of them fall ill, may heaven forbid it, I will serve as their nurse.”

His hands rose, as if to close on her shoulders, but at the last moment he let them fall to his sides. “The houses on Main Street are unfurnished,” he said, his head turned slightly to one side, gaze fixed on the window, where a morning breeze ruffled the lace curtains.

“I won't need much in the way of household goods,” she replied. “I'm used to making do.” Lydia took her travel case from under the bed and set it on the mattress. Then, methodically, she began removing her clothes from the bureau and the wardrobe. Brigham hesitated for a few moments, watching her with troubled eyes, then walked out of the bedroom and closed the door quietly behind him.

Her resolve faltered a little—if personal honor had allowed her a choice, Lydia would have married Brigham and been his wife in every sense of the word. But to offer herself, loving him as she did, knowing full well that he didn't return her feelings, was a compromise she couldn't make.

When Lydia left her room, she went straight to Devon's and rapped lightly on the door.

“Come in,” Polly called.

Devon's breathing indicated that he was resting in a degree of comfort. The swelling on his face had gone down, and his many abrasions and bruises were less angry-looking than before. Lydia's well-honed instincts told her this patient would recover handsomely.

Polly, on the other hand, looked like something from a Greek tragedy. She'd lost weight, and there were purple shadows under her eyes. Her hair, usually so glossy, was dull and flat, and her clothes looked as though she'd been wearing them for a week.

“Devon is improving,” Lydia said forthrightly. “You, on the other hand, seem to be in a definite decline.”

The other woman sighed, her hollow eyes devouring the man sleeping on the bed. She swallowed, started to speak, and then stopped herself.

Lydia stayed a few moments, then went into the hallway and down the rear stairway. She found Jake Feeny in the kitchen, along with Charlotte and Millie, who were simultaneously eating pancakes and arguing over which of them would be taller when they'd both reached their full height.

Ignoring the girls, who needed to learn to work things out without constant adult intervention, Lydia took a plate from the shelf and began filling it for Polly. “If you have the time,” she said to Jake, with a bright smile, “would you please heat water for Mrs. Quade to have a bath?”

Jake blushed as though she'd asked him for a waltz, and nodded. When he'd gone out to the shed to bring in a tub, Lydia sat down at the table, smoothed her skirts, and cleared her throat to let Charlotte and Millie know she wanted to speak with them.

Two luminous pairs of eyes turned to her immediately, one set pewter-gray, the other a brilliant amber.

Lydia cleared her throat again. This would be the most difficult part; making these children, whom she'd come to love very deeply, understand that she would never willingly abandon them.

“I've spoken to your father,” she began, in a brave but slightly quavery voice. “We've agreed that it would be better if I went to live in one of the Main Street houses, since both he and I are unmarried.”

Charlotte looked away, but Millie leaned forward in her chair, a questioning expression on her face.

“That would be easy to solve,” she said, as though pointing out the obvious to a slow-witted but much-loved maiden aunt. “You and Papa have only to get yourselves married to each other. Then you could stay and Charlotte and I would have a mother.”

A small muscle in Lydia's heart twitched painfully. “I'm afraid it's not quite that simple,” she said softly. “A man and woman should not marry unless they love each other.”

Charlotte bit her lower lip. “Some people think Papa is handsome,” she said. “He has money, and a large house. He never hits and rarely shouts. Couldn't you learn to love him, with time?”

Learn indeed, Lydia thought ruefully. Her enterprise would be quite the opposite, she feared: learning
not
to love Brigham Quade. “I suppose I could,” she replied after an interval, “but he would have to love me as well, you see, and he doesn't.”

Millie sagged slightly. “Oh.”

Charlotte's golden eyes brimmed with tears. “This is dreadful. I've become attached to you, Miss McQuire—in fact, I meant to ask permission to call you Lydia.”

She reached out and took one of each child's hands, squeezing them reassuringly. “You may both address me by my first name, except when we are having lessons. And it isn't as though we won't see each other every day, because you'll be coming to my house mornings to learn reading and arithmetic.”

Charlotte made a face, but Millie scooted forward to the edge of her chair. “Couldn't Anna and the others have lessons, too?”

Lydia smiled. “Of course. We'll have our own school, the seven of us, right there in my parlor, until the meetinghouse is built.”

“I'm going to tell Anna!” Millie crowed, bolting from her chair and hurtling toward the back door in a streak of energy. “We're going to have a school—a real school!” With that, she clattered out.

Charlotte remained in her chair, clearly feeling none of her sister's enthusiasm. She sighed and propped her chin in one hand in a gesture of forlorn acceptance. “You'll tire of Quade's Harbor soon enough,” she said. “And then you'll sail away and leave us even lonelier than we were before.”

It was on the tip of Lydia's tongue to promise the child she would stay, but she held the vow back, realizing how rash it would be to make such a pledge. Brigham paid her salary, and there was no one else to work for, since he virtually owned the town. If he ran out of patience with her, he could banish her completely.

“I have no plans to leave, Charlotte,” she said. “However, you're a young woman now, and you must know that life can be very unpredictable. If I promised to stay, the Fates would delight in making a liar of me.”

This brought a slight smile to Charlotte's mouth. “Yes,” she agreed, “I am a young woman now, aren't I? Soon I'll be old enough to travel. I'll go to the far corners of the world.” She paused and sighed, staring off into the great beyond. “I'll probably marry a pirate who's so handsome that just looking at him will make my heart pound.”

Lydia smiled and pushed back her chair. She would save her lecture on the low moral standards and general social unsuitability of the average pirate for later. For now, it was enough that Charlotte wasn't upset about her intention to move out of the Quade house.

 

Brigham told himself he was glad Lydia was going to live on Main Street. He had enough people underfoot as it was, he thought.

He sent his largest wagon and two teamsters to his place for furniture and other equipment Lydia would need to set up housekeeping. The men were to take their orders from Miss McQuire, loading and transporting whatever she chose to take.

The shriek of the mill saw gave Brigham a headache, so he went into his office and closed the door firmly behind him. There was an enamel crock with a lid sitting on a table behind his desk, and he ladled out some water to cool his tongue, his mind weighted with worries.

His first and foremost concern, at the moment, was Devon. His brother did seem to be on the mend, but he still hadn't come out of that deep sleep he'd been in since the accident in the woods. Despite Joe McCauley's predictions that Devon would recover, and Lydia's corroboration of that diagnosis, Brigham had a deep-seated sense of foreboding about the whole situation.

Then there was the mess with Polly. She had told Brigham the truth of the matter herself, when she'd sought him out in Seattle and asked him for work. She'd told him how she had duped Devon, and said she wouldn't blame him if he didn't want her ever to set foot in Quade's Harbor again. All she wanted, she'd gone on to say, was an opportunity to make amends and start over.

Brigham had been shocked, of course, and angry as well, but some instinct had urged him to give the woman a second chance, if for no other reason than that Devon had clearly loved her once. Besides, just about everyone he knew had some kind of shameful secret; the West was a magnet for adventurous misfits.

Like himself.

He smiled, sinking into the creaky wooden chair behind his desk, kicking his feet up and cupping his hands in back of his head. His favorite enigma was Lydia McQuire.

Brigham was fairly certain the woman had set her cap for him—after all, she'd nearly come apart in his arms that night in the cabin, when he'd introduced her to a singular pleasure. The memory made him harden, instantly and painfully, and he set his feet apart a little ways on the desk. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling.

Something must be wrong with him, he decided. Maybe he was getting old, set in his ways. He could have made love to Lydia, she would have welcomed him into the sweet solace of her body, and he needed that consolation sorely, but his damnable honor had interfered. Lydia was not a whore, and his conscience would not allow him to take advantage of her.

He frowned, dark brows knitting together. His certainty that Lydia found him appealing, much as she might wish otherwise, was unshaken. However, he was a pragmatic man and he couldn't overlook the fact that she'd refused his offer of marriage, not once, but twice.

Maybe she was leaning toward McCauley, the gentleman doctor, and she'd never made any bones about the fact that she found Devon attractive as well. Devon was a free man, since the marriage to Polly had been a fraud, and when he finally awakened, he might easily turn to pretty, gentle Lydia for comfort.

Brigham's right temple began to pound. Then there were all the drooling lumberjacks who would be knocking at her door as soon as they knew she was fair game, and not the boss's woman, as many of them now believed. He'd be lucky to get close to her again, let alone persuade her to become his wife.