Yankee Wife (19 page)

“I was not reading about the mating habits of anything,” she said tartly.

Brigham curled one finger under her chin and lifted it. His lips were so close to hers that she could feel their warmth, sense their texture, anticipate their pressure. “Enough of this foolishness,” he muttered.

Lydia told herself she should try to escape his kiss, but she made no actual attempt because she wanted it too much. Her whole body sang like a harp string when Brigham's mouth sampled hers. His hands rose from the sides of her waist to the delicate rounding of her breasts as his tongue played over the seam of her lips and then entered her mouth.

A soft and completely involuntary whimper escaped her. Instead of pushing Brigham away, as she knew she should have done, she clasped his shoulders as if to pull him closer. She felt the size and heat of his manhood against her abdomen, and a sweet dizziness swirled up around her as he pressed her against the edge of the desk.

Lydia was certain she would faint if he didn't release her, but the kiss went on and she stayed conscious. She felt as though she was astraddle a lightning bolt, and the beginnings of another scandalous inner explosion, like the one Brigham had brought her to on the bed at the cabin, seemed to be building inside her.

Just in time, just when she would have tumbled right over the brink, Brigham lifted his mouth. His eyes were full of challenge, and Lydia could see none of her own bedazzlement in their depths.

“Enough nonsense,” he said hoarsely, his thumbs playing freely with her nipples, which jutted against her camisole, frantic for contact with his fingers and tongue. “You have need of a husband, and I certainly require a wife. I want you to marry me, Lydia. Now. Today.”

She squirmed out of his embrace, and although he didn't make it easy, he didn't try to restrain her, either. She straightened her dress and raised her hands to the coronet of hair at the back of her head. That turned out to be a mistake, for Brigham's gaze slipped immediately to her breasts, and his glance proved almost as effective as a caress.

Lydia turned away, struggling to get her breath. When she'd finally succeeded, she lifted her head high, well aware that he was dose behind her, that he could easily draw her back against the hardness of his thighs and chest. “You've fallen in love with me, then?” she said, knowing only too well what his answer would be.

“No,” he replied, with wounding bluntness. “Love is a fatuous concept, invented by poets. I'm offering you something solid and tangible, a partnership, Yankee—half interest in everything I own. All I ask in return is that you share my bed, look after my daughters, and give me a son or two.”

Lydia whirled, her cheeks crimson again, but this time with fury and conviction, not embarrassment. “You may think that love is a ‘fatuous concept,'” she flared, “and no doubt you hold patriotism and personal honor in the same low regard. But I, Mr. Quade, will not settle for anything less than a true and deep sentiment from the man I marry!”

His mouth took on a disdainful slant, and he folded his arms. “That must be why you answered that handbill in San Francisco and willingly agreed to wed a total stranger. And what the
hell
does patriotism have to do with this?”

Lydia faltered. Her body was pulling her in one direction, her mind in another. She was a one-woman riot of conflict and confusion. “Marrying Devon would have been different,” she hedged. “He's a gentleman.”

Brigham pretended to pull a dart from his chest. Then he arched one eyebrow, and gave no sign that he meant to let her pass. “All right,” he said generously, “have it your way. But I still want an explanation for that remark about patriotism.”

She swallowed, wishing she'd never thrown out a challenge in the first place. When was she going to learn not to rise to the hook every time this man dangled a line in front of her nose? She fell back on bravado, too proud to admit she'd spoken rashly. “While other men were fighting and dying on the battlefields at Gettysburg and Antietam and Bull Run, you were out here cutting timber. Not only did you neatly avoid the danger, you had the brass to sell lumber to both governments!”

She had cause to regret that statement, as well as the earlier one, in the next instant. Brigham's eyes took on a chilly glint, and a white line edged his jaw.

“Are you calling me a coward?” he asked, his voice low and lethal.

“No,” Lydia said, and she wasn't trying to appease him. “You're a rascal and a rounder, but you don't lack for courage.”

His nod and brief smile were bitter. “Thank you for that much,” he said. With that, he backed her up to the desk and stood with his hands braced on either side of her, once again making escape impossible. “You have a fair share of gall yourself,” he said, measuring the words, practically biting them off. “You came into my house, like Sherman taking Atlanta, and then you demanded a place of your own, along with a fat salary and a school-house. Now I find you going through my belongings.”

Lydia had never been so rattled. She was practically on her back, her thighs pressed shamefully against Brigham's, and all her nerves were leaping beneath her skin. At one and the same time, she wanted to run away and to take him deep inside her, right there on the study desk, and hold fast to him.

“I was not—going through your belongings—” she explained breathlessly. “I've already explained—”

He pulled her upright in a sudden, wrenching motion. “Explain this,” he rasped, his nose practically touching hers. “Why is it that I'm such a ‘rascal and a rounder' because I refused to take sides between the North and the South? Joe McCauley fought on the enemy side, Yank. How does it happen that you regard him so warmly?”

Lydia ran her tongue over dry lips. “He is a good man, a doctor. We have a great deal in common.”

Brigham sighed, then turned away from her, shoving one hand through his hair. While Lydia was still recovering her scattered composure, he went to the bookshelves and took down a thick volume with a green leather binding.

“Botany,” he said hoarsely, slamming the book down on the surface of the desk. Then, without another word, he strode out of the study, leaving Lydia to gaze after him and wonder at the wild sensations he'd stirred not only in her body, but in her soul, too.

She remembered nothing of the walk back to her cottage, except that she moved so fast she got tangled in her skirts twice and nearly fell.

 

The afternoon was pleasant.

Lydia took her six students to a high knoll overlooking the Sound and the site of the meetinghouse Brigham had promised her, and they sat in a circle. The botany text lay open on Lydia's lap, and one by one they identified the leaves and grasses the children had gathered that morning.

“Mr. Feeny told me Uncle Devon asked for you when he took his meal tray upstairs,” Charlotte confided, with concern, as they all walked back toward the town proper. The Collier boys would make their own way up the mountain, to the camp where their mother had taken up residence in a tent, and the Holmetzes lived in the yellow house at the opposite end of the street from Lydia's blue one. Millie had gone ahead to play in Anna's yard.

Lydia sighed. She
had
meant to look in on Devon, but after the incident in the study, with Brigham, she'd fled the house in panic. She wouldn't go back until she knew the master wasn't at home.

“Please tell your uncle that I'll definitely come to call tomorrow,” she said. The morning would be a good time, she decided, before she began the lessons she'd planned for the children. She knew Brigham would be either in his office or on the mountain before the rest of the household had even stirred. “How is he?”

“He's in a terrible mood,” Charlotte confided. “He raised his voice to poor Polly and made her cry. Not only that, but when she went to bathe him, he knocked the basin from her hands and got the floor all wet.” The girl's wonderful eyes were wide. “Is it proper for a woman to bathe a man?”

Lydia suppressed a smile. “It's perfectly proper, under the right circumstances.”

Charlotte was still pondering that when they passed the towering Quade house. She gave Lydia a distracted wave and headed up the shady driveway.

Reaching home, Lydia found a basket of fruit on her porch, along with a tin of chocolates and an armload of wildflowers. Undoubtedly, the oranges and candy had come in on board the freighter she'd seen earlier, since such treats certainly weren't available in Brigham's despicable “company store.”

Lydia gathered up the booty carefully, then turned to scan the street. She was being courted in earnest, quite possibly by several different men, but so far only Mr. Flengmeir had presented himself at the front door and declared his intentions.

With a sigh and a slight shrug, Lydia went inside. The kitten, whom she had named Ophelia, came scampering and tumbling over to meet her, batting ineffectually at her hem. She put the oranges in the center of the table, the flowers in a jelly jar with water, and the chocolates in the top drawer of her bureau.

She would eat two of the oranges herself, she decided, one after supper and one at breakfast time, and offer the rest to the children the next day, as an incentive to work hard on their studies.

Since the kitten was still attached to her skirts when she'd put the candy away, Lydia bent and gently freed its tiny claws from the fabric, then collapsed wearily onto the feather-filled mattress. Ophelia toddled unsteadily up to the base of Lydia's throat and settled herself there with elaborate ceremony.

Lydia's eyes filled with tears, and she caressed the cat lightly, with just the tips of her fingers, delighting in its warmth. A moment later, weary from a busy day and the encounter with Brigham, Lydia drifted off to sleep.

When she awakened, twilight was casting purple shadows through the window, and Ophelia was snuggled close to her right cheek, giving her soft, purring snore. Lydia lowered the cat carefully to the floor and sat up, yawning.

She hadn't meant to doze off; she needed to make supper, heat enough water to fill the hip bath she'd borrowed from the Quades' attic, and plan the next day's lessons. If there was time, she would seek out the ladies she'd seen getting off the freighter that afternoon and introduce herself.

With a sigh, Lydia swung her legs over the side of her bed and pinned a few loose tendrils of hair beneath her sagging coronet. Perhaps the women were unattached, and some of the loggers would turn to courting them instead of her.

She hoped so.

She made a trip to the small privy out back, washed her hands under the pump in the yard, and filled the largest kettle she had. She put the water on the stove to heat.

Supper was simple; Lydia cooked one of the eggs Mr. Feeny had brought to her, and browned a slice of buttered toast on a small griddle. After pouring a glass of milk, she sat quietly at the round table to eat.

Lydia was just finishing her meal when a knock sounded at the door.

Again her heart lurched. She wasn't up to another encounter with Brigham Quade, and besides, it wouldn't be proper for him to visit her. People would start saying she was his mistress, a kept woman.

“Who's there?” she called in an uncertain voice, fully prepared to refuse Brigham admission. Never mind that it was his house, his town.
She
was the one with everything at stake.

“It's Joseph,” her friend replied through the closed door. “I've come calling, Miss Lydia. It is my hope that we could sit on the front porch together for a while.”

Lydia's relief was matched only by her disappointment. She summoned up a smile and opened the door. “Hello, Joseph. Won't you come in?”

He was holding a small nosegay made up of buttercups and wild violets, and once again Lydia willed herself to fall wildly, passionately in love with him.

“It wouldn't be proper for me to do that,” he said, and there was an indulgent note of scolding in his tone. “We must think of your reputation, darlin'.”

Lydia sighed. If only Brigham Quade would concern himself with wild violets and propriety, things would be so much simpler. She smiled and stepped out onto the porch to accept Joseph's offering, and they sat together on the top step.

“How's Devon?” she asked, after taking a delicious sniff of the delicate wildflowers he'd brought.

“Mean,” Joseph answered, with a long sigh. “He's making life pretty miserable for Mrs. Quade.”

Lydia felt a flare of sisterly indignation. “He ought to be horsewhipped. Maybe Polly made a mistake, but she loves Devon, and he loves her. I just hope he realizes that before it's too late and there's the baby—” She broke off, horrified that she'd betrayed such an important confidence.

“Does Devon know?” Joseph asked after a long time.

Lydia didn't hesitate. Surely Polly had not kept something so vitally important to herself, fearful as she'd been of Devon's reaction. “He must. Polly had almost no choice except to tell him.”

The doctor didn't answer.

B
Y THE TIME ANOTHER WEEK HAD PASSED
, P
OLLY KNEW
only too well that she was indeed going to have a baby. She was wildly, violently ill in the mornings, and in the afternoons such a fatigue overtook her that she could only lie in silent misery on a couch in the corner of Devon's room. At night she couldn't sleep for the worry.

For the most part, Devon ignored her completely, although after a visit from Lydia, he was always especially surly. Physically, however, he was a little improved with each passing day, and soon he was up and walking with a cane.

Polly, curled in a chair next to his private fireplace, knew she could no longer delay the inevitable. Before long Devon's confinement to the bedroom would end, and avoiding her would be much easier.

“Devon.” She said his name firmly, although bravery was the last trait she would have claimed at tine time.

He was standing at the windows, wearing only the bottoms of his long underwear and leaning on the cane one of Brigham's men had made for him from a sturdy piece of pine.

Polly's heart swelled with tenderness as she looked at the father of the baby growing inside her, the man she would think of as her husband even if he spurned her forever.

“Devon,” she repeated.

He stiffened, the muscles in his shoulders beautiful in their formidable power. “Leave me alone,” he said.

Polly swung her feet to the floor and stood, smoothing her skirts. “Honestly, Devon, you're behaving like a spoiled child.” The last word stung, pertinent as it was, and she drew a deep, tremulous breath. “I have something important to say, and
by God
I'm going to say it, whether you object or not.”

Devon turned his head, looked at her with fierce, Viking-blue eyes. Once, he'd regarded her with gentleness and love. Now he could barely tolerate her presence. He said nothing, he simply stared at her with that expression of challenge in his battered but still handsome face.

The whole world seemed to pulse, like one giant heart, and there was a roaring in Polly's ears. She forced herself to gaze directly into Devon's eyes, and said, “I'm going to have a child. In January, I think.”

A series of emotions moved in his face, but he'd brought them under control before Polly could identify them. “Congratulations,” he said.

The word stabbed Polly like an arrow, but somehow she found the strength to say with dignity, “You are the father of this child, Devon.”

He turned away again, to stare out the window. “How convenient,” he said, after a long silence that was pure torture for Polly.

She closed her eyes, gripped the side of a table to keep from sagging to the floor. She had guessed what his reaction would be, and yet it came as a brutal shock, too. Polly had not entirely abandoned the hope that he would remember that he'd loved her once, that he'd remember all the plans they'd made together.

Now, however, there was nothing left to say.

Devon reached out, snatched something from the top of his washstand. Then, laboriously, depending on the cane to keep himself upright, he turned and flung one hand out.

Currency swirled toward her in a storm. “Here. This is what you wanted, isn't it?” he growled. “Take it—take any goddamned thing you want—and get the hell out of my life!”

Polly had done some pretty questionable things in the past, and she knew the days and years ahead might be bitterly difficult for both her and the baby. All the same, she would have starved before taking that money. She lifted her chin, tried frantically to think what Lydia would do.

At the moment of that decision, a peculiar thing happened. A new strength poured into Polly, and she said something she hadn't planned, hadn't even consciously thought before. “I won't make it so easy for you, Devon. I'm staying right here in Quade's Harbor. I'll marry the first man who asks me, and every day for the rest of your life you'll either see me, or the child you denied. Your child.”

With that, Polly turned and left the room.

 

At noon Brigham came down from the mountain. His clothes were stiff with dried sweat, pitch, and ordinary dirt. His best bullwhacker had quit in a drunken rage, he'd been stung on the back of the neck by a wasp, and he was so obsessed with thoughts of Lydia that he was more a hindrance to the men than a help.

Reaching the cool sanctity of his tree-trunk office, he ladled a big drink of water from the bucket and scowled at Harrington, who was sitting at his worktable on the opposite wall, going over papers.

“There's a problem, sir,” Harrington announced bravely, after clearing his throat twice and rustling things.

Brigham touched the sting on his nape and cursed. “There are a number of problems, Harrington,” he answered in a curt tone.

“This one is rather urgent, Mr. Quade. Two women arrived on that freighter that came in last week. They're missionaries.”

Missionaries. Brigham took a bottle from the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk and, despite the fact that he rarely took a drink before six in the evening, tossed back one fiery swallow and then another. “Where have they been staying?”

“I gave them my cabin,” Harrington answered. “But I'm afraid I can no longer tolerate living up in camp with the other men.”

Brigham could well imagine how the skinny, earnest clerk would fare among the timbermen; they would bait him mercilessly. He sighed and rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “These women have come to save our souls?” He sighed the question, already convinced of the answer.

But Harrington surprised him. “Not exactly, sir. I believe they think we're hopeless pagans, all things considered, and expect a better harvest among the Indians. They're searching for Reverend Matthew Prophet, too.”

The reverend had packed up his bags and left on one of the mail-boat runs some days before, and Brigham hadn't given the wild-eyed fanatic another thought since. He had hoped, in passing, that the old man wouldn't do too much harm to the good Lord's cause before someone lynched him out of annoyance.

“What do they want with Prophet?” he finally asked. He didn't give a damn about the answer, but he knew Harrington would not rest until he'd related it.

“The older one claims to be his wife,” Harrington said. “The younger, his daughter.”

At last Brigham was interested. “Great Zeus,” he muttered. “Prophet abandoned his own family?”

“Yes,” Harrington said, and this time there was a grudge in his voice.

Brigham smiled. “Is she pretty? The daughter, I mean?”

The clerk flushed and looked away. “Yes.” He pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. “It's not right, a girl like that wandering around the frontier with only her mother to watch out for her.”

The sting on Brigham's neck was still burning. “Maybe not,” he conceded impatiently, and headed for the door, “but it's common enough, since the war. Tell the ladies they can put up in one of the Main Street houses, temporarily.”

“Yes, sir,” Harrington said, with a note of good cheer.

Brigham started toward home, thinking he'd have a cool bath and put a paste of baking soda and water on the wasp sting. Maybe then he'd be able to concentrate on his work.

The musical sound of laughter reached him long before he came to Lydia's gate and stopped there to watch the game going on in the side yard. Lydia was blindfolded with a bright red bandanna, staggering about in the grass, her arms outstretched, while six delighted children dodged her grasp.

Brigham was enchanted. Along with the hot and elemental needs he felt whenever he saw Lydia, there was a sense of tender magic. He wanted to join in the game, to capture Lydia in his arms and kiss that laughing mouth.

As he watched, Millie purposely allowed herself to be caught and as a result became “it.” Lydia removed her blindfold and fastened it carefully over the little girl's eyes. Only when Millie was groping after the other children, who taunted her good-humoredly, did Miss McQuire look toward the fence and catch Brigham staring at her.

He saw her draw herself up, smooth her hair and skirts. The womanly gestures were habitual, he knew, perhaps even unconscious. She was obviously gathering her thoughts as she approached.

“Just in case you're about to say blindman's buff is a waste of lesson time—”

Brigham raised one hand, palm out, to silence her. “I wasn't going to say anything of the kind,” he said. “The truth is, I was thinking how good it is to see children playing together.” It
was
the truth, he reasoned to himself. It just wasn't the
whole
truth.

Her brows puckered together in a frown, and she tilted her head to one side. “Is your neck swollen?”

Brigham felt foolish, wanting her sympathy and gentle touch the way he did. So he tried to hide his feelings. “It's just a wasp sting, that's all,” he said.

She stood on tiptoe, bending over the fence. “Such things can be quite serious. Let me see.”

He turned his head to give her a better view of the wound, taking unreasonable pleasure from her concern.

“I don't like the looks of that,” she said. “Come sit on the porch. I'll take out the stinger and apply some disinfectant.”

Brigham opened the gate and followed her obediently up the walk, while the exuberant game of blindman's buff went on without interruption. He sat on the top step and Lydia went into the house, returning in a few minutes with a basin of water, a cloth, and a bottle containing some tincture. She had washed her hands, and the scent of soap was about her.

Her manner was gently efficient. Brigham couldn't remember the last time a woman had touched him with tenderness—passion, yes. Anger, yes. But not in a gentle, caring way.

He went weak at the softness of her attentions, as dazed as if he'd just swallowed half a bottle of laudanum in one gulp.

She made a tsk-tsk sound, full of sympathy, and Brigham couldn't help thinking of her steadfast refusal to marry him. He'd wanted to bed her almost from the first, but now he mourned something else even more deeply. He ached with the knowledge that he might never be entitled to wifely ministrations like this. So many times, his back was sore when he came out of the woods after a long day's work, and it would have been a glorious thing to feel her strong hands rubbing away the weariness and the pain. She might have cut his hair for him, and listened in soothing silence while he told her about things that had gone wrong, and washed that hard-to-reach place between his shoulder blades when he bathed.

“There,” she teased briskly, breaking the spell. Leaving Brigham with no ready excuse to linger. “I'm sure you'll survive your injury.”

Brigham turned and looked into her blue, blue eyes, and immediately lost his equilibrium again. He spoke sternly, so she wouldn't know how she'd shaken him, just sitting there, smelling of plain soap and touching him with gentle fingers. “Harrington tells me a woman and a girl came to town last week, looking for Reverend Prophet.”

Lydia looked toward the children, soft tendrils of hair dancing against her cheeks, watching with a half smile as Anna became “it” and the others pursued her. The pure gaiety of their laughter did something peculiar to Brigham's heart, as did the close proximity of this woman.

“I know,” she said. “I called on them after they'd settled into Mr. Harrington's quarters. Quite a situation.”

“Harrington is sweet on the girl, I think,” Brigham said. He didn't give a damn about his clerk's romantic interests, but he wasn't ready to stand up and walk away, either.

Lydia's smile was more medicinal than the stuff she'd applied to the insect bite. It made his heart bunch up in his chest, then expand with a painful rush. “Love seems to be in the air,” she said. “Mr. Feeny has been calling on Elly Collier of late, and a day doesn't go by that some suitor doesn't leave me a present.”

A quiet, poisonous rage surged through Brigham's system, virulent as the wasp's venom, and he stood. “I don't want you accepting gifts,” he said flatly. “It isn't proper.”

She looked up at him without so much as a hint of timidity, and a little yellow-gold cat wriggled over to make its way onto her lap. “Since when have you troubled yourself over what is or isn't proper?” she countered, unruffled. She stroked the kitten, and Brigham was sore with envy.

He had no answer. Brigham Quade had never given a rat's ass about propriety, except where it concerned his daughters, and Lydia obviously knew that.

“Has Joe McCauley come calling?” he asked, his voice gruff. The place where the wasp had struck didn't hurt half so much as the bite Lydia had taken out of his pride.

Lydia nodded. “Yes. He's made no secret of his intentions, Brigham. Not even to you.”

That was true enough. McCauley had gone to Seattle just the day before, in fact, looking for a loan to build himself a combination office and house in Quade's Harbor. Brigham had offered to put up the money, since the town needed a doctor if it was going to grow into the kind of place he envisioned, but McCauley had politely refused. He'd said straight out that he didn't want to be beholden; the building and the practice had to be under his own governing.