Halfway Home, page 16
She searched the eyes of the man she had married in such indecent haste. in the steady light of the oil lamp, the lines etched by pain and exhaustion were clearly visible in his angular face.
“I thought about it, damn it,” Jericho snapped. “But it didn’t change the way things were. I did what I had to do, and I’ll thank you to stay out of my business.”
Heart fit to break, Sara started to apologize for her husband’s rudeness, even if it had been mostly deserved, when of all unlikely things, Rafael began to grin. And then he started to chuckle. Both Sara and Jericho stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
Sara tightened the sash of her wrapper. “Rafe, are you feeling all right?”
Even Jericho looked concerned. “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you? More than usual, I mean.”
Rafe dropped onto the foot of the bed, leaned back against the footboard, and howled. The only coherent word they could get out of him was “fate.” He kept repeating it over and over. Finally, he got up and staggered out into the hallway. They could hear his uneven progress as he made his way toward the taproom, still laughing, still muttering about fate.
Jericho turned to Sara. “You reckon I ought to get dressed and go after him?”
Sara sighed. “I reckon you’d better get yourself in that bed before you fall down in a dead faint. I doubt you’d appreciate it if I had to drag you off the floor and finagle your carcass into that bed again.”
A gleam of dark amusement crossed Jericho’s face and was gone so swiftly she thought she must have imagined it. “Spoken like a wife, madam.”
“I am a wife,” she said with a baleful look. For now, at least, she added silently.
Chapter Thirteen
“I’ve settled the tab for your gelding, Sara. If you’d care to sell him, I think I can find you a buyer with no trouble at all.”
“No, don’t do that. Let me think, Rafe.” When he wasn’t in a teasing mood, Sara had found that Jericho’s friend could be quite nice.
The three of them sat out on the veranda on one of the long backless benches, enjoying the scant warmth of the hazy October sunshine. Aside- from his most recent excursion to the necessary, this was the invalid’s first real outing. To judge from his expression, he was not particularly enjoying it.
“I’ll take the horse,” he muttered. “Sara can use it for her own personal mount until I find her something more suitable.”
They were talking across her, which irritated Sara no end. “Blue is perfectly suitable, thank you all the same.”
“He’s nearly seventeen hands,” Jericho argued.
“He’s gentle as a lamb,” Sara riposted. “I’ve ridden him for years.”
“No need to decide now,” Rafe placated. “We’ll tie him behind the shay along with your horse, Rico, and you can make up your mind later.”
Sara spoke up sharply, ready to put an end to the discussion. “Thank you, but my mind is already made up.” She wrapped her shawl more closely around her shoulders, wishing she had thought to bring along a coat when she’d gone haring off into the night to succor a critically wounded husband. At the time, clothes had been the last thing on her mind.
“Rafe’s right. The matter don’t have to be settled now.”
Ignoring her husband, Sara turned to the older man. “Rafe, I’ve written a letter for my stepmother. Could you possibly find someone to deliver that and Blue? Noreen can sell .him if she needs to. There’s little enough else left to sell.” That last was added somewhat bitterly, but Sara knew she owed it to her father’s memory to see that his widow didn’t starve. She had written a bank draft, not a letter. Knowing Noreen, the woman would far rather have money than a few false words of sympathy.
The house would probably end up as a boarding establishment. By now, Sara was past caring. Everything she had ever loved about her home was long gone, overlaid with too many bad memories. Including Blue. He was Titus’s horse. Had been Titus’s horse, she amended.
She only hoped Maulsie and Big Simon were at this moment waiting for her at Wilde Oaks.
Rising abruptly, she hurried inside, murmuring something about the chilly weather.
“She’s looking weepy,” Rafe observed.
“Sara? Didn’t look weepy to me.”
“You didn’t notice how the tip of her nose was starting to turn red?”
“She said it was cold, didn’t she? Reason enough for her nose to turn red.”
Feeling trapped, Jericho scowled at the toe of his boot. It was the first time he had worn them since the duel. Being fully dressed again after lying around in his blasted underwear should have given him a sense of being back in control of his affairs.
Instead he had never felt less so.
“I don’t believe you even looked at her,” Rafe said slyly. He had a way of pretending to know more than he actually knew that never failed to set Jericho’s teeth on edge.
“I looked at her, damn it! I was about to give her my coat when she upped and left.”
“She’s fell off some these past few days. You notice the way that frock was hanging off her b—that is, her frame?”
Jericho snorted. “Sara? She’s in fine fettle.”
With a shrug, Rafe clipped the tip off his cigar. “If you say so.”
“Damn it, if the woman needs fattening up, then I’m the one to do it! She’s my wife, not yours!”
Rafe spread his palms in a placating gesture, turning away to hide the gleam of satisfaction in his bright blue eyes. Fate was all very well, but a little prodding never hurt. “I reckon you’ve got the papers on her, all right, but that don’t mean she can’t have friends. You told me yourself it weren’t a real marriage.”
“You want to know how real it is, try poaching on my territory.”
“You know I’d never do that. All the same, while you was sprawled out in bed snoring your head off, the two of us spent more than one night together. Hit it off just fine.” He paused. Seeing Jericho’s hands curl into fists, he weighed his next remarks carefully. “Damned shame you were in such an all-fired hurry to haul her up before a joiner. I’d have saved you the trouble by marrying her myself if I’d known. Least I could do, under the circumstances.”
“You’d take another man’s leavings?”
“Hell, Rico, you ain’t even had time to set your mark on her yet.”
“I’m talking about Ricketts, damn it! He bedded her before his wife came and hauled him away. She might even be breeding.”
Rafe shrugged. “Can’t blame Sara for that. The old goat hornswoggled her.”
“I’m not blaming her, I’m just saying—” Uttering a string of raw profanity, Jericho got to his feet too quickly, swayed and nearly fell back onto the bench. Brushing aside Rafe’s offer of help, he stalked into the hotel.
“Rico, my boy, you know as much about women as I do about driving a bloody sailboat,” Rafe murmured. Still grinning a few minutes later, he sauntered out to the livery stable to find a boy to deliver the gelding and Sara’s letter to Smithers’s ma. From the little Sara had let drop during their late-night card games, the woman was a witch of the first order, but if Sara wanted her to have the damned horse, then who was he to argue?
The trouble with Sara Wilde, he was coming to realize, was that she was a real nice woman. And more often than not, nice women got the short end of the straw.
*
Sara was sitting in the rocking chair that had replaced the straight chair which had been destroyed the night the three drunks had broken into the room. The night one of them had shot a hole in the ceiling.
The night her reputation had been shot full of holes.
When Jericho let himself in she was rocking hard, doing about eighteen knots, as near as he could judge.
“Something worrying you?” he asked cautiously.
“No.” She didn’t bother to look at him. Neither did she slow down.
“That’s good. Was it something I said?”
“I told you nothing’s worrying me,” she snapped.
“Cut line, woman. Your nose is red, you’re fixing to cry, and you’ve been losing weight. That dress of yours is just hanging off your b—your frame.”
“It is not, I am not, and it is not.”
Jericho knelt beside her and stopped the motion of the rocker by gripping the side post. Using his right hand. He caught his breath sharply. The torn muscles in his shoulders had not yet healed completely.
Sara heard him gasp. “You go right ahead and tear your wound open again. I’ve nothing better to do than stay here another week and nurse you, for I’m sure Hester can order the roofers around and see to rebuilding the kitchen garden fence. Ivadelle will likely take a hand in the redecorating. I don’t think she likes the curtains in the front parlor, and as for the carpet . . .”
During the entire recital, she refused to look directly at him.
Ivadelle? Jericho’s jaw was not hanging, but the effect was just the same. Who the hell was Ivadelle? What was wrong with the curtains and the carpet? They’d been good enough for his parents and grandparents.
Cautiously, still kneeling beside her, he lifted a hand and held it against her brow. “Are you coming down with a fever?”
And then she did look at him. Her large, golden brown eyes were shimmering, her full lower lip was trembling, and the tip of her nose was indeed a bright pink.
She looked so damned beautiful Jericho felt his lungs seize up in his chest. “Sara,” he whispered hoarsely, not at all certain of what he wanted to say, only knowing that he had to say something.
His chest was so full of feelings he could scarcely breathe. Instead of speaking, he did something.
And while the something he chose to do might not have been wise, it was as inevitable as the tides. As the rising sun of a morning. As the falling of leaves in autumn.
He kissed her. And she let him. Not only let him, she kissed him right back. Softly, at first. A mere brushing of moist, warm lips. He felt her breath against his face, and she smelled of soap and dusting powder and the peppermint powders she used on her teeth, and Jericho thought it was surely the most intoxicating scent in the world.
“Ah, God, Sara,” he groaned. Sliding her off the armless rocker onto his lap, he bent one knee, bracing his foot on the floor, and leaned her back against the inside of his thigh. His good arm supported her back, his right hand came up to turn her face to his again, and this time when he kissed her there was no softness, no gentleness involved.
He kissed her fiercely, hungrily, as if he couldn’t get enough of her. Stroking her neck, his thumbs tangled in her hair. One by one, with trembling fingers, he removed the tortoiseshell pins that held it in place, and it tumbled over the back of his hand like a warm, heavy waterfall.
Her own small capable hands moved over his face and fluttered down to knead the muscles of his shoulders. Both shoulders. He didn’t even feel the pain, his whole awareness being centered on another part of his anatomy.
And hers. With an unsteady hand, he traced the delicate line of her jaw. His fingertips trailed down her neck until their progress was impeded by the high collar of her woolen gown. After only a moment’s frustration, he slid his hand down over her chastely covered breast and felt her stiffen in his arms. Felt the immediate response of her hardening nipples, and knew a powerful surge of triumph.
Careful, Wilde, for all she’s been bedded, she’s still green.
The weight of her hips pressed against his fiercely aroused flesh while the hard, bare floor pressed against his bony backside, making him exquisitely aware that the floor was hardly the best place for an exercise of this nature. Only how the hell was he going to get her up off the floor and onto the bed without coming to grief? Getting to his fret out on the veranda had nearly done him in.
“Sara,” he whispered against her throat. She had to feel him. He was as hard as an oar handle, damned near as big. She had to know what she was doing to him. “Sara, do you think we might edge over near the bed so I can hoist up aboard the mattress?”
She looked at him then, her face flushed with passion.
Or was it embarrassment?
“Oh, merciful saints. What were we thinking about?” she whispered.
“I’m surprised you have to ask.”
Before he could figure out his next cautious move, she was scrambling to her feet. In the process she braced her hand right where he was most vulnerable and then jerked it away as if she’d grabbed hold of the business end of a hot poker.
He was still taut as a flying jib in a full gale when, blushing up a storm, she bent over and grabbed him under the arms. “Here we go now—I’ll pull, and you grab hold of the back of the rocker and see if you can get to your knees.”
“Jesus, woman, I’m not a cripple, you know!”
Ignoring his protest, she said, “Maybe I should make you a pallet on the floor so you could rest first. . . .”
Rest first? That might not be such a bad idea, only he wasn’t sure he could hold out that long.
She stepped back, her hands on her hips, looking angry and flustered. “I knew it. I told you it was too soon to get out of bed!” Then, bending over him again, she started patting and pushing, her soft breast swinging right in his face, and Jericho commenced to sweat. If she said one damned word about fever, he vowed he would bed her right where she stood. Or knelt. Actually, he could envision any number of interesting possibilities, none of which required a mattress.
But before he could act on any of them, someone rapped on the door. “Rico? It’s me, Rafe. Are you in there?”
Tarnation. “Get the hell out of here, Turbyfill!”
“Are you all right? You sound like you’re in a bind.”
“Can’t a man get any blasted rest around here?” Jericho muttered. Sara tugged at his elbow and with a mighty effort, he managed to grasp the bedpost and swing himself up and around. Collapsing onto the feather ticking, he yelled, “Go to hell, Turbyfill!”
“Righto. But before I go, send Sara out here a minute, will you? I need to have a word with her.”
Jericho would rather have carved out his own liver and sent it out on a silver platter, but that didn’t appear to be an option. He flat-out refused to beg. “Go if you’re of a mind to, madam,” he snapped. “I’m not your blasted keeper.”
“No, you’re not. What you are, sir, is childish. I thought I had a nasty temper, but you’re worse than two tomcats in a tote sack.”
Childish was he? Curling his lip, he snarled at her, just to watch those clear eyes of hers shoot sparks. Which they did. Without even bothering to help him lie down, she spun around and marched across the room to the door.
Jericho sighed a sigh that was felt in every torn and half- mended muscle in his body. His gaze followed her as she yanked open the door. In twenty years he had seen more than his share of storms at sea. He’d seen St. Elmo’s fire light up the rigging aboard the Wilde Wind until she glowed from bowsprit to sternpost.
All that was a summer breeze compared to the way that woman affected him.
Not until the door closed behind her did Jericho let himself relax. And then he groaned. Childish was he? He didn’t feel childish. What he felt was horny as a ram and mad as hell because he was still too damned weak to do anything about it!
The truth was, he felt weak as rainwater. The whole right side of his upper back was aching like a rotten tooth. Having never been sick a day in his life, he had expected to mend overnight. In a day or so, at the most. God knows, that blasted conjure woman had smeared enough of her stinking potions on his back and chanted enough gibberish to raise the dead.
She had conjured him good, all right. He’d been forced to lie abed for neigh onto a week, half of it flat on his belly, while the strength seeped right out of his body. He’d told the fool woman that what he needed was a little more brandy and a lot less fermented frog brains.
She’d told him that brandy wouldn’t replace all the blood he’d lost. He dimly remembered going a few rounds over that, but then, between the princess’s conjuring spells and the doc’s laudanum, it was a wonder he could even remember his own name.
And then Sara had come. She had taken up where the other woman left off—bossy little female.
At least she’d gotten his blood to circulating again.
*
Some thirty minutes later, when Jericho heard Sara’s brisk footsteps coming down the hallway, heard the rattle of the doorknob, he was in no’ sweeter frame of mind. Closing his eyes, he pretended to be asleep.
She came and stood over him. He could feel her heat, smell the special scent that told him she was nearby, even in the dead of a pitch-dark night.
Hell, he even knew the cadence of her breath.
Right now it was quicker than usual. Which made him wonder what she had been up to.
With Rafe.
It would serve her right if he grabbed her by the wrist and flipped her over on top of him. He would do it, too, if he thought he had what it took to make the next move, but bedamned if he was going to ask her to unfasten his breeches and lift him out. Before he would do that, he would wither away like a Mexican pepper that had been strung up to dry.
Instead, he listened to her moving around in the room, tried to envision what she was doing and how she looked doing it as he heard the rustle of cloth and the clink of pitcher against washbowl.
Eventually, he must have drifted off to sleep.
*
Sara wondered if the man was going to sleep all day. He’d been awake when she had come back to the room last night, but pretended he wasn’t, and for reasons she didn’t even try to sort out, she had let him believe she believed it.
She told herself it was only because she wanted to avoid another argument. All they seemed to do lately was argue. But it wasn’t that. It had something—more than something; more like everything—to do with all the kissing and other things that had been going on.
When he had touched her right smack dab on her bosom, she’d thought she would swoon from all the peculiar feelings that had rushed through her body. She had felt like a glass of cold tea when one stirred a spoonful of honey into it. It was all the same clear color, yet one could actually see the torpid streams and currents swirling around in its amber depths.
