Yankee Wife (29 page)

“Go to bed, Etta,” he gasped in rusty tones. “We'll make arrangements tomorrow.”

She opened her kiss-swollen mouth to protest, then stepped back. “You'll find Pa in the woods,” she said, “working for Mr. Quade. He won't make things easy for you.”

Joe gestured toward the bedroom, struggling against the heat and hardness of his body, the insatiable hunger she had roused in his spirit. “Good night,” he said, turning away, reaching for the lamp.

When he turned again, holding the lantern aloft to light his way, Etta had disappeared.

He went into the examination room, distractedly washed and stripped to his drawers, then stretched out on the thinly padded table to listen to the wind. It was nothing compared to the howling loneliness and need raging in his own soul.

Sleep eluded him, for although he was physically weary, the essence of his being was just coming awake after a long, deep slumber. For the first time in more than a decade, Joe McCauley was truly glad to be alive.

He had no way of knowing how much time had passed when she came to him, clothed only in lantern glow and shadow, her rich, wonderful hair falling around her breasts and shoulders like a cape woven of light.

She touched his face and he moaned, helpless, stunned at the depths and rawness of his wanting.

Etta bent, kissed the hollow at the base of his throat. When he started to speak, she laid a finger to his lips and pleaded, “Don't send me away, Doc. Please. For the first time in all my days, I feel like I'm in the right place.”

With a tentative hand she stroked his chest, making slow circles around his nipples, and then his belly. His manhood thrust hard against the thin fabric of his drawers, and when she touched him, he cried out hoarsely, as though wrung with fever.

She knew what he wanted, what he needed, and Joe McCauley vowed then and there never to ask where she'd learned such skills. He craved comfort and real belonging too deeply to care.

Etta opened his drawers, and he let her peel them slowly down over his hips. She moved his legs so that they dangled over each side of the examining table and he was utterly vulnerable to her. Then she leaned over and began kissing his belly, occasionally teasing his painfully alert flesh with the tip of her tongue. Lightly, ever so lightly, she caressed the soft sack beneath his manhood, while his rod took on a life of its own and strained upward.

Etta chuckled affectionately and closed her hand around him, rubbing her thumb across the moist tip and smiling in the faint flicker of lantern light coming from the next room. He moaned and arched his back slightly.

“Are you still wantin' a lady, Doc?” she teased, just before she bent over him again, this time to lash him mercilessly with her tongue. “Or mightn't a whore be what's needed tonight?”

Joe broke out in a sweat. Surrender of any kind was foreign to him, but he left his legs sprawled to the sides of the table and he let Etta have her way. When he felt her mouth close over his manhood, eager and hungry, he gave a shout of glorious despair and rose high off the surface of the table.

Still drawing on him, Etta stroked his hips with comforting hands, eased him back to the table. He lay trembling while she gave him torturous solace, her hands moving lightly over his inner thighs, accentuating the fact that he was spread for her like a banquet.

Finally, he caught her head in both hands and tried to lift her away, but she clung. In fact she suckled harder, and punished his insurrection with the slightest nip of her teeth, and in the next moment his reason splintered in glittering shards of fire. He cried out senselessly to heaven, and still Etta was ruthless.

Only when he was fully spent did she release him, take one of his hands and place it over her breast.

He squeezed gently, feeling the nipple go hard against his palm, wondering at a universe made completely new. Curving his other hand at Etta's nape, beneath the cascade of bright hair, he drew her down for his kiss.

When he could speak again, when his breathing was somewhat regular and his heart was no longer thudding against his ribcage like a sledgehammer against a washtub, he drew her against him and whispered her name like a prayer.

 

Brigham was sleepless that night, pacing before the study fire, filled with the conviction that something terrible was about to happen. The wet, loud fury of the wind had never troubled him before—he was used to living by the sea, having grown up in Maine and made his fortune on the shores of Puget Sound—but now the pit of his stomach was cold with fear. The howling! It was as though the souls of all the dead on earth had risen from their slumber to wage war on the living.

“Papa?”

He turned at the sound of the small, troubled voice and saw Charlotte standing in the enormous doorway, hair trailing. She was wearing a nightgown and wrapper, but her feet were bare. “Go back to bed,” he told his daughter, with brusque affection and an attempt at a smile. “The storm will pass.”

She crept closer, curled up in the leather wing chair nearest the hearth. “I'm afraid, Papa,” she confided, without pretending to her usual worldly wisdom. “Those big trees outside my window are
swaying
.”

“The framework of this house is sound, Charlotte,” he said reasonably, unwilling to show his own uneasiness lest it worry the child further, “and so is the roof. I made sure of that when I built the place.”

Charlotte propped one elbow on the arm of the chair and cupped her chin in her palm. Her gaze narrowed slightly and grew pensive. The sudden shift of subject didn't surprise Brigham at all, for he'd seen it coming.

“If Lydia is your wife, why doesn't she live here—with us?”

Brigham felt a headache take root in the muscles at the base of his neck. “That's difficult to explain,” he began, after a few moments of awkward silence. “Lydia and I—er, well, we have our differences.”

Charlotte gave an exasperated sigh. “And Uncle Devon and Polly ‘have their differences,'” she said, in a tone Brigham would not normally have tolerated. “What is it about the men in the Quade family that makes them such dreadful husbands?”

Despite the knotted ligaments in his nape and his sense of impending calamity, Brigham had to smile. “What brings you to the conclusion that the
men
are at fault?” he countered, sinking into the chair behind his desk. “Is it so inconceivable that it might be the women who are making things difficult?”

The girl arched one perfect eyebrow. She was becoming a woman, and Brigham felt a pang of loss at the prospect. Although he longed for sons, he had never wished that either of his daughters had been born male. In his remote and somewhat awkward way, he adored Charlotte and Millie.

“Yes,” she answered pertly, raising her chin from her palm. “You're a very stubborn man, Papa, and Uncle Devon is no better. You have all the poetry and grace of an ox.”

Brigham laughed and held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender, but inside he felt another twinge. When had this wise young woman slipped in and taken the place of his little girl? “Poetry and grace, is it? Well, it's a comfort that you think so highly of your father, Charlotte. Tell me, does your sister hold me in the same lofty regard?”

Charlotte's expression was one of impatient indulgence. “Don't be silly, Papa—you know very well we love you devotedly, but that doesn't mean we're blind, Millie and I. If you'd just go to Lydia and admit that you adore her, a number of problems would be solved right then.”

He rose, went to the liquor cabinet, and poured himself a brandy, all in an effort to avoid meeting his daughter's gaze. She had already seen too much, this woman-child, and he feared to reveal more. “Life is not so simple as one of your romantic stories,” he told Charlotte, somewhat sharply, as he poured. “As you grow, you will learn that, regardless of what the fairy tales say, love does not necessarily conquer all.”

The branches of a tree slammed against the window, then made a clawing sound on the glass, like giant fingers, and Charlotte started violently.

“You're certain none of the trees will fall on the house?” she asked in a small voice, her eyes huge in her pale little face.

Brigham was glad to put the discussion of Lydia behind him. “I'm certain you won't be hurt, even if one does,” he answered gently. “Now, go back to bed, Charlotte. It's late.”

Charlotte rose from the chair, padded over to him with the innocent grace of a kitten, and leaned down to kiss his cheek. “You shouldn't be afraid to tell Lydia how you feel, Papa,” she scolded gently. “She cares as deeply for you as you do for her.”

Something like hope buoyed Brigham's troubled heart, at least for a moment. “Good night,” he said pointedly.

Although he had apparently managed to reassure his elder daughter somewhat, Brigham was himself as anxious as ever. Leaving his drink unfinished on the desktop, he rose and went to stand at one of the windows, trying to make out the shape of Lydia's house in the darkness.

 

Dawn was still a long way off when Lydia finally gave up on sleeping, put on a fresh dress and a warm cloak, and set out through the furious storm for the schoolhouse. She would build a fire in the shiny new potbellied stove and carry in drinking water from the well, then write out the morning's lessons on the big chalkboard behind her desk. The time—please God—would pass quickly, morning would come, and the little flock of children would appear, full of mischief and magic. Then she would be able to forget her private concerns by busying herself with the needs and problems of others.

By the time she took refuge inside the newly completed school, her hair was wet with rain and her cloak was clinging to her dress. She lit only one lamp, though she would have liked to have several glowing about the large room. As teacher, it was her responsibility to make sure expensive supplies like kerosene were never wasted.

Humming, Lydia built a rousing fire in the stove in the corner of the room, then shook out her cloak and draped it over a chair to dry. As the moans of the wind grew more plaintive, and the great trees rustled restlessly in response, Lydia concentrated resolutely on planning the day's arithmetic assignments.

 

Devon was wet to the skin as he climbed down from the box of Clyde Malcott's wagon and stood looking up at the general store he'd built with his own hands. He'd picked a hell of a night to travel overland from Seattle, he admitted to himself, but then the weather had been good the day before, when he and Clyde had set out.

Clyde touched his hat brim. He was carrying special supplies for one of the lumber camps and still had some hard traveling ahead of him. “Fare thee well, Mr. Quade,” he called over the tempest.

“Thanks again,” Devon replied, pulling his carpet bag from the bed of the wagon just before Clyde and the team of weary horses rattled away. He paused again, at the base of the outside stairs leading to the second floor of the mercantile, and allowed himself to hope.

He'd spent most of the trip—hell, most of the last few weeks—planning what he'd say to Polly when the two of them were face-to-face, but all his pretty, carefully rehearsed words were carried away on the breast of the wind as he stood there.

Using his cane because he was tired and his healing muscles were cramped from the long, jolting wagon trip through the countryside, Devon started up the steps. When he'd progressed to the upper landing, he drew a deep breath, held it in his lungs for a long moment, and then knocked.

He saw Polly peer out at him from an upstairs window, and then the door flew open and she was standing there, the storm catching her thin flannel nightgown and molding it to her shapely body.

“Devon,” she whispered, as if afraid to believe it was really him.

Devon set the bag down at his feet. “Are you going to let me in, woman?” he demanded gruffly. “Or do I have to stand out here in the wind all night?”

With a cry of anguished elation, she launched herself at him like an arrow from a crossbow, flinging her arms around his neck. He felt the slight roundness of her belly against his midsection as he embraced her, and his throat thickened. He carried her over the threshold and closed the door, leaving his satchel and a great many misgivings outside in the rain.

“It isn't going to be easy, our finding our way back to each other,” he warned, setting her on her feet again, his hands lingering on her hips, “but I won't know another moment of sanity unless we try.”

She reached up and swept off his sodden hat, her face bright with joy, her beautiful eyes glistening with tears. “That's all I ask of you, Devon.” She caught one of his hands in both of hers and pressed it to her abdomen, where the baby was growing. “And it's all your son asks, too. Just a chance.”

With that, she began peeling away Devon's rain-drenched clothes, and he stood there, needing the warmth of the fire and of her love, ready for the first time in his life to submit to the will of another.

T
HE BLADE OF A KNIFE PRESSED LIGHTLY AGAINST
D
EVON'S
jugular as he lay beside Polly in the stormy, predawn darkness. An instantaneous calm overtook him; without moving or even changing the meter of his breathing, he looked up through his lashes.

The shape of a man loomed over him, and Polly stirred, sated and untroubled, at Devon's side. The instinct to protect her and the unborn child was ferocious; it pumped energy through his being.

“If it isn't the unhappy bridegroom,” the intruder drawled, his white teeth gleaming in the gloom as he smiled.

Devon felt no fear; there was no time to indulge in the luxury. In a motion so fast he never recalled making it, he clasped the stranger's wrist to stay the knife and bolted upright.

Polly awakened with a shriek. “Nat!”

Although he had no time to think about it, Devon registered the name on some level of his mind and knew this was the man Polly had known in San Francisco. And the realization gave Devon a new, even greater burst of strength that sent the night visitor hurtling against the nearest wall.

Still, the fight was far from over.

Nat bellowed like a bull and lunged for Devon, trailing the first gray light of dawn, the blade glinting in his hand.

Devon was naked, and still somewhat slow from satisfaction and sleep. He was not yet fully recovered from the near-fatal accident in the woods, and his assailant was strong. For all those disadvantages, it never occurred to Devon that he might lose.

He felt the point of the knife graze the underside of his chin just before he sent it clattering across the floor with a sharp blow to the other man's forearm. Immediately after that, a fist struck Devon hard in the solar plexus, thrusting the air from his lungs.

The pain only made him more determined.

A table crashed to the floor, and something shattered. Devon heard footsteps pounding down the inside stairway and silently rejoiced. No matter what happened to him, Polly would escape; she and the baby would be safe.

The stranger's hands closed around Devon's neck, cutting off his wind, and he felt broken glass cut into his back as he rolled in an effort to free himself. When that failed, he brought his knee up hard between the attacker's legs. The bastard howled in outraged pain, and Devon got him by the ears and slammed his head hard against the floor. Finally, Devon's opponent went limp.

A second later Devon felt the cold end of a shotgun barrel press against his backbone, and a rush of frustration, fury, and love swept over him.

Polly had not fled after all.

“Put your hands up, Nat,” she said, her voice quavering in the darkness. “I swear I'll shoot you if you don't.”

It was a moment before Devon could get his breath. “Damn it, Polly,” he rasped out, “it's me you're jabbing with that thing, and I'd just as soon you wouldn't pull the trigger if you don't mind.”

“D-Devon?”

He stood and took the gun from her hands, and he thought he felt her trembling reverberating in the stock. “Light a lamp,” he said gently. “It's dark as a coal miner's tomb in here.”

Polly obeyed, and when Devon got a good look at her, his heart softened. Her hair was still tangled from their lovemaking, and she wore one of his shirts, with just one button fastened. She gazed down at the man on the floor with horrified relief.

“Is he dead?”

There was broken glass everywhere; in the scuffle, a small china figurine had shattered to bits. “No,” Devon answered, picking his way through the shards of porcelain to lift his wife off her bare feet and carry her to the safety of the bed, where she wouldn't cut her feet. “I'll tie him up and lock him in the storeroom, and tomorrow Brig and I can figure out what to do with him.”

Polly touched Devon's back, and her hand came away bloody. She paled. “You're hurt. Maybe I should get the doctor.”

Devon reached for his trousers, stockings, and boots. “You're not going anywhere,” he replied. “Just stay put, Mrs. Quade, until I've taken care of your admirer here.”

He half dragged and half prodded Nat to his feet, escorted him downstairs, and flung him into the storeroom. Using twine, he bound the other man's hands behind him.

“You got one hell of a right cross for a storekeeper,” the prisoner muttered.

Devon didn't answer. He just latched the storeroom door and went upstairs to his wife.

Polly was crouched in the middle of the bed, looking small and terrified, and Devon said a silent prayer of thanks that he'd returned to Quade's Harbor when he had.

“That's him, the man you knew before me,” Devon said without rancor, setting the shotgun in the corner of the room.

Polly nodded briefly and patted the mattress with one hand. “Come over here and let me pick that glass out of your back.”

Devon obeyed. “Do you still have feelings for him?” he asked calmly. No one would ever have guessed from his tone how important her answer was to him.

“Sure I do, Devon Quade,” Polly snapped, kneeling behind him on the bed and taking no particular care, as far as he could tell, to minister gently to his wounded flesh. “I hate him!”

“But you loved him once.”

“I thought I did,” Polly responded, less heatedly. “I was just a scatter-headed girl then, though. I didn't learn what love was until I met you.”

Devon was quiet for a moment. He cared deeply for Polly, wouldn't have returned to Quade's Harbor if he hadn't, but he wasn't ready to say he loved her. Not straight out, anyway. “If that baby you're carrying is a boy, I'll want to name him for my brother.”

She paused, her hands on his shoulders, and bent to kiss the nape of his neck. Devon wasn't exactly sure, but he thought he felt her tears on his skin.

“Brigham is a fine name,” she said hoarsely.

 

Lydia was busy at the blackboard, writing out the day's arithmetic problems, when she heard, rolling beneath the incessant chanting of the wind, an ominous, grinding creak. Just as the roof shattered, she lunged beneath her heavy oak desk and instinctively covered her head with both arms.

When she looked up, the schoolhouse was filled with branches, and the festive scent of pine sap. And smoke.

She bit her lower lip and struggled to stay calm. A tree had fallen on the schoolhouse, that much was perfectly obvious, but except for a few scratches, she had not been hurt. No, the threat now was fire; the lamp had been broken, and perhaps the stove had been upset as well.

Lydia started to crawl out of her hiding place, but the broken tree limbs were too dense; she was trapped.

She heard a crackle of flames, and the smell of smoke intensified. Her eyes and throat began to sting, and she pressed the palms of both hands to her stomach, thinking of the child nestled there inside her. Trusting her for life and love.

Tears pooled along her lashes. “Brigham,” she said softly, amazed at how small and unimportant their differences seemed to her now. She had been wrong to demand so arbitrarily that he close down the Satin Hammer Saloon, no matter how that might have affected his timber business, but she reserved the right to wring his neck if he ever patronized the place. As for their political quarrel, well, if a broken country could mend itself into a union again, surely two people who loved each other could, too.

Lydia lowered her face to her updrawn knees. It was strange, she thought, with despairing ruefulness, how quickly one could put things into perspective when all other options were closed off.

 

Brigham had been dozing, but some sound jolted him awake, and he sat up straight in his chair. Instinctively, he rushed to the window, and in the first uncertain light of a rainy dawn, he saw the ancient tree that had fallen across the schoolhouse, crushing it to splinters.

He told himself Lydia wouldn't be in there, couldn't be, that she was safe in her bed in the cottage, but all the while he was thinking those thoughts, Brigham was bounding toward the front door.

He flung it open, left it gaping behind him when he ran down the walk and vaulted over the fence. Flames were roaring in the branches of the downed tree, catching at the broken walls of the school. Devon arrived, ax in hand, just as Brigham did, and there were others coming out of the night, too.

Brigham paid no mind to any of them. She was in there. Damn her stubborn Yankee hide, Lydia was
in that schoolhouse
, and if she hadn't been run through by a branch of that huge tree, she would surely be burned to death in the fire.

“Lydia!” he yelled, fighting his way up the huge, knotted trunk of the fallen fir, clawing at the shingles of the roof with his bare hands. “Lydia!”

Devon was beside him, shoving the ax into his grasp. Brigham only distantly acknowledged his brother's presence, so intent was he on Lydia's situation. “Here!” Devon shouted over the rising roar of the flames. While Brigham chopped at the roof with the wild efficiency of desperation, Devon remained at his side, despite the heat and the danger, using all his strength to clear away boards and branches.

Her voice rose to them, small and precious as the sound of a church bell the day after Judgment.

“Brigham? I knew you'd come for me.”

Brigham was soaked in sweat and the drizzling mist, and every muscle in his body screamed in protest, but still he swung the ax. A raw sound, part shout and part sob, tore itself from his throat. He thought he screamed her name again then, but he couldn't be sure.

Men were passing buckets of water up onto the burning roof, and Devon and others fought the blaze while Brigham lowered himself down through the rafters and the clawing fingers of the tree's branches.

“In the name of God, Lydia,” he shouted in an anguish of fear, barely able to breathe for the smoke, “where are you?”

“Here, Brigham. Under the desk.”

Coughing, fighting his way through a curtain of sharp needles and aged, pitchy wood, he found the desk, wrenched her out. Her face was white in the glow of the fire, except for smudges of soot, and she flung her arms around his neck with a little cry.

He took one moment to hold her close, then shouted, “Hold onto me—no matter what happens, don't let go!” She nodded, and Brigham began the dangerous climb back up through the debris. The heat was hellish, and the fire made a voracious whooshing sound in the timber and the remains of the building.

Devon was waiting on the rapidly disintegrating roof, though everyone else had already fled to safety He took Lydia from Brigham's grasp and carried her down over the massive trunk of the tree. Brigham hurtled after them only moments before the fire exploded and both the school and the tree blazed like the devil's vengeance.

At a safe distance from the inferno, Devon laid Lydia gently in the damp grass. Joe McCauley knelt at her left side, Brigham collapsed at another. His arms and face were scratched and burned, his clothes torn, and he couldn't seem to get enough air no matter how his lungs grasped for it. None of that mattered now, though, because Lydia was lying too still, and her eyes were closed.

Joe McCauley laid his head to her breast. “Her heart is still beating,” he said, rising to look directly into Brigham's burning eyes, “but she's not breathing.”

Panic swelled in Brigham's chest; he took Lydia's limp shoulders in his hands and raised her up, so that her mouth collided with his. If she had no breath, he would give her his. Had it been possible, he would have given her the strong, steady beat of his heart as well, and the nurturing blood flowing through his veins. He would, indeed, have surrendered his very life to save her.

No one spoke as Brigham drew air into his lungs and forced it into Lydia's. No one dared touch him, even though he knew they all thought his desperate effort was futile.

Tears mingled with the sweat on his face; he shook her once, out of fury and despair, and then he began to feed her air again. All the while, a litany of misery and hope threaded through his mind, twisting, turning, doubling back on itself.

Don't die—please, Lydia, don't leave me
—

Finally, Brigham felt strong hands come to rest on his heaving shoulders, heard Devon's voice in the thundering din of that tragic morning. “She's gone, Brig. Let her go.”

Brigham threw back his head and bellowed at the sky, like an animal. “Noooooo!” And then, like God breathing life into Adam, he pressed his mouth to hers again.

A light rain began to fall then, a misty benediction, and suddenly, wondrously, Lydia stiffened in Brigham's arms and then shuddered. He drew back, saw her open her eyes, watched as she tried to form his name.

A swell of joy rose from the onlookers, though Brigham could not have sworn afterward that anyone made the slightest sound. Joe McCauley rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger and said hoarsely, “Let's get that wife of yours in out of the rain, Brig.”

Brigham carried her toward his house, the townspeople trailing behind them in the early light as he held her so close against his chest that he could not guess where his being stopped and hers began. She lay trustingly in his embrace, only half conscious, her head resting against his shoulder.