Yankee Wife (23 page)

L
YDIA DIDN'T LET HER MISGIVINGS SHOW AS SHE GLARED
up at Brigham, there in the shadowy confines of his office. She decided to handle him the same way she'd managed a certain irritable bulldog in her neighborhood back in Fall River—by looking fierce herself and not revealing so much as a hint of trepidation.

Unlike the bulldog, however, Brigham was not intimidated.

Even though some instinct told her to button her lip, Lydia just couldn't obey it. She'd had no real experience at loving a man before, of course, and her feelings carried her along on the crest of a tumultuous flood tide—often to places she didn't want to go.

“I imagine,” she said shakily, “that you intend to frequent this—this den of depravity?”

Brigham laughed. Damn him, he actually
laughed
. “‘Den of depravity'?” he echoed. “Now you're starting to sound like Reverend Prophet.”

Lydia reddened. “Kindly do not try to skirt the point, Mr. Quade,” she said evenly. “You vowed fidelity to me, just yesterday, and I would like to know whether or not you still hold that pledge in your heart.”

He leaned against the side of his desk and folded his arms, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he regarded her. “You sound like a character in one of Charlotte's novels,” he observed.

Unwilling to be bested, or shunted onto another track like an empty railroad car, Lydia returned his parry. “How would you know that unless you'd read them?” she asked, neither expecting nor awaiting an answer. “It will do you no good, sir, to hedge my questions.”

“All right.” The expression in his slate gray eyes was unreadable as he regarded her, and Lydia saw no rancor in his attitude or bearing. “Here is your answer, Mrs. Quade. As long as you are a proper wife to me, I will be an honorable husband to you.”

Lydia was reminded of a day spent on an icy pond near Fall River, with the family of a schoolmate. The older boys had worn skates, and pulled the other children around behind them, at dizzying speeds. They'd made a great, screaming snake, twisting and gliding over the bumpy surface, and she had been at the tail end, filled with terror and glee.

The feeling she had now, as she looked up into her husband's face, was much the same.

“As long as I am a proper wife to you,” Lydia repeated quietly, pacing like a lawyer in front of a jury box, “you will be an honorable husband to me. That is a perfectly fair agreement, provided your definition of the word ‘honorable' is the same as mine.”

Brigham shoved a dirty hand through dusty, sawdust-filled hair, and Lydia marveled at how attractive she found him, even in that untidy state.

“I will never turn to another woman as long as you will receive me in your bed.”

Lydia blushed at the bluntness of his words, even though she'd wanted the unvarnished truth. She waited, hoping he couldn't guess by her appearance that her whole body was thrumming with the memory of his lovemaking, and with anticipation of welcoming him again. “Suppose I am ill, or otherwise indisposed?”

He sighed, and a tiny muscle under his left temple knotted, then relaxed again. “You're asking if I would remain faithful if you were sick, or in the last stages of bearing my child, I presume?”

She nodded, wildly embarrassed, and at the same time, desperate to know. “Yes.”

The fingers of his right hand thumped against his upper arm. “I want more children, Lydia. You will find me the most devoted of husbands during your confinement. As for illness, I would be unshakably loyal—provided I didn't think the malady you suffered was really a convenience designed to keep me from your bed.”

Lydia was still then, facing him, trying to read his remarkable face. “As you come to know me better, Brigham, you will realize that I am not the sort to feign illness in order to gain an advantage.”

He leaned toward her, arms still folded, voice lowered to a mocking whisper. “Are we through now, wife? I have a great deal of work to do.”

She drew a deep breath and let it out again, slowly. “Not exactly. There is still the matter of the…brothel.” The last word tasted sour on her tongue, like a dill pickle gone bad. “It would not be fair for me to be satisfied with your promise not to frequent the establishment…” She paused, narrowed her eyes as she studied him for a long moment, then continued. “…if indeed you've actually
made
such a promise—when other women's husbands most certainly would go there to drink spirits and spend their wages. As your wife, I have as much responsibility to the women of this town as you have to the men. I must take a stand.”

A flush glowed beneath Brigham's suntan and the layer of dirt, and the look in his eyes did not bode well for social progress. “I will not close the saloon,” he said tersely. “In case you haven't noticed, the great majority of men in this town
have
no wives. If there were no whiskey or women here, they wouldn't stay, and I would be out of business.”

Instinct made Lydia retreat a step, but she wasn't willing to concede defeat by any stretch of mind or spirit. “Nonsense. Your workers have stayed all this while. You've built that fancy house and filled it with fine things from all over the world—”

“When I came here,” Brigham broke in, with a voice that vibrated like the gathering of thunder in the far distance, “there was very little competition, and I was able to keep my workers because I was good to them and because there was no place else for them to go. Now there are timber operations being set up all over Washington Territory, and if my people aren't happy, they can simply catch the next mail boat back to Seattle. Before a day passed, they would have new jobs.”

Lydia swallowed. “But surely you see—”

Brigham took his watch from the pocket of his trousers and, with a practiced and very irritated flick of one thumb, snapped open the case. “We will talk about this later, Mrs. Quade. I would suggest that you go home.”

Lydia stared at him, appalled and amazed at the dismissal. She saw that she had made little or no progress with Brigham, and she was thoroughly discouraged. “What?”

“I said, go home,” Brigham told her, rounding the desk and stopping to look down into her furious face. “After I've finished my work, had a long swim in the pond, and eaten my supper, I will be happy to listen to your grievances.”

She couldn't think why it surprised her to find herself at the end of his list of things to do that day, but surprise her it did. She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again.

Brigham touched the front of her dress with his fingertips, causing the nipples to strain against the fabric. “Go home,” he said for the third time. “If you don't leave now, I can't promise I won't have you right here.”

Lydia trembled, partly from wanting, partly from rage at his presumption. He plainly believed he could seduce her in his office, in the broad light of day. Even worse, he was right.

She turned, too angry to speak, and stormed out.

Lydia walked briskly past the big house and up the hill to the cabin behind it, her skirts catching on twigs and blackberry vines as she went.

As her eyes burned with tears, so her body throbbed with a need that would not easily be denied. Reaching the cabin, she snatched up the sheets she'd draped over the bushes to dry after washing away the stains of her passage into full womanhood, folded them, and took them back inside.

Her knees were trembling, so she sank into the rocking chair where Brigham had sat to admire her that morning, and clutched the worn wooden arms in her hands. She began to rock, furiously at first, then with a quiet, purposeful rhythm.

 

At the end of the workday, Brigham walked home, his bone-deep weariness assuaged by the prospect of Lydia. He imagined her waiting for him in the master bedroom, her skin and hair scented, her lush body draped in something silky. She was an intelligent woman, despite her inexperience in the ways of men and women; by now she had surely seen reason and come to terms with the idea of a saloon in Quade's Harbor.

He would have a bath—perhaps Lydia would wash his back—and tell her about his day. He'd missed such wifely ministrations sorely, he realized. He wanted to be fussed over, coddled a little, to take Lydia to his bed and satisfy her thoroughly, to be satisfied himself. After that, over a private dinner in their room, they could work out this small resistance she seemed to have toward whiskey and fast women.

When Brigham opened the door of his room, however, a frown creased his face. There was no trace of Lydia or any of her few possessions, not even the distinctive, spicy scent of her. The pit of his stomach plunged as darkness engulfed all the delectable fantasies he'd been entertaining.

“Lydia?” Even though he knew she wasn't there, knew it to the core of his soul, he couldn't stop himself from calling her name.

Another door creaked, somewhere along the hallway, and Millie appeared. Brigham saw a scolding expression in her slate-gray eyes. They were so like his, those eyes, that they might have been taken from his own face.

“Where is your stepmother?” he asked. It was the child's presence that gave him the impetus to step over the threshold and stride purposefully to his bureau for clean clothes.

Millie stood in the doorway, small and fierce. “She's at the house on Main Street,” the child announced.

Brigham fetched a bar of soap from the mahogany washstand, a rough cotton towel from beneath. “I'm going up to the pond for a bath. I want you to find Lydia and tell her for me that she'd better be here, under this roof, when I get back.”

Millie regarded her father with calm sympathy, apparently undaunted by the sternness of his words. “I don't think she'll listen,” she said, with alacrity. At the raising of her father's eyebrows, she added, “But I'll try.”

As she scampered toward the front stairway, Brigham strode in the direction of the rear one. He thundered through the kitchen, ignoring Jake Feeny and the delicious smells of supper cooking, and stormed up the hill behind the main house.

He supposed this was what he got for going against his own better judgment and taking a wife. If he didn't put his foot down, Lydia would have him trotting behind her like an obedient puppy and saying “Yes, dear” every time she issued a proclamation.

He'd die first.

He didn't look at the cabin as he passed it, because he didn't want to think about loving Lydia. He didn't want to recall the quick, feverish murmurs she'd given as he'd pleasured her, the small sighs, the primitive, demanding groans of submission and wanting as she'd approached fulfillment.…

Brigham reached the edge of the pond, kicked off his boots, flung aside his shirt. His pants caught on the physical evidence of his thoughts as he wrenched them off, and he swore. He was as hard as an oak billy club, and the cool water in the pond would be little help.

He took the soap and waded into the water until it reached his chest, then began to wash. He scoured himself from head to foot with furious energy, and when he left the water, his skin stung with cleanliness. His manhood towered against his belly like the mast of a ship.

He dried himself, then dressed quickly in the fresh clothes he'd brought from his room. His tousled hair got no more than a brisk combing with the fingers of his left hand; he carried his dirty shirt and trousers in a bundle in the other arm.

As he walked down the hill, Brigham was very careful not to so much as glance toward the cabin. If he did, he thought, he would probably turn to a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife.

Reaching the backyard of the big house, where Jake was pumping water and doing his damnedest not to look amused, Brigham flung down the laundry.

“Is she back?” he rasped.

Jake's grin showed in his eyes, even though he'd managed to keep his mouth sober-looking. “No, Brig. Guess you'll have to go after her.”

“You're damned right I'll go after her,” Brigham muttered.

“Maybe you'd better cool down a little first,” Jake suggested. “After all, this ain't no ordinary woman you're dealing with. You say the wrong thing and rile Mrs. Quade, why, she might just up and sail out of here forever. Or she could visit herself a judge and have the weddin' undone. Don't think Doc McCauley wouldn't be waitin' for her with open arms, neither. He's a good man, and where the lady is concerned, he'd be willin' to overlook a lot, just to have her at his side.”

Brigham was seething. He had never encountered a woman so willfully disobedient as Lydia, and he wasn't quite sure how to deal with her. Furthermore, the thought of her bucking beneath the thrusts of another man's hips—even one he liked as much as Joseph McCauley—filled him with sickness and fury.

“Are you through?” he raged at Jake, taking his anger out on the old cook because he was close at hand.

Jake looked sorely miffed as he waggled a gravy-covered spoon in Brigham's direction. “You mind how you treat Mrs. Quade, Brig,” he warned, “or you'll have me to deal with.”

Brigham folded his arms and arched one eyebrow, to let his old friend know he wasn't intimidated, then turned and moved back through the house, toward the front door.