Heart of the West (11 page)

He spun around on his heel and strode out the door. But he didn't go far. He settled his hip against the hitching rail. He crossed his long booted legs at the ankles, hooked a thumb in his gun belt, and stared out over the yard, the cigarette dangling from his fingers. It was a relaxed pose, but anger twanged in every hardened line of his body.

She walked through the door of the cabin and out to the hitching rail. She stood there looking at his profile. Looking at the sharp protrusion of his cheekbone under the dark, taut skin, at the hard, cruel line of his mouth. "I know what you are trying to do, and you will never succeed. I will not allow you or anything else to frighten me away."

He turned his head, and his uncomfortable eyes stared back at her. The chinook wind blew between them, dry and hot as anger. "I'll bet you whatever you care to name that you'll be scootin' off back home to your mama long before the first snowfall."

Clementine deliberately looked at Gus so that this man— this rough, uncouth, and lawless man—would know that his brother was the reason she would never leave. Gus was leading the dun mare out from between the buckboard's shafts. The big gray gelding in the corral, Rafferty's horse, butted his head against a pole and let out a sharp whinny. The horse suited his master; he was as ugly as a rat and probably just as mean.

"Your horse, Mr. Rafferty," she said. "Will you wager your horse?"

"What in hell would a little gal from Boston want with a horse?"

She turned her head to meet his disturbing eyes, and an unexpected shiver curled up her spine. He provoked her—that was it. The man was able to provoke her just by standing next to her, breathing the same air. She had to swallow twice before she could speak. "I might not know how to ride as yet, but I intend to learn. Do we have a wager?"

"Well, now, Boston, I guess that depends." He drawled the words, pulling them out like taffy, mocking her. "On what you got to ante into the pot."

Her hand went up to the cameo brooch at her neck. She felt almost dizzy for a moment at the thought of her audacity and, yes, her own wickedness. For hadn't she been taught that all wagering was sinful in the sight of God? She fingered the delicately wrought gold for a moment, then unhooked the clasp and pulled it free of the stiff black velvet collar of her dress. She held the cameo up to his face. "I put up my brooch."

He peeled the cigarette off his lower lip and tossed it to the ground, grinding it to ash with the toe of his boot. He took the brooch, his fingers brushing hers with their callused roughness. He rubbed his thumb over the carved agate. "This is a woman's thing," he said. "What would I want with a woman's thing?"

"You could sell it," she retorted, her throat tight, "or give it to one of your chippies. I understand you have dozens of such women whom you doubtless need to keep content by giving them pretty baubles."

He let out a startled snort of laughter. "Only five or six, last time I counted. Trouble is, they're spread out all over to hell and gone. Keep me busy, they do, ridin' to and then fro, not to mention all the ridin' I gotta do while I'm there. Christ, by the time I get to the last one, I'm usually so saddle sore I barely got enough left in me to make her scream at the end of it."

Clementine went rigid, and she felt hot color flood her face.

She hadn't quite grasped the meaning of all he'd said, but his raw laughter left her with no doubt it was wholly profane and utterly indecent.

He leaned into her, bringing his face so close to hers she could see the fine lines around his eyes and the stubble of the beard he hadn't bothered to shave off that morning. "I don't need any pretty baubles to keep my women content. Unless, of course, you're talking about
my
baubles."

He took her by the wrist and dropped the cameo into her palm. Her chest swelled as she sucked in a deep, hitching breath. She tried to control the shudders that passed through her. She wouldn't let him see how his touch revolted her; she wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"Do we have a wager, Mr. Rafferty? Or are you afraid you might lose?"

Something flared bright and hot in his eyes, like throwing quicklime on a fire. The tension was now so taut between them that she was surprised the hot wind didn't twang a note out of it.

"When you run outta here with your tail tucked between your legs, Boston..." His fingers moved, sliding slowly up her wrist until they met the tight cuff of her sleeve. Then he let her go. She gripped the brooch so hard the pin dug into her palm, drawing blood. "When you run," he said in his soft-voiced drawl, "don't forget to leave your li'l bauble behind."

Gus took the cast-iron pot off the shelf and set it with a clatter on the little stove. Squatting, he opened the damper and fanned his hat at the flames. "I think some mulligan stew for supper would be a nice change from sowbelly beans and canned corn."

Clementine sat on the woodbox, her hands tucked between her knees like a child. He looked up at her, his face flushed by the stove's heat. "There's a sack of spuds in the food cache," he said. She looked to where he pointed, at an old apple crate under the sink. "There's some wild onions growing alongside the river. And if I know Zach, there's probably some freshly killed venison hanging in the springhouse." He stoked the fire with a piece of kindling, then tossed it in.

"Gus..."

He looked back up at her, his face still flushed bright, happy, and she knew it was because he liked hearing her say his name.

She dragged in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Gus, in my father's house on Louisburg Square, we had domestics."

The brightness left him, quick as dousing a candle, and his mouth tightened. "I'm sorry, girl," he said. "But it can't be like that for you out here, not yet. If you don't want to stay, Nickel Annie will be heading east again next week."

"Oh, no..." She slipped off the woodbox and knelt beside him. She laid her palm against his chest. "I would stay if you said we had to live in a cave. I'm only trying to tell you that, faced with those potatoes and the pot, I find that I am ignorant. Woefully ignorant."

All the tension went out of his big body. Reaching beneath the sink, he plucked a tin can out of the food cache. He pulled a jackknife out of his pocket, snapping the blade open with a well-oiled
snick.
He held the knife and can up in the air, flashing a big Gus McQueen smile. "This is a knife. And this is a can." He stabbed the knife into the can, and air escaped from the hole in a loud hiss. "Stewed tomatoes." He brought the can up to his nose, sniffing loudly. "I take that back. It's more of that durned corn."

He laughed and she laughed with him. She let it bubble up out of her unchecked like a shaken bottle of effervescent lemon.

He went still, staring at her, his eyes wide and serious. He traced the shape of her lips with his fingers. "I wish I could give you a mansion and servants. And I will someday, I swear it."

"I don't want a mansion or servants. I only want you."

"Do you mean that, girl?"

Beneath the touch of his fingers, her mouth curved into a smile. "Only you, Gus. Only you."

The coal-oil lamp, with its wide bell-like paper shade, threw a warm glow over the table. A pot of fresh coffee burped cheerily on the cookstove, and Clementine felt pleased with herself, for she'd been able to make biscuits in a frypan just like Nickel Annie's. Well, almost like Annie's... They were only a little scorched on the bottom.

Gus sat in his shirtsleeves, eating the biscuits and the canned corn with an unfeigned appetite. Her father, Clementine remembered, had always worn his coat to the dinner table. Come to think of it, she had never seen her father without his coat. But tin plates and nail-keg seating weren't the same as starched linen, silver and china, and plush-covered chairs.

Clementine started at the sound of scuffling footsteps at the front door, and her head jerked around. Outside, a dog whined, and Mr. Rafferty's rough voice shushed it. She listened, her back taut, until the footsteps faded into the night sounds of the crickets and the soughing wind.

Clementine noticed how Gus, too, had tensed and then relaxed when his brother didn't come in. "Zach's offered to bed down in the barn for the time being," he said.

"That doesn't sound very comfortable for him," she answered, not meaning a word of it. She hoped the man would be miserable.

Gus shrugged, his gaze going back to the door that was now shutting Zach Rafferty out of his own house. "He's used to sleeping rough."

Gus had been gone for almost a year, yet as far as Clementine could tell, the brothers hadn't exchanged more than two or three sentences since he'd come home. And if they hadn't been getting along before Gus left, her presence was sure going to aggravate whatever was wrong between them.

Clementine hoped this would be so; perhaps Mr. Rafferty would be the one to leave the RainDance country. She peered through the shadows cast by the rafters, trying to make out the gouge in the wall. It could have been carved by a tomahawk. Or it could have been left by the innocent ax that had chopped and hewed the log. She wanted to ask Gus about the man who had lived here before them, about how he had died. But she wanted more to think the story wasn't true, that Zach Rafferty had made it up to frighten her away.

"Clementine..."

She looked across the table at her husband. His eyes held a strange and sleepy, heated look, and his voice when he spoke her name had a husky break in it. "Clementine, we're here. At the ranch, that is. And it's time I..." The skin across his cheek- bones flushed, and he pressed his lips together hard. "I want to be making you my true wife now. In the... the physical way."

She couldn't swallow, or even breathe. It was real suddenly, what would happen between them. And it would happen soon, at last, at last. She was going to lie with him on that big iron bed, and he would make her his true wife.
"I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me."
She would become his beloved, and he would be hers. Her beloved.

The nail keg scraped across the floor as he stood up. He came around to stand behind her. She drew in a funny little sucked-in breath as he began to take the pins from her hair. His hands smoothed her hair over her shoulders, awkward and yet gentle. The room had gone so quiet she could hear her own breath and the uneven thump of her heart.

He reached around to help her up. She placed her hand, trembling and damp, in his. He led her to the lean-to room. It was barely large enough to hold the bed, the big iron bed made up in trade blankets and pillows cased in flour sacks.

She could feel Gus hovering behind her, hear his rough breathing, but she couldn't bring herself to look at him. "I'll, uh, give you a few minutes alone to get undr—to get, well, ready. Well, hell," he said, laughing shakily. She waited until the door had shut behind him, then eased out her own shaky breath.

She had never seen herself naked. She had even bathed in her shift. But this time she did not drape her night rail over her head like a tent before removing her underclothes. She pulled off petticoats, camisole, corset, and chemise. She hesitated when she came to her shimmy, then tugged free the drawstring and peeled the muslin drawers off her hips and thighs.

The air was cool on her bare skin, and she shivered. Her nipples drew up tight and hard. She touched them, briefly. Her hands drifted down, fluttering over her belly, but went no lower.

Moving quickly she took a fresh night rail and her hairbrush out of her valise. She pulled the nightdress on over her head. The thin batiste settled over her, gentle as a caress.

A clay jug sat atop a tall, thin chest made of more packing crates, beneath a cracked and tarnished hand mirror that had been nailed into the wall. She poured cold water into a tin basin and washed her face and hands quickly, chaffing her skin with the rough towel. She gathered up her hair, pulling it over her shoulder, then reached for her brush. Her fingers gripped the handle, her knuckles whitening. The hairbrush, fashioned of sterling silver etched with elaborate roses and engraved with her initials, had been a gift from her mother. She had a vivid image of her mother and Aunt Etta sitting in a wash of morning sunlight, her mother laughing and then weeping, and Aunt Etta saying, "At least from now on, you'll be spared his bed."

Gus knocked on the door. She dropped the brush and whipped around, her hand fluttering to her breast.

The door eased open. She felt shy, standing before him in nothing but her nightdress. Shy and strangely aware of her own body, of the nakedness of her legs beneath the thin batiste, the heaviness of her breasts, the tightness in her nipples. She could feel her pulse beating hard and fast against the high lace collar. Unconsciously she put her hand up to her throat.

He came at her, the light at his back throwing huge shadows over her. His hands encircled her arms, and her breath left her in a soft huff, fluttering her lips.

He stared at her mouth, his- eyes bright, his face taut. "Clementine," he said, and his voice broke into a groan as he lowered his head and kissed her.

He filled her with his breath and taste. She was trembling deep inside herself, and she felt a tugging sensation low in her belly that was strange and rather pleasant. She arched against him, gripping the hard muscles of his back. She could feel the heat of him beneath the soft flannel of his shirt, and a trembling within him as well.

He shuddered hard and tore his mouth off hers. "Get into bed."

The mattress sighed, and the braided rawhide groaned as she lay upon the bed. She pulled the bedcovers up to her chin. The sheet was cold and scratchy beneath her bare legs.

She watched him undo the laces at the sides of his boots and kick them off. She knew men weren't built the same as women in their private places, but she had never seen a naked man to know how they were different. But he undressed only down to his white woolen union suit before pulling back the bedcovers and stretching out beside her. It was so quiet she could hear the rush of her own breathing in her ears. Her body felt weighted, her skin too hot and tight.